Mohamed Magid – Culture Clash Immigrant Muslims Raising Children in the West
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Full. Can we ask the brothers to move
this way and maybe if even in this
area, if they can just move this way
so that the people outside, can come in.
I believe that
I am somewhat uniquely situated,
on the panel to to talk about this
topic
because,
Allah
basically has willed that I am, one of
the older of the second generation,
of of Muslims in North America. My father
came here in the sixties. I was born
sometime in the seventies,
and now I am kinda sort of straddling
in the middle. I still sometimes get called
uncle by some of the younger kids. I'm
like, no, I'm not an uncle yet, but
technically I am, because I have 4 kids
of my own. So I'm kinda sort of
straddling the divide. My parents,
they're healthy, they're alive. I have 4 kids,
the oldest one is 9 years old. So
I'm seeing perspectives of both sides,
And I just wanna discuss with the both
of you, the parents
and the youth, from a personal perspective, not
necessarily a purely Islamic one, from a perspective
of somebody who kinda sort of sympathizes with
both sides now, has has experienced both sides
of the of the coin. And, you know,
I mean, it's embarrassing to say, but yes,
I was a teenager in North America, and
yes, I went through what all of you
guys, some of you are still going through.
And yes, wallahi, I'm not proud to say
this, but I had fights with my own
parents as a teenager, and I had a
lot of misunderstandings and conflict. It wasn't anything
different.
And so I've kinda sort of been there,
done that. I've lived that experience in life,
and now Allah
has blessed me to have children of my
own. And
a lot of these clashes, a lot of
these issues, they are not religious in nature,
has nothing to do with the religion of
Islam per se. Islam is only one factor.
It has to do with human psychology. It
has to do with the the the dynamics
of of old versus young. So
in the short talk that I have and
then inshallah, I've been told that after the
salah, we'll have question answer and we definitely
want to hear, questions and answers and perspectives
from both the parents and the youth. In
the short talk that I have, I wanna
give 3 pieces of advice to the youth
and 3 pieces of advice to the parents.
Very simple and to the point.
For the youth, 1st and foremost,
for those of you who are still living
at home,
for those of you who still
have to face what you consider
the stifling
experience of the the the the rules that
your parents place upon you and all of
these issues of of clashing with them, I
want to remind you point number 1. I
want to remind you of a simple
fact. It is a fact that has nothing
to do with our religion. It is a
fact that transcends
culture and civilization.
It is a human fact. And that fact
is
no one on earth will ever love you
as much as your parents.
And no one
cares more about you than your parents.
And whether you understand it or not,
your parents have your best interest in mind
when they tell you what they want you
to do. Now I know this fact is
somewhere back there you know it but wallahi,
I know as a teenager, you didn't even
wanna think about it. You just wanna sideline
it. You know it deep down. You know
it, but and this is just words to
you now and mark my words and remember
them. Until you are a parent,
you will never understand what this means. Until
you have a child of your own, until
you hold this little baby in your arms,
and as a mother or a father, you
realize, oh my God, I'm in charge of
this kid. I have to take care of
this kid. And then those emotions start coming
in, and then you begin to sacrifice your
sleep and your time and your effort and
your money, and the love for this child
grows and grows and grows, then it hits
you. Then and only then. Right now it's
only words. Then it will hit you. Oh
my god. My parents must have been through
the same thing that I'm going through now.
And you know what you're gonna feel? I
felt this and I know all of you
that are gonna have kids and have have
kids feel this. You will feel an immense
sense of guilt.
Guilt. When you have your child and you
start to sacrifice for that child,
then and only then will you realize,
what did I do?
How could I have treated my parents like
that? What if this kid does the same
to me? Because the kid will do the
same to you eventually. It's a part of
human dynamics. But my point to you is
very simple,
and that is
Allah
in his infinite plan of of creation
has placed in the parents this emotion
without which wallahi they could not raise kids.
Kids are not easy to raise. Do you
know the amount of frustration
that builds in a parent because of the
child? Only a parent knows this. Do you
know the amount of money that you have
to spend to raise a kid? How how
much is it these days? 350
1,000 per child till they're 18. This is
not including college cost or something. That's the
average in America.
All of that money, the parents,
their lives become transformed after they have kids.
Their lives become for their kids. They live
for their children.
And that's something
you know it as kids. You know it
but it never really hits you and you
won't experience it till you're a parent on
your own. So this is the first one
I want you to understand that this
asphyxiation you have, wallahi, it is an asphyxiation
of love.
It's because your parents love you, they're placing
all these commands on you. You might think
you might think that you know better than
them. This leads me to my second point.
But here's the second point.
Most of the time you don't. Sometimes, yes,
you do. No doubt. But most of the
time you don't. My second point,
parents,
not by virtue of the fact that they
are from a culture or ethnicity or anything,
but simply by virtue of the fact that
they are 20, 30, 40 years older than
you. That's it. Just because of this fact,
they are more knowledgeable than you.
They're not more knowledgeable than you about Twitter
and Facebook and MySpace.
They're not more knowledgeable than you about the
lingo of the time. They're not more knowledgeable
than you about how to be cool in
in the age that you live in. I
grew up in the eighties. It's very different
now from back then. And by the way,
that's another point. My kid is already doing
things I have no idea what it is.
His language, his style, his manners.
I'm losing the cool factor because
I grew up in the eighties. Now it's
now it's the 2,009, the tens, whatever you're
gonna call it next. Right? This this
this disconnect will happen to all of you.
When you have your own children, 20, 20,
20, 30, 20, 40, whatever that might be,
do you really think you're always gonna be
in the loop? This is an inevitable part
of life. Your parents will live in a
different time zone because they are of a
different time, and you too will be of
that different time. But the point that I'm
trying to stress here and I say this
very bluntly,
just because your parents speak with an accent,
just because they don't act the way you
do, just because they do things that American
culture might deem backward or or uncivilized. I've
been there. I know that. Wallahi, there are
times back when I was a teenager, I
was embarrassed to be with my parents, and
I'm sad to say that because now wallahi
is the best thing I treasure. Any excuse,
I wanna travel and be with my parents
because I live different I live a different
state than them. But I know I've been
through that stage. 16 years old, I I
remember how it felt to be a 16
year old. Some things that they do in
public, you just wanna cringe. No. No. I'm
not related to them. No. No. They're just,
you know, they just happen to look like
me. I know. I've been there, done that.
Okay? But you know what? Let me tell
you, honestly,
those things are all irrelevant.
They're all irrelevant
because we are judging them
by these
shallow measures. The fact of the matter, they
have experienced
humanity
longer than we have. They've experienced human relationships.
They've seen the good and the bad of
human beings, and human beings don't change. Regardless
of your culture and your and your ethnicity
and your religion, love is love, hate is
hate, politics is politics,
cheating is cheating, being honest is being honest.
This transcends
any religion and culture. And our parents,
simply by virtue of the fact that they
have been on earth longer than us, that's
it. That's the only requirement that you need.
They have something we will never have at
that age, experience.
Our parents will always have one up or
over us because of experience. So you know
what, you might think you know more than
them and sometimes,
yes, you might.
But the rule of thumb,
by and large, parents are right.
Generally speaking, they are right. We know the
prophet Nuh says come and join the ship.
And the the son says
I'll be able to climb up the mountain
and I'll go right to the pinnacle of
the mountain and this will be able to
save me from the water. The father understood.
Today, nobody's gonna be saved except if Allah
has willed, and you are not of those
whom Allah has willed. The kid thought he
knows it all. Been there, done that. This
is his world. He understands better, but he
didn't understand. The father knew better. And similarly
in the story of Yusuf, the innocent child
comes
and he tells his father the dream. The
father sees way beyond the child and the
father tells the child,
don't tell your brothers.
Do not tell your brothers.
The innocent child had no clue that his
brothers might possibly do something to him, but
the father knew. It's life experience. It's all
it is. The father knew and he said
don't tell your brothers or else they might
plot and plan against you. Now Yusuf didn't
tell, but still the brothers plotted and planned.
The point here, Yusuf did not know
the reality of his brothers. The father knew.
Simple wisdom and experience. So I want to
remind you, youngsters here when I say youngsters,
I mean, if you're still living at home,
whether you're 20 2, 23, when you still
haven't broken free of that nest,
realize your parents will always always
love you more than anybody on earth, and
they will always be one up over you
when it comes to
simple knowledge and experience. Now that doesn't mean
they're always right. And in the Quran, we
have an example. Prophet Ibrahim and his father.
Right? Prophet Ibrahim and his father. His father
was an idol worshiper. What did Ibrahim
say?
He said my father.
He
said, I have some knowledge you haven't been
given. In this case, the son knew better.
Yes. In this case. And so there will
be cases, no doubt, that your parents are
incorrect in what they're saying. The point is
though, don't dismiss it simply because they have
a different accent or they're not as cool
as you think they should be or whatever.
Don't dismiss it. Look beyond these shallow judgmental
calls. Once again, as I said, they have
something you will never have and that is
life experience. And by the way, your parents
will never stop being parents to you until
you are I'm I'm already, alhamdulillah, in my
thirties. Right? My parents
still call me up and give me advice.
My father sometimes here I said something at
a lecture, somebody comes and tells me, he
calls me up. Why did you say that?
You shouldn't have said that. Correct yourself. My
mother, she calls me up. It's cold in
Connecticut. Are you wearing enough clothes? Is it
this? Is it that? Like, mom, I have
4 kids. I have to take care of
them. She's a mother. She's a mother. Wallahi,
it's in her nature.
No matter how old I become, it doesn't
matter. Parents are parents.
And thank Allah
that you have parents that are able to
do this to you because there are many
whose parents have gone on and they miss
that love and tenderness. You're irritated by it,
you're irritated by it, but there will come
a time when you will miss it. Take
advantage of it when it's there.
The the next point I wanted to to
move on to is
that I want you, youngsters, youth, those who
are a little bit younger than me, I
want you to understand
one simple fact of of life once again,
and that is that this is not a
new clash.
It's not only a clash of second generation
desi Americans or Arab Americans.
This is a clash that occurs at every
time and every place and every culture and
every era.
Believe it or not, our parents had their
own clashes with our grandparents. Not the type
we do, but their own. And our grandparents
with their own great great parent this is
the way life is. No doubt, this little
bit of friction is more pronounced for our
generation for many reasons. Of them is the
culture clash. Yes. There's no doubt, little bit
more, but the clash nonetheless existed.
And you know what?
This is the last point for the for
the youth. Do you know what? When you
become a parent and your kids start to
grow up, do you really think you're going
to be any different? In the sense, Do
you think that you're gonna let your kids
to roam scot free? Do you think you're
gonna not gonna put conditions on them? Do
you think you're not going to love them
and and want the best for them?
Don't think you're gonna be any different. Realize
your parents, realize every elder, this is the
irony,
every elder has gone through your stage. Every
elder was once upon a time 16 or
20 or 25.
They've been there, done that, and yet they're
still doing what they're doing. Why? Because like
I said, love and experience. And you know,
and I've said this before and I'm seeing
this with my own kids now,
you think your parents are stifling you? You
think that they're putting all these conditions on
you? Wallahi, mark my words. And then you
will see them in your own life. Mark
my words. You will be stricter with your
kids than your parents were with you. You
know why? You know why? Because you know
more than your parents did about life in
America.
You know more than your parents did. Your
parents think we're all innocent. We all know
what we do, you know, outside of school.
I mean, you know, it's just the reality.
Our parents have no clue of our real
lives. We know that. Right? Our parents, you
know, they think that, you know, everybody else's
kids does that, not their own kids. We
know how we live. We've lived our lives
and we continue to live our lives. We
know the secrets we keep from our parents.
We know that. Now those secrets,
you don't want your kids doing what you
yourself did. Correct? You do not want your
kids doing what you yourself did. So you
know what? You're going to be even stricter
and you will monitor even more than your
own parents did. So don't fool yourself and
don't think that, oh, when I when I
have my kids no. That's not gonna happen.
Wallahi, you will have the same issues and
the same clashes and your kid will think
he knows it all and you're gonna try
to want to make him the best. It's
all a sign of love. You want the
best for this kid. You want the best
you've given your life for this kid. You
go to work motivated by your kid. You
wake up in the morning because you wanna
sacrifice your money, your wealth, your time for
their education, for their future.
Nothing is able to take your money as
easily as your children and their education and
their, you know, just everything. This is a
part of being a parent.
So my point is when you have your
own children, you will be even more stifling
and asphyxiating upon them because you've been there
and done that. So don't fool around with
yourself and don't think you're gonna be any
different. The fact of the matter is this
is human nature because you want the best
for them, because you want everything that you
didn't have or maybe you you want to
make sure they don't do what you've done,
you will in fact enforce more of a
rule upon them than your parents did upon
you. So remember these three advice for the
youth. Once again reiterate, number 1,
parents love you more than anybody else. Not
your children, not your spouse, nobody on earth
will ever love you like your parents. And
I've given a Chudba, which is online. It's
called incomparable love. I I I suggest you
listen to that. Incomparable love. About the love
that parents have for their children. Number 2.
Experience.
Your parents have more experience than you about
what really matters in life, not accents and
not how to act and not how to
dress and not how to look g q,
they know human beings better than you ever
will, ever. Because even when you're 30, 40
years old, your parents are still alive. They
have 40 years more than you still.
As long as your parents are alive, they'll
always be 1 up over you.
And number 3, realize that you will be
perhaps even more
stifling with your kids than your parents were
with you. Advice to the parents.
The parents
the
is not to be a dictator,
that role is not to control each and
every matter of the lives of your children,
but that role is that of Morabi.
That role is that of a nourisher.
And that nourishment
will be a lot when it's a seedling.
And as the seedling grows, that nourishment will
minimize.
This is what your role is. So don't
think short term, think long term.
Think what's gonna happen to this child 15,
20 years down the line if I treat
him in this manner versus that manner. Don't
think short term, think long term. Remember that
your child might go ways and do things
you don't like, but in the long run,
you want your child to have this this
perception, I can always go back to my
mother and father no matter what I do.
You don't want your child to, as soon
as they're independent, leave the house, and that's
what's happening. A number of households, we know
this. And imam Majid, they've experienced
this, in the counseling of the community. I
know places where as soon as the kids
found a job, because the home environment was
so stifling, they hated it so much, they
just disappeared.
Realize that thinking long term will save you
in this regard. Your role is to provide
an atmosphere of love, an atmosphere of of
comfort. No doubt, you will be strict at
times, but think long term even when it
comes to the strictness.
The and also, by the way,
within this point,
realize that sometimes you might not be the
best person to talk to them about some
issue that they have. This is something the
parent simply doesn't register for them. And notice
in the story of Luqman alaihi sallam. The
story of Luqman. The story of Luqman is
a beautiful advice, right, from father to son.
Right? And it begins, oh my son, You
Bunei, You Bunei, You Bunei. But there's only
one commandment, it's not.
Allah speaks it directly.
The father doesn't advise the son, and that
commandment deals with treating the parents with respect.
Read the story. We don't have time to
go into the details of this, but it's
a really fascinating matter in the Quran. That
the the parent, Luqman says, oh my son,
pray. Oh my son, be conscious of Allah.
Oh my son, walk peacefully on earth. Oh
my son, always have taqwa of Allah. Oh
my son, don't commit shit. And then Allah
says,
your lord has decreed
that you shall treat your parents nicely. It
doesn't say, Luqman told his son treat me
nicely. You see the difference. Right? Allah says
directly,
your lord has
your lord has decreed that you shall treat
your parents nicely. Now there's a lot of
tafsir going on here that we don't have
time to get into, but one point here
that some of the scholars said,
sometimes
the parent is not the best person
kid
because there's a clash of interest here, and
it will be dismissed easily. Okay? And that
doesn't just apply to treatment of parents. Overall,
look at the situation and scenario. Perhaps sometimes
going to
imagine, going to the counselor is better than
you yourself giving advice to the kid. The
second point that I want to bring up,
treat your kids
with respect and maturity.
This to me is one of the biggest
issues that I find, that there's always this
trivialization.
No doubt you know more than your kid.
We all know this as parents. You know
more than your kid. But you know, your
kid also needs to learn some things of
life by himself or herself.
Treat them with an element of maturity
and realize that in our Sharia,
a child becomes an adult at the age
of 13 or 14.
Not 8 not 18, not 19.
A child becomes fully Balik
at the age of 13 or 14. Maxim
of scholars say is 15. As soon as
puberty hits, that child is no longer a
child. In our religion, there's no such thing
as adolescence. There's no interim where you're a
kid but you're not a kid. No such
thing.
That's the difference of our religion. You treat
a 15 year old like an adult and
you know that's my philosophy.
Any person who's 15 or above, I talk
to them like an adult. I treat them
like an adult and sometimes they're a bit
shocked because they're not used to that treatment.
Because these 15, 16 years old are treated
like kids, they act like kids. They act
like kids because we treat them like kids.
Treat them like an adult and it's gonna
take a while because they're not used to
it, but give them that intellectual
respect. Sit down and have an intellectual
conversation with them like you would with an
adult. Tell them about your life. Tell them
what's happening in the world and automatically your
son or daughter will mature. Stop treating them
like kids because they are no longer children.
And if that's the case when they're 14,
well then by the time they're 9 or
10, you better start laying the foundations for
that. This is in my humble opinion, one
of the biggest negatives of this culture we
live in is that they always wanna make
children more immature than they are. And our
Sharia tells us to treat our children more
mature. Make them basically think maturely and act
maturely. So this is the second point. Treat
your kids with maturity.
Treat your kids as as
not equals, it's not gonna happen, but treat
them with the respect and the intellectual maturity
that they deserve. And the final point I
wanna ask the parents to think about,
I want you to think about a simple,
again, human phenomenon.
No doubt it's a part of our nature.
We want our children to be like us
as much as possible. We want them to
keep our ways and our tradition.
But I ask you an honest question.
How similar are you to your mother or
your father?
Your mother or your father, are are you
exactly like them? Or are you a little
bit different or are you very different?
Of course, we're all different.
We are not clones of one another. And
so if you, being a product of the
same culture and the same civilization of your
mother and father turned out so different from
them, what do you think of somebody who's
been born and raised in a culture that
is radically different than the one you grew
up in? It's not going to happen. And
when you try to demand it, you're only
asking for trouble. Be realistic.
Be pragmatic. And this is a huge issue.
This culture
basically clashed. You as an an immigrant who
have never been treated
by your parents the way that us as
a second generation expect our parents to treat
us. What I'm trying to say is basically
the way that our peers in the western
part of the world, Americans, are treated by
their parents, our parents never treated us like
that. That's never happened. We see
the other kids and what their parents do
with them. We know our parents don't do
that to us, and that does affect us
some at some subconscious level. Understand, you're not
living in the world that you grew up
in. It's a very different world. Over here,
parents spend time with their kids, take them
to the ball game, do this, do that.
That was not a culture that our grandparents
did with our parents. It was a very
different world. When we see other kids, their
parents doing that with them, spending time with
them, taking stuff, you know, ridiculous things for
us sometimes, but it's that concept of I
care about you. I want to spend time
with you. I want you to have a
good time as well. When we see that,
wallahi, the fact of the matter, you feel,
how come my parents don't do that with
me? Then you realize it's our culture.
But that's not necessarily something that has to
be positive. It can be changed. So you
have decided, you who have immigrated here, you've
decided to change your land and civilization.
Real
in
as people who have been born and raised
here, cannot act the way you acted when
you were our age. We cannot.
Don't expect us to and don't blame us
when we act different than what you did.
It's not our fault. We have grown up
in a place and a time and a
culture that is radically different than the sixties
and fifties and forties back home. And this
was a decision, with all respect, you made
it. You made it, and now we now
being born and raised here based on that
decision. Therefore,
cut us some slack.
Cut us some slack. Understand, there are elements
you're gonna preserve and those elements need to
be religion and toheed and prayer, and there's
a lot of elements that will go out
the window. I'm sorry to break this bubble
for you, but languages,
Persian, Urdu, even Arabic, they are not going
to last too long. Look around you. How
many of us here who are from a
Pakistani Indian background are able to converse to
each other in Urdu? How many of us?
How many of us? Hardly any. If this
is the case for us when our parents
still speak Urdu, how long do you think
it's gonna last? I'm pretty much sure my
children and their grandchildren, they're not gonna, you
know, I mean, I I kinda sort
of went past speaking Urdu. My kids barely
speak anything and I don't expect them to
marry somebody who's gonna speak fluent Urdu and
then pass it down. Be a bit realistic
in this regard. Don't be, you know, this
is a decision again, with all respect, you
made it and now you need to deal
with that. This is a decision. You made
it. Don't get angry if certain cultural elements
are lost. And that's a deep topic in
and of itself. Make sure
elements are preserved and those elements are religious
in nature. So these are the 3 advice
that I had for the youth, the 3
advice I had for the parents, and the
last point, conclusion here,
parents and youth, both of you,
remember,
du'a.
Du'a for each other.
Parents make du'a for their kids. Kids make
du'a for their parents. And this is the
Quranic methodology.
Allah tells us in the Quran. Allah tells
us in the Quran. So many du'as for
children and also du'as for parents.
Oh Allah, give us children that are comfort
to our eyes.
Oh Allah, make me and my children of
those who established the prayer.
So dua, parents have to make for their
children. And a blunt question, ask yourselves, how
often do you make dua for your kids?
How often?
Similarly,
children have to make dua for their parents.
Oh, Allah. Guide them. Have mercy on them
just like they took care of me as
I was a child. So make sure that
dua for each other becomes a regular part
of your adria. Every time you raise your
hands,
remember yourself, remember your friends, remember the good
of this or the next, but also remember,
if you're a child, remember your parents. If
you're a parent, remember your child. And this,
insha Allahu Ta'ala, not only will it increase
your love for each other, not only will
it make you better parents and children, most
importantly, it will bring about the blessings of
Allah. It will bring about the blessings of
Allah when you make dua for one another
and that indeed is our ultimate goal as
children, as parents, to enter into this blessing
of Allah and be together in Jannah.
This topic that,
that we
supposed to address
today,
it is extremely
important topic.
The issue of the generation gap
and I would like to, as brother Shadi
Imam have said to you, address it from
my experience as the
Imam in this masjid and a counselor
from the counseling perspective,
I would like to say that
most of the problems
that we see,
today between,
generations,
can be summarized in the following points that
I would like to share with you.
That most of us,
those are parents,
worried about whether their children,
they will speak the same language that they
are. I'm not speaking about Urdu or Faresi
or Arabic.
Meaning that, the
same language of understanding
of Islam, understanding their values,
understanding where they come from,
and we see,
very clear there's
sometimes
generation gap or generation clashes.
In order for me to highlight those issues,
I I want to begins with the definition
of generation.
What is generation? Do you know? When you
say generation, what do you mean by that?
What is generation?
20 years. How many years? 30 years. 30
years?
30 years. 10 years? 30 years. It become
like an auction.
Okay. 19
years. 19 years.
Some other message that generation gap,
the contemporary scholars,
about 20 years of gap is called generation.
But you have to look at us, look
at this issue of generation from the Islamic
history perspective.
In Islamic perspective, they have the first jil
called jil,
jil of Sahaba.
The second deal,
deal
at Tabi'in.
The third deal is
Tabi'in.
Tabia. Tabia. Tabia. Therefore, in from Islamic perspective,
there's also generations
but we need to see how those generations
related to one another.
Whenever we face with the situations
where there's we believe there's a clash of
generations
whether in the communal,
level, community level or in the family level,
we need to ask ourselves how Rasool Allah
alaihi wa sallam dealt with integration
of the generations.
And therefore, the word generation also means
that a group of age or group of
people
would share the same values
and they have grew up
with sharing
the same, of kind of lifestyles.
That's by the way
the counseling,
psychological,
sociological
interpretation of this?
What are the
issues that we see
in in the
generation gap or clash of between generations.
Number 1,
different objectives
and interest.
Number 2,
misunderstanding
and communication between generations.
Number 3,
the different of values,
people have different values
and
the frame of reference
of those values.
Number 4,
the absence of communications
and connection
within the generations.
Number 5, the lack of respecting
the
experience
or the potential,
Either experience of the elder or the experiences
of the anger or the potential of the
young people.
Number 6,
that lack of appreciation,
lack of appreciation
within the generations.
Either the older appreciating the anger or the
anger, you know, appreciating the older.
Babe, if you look, those are the symptoms,
those are the issues that I see in
my councilings.
Cause of
this generation's
gap or clash of generations.
Things we can do to turn this around
and to take advantage of the donation gap
to make us something productive.
Number 1, those are the conditions.
To believe
in the
overlapping
of generations
and integration
of generation and the completion of one another,
to complete one another's,
to believe that my children, they complete me,
I complete them and
when the youth
think of their parents like that and the
parents think of their children youth like that,
then the perspective changes.
An example of this is the generation of
Sahaba and
Tabi'in. You see the connection between
the Sahaba and Tabi'in,
in how they transfer knowledge
and how
the,
the jil the the young generation was
entrusted to responsibilities.
Like Usama ibn Zayed,
having,
people like Musa Abub Nirmayr.
The generation of young people, they were completely
connected
with the the older generation
of the Sahaba or Tabi and there's many
examples but I'm speaking for 15 minutes. I'll
just remind myself on that.
Number 3
is to learn from the experience of others,
to seek the experience of others.
And my brothers, young people who are sitting
here,
that a young person who's arrogant,
who he think that he knows it all,
is a person who never have real
understanding
of the limitation.
And that's why when Nuh said to his
son,
oh my son join us,
The son said I'm a The son said
I'm a cool guy.
I know it all. I know how to
text messages. I know how to send instant
messages.
I know how to I'm a computer savvy,
I'm the internet,
you know,
guru, I know things.
Then what, I'm not going to listen to
you. Therefore, his father said, join us. He
said, no no no, I'm a young man,
I'm going to climb the mountain.
Oh, son, join us.
I don't need your help. I don't need
your protection.
I know how to do these things.
The father
says, don't fool yourself, son.
You will not be able to protect yourself
because the son have not listened to the
father and he thought that he had more
experience,
more knowledge,
his youth
made him have have an illusion
for a half a mile.
He was surrounded with the waves and the
water and among those who have drowned.
The other things that I say in my
counseling,
you have to understand the language
of one another.
I'll give you an example.
You know, there's, somebody, gave me a gift
of a book called 5 Language of Love.
It's very interesting. You ever heard of that
book? Who heard of this book? Raise your
hand.
Okay.
It's a very interesting book
that
sometime, people don't speak the same language because
they don't know the prime language of the
other person.
Therefore the parents,
what they think
of that I want my child to be
like me 100 person
especially immigrant parents.
I want them to be pure Sudanese.
I would like them to love everything about
Sudan.
Sudanese food, I don't like to like pizza,
I like them to like molloyi and wika.
I want them to eat with their 5
fingers, like, to dip it on the dish,
you know,
until they take them to Sudan and they
already check. My children, my visa around here,
and then they have to use their hands
to eat, which is a beautiful thing by
the way. I love this, the culture of
people eating from the same plate.
And therefore, you come from a culture
where it's assert your individual
individual,
interest.
And therefore, the individualism
overtaken some of other use.
It is my space. You heard my space?
My space, not the computer word, but my
space meaning like, you know, give me a
space. You heard that expressions?
And the parents sometimes they don't understand what
the space means.
What do you mean I give you a
space?
You need to understand the language of the
youth, young people grow up in America.
And, if the space, you need to allow
them to make some decisions,
allow them to think for themselves,
with your guidance,
we need to do that.
And therefore, there's sometimes misunderstanding
of this kind of language.
Now,
sometimes
parents
focus on the means, not the outcome.
I want you to do it my way.
Father, mother, let us talk about it. I
can do it this way and I can
achieve the same thing. No no no no.
If I ask you to drive in Dronesville
to come to Adam Center, don't go to
the,
church road.
And sometimes,
parents are not patient with that.
Therefore, we have to concentrate on knowing the
gap, on the objectives,
not in my Sudanese culture style. I have
to do it my way. No, I have
to see what the outcomes is. Number
5,
is ability to have the young people
be involved and the parents being involved in
the decision making.
Some young people believe that their parents have
nothing to do with their life, therefore they
cannot share anything with them, they will not
discuss anything with them,
nor the parents sometimes involve their children in
the decision making process.
And how you train people leadership
and authority and conflict resolution
other than involving them in decision making and
training to do so.
And that, by the way, have impacted also
sometimes our institutions,
where we believe that we need to exclude
the youth from the participations
of board or executive committees or other things
like that.
The last things that I would like to
see that
is the contradiction sometimes
between the what the parents is asking and
what the parents do.
You have heard that before?
The parents say don't do this, don't smoke.
But the parents smoke.
A father
or a mother would disrespect their spouse in
front of their children
and they demand from their children or the
youth to respect them.
Youth
see that. That's why the Some of the
youth Reason that the youth talk back to
their parents,
because they see the disrespect taking place in
the household.
The last thing I want to say,
the clash
of culture,
generation culture.
The old and the new
culture.
By the way, that's even in Egypt, even
in Sudan,
the generation culture,
the computer culture, the Internet culture,
the cell phone culture,
you know, all of these
things are
some generation they have not experienced
and therefore,
difficulty to deal with the new reality.
How we're gonna face this,
confront this reality that of changing of the
lifestyles
of young people,
the fast rhythm of life, everything is drive
through,
even the salah become drive through.
Yeah, everything
is speed and you know, people high speed
and everything.
And therefore, a person,
have to learn that and that's why there's
a famous saying that,
prepare your children for a time is not
your time. Imam Ali, father Allahu Anhu said
that.
Now,
recommendations.
Number 1,
we need to give our children
the comfort
to feel that they've been trusted.
But the children, young people, you have to
earn your trust.
Children who you who lie to your parents,
they lose their trust.
And why children sometimes lie to their parents?
Because there's no open line of communication.
There's no way that the parents can, a
child can say anything and the parents will
accept it.
The parents get shocked, how comes you do
this? How comes
You look to be what happened in the
Quran, the dialogue took place between,
Yusuf alaihis salam and his father.
Yusuf alaihis salam has so close relationship with
his father, he come and tell him his
dreams.
How many young people here tell their parents
their dreams?
What they want to do?
And what they've seen in life?
He said,
Sheikh Samiullah recited.
And the father
lived the dream,
although have difficult time
being separated from his son, but the son
in the end of the surah
or the story, he said,
This is the interpretation of my dream.
It come true.
That dialogue between Ibrahim Alaihi Salam and his
son is my
What do you think about my dream?
Last thing I would like to say that,
we need encouragement.
We need encouragement
by
appreciating
parents
and appreciating young people. It's called gratitude, being
grateful.
And one of the ways that we encourage
young people
is to have them
to establish an institution, like I said before,
to participate in building an institutions, as Ibrahim
alaihis salam is Mahdi.
The Kaaba,
building of the Kaaba, Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
said he therefore Ibrahim Alaihi
Wa Ishmael.
He didn't say, the father Ibrahim was building
the Kaaba Alaihi Salam and no mention of
Ishmael.
Quran acknowledged the the contribution of the 2nd
generation.
And by the way, just to end in
this note, if you look at it, Ibrahim
Alaihi Salam was not Arabs, was he?
Let me give you news, he was not
an Arab.
He was not an Arab.
Ismael alaihis salam was Arabized.
Before Ibrahim alaihis salam, the first generation,
Ismael alaihi salam is a 2nd generation Arab
who spoke Arabic better than the Arab.
But Ismael alaihi salam never forget the religion
of his father which is Tawhid
and therefore his religion with the father kept
kept intact. He didn't say, father,
you are not Arabs. You don't know how
to do things in America. I speak Arabic
with Arab accents,
you know, you speak with Pakistani
and Kashmiri accent and therefore, you're fresh off
the board or whatever they might call them
young people and
that's
young people say that sometimes.
And therefore, Ismail alaihis salam connected his father
and then the father and the son,
they made them one of the most successful
project humanity
known, which building of the Kaaba.
But they were thinking about the 3rd generation.
How they thought about 3rd generation?
Yes.
Oh Allah,
they'd make the children,
our children, progeny to establish prayer.
The generation to come, oh Allah, I want
the generation to come to have a prophet
among them.
You know, send the prophet among them.
That vision
of the 1st generation, 2nd generation, to think
about the 3rd generation
and that continuation of Islam.
We're gonna try
to be short.
And,
I put the questions
in 2 big questions.
Why, the matter.
And
the second one, how. Okay. So how we're
going to resolve
this this issue?
First of all, being together
here,
parents and children and young people, older people,
this is something amazing and and
and
it's indication
that
there is an issue.
If we everybody come,
we have a lot of session, hamdulillah, about
raising the children. But hamdulillah, every time there
is a lot of people coming. This is
means we didn't
arrive
to the final solution.
So the issue number 1, I'm going to
put 3 points about
why we have to learn
and we have to do seminars
and classes and we have to do halakat
and we have to bring the parents together
and discuss this issue.
Because for the first
important reason
that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is going to
ask us.
And a lot of people they
forget about this.
Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala in the day of judgment,
he going to ask
every father
and every mother and every teacher and every
leader
in the Muslim community,
Everybody who is Mas'ud, who is in charge
of this new generation,
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala is going to ask
him or her.
So the question, it's not a laughing matter.
It's a very serious matter. When you stand
up front of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and
he going to ask you,
I give you nama. This nama called children
or a teacher. You have 20, 50 student
in your class.
And I'm going to ask you this question.
What did you do?
When the question
been asked,
you have to have answer.
Oh Allah, I did my best. I learned.
I did my best. I tried to raise
my I did every
possibility
in my,
everything in my possibility to raise my children
the way that you like them, you want
them to be.
This is number 1. So if I know
that the su'al
is going to be asked,
this is not only bring us today here,
it's going to make us
come to every single
halaqa and ask the same question, how I
can raise my children
the Islamic way and the proper way? Number
2.
Talking about the future, the the the youth
of the ummah,
it's talking about the future of this Ummah.
Talking about 50 years from now,
20,
who going to be the leader?
Who going to What's going to be the
situation of the Ummah?
The same question Rasool Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam was
in his head in bedder
when surrounded with the mushrikeen.
Rasulullah Sallam he raised his hand. He said,
oh
Allah, today
if you don't give us victory,
if we're not going to be successful
in this
world, Nobody's going to worship you.
We want people, the worshipper,
we want our youth, we want Islam to
grow up and to be here.
So if you care about this deen,
if you care about this ummah,
you have to be here today.
You have to come to say how it's
going even if I don't have children.
What's the future of the Muslim Umma is
going to be here and all around the
world.
If you feel that you're part of this
Ummah, you're going to come and spend time
and care about the future of this generation.
Number 3,
the third question
because it's a reason. The third reason because
it's a real problem.
If you are
like Mohammed and other brothers and and who
are in counselling,
There is a problem every single day. There
is people coming crying.
In this Ramadan, I didn't see in any
Ramadan
people more than this Ramadan coming, crying.
They care about their children. They say, we
are losing our youth.
If you are in position of counseling,
you're going to see the problem and see
it real.
It's not from distance. It's a real problem
that the Muslim community
are facing
these days.
When you see it, it's a real problem
means there is a it needs a real
solution. This is why you have to be
here today.
When you when the father open the Facebook
of his son or his daughter
and see things that's shocking him or her,
this is a big reason to be here
today.
When a 19 years old
girl
run away from her home,
from,
Ohio
going to Florida. They said I'm going to
change. I'm going going to be Christian because
she met somebody in the Internet and they
gave her money and and they sent her
a ticket. Or 17, not even even 18.
And become a big issue in the news
means this is a real issue.
We don't want to make it bigger than
it is but it's a real issue.
So there is responsibility front of Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala. Even if you are 18 today
or 17,
after 5 years maybe you're going to be
a father or a mother.
After maybe 8 or 10 years, you're going
to have children.
So don't say I'm 18 or 17, it's
not my my issue now.
Start from now thinking about the future and
your future.
So for you, if you are 17 and
16 sitting with us, don't say, oh, I'm
in the in the children's side
today.
But you're going to be in the parents
and in a few years,
and you'll you'll not imagine how fast the
years is going to be.
So the issue is real.
The issue is is part of our belief
and aqidah and Allah
is going to ask us.
Question,
how we going to face it?
How we going to resolve this problem, this
issue?
How I'm going to raise my children the
way that the prophet, sallallahu alaihi wasallam, wants
me to raise my children, my daughter and
my son?
The answer is very simple.
As he, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam did.
He raised
the best children.
He raised Fatima.
He raised Ali,
Zaid, Usama,
the children of of the his cousin, the
children of the Sahaba. They've been
raised as the best example. We have a
generation
of young Sahaba.
Young. Very young. They move to or
in Madinah. They are very young, and they
become the best.
We know the majority of the Sahaba, they
convert to Islam.
But the best among the Sahaba
are the children of the Sahaba who grew
up in the time of Rasul salallahu alaihi
wa sallam. Themselves they are Sahaba.
So Rasul salallahu alaihi wa sallam So the
answer is look to the life of the
prophet salam
and try to understand it deeply and you're
going to find the answer.
I try quickly to to to, put few.
It needs more time, of course, but
how the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
taught and raise
this generation, young generation.
We talked before
about
the 2 condition. We call them shurud.
Condition number 1,
a siddiq,
truthfulness.
Condition number 2,
al alm, the knowledge.
Let's start with the first
one, truthfulness.
And I want to give you from my
own life.
In the eighties, early eighties,
we were very young
Muslims, 16 teenager
in the masjid.
Almost
70 young people.
Between the age of maybe 14 and 22,
23.
When we sit together and we talk, look
to ourselves,
maybe 90%
of us,
our per parents
are regular,
very
simple people.
And few among us are the children of
the imams
and the leaders and the teachers.
We try to understand the question why.
Why this parents, they they went to any
Islamic school. They are not leaders. They don't
have PhDs.
They don't have anything,
But they produce
the best.
And I said the best. I know this
the people with me. The best young people
in our town.
In the opposite side, our teachers,
our imams,
they produce the worst.
And I'm saying it was a big question
in our mind. The worst kids.
So the question,
it's not how much knowledge your father know.
It's not how much Quran
and how much tafsir
in the beginning, your parents as a father
you have.
I tried to find out to find something
very sincere that our parents, my father, I
taught my father how to pray,
me and my brothers.
But some things that my father gave it
to us, he's sincere.
He will cry
because my mother, I remember one day she
going from the masjid
and she said, I went. She doesn't know
Quran. She doesn't memorize maybe only the short
surah to pray with. And she said all
She cried and she said all my dream
that one of my children
will be will be know how to
read Quran
and know how to elm. She said it.
I remember it. I was very young. I
remember. But she said it from her heart.
The people who are really sincere
to raise their children,
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will be in their
side.
So number 1, if there is no siddiq,
don't even talk about the methodology and the
new method and the way of rasul siddhi
wa sallam. All the
doesn't make any sense
if we don't have tiddiq.
Truthfulness.
That I'm really
When Rasool alaihi wasallam, every time Fatima come
to his room, he stand up and kiss
her from his head,
Rasool alaihi wasallam is not acting.
He care about this generation.
When Rasul
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam,
he said, Rasul sallam, I served the prophet
sallalahu alaihi wasallam for 10 years.
He didn't tell me
for for something I did, why you did
that, And for something or for something that
I didn't do, why you didn't do that?
He never asked him why.
Rasulullah
sallam, he doing this because he care about
him, because his truthfulness,
because there is siddiq
in raising this child children.
So the siddiq, it's a big issue.
It's very important.
There is I saw people here with PhDs
and imam and their children, they're not Muslim
anymore in our area.
Don't go too far
from our area. I know big imams
and their children, I know. I met. I
tried to make counseling. They ran away from
their homes.
They don't want to be around the Muslims.
Not because of Islam,
because of the father, because the way that
being treated, because there is no truthfulness
in this.
And we saw people, their parents now, children,
raising their hand, crying so Allah will guide
their parents
in our community.
So what's what's going on? Here, there is
there is siddiq, there is truthfulness, and don't
worry. We saw people without PhDs
and they have the best children in our
community
without no nothing.
Regular workers, they care they're truthful. The second
one is the 'ilim and this is the
most important part.
Few more minutes.
The 'ilim,
the foundation of this deen
after after
the sincerity
and Ikhlas,
you have to have ilm.
Because sincerity and ikhlas and siddiq and truthfulness
by itself, truthfulness
doesn't help it helped but it's it's needs
something else. We call it knowledge and the
erem. What's the erem that we have to
know?
The erem, how Rasool salahu alaihi wasallam want
us to raise our children,
how to bring the gap.
We talked before about the
the the three
important part of raising children in Islam.
The player Rasulullah said,
Be child to your children.
Number 2, Rasulullah said,
you're talking about
playing,
it's a key
part of raising the children.
And we talked the second part
of taleem
without teaching
our children.
If your child is 16
and 14, you bring them to teach them
how to respect the others.
I'm telling you there is something wrong with
the parents, not with the children.
If there is no care
from the beginning, well, I'm not going to
talk about the 2 first period, but I'm
going to talk about the most important part
that it's when our children grow up.
I'm going to talk about our culture
against the teaching, Islamic teaching.
By the way, this crisis is not only
in America.
It's not only here in our area. It's
even in Mecca and Medina.
The same issue that we discussed today,
there is
fathers and mothers asking the same question in
Mecca and in Medina. Their children, they are
not following the way that the parents, they
are doing. There is the same issue in
Egypt.
I was looking to blog in
Islam Islam online yesterday, day before yesterday.
It was shocking.
There is somebody writing blogs. I'm not going
to talk about 1 group, 1 Muslim
group in Egypt.
And this group, one of the members, he
start a blog.
In this blog,
he telling everything
truth about this group.
One of the biggest issue that he brought.
If
you go Islam, a very interesting article.
Islam online, go to the
Islamic Movement around Muslim world and there is
an article about the blogging,
talking about. One of the biggest issue,
he said how the children
of the leader of this group,
they're not practicing Islam.
He started talking about issue people fighting for
the leadership and big, very important article. And
one of the issue there is our children.
The children not of the followers.
The children of the leaders.
They are not practicing Muslims.
And he tried to explain that go back
to the and the way and the
and sincerity. Very important article.
So
the the the challenge The third thing which
is important
is
called al Musahamah,
the friendship.
And this is the key, wallahu a'ala, to
resolve
all this issue, the issue of the gap
generation fighting. Musaaba,
friendship.
In the saying that we talked about it
before
that
was a Hebrew from 14 or the the
the the it's it's not hadith. It's it's,
it's it's some of them said,
some of them is saying of.
But it's described
the real Islamic way of raising the children.
You talk about Musaaba, friendship.
Without Musaaba, without this
Musaaba, we cannot pass
all the knowledge. We cannot
create or bring a new generation
to care about Islam. What's Musahaba? Musahaba
means the parents,
the leaders, the children, the teachers,
they will treat the older
children
as their friends.
Seem like very
difficult things for a lot of us. How
I'm going to treat my 13 or 14
child as my friend?
This is what what the Islamic
theory of education taught us.
That when the children grow up,
they have to have friends.
They have to have somebody to share
the knowledge and the experience and involve
them in what you are doing.
With all respect, I have a different opinion
about
the separation that we created
between generation
and a lot of Muslims,
Muslim centers and Muslim,
maybe some of including us,
maybe we have to
reevaluate
what we set up.
That we cannot
isolate
the the youth from
the the rest of the community.
Rasool sallam, he didn't do that. Sahaba, when
they are 15 and 16 and 17,
they are they come, they sit, they listen
to the mashwara,
they talk about the prophet salawasalam as he's
one of the community.
The day that we stopped
following the teaching of the prophet salawasalam
and established
the mentality, the culture
that we get from before Islam.
Montality, the cult of the tribes before Islam.
That the respect have to go one way
from the younger to the older.
This is not the way that Rasool, sallam,
raised the sahaba.
The respect,
the care, the
go both ways.
The young generation, we respect them and we
respect them sincerely
And we bring them with us and we
listen to them and we let them listen
to our adult so called discussion and questions.
Because if you don't raise the question with
them, if you don't be their friend, they're
going to find another friend outside.
If the father and the mother and the
teacher and the leader and the imam
is not the friend of our youth,
they're going to find another friend. And most
probably,
is not going to be the right friend.
If we fail
because of our culture
as a mother to talk with her daughter,
to talk with her son about all the
issue that they're facing,
then we it's it's a recipe of failure
to raise them the correct way that Rasul
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam want us to to
raise them. Rasul sallam he used to talk
to with Fatima. He used to respect her
and listen to her
and bring her and treat her as
his friend.
The day that we establish the friendship insha
Allah, the the,
that we will talk more about it. The
alum, it needs
seminar by itself. What's the knowledge? How I
have to do? But again,
siddiq and the alm. This is the two
things to to key, Jazakkumullah khairam, and may
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala guide us and bring
help us to save our generation and to
save
us ourselves.
So this is the standard question that has
become so cliched that it's it elicits snickers
in the youngsters
and raising eyebrows in the elders, but the
problem is still there, and it's not going
to go away. Therefore, the question is the
standard question that I get asked and all
the speakers get asked. A brother says, I'm
a young brother, 24 years old. I'm interested
in going studying medical school, but and I
wanna get married to a particular sister, but
my parents keep on telling me I am
not ready and I'd really want to get
married to save myself from fitna, from the
things around me. What should I do? Etcetera
etcetera.
Wallahi, marriage is one of the biggest clashes
that youth have with their parents,
and this is something that no matter how
many times we talk about this and raise
the issue, the same issues keep on coming
up. The parents are thinking as if when
they were 1920,
25, and they keep on thinking, look, I
was your age. I I went through this.
What's the problem? Why can't you wait? I
was 30 when I got married. I was
29 when I got married, And the fact
of the matter is times have changed.
Times have changed. We're not living in back
home anymore.
I've been through this as well. I got
married when I was 21 years old. And
wallahi, it was one of the wisest decisions
I ever made. I was 21 years old,
and my parents were supportive of this, and
I thank Allah for that, even though it
was a little bit of a pushing. But
anyway, eventually, they they did they did, you
know, come around in understanding. I thank Allah
AsoWitch for that. The fact of the matter,
look,
our youngsters
are being exposed to things you never even
imagined of, and they have lots of opportunities
to fall into haram. They are normal human
beings. It's not anything abnormal. You also were
normal at that age, but you lived in
a different
culture,
different society. People were very different around you
by when you were growing up than they
are now. In our times, you know, a
kid came to me. I'm not making
this a child came to me. I think
what?
In our times, you know, a kid came
to me. I'm not making this a child
came to me. I think what? How old
was he? 14 or something?
And he said,
my peers make fun of me because I
don't have a girlfriend.
The kids at school call me you know
what they're gonna call me. Because I'm not
attracted to women, they think. And I think
I'm attracted to men. And he's almost in
tears. He goes, what can I do now?
Now you didn't have to deal with that
issue when you were 14 or 15, did
you? This is a 14 year old kid
and he's confused because
he wants to be a good Muslim but
what what is he gonna do? Because all
of his friends are having girlfriends and whatnot
and he's trying to live a straight life.
So look,
point of fact
here, your kids have 2 alternatives
and this is not a kid, he's a
24, he's an adult. He has 2 alternatives,
haram or halal. There's no in middle. Right?
It's either haram or halal.
You can either encourage him for the halal
or face the consequences of falling into haram.
It's really there's not that much, you know,
magic to understand this. It's very simple.
My advice to you, if your child shows
the maturity
of marriage,
Right? 24 is an old enough age. And
if at that young age, they feel that,
look, I think I can manage,
then don't worry about the sustenance. Allah says
in the Quran. And I know this is
sometimes parents think how about how is it
gonna happen? Allah clearly says in the Quran,
if
they are
if they are poor, Allah
says Allah will give them from his falul.
And this is with regards to marriage. With
regards to marriage, Allah says if they are
poor, Allah will give them of his father.
You know, I got married. I didn't have
a full time job at the time. 21,
what am I gonna have? You know? I
didn't know where the sustenance would come from,
but
we managed. It wasn't easy. And you know
what struggling the way that we did? Wallahi,
not only did it make me more mature
faster,
it cemented the bonds between my wife and
I. Made us a better couple because we
had to face certain problems, certain issues that
perhaps we wouldn't have had to face if
we didn't go through that. So if
your teenager,
if your young 20, 22 year old son
or daughter expresses a sincere desire to get
married,
test them with their maturity.
And if they are mature enough to handle
the situation, I would personally be encouraging. And
do what you can to help out. Sacrifice
what you can, but Insha'Allah, I think in
the long run, it will be better for
you and for them. And also, by the
way, now I speak to the youth here.
Just like you remember how you're feeling now,
don't forget this when your own child becomes
1920 as well. Don't forget this, that it's
different world, different place. Encourage them. Marriage, wallahi,
is one of the biggest problems that our
youth face, and insha'allah, we're having actually huge
conferences about this soon. Be announced soon in
the public, but we're having major conferences about
the issue of of marriage in the 2nd
generation. And, by the way, divorce rates are
also going up. It's a biz the big
problem, and that is another issue. Why is
it going up? Because their conception of marriage
is taken from Hollywood and Bollywood. It's not
taken from the real world. We didn't do
a good job of educating them what is
really marriage. So no doubt, it's there is
no simplistic answer, but if you sense maturity
from them and if they have prayed their
istikhara and if you they have found an
appropriate spouse, I would personally be supportive of
it. And you know there's also the alternative,
by the way, where this will move on.
There's also
of having the katpukitab only.
And that is that the wife and husband,
they have the nikkiyah
contract done, but not the consummation.
So what this allows is that they can
talk together. They can, you know, go to
the movie theater if they want together. They
can go out on a date together. In
other words, there's this sense of I have
a companion, but they're not yet living together.
And there's nothing wrong with having the katbu
kitab, it's called. You have the marriage contract,
and then you say, insha'Allah, when you have
an apartment, then you can have the big
ceremony of the consummation and and take her
to your house. Until then, we simply have
the nikah contract. So, technically, you're married, but
you're not living together. So there has this
sense of, like I said, you can express
your love. Wallahi is a human element as
well. You want to love somebody and you
want to be loved. It's not just lust.
It's also a human element that you want
to express that love. You want to feel
like a normal human being. And so this,
this marriage contract, what it will do, it
will allow those emotions to be expressed in
a halal manner and will give stability to
the life. It will even give your son
or daughter an incentive to do good in
studies and move on to the next stage
of life. And this is certain advice. I'm
sure Imam Madrid has much better advice as
well.
Zakkalahir, but I would like just to warn
the young people for 4 things.
Number 1, you you need to do premedical
counseling.
I would like to say that
marriage have one components on it is was
the major components is to protect a person.
But you have to know is a whole
package. It come with other responsibilities.
The reason that marriage is failing in 2nd
generation Muslims, they're getting divorced within the first
5 years,
because
there are some people who have not taken
marriage serious.
It's a replacement of dating, replacement of this
and that. Marriage is a person had to
be taught
what is marriage is all about and that
why we offer here in Adams Premedical Council
before we marry people.
Person have to know what are the responsibility,
what are the obligations,
what it takes to be a husband, what
it takes to be a wife.
This is number 1. Number 2,
I will agree the issue of katbekitab
with one condition.
Because some people taking katbekitab
is that it is trying it out. Let
us try it out.
And many marriages break with Kadbek and just
doing nikka haole.
We have seen it and I have seen
it all the times.
And what they do is taken like, now
they give us alliances of Islamic dating.
Halal things,
a kosher
and halal
mark on it and therefore they go out
and so forth, they Guess what happened? After
a year they said, we don't like to
be married anymore. And not only that, their
parents sometimes they do cut back it up
and they think that the message of being
consubmitted, they've already been consubmitted in the 1st
month.
Seriously.
Number 3,
that I would like to warn.
The parents.
That is very important
that the parents and the children when they
sit down,
they talk about what the parents expect of
the children,
what they're looking for and the child have
to share that with them. What happened here
is the child sometimes devour feeling, meet the
sister
at the,
MSA,
all the respect to the MSA,
or meet her at the Sudanese club at
the schools,
or the Pakistani,
American Association,
whatever it might be,
or
cyberspace
love.
There's something called nasid.com
and shadi.com
and every.com that you can
imagine. People fall in love also in cyberspace,
called virtual community.
And they go so much into the relationship
and then they come later and they tell
their husband, guess what, I'm in love.
And I really want you to understand why
and and then the class begins.
The naseeh that we have, that the parents
and the children sit together, discuss what the
child wants, what the parents wants, to develop
a strategy
that how we gonna go about it.
The last and I'll see how I like
to give,
is the position
of people have been possessive.
Sometimes they don't like the child to get
married because they don't like child to go.
And therefore, the child, they want to keep
the child,
30 years old, my baby.
He's really
still your baby,
but he is a grown man. He need
to establish his relationship
and that's why it is,
there's a nice book written
a man remain as a child until his
mother dies,
that's true. As he just saying, he asked
him if he
have drank his milk or have enough clothes,
still.
But we need to tell the parents to
have to understand
that the child now has to have a
life of their own and therefore they need
to draw it offline. Now for a lot
of the things I just want to mention
in this issue because,
Inshallah, I don't know if his son is
here, we're writing a book in this issue,
taking all the scenario I have heard of
in 20 my 21 years in America,
and she had experience in counseling,
and the book Inshallah and the final stage.
I got a question about
positive and negative effect of TV in the
house,
and the relationship that we build between
the parents and the children.
And somehow, I feel that it always goes
through the TD because any conversation that we
started to have, first thing we need to
have is the TV on. So I'd like
to have you input that.
So for those of you who were unable
to hear the question, it's basically about, the
issue of of how can you have a
quality time with your children,
especially when there's something called the TV at
home. And family time. And family time. Yes.
And
family time simply becomes sitting down in front
of the TV as a family and looking
at the TV. This is family time now.
Okay?
You know, the radical solution which, alhamdulillah, some
of us have managed to do is not
to have a TV at home.
And wallahi, it's something
I would personally advise you even though I
know many of you are not gonna be
able to do this. I had I don't
have a TV at home. I don't have
a TV at home because I know when
it's there, I'm not just gonna watch the
news, my kids aren't just gonna watch cartoons,
my wife isn't just gonna watch Oprah, I
know what's gonna happen, the reality what's gonna
happen there. Okay? So my kids have been
raised in a house where there is no
TV.
Therefore,
they are not accustomed normal
place
and I know what a and I know
what this box does.
You sit there and you literally waste 2
hours, an hour, it doesn't matter. You just
waste that time. So the radical solution, and
this is what, alhamdulillah, we did this from
day 1, my wife and I, just don't
have a TV at home. So that when
the kids are raised there, you know, they
they are raised in a little bit of
a better environment. No doubt their friends have
TV. They know what TV is. They know,
but at home, they know that it's not
there. And so at home, they play together,
they fight together, we we have some time
together. You know, wallahi, when my kids fight
together, I'm better I'm happier that they're doing
that than they're watching TV because at least
they're developing some relationship. Right? At least they're
learning how to cope with the real world.
They're cope to cope with one another. So
this is, in my opinion, the ideal solution.
If that's not gonna happen and the fact
that matter is not gonna happen in most
households,
in that case, sit you set very strict
rules for the television.
You set very strict rules. This is what
you're gonna watch if you do your homework
and your chores and whatnot. This is the
thing that you get to watch. So it's
basically you're the ones who's dictating what they're
gonna watch and
beyond this, you need to sit down and
take an active effort. Now my kids, you
know, I read stories to them. That's the
best thing. They love it. Every night they
come running, so can you read a story
to me? And they'll choose a book, and
we'll do that. That's it's even though the
story might be so ridiculous. I mean, I
actually read, what is that? That's cat in
the hat. Right? Is that cat in that
one? Right? Yeah. My daughter my little daughter
loves me to read that. Now sometimes I'm
thinking, my God, I I should be reading
even Taymiyyah or which more for taw or
even Al Qayyim, but you know this is
a part of being a parent. Wallahi, sit
there and you read the cat in the
hat. We know from my little daughter, she
loves it. This is a part of establishing
that relationship. I'm not saying an ideal parent,
but I think if I put that time
in, you know, and she's only 4 years
old, if I If she has that time,
it will develop that bond that Insha Allah,
later on, you know, she's gonna come to
me for things far more important than reading
cat in the hat. So there has to
be a two way street here. Right? You're
saying what can I do? Let me turn
it back to you. What have you done?
What have you done to take your kids
out? You know? I take my kids swimming
with me sometimes. You know? My boys, I
take them as a swimming pool there that
you go at a time there's nobody else
there. You know, I take them once every
few, you know, days or weeks. We go
and swim there together. Shalom, when they grow
older, I hope to take them on an
umrah trip or something. You need to develop
some bonds here. You need to do something.
I mean, again, in all honesty, our parents
didn't do that with us because that was
not the way their grandparents raised them. That
type of chilling out with the kids, it's
not done back home, but it is done
here. And
I am a second generation person. I can't
I can't just be standoffish with my children.
I sit down and play with them. I
throw them up in the air. I'm much
more physical with them. This is the way
I am. And I think that those of
us who have decided to come here, we
need to learn to
drop some of those those different attitudes that
was back home. That was fine back home.
I'm not even criticizing it. But this isn't
the way
our children see their friends and their parents'
relationship.
This isn't the way they do that. So
my question back to you is what are
you doing proactively
Just to have good relation. Doesn't have to
be Islamic, even though one of the best
things you can do is take them to
the masjid once in a while. For salat
al isha for salat al Maghrib if it's
time for that, you know, they come out
to school. Just take them to them. That's
it. Take them and take them back. Once
in a while on the way back, I'll
get them some ice cream. So they now
even though it's a double thing, so they
wanna go to the masjid because they know
once in a while they'll get ice cream
on the way back. You know, this is
this is a halal bribe.
It's a halal bribe. No no sin at
all. Point is now you need to think
about what you're doing with your children and
inshallah, kids are kids. You spend a good
time with them, they'll they'll spend time with
you. So it's not really that difficult.
Every age has something they're they they like
to do. And another thing that we do,
we we give them rewards for being good
Islamically. If you memorize this, then you get
your, you know, this toy or that thing
or, you know, some type of of of
game set and I try to also buy
educational toys by the way. We don't have
these even though I don't know how long
it'll be able to last, right now I
can tell you we don't have those gadgets
and those Wees and whatever. You know, we're
trying to keep that off. I try to
get them building sets and that type of
stuff. That's the type of stuff I'd rather
give them. I don't know how long they'll
be able to last, so maybe next year
I'll come and I'll have to confess we
have one of these contraptions, but as of
yet, we're staying, so we reward them. If
you memorize,
we'll get you this thing. Okay? And again,
this is a halal bribe. This is completely
permissible. Let them be if you pray regularly
for 1 week, you build a chart for
them.
Right? And there's 9 years old, 60, you
pray regularly, then insha Allah will go out
for ice cream or do something like this.
These are things that makes them want to
be good and makes them also have a
relationship with their parents. Insha Allah,
you be firm with them, be open with
them, go down to their level, and you
will see that they will love to be
with you. It's not that difficult insha'Allah. As
of yet, I haven't had insha'Allah any major
issue, and I pray that it remains that
way inshallah.
You wanna add some of these
Just say I would then like to add
small things about about,
being in this country.
What I know is of course
I didn't grow up in this country. I've
been here
for 15 or 16 years,
but you grew up in Muslim country. What
I know is and this is
a reality. There is a lot of second
Muslim generation.
They grew up in this country.
They didn't get anything from this country, the
good things,
and they didn't get the good things from
back home.
And this is and this is a big
big issue. We have we have a lot
of
second generation Muslims
who grew up in this country. Means they
they are In the end, they end up
with almost nothing.
They didn't
learn the good ways that the people
raise their children in this country.
There is a lot of things to learn
from the people in this country. How they
raise their children. We have a joke. We
say it but it's reality.
If you go to the store
and you hear a child crying, there is
85%
chance
it's going to be from,
I I don't want to to say Arab
because I am Arab. Alhamdulillah. But but this
is real.
There is
85% chance.
Means there is an issue.
There is a lot of good things that
we learn from this country.
There is groups that you can learn from
and of course we can learn a lot
from our parents.
This is the challenge that we have. How
we can get the Hikma, the wisdom
from
back home,
from our great grandparents
and also from this country here. There is
a lot of things to learn but sometimes
we don't have time to learn. So the
the idea that that there is groups
that really working hard to raise their children
without TV, non Muslim groups.
People, regular non Muslim, they have
strategy, they have alternative
for the TV and everything and they are
not Muslim.
To be part of them you can learn
a lot of these things and also you
can learn from the way that our grandparents
and our parents raised us.
So so just, there is
Hikma somewhere we have to get.
Assalamu alaikum.
I have 2 questions. I'm gonna hopefully only
ask 1.
As
you we reach out to the younger generation,
I grew up here similar to yourself, Shafi'a,
and gone through a lot of the phases
in my life which I wish I didn't
go through. And I've experienced stuff which I
wish I didn't, but it is part of
my past. When I'm trying to reach out
to the youth,
is that something that I use to connect
with them or not?
Do I talk about, yes, I've been through
this, and maybe if I if it's a
exact same similar situation, do I tell them
that I've done that to befriend them? Or
do I not do that to keep that
respect and that gap between it? That's question
1. Question 2 is I've noticed today that
I don't know if it's because of Facebook
and MySpace or whatever, kids aren't hiding their
sins.
Kids are not hiding. In my generation, we
hid it from our friends. We didn't tell
our friends we were doing x y and
z.
But the generation today seems to be open
about it and I I I haven't been
able to and I'm, you know, been able
to figure out why maybe you you 3
can shed some light to that.
So the first issue is about mentioning your
sins and and and issues.
I would say each situation requires its own
wisdom.
So when there's no need to be specific
about your sin, you can speak in generics.
You can say, look, there are people that
have, you know, done these things before you.
They've experienced it firsthand.
And you can say it in a way
that with the details and level that they
know it's you, but you don't say it
was me. Okay? There's a level of wisdom
there. There's no need to expose your sins.
Also also, there's a difference between sins and
and basically bad manners. I mean, we've all
had bad manners with our parents when they
were teenagers. Right? So I said that to
you. You know, I was 17, I had
a few fights with my mom and dad.
Okay. That's not quite like a sin sin.
It's like, you know, it's you you went
through phases. However, if you actually fell into
a major sin and you did something that,
you know, it's it's embarrassing to mention in
public,
don't mention it unless there's a legitimate need.
So you meet a kid who's going down
that path. You tell him, you sit him
down, you say, look,
I've been there, done that.
I've done this. I know what it does
to you. This is what it does to
you. Because it is allowed to mention
sins
if you want to warn people from falling
into them. What is haram is you mention
sins out of pride and boastfulness, and that
leads us to second issue, and that is,
wallahi, you're absolutely right. And this is scary
to me that in the span of 20
years, so much change has happened. I think
we both grew up in the eighties. Right?
In the eighties, like, a little bit in
the nineties. Okay. Well, you know, close enough.
I grew up in the eighties. You know,
you didn't you didn't you you did certain
things and you it's still embarrassing to say
it. You know? You still an element of
heyah, of of of basically modesty.
And yet within the span of basically 20
years,
things have changed so radically. Doesn't that make
you think that within another 20, what's gonna
happen? This is a fact of life.
The world around us is changing and what's
to are, we too were not boastful.
So this is our job once again to
inculcate in it, to inculcate them, you know,
with hayah. To make sure that they are
raised in a household that understands what is
modesty and respect. And that basically means you
have to talk the talk and walk the
walk. You have to live your life with
your wife
and your friends in a manner that your
children clearly see night and day, public schools
like this, home is like that. And perhaps
they might do things that are not right,
but when they grow up they'll always remember,
oh look, you know, this is the way
it should be. Because I have a saying,
they all come around in the end. When
you have iman, you know, we've gone through
stages. Eventually you come back. You know? Our
children, I would do better. They might go
a little bit beyond what what we want,
but if we have raised them properly, they'll
always have that safety net. They'll always know
this is what we need to do in
the end. So my advice to you is
you need to talk the talk and walk
the walk. You need to show them what
real modesty is in the household. And
we're living in a time wallahi faisha and
and evil is everywhere.
How much can you do? Fataqullaha mastata'a'atuh. Fear
Allah as much as you can. Make dua
to Allah to protect you and your children.
Show them the right way, and then leave
the rest to Allah
There's only, you know, so much that can
be done. But I think also maybe,
I think also maybe it's very important,
of the parents to speak about the children
or to the children about issues that my
they children might face in the society.
What happens sometimes with Muslim community, do
we in denial.
That sometimes even you mention something, Khuba said,
Jumasa walked to you, he said, brother, we
shouldn't mention that.
My
brother, I'm mentioning it because I'm warning the
community. I'm telling them it's important to be
aware of these issues
because it telling you that you need to
tune out, you should not mention anything that
of embarrassing and this kind. I think children
need to be talked to about serious issues,
especially when they become in middle school. Middle
school, I
didn't grow up here but I I know,
I counsel people. Middle school, you're throwing the
children in the water, if you don't know
to tell them how to swim, they're gonna
drown. And they say in Arabic,
He he hang up his, a person
important. And what happens sometime my immigrant parents,
let me just mention this about the immigrant
parents, that sometimes I'm an immigrant parents, sometime
we we think
that by just not saying anything,
not saying
telling them anything, they'll be alright.
Check it out.
Trust me.
I'm gonna tell you my brothers and sister,
if parents do not talk to their children,
they don't know the environment of their children,
they don't have not been in public school,
they don't see how it look in, in
in high school, they don't know what is
an internet,
then they live in an illusion
that they just
by not talking to them and have them
close their room and be in the internet,
the children will be okay. No.
And therefore, one of the things that the
person must know is called
knowing the reality.
And that's why they say faqih, a person
cannot be a faqih unless he knows three
things. The fiqh of the text
and the fiqh of the environment
and the fiqh of application of the text
in the environment.
Application. If you don't person doesn't know that,
they will not be able to navigate their
way in life.
As for the sin,
this by the way, it happened even previously.
You know, Olamas says,
from the other says,
people with sins are 3 levels.
Some people do the sin
and they're so ashamed of it.
They say, Tal comes and says,
what is this hypocrisy?
Tell people you're doing it.
Before the child come to you and says,
dad guess what, I'm doing this
and I would like to be my own.
You know, things
The third thing, which is called support group
by the way, the support group and Sims.
The third levels
is inviting other to it.
And you see, they have seen this evolution
taking place in America and you have seen
it take place now in some Muslim countries
that things that were people were ashamed of,
now
in the public and there's a clear invitation
to it,
because it's cool. Therefore you need to be
aware of those 3, three levels.
We
have a question from my sister, I think.
Very important question. It's a situation that,
there is your children and step children.
I'm not going to talk about
specific case but general case.
Most
of our children,
they learn the bad things
from the closest
friend, from the
the environment that we believe it's safe,
that we don't have any supervision.
For example, lot of kids, they learn a
lot of bad things from their cousins
when they come to visit them.
The parents,
what they do,
they think that it's it's safe environment. They
are their their cousins and they come come
and they learn and they go spend the
weekend or sit with them. Based in in
a lot of cases that we see,
the kids will learn a lot of bad
things
from their closest cousins.
The answer is very very simple. I'm going
to and not for this sister but for
this case.
Adult supervision,
it's the most important things. A lot of
Muslim brothers and sisters, they took their kids,
they drop them in the school bus,
and they don't see them only after how
many hours.
They don't know what's going on. Allah is
going to ask us for that. Where I
put my child?
One one brother he came in the in
this Ramadan and he asked me He said
the problem of his kids. They are
I don't we don't go into the details.
I asked him one one I told him
one answer. If you put yourself in the
same situation as your daughter, maybe you're going
to be worse than her. You put her
in public school. She doesn't have any Muslim
friends.
She all have all the
march of the society. And this is where
we have to They're not even in the
middle of the society. They've been influenced. A
lot of immigrant, their children, they go to
school with low income people. They live with
cheaper neighborhood
and they put their kids with with with
not even with with the mainstream of the
society.
So they learn the worst things.
So if you put your child in situation,
Allah is going to ask you on the
day of judgment.
You put your child to learn all these
things. To go back to this question,
before I even,
I'm not asking the marriage, but of course
if I'm going to marry somebody and I
know I don't know their background,
how strict they are, how practicing the Islam,
and I bring my children, I put them
there, it's and they're going to have a
negative effect. Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala is going
to ask me. So the best solution for
this to work hard with your husband
and to
created an Islamic environment
at this
home. And this is one case, one step
at a time and
clean up the environment
and to work with with every single child.
And that
we hope insha Allah that that that would
help but but without doubt, the biggest negative
influence
come from the
the place that we think it's the safest.
So we have we have to be very
careful about the cousins, about about the people
who come. Are they Do they have the
same values as us? Could be your brother
is not as practicing as you are.
And their children, they exposed to non Islamic
influence from outside. You brought them to your
home. You led them by themselves.
In one weekend,
they will learn the the the negative things.
So this is a very serious messuliyyah.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala is going to ask
us. I'm I'm I'm going to know every
single friend,
every single
environment, every single website that my children is
they go they're going to. So I have
to be really responsible and help them to
grow up Muslim kids. By the way, it's
not only negative.
I'm telling you there is kids here grew
up in this country.
10 times better than a lot of young
Muslim children in Muslim countries.
I saw kids grow up here. People that
easy to blame it. Oh, we are in
non Muslim countries. It's not true. They are
people who raised their children
the best way, better than their cousin. I
have
It's true. They
It's true. They say the problem there, they've
been praying here every single day with Jannah.
They go there, they didn't pray for 1
week
because nobody prayed.
So the question, it's not where you raise
your children,
how you raise them. And this country, I
call it in Arabic. It's go the place
that show our weaknesses.
If I don't do my job, nobody's going
to do my job. So this is why
everybody have to do his or her job
to raise our children, inshallah, the right around
the right way, allahu.
We've been talking a a
lot about
things in terms of children committing sin and
other things like that and dealing with, you
know, the culture that we live in and
other things like that. My question is specifically
for you as teachers.
When you deal with
youth who are more religiously inclined,
how do you teach them not to necessarily
challenge their parents and do other things when
they think they're more religious than their parents?
Maybe their parents don't practice religion as they
do or they think they practice better than
to prevent them from having that arrogance and
destroying their own home by thinking, well, I'm
a better Muslim than my parent.
And so they start destroying their own home,
or for that matter challenging
Imams and other things like that, thinking that
they have some knowledge,
as was mentioned before, that people's life experiences
just the fact that you're older, you have
more life experience. But unfortunately, sometimes even when
it comes to religious matters, people feel like
just because they've been to some classes and
stuff like that, they are more religious, and
therefore, they can challenge their parents. They can
challenge, leaders of the community. How do you
would you address
from that perspective?
It's a very deep question,
and it requires
a lot of of of time and contemplation.
But I am very very familiar with the
question because I have gone through that phase
myself.
I have gone through that exact same phase
where you think you know more than your
parent. A 17 year old kid, 18 year
old kid, you've read a few books, you
know, listened to a few,
you know, scholars here and there, and your
parents are not doing that type of of
of of understanding. And so you you think
you know better than them. And, you know,
some of the you know, I I told
you we had some clashes with my parents
when I was 17. Believe it or not,
they were over religious issues. You know, they
were over religious issues where I had this
assumption that I knew better than them. And
what calmed me down was knowledge.
What calmed me down was more knowledge because
the ulama say, a little bit of knowledge
is the most dangerous thing.
The most dangerous thing is little dose of
knowledge because you think you have everything.
And the more you study and the more
you learn, the more humble you become.
And the more you realize, even if you
might know one particular issue that your parents
don't know, subhanallah, it doesn't change the respect
that is due to them by virtue of
the fact they are parents. So the solution
I'm dealing more with the youth, obviously. Right?
Of course, the parents have their own things
that we need to talk about. For the
youth, really, the solution is you teach them
this head on. You don't talk about just
fiqh and aqidah and tafsir. You always have
to bring in spirituality. You always have to
bring in akhlaq. You always have to bring
in humility and humbleness.
You cannot simply teach dry facts. And I
hope that inshallah we're doing this, you know,
Adam Maghrib and other institutions that we're doing.
I hope that we're also emphasizing
akhlaq and adab and not just theory, not
just issues that are, you know, abstract and
and and and and, you know, mundane or
or intellectual.
The main thing here we need to tell
our children,
we need to tell our youth that, look,
if you are doing something your parents haven't
done or or you think you're doing something
correct and doing
still they are your parents and they deserve
that respect. And it is possible
that your doing this good deed
will be nullified by your bad treatment with
your parents.
And it is also possible
that you think you're doing something right, but
the fact of the matter is that's only
one opinion and your parents have something that
is equally valid. Now
there's many factors to talk about, but I
wanna talk about one particular issue and that
is what do you do when there's
a religious clash? Let me give you an
example.
The girl wants to wear hijab, and the
parents say, no. You can't do it. How
many sisters have come to me, to all
of the people here and said, look, my
parents don't want me to wear hijab. She's
17 years old, 18. I've even had girls
going to college.
They're
sticky. Where it's a clear cut case of,
you know, and I mean, it's saffirullah. It
can get pretty ugly sometimes.
That is where you need to look at
the overall situation.
If the person is in a situation where
the parents might actually cut off their sustenance
or make life difficult for them, you know
what? You just tell them. And I've told
sisters this. Look, It's only a temporary phase.
If you're not gonna able to find anywhere
else, your parents are gonna kick you out.
This one sister came, her her father literally
was gonna kick her out of the house
if she continued to wear hijab. Here in
North America, that's the way it became. I
told her, look, for you this is the
laura. Don't wear hijab in front of him.
Don't even show it to him, and do
what you can ask Allah to forgive you.
It's a matter of time when you will
move move on and you'll be able to
do as you please. The real issue comes,
like I said, when it's clearly a case
of haram and halal. When it's a case
of difference of opinion, wallahi, we need to
educate our youth. Differences of opinion should never
ever lead to harshness, to bad manners, to
a clash of of of of parent versus
child.
Prayers.
Issue here, there's a question of, you know,
zabiha versus non zabiha. Parents have one thing,
children have another. Never should this lead to
a clash. More education, more tarbia, and this
is our job as educators, primarily, to teach
the kids not to be arrogant to their
parents. I know you have a lot to
add Ima Majid to this.
I think you really have a dis issue,
but I would like to say that,
the problem it is, is that children sometimes
learn information,
but there's no transformation.
And I would like to repeat this, information
but no transformation.
They've memorized things,
they go to this website, Islam this Islam
that
and they do have no etiquette.
Imam Shafi Rahmullah
sat with Imam Malik, in 2 years, he
knew everything Imam Malik has.
The rest of the years, he stated Imam
Malik for Adam.
Learning from the Adam of Imam Malik.
When Imam Malik
his mother sent him to to
learn from him, She said learn from his
adab before his books.
It is important
that Islamic teaching
cannot be a just an information being given
to children or young people.
We need to teach, adapts comes with it.
The etiquette.
And unfortunately,
because of the age of information,
people think that it is how much I
know,
it is about how much I do.
I give an example,
In Sudan,
a man,
a young man,
I use this example a lot,
sat next to an old,
an old person. The old person come to
pray in the masjid and he said, Assalamu
Alaikum, Assalamu Alaikum. Then the old man said
to the young man, Taqaballullah.
The man says,
What you talking about?
And then the old man says,
it's being mean sunnah.
It's how to say things.
How You see, the problem is the approach
And that's why little knowledge is dangerous. They
say that
the gallon of water have a little water
and it make a lot of noise.
When it's full, does it make noise?
It doesn't.
Therefore, it is how? The example of Hassan
al Hussein, that being said in literature,
correcting the man who made the wrong wadu.
And they told him that, can you look
to us and tell us how the hour
will do? And then he said, I made
a mistake.
There are some brothers,
they don't know that Abu Hanifa for example
says, you can you can put your hand
here.
They go to their parents, your prayer is
not correct.
The parent says,
son, I said it that in the fiqh
class. No. I went to Mohammed Majid, I
went to brother Abdul Rafi, I went to,
Sheikh Abdul Rafi, I went to Sheikh Yasser
Padi. I want to say Yasser Pajes and
he said, this absolute lot and therefore whatever
they say is like Quran.
Humble yourself,
learn that, we we try not to teach
people this, but a person have to understand
that. Some people think that they know more
than Imam Shafeh himself.
Who's Shafeh?
I said who's Shafeh brother? Do you know
how even to read fat how correctly tell
me who Shafeh is?
Or the objective of Hanifa or Imam Malik?
Therefore, we need to teach people to humble
themselves.
I know that as the the just Sheikh
Yasser mentioned,
it is the certain issue what is really
sometimes serious.
We have parents who as children do haram,
honestly.
It's clear haram.
You know, and sometimes it's not all about
hijab, they ask them to sit in the
social garden with alcohol being served
and he said, you have to be nice.
I said, what are you telling them?
You have to draw the line here.
And therefore,
we have to educate the community as well,
that you have no rights to ask your
children to disobey
Your rights been taken away.
Before the parents' right ends
when the life of Allah begins.
You cannot over it. That is clear cut
and therefore we have difficulties.
Sometime,
parents need to encourage their children to be
religious.
Why you are so upset that your son
want to more Quran?
You You know, you have parents telling their
their their
spouse, I don't like my children to I
don't like to become rulers.
Yeah, he's telling me that you you're making
fun of
Are you making fun of the great companions?
Are you making fun of the greatest scholars
of
What is this mentality and understanding?
And therefore, this is really an issue that
we need to teach the children how to
deal with difficult issues, to be humble, but
also we need to teach the parents, we
need to encourage them, you need to be
happy that your child is pain. You need
to be happy that your
child of Allah because when a child, when
a person dies, all the good deeds sees
except of 3 things,
Knowledge left behind, charity left behind, child make
dua for them. That's what it is? And
that's the investment a person make. That's what
it is a big challenge. I know that
we went over the time
of this issue but,
why don't
I take a shot on this. This is
about that.
Let me know what it is exactly. Here,
in your sleep.
Allow me but just to follow-up on on
the the the the previous actually question.
One thing that is very important and crucial
to add to, the main point of the
Mashaikh over here is Allah's
instruction to the prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam.
And then Allah sallallahu alaihi wasallam,
he send them for a very clear message.
He was sent for 3 things. These are
very major things and they always come together.
If you read the Quran, they always come
together. The message of the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasallam, then he teaches people al kitab, which
is the book of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
Then al Hikma, and that's the
son of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam,
why use akihim? Now the ulama, they argue
about the meaning of tiskia. What's the meaning
of Izakhihim? What is it has to do
with teaching the Quran the son of the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam?
Which means to purify them. And the meaning
of that is that the application of the
Quran and sunnah should be should the conclusion
of learning the Quran and Sunnah should result
in purification.
We see that even in the message of
of of
Musa alayhis salam to a man like Firaoun
Kids and children, they don't really pay attention
to that when it comes even to dealing
with parents or even some any other person
who might not have, the proper education or
learning in the deen.
Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala, sent Musa to Firaun.
What did he say? How he summarize his
message?
The whole message of Musa
was to produce tazkiyah from a man like
Firaoun. If
Musa was sent to Firaoun
to make him purify himself,
Means he want him to learn to be
that person who would be pure and purify
himself. So the purpose is, the whole idea,
if our way of teaching our parents,
our friends,
our elders, our youngs and so on does
not result in test gear, pure souls in
a self motivation basically, then we are not
doing the right thing, they were not learning
the right thing. So again, the Quran and
the Sunnah and the proper application
of that,
which also adds to this question over here.
A sister I mean, someone is saying that
to you, I don't think it's a sister.
I'm a convert Muslim. My children range from,
age 5 to 14, all born and raised
Muslim.
All my conflicts with my teen kids,
or preteen
are based on deen, not culture. So it's
all on the issue of deen.
And how does a parent balance treating them
as adults and setting enforcing guidelines
when they are transgressing limits and how does
one enforce the rules
while still treating them as adults. Now, when
it comes to dealing with the young adults,
now preteens and teens, the whole philosophy of
the teenage
basically is all about,
rebellion,
is all about testing the limits. Now these
kids are grown up from being under the
the the the parental,
control
into their own domain. So they wanna see
how much they can do and get away
with. That's the whole idea. So the issue
of of trying to set the limits from
the parents is gonna still continue until they
mature enough to understand why parents are doing
what they're doing. So you need to be
persistent and needs to be clear on, you
know, on your points. But it's the way
the presentation itself, how you present that.
Kids in that age, they don't need instruction
as much as advice,
which means they need friends more than they
need someone of control. Usually, kids, they're not
really some they don't take, instruction from their
parents as much as they take it from
their friends. So try, inshallah, try to build
this kind of friendship, this kind of friendship
relationship with your kids. Means the kids, they
need to know that you are a friend
whom they can trust. And I remember in
one of the the, the circles of, of
Renmin were teenagers,
and I asked them, there were about 25
of them there, and I gave them pieces
of paper, each one of them, and I
said, if you have a trouble,
if you have a trouble, if you have
something that bothers you so much and you
wanna talk to somebody,
who would be that person that you would
you would talk to? I said, sort your
priorities.
I want you to give me the top
five persons that you would like that you
would talk to them about this issue. So
don't give names, just give titles like father,
mother, cousin, teacher, this and that, and so
on. And guess what? Of the 25 people,
only one
kid, said my mom.
Only one child. I said, who has it
on the second?
A little bit more.
But the magi some of them didn't even
have parents in the list at all
and that is most of them, the top
the top actually,
that ranks the top in this list was
a friend.
And that friend could be relative,
cousin, or maybe just a neighbor, and usually
it's someone of their age,
so they need someone who is a friend
to them. Even if you're the parents, you
need to be I don't wanna say, say,
part of their culture as much as you
understand their culture, where they're coming from. So
when they bring you something like you think
it's actually something that transgresses the limits,
instead of saying, don't do that, come and
discuss the subject with them. Show them that
you understand the desire and the need for
them to enjoy listening to something that's haram,
watching someone's haram and so on, but then
let's see the consequences of that decision. Let
them see that you understand them and when
you make decision, you help them with that,
InshaAllah. So it's a of building that good
relationship insha Allah and slowly and gradually they
will open up with you.
I think I'll,
say this is more of a comment,
if that's okay.
I thought of saying this because when brother
Abdul Raffa mentioned
that the way to teach your kids is
to look at the prophet, sir, as an
example. And what he mentioned was treating them
like adults, talking to them, taking their advice.
The reason I decided that I think it's
appropriate to say this comment here is because
I'm facing 4
scholars who have a lot of influence and
talk to a,
national audience, and I would like, if you
agree with this message, for it to be
passed.
I think one of the reasons our youth
is where they are and our ummah, in
fact, is where they are is because the
women have been kicked out of the masajid
around the world.
And it is a phenomenon that happens
in the in America, even though the people
may not call it kicking out of the
masjid, but to a lot of women, we
are kicked out when we have kids. When
a child like this is crying or the
baby is crying, they are put in a
different room.
We have now 60 women praying with a
120 kids. Those kids do not get the
tarbiyah that they would if they were in
the main masala standing next to their parent
and learn how to behave in the masjid.
And this is something,
this is a small example of what's happening
on a big scale. Adams
treats women much better than many massages, but
there are Masjids now who actually
have rooms
sealed,
with with soundproof,
you know, sound barriers.
I mean, the the walls are made soundproof
and that's and they call it the cry
room
and that's where the, mothers are supposed to
be. What ends up happening is this mother
who has, let's say, 3 kids, even if
a mother has only 3, 3 kids at
with 3 year intervals, you are kicking this
woman out of the masjid
for about, let's say, 12 years of her
life. And if she's not welcome in a
masjid, what where does she get her knowledge
from if she is a stay at home
mom? And she can, of course. Yes. We
all can be super moms and go internet
classes. Yes. But the bottom line is, if
she's not welcome,
what ends up happening is the the mothers
are,
a lot of times, the primary tarbia givers
in the family and if they lack on
it because of lack of knowledge,
then they will not be able to give
tarbia, and our ummah is in this situation.
I personally believe because women were kicked out
of the massages around the world. And I
would like this message to be passed on
so that masjids can be more,
sister friendly and children friendly.
And it came to my mind that never
would the Rasool, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, tell
all the women with children, sister, it's better
for you to pray at home, or sister,
go in that corner and pray. Instead, they
may the prophet may have said may have
said that, sister, if you cannot concentrate,
then you pray at home in your in
your room, the one who doesn't have a
kid. Or maybe make a room in the
masjid for those who can't concentrate,
but not to kick the women out
the masjid. I I just want to say
to the sisters that who have been here
for the first time to Adams,
welcome to Adams. Bring your children. We love
to hear the sound of children.
All the the the fathers,
but also we require also we like you
to, as the sister said, to have your
child try to pray next to you and
to take care of the child.
Many people object me when I say it,
even some of the brothers.
Every time I said brothers,
if a child cries, have mercy on the
mother, don't get upset
because just look to what did.
When the child cries,
shortened the
The Surah,
he didn't say
sister, don't bring your children to the masjid.
We are fed up with this. You know,
stay home. You disturbed our kushu. Do you
think Rasool was not concerned about this kushua?
Or the sahabarullah
alaihi.
Brothers and sisters, the the masjid of Rasool
Allah was an open masjid for men and
women. They come to the masjid, they learn
the masjid, they,
confess with the Rasool Allah Wa Alaihi Wasallam
and do have recorded history and the
authentic history of a rusus salallahu alaihi wa
sallam life. And therefore, we all like really
that to be changed, the attitude especially some
brothers have very negative attitude of sister being
present in the masjid.
They many time recommended recommendation that we need
to have them disappear from the masjid and
I said brothers, I will not do anything
that Rosal Aslam have not done. The welcome
sister welcome to the masjid, children welcome to
the Masjid.
And
sister, what for the point that you mentioned,
and I do believe that,
part of raising good children
by having a friendly
message for youth,
for mothers,
for children.
I would like us to thank
I'm so I'm so sorry but I want
to add something. Yes sir. We agree 100
percent with him and measured but I would
like to add something. Of course we want
Masjid open to the youth without discussion
but we want the youth to be
with us in the Masjid
to learn,
to mature, to grow up.
Not
youth that they come to the Masjid to
play basketball
and leave
without learning anything, without finding new friends. So
it's it's it's a balance. We want sisters
and brothers to come to the Masjid but
also to respect the Masjid
the way that they come. There is there
is there is a non Muslim that come
to the Masjid, they
cover themselves properly than many a lot of
Muslims.
We want the children to come to the
masjid and we encourage the sister and we
encourage the the young and the youth and
the brothers. But also we want the children
to learn the adab of the masjid.
If the father or the mother sees the
child running and bothering everybody, it's very easy
just to teach them. So we don't want
to go to the to
the culture mentality.
Women have to stay at home. Children have
to stay at home. Youth, we are not
considerate a complete
human being. This is wrong. But also in
the same times, you want to do things
the right way. We want them to come
to the message Sister to be involved and
we want the sister to to participate. And
I wish today we have one of the
sisters here. It's issue. It's very important to
share their opinion.
But in the same times, we want we
want our our youth to be involved in
the message
and to really
There is no youth now and with us.
I think we can talk because they left
most of them.