Abdal Hakim Murad – The Biggest Responsibility Ramadan Moments 3
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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.