Faith IQ – What Is Allah’s Wisdom of Having A Disabled Child – Shaykh Omar Suleiman

			What is the wisdom of having a disabled child?
		

			Welcome to the episode of faith IQ, a web series focused on answering your questions about Islam we
have here with us chicama silly man, to help us explore and understand this idea of, you know, is
there a wisdom when people have been? I guess the question of, are they blessed? Or are they tested
in reference to disabled children? You know, so I mean, one of the things here that somehow I've
This is very personal to me, I mean,
		

			morson is one of the organizations I found it Muslims understanding helping special education needs,
and you you meet parents and their cycles here, right? So there's, when you first have a child, and
you learn that they're disabled, and it's just,
		

			it's crippling, right? It's, you had all these these thoughts about having this this perfect family,
and then boom, you got hit, disability is coming various degrees and shapes and sizes. Right. And I
think one of the things that people kind of misunderstand, at least what I know, like there's
disability in the sense of like, somebody might have autism, right? Or if that's even if some people
might call it like, they're not even disability. Some people say that there are differences, right,
differently abled, differently abled? Yeah, absolutely. So and it's true. I mean, so how law so
there are special strengths that each of these child has as well. And if you only look at them with
		

			the eye of pity, then you're missing out on really extracting the beauty of that child. Right. So,
but I guess the question of like, is it At what point is it fair to say that a child is disabled,
versus like so because, um, because there's other things too, like, for example, if a child is born
with cerebral palsy, the best thing is not to assign the disability as the identity, right. So there
are disabilities, and it's better, you know, and that's why it's best not to, to box that person and
to stigmatize them only as being disabled. Okay? So when and the questioner is asking about wisdom,
like this is at its heart. So that's the idea that usually, when you first have the child, and any
		

			type of disability shows up, it crushes sort of the imagination, the dream that you had of having a
healthy child, and then so how, what you find is that that child as a child grows, unlocks a certain
compassion in the hearts of the parents, and just the check that the parents would not treat the
child for anything, right, it becomes, it becomes such a blessing. And the reality is as difficult,
it's tough, May Allah help those parents, but they have a person of gentleman with them. They have,
you know, allies, with the sick person, they have someone that's with them all the time, the angels
always in their presence a lot in their presence. And it's hard to come to the wisdom per se, but
		

			you know, there's a reward at the end. So the only wisdom here is that Allah always creates with
wise purposes, but the reward is a short if a person does, right with a situation. Now it's a
question of like, are we looking at it? Are we approaching the care of this child? Because you know,
there's reward in the hereafter.
		

			But at the same time, one, one might argue that At what point do you consider a child in that
category? Yeah, so I think that that's hard. Those are lines that are often ambiguous. And so it's
very difficult, right? So in Islam, you know, there's the line of when the pen is lifted, when a
person can cannot even, you know, comprehend what they're going through, but Allah knows that at the
end of the day, and so a person might be excused from certain obligations, and that's when they
would reach a certain threshold. But Allah knows, the full the full spectrum and the full scope of
what a disability actually is, because a lot of times, we're not able to see the full impact of
		

			certain disabilities. And sometimes we're not even able to detect a disability at all in time to
properly accommodate what what are the spiritual challenges that might come for an individual as a
parent,
		

			when they have a child that might be so that's why Markson is so important to me is that we've
essentially eliminated these people from from the massages, alright, so if you have a child that has
a disability, especially if you know, something that would cause them to make noise, or whatever it
is, where's their place in the most. And so our mandate at Marsan was we got to make all the
messages houses of a law for all of us servants, no matter who they are, whether they have
disabilities or the parents of those with disabilities. So like, what is my son trying to do
specifically that enables such people to be able to benefit from coming to the message. So there's
		

			certifications and measured certification programs. And so there are different tiers of that. And
so, you know, ideally, you want a place where you want something that's accessible, obviously,
that's very basic, right? Something as simple as wheelchair accessibility. Sometimes we don't even
have that. Okay. lm sign language, elevator sign language, interpretation joumana spaces
accommodating in Sunday School special needs within your Sunday school, the required school now, how
do you do respite
		

			program what's the respite program is where you have special needs providers that would be able to
babysit, take care of kids while parents are able because usually these parents don't get a break,
or youth prayer conventions, conferences, we need to, you know, we kind of like the same way that
they have daycare for children at these kind of things at programs, you have the same thing for
people support systems, emotional, emotional support to Yeah, the you know, it starts off with
saying, look, we see you and we want to help you through this and help you overcome this. Now, what
would you say is the most common scenario?
		

			Because there's a diversity of challenges, you know, the kinds of conditions that children might be
born with, right, but especially with your work through Mawson to put it into context? And also in
light of the question, what's the common type of challenge that parents face? The common challenge
that parents face is that the community does not do enough, you know, and that even if there there
are certain things that are happening, it's just, you know, it's an emotional roller coaster, right?
So sometimes there are good days, and there are bad days, there are days when, you know, hardships
arise that other people don't even consider, right. So your social life is impacted by this, your
		

			religious lives impacted by this here. So every time you kind of hit a roadblock, and it can
sometimes be a major roadblock.
		

			You know, it can it can really set a person back. Okay, so I want to send my kids off to school,
right? What's my, if this if the disability is severe enough?
		

			If something happens to me, who's going to take care of the kid? Like there's so many different
things that come into mind? We can't go to certain gatherings we can go to dinner parties, right? So
the minor inconveniences, which are which which are minor, but they're not really minor, right?
Because if you have no social life, no ability to go out and socialize, because you always have to
be taken care of kids serious. That's a serious hindrance. What would you suggest for any parent is
facing this is going through this? What advice would you have for them? Well, one is to become
advocates, become advocates for their kids and become advocates for families like them, the
		

			community needs to be confronted with what what does an advocate look like? What are they? What
would you suggest that they do specifically, make sure that their places of worship and their
communities are more accommodating to people with special needs and the people that care for those
with special needs? And
		

			you know, and become voices, you know, a lot of a lot of families, especially because of stigma,
just suffer in silence. They don't even tell people they have kids that have special needs, because
they don't want to go through the being stigmatized that a lot of people do in certain cultures. So
now, what's this? What's the kind of a stigmatism that sounds like an eye problem? But no be
stigmatized? You know, like, people look at you funny when you're the profit slice. I'm talking
about emotional sensitivity to the point he said, Don't stare at people that have skin conditions,
because your stares is hurtful. Right? And so,
		

			you know, being looked at funny, and sometimes people even saying, Oh, you know, must be hazard or
another age or something evil happened to you know, there are those types of things that can happen.
All those are forms of stigma, how do you find support within the community? Because, you know,
being an advocate is takes one kind of personality, right. But what if, like, I think the advocate
the thing is, is that maybe when you say I advocate, you're thinking like activist and very Yeah,
that's what I've been an advocate of someone who, who even just ushers forth the conversation to
some extent, right. So that doesn't necessarily have to take a formal capacity, okay? Because it
		

			might just very be very well be that it's not that massage either deliberately.
		

			being like, no, we're not going to cater to people who have disabilities and whatnot. But it just
might be that they're unaware of considerations that they would need to have for not only just the
facility and his design, which we'll start at the beginning, but whatever situation you're in, but
like the programming and the regular things like Joe mine, he then saw on what have you, like, what
would you suggest to the people who don't have that to do? I think that, you know, try to as much as
you can replicate, find support, even with a few families that are in similar situations and take
care of each other. Right. And that sort of that kind of that solidarity is necessary, not just from
		

			an advocacy perspective, but when one possible, you know, offering respite for each other, you know,
		

			doing things together, right. So you've suffered from a very similar thing. So finding families that
have suffered in the same in the same light and trying to help each other. So maybe offering
respiratory parents together. You know, doing something on IE together, finding things to do in
Charlottetown together. Gotcha. Cool. All right, folks. So I hope the answer and discussion was
helpful and insightful. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below. We would love
to further explore additional questions that you might have on this topic or others. I'll see you
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