Faith IQ – How To Deal With Toxic & Emotionally Abusive Parents – Shaykh Omar Suleiman

			How do I remain obedient to emotionally abusive parents?
		

			Welcome to faith IQ, a web series that goes into exploring questions that you guys submit about
Islam. Before we begin, if this is your first time here, make sure you hit that subscribe button up
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today's video, we have shakaama live man here to help us address and explore the question of how do
you deal with or how do you be obedient to to emotionally abusive parents? Now, before you answer
the question, I want you to help us first qualify, because a lot of times what somebody might be
like, Oh, that's emotionally abusive, may not be there, just you know, scolding them, right. versus
		

			something actually being emotionally abusive. So if you can help clarify and define qualifying what
that means, I think that, you know, these terms are in need of being qualified. And they're also a
case by case. So sometimes there are people that are verbally abusive, but you know, there's a fine
line between someone who's being a jerk and someone who's actually like hurting and harming and
causing serious harm with their words. I think that you start from the place that, you know, it's
become really hard to talk about these issues in public, because everyone has a very personal story,
a little story, and they hear a football about obedience to parents, and they say, what about
		

			emotional abuse? Yeah, well, the father and the sooner addressing the default, which is that Allah
has given the parents a right over the child. Yeah, particular honor over the child, just like the
default is that they brought you into this world. And so they have rights over you and honor them.
And that's something that we should take seriously. But the exceptions are there. Yeah. And like
there's a story from on top of the law and who are young man was brought by His Father, and the
Father was complaining about him. And then the young men actually had his own grievances normal the
law and who said that, you know, the father had had hurt him or forgone his rights before he could
		

			have any rights clean back from him. So okay, there are terms there are times where even in the
center for the price predecessors, someone like, Bob where, you know, he's like, Well, no, you have
no right to complain about your child because of what you've done to your child. Right. So the best
way to deal with this is usually for someone to actually look at both talk to both parties, okay.
And to see, you know, where the lines have been crossed. So there's got to be a detailed look,
because, cuz somebody might be like, Oh, my parents are being emotionally abusive, but then it's a
question of like,
		

			maybe a child, maybe it is abuse if a child has never been scolded in their life before? No, and
they're right. But there aren't, you don't want to diminish emotional abuse, emotional abuse can
even be worse than physical abuse. Well, what are some cases that you've kind of come across? where
something is like, Oh, yeah, this was emotionally abusive? Well, sometimes a parent constantly
making remarks about their child's weight, okay, to a point that they're calling them names, calling
them you know, okay, basically make it like, they might not actually be fat or obese, especially in
the case of women. Right. And like, there are a lot of parents that are really insensitive, and that
		

			go on their go on their kids, and there's just really, really too much with it. Right? So they're
gonna make comments about their food and make comments about their appearance, and no one's ever
gonna want to marry you. And no one's all things like that. So those are that's really abusive, that
can have serious detrimental effects emotionally, psychologically, and things of that sort. So I
feel like the parent or the adult that does that, don't even recognize that they're being abusive,
right. So that's why counsel, sometimes they do and some, a lot of times, they think it's actually
to the benefit of the child, yeah, taking out frustrations on the child, so
		

			and it just becomes too much for the child to bear. So the child is, in fact, recipient of emotional
abuse, but the parents don't recognize that they're doing that. And they think that what they're
doing is to the benefit of the child. Now, the end of the day, having counselors and therapists, and
people actually sit and sort of sort that all out is something that's very important. There are
Islamic guidelines to it. Yeah, Islamic guidelines, sort of guide certain elements. And then there's
the psychiatric and the counseling and the therapy part of this, which is like, Okay, if it's
reached this point, how do we how do we actually solve this? But the thing though, the challenge,
		

			especially people have an immigrant disposition. Rarely, especially the adults will rarely ever even
consider the thought of going to therapy, or going to account. Yeah, so there are there are, there
are layers, right, yeah, there is, you know, talking to an aunt or an uncle or someone that can
relate that the parents can relate to. Okay, so it doesn't necessarily have to be a professional
counselor. Not for every case. Okay. Not for every case. Yeah, I mean, it's ideal, but there's
financial cost to that there's time there's getting buy in from everybody. It's hard to get everyone
to it. You know, I think we need to remove the stigma around that as a Muslim community, because
		

			that's part of growth is to is to actually have someone help you sort through those types of things.
But
		

			yeah, I mean, I think that the point of this is, is certainly that,
		

			you know, you you need to you need to try to find ways to mitigate this as much as you can and have,
you know,
		

			I have an aunt and uncle someone step in at least, maybe shatter the
		

			the the idea that I'm doing nothing wrong. Yeah, you know that nothing's abusive about this, I'm not
saying anything, you know what, and often, you know, the justification will come, my parents did
this to me, right like, like the way I'm talking to my kids, if they saw the way my parents talked
to me. And, you know, that's that's not the best way to resolve that's not the litmus test. And
sometimes look, sometimes, you know, a child will, will say they're being emotionally abused. And
it's not really emotional abuse, right. And that's something that can be,
		

			you know, deciphered once it's sort of all brought out there and serious discussions can happen
about it. So I think that the point is, is that,
		

			you know, everyone has a very unique situation. But generally speaking, it's better to solve this,
even if a child if a child feels like they're being emotionally abused, even if it's not really
emotional abuse, that should be enough to warn a parent willing to sit down with someone to sort of
help sort through the situation. Gotcha. Now, there's a, you know, this idea of silica Raheem,
right, which is goodness towards parents.
		

			Where does that line begin, and in the context of emotional abuse? Well, if there's an imminent
threat, or danger or harm, which is usually in the realm of the physical, right, then that's where,
you know, it's permissible as a rockstar for a person to, to its concession to that very particular
person to sort of omit that and to do what they have to do to take to take heed and to and to
protect themselves. Right.
		

			When it's in the when it's in the realm of the verbal, then, you know, I think, you know, as a
child, I still want to fix it with my parents, right, I can't just give up on that, because our
relationship is far too sacred. So then the doctrine of silicone hand will be invoked of maintaining
ties will be invoked, not to say tolerate the emotional abuse, but try to find a way to make it work
with your parents, making them aware of the emotional abuse, and still wanting to honor that link
that you have with them. So this will kind of require that there be a healthy level of communication
between the parent and child. If that doesn't exist, it's gonna be very difficult to be able to
		

			achieve that though. Right? Yeah. And that's, then that becomes the problem. That's what needs to be
alluded to that. Look, we were not able to talk, we're, you know, we're having major communication
issues. And again, you're right. You know, a lot a lot in particularly the immigrant community would
be really resistant to any type of counseling, like, what do you tell my counselor? Yeah, but I do
think that you might be able to find someone sympathetic to you within the family corpus that can
that are within the family itself that can then go and talk to that person that at least bring it to
a conversation, start the conversation. So essentially, if we were to sum this up, step one would be
		

			to be like, Oh, you know what, this is a problem, right? I'm as a child, I'm affected by this. Can
we talk about it? Right? And if you can achieve that, then perhaps there could be
		

			an understanding to be made or to be met, where the parents be like, Hey, you know what, that wasn't
nice of you. That wasn't parent parental of me, right.
		

			And so I guess the question now is, for anybody who's going through what they might deem as
emotional abuse, the first place to start would be to have that initial conversation, right? Yeah,
absolutely. You got to have the initial conversation. Got it. Alright guys, hope you guys found that
a value of benefit.
		

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