RHM The solution - the most missing quality of our society

I love Arabic grammar. Most of the words have a three-lettered root that encompasses a pool of possible meanings, all having something in common. From these roots with the addition of other letters, we can form countless nouns, verbs or adjectives according to an amazing set rule. 

The most familiar could be perhaps salaam that means peace, with the root S-L-M. It is the root of the world Islam as well which actually means something like a willful acceptance of the facts (ordained by God) that provides peace of mind. Not submission, not suppression, even more not suppression to creatures. (Ok, grammatically it could mean submission, but psycholingvistically I would avoid the use of this world in the presence of everyone - including myself - grown up in a submissive environment and/or oppressive society.) Knowledge is to be aware of the fact. Wisdom is to know when and how to tell them.

R-H-M is another triconsonantal root of many Arabic words containing a wide range of meanings that includes pity, mercy, compassion, kindness, sympathy, caring, etc. It actually means all the manifestations of unconditional love. According to a strongly referenced prophetic teaching, the “rahma” (= mercy, compassion, kindness, sympathy, caring, etc.) of God is more than 100 times bigger than all the rahma ever existed on earth over time, including the human and animal world. So how could someone think about God as someone “not merciful”?

Another important derivation of the RHM-root is rahm, the womb. It shows us a lot of examples of being a mother and how to treat yourself in case you haven’t received all the unconditional love and kindness and mercy in childhood. Perhaps it makes so much sense to me now as I don’t possess the organ itself anymore, yet I’m trying to embody all the features it actually embodies. I understand from it that as a mother my main way of existence is providing a safe haven for my children, to accept them unconditionally, to love them as they are, to show kindness to them, to be caring, to feel sympathy for them and to be merciful with them no matter what.

I have many friends thank God. Very few of them I talk to daily/weekly, but there are others who, no matter how long time passes, we can talk about the most important things immediately. I can’t be grateful enough to one of my dear friends from this latter group who shared her deep struggle with a guilty conscience for not knowing how to draw a line between accepting her child as they are and following her principles (the grown up child apparently goes against them). The whole idea of this article actually came from our meaningful conversations with my dear friend.

The way religion was taught to us was partly a law book, and partly some people’s attempt to recreate their society in a land that was already prone to being suppressed. The red oppression was painted green, and the unspeakable fear of the black car stopping in front of the house at dawn (an actual threat our parents’ generation lived in as children) has turned into the “pious fear of God” for not completing religious duties and not ticking enough on our checklist of good deeds. What remains is the fear of an authority that is only interested in deeds and not thoughts and feelings behind it. How absurd! How many times do we read that God sees our hearts and not what we do outwardly? And so many things against the idea that God would actually be like a heartless tyrant. He is Compassionate - that’s actually the Possessor of Rahma (= mercy, compassion, kindness, sympathy, caring, etc.) for every single creature, like He even provides oxygen and sustenance to sinners, Merciful, that He gives extra to those who love Him - not trying to tick every box on the checklist out of fear. We know that He is Kind, Forgiving, Seer of our hearts, is closer than our jugular vein, meaning that He understands us better than we understand ourselves, yet we see and portray Him as if He was less compassionate and understanding and loving than a relatively soft hatred human is able to be. What’s our excuse? And what’s our reason? That we have not been freed from the shackles of tyranny that has surrounded us in the air since we had been conceived, got infiltrated in our mothers’ milk, and is everywhere around us ever since, as the poem “One sentence on tyranny” says. And then came people from another suppressed society and explained so many just legislations - yet in everyday life they follow another suppressive way where only outer actions matter and not the hearts. The only time we notice they possess that organ when they form a long line in front of the cardiologist on health day.

Why is it so? Why do they present mercy as a set of requirements? Why do we accept submission instead of peaceful tranquility? And why do we continue this, giving those who have been in our rahm, who yearn and live from our unconditional acceptance, a new set of complexes of inadequateness? How can any sort of principle be more important than the person themselves, their needs to be loved?

Why? Because none of us experienced real mercy, compassion, acceptance, unconditional love.

Because those who had been charged with loving us unconditionally have already been broken by the time they had us. And the same happened with those who raised them, and to those who raised them, and on and on and on. There’s no documented time of a society built on mercy, acceptance and unconditional love. 

People believe that the enforcement of principles on the new generations is the cure, it’s the right way and are surprised when they rebel against our lofty ideals. What we fail to understand is that before any elevated, pious way could be accepted, one needs to feel accepted. One needs to know why. If it’s God teaching us something, we need to know God. We need to know He loves us unconditionally and that He is suggesting to us a way of life that is benefiting us. It’s not an order. We will not fall out of His mercy if we fail to follow His advice. There’s no way to fall out of His mercy. 

We, middle aged people grown up in oppressive societies, had to learn from the moment we were born that in order to be accepted, one needs to give up their own needs. Babies weren’t “allowed” to cry, so they learnt to disregard their own feelings of cold, hot, wet or hunger in order to please those on whom their lives depended on. And then in kindergarten, in school, in the family, in society, in higher education, in the workplace we only met a new set of requirements we needed to meet in order to go on, to live, and no one cared about what we wanted. After a while we didn’t care either, we lost all connection to our own gut feeling, to our soul. Why? Because we weren’t treated with rahma. We only have known rules to abide by and no unconditional love - we have never received it. So when we were presented with a just system, we admired its justice, but we perceived it as a new set of laws, and not the manifestation of mercy, compassion, kindness, sympathy, caring and unconditional love. Why? Because we never experienced it.

How can we say we haven’t experienced rahma if we believe that’s the main quality of God? Haven’t we seen all the wonderful examples of our life when He saved us from calamities, when He answered our prayers, when He opened us doors we thought were closed forever? What’s wrong with us? 

Nothing. There’s nothing wrong with us. We just can’t love following orders. It’s not how it works. It’s not how we work. How we are created. We can perceive love if we experience it directly. If our parents were unable to give it to us due to the same problem, we can give it to ourselves. We can accept ourselves unconditionally. We can be compassionate with ourselves, show us sympathy and kindness. And yes, most probably there will be times when some of the points on the checklist won’t be ticked. But it’s alright. Because we are learning to operate from the place of love, not from the place of desire for adequacy and compliance. Only if we love us unconditionally will we experience the love streaming to us from God. 

Only then, if our integrity, or what we believe at the moment to be that, is not swiped off the table, not denied, not judged, but accepted as it is we can experience real mercy - and consequently we will be able to follow any sort of guidance or advice. In the situation when our authenticity is not required to be given up in order to have connection. And rebel as they are, we can learn a lot from our children. How?

Because the next generation doesn’t operate from fear. And it’s partly our merit. When we held them as babies when they cried, when we fed them whenever they were hungry and not “in every 3 hours” as it was prescribed, when we sat down with them and asked them what’s wrong and didn’t order them to stop whining, we nurtured their souls. We managed to provide them with part of the rahma we haven’t even experienced because we felt that’s part of our fitrah, our natural way of being.

Consequently, our children don’t believe they need to deny themselves in order to be accepted, and we can take pride in this. We helped them heal from a transgenerational curse and it’s wonderful. We have started a road we haven’t really understood, just felt it’s better, but we are stumbling from time to time as we don’t really know the next steps. Also, because with little babies, rahma comes naturally, but with partly grown teenagers and tweenagers it can also become a question of dominance. They are stronger than us - we raised them that way, but now we might feel they turn against us, denying our principles. And, we can’t pour from what we don’t possess.

The next inevitable step is to channel rahma towards ourselves. To learn to love ourselves unconditionally. To turn to ourselves with sympathy and care. To understand ourselves, to heal our wounds. And by doing it, by going through the process to learn to love ourselves we will experience that God’s love has always been there. It has never left, never changed. That whatever we have gone through was only for us to finally find ourselves.

We need to experience our own unconditional love in order to perceive the love of God that has always been around and also, in order to be able to love others unconditionally. And no, it’s not a requirement again to love everyone like that. But our children are an exception. They are entrusted upon us in order to be loved by us unconditionally. In order for us to convey the love of God to them. And this is the way. Not the restrictions, the rules and laws, and absolutely not the way of full or partial retraction of unconditional love. That’s not how they will understand what’s right. Every rule is actually a manifestation of love, but for anyone to accept it fully, by heart, not by force, one needs to know the source of that love and needs to experience it. 

Is it too far fetched from piety? From righteousness, from following God’s rules?

During the first 13 of his prophethood, Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him never introduced a single ruling. No obligations, no prohibitions. Only talks of who God is, how He dealt with previous nations, how we can see His love and mercy throughout the millennia of human history. Only when there was an opportunity to create a society based on justice for everyone were guidelines gradually introduced, and they were called “advice” to the people and their leaders.

Muslims also get offended when they are told “islam was spread by sword” and they love to cite the example of Indonesia where the nice manners of the Yemeni traders was the main reason for the spread of the religion. What we fail to recognise is that withdrawal of love where it is necessary has the same effect as cruel oppression. Not giving unconditional love to our children can kill them. Being strict with them and imposing even the best principles upon them is the same as spreading truth and justice by sword.

We can try other ways. But this is how psychology works. This is how we are created. By our Creator. Out of rahma.