Little Yemeni Girl

Intelligent Children

Little Yemeni Girl

Maulana Abu Tayyib Attari Madani

There was once a fisherman from Yemen whose source of income was through catching fish. One day, the fisherman was busy setting his net by the river. His young daughter joined him on this day. He would take the caught fish and place them into a basket behind him.

After a long day of fishing, he eagerly looked into the basket. To his surprise, the basket was completely empty. Worryingly, he asked, ‘Daughter! Where have the fish gone? What have you done with them?’

The daughter cried out, ‘Dear father! You told me that a Hadith states: Only the fish which becomes heedless of Allah’s the remembrance gets caught in the net. I did not like the idea of eating fish that had become heedless of Allah’s remembrance. So, I put all of them back into the river,’ (Safa-tul-Safwah, vol. 4, p. 357, summarised).

Intelligent children! Although we are allowed to catch and eat fish, we learn an important lesson from this story. We should spend time with those who remember Allah Almighty, follow His commands, and stay away from those things which Allah Almighty dislikes. We also learn that forgetting about Allah عَزَّوَجَلَّ causes problems and worries.