Mirza Yawar Baig – Own the responsibility
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AI: Transcript ©
Our brothers and sisters, we were talking about
the
primacy of roles in,
in a marriage,
in terms of,
the role of the husband and the role
of the wife. I want to expand that
further and look at it from the parenting
perspective, the role of the mother, the role
of the father.
I mentioned that also in the in the
last, hadera on this.
I want to start with,
quoting
from,
Mufti
Zukorlik,
who was a great
Bosnian
Mufti,
amazing man of amazing wisdom.
He says, it's family.
It's family.
Not only a community in which the survival
of the human species is ensured,
not only a community of elementary human relations,
but it is an incubator,
or a greenhouse, or a glass garden
in which human character is formed.
This is where
the basic structure of human character is formed.
And where it is skipped, you actually have
practice
to see it. Whoever skipped it, send him
to Howard, bring him back with crowns, proclaim
him with whatever you want. When he speaks,
he shows that he has skipped in the
family.
He shows those omissions,
those shortcomings
and that can never be compensated for.
I think these are among the wisest words
that I have ever heard. May Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala
help us to do,
that which is pleasing to him.
Now
we have to
look at the raising of children
not from the perspective of what do we
have today and what can we do, but
from what is required.
This is the
basic,
you know, far away in which you would
deal with any situation.
You would say,
you know, take take anything.
If you say,
I want to do this or that,
you will say, what is actually required?
Based on what is required, then you say,
today where I am in terms of time
and space,
what do I have
and what do I need to have?
But it has to begin from
what is needed.
If you say I want to build a
hospital, you say, well, what kind of hospital?
What is going to be the focus of
this hospital? Is it a general hospital? Is
it a specialist hospital and so on? Now
once you have all that, then you say,
I am sitting now in Kaira, or I'm
sitting
in Nigeria, or I'm sitting in India, or
I'm sitting in Pakistan, or I'm sitting in
America.
What do I need
here
to build that hospital? But I'm starting with,
this
clear understanding of what is needed
for that hospital. I superimposed
that onto
what do I have in my current time
and space situation,
And I fill in the gaps.
We have to do the same thing with
parenting.
So what is required in terms of parenting?
In my view,
the first thing first and most important thing
that is needed in parenting is to understand
that this is
the not one of the this is the
most important thing that
a family
can do
or needs to do is
good parenting.
If you have children,
then raising those children
to be
good Muslims,
to be good citizens of their community,
and to be good citizens of the world,
with all that is required, and those what
is required must be listed.
This is the number one responsibility
of the parent. There's no,
in my view, there's no two ways about
that.
It's not one of the responsibilities. It is
the most important responsibility.
Then we have to say, alright. So in
that case, what
do I have? What is available to me?
Now what is available to us depends on
the kind of social,
system and and,
society that we live in. If we live
in a society which is purely
nuclear family, husband, wife, and children, and,
even though there are grandparents
who are available,
we, for various reasons, I don't want to
go into the
politics of all that, but for various reasons,
we,
shunned them out of the equation.
Then we are left with
a situation which is,
deficient
in
many ways.
For example,
the older generation, the grandparents' generation,
brings to the table
accumulated life experience
and wisdom of
70 plus years.
Now we are
if you say, well, you know, they are
not going to be part of the equation,
they are not going to
contribute or they will not we will not
go to them, seek their advice
on raising our children, then you have canceled
out
that resource which was available to you free
of cost.
Right? So that's one. Second thing is not
everybody has grandchildren, grandparents,
who are alive. Not everybody has,
grandparents in the in the same place because
we have just just distributed
and dispersed ourselves across the world,
in in pursuit of
of economic,
advantage.
So, therefore,
we have created a situation for ourselves
where we have deprived ourselves of this
wonderful resource,
which
is usually available to everybody.
Yet, however,
in wherever you are,
there will be others. There would be other
elders
in your budget, in your community, and so
on and so forth. Who are there? I
mean, they're not related directly to their grandparents
or children, but they are available. So that
would be there. There's a scholars, teachers, imams,
elders from the community and so on.
Do you take advantage of that? Do you
have a system where people can where children
can go and sit and sit and listen
to them? Now that there's a precondition to
that, especially in America, where children need to
have that sense of humility
and the sense of need to go and
sit at the feet of an elder and
listen to them. Now, unfortunately, here where we
live in a situation where,
we have, we have created a culture,
which is based on arrogance,
which is based on
if a completely
false feeling of self sufficiency,
in the name of,
of of,
self esteem of the child.
These we raise children who are
who just have inflated egos.
The whole system contributes to that. The entire
system contributes to the sense of inflated egos
and of,
lowered
standards
where people are applauded and given absolute products,
of excellence for the most common mundane things.
Take, for example, the annual graduation that we
have in every class.
It says graduation,
going from from grade 5 to grade 6
to the graduation.
Oh, wow. Fantastic.
The whole graduation party blah blah blah.
What is the achievement?
What is the great achievement?
Now, when you lower the bar like that,
when you lower the standard like that and
everything you do, oh, fantastic, wonderful,
the problem is that then a real sense
of achievement goes out of the window.
A child gets the gets the impression, and
this is how we have we seem to
have children, you know, like this in this
place.
A child seems to have, this sense of
entitlement
that he's entitled to when I'm the best.
I'm entitled to everybody's attention. I'm entitled to
everybody's,
you know, applauds.
And,
I really don't need to do anything. It's
just me me just being here by body,
being present is a is a gift to
mankind.
And and and they're they're raised with this
sense of, false
false arrogance. So for them to go and
sit with elders
and listen to them, I've heard statements I've
heard statements from people,
from from from young people,
really, very, you know, I don't even want
to to don't even want to,
defeat those statements, but they're very insulting,
statements about, their own elders.
Including, for example, you know, my dad tells
me they used to walk 5 miles or
6 miles or 10 miles to go to
to to go to the school. So what
shall I do? Woah. So what? Big deal.
How does it make any sense to me?
How does it apply to me? This is
the thing. The the fact that you can't
see the value in that is a sign
of your ignorance.
No. It's a sign of the dad's ignorance
that he talks about this.
So when you when you when you create
a society like that,
what do you expect from it? So really,
we have to start from understanding that parenting
is the number one important role, and it
won't happen by osmosis. You don't just learn
it. It won't happen because the breeze is
blowing.
It is something that you have to learn.
It is something that you have to, you
know, spend time energy
to learn how to be a good parent
and use the resources that are available to
you.
The most important thing is to own responsibility
for yourself and say, this is my role.
This is something that I am supposed to
do. No one else is going to come
and do it for me. My children are
my children because they are my children, and
I am supposed to raise them in a
way where they will be
a source of pride for me. They will
be
wonderful,
children who will be a sadaqa jariyah for
me. It's my responsibility.
Really, this is something that,
I consciously, I request,
parents to to to really think about this
for yourself and ask yourself this and say,
what can I do to it's not just
a matter of, you know, say, of course,
they have my children? Right?
What is it that you are doing specifically?
Name it.
Metrics. Measure it and say, what is it
that I'm doing
to make sure that my children
are raised in the right way,
where there will be,
the means of and
blessing for me
in this.
May Allah,
guide us and,
help us to do,
what pleases him and to bring about change,
in ourselves, in our communities, and in the
world.