Saints & Sages — Facts Faith Culture Religion

3-Similarities of Saints Discovered Through Saint Valentines

if you want to know existence of saints from other parts of the World…

5 min readJan 13, 2022

…Cont.’ part 2

💌 “From your Valentine” 💌

Imagine you got a letter from your beloved. You would smile with the rosy cheeks blooming from within you. If only everyday you could feel this way, right?

Well, I would like to share with you 3-similarities of Saints from Muslims. It would not possible if I did not read about Saint Valentine. Here we go…

1 — Love is not only remembered on the 14th of February. We live by it daily.

The Western Christians, or those from the denominations of Lutherans & Anglicans, commemorated St. Valentines’ Day on the 14th of February. The Orthodox celebrated the remembrance of him as the oldest saint, on the 6th of July.

The Catholics had many Saints they remembered or celebrated, and the name Valentine could be found a lot in the Romans list of Martyrs.

There was also another female saint named Valentina. Some resources stated that Saint Valentina was martyred when she stood up to protect her friend. Her friend was a Christian believer. Although they were different beliefs, they saw each other as spiritual sisters.

Everything was about love.

🌹The Muslims🌹

We commemorated yearly the day Saints passed away. It was called ‘Haul’ in the Arabic language, which referred to ‘Yearly or Annual’ death anniversary.

In this event, Muslims gathered to read Tahlil which contained verses of the Qur’an as chants or meditations, the affirmation, and proclamation of God’s existence, sent our supplications prayers for the Saint, and listen to some preaching by the Imam, about the life of the Saint.

And as the Imam of the Masjid or congregation spoke about the life of a saint, everyone listened to reflect on what the Saint did for humanity. What was it that we could exemplify or follow in the footsteps? How did he live his life with love towards God?

Some people prepared food as charity and donation. Among those who sat in the congregation for the event surely consisted of people who were hungry or in financial dire straits. The source of their food was from an event like this.

Of course, we had Muslims who did not practice commemorating the day of saints too. To them, once a person passed away, he was gone. To some others, they strictly did not want to mention the names anymore, even in good. Not even doing tahlil. To some others, remembering of saints were not in the basic of the religion.

Every one had different knowledge level and wisdom granted. It would be pointless arguing. Leave controversies aside.

2 — Saints and Religious personnel are 2-different roles.

To be elevated into the ranks of saints, a lot of people in the past refused to be famous or well-known. Most saints were low profiles. Little was known about them.

A saint needed no certificates from the university unlike being a scholar. Their sainthood was given in ways we would not know-how. The scale would not be based on the number of books and pages studied.
A religious teacher would be recognized by his or her profession and validated by certificates in religious studies. A religious teacher would not necessarily be a saint.

Everyone had been born with the secrets of spiritual stations to that of saints. The pathway of a saint contained thorns. It would not be easy to reach that spiritual station.

3 — Saints were persecuted and some were jailed, but their demise showed miracles indicating them at the station of saints.

Needless to mention repetitively here, we knew now that Saint Valentine was imprisoned and martyred subsequently. Miracles or signs of their sainthood were known or witnessed by people near their deaths or after their demises.

🌹The Muslims 🌹

One of the saints well-known in Asia was Habib Nuh Al Habsyi. Stories were told about his life and 1-of them was his imprisonment for being a nuisance to the public during the British rule in my country.

All Habib did was spreading the act of love and reminding others to do anything with love. He used to give away sweets to children too. Some shopkeepers did not mind him taking a bit of money to give away to the poor and needy. The shopkeepers already knew that blessings would come. They always had increased in profits for business.

During his imprisonment, he requested to be unlocked so that he could perform ablution before standing in prayer. It was denied. Minutes later, there was chaos as one of the guards saw his cell empty. The wardens looked all over the place for him.

Habib Nuh was seen completing his ablution and walked into the cell himself. He started to do his prayers. Upon release, Habib Nuh was seen, as usual, surrounded by children. The children loved him so much.

Then came a time when the police or wardens concluded Habib Nuh did not pose any security risk or made any offenses. He was just himself, a man loved by many people, especially children.

Before the pandemic, many visitors and tourists visited the mausoleum of Habib Nuh Al Habsyi. Some of them were non-Muslims too. More stories about him had been written in a book ‘The Grand Saint of Singapore — Habib Nuh Al Habsyi’.

If you have come to this end of the article, I appreciate you and thank you for taking the time and effort. In no ways are these written for raising controversial arguments about who is right or wrong. We seldom see the reason behind our existence in this World is to be as one. Despite differences.

💌A nation lives in peace and harmony with tolerance towards one another. While loyalty remains to an individual’s belief. 💌All these are not easy if we do not have love towards humanity for each other regardless differences.

Peace. Shalom. Salaam. Selam. Aman.

Try to celebrate love daily. In every action we do. Try.

References:

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Author’s @ 2022 reminder : Love, Conviction and Determination