AbdelRahman Murphy – Talking Young – Ground Their Beliefs NOW

			On
		

			some level 100 Level site or site Mr. Little sort of level either early he was Saturday he a domain
		

			want to welcome everybody to this session. The session itself is probably one of the most pertinent
and important sessions that the entire conference offers. And just for a quick reflection,
		

			I want everyone to look around the hall. And to see mashallah that the conference obviously is
amazing. It's very wonderful, I want to see the amount of interest in this particular session, maybe
not because of the speakers, but because of the title you look in the call is a little bit empty.
It's a little bit thinner. And the reality is that this actually highlights for us this hall, the
attendance of these sessions, not just this one, but any session that has to do with family
building, or family training, or construction or refinement. It unfortunately always falls as one of
the lower interest sessions. In our community. I remember when Sheikh Hamza Nasir, and myself, had
		

			launched a seminar called happiness in the home, anyone here want happiness in your home, anybody?
Raise your hand if you want some happiness in your home. So the session or the workshop was titled
happiness in the home, we thought, You know what, everybody wants happiness in their homes, whether
they are children, whether they are spouses, whether they are parents, nobody wants unhappy homes.
So we do this workshop, and we're very excited to do it. And we go to a location and we set up
everything. And on Friday night, it was completely empty. I mean, relative to the usual crowds, it
was maybe 4050 people we were expecting probably, you know, a couple 100. And so that night, we went
		

			home, and we looked through our inboxes. On Facebook, we looked through our email inboxes. We looked
through our WhatsApp messages. And we noticed that for some reason, we were always being bombarded
with questions and ideas, and problems and conflicts about how to raise a family
		

			where people would email and ask us, hey, my kid and I are having this dispute. My son won't listen
to me, my daughter doesn't seem to get on the same page as me or young people emailing us, hey, my
parents, they just don't get it. Right. I'm trying to marry somebody and they're saying no based off
of their occupation, or ethnicity, or the color of their skin, how can I get some help, or spouses
who are battling each other every day when they come home. And we realize that there is a distinct
dissonance. There is a strong distance between what we are willing to admit as a community we need
help with and evidenced by this is this hall, that if we did this talk on halal meat and mortgages
		

			and music, we would have standing room only if we if this talk was called gin stories. We'd have
3000 people here, willing to listen and also to contribute their own story, their own gin story,
right. But when it comes to family refinement,
		

			then that's the time that we circled to go shopping.
		

			That's the time that we circled to go take a nap in our hotel room. And this actually is indicative
of the problem itself is that we only make time for family when it's in crisis mode. I'm not saying
that people who are here are in crisis mode.
		

			And I'm also not yelling at you. You know, it's always interesting when the cathedral yells at the
masjid for not coming to the masjid when everyone who's there is clearly in the masjid. Right. So
I'm not trying to make everyone feel bad. How dare you not come to family programs. You're like
chill out big angry white guy. I'm here right now. Right? But the point being is that as a community
individually, Mashallah. But as a community, we have to realize that the building blocks of every
community are the family I mean, we hear it time and time again. The first people to accept Islam
from the Prophet SAW sent him when he received revelation, his family, the first people that the
		

			Prophet SAW Selim would go to his family, when Khadija was testifying to the Prophet SAW Selim after
revelation, that you are a messenger of God, what was the first description she described him with?
In Nikola Tesla Rahim you keep the family ties. When the Prophet SAW Selim. You know, in the Quran,
Allah says cool and fossa como Alikum Nowra. Save yourselves and your family from the fire. There's
no shortage of evidences that talk about how important it is to make sure that our families are
strong. But the shortage rather is our willingness to admit that
		

			Every human being on Earth needs to focus on their family, that this is just something that is non
negotiable. That you could focus on your career, you could focus on your social life, you could
focus on your religious life. But if you are deficient in your family, you will eventually crumble
just like the foundation of a home. If it is not strong, it doesn't matter how expensive the
furniture is, it doesn't matter how many chandeliers you got, or what kind of appliances you bought,
or the cars in your garage. If the foundation is weak, everything suffers. And we're seeing this
problem today. So the first thing we have to understand about shoring up families with regards to
		

			the topic that I was given, which is talking particularly about raising young people.
		

			And there is, by the way, this incredible transformation that occurs when you have children of your
own. Some of you may know that I have a son now hamdulillah last year around this time, he was only
a couple months old. Now he's 13.
		

			That was a joke. No one laughed. Okay. The point being is that, you know, he was a baby like an
infant last year, and now he's one but when kids are one years old, especially boys that kind of act
like I call him one teen years old, he's like a teenager already got a lot of sass, mashallah from
his dad, unfortunately.
		

			But the point being is that there are two kinds of knowledge when it comes to understanding
something, there's actually a theme and finally a theme. There is knowledge, which you know, to be
true, how could you attain you know what, it's truthful. But then there's a new you have to learn,
which means that you can see it with your own eyes, you're experiencing it in the flesh in the
moment. And having a kid turns all those lectures that I heard and that all those talks that we gave
about parenting, it turns it from theory into reality. And all the narrations about the Prophet SAW
son limit his incredible role as a father, and as a husband. It turned it all from theory and
		

			narrations and stories into something that I could see before my very own eyes. You know, Musa, my
son, I'll give you some lessons from my time with him. And then I'll conclude to people who are much
more qualified, like my teacher, Shelby Nasir was to have the dunya insha Allah talk about the
family institution. Musa is very interesting. And I think I've learned a lot about parenting just
from this one year. The first thing I've learned about parenting is that as a parent, sometimes we
put a lot of emphasis on telling. Sometimes we put a lot of emphasis on the verbal communication. We
feel as though if I can communicate and I can articulate my message, in a way that sounds to me as
		

			being good, my kids should listen to me. So Musa this morning in the hotel, he thought it would be a
good idea to take Bobo's toothbrush and dip it in the toilet.
		

			So I look at Musa and I and by the way, my son is like, you know when kids have this look on their
face where you know that they're about to do something wrong. Like like we call him dish to which in
Bangla means naughty. We call him dish to actually he's so dish to them when we say what's your
name? He goes to
		

			he knows he's naughty boy, right? He understands. So Musa took my toothbrush and was headed to the
toilet. Right? Why? Because the toilet has teeth to Baba, right? We got to clean the toilet too. So
I'd look at Moose and I say Musa, and he looks at me with that dust you look on his face like
		

			and I say no, Musa don't do it. He looks at me. And I thought to myself briefly for two seconds, man
Hamdulillah I finally got through to this kid. He finally understands me how many parents have ever
had that moment where you thought to yourself, I got through now my kids one but your kid might be
21 And you still might be having these moments. I finally got through. And then he looks at me. And
he goes Baba and I said yes. And he turns toward the toilet and runs with a toothbrush. It didn't
matter what I said to him. What I had to do was get up from my chair. I had to take my toothbrush
and I had to take his toothbrush. He has a little toothbrush toothbrush in quotation marks. And I
		

			had to show him this Musa is for this and I brush my teeth. And I said Musa, this is Musa
toothbrush. What do you do with it? And what did he do everybody? He brushed his teeth. We become
obsessed as parents with do as I say not as I do. And we think that if we tell our kids what to do,
the surely that's sufficient. But the messenger of God SallAllahu Sallam did not just come to Mecca
did not just settle in Medina sit on his throne and say do this. Don't do that. What did the Prophet
SAW Selim do? As a person he modeled as a person he showed everybody he exemplified. He was the
		

			First person to do what he was telling other people to do. Playdough calmly hydro hydro company
Adley what nfo company, Lee, the best of you are the best of you towards your families. And guess
what I try, I am the best to my family's meaning you can follow me with confidence. I'm not telling
you to be good to your families. While I'm not being good to my family, I am modeling this behavior.
So if you want your children to do what you want them to do, ask yourself first, am I doing what I'm
asking them to do. And when it comes to religion, hamdulillah these are things that we find to be
pretty, pretty standard. I asked my kids to pray because I pray. I asked my kids not to say bad
		

			words, because I don't say bad words. But the one thing that I think we sometimes overlook is the
impact of character. The impact of our kids are watching us. They're seeing how I'm talking to my
wife. They're seeing how my wife is talking back to me. And they're modeling exactly what they're
seeing. If I'm asking my wife for something, and she says she can't do it, and I get frustrated, and
I raise my voice, what do you think is gonna happen? When Musa gets frustrated? What do you think in
his head, he's going to think is the appropriate response to when he can't get his way. It's going
to be to scream and yell. We have an immense responsibility as parents to make sure that our young
		

			people have evidence for what we're asking them to do. That is not just simply theory. But there are
example after example, Musa, I want you to be generous. That's why I'm giving money to charity Musa,
I want you to be kind. That's why I'm treating people with compassion, Musa, I want you to be just,
that's why I'm holding myself accountable. These are the moments where you remember and I told this
story before and I'll tell it again, the moment that my relationship with my own mother became so
strong when I was young, was when she came and apologized to me. My mother, I know some of you right
now are like no, parents should never apologize to their children. When my mother came and
		

			apologized to me why? Because she accused me of eating my father's food. And if you see her
accusation was based off of, you know, evidence.
		

			Right? They used to say that no leftover would last more than a night when the man was home. Right?
So my mother, she thought that oh, man, why did you eat your father's leftovers? Go to your room,
you know that he wanted to eat that later? I said, Mom, it wasn't me. She said, Yeah, right, Toby,
go to your room, right? I go to my room, and I'm sitting there the whole time. I never ate it.
Finally my dad comes home and he says, Where's I'm gonna man. My mom says I'm so sorry, Jim. He ate
your food. He said no, he didn't. I ate my food. My mom came to my room with tears in her eyes. And
she says, Man, I am sorry.
		

			I was so shocked. I almost had to look over my shoulder. Is there someone else in the room she's
apologizing to?
		

			Or is it me? When she apologized to me, I realized something that I also have to learn how to
apologize when I'm wrong. Just like my mother is apologizing when she was wrong. This is the kind of
modeling I'm talking about.
		

			So many of us are so arrogant as parents, we refuse to admit even when we're wrong. Guess where the
heart headedness of your children comes from? Because they see it in front of their eyes. This is so
important as parents that we have to honestly put it first and foremost, be the person you want your
children to grow up to be. Stop talking about what you want your kids to be, and do what you want
them to be. We ask a lot to accept. The second thing is that we have to understand that yes, we are
teachers of our children. But we also at the same time that we teach, we love them. And we make sure
that every lesson that we give our kids is wrapped in love. I know a lot of people, you know,
		

			sometimes we talk about my I wasn't raised this way. And look at me. I turned out okay. Right.
That's usually like the common defense. It's arguable whether or not we turned out okay, right. We
think we turned out okay, but then we have some moments where we think maybe I didn't turn out okay,
right. The point being is that just because you were raised a certain way, and whether or not you
turn out okay is a discussion for later. That does not mean that the era that you live in now and
the time that you live in now and the culture that you live in now, does not demand adaptations to
how you raise your children. I once asked a group of young people at a masjid halacha I once asked
		

			them, I said, How many of you your parents criticize you on a daily basis? Anyone here right now how
many of you growing up your parents gave you critical feedback on a daily basis? Raise your hand
that there was something wrong every day.
		

			Okay, thank you for the 10 people who are being honest, all the rest of you say stuff for a lot
because you're lying, right?
		

			It's part of being a parent look, even this morning when Musa was doing some I was like Musa No,
stop. That's critical. I'm being critical of him. Stop it. You're wrong. Don't do that. I
		

			then asked a follow up question to that same audience. And I'm going to ask it to you now, how many
of your parents the amount that they would criticize you, they would also tell you how much they
loved you every day.
		

			Now you can't see it. But I can see it, the few hands that were raised, there are significantly less
hands for the second question, may Allah forgive us that we cannot tell our kids how much we
appreciate and love them as much as we criticize them. If you had a job, and you worked for your
employer, and you felt like you were being criticized more than you were being appreciated, what
would you want to do?
		

			You'd want to leave your job. So when we have teenage children, who feel like every time they walk
home, every time they walk through those doors, there's going to be just criticism after criticism.
Your room is not clean. You didn't do what I told you to do. You didn't take you didn't empty the
dishwasher, the lawn, it's like a amazon rainforest out there. Right? Your car is filthy, blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah, so and so was getting better grades than you.
		

			You don't even know what your your kid may have just come home for being bullied at school. And the
first thing you do is you attack them more than the Islamophobes.
		

			Of course, they didn't want to come home. You know, the Arabs, the term for home that they used was
mess, Ghana, a place of Sakina of tranquility. If we don't make our home, its places of tranquility.
Where do we think our children are going to want to spend their time anywhere else but home. And a
lot of parents message me and a lot of parents will come up to me after this session. And they will
say my child and I have a bad relationship. My kid never wants to come home. I'm giving you the
answer right here. Make a home a place where your child wants to be. Does that mean that you can't
criticize them? Of course you can. You can give them criticism that's your job. As parents we have
		

			to train and mold our children but to do it in a way that is beautiful and sweet, like covering
medicine in sugar. You know one of the reasons why I like Advil more than Tylenol
		

			because it's covered in sugar. It does the same thing but when I take it as I'm eating the Advil, I
don't eat the Advil. Everyone's like, well, all the doctors near like this guy needs help. You don't
chew Advil weirdo? Right? As I take the Advil from my headache, they covered in sugar, so it's a
little bit more pleasant as it goes down. But Tylenol tastes like I don't God knows what tastes like
chemicals, right? There is a reason why they add flavor to medicine to make it more palatable for
the person who's taking it. So it's your job to train your child. It's your job to grow them to do
to be right to grow them to be a beautiful young person. But man, if it's bitter and sour all the
		

			time, can we really complain as to why our kids don't want to come home. They don't want to spend
time at home. They don't want to spend time talking to us. Because maybe we haven't given them
enough love. The Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu wasallam his default modality was mercy and love. He
treated his young people in his life with mercy and love. There are countless stories where a young
person would have disobeyed the Prophet SAW Salem, and the Prophet SAW said and responded with
compassion and mercy. There was one time where the Prophet SAW Selim was have given ns a job to do
and on the way to do that job and as became distracted by some other boys in the street who were
		

			playing games. A long time later, the Prophet saw someone walked up and NSS narrating the Hadith, he
says that I felt someone's hand on my shoulder. So I want you to imagine this. He's given a job on
the way to do the job. He sees his friends, he starts playing fast forward 30 minutes he feels a
hand on his shoulder. What's the first thing you would do?
		

			Ron?
		

			Oh, no, he looks up. And he saw he said, I saw the smiling face of the Messenger of God. The smile
on his face is the first thing he described. And the Prophet SAW sent him said to him, did I ask you
to do something or did I not and he wasn't doing it in the way that some of us do it. We're like,
Did I ask you to do something?
		

			The Prophet SAW sent him set it with sweetness. Did I I'm wondering did I forget to ask you to do
something or did an NSF jasola You asked me he said okay, go and do it. Please. Look at this
sweetness to the point where and this is narrating this hadith and it's making your heart melt. How
many of us are able to act like this with our family, with our kids with our young people that even
the criticism we give them makes their heart melt with love for us? I will tell you this everybody I
only have 49 seconds. My timer is blinking. But I will say this. This could be a day long workshop.
It could be a weekend long seminar. Never ever discount the love and character that you have with
		

			your children. Religion can always be
		

			obtained at any point in life, as long as they believe in God and His Messenger is His final
messenger, and they're doing their best. They don't need to memorize the entire Quran by the age of
nine. They don't need to spend every waking hour reading the Hebrew hottie. They don't they don't
need to be using all of their internet time watching videos of Imam Omar Suleiman and shake up the
Nasir Jenga. That's okay. What they need to be doing is loving Allah and His messenger and unless we
show them what Love feels and looks like then we are actually going to be pushing them away instead
of pulling them in reinvest in your families reinvest in your children, and the long term will pay
		

			off we ask a lot to give us success in this life in the next Amira Bill Alameen Subhana Allah will
be hunting a shaman La ilaha IL and necessary if we want to relate or Salam aleikum wa rahmatullah
Africa.