Mirza Yawar Baig – Purpose of teaching
AI: Summary ©
The course on Sira Solution will be offered on Sunday and parents are encouraged to show respect towards parents. The course is designed to make parents aware of the benefits of feeding children, including their ability to make their own clothing and show respect towards parents. The sun is brought to people's minds during driving and the "umb enormous man in history" is discussed as beneficial for everyone. The curriculum and manners of children at Maqtab are taught based on age and desire to be confident in learning.
AI: Summary ©
In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious,
the Most Merciful.
All praise is due to Allah, Lord of
the worlds.
And peace and blessings be upon the messengers
and the messengers, Muhammad and the Messenger of
Allah, peace and blessings be upon him and
his family and his companions.
Peace be upon you all.
In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious,
the Most Merciful.
The topic is the issue of parental responsibility
in the raising of children.
I was just now in Atlanta, teaching a
course on Sira.
And inshallah, we plan to have the same
course on Sira today, called Sira Solution Workshop,
which will be here inshallah, November 9 and
10.
So please make a note, Saturday, Sunday.
It will be two hours before Zohar, two
hours after Zohar on both days, inshallah.
So please come.
One of the people there, he asked me
a question.
He said, how can we get our children
to follow the sunnah?
How can we get our children to follow
the sunnah?
I said, very easy.
He said, how?
I said, you follow the sunnah.
There is no other way.
I cannot say, I will follow something else,
and I want my children to follow the
sunnah, won't happen.
How can I get my children to follow
the sunnah?
By following the sunnah myself.
Because children listen with their eyes.
Children do not listen with the ears, they
listen with the eyes.
They don't care what you say until they
see what you do.
So you can say anything you want, the
child is watching to see what you do.
And he will follow what he's seeing, he
won't follow what he's hearing.
So if you want your children to follow
the sunnah, follow the sunnah yourself.
If you want your children to go to
the masjid to pray, you go take the
children.
You want your children to, for the ladies,
you want the girls to wear hijab, you
wear hijab yourself.
You want the children to speak respectfully to
you as a parent, you speak respectfully to
your parents and to other elders, the children
learn from that.
If I treat my parents or if I
treat some elder people without respect, and I
want my children to treat me with respect,
it will not happen.
It will not happen.
Right?
Children learn from personal example.
That is the reason why Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala made the tarbiyah of children the
only fard on the parents for which you
will be accountable.
Right?
Everything else, including their food.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said, We feed
them.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said, don't kill
your children.
Allah feeds you and the children.
But as far as tarbiyah is concerned, it's
your responsibility.
The responsibility of the parents.
Now in the tarbiyah, the first and foremost
things, the first thing is to inculcate, to
raise in the child the khashiyat of Allah.
The concern for the pleasure of Allah.
Which is, the other word for that is
taqwa.
Make the children mutaqoon.
How do you make the children mutaqoon?
By inculcating the khashiyat of Allah.
Always, very simple.
How can I inculcate the khashiyat of Allah?
By making one line, one word, one sentence,
your, what we call in Urdu, taqiyya kalam,
which is something which you say all the
time.
And that is, will Allah be pleased with
this?
Will Allah be pleased with, whatever it is.
Will Allah be pleased with this?
Take it to any extent you want.
If I'm eating my dinner, will Allah be
pleased with this?
Right?
Very simple.
The benefit of that question is, when I
say, will Allah be pleased with it, then
automatically, Allah will be pleased with anything which
is according to the sunnah of Rasulullah sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam.
So, sunnah also comes in automatically there.
Will Allah be pleased with my eating?
As long as my eating is according to
the sunnah.
Then I have to find out what is
the sunnah of eating.
What should I eat?
I must eat halal.
How must I eat?
I must not eat till the food is
coming back out?
No.
Give some space.
Eat with my right hand.
Eat in a way which is dignified and
so on and so on.
Same thing, clothes.
These clothes shall I wear?
Will Allah be pleased with it?
How will Allah be pleased with it?
If this is according to the sunnah of
Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
Should I do this business?
Should I go there?
Should I go here?
Should I learn this, learn that, this school,
that college?
Whatever it is, the only one question, this
is very simple.
Only one question.
Will Allah be pleased with it?
Whatever it is.
I'm driving my car.
Will Allah be pleased with my driving?
Allah will be pleased with my driving.
How is the sunnah of Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam to be brought in driving?
He never drove a car.
The sunnah is brought in by noting that
Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam did everything in
a responsible way and in a way that
did not harm anybody else.
So if I'm driving my car and I'm
driving on a road which has a 30
mile speed limit, I'm going on that road
at 50 miles an hour, then this is
not according to the sunnah of the Prophet.
It's not according to the sunnah of Rasulullah
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
If I'm parking my car, what is the
sunnah?
Same thing.
In a way which is not inconvenient, which
is not harmful to anybody else.
So if I'm parking on somebody's lawn, if
I'm parking in somebody's driveway, across the driveway,
across the gate, all of these are things
which are harmful to others, which Rasulullah sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam would not have done.
So when we say the sunnah, we don't
mean the exact thing.
You might say, I'm not riding a horse,
I'm not driving a car.
I'm not riding a camel, I'm driving a
car.
No, it doesn't matter.
That's not the actual data.
The issue is, what do I understand from
this?
I understand that I must behave in a
way which is beneficial for all concerned.
One of the simple things I ask people
is, when we pray in any masjid, you
would have noticed, people usually, especially the regular
ones, people who come for every prayer or
at least three, four prayers, they usually stand
in the same place.
I mean, in our masjid, we don't have
any reserved spaces for anybody, but this is
human tendency.
Normally, if I'm praying in this place, then
my tendency will be to come and pray
in the same place.
So I ask people, I tell them, you
are praying every day in the masjid, so
somebody who's praying next to you, usually the
same guy is praying next to you every
day.
Do you know his name?
Simple question.
Do you know the name of the person
who's praying next to you?
And I can tell you, there are people
who pray, may Allah bless them, five times
a day, they pray year after year after
year, there's a person who's praying next to
them, when the person dies, they don't know
who died.
Right?
We say, fulan means fulan died, we say,
who's that?
He's the guy who prayed next to you
every day for the last 20 years.
Now, the reason is, if I do not
even know the name of the man praying
next to me, how can I be concerned
about him?
I don't even know him, I don't even
know his name.
How can I say I'm helping him?
How will you help him if you don't
know what he needs?
So how will this ummah happen?
Nabi Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam's biggest, I mean, every
time I say biggest, I always think there's
something bigger, but one of the biggest of
his mojizat, one of the biggest of his
gharamat and mojizat, is the formation of the
ummah.
Imagine in a society which was highly racist,
which was highly tribalistic, right?
Like in the 7th century Arabia, even today,
if you go into the Middle East, everybody,
this is Lublani, this is Suri, this is
Iraqi, this is fulan, this is fulan.
They don't even say Arab.
So, there's this, even more.
That society, Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam converted that
into a sense of brotherhood, understanding of brotherhood,
which is unbelievable and unheard of and impossible
to imagine.
But he did it.
He made a slave ex-slave the brother
of a chieftain from the Arabs.
Many of them, like this.
How did he do that?
By emphasizing the common thing which we have,
which is Islam.
Just take a, if you take a picture
of all of us sitting here, in this
room, there are at least, in my view,
I don't know the nationalities of everybody, but
I think at least we have five or
six different nationalities of people here.
It's unbelievable.
You won't believe it.
Many times, some of my friends who come
here from the churches, they come to see
the mosque and all that.
Do you know what they are amazed at?
They say, look at the diversity in this
place.
He said, in our church, there's nobody.
If it's an African-American church, you have
only black people.
If it's another church, you have only white
people.
Nobody else.
He said, you have got, I don't know,
10, 15 nationalities, all kinds of people from
different races and different countries.
He said, Alhamdulillah, this is because of Islam.
This is because of Islam.
Islam is the thing which makes us all
one.
It doesn't matter, black, white, this, that, blonde.
None of that matters.
What matters is, La ilaha illallah Muhammadur Rasulullah.
That we are one because of the deen
of Islam.
This is something to inculcate in the children.
So what we are doing, this maktab here,
we are teaching a curriculum, Alhamdulillah.
We've got Islamic studies, we've got Quran and
so on.
Alhamdulillah, this is very good.
We have it and we're doing well.
But my goal of this maktab is akhlaq,
is manners, is dealing with people.
I don't care if the child is a
hafidh and he cannot speak respectfully to his
parents, that is no use.
The child may get a first in class
in Islamic studies, but if the child does
not know how to deal with elders, he
comes into the masjid, he's standing there, sitting
there, feet up like this, we have failed.
We have failed.
As in, we will hold ourselves accountable based
on the manners of the children.
Akhlaq is the number one thing, as far
as I'm concerned, in terms of teaching children
of this age.
The rest of it will come.
Because the books we are teaching the child
can learn at home.
You can teach at home, by themselves the
children can learn.
Those books are meant to be easy to
read and easy to understand.
We are not teaching any rocket science here.
Quran also, once he knows, he can read
the alphabet and he understands some rules of
Tajweed, he can read on his own.
Akhlaq is what we want to teach them.
We want your children to be such that
when they go on to you, you should
be delighted, my children, after coming to the
maqtab, they are so well-behaved.
That is how it should be.
I want to end by telling you a
true story.
I was in South Africa and they took
me to see a madrassah.
After we did the tour of the madrassah,
we collected in the auditorium and it was
a girls' madrassah, only girls.
I think the age was from six or
something to 16 or 17, so all ages.
So in this whole madrassah, I was seeing
all of them and obviously they were all
wearing hijab.
Some have niqab, but every single girl is
wearing hijab, sitting there.
So the director of the madrassah, Nazim, he
said to me, Sheikh, guess how many of
these girls are Muslim?
I said, what?
He said, this is a madrassah, they are
all wearing hijab.
What do you mean, how many are Muslim?
He said, 60% of these girls are
not Muslim.
60%, only 40% are Muslim.
All of these, 60% are not Muslim.
They are Zulu, they are Xhosa, they are
Shanghai and all different African tribes.
Not Muslim.
I said, then why are they here?
They said, because their parents say, first of
all, your education that you give is very
good, so we want our children to learn.
Secondly, they say, our girls come here, and
when they come home, it's like a new
person.
She's so respectful, she's so kind, she's serving
the parents, she's helping around in the house
and everything else.
And he said, the same girls, they're friends,
they are on drugs, they are boyfriends, they
are all over the place.
These girls are so good, we want our
children to be there.
So I said, what if they accept Islam?
His parents said, no problem, let them accept
Islam, we don't care.
As long as they have good akhlaq, this
is what we want.
So I said, did you ever have a
complaint?
He said, yes, one day.
I said, what complaint?
He said, one father came and he said,
I've got a complaint.
He said, what's the complaint?
He said, my daughter learned something here and
made me spend some 10,000 rand in
the house.
I said, on what?
He said, to put a water shower in
the toilet, next to the toilet, to wash
for his tinja.
So she said, she learned it here and
she said, we never had this before.
Now I had to go and install because
she made a big noise.
So our teacher, they were all laughing.
So the teacher said, we are sorry.
He said, no, no, no, I'm only joking.
Good, good, very good, good thing you taught
them.
Akhlaq, same thing.
We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to
fill this whole effort with khair and barakah.
We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to
fill the children's hearts with the khashiyat of
Allah and the nur of Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala and the hubba of Muhammad sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam.
We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to
make those children a means of sadaqah jariah
for all of you inshallah and for all
of us.
Wa sallallahu ala nabiyyil kareem wa ala alihi
wa sahbihi wa sallam bi rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu.