Abdal Hakim Murad – The Biggest Responsibility Ramadan Moments 3

should be laid off man you Rahim about a colossal fee comb. If you

heard the shadow Kareem.

Ramadan is obviously one of the individual, I bet. It's not so

much like the Hajj or the solat, which are really congregational

Ramadan really affects us as individuals primarily.

But it also has collective aspects, which are some of the

sweetest things that we remember of the month when it's done. The

gatherings for Iftar and the gathering for the aid, most

obviously, but also the prayer of tearaway.

In these COVID times, these congregational things are rather

thinner, depending on local rules.

And perhaps that's one of the things that we will recall from

this Ramadan that we missed the sociality of et al, Jana Attell,

Rama, while phulka to other in coming together there is mercy.

And in separation, there is a punishment, we are social animals,

and our world has too many solitaries. in it. We even have a

ministry of loneliness in the United Kingdom Now, first country

in history, as far as I know, to have a minister of loneliness

because it's reached epidemic proportions. And what do you

expect from a culture that declares the individual to be the

measure and the end of all things.

But in the month of Ramadan, we traditionally experience a lot of

collectivity, we are more in the mosques, and those if thar and

there is a hole, and it isn't just with neighbors, and the members of

our mosque GEMA, but also with family, particularly, Ramadan is

an intergenerational time. And this again, is very unmodern. In

the modern world, there is an ever growing generation gap, and the

old are hardly seen by anybody at all.

In a traditional society, of course, the generations are

squeezed together and often live together under one roof so that

the wisdom of the old can be benefited from by the new

generation, and some of the pressure is taken off the harassed

and exhausted and hardworking parents.

So Ramadan is a time for children as well.

And it's a time that children often look forward to whether or

not they're old enough to fast. They get very excited that if thar

time, you certainly get excited at the time of aid. There was a

strange festive dimension to Ramadan that kids really aspire to

and and enjoy. And in many Muslim countries, you have cartoons,

fellow as a year, sugar dolls, colored lights in the streets, it

has that strange Ramadan night time party dimension, which is

part of the delightfulness of traditional Muslim cultures.

So it's a Ramadan for children.

And it's a time when they tend to be more open to learning about

Dean.

But in our time these opportunities have become rarer

is the age of loneliness, even for those who are still physically

living together, because everybody is on a screen. They sit together

in the evening, perhaps if they're not in the separate bedrooms, but

everybody's looking at something quite different on a screen so the

family is together but not together. And parents need to

watch that very carefully. Not just because you don't know what's

on those screens that your kids are looking at. But also because

this is something more a forecast than of Jamar something more of

divine disapproval, than of the natural togetherness, the basic

Jamaah in Islam is the Joomla of the family.

Now,

there are so many Hadith in which the Holy Prophet alayhi salatu

salam emphasizes the importance of not just educating children and

providing them with basic religious education and giving

them Quran and so forth, but nourishing them.

And this nourishment is not expressed in the language of

Talim, which is like formal education, the kind of thing that

would happen in the Mecca tab, but is to do more with tarbiyah and

deep. We use quite a different kind of

expression. tunnelbear comes from the Arabic word Arabba, meaning to

grow. So just as in this corner of the CMC garden, the daffodils are

out. So also, we cultivate families and this is part two

is the husband wife relationship is as it were.

A crop is growing up. And we need to be good shepherds and good

farmers maintaining the crop. We don't just see the fields and then

go off somewhere, but we watch things very carefully before they

mature and come to harvest.

So that's the idea of tarbiyah. Ringing things up.

Looking at the rosebush, seeing what fertilizers might be

necessary when it needs to be mulched when it needs to be

pruned. Sometimes chastisement is necessary, when it needs to be

trained, perhaps against the wall.

This is necessary with all living things, and with one's own

children. It is vitally important

because Allah subhanaw taala does say that as you realize there are

two Israa, okra no so burdened will bear the burden of another.

But we also know that bad upbringing produces damaged

children, and that the damage they cause in turn is ultimately kind

of our fault.

So Allah says, Go and fullcycle Alikum Nowra ward off from

yourselves and from your families, a fire.

In other words, keep your kids just as you wouldn't want them to

put their fingers in an open fire or in the barbecue. So similarly,

you don't want them to go near the sources of the Divine Anger.

And the child, when it's young, is the greatest responsibility

anybody will ever assume.

And in our culture, the schools don't teach you about parenting

and it's far from the preoccupations of teenage boys and

teenage girls babies responsibility, it's not part of

their conversation at all in this strange and in many ways, bio

phobic society that industrial humanity has, has inflicted upon

itself. But the believer sees in the child a precious gift and an

Amana

a responsibility.

Because while we are accountable for the procreation, the actual

creation is from God. The soul comes from the Divine.

This Neff called Raw, the breathing of the Spirit, which

happens after a certain period of time. In the miraculous Colorado

McKean, the safe resting place of the womb, is the insufflation of

the Spirit, which is that basis for the bowing down of the angels

to Satan, Adam Alayhis Salam that first and most extraordinary and

startling divine commandment when a fastener fee mid rocking up.

So the little kids are very cute. And we know we need to restrain

the Wilder urges. But at the same time, when we look at them, we

recognize that what we are seeing is a witness to the divine.

The spirit is there, it's not fully connected to the moral life

and to explaining itself and impulse control. Because it's in a

form. And in a mind, which is still learning.

Still embryonic really. And it takes a long time before it really

flowershop flourishes and assumes moral, spiritual responsibility.

But the soul is still there. So in some countries, they say that when

the baby cries, can't understand what the baby is saying, but it's

actually praying for its parents. That's a tradition, that the

spirit is there, even though the child is disconnected from speech

began ordinary communication but the spirit is fully there, which

is why in Sharia, to kill a child is equivalent to killing an adult,

however brilliant that adults education might be, it's still the

same crime. And of course, the unborn insult child is is the

same.

So we hold in our hands, this very important is very precious a

manner and we have to make them grow well, not to stop them.

If the green fly calm, we get rid of the green fly carefully. If

they're growing in the wrong direction, being pushed by a

country wind while we find ways of supporting the plant, so that it

continues to grow and fulfill its potential. Much of it is about

protection, protecting the fitrah on which it has been created.

But there's another word which the Holy Prophet uses sallallahu

alayhi wa sallam which is deep

which

She says, of course it's a form of the word adverb. courtesy. He says

alayhi salatu salam at ebony. Robbie the accent DB My Lord has

given me an open has given me beautiful adverb. We often use

this adverb in the context of education to deed the sibian we

say giving AdMob giving education to children.

Now the word deep AdMob is related to an Arabic word, Matt deburr

which actually means a banquet. It's a place where everybody in

the tribe gathers together and they become less slaughtered and

people are feasting.

It's a kind of joyful thing.

So when we are inculcating adults in the child, what is the banquet

which we are inviting the child to at which it must maintain? Correct

Adam? Well, the banquet is the recollection of the day of Ellis

to be Robbie calm, Am I not your Lord? The banquet is the

celebration of the remembrance of our transcendent origin, attention

of the nobility of Benny Adam Kurama, Benny Adam, we have

enabled the descendants of Adam.

So there is a Dawa, an invitation to a banquet, at which of course,

one has to show, do courtesy.

And all of religion in a sense, is simply the courtesy that one shows

when one is invited to the banquet of Rabbil Alameen, which is our

lives, the amazing world, and

accepting everything that he puts in our plates.

So children do not just need information.

They do need, how to make, model and do those basic things.

But more than that, they need something that will nourish the

soul, and keep them upright and growing well as Muslims, when

they're finally out in the world, and away from parental scrutiny.

And that is something that is inspirational, by which I don't

mean

the kind of excitement of seeing an Islamic celebrity in person and

getting her autograph. That's not it.

That's just that's really,

but instead, the child's innate capacity to recognize the divine

and the sucker ality of things which comes from the alas to be

rhombic human comes from the fitrah has to be protected.

Just as we protect the child from traffic, we should protect the

child from ugliness

from that which damages it spirit, always surround the child with

beauty.

Always surround the child with harmonious sounds. Always keep the

child away from anything that might traumatize or scratch the

softness, neonatal tenderness of its heart. Always be protective of

the child and keep away anything that is dark, demonic egotistic.

And the child will naturally be nourished by that because it's our

nature to be inclined towards what is beautiful. It's not our nature

to be inclined towards what is ugly. Part of the strange,

distasteful perversity of modernity is that we really like

horror films are we like to see atrocities or some outrageous

thing and this is really sick. It's not the human nature of the

human heart to want to look at ugliness and misfortune. The soul

naturally is a beautiful thing, remembering the divine beauty and

wants to see beauty in the world.

So an exposure of the child to the magnificence of Islamic

civilization is really important.

Showing them the beauties of Islamic art, take them to the

British Museum.

They may grown a bit or take them to the British Museum and say,

Look, everybody wants to see the Islamic stuff. Did you see that

Quran and all of the non Muslims goggling that the beauty of it.

Did you see those textiles? Did you see that glass work? Did you

see this? And it gives them a sense of pride in their Islamic

identity and an awareness that religion is about the person doing

the beautiful and producing what his beautiful,

show them the magnificence of the traditional mosques of Islam.

Ideally traveled with them to some of the great places of Islam so

they can absorb in the little souls that magnificence and the

dignity and the serenity and the majesty of those places.

Keep them away from anything that is derivative, second rate, corny

merely inspirational. This is really important from an early age

their soul should have the sense that in Islam, repose is

everything that is true and beautiful and compassionate and

harmonious and symmetrical. But that everything that disturbs that

comes from neffs ego, extraneous things. This is particularly

important in our age.

In the month of Ramadan is a time when we can sometimes travel with

them to Muslim countries perhaps bend Ramadan in

our codes. Spend Ramadan in Konya, spend Ramadan in a place where you

can really see a traditional Muslim society still more or less

functioning, and get a sense of the naturalness and the beauty of

that environment. And if it's sacred spaces, this is really

important in cementing their sense of Islamic identity.

And then when they can, helping them to do their first fast,

making a fuss of them, make them feel that this is really a great

achievement, making sure people know about it, and praise them

because the the child's

desire there is not so much to be arrogant, but to be affirmed and

to feel secure. And when adults and people that the child respects

affirm the child, the child feels reinforced and feels more steady.

So now the biggest responsibility is the one which you take on when

for the first time you hold in your hands, a human life, a baby,

a child, a soul, no more enormous Amana

and cultivating the Astra have that child is an enormous

responsibility and in the time of Ramadan, we can introduce them to

some of these beautiful things. We can introduce them to beautiful

people to beautiful sights to something that helps them to feel

really proud of the greatness of membership of this ummah, and of

membership to the way of its founder sal Allahu alayhi wa

sallam. So inshallah this will be a good Ramadan not just for

ourselves, but for our children. And a Ramadan that when they're

adults, they will look back to saying, Robert, honestly, great

when I was a child, we really used to enjoy Ramadan, and we had

colored lights, and we had presents and we had visitors,

everything was amazing. And I did my first fast and I was so good

all day long. And my parents praise me and just make it a happy

and a luminous and an unproblematic memory. Because

there's so much in the world now that that will cloud and damage

and crack the pure mirror of their souls. Let the the basic forms of

religion be something that they always look back to with nostalgia

and happiness. So may Allah in sha Allah make this a good Ramadan for

us and for our families. Make it a time of death beat of

strengthening our Eman and our solidity in this deen and help it

help families to come together again, not just nuclear families

but extended families as well. Make the older people fully

included so we can benefit from their experience and support them

in their difficulties. And inshallah bring us safely to the

aid as better Muslims as deeper Muslims as more thankful Muslims,

and as families whose internal ties are strengthened and better

than ever before. Baraka lofi calm but to Kabbalah cm ACOEM salam o

aleikum wa rahmatullah.