Maintaining bonds with relatives

This week’s khutba was on maintaining relationships or bonds with relatives

Maintaining relationships with relatives increases connection and love between family, and removes hatred and jealousy from each other, and allows for relatives to care for each other and to look after each other.

The act of maintaining relationships comes in many forms, from smiling and being happy by seeing each other, to being soft when dealing with each other, to helping those in need within family, and to try and be the first to aid each other in any situation.

It is also about giving each other gifts, and to forgive any mistakes, and to not find each other’s faults or making them bigger than it is. It is also by being fair to each other and to do supplications and dua for your family to be successful in this world and next.

This is related in a hadith of the Prophet SAWS in which he said:

“He who believes in Allah and the Last Day, let him be hospitable to his guest;

Dear brothers and sisters, the bond between relations has a great status, and its rights are many, and it’s enough to say that if you maintain this bond then Allah SWT will maintain the bond with Him, by his mercy and bounties, and whoever cuts it then Allah SWT will cut it from Him.

This point is relayed in the Quran in Surat Muhammed ayat 22 and 23 which is translated to say:

So would you perhaps, if you turned away, cause corruption on earth and sever your [ties of] relationship?

Those [who do so] are the ones that Allah has cursed, so He deafened them and blinded their vision.

Dear brothers and sisters, here we can see the importance of maintaining ties with one’s relations as the punishment of those who do not is clearly stated within the ayats of the Quran.

There is no difference of opinion about the importance of maintaining relationships with family, and cutting ties is of big sins. However, we need to implement practical lessons in order to avoid being guilty of this sin and so this reminder concludes with 5 tips we can all do to achieve this.

1. Visiting them. This is especially true in the time in which we live as our relationships have become virtual thanks to Facebook etc. However, this cannot replace in-person interaction which is what is needed for a healthy relationship with others.
2. Helping them. Whether this is practically by helping elders with basic things, to offering sincere advice to others. This is particularly important as we live in a materialistic and competitive time in which jealous and envy is rife amongst some. As Muslims we must set the standard here and wish only the best for others from the heart and thus allowing this feeling to manifest into good advice for others.
3. Forgive and pardon others. As Muslims we need to be of thick skin. Ours is not the manner of holding grudges and so if we have been wronged by others, we ought to forgive for the sake of Allah SWT in the hope that He in turn shows mercy to us. This is conveyed in the following hadith in which the the Prophet SAWS said:

“The person who perfectly maintains the ties of kinship is not the one who does it because he gets recompensed by his relatives (for being kind and good to them), but the one who truly maintains the bonds of kinship is the one who persists in doing so even though the latter has severed the ties of kinship with him”.

1. Be charitable to one another. We are often told in khutbas on marriage that we ought to gift our spouses with presents often. However this is also applicable to all relationships as we ought to extend charity to all our relations. And charity begins with a smile dear brothers and sisters so there is no reason to not implement this. It also has it’s reward as the Messenger of Allah SAWS said

“Anyone who wants to have his provision expanded and his term of life prolonged should maintain ties of kinship.”

1. Pray for one another. Dear brothers and sisters, our Ummah is one that is blessed with kinship and so let us observe this fact through active duas for one another. We have the means to do this already through social media. Lets use technology to communicate our duas and to request it from one another as it is our right to do so from our fellow brothers and sisters.

Dear brothers and sisters, we are experiencing more and more as the world changes that relationships are at risk of becoming strained. Technology in particular is proving to be a catalyst for this. However, we can also use that to keep in touch, plan face to face meetings and to share worries and to pray for one another. By displaying this mercy towards one another we can only hope that Allah SWT graces us with that same level of mercy upon our return to Him.