Why Your Father Matters

In the West we live very individualised lives. The philosophy now is individualism, as against tribalism, or familyism if there be such a word. Everywhere else people were tribal — very tribal. What your father said, that was the end of it; one did not go against one's father. Such has been the patriarchal community: whatever the father said, that was the end of it; and likewise the elders of the community. Now one would be hard put to find a father and son who think alike — sometimes for good reasons, in that the father stands on one level and the son or daughter is, mā shāʾ Allāh, well guided and understands, while the father is deeply and negatively cultural. Not all culture is bad, which is why the word here is negatively cultural. So in some cases it is a good thing. But otherwise we live by individualism, and it is therefore hard to understand.

Being told, then, that your father was… that Shayṭān was the enemy of your father — what is my father to me, people will say. But Allah says: no, that matters. You carry something of your father's genetics after all. Your father matters to you — meaning your father and your parents in general, not the father only, for there were both father and mother; there was Ḥawwāʾ (peace be upon her), Eve, and Ādam (peace be upon him). So that deception is set out, and one may read of it for oneself, in shāʾ Allāh: how Shayṭān contrived to make them, or to persuade them, to eat of that tree. The sūrah then moves on.