Hamza Yusuf – Teaching Our Children – Part 1

			So it's very important and then also your children. Having an environment of love in your family in
your house, your children should feel love. You want your children to be in an environment of love
the prophesize sam kissed his children, he hugged them, he and we know that touching, children need
a lot of touching, they need a lot of tactile stimulation, if you don't give them that they actually
suffer from it. We also know a lot of sociopathic behavior is the result of maltreatment when they
were children. So it's very important to have a lot of love in the house. Finally, I'd wanted to
talk a little bit about Hades before I go on to the next chapter. I had the the Mr. Bharani relates
		

			and it's it's from Satan alley, and he says that the prophets I sent him said Ed Devo Elijah kumada
said it he saw
		

			discipline your children or raise your children with three characteristics or qualities and then he
said have been of the equal love of your prophet
		

			have be adequate, he loved his family, what did our pteropod on
		

			and then he talked about the the macom of the hammer, Quran and the Day of Judgment. But if you look
at those three, he said, the first one is loving the Prophet. Now you have to
		

			I'm always amazed at that, like the women always have their notebooks and pen always read them and
their memories are amazing.
		

			It's beautiful. And you have to thank
		

			these poor women have to write down things they hear the men just Mashallah. So osmotically
absorbed, they don't have to listen.
		

			It's just going in, you know,
		

			their, their, their pores are open to knowledge and information.
		

			is wonderful.
		

			It really amazes me. I've seen that over the years, so many times, you know, they're taking over you
guys, you're just all sitting around watching it happen. I'm serious. You know, there were gonna be
in those caged
		

			things before long.
		

			With the crying babies, the women are gonna be on the other side. It's happening. Yeah, seriously,
because won't be so dumb. You know, the nobody will know that I can and the women, I'll just say no,
no, the men are supposed to be in that age area. Over there. You know?
		

			Seriously, if they wise up, they're gonna find out. Oh, my God, I really we don't have to do that.
We don't have to do that. We don't have to do that.
		

			They've been for 1400 years. They've been tricking us all this time. Yeah. Where's my servant?
		

			I'm not making that up. Yeah, and then you're gonna have to have two jobs.
		

			And don't expect dinner when you get home.
		

			Because she doesn't have to cook either.
		

			That's why you better love them, you know?
		

			Make your own dinner.
		

			Anyway.
		

			So where was I?
		

			Yeah, loving the prophets, Eliza, raise your children to love the prophets. I said, you can do that.
And there are different ways to do that. One of them is really reminding them of the blessing of the
Prophet sighs and because so much in your life is from the Prophet size, and so many of our
blessing. We don't think about it. But so many of our blessings are from the prophets a lot isn't
him and so you remind them of that and then also telling them the stories of the prophecies and what
he did for them, inculcating in them that luck and then doing things that Islam is a sort of, you
know, you take your kids, one of the things really tells me in the US is people don't take their
		

			kids to Juma you know, their their young teenage you know, they should be going to Joomla from about
910 on to get that experience. They don't do that. They're in school, whatever. I take my boys to
the gym, and I watch like my little my eight year old. He's just like, it's so intense to watch him
because he's really listening, you know, and then we go out and we talk about it. We went to the
Juma and this man gave this talk about
		

			about this mosque in India that the Hindus claimed the land was there as the Muslim claimed the land
was there.
		

			And there was a fight. And so there was one righteous Muslim in the town. And both the Hindus and
the Muslims agreed that,
		

			that they would allow him to arbitrary between them because they thought he was fair. And so then he
mom's telling the story. And then he says, and then it was the suspense. When the mom decided, who
had the right, it was the Hindus. So my little eight year old, so I knew he was gonna do that.
		

			He knew that he was going to be fair, that was the point of the story. So he got the point. And then
we're on the way home, he said to me, You know, I think there was a better solution. So I was like,
what was it he said, he should have split the land and then the Hindus could have had the one half
the Muslims, the other half, they could have each built their places of worship together. And so you
underestimate, you know, the power of children and their capacity to understand things, you know,
they really children are amazing. And and they're very spiritual. There's, there's a, there's a book
by children, peers worth reading from others, which is called the magical teen. And one of the
		

			things that he argues in there is that the most spiritual period of a person's life is their teenage
years. And and what he says is our society gives no way for children to experience that in previous
cultures, even if you look at the Native American culture, they had vision quests at very early
ages, to find out who they were, they took them out into the wilderness and they would go through
this spiritual quest went into puberty. In the Jewish tradition, you have the bar mitzvah, where you
come in of age, spiritually, you have to learn a certain amount. in in in the indo Pak culture that
had the hot arm was a very important
		

			a hallmark for a young person's development, religious development, there were ways in which people
were, their spirituality was encouraged and enhanced. So it's very important to do that with
children. But you know, take them to Joomla you know, I take my child like to take my children to
the Juma and I usually take them like somewhere they want to go afterwards on that day, so it's a
special day. So they look forward to Juma. It's something they look forward to. And then also,
Ramadan is a very opportune time, to really inculcate these virtues, and then doing prayer on the
Prophet salicylate, and even a little bit, if you just do after the prayer, like the Moroccan
		

			tradition, they always do sought out and maybe after they finish the prayer, it's good to do from
the Prophet, remind them about the prophet and then embody his character, really try to embody the
character, your children are one of the great sources of your own spiritual development, if you take
it seriously, because children are teachers, they're also they test our patience. They test us in
all those things that we're told to practice with other people, children test us with that. And vice
versa for children, they're tested by their parents. So it's something that they also need to learn
to deal with. So there's a lot that you can do. Loving the Prophet is very important, knowing his
		

			story, knowing where he went, taking your children to Mecca and Medina, taking them to these places,
letting them see, it's very exciting for them. You know, my young, my eight year old was so upset
today that he didn't get to go to these places. Because my wife woke him up. And he's like, he was
so tired from yesterday. She woke him up and he's like, she said, it's time to go. And he just went
back to sleep. And then, when he woke up later, he said, did they go? And she said, Yeah, why didn't
you wake me up? And he and she said, I did you? And he said, No, you should have thrown water on me.
I mean, that's how you know he really wanted to go. So you can't underestimate the impact that these
		

			things have on young people, even at a young age. My most profound experience as a child growing up
when I was 12 years old, my mother, we went on a Sierra Club, hike into the wilderness for 10 days.
And we had to prepare, we had to learn all the stuff we had to we did preparation with backpacks we
had to go every weekend just walking up this mount Tamil pious with with National Geographics in our
backpacks just to get used to carrying the weight. But it was that experience where I can almost
tell you everything that happened on that journey because it was it was a discovery for me of being
out in the wilderness of what nature was like. And we went to this place called Crystal Lake which
		

			takes three days to hike to up in the mountains. There's no roads to it. It's a beautiful lake in
California. We swim in the lake,
		

			crystal clear water and and one of the counselors our counselor wasn't this is in the 70s he was a
staunch environmentalist because my mother was into the environmental. We were we were doing
recycling in the late 60s.
		

			I'm not making this up. And that's how my mother was just always ahead of the curve on those types
of things. And she would bundle we had biodegradable soap in our house.
		

			In the early 70s, my mother wouldn't do anything. You know, she was and shoes that we had to bundle
all the paint, we hated it, you know, as kids, you know, it's your mom. And But later I just really,
really appreciated because what what my mother taught all of us, I think, and what we really
recognized in her was my mother was never a talker. She wasn't the type person that gave speeches or
she actually just did what she believed. And we saw it in her actions. She was civil rights. She was
out there marching, it wasn't like we should have integration. She took my sister and drove her to
an all black school before they integrated. In the early 60s. We've got my sister's yearbooks, she's
		

			the only white face. They're all black. I'm not making this up. And my sister was traumatized by it
was very difficult for her to do that. Because it was marine city, it was an all black environment.
And most of the people there did not interact with white kids. So my sister was the only white kid
in this whole school. But my mom believed in integration. She just thought she you know, her mother
was from the south, her mother left the South because of the black and white in the 30s. My
grandmother, she she married moved to San Francisco. She came out with her brother, they left the
South because they didn't like the the whole way the South function, they went to the most
		

			progressive place in America, which at that time, San Francisco and probably still is. But that's
she lived those things. My mother always lived those things. Those had a big impact on me, part of
		

			a large part of my whole view of the world came from my mother. So you can't underestimate the
impact that mothers have on their children, and also the spiritual openness to things. I was very
open to those things as a youngster and curious about these things and why they were doing these
things. So those type things you can do with your children just to inculcate that love in them. And
then the other thing he said, salado said in the alley Beatty the love of his family which is very
important.
		

			The family of the prophets all I said is obviously the albedo is the the uncles of the Prophet Hamza
out of the line who say the Hamza we go visit him honor him the shoe
		

			and bass akeel whose shares are these grandfather, all these people we honor them and love them and
then their children and then the children Jafar the cousins and their children Elijah for you know
last night it was with five or six of them, you know, just from a sad they're from El Jaffa and you
should love them because they're the children of the Prophet's family. And and anybody who has
intercept many people have intercept some people look at it like How's that possible? Well, it's
very easy the majority of people on the earth according to hotlines, you probably have some blood
from the prophets allies and even the non Muslims a Queen Elizabeth claims in her lineage. john
		

			kerry, if you look at peerage birds, peerage, john kerry has the man that ran for president, he has
blood from the family of the province lies to them through a Persian connection. So a lot of people
have blood, but descendants are people that have a lineage directly to the Prophet with a tree. Now,
there are people that don't have that. I mean, they they, they have trees, but they're not real.
That's true, because it was a very prestigious thing. So you find that but what I've noticed is that
people, there are people that have Siracusa and can see the family and I've seen this many, many
times. I really have. I'll give you one example. There's a man in Mauritania Jose, who is a shitty,
		

			very spiritual man, really amazing scholar lives out there. He's the only person I've ever seen one
of the Hajj actually get up to greet and when he comes to visit