The Stranger ...?




A few months before I was born, my dad met a stranger who was new to our town. From the beginning, Dad was fascinated with this enchanting newcomer and soon invited him to live with our family. The stranger was quickly accepted and was around to welcome me into the world a few months later.

As I grew up I never questioned his place in our family. Mom taught me to love Quran, the Word of Allah, and Dad taught me to obey its instructions, but the stranger was our storyteller. He could weave the most fascinating tales. Adventures, mysteries and comedies were daily conversations. He could hold our whole family spellbound for hours each evening.

He was like a friend to the whole family. He took Dad, Bilal and me to our first major league baseball game. He was always encouraging us to see the movies, and he even made arrangements to introduce us to several movie stars.

The stranger was an incessant talker. Dad didn't seem to mind, but sometimes Mom would quietly get up while the rest of us were enthralled with one of his stories of faraway places, go to her room, read the Quran and pray. I wonder now if she ever prayed that the stranger would leave.

You see, my dad ruled our household with certain moral convictions, but this stranger never felt an obligation to honor them. Profanity, for example, was not allowed in our house - not from us, from our friends, or adults. Our longtime visitor, however, used occasional four-letter words that burned my ears and made Dad squirm. To my knowledge the stranger was never confronted.

My Dad was a teetotaler who didn't permit any haram food in his home, but the stranger felt like we needed exposure and enlightened us to other ways of life. He offered us beer and other alcoholic beverages often. He made cigarettes look tasty, cigars manly and pipes distinguished. He talked freely (much too freely) about sex. His comments were sometimes blatant, sometimes suggestive and generally embarrassing. I know now that my early concepts of the man/woman relationship were influenced by the stranger.

As I look back, I believe it was because of the grace of Allah, specially in the month of Ramadhan that the stranger did not influence us more. Time after time he opposed the values of my parents, yet he was seldom rebuked and never asked to leave.

More than thirty years have passed since the stranger moved in with the young family. But if I were to walk into my parents' den today, you would still see him sitting over in a corner, waiting for someone to listen to him talk and watch him draw his pictures.

His name?

We always just called him TV.



Is TV controlling your own and your family's life? Is it influencing your ways of thinking and moral values? If you are sincere to yourself then the answer is YES. Ramadhan is the time when you can bid farewell to this influencing and profane stranger. It is indeed a stranger in our family and should not have a passionate place in our God-fearing family. Let us get rid of it. Now and for all.



Imam Ali (as) asked the Prophet (saww): "What is the best action in front of Allah in this month of Ramadhan?". No doubt the Prophet (saww) replied: "....... Refraining from sins". After all the purpose of fasting is to get rid of all our bad habits including the bad influence of TV.



Remember the ayah? "Kutiba alaikum as-siyaam ........... la'allakum tattaquun". (2:183)



"Fasting has been prescribed ........ SO THAT you become pious", and refrain from bad habits.