On motherhood, moral courage, and the responsibility we share for one another's children.
I have always found it interesting how we read stories in the Qur’an as though they belong to another time, another world, and another set of people. We admire the courage, condemn the cruelty, and reassure ourselves that we would have known better. I am not entirely convinced we would have.
Take the story of Prophet Musa (peace be upon him), a child born into an oppressed community in ancient Egypt, where Pharaoh had ordered the killing of their infant sons. His mother, fearing for his life, was inspired by Allah to place him in the river, trusting that he would be returned to her (Qur’an 28:7). I have to wonder what kind of world makes putting your baby in a river the safer parenting decision. And yet, for Musa's mother, keeping him close meant exposing him to almost certain danger. Letting him go, as unimaginable as it must have been, offered the possibility of survival.
And where does that river carry him? Straight into Pharaoh's household. You really cannot make this stuff up.
In Surah Al-Qasas (28:9), Pharaoh's wife sees the child and pleads for his life, suggesting that he might bring them joy or perhaps even become their son. Here is a woman living within the very household responsible for the persecution of this child's community, choosing to protect him rather than participate in his destruction. She does not ask whether he belongs to her people or whether his life is worth the inconvenience of challenging her husband. She sees a child worth saving.
The story takes another remarkable turn when Musa refuses to nurse from the women brought to care for him. His sister, who has been watching from a distance, offers to find someone who can nurse the child. That someone, of course, is his own mother. Through a series of circumstances that could only be described as extraordinary, Musa is returned to the very woman who had placed him in the river to save his life. Pharaoh's household takes in a child whose existence defies his decree, and the child's own mother ends up caring for him under its protection. The irony is difficult to miss.
What strikes me most about this story is not simply the miraculous return of Musa to his mother, but the decisions made by the women who protected him. His mother acted out of love and desperation, his sister out of loyalty and resourcefulness, and Pharaoh's wife out of a willingness to recognize the humanity of a child whose life her husband's policies had placed in danger. These women occupied very different positions in society, yet each understood that protecting a child mattered more than the circumstances that divided them.
James Baldwin once wrote, "For these are all our children, we will all profit by or pay for what they become." I cannot read those words, or the story of Musa, without thinking about the children of Gaza.
How many Palestinian mothers have been forced to make impossible decisions to keep their children alive? How many have searched for safety where none could be found? How many children have been separated from their families, displaced from their homes, or left to navigate a world in which the adults responsible for protecting them have failed? Musa's mother placed her child in a river because she feared what would happen if he remained. Mothers in Gaza have carried their children through destroyed neighborhoods, fled from one place to another, and sought refuge in hospitals and shelters that themselves have not always been safe. The circumstances are separated by centuries, yet the question facing these mothers is painfully familiar: Where can I take my child so that they might live?
As a psychologist, I often think about the ways we teach children empathy, responsibility, and the importance of standing up for others. We encourage them to recognize injustice, to protect those who are vulnerable, and to treat others with dignity. Yet somewhere along the way, adults become remarkably skilled at making exceptions to these principles. We divide children by nationality, religion, ethnicity, and belonging, as though their vulnerability changes depending on whose children they are. We speak passionately about protecting our own while finding reasons to remain silent about the suffering of others.
This is where Pharaoh's wife becomes particularly significant. She lived within the very household responsible for the oppression of Musa's people. She could have accepted her husband's decree as something beyond her control or convinced herself that the suffering of another community was not her concern. Instead, she intervened. Her decision did not dismantle Pharaoh's system of oppression, but it protected a child from its consequences. There is an important distinction here between being powerless to change an entire system and choosing not to act within the circumstances available to us.
The story also challenges our understanding of family and belonging. Musa's mother protected him because he was her son. Pharaoh's wife protected him despite the fact that he was not. One acted from the intimate bond of motherhood, while the other recognized a responsibility that extended beyond blood and community. Both were necessary to his survival. Perhaps this is one of the most meaningful lessons in the story: our responsibility to children cannot end at the boundaries of our own families.
And this brings me back to Gaza. We cannot celebrate the courage of Pharaoh's wife while overlooking the responsibility her actions place upon us. It is easy to admire someone who stood against injustice thousands of years ago. It is considerably more uncomfortable to ask what standing against injustice requires of us today. What does it mean to recognize the innocence of Musa while struggling to extend that same recognition to a Palestinian child? What does it say about our understanding of morality when the protection of children becomes conditional upon politics, geography, or whose suffering we are willing to acknowledge?
Musa's story does not end with the river. The child whose life was threatened eventually becomes the prophet who confronts the very power that sought to destroy him. There is something profoundly hopeful about that. But children should not have to survive extraordinary suffering to prove that their lives matter. They should not have to become prophets, heroes, or symbols of resilience to deserve protection. Their humanity should be enough.
Perhaps the lesson of Musa's story is not simply that Allah saved a child from Pharaoh, but that we are being asked to consider our own responsibility toward children living under oppression today. The women who protected Musa did not wait for the world around them to become just. They acted because a child needed protecting.
Baldwin's words remind us that the consequences of how we treat children extend far beyond the families into which they are born. Their futures are inseparable from our own, whether we choose to recognize that connection or not.
The children of Gaza are not someone else's children. They are all our children. And they always were.
