Fatima Barkatulla – Islamic Parenting Muslim Family Vision – With Love & Mercy
AI: Summary ©
The importance of marriage and healthy lifestyles is emphasized in the conversation. The speakers emphasize the need to maintain healthy lifestyles and create a vision for one's life. The development of Islam is discussed, including the importance of having a clear understanding of one's own family goals and setting goals for family members to achieve success. The importance of allowing family members to express their goals and setting goals for improvement in chances of achieving their goals is emphasized.
AI: Summary ©
I will treasure and the more to the sunset in the evening, I will pray Sure.
I will pray Sure.
When I'm drowning in onto a board in the deepest, darkest ocean, I will praise you
will praise your
beloved ministry monniera God
in
heaven Did you love?
Do you dear sisters,
to love, you're going to cancel
a family vision.
When you first got married, I'm assuming most of you are married or thinking of getting married. When you first get married, you are literally entering into a new creative state.
In fact, I can't think of any union or any stage of life that is as symbolic of being creative as marriage, you are literally going to be a couple that brings forth life and Charma create a creative force that Allah subhanaw taala has put within you a new life, a new culture.
What do I mean by new culture?
Whether you and your husband are from the same culture or not, you know, even if he's from a different cultural worldview from the same culture, the fact that you're brought up by different parents means that you both come from different cultural backgrounds. What that means is that once you come together, you have the opportunity now for a new culture, your own family culture,
a new legacy, it's the opportunity to create a new legacy.
So in child love your children, what you as a family unit build together will one day benefit you in your grave.
spamela Sometimes, we belittle the legacy and the power of what our children lost to such a degree.
We're not aware of it at all a sister just a few weeks ago,
she said to me, I know children, you know, mashallah they bring a lot of joy. And, you know, but
why should I have more children?
And she was just not feeling very motivated to have any more children.
And I just thought to myself, so Allah like, is it that we are not talking about this enough? Is it that the whole world keeps telling us about all the different things we could do to build a legacy to such an extent that we no longer talk about
a family raising a human being being the ultimate legacy? And I had to mention to her the very famous Hadith of the Prophet salallahu Alaihe Salam, which I'm sure you are all aware of, that when a person passes away, all attendees are caught up except for three right? In tell me what the three things are that continue to benefit us even after we die.
knowledge that he taught or he left behind, that continues to benefit people.
You said,
your children that you leave behind you make bar for you.
Yep.
So that's
the one that we're gonna focus on is the child who prays for you, you know, subhanAllah it's not even just that the child is the most likely person to pray for you, after you pass away, but every single good deed that that child does, every single time our children recite Surah Fatiha in the Salah, the Surah Fatiha that you told them every single time they behave in a way that they learned from you
Subhanallah you're getting word for that. Even beyond our graves, we're gonna get the word for that.
And then their children and everything that they teach them,
you know, that's gonna continue to benefit us and then their children and their children. So on your monthly AMA, in sha Allah will be turning up.
Scared, worried. And Allah subhanaw taala will have a huge pile of good deeds 1000s of own rows, maybe millions 1000s of hedge maybe millions fast and we're going to look at one of them. We're going to
Say,
I didn't do all of that. I didn't do all of that.
And it will be sent to us. But it's it was your child and their children and then their children SubhanAllah. If we were to live 1000 years, can you imagine you'd have your own little nation, right? That exists here in the UK. My parents have only been here since the 70s. And they've got a little mini nation now, with their children all having children, and it just grows exponentially. It used to be so lonely, you can probably relate to this, your parents, or your grandparents, they were really lonely when they came here.
Probably most of us grew up without any family around. We didn't have aunties, uncles, they were all back in some foreign country, right. And now, just one or two generations later, it's like you can't keep up with your relatives.
You can't visit all your brothers and sisters. Yeah, we're tired of them as well, you know, a little because then the SubhanAllah. Look how exponentially the blessing of children grows. So that is the one thing that we as women need to bear in mind, because society is not going to tell us that society won't tell us that it doesn't tell us to value our children.
So entering marriage is the ultimate creative state.
That means you get a chance to create something new. You know, and that's one of the great blessings isn't it?
You know, Allah subhanaw taala, the way he's created this world, there's constant renewal, constantly,
you know, people are passing away, new ones are being born. And with that every generation moves forward and forward and forward. And progress takes place. So in all of that is so much hit them up, if only we were to pay attention.
So you have a chance, as a person as one of the creative forces within a marriage, to create a vision for that marriage and for that family. And perhaps for the little Alma, that you will be the head of
one of the things we have to bear in mind is that everything that isn't maintained, goes downhill, right? Sure, you've experienced that, you know, we experienced that with our bodies, right?
Anything that isn't maintained, if you don't keep on top of it, don't keep on top of the healthy diet, the exercise and, or even, you know, the beauty treatments, or taking care of yourself taking care of your house, don't take care of things. What happens to them.
They fall apart, right? Slowly, but surely there's decay. That's just like the nature of, of this world.
And marriage. And building a family is just the same. If you don't maintain it, you don't invest in it. If you don't have a vision for it, if you don't keep nurturing it, the decay will set in and slowly but surely, things will start falling apart.
So why, why? Why do we need to know this? Why is this important?
If you look in the Quran, even the Prophet Ibrahim alayhi salam, he had a vision for his family. So just imagine not only did he have vision he had imagination. I think we can learn a lot from that. Because if just imagine this, he is standing in the middle of the desert
with his son Ismail,
his only son at the time, I believe,
or at least his only son in that part of the world. And both of them are building this Kaaba, they're building discover.
There's no one really to come to the GABA, but they're building it anyway. Because Allah has come on with them. And while they're doing that,
what is Ibrahim Ali salaam doing? He's been very imaginative and is making dua and he's spelling out his vision. And so Allah Subhana Allah tells us in the Quran in surah baqarah What is your how Abraham will cover it? I mean and Beatty. What is my rebellious a couple Mina in occurrences Samuel Aleem. Rapana anonymously made in the laka woman's RIA Tina matter Muslim matter luck. We'll add in our second our toolbar Lena in the counter to wearable Rahim.
Robin I was thinking Rasul Amin home yet so I lay him a ticker while you are Lima who will Kitab al hikma will use a key him in a candle as his will help him. In this beautiful three ayat of the Quran. Allah subhanaw taala shows us how Ibrahim alayhi salam set out his vision for his family. And he asked Allah, that that vision would come to reality. He said If Allah subhanaw taala tells us and when Ibrahim and his son were building the house, they were laying the foundations of the house. They said Rob Burnett, Kabul Mina, oh Allah accept this from us this thing that we're doing accept it from us in a Qantas semula lien Indeed you are the All Hearing the all knowledgeable
rumba now watch anonymously mainly laka Oh Allah make us to Muslims make us those who submit to you
women will react in a matter Muslim at Allah and from our progeny from our children. Make a nation he said a nation of Muslims for you those who submit to you well I didn't seek an hour to ballerina and show us how to do our rituals of homage
to the Elena and forgive us in NACA ancestor wobble Rahim Verily you are the old forgiving the All Merciful. And then they carried on making they said, Robin what I see him Rasul a Minho. Oh Allah, our Lord, send for them,
or send form them from amongst them, a messenger from you. Yet to allay him, tikka, who will recite your words to them while you are living whom will kita and will teach them the book? And we know the book, which is the Quran
while hikma Why is the key him in Africa and tell us he still has him, and that will will teach them hikma wisdom
and will purify them? Verily You are the supreme and the wise. And Subhan Allah in answer to the dua of Ibrahim, Allah subhanaw taala sent a prophet muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam to that nation. He was the Rasul that Ibrahim Alayhi salaam prayed for. He came with the three things and the Kitab while hikma were to purify them and Saskia
the Kitab being the Quran, the hikma the wisdom being the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah when he was salam.
And purification being, you know, the purification of the soul that Prophet sallallahu Sallam taught us with his actions and with his behavior. So you see my sisters, and you imagine the daughter of an old man
at a salon, in the middle of a desert with his son, where he can't really imagine his his progeny and his, you know, his his future, progeny being anything
came true in such a spectacular way, in a spectacular way. In fact, we are benefiting from the two out of your brain. Think about it. Yeah, that messenger came, he taught us and we're here today, as you know, Muslim and in sha Allah, and also to the Tao of your brain. And
so the Quran encourages us to have vision encourages us to make the awful things that seem impossible. For things that seem amazing. Right, just like Ibrahim Ali Salam did, the Quran encourages encourages us to make the DUA rather than I mean, as well as Riyadh sinner, or rather, I will want you to feel
that, Oh Allah make make us have Lana Mina is watching and made for us, from our spouses and our children. The coolness about eyes make them the coolness of our eyes. And the scholars said, the corners of the eyes. Some some of the people they asked some of the scholars left is this coolness of the eyes that we get on the day of judgment. And they said, No, this coolness of the eyes. Of course, in on the Day of Judgment, you will get corners of the eyes from your children as well. But this coolness of the eyes is the peace and the happiness that a parent feels when they see their children and their spouses obeying Allah subhanaw taala. And isn't that what we all dream of? All
this effort we're putting into our little ones what what do we want to see at the end? We want to see them worshipping Allah when they grow up.
And then at the end of the day, which
make us leaders may
He has Imams
of the righteous Subhan Allah of those who have Taqwa.
So, straightaway, ALLAH SubhanA. Allah is encouraging us in the Quran, to have high aims right? To think big to think of our children as something big, bigger than what they are at the moment as leaders. And what does it mean to be a leader?
To be a leader means you have to be at the top of your game. So right at the beginning, you're asking Allah to make your child a role model.
Make your family a role model family, the other people when they look at you, they see you as leaders, they want to follow your way they want to copy you Subhanallah and that is not going to happen to complacency, and without some vision.
So what do we need to do?
What do we need to do?
We need to become very deliberate about the things that we do and our deen encourages us to do that encourages us to have intentions, and what our intentions except
having visions, right you have a vision for the future, you have an intention, the way your family is going to be the way your marriage is going to be the way you're going to show up as a family in this world, and how people are going to experience you, right.
So some of the means that I would take
to do this are first of all, we need to sit by ourselves. And we need to take account of our own where we are right now, right where you are as a person right now. And where you want to be.
And then after that, you need to have that same kind of meeting with your husband.
Okay, where you both sit together, and you think about and talk about and thrash out? What kind of family do we want? What is the guiding light for our family, and SubhanAllah. So few people do this. And that's why what happens,
because you've never spelled out verbally together, and made that intention that the purpose of our family is to serve Allah, the purpose of our life and our family is to get to Janna, we want to get to John that we want to do everything that it takes to please Allah in any given situation, because we never spell that out. When hardship comes, and it hits us, right? When the inevitable suffering and hardship of this world comes in hits us what happens when the tests hit us, we fall apart. We don't know which way to go. Everyone's going in different directions, people are falling apart, they don't know that they're giving up. They're willing to just leave it now. Forget it. It's too
difficult. We weren't meant to be together, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
And that happens, because
when those hardships hit, that's when you need your vision the most, you need your vision, because Subhanallah if you lose a child, and it hurts you, you feel like your whole life is going to end.
What's going to sustain you. If it's not that you're both on the same page, and you know what the purpose of this life is and the way that you had intended to head.
If you're, if you've never knew that in the first place, then the big tests of life are gonna throw you off track.
So it's really important as a couple to sit down and draw up a vision for your life. One book that I will recommend to you is, this will help you to write a vision. And you need to do that as a couple first before you bring the kids in
before you bring them on board with this. And that is The Seven Habits of Highly Successful families. Okay, so this isn't in that same group of books as the seven habits, you know, by Stephen Covey. This is the family version. You've got to read it such an excellent book, Mashallah. And within it, you'll find how to write a vision, or I think there's a link in there that shows you how to write a vision online.
And you need to do that as a couple and spell it out.
Then you need to have regular family meetings with your kids, especially as they get older, maybe not when they're very young.
But, you know, by the time they 10 definitely should start having family meetings. And I would say as a minimum once a year, if not twice. And what would you do in those family meetings?
So I'm in those family meetings. You spend a little bit of time re
expressing what your family vision is, you know, if it doesn't get said, it won't go into the kids,
you know.
So it's really important that they're on board as well, that they're on board.
In those meetings, you would go through each person in the room, and you talk about what have you achieved in the past year?
And get into that habit, what have we achieved in the past yet, just name three things, three things so we can feel good, we don't just want to feel negative about ourselves and what we haven't achieved, we want to think feel good about the things that we have achieved and integrate those. And, you know, you might have to sit there with a diary and write this out, you know, but it's such a meaningful exercise, because it allows each person in the family to start taking stock of the year. So you write down what have we achieved this year, each person? What are some of the memories from this year that were really great, you know, and get people to talk about those so that as a
family, you become grateful, and gratitude becomes a norm.
And then each person
gets a chance to express what have been some of the challenges they face this year,
that they need to share with the family. Okay. Now, if it's a very personal thing, I would say you have one to ones with each child. But if it's something to do with the family, you literally ask the question,
What is good about our family? And you talk about that? And what are some of the things that we need to improve as a family. So it could be that one child notices that, you know, the family, the profanity in the family has increased, right? Swearing,
right, or, you know, somebody's not feeling good. Somebody's not experiencing this family in the positive way that you might be thinking is, somebody's feeling bullied, somebody's feeling left out, somebody's feeling ignored. That space is a chance for them to be able to share that.
For them to be able to say, I don't like it, Mom and Dad, when you argue in front of me.
I don't like it when this happens. And you allow that to be a free space, even though you feel like you feel like diminishing what they say right? It's not like that. It's not that bad. You feel like saying that to them. But don't do that. resist that temptation, allow them the space, because if we don't allow them the space, then they won't share what's really on their mind.
So
what So you sit there and you listen to your children complaining about everything that they think is wrong, right. And you also have your own list, right? For example, there's too much burden on one person in the house, maybe, you know, certain people are not doing the chores, whatever it is, right? You get to spell it out as well. And in that annual meeting, you set new intentions. And you get them to say those intentions and agree to those intentions.
And then you go around the room and you ask each person to spell out three goals for this year.
Three goals, three things they want to be able to say they achieved by the time of the next meeting. That's why you've got to write it down, because otherwise, everyone forgets what those were. And also, you can whip that diary out again in a year's time. And you can bring everybody to account including yourself.
So, three things. The reason why I mentioned three is because I found that with teenagers, they some reason can't think of more than that. So, three seems like a good number, you know, but you personally might have missed, you know, you and your husband, you can go through different areas of your life and financial life, our marriage, you know, marriage goals, our family goals, our extended family goals. You know, you can write down your goals as a sister, you know, to your siblings, your goals as an auntie, you know, maybe that's an area that might be neglected if you're not intentional about it, right? All these areas need nurturing, right? My dad, he always says to us, love has
little compartments. Love has little compartments. And there's different compartment compartments for different people. You have a love for your mother, you have a love for your father, you have a love for your siblings, a certain type of love for your friends and all those little compartments need something to put inside them. Yeah. So that we don't end up neglecting.
So we do that we mentioned
Three goals that we want to achieve by the end of the day can be simple things like, I want to pass my exams, I want to get into a good university, I want to get into a good secondary school, whatever it is, you know, make three things, then at the end of the year, they can look back and think, yeah, I did that. I did that. And then they'll get into that habit of succeeding, right? And setting goals and succeeding and setting goals and succeeding, include in that vision,
the feelings that you as a family want to have, what kind of culture do we want to have, we want to have a loving culture, we want to be people who value people, not technology and things, right. That's something that ends up happening, we start becoming the sorts of people whose children don't care about family members, they care more about the things that those family members will buy them, right? We don't want that we need to become intentional about that and highlight that to our kids. Now, those gifts are not important. They're just a symbol. What's important is the person.
Talk about that kind of atmosphere you want to have in your house, is your house becoming a place of anger? Is it becoming a place where people are becoming complacent about salah
is one of the things you want to make a must in your family that you pray in Jamar, most of the solos, as if people are at home, you know those sorts of things, it takes a bit of time takes a bit of thought. But it's really worth it, it's really worth it.
Think about the walls that you want to have as a family and the manners that you want, as a family to have.
My sisters, if we don't
become intentional, we don't sit down and write a vision for our family, and we don't at least think about it and set it out,
then we may store up problems for the future.
How many marriages
started off great.
You know, they will great even when you maybe first had so strong, it was great. But by her third, fourth child, you know,
too much neglect has caused the rock to set in.
And that's because we never gave it the time, we never nurtured it. So with your spouse need to become intentional, at least once a week, at least I would say one hour or one and a half hours needs to be spent just talking about
the routine, you know what's going to happen, the planning for the week, etc. Right? So that's kind of like the admin, right? At least one hour needs to needs to take place every week, that is admin.
And then aside from that, you need to shedule in time, and it has to be scheduled in because I shouldn't say scheduled, right. It should be scheduled in that you have certain time that is just for you. You enhance
that you don't talk about the worries of the world and you don't talk about the kids. And you just get to connect just for connection just to have that frivolous chat, you know, go away, have some have a drink together something you know, do something that's just for you.
And if you can do that overnight. And this is easier said than done.
But you know, when we really want to do something, we managed to do it right, we managed to find the childcare when we really want to do something. So I think when it comes to marriage, this is one of the most important things that we should be able to find helpful. So if you need to get somebody to look after the kids do it, but have times when you and your husband are alone together at night as well, right? You need that regularly. If you can't do it every month, let's start off with four times a year. Let's then build it up to more than that, you know, if you really want to do it, you could do it. And it's really worth it. Because unfortunately, as the years go by what happens
you can very easily start drifting apart.
Because you just haven't spent that time together, you haven't fed the marriage.
So make sure that that is a very important and it's not selfish, it's actually maintenance for the family.
Because your children are going to be so much better off when they have happy parents. And they have parents who are connected or not fighting all the time, who don't seem to be on different parts. So that's why it's worth it to worth putting that effort in.
If we don't do this, we could end up at different in different destinations to our spouses. Because life is tough.
You know, if you live long enough, most of us will face tests.
And without something, a guidance start to focus on without a vision for our families, it's too difficult.
It's too difficult to recalibrate yourself and get back on track after those tough times.
So in summary, sisters, self reflection, having those moments of self reflection, where you literally spell out all the different roles that you have in life, including being a sister, including being a friend. And you literally write what your vision is for each of those.
And then your vision as a couple, spend that time thinking about it together and spelling it out. Then as a family, having regular meetings, and regularly appraising how good it's going, which things you fell short on. Even if every year you make the same promise. And then I mean, the same intention, and then it keeps falling. Get back on track, because you're teaching your kids, you're teaching your kids a very valuable lesson that we made the intention, we didn't quite get there. But we can at least improve. Every year we can at least improve, we can continue having that intention.
And then
you have your vision, but then you also have goals, regular goals along the way to that vision.
And a very important part of that is constantly appraising, meaning that you then ask yourself, did we?
Did we meet our goals? Or did we not? That's very important because it's very easy to set out a vision and then not account yourself for just written in some book somewhere, right.
And then based on that you adjust, keep adjusting your vision and keep adjusting your goals as the circumstances change. And in sha Allah, on the Day of Judgment,
hopefully, we will get the credit. as mothers, as the ones who are the visionaries of our families, we will get the credit for the little ALMA will result from our progeny, child law and all the good that will come from that.
And sha Allah with that I will leave you Subhanak Allahumma will be handed a shadow Allah ilaha illa Anta
and
I was born to praise you. I was born to praise you