Lifestory
Sustenance Will Come
Mubarak Adam
Issue 21, Spring/Summer 2009
My life began in Nabipur, a village in Gujarat with less than 2,000 inhabitants. I lived with my family - grandparents, parents and sister. Our main source of income was farming but when I was a young boy my father took the decision to mortgage our farm to access sufficient funds for him to travel to England for work. For seven years we lived in a one-storey mud hut and times were hard. In 1967 my father arranged for my mother, sister and myself to join him. I remember our travel date clearly - 4th October 1967 – and I was aware that at 15 I was without formal education, I could not read or write, yet I felt determined to use my strengths to overcome my weaknesses.
My father had a job in a cotton mill in Lancashire and he had bought a house for us in Preston for £400. He worked in the cotton mills all his working life, and over time he paid off the mortgage on our farm in Nabipur and built a three-storey house with bricks and mortar. We still support our family there and have been back to visit a number of times.
On my arrival in England I found myself completely overwhelmed by the system – the culture, the customs, the language, the people, and of course the weather. It did not take long for me to realise however that if I was to survive I had to rise above this so-called ‘culture shock’. Fortunately I quickly realised the nature of my ‘strengths’: optimism and determination, and also an innate liking for people irrespective of colour or creed. All of these qualities proved to be powerful tools in negotiating the obstacles presented to me as an immigrant at a time when the term multi-culturalism was unheard of.
Growing up in India I had learned to play cricket rather well, and absolutely adored the game. Much to my surprise and delight I found this to be one of the most rewarding routes for social networking, not only as a way of meeting people from many different walks of life, but of developing my English language skills. I was attending night school and receiving private tuition at the weekends to improve my English, but learning and speaking it on a social level in a Cricket Club environment enabled me to pick up on the subtle nuances of language and dialect that made me feel more at home in Lancashire. I played cricket for seventeen years and gained great enjoyment from the game and the people I met. Indeed I have many good friends, from the many strands of my life: I value, and have been inspired by them all.
Throughout my working life I have only been unemployed for seven months yet I have to say that this was probably the worst time of my life. Waking up every morning into an atmosphere of doom and gloom, my sense of optimism deserted me. I was filled with a dreadful pessimistic view of the future – in reality no future at all! Eventually however I found a job with British Nuclear Fuel Ltd. and worked with that organisation for 28 years, the last 10 years as a team leader. Whilst I hugely enjoyed my time with BNFL, events at home brought about a new path of discovery.
In 1999 my wife became ill and I moved into the unfamiliar territory of ‘Carer’, a role that was to evolve and change my life. In 2004 my father fell from the top of the stairs to the bottom breaking his right hip, which made him permanently physically disabled. One year later my mother had a massive heart attack that left her disabled too. Now I had to care for three people and felt it necessary to sacrifice my full time job.
I faced many difficult challenges, and although Social Services endeavoured to find a suitable Asian carer for my parents it proved impossible. Despite settling in England my parents had not embraced the culture and the language as fully as I had, and so they needed a carer who would understand their Indian culture, customs, religion and Gujarati language – Ghanti. The complications were many and so it was with gratitude that I learned that new government regulations allowed for ‘person centred planning’ for the disabled. This meant that I could personally organise the employment of three carers, and I was careful to engage people that I could rely on and trust to take care of the people I love.
To understand the whole concept of disability and the needs of disabled people I joined Lancashire Centre for Independent Living (LCIL), Pukar (disability resource centre) Lancashire LINK, Mental Health Improvement Programme (MHIP) and Preston Carer Centre and am still learning. One of my main contacts through the game of cricket was Malcolm Rae, OBE, now Joint National Lead in the National Mental Health Development Unit’s Acute Care Programme in Mental Health. He introduced me to Whittingham Hospital Cricket Club some 35 years ago and we stayed in contact when I joined Springfields CC. His friendship has proved invaluable in enabling me to expand my knowledge and understanding of disability across the board. He encourages me to attend his conferences on Mental Health - he is my mentor!
disability is a reason for care and not discrimination
Thankfully I have learned through these connections that disability is a reason for care and not discrimination: that the sanctity of human life is paramount and no human life can be considered worthless, regardless of skin colour, age or disability. As my own family life has evolved I have become interested in discovering the Islamic teaching on disability in the belief that Islam provides guidance to mankind, in all aspects of life. It urges Muslims to seek guidance and exert every effort…to leave no stone unturned in pursuing the truth. May Allah Almighty help us make use of the truth, after acquiring it, and help us to steer clear of falsehood. Amen!
Allah is the name the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All thanks and praise are due to Allah and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.
In my search for truth – helped by my spiritual guide Moulana Yunus, Imam at our Noor Mosque in Preston - I can see that Allah has created people, not only in different races and colours but also with different abilities. While some of them are given certain gifts, others are deprived of these gifts and thus are considered ‘disabled’. This is the nature of life, according to the Divine Wisdom through which Allah governs everything. It is also a great thing that Almighty Allah, when depriving a person of a certain ability of gift, compensates for it by bestowing upon him or her other gifts in which he/she excels. That is why we see that those people who are deprived of sight have very sensitive hearing so that they can hear very low sounds or movements around them. They are given excellence in other capacities to compensate for their imperfections.
In order to be an active member in the society, a disabled person needs to be fully aware of his surroundings and the nature of his or her disability. In addition, it is incumbent on the society to offer a helping hand to all those people. Islamic history has a shining record of role models who, while having some kind of disability, occupied excellent and prominent positions within society. Atta Ibn Rabah, who was known as being lame and paralysed, was the greatest scholar in Makkah.
One of our greatest responsibilities lies in regard to children with disabilities. It is the duty of the society to establish schools for them, educate them and enable them to feel secure so that they can benefit themselves and their family and so become integrated into the community. In the West great care is shown to the disabled, it is the duty of us Muslims to shoulder the responsibility of showing the utmost care to those people. For, according to the teachings of our religion, those persons are sources of Divine mercy and blessings. They are the weak for whose sake we are given sustenance and made victorious. In his Hadith, our Prophet, peace and blessings are upon him, said: “You are given sustenance and victory for the virtue of those who are weak amongst you”. We should show mercy and care to the disabled out of both human and religious motives. In Islam we are commanded to show mercy to everything in this world. The sacred Hadith reads: “Show mercy to those on earth so that He who is in the heavens bestows mercy to you”.
Springfield Cricket Club
All allusions to disability in Islam are positive and encompassing towards the disabled. There does not seem to be any place for other understandings yet, as we all know, in today’s society some misconceptions are alive and flourishing. All of us are cultural beings; our culture shapes how we see the world and make sense of it. Culture influences much of our behaviour and interactions, it also mediates how we make sense of disability and subsequently how we respond to those people with disabilities: it has to be said that there is often a negative response to disability, in all its forms. But I am an optimist and believe that because culture is not a static concept, it can change, responding to a shifting sense of values that includes rather than excludes those people who may need our respect and support.
As my life has evolved I have found that my priorities have changed and my faith, my family and the sanctity of all human life have become paramount. This is my reality, and the reality of many carers who like myself have given up much of our lives so that someone we love can have a life of their own.
“You are given sustenance and victory for the virtue of those who are weak amongst you”.