Free our children and watch them fly to great heights. All it takes is the proper upbringing of children in islam.
With the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Ever Merciful,
We live in a very modern era, where we, as parents, face newer challenges each day when it comes to the upbringing of our children.
As an example; with the touch of a button our children can access anything on the internet including perverted pornographic material,…. We need to train our children to cope with all of this.
For us to bring up good children there are three important aspects that has to be in place; a good subject matter to teach our children, a good teacher to teach it to them and lastly we need to groom them to be good pupils. All three are necessary for the proper education of our children and if any one of them is missing then the education process would be impaired.
Inshallah we will cover all three in this article.
You have to sleep early, tomorrow is school. A schooling year is around 200 days and a child has to go through 12 such years. Most of us discipline and push our children to achieve top grades so that our child could go to university. All this, so that they could earn, a more than comfortable living – materialism – robotic – enslavement to wealth. The Holy Prophet, peace be upon him, has said:
“Blessed is he who is guided to Islam, and who’s livelihood is just sufficient and who is content therewith.” Al Hadith 1:1:5:88.
He is stressing religious knowledge over worldly knowledge. Contentment in this department of earning is what we need otherwise no matter how much we have it will not be enough.
Allah SWT is the Provider and our children will survive one way or the other. What’s worse is that by making money and careers the focus we will overlook other far more important aspects of our children’s education to end up raising very selfish, materialistic people and such people will not imbibe the characteristics that Islam teaches towards being a good person. We need to change our focus from this. Secular education and money does not bring about happiness, peace and contentment in this worldly life and certainly not in the hereafter.
This does not mean that our children must not become professionals, but it is about not pushing them for the sake of money or status or for grooming them such, so that they be a feather in our cap, but rather we must allow them to choose such jobs as they are happy with, with the intention of serving the community, then, Alhamdulillah, it is good.
The problems we face in our community today is not about earning but it is about materialism, divorce, drugs, homosexuality, greed, ritualism, extravagance, abandoning the old age and so forth, all of which results in immense emotional pain and this harms not only the individual, but also the family and society at large and even the environment.
Teaching our children religion is the solution because religion focuses on teachings that which will make us better people and better people will make stronger families members and a closely knit society. This should be the subject matter that we should focus on. Loving and building relationships of love by serving and sacrificing for others, for the sake of Allah SWT, is the greatest thing we could teach them.
Islam, not only has the solutions to avoid the above problems but it also has teachings on spirituality which would lead to perfect faith, inner enlightenment, peace and contentment. These teachings about spirituality is an important aspect to fully developing our children to the maximum of human potential. Spiritual knowledge is endless and its quest is deeply satisfying and fulfilling.
Human life starts off from a stage were we know nothing, not even how to move our finger, and from this stage we learn so many different skills. Of all these skills, developing our spirituality is the most important because this leads to understanding the purpose of life, fulfilling it and most importantly, realising God (faith).
Learning about our souls is therefore the mother of education and it is truly liberating and powerful yet it is also humbling. Our spirituality can even help us greatly to excel in our professions to help our community.
Consider; how powerful are the Prophets and the Aulia Allah. The Holy Prophet, peace be upon him, could see all of the future even life after death. He predicted so many things that have come to pass and many more that are still to be fulfilled. This is the power of spirituality.
These Islamic teachings, spirituality and faith are natural and it is in tune with our human nature.
“So pay your whole-hearted attention to faith (spirituality) as one devoted (to pure faith), turning away from all that is false. (And follow) the Faith of Allah (-Islam) to suit the requirements of which He has made the nature of mankind. There can be no change in the nature (of creation) which Allah has made. That is the right and most perfect Faith, yet most people do not know (it).” Al Quran 30:30.
As parents we must pray for good children and we must dedicate them to the service to Allah SWT by serving humanity, and we must pray to Allah SWT to guide us to bring up good children. At the outset of teaching Islam to our children we need to stress that Islam is not about ritualistic acts of prayer only. Allah SWT does not need our worship or our prayer. What He wants from us is to be sincere, good people and out of all the different aspects of being good, being knowledgeable in religion and practising on it, ranks high, second only to loving others for the sake of Allah. Our prayers leads us towards becoming better people provided we do them sincerely.
In teaching our children to be good pupils, a certain amount of discipline is necessary in the upbringing of children but too much of this robs them of the ability to think, explore and work things out on their own. Such children would only do what they trained to do and they would have difficulty when they are faced with tasks of a different nature. So we have to teach them to make good choices and set them free to make their own choices. When we stress too much on discipline then, when they have that freedom, they will not want to listen to us at all even in the most crucial junctures of their lives. There will be that barrier between us and them.
One of the greatest things about us human beings is that no one has to tell us what is right and what is wrong. Each and every one of us has an inbuilt conscience. Let’s teach our children to recognise this, to listen to their conscience and to keep it pure so that it would talk to them and guide them to great heights. Being true to ourselves and others, being just, considering others are all aspects that will help maintain our conscience in sharp focus. Doing wrong destroys our conscience and it would not talk to us.
Children knowing themselves is the greatest of knowledge, because then they would be able to apply themselves more efficiently to make the most of their lives. This, if we get it right is truly liberating them. They need to know about their passions and desires and they need to learn to control these desires. As an example: they need to know that our carnal desires loves to seek attention and that they need to overcome this to become secure well adjusted individuals. From our side, too much praise would make them attention seekers. So we got to teach them to be self confident in doing right and not to depend on the approval of others or to conform to the wrong doing of others. Other aspects of our passions that we need to address with them are greed, vanity, sexual desires, self praise and so forth.
They need to know themselves and control their desires otherwise others will exploit and manipulate them by taking advantage of their desires without them realising it. They could spend their entire lives serving people that are using their desires against them. What’s worse is that they would not have achieved anything worthwile with their lives because they wasted it serving and following the wrong people.
Consider; a child is one with its mother for nine months. So even after birth it takes them years to naturally wean themselves away from their mothers to be totally independent. As mothers we must not push them away because of our careers but we have to do this as gently as possible over time. Love our children means making sacrifices for them and these formative years of their lives are the most important. Ideally we have to make that time available to them and let them choose to move away when they are ready. This makes them emotionally secure and they develop good social skills.
Having good friends is important in the development of our children so we need to live in a good Muslim neighbour hood, in a sort of ‘ummah’ preferably close to mosque.
Islam teaches a balance way in all our affairs. It’s important to work yet we must not make earning the end all. We have to pray and fast yet we have to make time for our spouses and family. So in guiding our children, it must not only be about work or ritual prayer only but it must be about every aspect of life from an Islamic perspective. Also, the best way is not to force our way on them but to guide them in such a way that they try to do and be good sincerely on their own accord and not do this to please us. This is important because it is about sincerity.
We need to teach our children that the important thing about prayer is to know that Allah SWT is always listening to us, even our deepest thoughts…. and the greatest prayer to make is that of seeking guidance. (Sura Al Fatiha). This is what we need to stress because, who better to guide than Allah SWT and He will guide us through His servants and messengers. This is the way that Allah SWT has always communicated to humanity. He never communicates by Himself or by angels but it has always been through men. So the Man of God or Spiritual Guide is that great teacher who will build on and complete the upbringing of our children.
In my research on this topic of child rearing I came across this one article where the Holy Prophet PBUH says that the first seven years of our children’s life is for playing, the second seven is for teaching them and the following seven is to advise them and let them make the choices. The link to this article is at the end.
Our Hazrath Aijaaz Ali Shah RA has said that this last seven years is the critical one in that it is the time when they make choices and set long term goals that they want to achieve. If we have treated them well and taught them well then we will be able to befriend them at this time, we will be able to discuss issues with them and guide them even further. Lets encourage them to seek God.
May I add one more to the three essentials of learning, we must always pray for our children to be rightly guided and for them to develop faith (Imaan). Our prayers will make the difference, Inshallah.
May Allah SWT guide us all and help us to attain faith.
Peace and salutations be upon Allah’s Messengers who are responsible for guiding humanity throughout time. Ameen.
We have many more articles that can help greatly in this important aspect of child upbringing.