There is a great surge towards securing the rights of disabled people in the modern world.
Islam ensured 1400 years ago that disabled people were given equal opportunities and were accepted as full members of society:
MUAZZIN
ABDULLAH BIN Umme Maktoom (radhiallahu anhu) was a blind Sahaabi. This was no impediment in him being one of the official Muazzins of the Prophet (sallallahu alaihi wa sallam). There was no prejudice in the early Muslim community against his appointment to such a noble post, as it was regarded in those days.
IMAM
THE VERY SAME BLIND Sahaabi was appointed as the Imam of Musjidun Nabawi (sallallahu alaihi wa sallam) when the Muslims went to Badr to fight the first battle of Islam.
No voices of dissent were raised.
BLIND
THE ACCEPTANCE, and aid of, disabled people is clearly outlined in the following narration:
"He who guides a blind person for forty steps, Paradise is certain for him"
[Jaami Sagheer]
What more proof can there be of the equal status accorded the disabled in Muslim society? Paradise is in store for the one who renders the blind a service!
FROWN
THE HOLY QUR’AAN has a chapter wherein rebuke is given for frowning at a blind person who unwittingly came into a meeting that the Holy Prophet (sallallahu alaihi wa sallam) was holding with high-ranking members of the non–Muslim fraternity.
TRUE HUMANITY
ISLAM BROUGHT true compassion for all creatures. There’s no need for the ‘enlightenment’ that the West needed to slowly and painfully rid itself of the prejudices of race, gender and disability that was a part of their world until very recently.
Muslims need to apply these teachings of Islam that the Sahaaba made a natural part of their everyday lives. Especially with all the bad press that Muslims are getting, we need to be paragons of etiquette and virtue that Muslims ought to be, so that we can correct the erroneous image of Islam.
Hardly a Handicap
