Living Islam – Raising a Muslim Child #03

Bismillah R Rahman r Rahim Al hamdu Lillahi Rabbil Alameen wa salatu salam ala Shara film ba will mursaleen Muhammad also relies on our highly URI Lee he was Abu salah, thus leaving cathedra and cathedra from abajo. My brothers and sisters,

we have been talking about the issue of,

of raising children. And as I mentioned, this whole series is about raising a Muslim child. And if you say what's so special about a Muslim child, what is so special about a Muslim child is that the child is Muslim. And being a Muslim, therefore, comes with a set of responsibilities. And that is the reason why parents have to be mentally prepared and also materially prepared, emotionally prepared to be able to be good parents to a Muslim child.

A parenting requires that parents develop themselves to be to a level where they become an inspiration in the lives of their children.

It requires us to face the fact that ignorant parents can only produce ignorant children.

Parents who have no books in the house, will not have children who are addicted to reading.

They will go and check I asked this question generally to parents and say in the last one year, how many books did you read? I'm not saying how many do you write? How many did you read?

Now you you know the answer for it to be yourself. Ask yourself if that is good enough.

Parents whose conversation centers around the lives of other people, only gossip and Riba and backbiting and slandering, cannot have children who speak about great ideas and dream of changing the world.

Parents who whose major whose major life decisions are which dress to wear, or which handbag to carry, or things of that nature, cannot guide children

who are struggling with existential realities relating to their purpose in life

cannot be done.

By brothers and sisters, please understand this is parenting is a very serious matter.

Parents need to wake up and face the fact that their problems relating to raising children are really a reflection of how little they have invested in themselves.

paupers can hardly be expected to help others. The time to change is now and it's never too late.

Muslim families today spend far too little time inculcating the value of contribution of each generation, creating its own legacy and not being content to ride on the coattails of the earlier generation. They give their children the same education that is given to children of ordinary people who are not Muslim. They don't prepare their children for the distinctly different responsibilities that they will have to shoulder.

This is not arrogance, it's merely recognizing the fact that the Muslim child is going to inherit a mission that is completely different from anyone else.

simply sending your child to the mcta or to the mother or to the Sunday school, where they learn to read the Quran Naza just by character recognition

without understanding the meaning or knowing the language or anything like that, and where they learned some dogs and so on. So what is not sufficient, I'm not saying don't send them there, something is better than nothing but that something better than nothing is not going to solve any of your problems in life.

We need to aim for excellence that requires investment in your children.

Your children cannot be outsourced to the daycare center or to the mothers or to the Mokka bot to somebody else to raise on your behalf or to the school to raise on your behalf. It is your child and therefore you are responsible for raising that child and you are responsible before Allah subhana wa Danijela.

Muslims have been sent to give not to take.

So they must build a treasure house of faith and wisdom and compassion and courage and talents. Because you can only give what you have.

It is essential for Muslims, for us to understand the distinctly different responsibility that comes with such a mission for which we are answerable to Allah subhanaw taala

parents often equate expense with quality. They give their children the most expensive education which often insulates them from the

realities of life, and they never learn to fight real battles. Most schools are very keen for the child to feel good, and bend over backwards, to make the child feel happy. Almost everything goes air conditioned classrooms, there's that one, not. Parents love it. Children obviously love it. But in the process, the children learn nothing about life.

Parents have no boundaries, the school teaches no boundaries. And children grew up with a feeling that as long as they are happy, they can do whatever they like. Nothing is more destructive for the child than this attitude.

I went to one of the best schools in the country, the other half of the school. I said the best schools, but my wife objects, I will say one of the best schools.

But it was not a school where you could just do whatever you liked. There were boundaries, we were taught manners, we were taught how to do things. And if we didn't do them, according to how we were taught, there was a price to pay

in the body of our brooms would be examined in the morning, they will be

randomly the room will be examined. And they would be able to come and see if we had made our bed, they would come and see if our shoes have been polished and put away properly. In the in the place where the shoes were to be kept.

They would just see the neatness of the room.

If things are just piled up somewhere or closed, and so on, and put away all of this we had to do.

And we did it. And I hamdulillah to this day I do it. And I thank those who people who wrote me up that they gave me these values.

My brothers sisters, children learn because they listen with their eyes. They don't care what you say. And she they see what you do.

And that's why it's so critically important to set a good example.

And it all begins in the home. Not in the school, not anywhere else.

Parents, especially wealthy parents, give expensive toys to their children, mostly as guilt placebos, to compensate for the fact that their own social lives don't allow them to spend real time with their child.

The most striking and shocking incident that I remember, is one of my wives, classmates, who was I went to school with her.

We heard that her mother, that mother passed away.

So my wife went to call on her to pay her condolences.

So when she came back, I asked her I said how so and so.

She said, You know, the strange thing is that I met her. And she looked perfectly normal. She did not look at some look like somebody who had lost her mother.

So to the extent that my wife said, Well, you know, how are you feeling? And so on? I hope you are, you know, she tried to tell her something like, you know,

some words of comfort.

And this lady said to her, she said, No, no, don't don't say all this because it doesn't matter to me. It makes no difference.

That sound like a very callous

kind of a statement. And I am sure she she must have seen the look on the face of my wife. She said, You know, I'm saying that because she was never here for me anyway. Now she's talking about a mother. She said my mother was never here for me anyway.

They were very wealthy people. So she said, You know, I had a governance, I had a car, I had a driver, I could go anywhere I wanted, I could come and go and so on, you know, bills are paid and I would go to the club or whatnot. My mother had a social life, she would, I would hardly see her. She spent no time with me. And

so you know what, what is the?

What does it matter to me that she is she's dead?

Is this how you want your children to think about you?

Ask yourself this question.

The opposite is equally bad.

For example, if you are one of those mothers, and generally the women who do this, you know, men men are too busy outside the house with their careers and jobs. But if you're one of those mothers who literally sort of spoon feeds the child, and the child is not 20 years old, but still you make hotpot for the child and you may have hot food and you bring it and give it and the child come and he wants and does what he wants. And I've seen cases where children literally the way we used to live, there was this mother who would go to the gate and wait for the school bus and a school as they do to cheer they had two daughters. As soon as the daughters got out of the bus, they would

come to the mother. They would remove their backpacks and

dump them on the street. And then as this mother would pick up and she's walking behind these girls, and as they walk into the house, sometimes one of them would kick off her shoes. One of them would do something, and this poor woman would bigging up things after them. She never once told them don't do this, do the do the do the right thing, pick up things. Take them and nothing, no discipline. I imagine what kind of raising that is what kind of upbringing mercifully, they were not Muslim, but I'm saying that this is the kind of

raising an upbringing that creates the monsters we see in the world.

If you do not spend time, if you only throw money at children, the children learn to define human value in terms of material wealth. The best kids are those who have the best choice and momentary entertainment, TV gadgets, iPads, iPhones one night, are given a substitute for mothering. And fathering and parents proudly tell you how the little two year old can do wonders with the with the iPhone, or the iPad. They don't ask what the maker of iPads Steve Jobs said about his product and his children.

I quote from him, I will give you this. In the in the description of this video, I will give you the link to the article. I quote from this article.

It says jobs seems to have set the bar in Silicon Valley for entrepreneurs, encouraging their kids to be creative by limiting access to the consumer tech products they hock to the public. In an article in this in the Sunday New York Times,

titled Steve Jobs was a low tech parent reporter Nick Bilton found a growing trend among the California Silicon Valley Tech set to limit children's technology use

many of the people behind the social media platforms, gadgets and games that are consuming our kids time and minds and actually allowing their own children to waste an entire Saturday afternoon, playing Minecraft on iPad. Chris Anderson, former editor of Wired Magazine, chief executives of 3d Chief Executive of three 3d Robotics, and father of five emphasized that he and other tech colleagues are limiting technology in the home. My kids accused me and my wife of being fascists and overly concerned about tech. And they say that none of their friends have the same rules. That's because we have seen the dangers of technology firsthand. I've seen it in myself. I don't want to

see that happen to my kids. And who's saying this Chris Anderson, the former editor of Wired Magazine, and Chief Executive of 3d Robotics.

In 2011, New York Times story, and I'm still quoting from the same article reported that engineers and executives from Apple e-bay Google, Hewlett Packard and Yahoo, are sending their kids to a walled off Elementary School in Los Los Altos, California, where kids are discouraged from watching television or logging on at home. And there are no computers or other electronic devices.

We have schools which are the opposite, they simply give every child an iPad here is walled off, which is a very high class and a very high and school, which says we do not give them no electronics. The Times found that Alan Eagle, who works in executive communications at Google and has a degree in computer science of Dartmouth, has a fifth grader at walled off and does not know how to use Google.

The goal of a tech Free Childhood is to make sure that hands on creativity, expressive movement, and person to person interaction and kids is not stifled by escape into the netherworld of foreign screens. Word of believes that their students are gaining math, patterning and problem solving skills by knitting socks. They also suggest that learning fractions is best accomplished by learning about halves and quarters by cutting a food.

Most modern executives think that they are doing the right thing to prepare their children to compete in a tech savvy world by filling their home with all kinds of the newest gadgets and screens or apps. But as an artist and as the greatest entrepreneur in history, Steve Jobs wanted his kids to be able to accomplish physical tasks, like actually being able to make dinner rather than lead a sedentary childhood dominated by iPads, AI watches and iPhones.

Another End of quote another quote from the wonderful article, New York Times Steve Jobs Apple

was a low tech parent. Alex Konrad Constantinople, the chief executive of the outcast agency, tech focus, communication and marketing firm said her youngest son who's five, is never allowed to use gadgets during the week, and her older children 10 to 13 are allowed only 30 minutes a day on school nights. Evan Williams, a founder of blogger, Twitter and medium and his wife, Sarah Williams, said that in view of iPads, the two young boys have hundreds of books, yes, physical ones.

paper books that they can pick up and read any time. So to take one of the dads determine the to do tech moms and dads determine the proper boundary for the children.

In general, it is said by age

is how do they determine the boundary article says it's about age, children under 10 seem to be the most susceptible to becoming addicted. And so their parents draw the line at not allowing any gadgets during the week. On weekends, there are limits of 30 minutes to two hours on iPad, and smartphone use. And 10 to 14 year olds are allowed to use computers on school nights, but only for homework. We have a we have a strict no screen time. During the week rule for our kids said less the gold founder and chief executive of the Sutherland Gold Group, a tech media relations in an analytics company. But you have to make allowances as they get older and need a computer for school.

Some parents also forbid teenagers from using social networks, except for services like Snapchat will delete messages after they've been sent. This way, they don't have to worry about seeing something online that will haunt them later in life. One executive told me

all the some non tech parents I know give smartphones to children as young as eight. Many who work in tech, wait until the child is at least 14. While these teenagers can make calls and text, they are not given a data plan until 16. But there is one rule that is universal. Among the tech parents I polled. This is rule number one. There are no screens in the bedroom period. Ever, Mr. Anderson said.

And of course, just ask yourself, what do these very smart people who build the stuff and have become billionaires on that basis? Know about it that you and I don't? And if it is indeed as good as I've been telling myself It is then why don't they allow their children to touch it until they're teenagers? So is your little two year old? Is iPad smart? Or are you dumb?

So what must you do now? Take away the screens and give them books. Don't worry the scream and moan and groan for a while they will learn the joy of reading. And then doors will open for them without the harm of the screens. Let me ask you a question. How many kids do you have?

Do you have kids or children because goats have kids? Not people, people have children. I've said this before I'm saying it again. So stop calling them kids and stop treating them like kids. They are children, not little goats. This is not a game of semantics. It illustrates the attitude that most parents have towards their children.

They think that their duty as parents is restricted to feeding and clothing them and keeping their children dry and warm. That is what you do with little goats, not real humans. Little humans need a whole lot more in terms of inspiration, understanding ethics, values, emotional comfort, mental challenge and spiritual fulfillment. We have reached a state today where it is only momentary pleasure that seems important was not even physical well being. We need to remember that we are not only bodies, neither are our children. We also have colored the code which is the combination of the intellect and the emotion, the mind plus heart, and our why we have our souls, which also don't need

food and care and exercise. Otherwise, like the body, they get sick and the atrophy and the decay and the die, often before the body. But like prolonged near starvation, deadens hunger pangs to the extent that the body no longer gives out danger signals of its impending demise, our pillow and our why our hearts and our souls have reached a stage where we are no longer aware that we will have them.

Just think about this. If I asked you a question and say, Tell me what's in your heart just now I bet you can't say if I asked you what's in your pocket, maybe you can see that. But if I say what's in your heart.

What does that mean?

What a terrible tragedy it is.

And it is the soulless, mindless parents heartless parents, which are inflicted on their poor, unsuspecting, helpless children.

The result is painfully visible all learners.

Islam focuses on real overall development, body, mind and soul.

Something that we need desperately in order to succeed. Most wealthy parents that think one thing about the heart,

we always thought of the earlier thinking was that the heart is only a pump for to pump blood, but the heart is wasallam he said the heart is something which is if it is corrupted, the whole body is corrupted. If it is good, the whole body is good.

Right? Now, what's the difference?

Today even medically, they found that the heart has neurons, the heart has memory, the art has feeling the art the art is a is a is, is a basis of decision making, is not just an inner pump that pumps blood.

Now if this heart is

dead, has no feeling no emotion.

The heart is full of fear that heart is full of all kinds of of negativity and toxicity. What do you think happens to the body? What do you think happens to that person as a as a human being? Today a mental illness is at the level of an epidemic.

It is a serious thing. Mental illness cannot you can't say snap out of it. No.

People who have depression people who have ADHD people who have OCD people who have all kinds of schizophrenia, people who have Bipolar people, there are so many many kinds of mental illnesses are rampant in society.

And the big reason for that is because there is very little if at all, any focus on the development of anything other than the body.

We only think body we only think material, we only think food and exercise and, and and Bureau the external appearance of the body, nothing else.

But we are not just this this stuff, which you can see here we are, we are a whole lot more. And that has equal demand, if not more.

So most

wealthy parents, they tried their best to insulate children from poverty, from hardship from hunger, and the lack of resources, not realizing that they are protecting them from being exposed to the power of drive and ambition and courage and focus to bring big ambitious to achieve big, ambitious, and scary goals. They build walls between their children and the people who they must deal with after they leave the school. People who will one day work with them, and share their lives and decide their fate. People who need to be inspired and lead and cared for and supported and therefore people who must be understood not simply in order to do good and be charitable, but because the

success of their mission, success of the mission of your child.

And their lives depend on the development of these peoples a great multitude. The form parents forget or ignore the fact that one day the time will come for their software it will mollycoddled *cat to enter the jungle of the real world without any of the tools it needs to survive, much less to lead others.

I know schools for example,

in doing school,

they have a system where the students who invariably come from within ports, upper class families, wealthy parents, and so on was the powerful, you know, big big leaders, industrialists, businessmen, so on so forth.

Those children, they teach the children of the staff of the school that is the children of the servants of the school.

So the gardener's children, the drivers, children and the cooks, children and so on and so on so forth. These children are taught by the students have no school. Why does it do that? First of all, because to teach something is the best way to run that. So these children are they're also practicing their own homework and so on. Secondly, it puts them in touch with the within quote real world with the vast majority of people in the world. In my school in HBS, in a public school, we used to do the same thing.

We also went and we used to plant our own food, we grew our own rice. I have plowed rice fields behind Bullock's.

I've walked in that mud behind the book, and you learn the fact that if you don't tie the tail of the bullock

to its leg

when it flicks his tail, you will get a you will get a slap in the face with a tail that is soaked in urine.

You learn these things the hard way.

We used to do that. I know God has done for example, the wonderful school in Scotland

where Prince Charles went with

schooling didn't like it very much. But you know, the British royal families, the patrons of that school.

Gordon Stern, has a program where

for I think if I'm not mistaken, one whole semesters, about three months, those children spend time in a third world country, in some village,

helping to build something or do something in that village. So they will go there, they will build a school there, they will build a, you know, depending on what is what is required, and then they live in that village. And they work with those people that and they spend a whole semester doing that.

We have had programs which we did in Hyderabad, where we will get school children from from here from America, from wealthy families, who would come and go with us into the villages

on various charitable, charitable works that we used to do.

And God, I mean, the shock on the faces of those children, when they see that these are all human beings.

These are also human beings. And despite the life that they are living, they have big smiles on their faces, and agenda and faces up to the fact that I am on the other hand sitting in the lap of luxury, and I'm moaning and groaning and whatnot. And so I go away, no, I don't have this Me, me, me. But those children there, who are who are nothing.

They make a beautiful life for themselves. And they do wonderful, they do wonderful things.

So issue of attitude. So therefore, I want to close with this. It's not sufficient to simply feed and clothe and shelter the child. You do that for your pet cat, or your pet dog. It's not enough for a child, a child was to be raised, must be taught his or her place in society must be given the tools to succeed and made aware of its responsibilities, you will be Muslim children even more. They need a very different education, very different life experiences and very different criteria to measure themselves, all of which have to be inculcated from the earliest childhood. Being rich or poor is not about how much you have. It's about how much you think

the best and most powerful asset that Muslim parents can give to their children is to teach them these tools.

A good way to understand is just to wrap up, is to see how child prodigies are brought up, you know, children who are geniuses, they're not given the same education as everyone else. The entire focus of their education, both formal and informal is based on the eventual role that they must play. Only then can the true glory of the gifts that they have invested with, will come forth.

Take, for example, the tennis legend, Andre Agassi, because his father wanted him to be the top tennis player in the world. And he focused his training towards his goal from the time and Gase was a baby. To begin with, he spent considerable resources of a modest income in building a tennis court in their home. He then built a ball throwing machine that would throw tennis balls at 110 miles per hour, the speed of the ball coming out of that, that out of that machine was 110 miles per hour. This was in the 1970s ball machines that could throw that at that speed. They weren't in the they weren't available in the market. But he wanted the best for his child. So he built it himself with a

modified engine. He started training, I guess he was a tennis racket as soon as he was strong enough to hold water in his hands. By the age of seven, seven years old, I guess he with a tenant was hitting 2500 balls across the net every single day, coming at him at a speed of 110 miles per hour. Let me repeat that. At the age of seven a gassy Andre Agassi was hitting 20 502,500 balls across the net every day coming at him at a speed of 110 miles per hour. If you do the math, that comes out to a million hits a year. To this day, Andre Gase is regarded as the best service return in history of the game. Returning balls coming at 110 miles per hour 2500 times a day as a seven year old, believe

me has something to do with that.

Children born to Muslim parents have been gifted with resources with the tools to connect Allah subhanaw taala. But like all tools, they must be taught how to use them. They're not ordinary children, to treat them like ordinary children

is to deny them that opportunity to make a mark in the world that others will have to try far harder to do. They must be brought up always with a final aim of leading the world in mind. They must be carefully

watched and nurtured and mentored from the earliest age, they must be given tasks of graduated difficulty, so that they learn to win on their own. They must be allowed to face their fears and to conquer them, not sheltered, they must not be protected. But what if they have parents who themselves have no clue about such tools?

Or whatever just is, please understand this. I want to

end with this today.

remember and remind yourself that Allah has given us a opportunity. Allah has given you an opportunity and Allah subhanaw taala has given

that's why there has given

the

opportunity to you two opportunity to you to raise children who will be a means of staccato Jharia for you. So please think about that.

For some of the holiday will carry while he was named erotica for me, or Salam Alaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh