Fatimah, The Perfect Woman

The Perfect Woman A 16 x 29 Acrylic painting
by Mark Phillips

The was done from the profile picture of one my Facebook friends who liked one of my posts. I do not know her personally. I asked her if I could use her profile picture as the subject of a painting and she graciously agreed. Thank You! She goes by the Facebook name of "Fatimah Jah" and in my mind, her picture finally puts an appropriate face to the stories that I had read about Fatimah.

Fāṭimah, also called al-Zahrāʾ (Arabic: “the Radiant One”), was the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad (the founder of Islam).  Muhammad had other sons and daughters, but they either died young or failed to produce a long line of descendants. Fāṭimah, however, stood at the head of a genealogy that steadily enlarged through the generations.

Fāṭimah accompanied Muhammad when he emigrated from Mecca to Medina in 622. Soon after her arrival in Medina, she married ʿAlī, the Prophet’s cousin. Their first years were lived in abject poverty. When in 632 Muhammad was facing his last illness, Fāṭimah was there to nurse him. In general, she was devoted to her domestic duties and avoided involvement in political affairs. Yet after Muhammad’s death, she had a sharp clash with Abū Bakr, who had succeeded Muhammad as leader of the Islamic community, and Fāṭimah supported ʿAlī in his reluctance to submit to Abū Bakr’s authority.

Fatimah was different from all women in her high qualities and noble characteristics that took her to the highest rank of virtue and perfection. She was an example of her father’s morals and mentality. She resembled him in his deep faith in Allah the Almighty, asceticism, and refraining from pleasures of this life. 

According to Muslim beliefs, Fatimah was infallible. Allah had purified her from every sin and every defect and endowed her with all virtues to make her an example for all the women of the world. She was an ideal example in faith, worship, chastity, purity, charity, and kindness to the poor and the deprived. In other words, She was "The Perfect Woman".

There are many stories about Fatimah that seek to demonstrate how we as human beings should treat each other. I was fortunate from very young to be an insatiable reader and my Godfather, (a primary school headmaster) gave me some very unusual books. One of them was what you may consider as the Muslin version of Bible stories and I remember Fatimah was a frequent topic. I also recall that my mother was not happy that he gave me this “foolishness” to read.

I no longer have the book but thanks to the power of the internet I have found these stories to refresh my all too rapidly ageing memory, so that I may share them with you.

On the night of her wedding, Fatimah had a new dress on. When she found out that a young woman could not find a dress to put on, she took off her wedding dress and gave it to that young woman. Fatimah turned away from every material pleasure and preferred the satisfaction of Allah to everything. 

Jabir bin Abdullah al-Ansari said, ‘Once, the messenger of Allah led us in offering the Asr (afternoon) Prayer, and when he offered the Nafila (a supererogatory prayer), he sat in the qibla and people sat around him. A very old man came complaining of hunger and saying, ‘O Prophet of Allah, I am hungry. Feed me! And I am naked. Clothe me!’. The Prophet asked the old man to go to the house of his daughter Fatimah. The old man went to Fatimah’s house and from behind the door he greeted her and said, ‘O daughter of Muhammad, I am naked and hungry. Would you please comfort me, may Allah have mercy on you?’

Fatimah herself was in neediness, and she found nothing to give to the man except a sheepskin that her sons al-Hasan and al-Husayn slept on. The old man did not want to deprive her of her children's bed and he gave it back to her. Then, Fatimah took a necklace, which was a present from her cousin, off her neck and gave it to the man. The old man took the necklace and went back to the Prophet saying to him, ‘Fatimah gave me this necklace and said to me, ‘Sell it! May Allah recompense you with good for it.’

The Prophet cried and said, ‘And how does Allah not recompense you with good for it while the daughter of Muhammad, the principal of the daughters of Adam, has given it to you?’

Ammar bin Yasir asked the Prophet, ‘O Messenger of Allah, do you permit me to buy this necklace?’

The Prophet said, ‘Buy it, Ammar! If the human beings and the jinn participate in it, Allah will not punish them with Fire.’

Ammar said, ‘O Sheikh (old man), how much is the necklace?’

The old man said, ‘I sell it for a meal of bread and meat, a Yemeni garment that I cover my private parts and offer prayer for my Lord with, and a dinar that takes me to my family.’

Ammar said to him, ‘I give you twenty dinars, two hundred dirhams, a Yemeni garment, my camel to take you to your family, and a meal of wheat bread and meat.’

The old man said, ‘O man, how generous you are!’ He left delightedly saying, ‘O Allah, there is no god but You. O Allah, give Fatimah what no eye has ever seen and no ear has ever heard of.’

Ammar perfumed the necklace with musk, enveloped it in Yemeni garment, and gave it one of his slaves saying to him, ‘Take this necklace to the messenger of Allah and you will be his.’

When the slave took the necklace to the Prophet, the Prophet asked him to take it to Fatimah who took it and set the slave free. The slave smiled. 

Fatimah asked him what made him smile and he said,

‘What made me smile was the great blessing of this necklace. It satiated a hungry one, clothed a naked one, made a poor one rich, freed a slave, and then returned to its owner.’

There have been many women in the history of the world who have become great and famous because of their great deeds. Mankind can justly be proud of them.

But in the entire history of the world, there are only four women who could measure up to the high standards of true greatness and perfection set by Islam. They measured up to these standards by dint of their great services to Allah. 

Muhammad Mustafa, the Prophet of Islam, the Recipient of Revelation from Heaven, and its Interpreter, identified them. They are:

   1. Asiya, the wife of Pharaoh 

   2. Maryam (Mary), the mother of Isa (Jesus) 

   3. Khadija, the daughter of Khuwayled, and 

   4. Fatimah Zahra, the daughter of Muhammad Mustafa 

Again, I thank you, my Fatimah for allowing me to put a face to "The Radiant One", "The Perfect Woman". I am still not sure which title I will finally choose. 

As always, thank you for reading. I appreciate the comments and the kind words of encouragement. Until next time when I will share some more of my work and a little about what makes me, me, please leave a comment.  And, I will really appreciate if you share this post with your friends. To make sure that you don't miss any future posts, Please enter your email address in the subscribe by email box on the right.

Mark Phillips

Artist
Email:- mark@phillipsbajanart.com
Website:-www.phillipsbajanart.com
Online Store:- PhillipsArtStore

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