Morad Awad – Lecture 04112022
AI: Summary ©
The importance of strong personality in shaping children for stability and confidence is emphasized, along with instilling parents' traits of ambition, courage, and humility in their children. The speakers stress the need for education to teach children to forgive others, raise children with stance of being confident, and change the timing and timing of Tar merg programs. The speakers emphasize the importance of not surprising children with weak personalities and instilling confidence in children before reaching their point of weakness.
AI: Summary ©
We praise Allah
on this blessed day of Yamanjumu'ah.
And we send our
praise and our peace
and blessings upon our noble prophet Muhammad alayhis
alayhi salatu wasalam. And I remind myself and
yourselves to fear Allah
As Allah reminded us of this in the
holy Quran when he said,
Oh you who believe,
fear Allah the way he should be feared,
and do not die except in the state
of submission to him. We ask Allah to
die in the state.
We ask Allah to be resurrected in the
state.
Brothers and sisters,
it's not
a coincidence
and it's not rare
for me to be asked certain types of
questions
in these times that we live in. I
mean, in these weeks.
As
there was a particular occasion
that we passed through in a day that
people here
celebrate
wrongfully,
which is this
the day of Halloween
with all that comes with it.
But I'm not going to talk about that
as we all should
be well aware of that and why
a muslim should not be celebrating
those satanic type of days
where they, You know, where that has origins
of satanic worship
and the likes. But what I will what
I will talk about today is
the questions that
parents ask me
on these types of days.
Many of us here are parents
and some of us here are children,
and some of us here are yet to
be parents.
And
the questions I often get
are
questions of how do I
get my children
to
not want to celebrate this type of occasion?
How do I get my children to be
different from their friends?
Or how do I get my children to
not surrender to peer pressure around them?
Everyone is doing something and we are telling
them to do something else.
Society norm societal norms are one thing yet
we are trying to raise them
to do something completely different.
How do we do so?
And why do our children keep bending?
Some ask me, why do our children constantly
want My children want gifts.
They want instant gratification.
They want
to be
extra gratified for everything that they do.
And the answer to that, my dear beloved
brothers and sisters, it's not a simple answer
but it is the topic of the khutba
that I'm going to give today.
So today I don't want to give an
answer
as to how to deal with this problem
that is recurring
and will continue to recur
because the root
cause is not addressed. Today, I will talk
about the root cause
and how to address it by
giving a vision
to parents
and future parents insha'Allah ta'ala
as to how to combat this issue.
Before I begin,
I want to make a very important distinction
between
children that are raised to be righteous
and children that are raised to be confident
and righteous.
So, righteousness
alone
in our time and in any time
Was not, is not and will not
be the way we should raise our children.
I'm not saying
being them being righteous is bad because we
all want to be righteous and we want
our children to be so as well.
But
as we are raising children,
one of the foundations that we need to
have in order for righteousness to be stable
is the foundation of confidence.
The foundation of strong personality.
Because if righteousness,
brothers and sisters,
comes
without a strong
fortified
confident personality,
then this righteousness will easily be swayed.
And we see the examples of this in
the in the sunnah where the prophet spoke
to little children.
And I will mention 2 examples
because if I continue to mention examples, the
khutba will get long and I was asked
to limit it to 30 minutes.
At the time
of the prophet
his cousin Al Abdulla ibn Abbas was a
child.
And in a famous hadith that we may
all know,
the prophet
pat on his head and told him, Come
here child. Let me teach you some words
and and I want you to remember them.
Did he tell him, Don't ever forget to
pray? No. Did he tell him, Eat with
your right hand? No. Did he tell him,
Fast the month of Ramadan?
No. Did he tell him, Come and do
hajj with me when I do No, no,
no. It wasn't any of these obligations
that parents tend to bombard their children with.
The Prophet
told ibn Abbas,
I am teaching you some words, so memorize
them child.
He said, Okay.
He said,
Preserve Allah and Allah will preserve you.
Preserve Allah and you'll find Him with you
all the time.
If you ask,
think of asking Allah first. Ask Allah first.
Only ask Allah.
And if you need help, first ask Allah
for help.
And know
And if the whole world were together
to benefit you with anything,
they cannot do so unless Allah already wrote
it for you.
And if
And know that if they all gathered, everyone
in the world were to gather to harm
you with anything,
they will not do so. Except if Allah
wrote it upon you.
The pens have been lifted and the scriptures
have dried, the ink has dried.
Your decree is there. Know this.
But I want to ask every single one
of us now.
Is there anything in what the Prophet
told this child
that requires him
to do something
like get up, pray,
go, give charity,
go and do this.
No. No. No. There was none of that.
It was all building his confidence from the
inside.
It was all about him
being proud to be Muslim, being confident in
his Islam,
knowing that Allah is with him despite who
is against him, knowing that the truth will
prevail
no matter what, and that the decree that
is written upon him will fall upon him
regardless.
It's all about confidence building.
The Prophet had
who had
his children,
his grandchildren, al Hassan wal Hussain radiAllahu ta'ala
a'hu.
And he didn't
tell them,
Come and pray next to me, or do
this or do that. No. But what was
narrated
about how he spoke to them was very
clear and simple.
He would grab Al Hasan,
radiAllahu anhu, and he would say,
And my son here, my son is a
sayyid. He's a noble man.
And Allah will use him one day to
bring and rectify together 2 great
people from amongst the Muslims. And he did.
Subhanallah.
This is instilling confidence my brothers and sisters.
And this is what's important.
Today,
the focus of the parents should be on
instilling the personality,
the strength in personality,
the confidence. And I do not confuse confidence
with high self esteem as I see that
being something that's being that's confused sometimes.
There's nothing virtuous about high self esteem.
As a matter of fact, high self esteem
can be perceived as arrogance.
But confidence, however,
is the combination of 2
noble traits.
2 noble traits which is
humility
and courage.
Having humbleness and humility
and courage.
The balance of those two
great qualities is what we call confidence.
And that is what we need to instill
in our children. Because if we do not,
if we only want our children,
Oh,
respect. Respect your parent. Do this. Okay. Go
pray. Okay. Mashallah.
My son or my daughter, they pray their
5.
They do this, they do that, they wear
their hijab, this girl wears hijab. The boy
doesn't miss
in the masjid. He's always in the masjid,
the lalhumabarik
and that's amazing.
But the moment a calamity befalls this child,
the moment they meet one bad friend, the
moment they go into a public school, or
into a university,
or into a workplace where there's a corrupt
environment,
that said, It's over.
They're done. The righteousness goes down in the
drain. And that
one environment is enough to skew everything that
the parent build from day 1.
And we're not saying that the parent is
wrong for doing so.
But
when
the person
is not confident in themselves and in their
faith and in what they believe in, then
they won't be able
to resist
the temptations of the world when it falls
upon them, brothers and sisters.
So we need to instill this insha Allah
ta'ala or else,
we'll see what we saw in the past.
The Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
did not die before he mentioned the people
that will be righteous with weak personalities,
weak character
and low confidence.
The Prophet
gathered the Sahaba one day and he said,
There will come a people
in the future.
Your salah, he's talking to who? Abu Bakr,
Umar, Uthman, Ali
He's talking to the 10 that were given
glad tidings of Jannah.
He was talking to them. He said, Your
salah There'd be a people after you.
Your salah is nothing compared to theirs.
Your salah is nothing compared to theirs.
And your siyam is nothing compared to theirs.
They read the Quran so much
but
it's only in their throats.
They recite it beautifully,
out loud, all night, in abundance, Allahu Akbar.
Their khatim, maybe everyday they do a khatim.
But guess what?
They pass through this deen, the way the
arrow
passes through its target
or passes through the boat.
See how fast it goes? They come in
the din and they're out.
Why?
They're weak
in personalities. They're very righteous.
They have the righteousness, the ability
to do so much good, to fast everyday,
to pray qiyam every night, to read the
Quran every 2 or 3 days. But
they're weak in personality and these people were
the Khwarej.
And the biggest evidence that they have weak
personalities
is that these
is
that
these there were there were 6,000 of them
in the outskirts of Iraq.
And they had broken away from the khilafa
at that time, from their rule and from
the imar of Ali bin Abi
Talib
And he was the amir at that time.
So he said, These people are castaways
and they are causing disruption to our harmony
and our security, and we need to fight
them. Abdullah ibn Abbas Who's
Abdullah ibn Abbas?
We just mentioned him in the beginning of
the khutwa. He's the one who the Rasul
instilled confidence
in. He's the one who understood
what types of people these are. So, he
told Ali ibn Abitale You
Ali, let me talk to these people. Just
give me one chance. That's all I need.
Give me one chance and let me see
what I can do with them. He went
for one day,
and he spoke to all the people. He
just said, Allow me to speak to all
of you. They said, the leaders of the
khawar said, Okay, Abra Abbas. You're a good
man. You can speak.
He spoke
for not so long,
and his speech
was enough to bring back 4,000 of the
6,000 Khawaraj.
4,000 of them completely left.
Completely left.
Why so?
Because they had no confidence.
They had the righteousness to do so many
good deeds, but the confidence, the foundation wasn't
there.
And if there's anything we learn from this
brothers and sisters, it's that we should focus
on this at a young age before they
have to meet the world and meet it
hard. So let's
stop
only focusing on developing the righteous deeds in
our children, but focusing
on
nurturing
this confidence in them, Insha Allah Ta'ala. And
I'll leave 3 simple points to do so
in the second khutbah.
Khutba.
Surah Allah
in the way we raise our children. Surah
Allah
in the way we
communicate with them because wallahi,
the great one of the greatest amanas we
have
are these children children that Allah
blessed us with.
Brothers and sisters,
there are 3 simple points that I will
share with you today
that if you focus on
will
nurture a confident child InshaAllah Ta'ala
so that they grow proud even if they're
not doing all the righteous deeds. They can
pray their 5 fardsalas
only without sunnahs.
They cannot pray a single rak'ah of tahajjud
or qiyam or even taraweeh in Ramadan.
Maybe they only fast during Ramadan. Maybe they
barely give sadaqa.
Maybe you invite them to go for umrah
and they don't want to.
Right?
Maybe they do all they don't wanna do
these extra things. But
with this, whatever they do, they do their
furud
When they're challenged by a teacher or they
meet a friend or they befriend someone who
is negatively influencing them,
They stand strong like a rock. They don't
move.
As a matter of fact, they in they
they affect everyone around them. But they themselves
don't get affected by anything.
Because of that confident foundation,
they were raised on bi'ismillahi ta'ala. The first
of the three points, brothers and sisters,
is to raise them with dignity.
Dignity is the first quality they need to
have in order to be in order to
be
righteous and confident at the same time.
So this means that
excessive
punishment,
degrading,
mocking,
cursing,
putting down, comparing with others, in front of
others. Wellai, sometimes
I see other, you know, see certain parents
there with me and they they say, Hey,
look. You know, my child is good. He's
not as smart as this one. But, you
know, this kid maybe he'll be He's not
gonna be a doctor, definitely. You know? Yeah.
Akhi, how dare you speak,
to your son in front of him or
to your daughter in front of her like
that.
Preferring each other or cursing at them
or excessively punishing them in a way that
puts them out, or even
criticizing them in public so that they look
bad in front of their friends, in front
of their uncles, in front of their aunts,
in front of their grandparents. People who these
children care
for their image in front of.
They care
how they look in front of these these
people.
Why
get them Why why let them lose their
dignity in front of them? Keep them dignified.
Because if they have it, they will preserve
it growing up. But if it's lost at
a young age, then their self worth is
lost and then after that they they'll be
willing to do anything.
The second
is modesty.
Modesty.
And the Prophet
said,
Modesty is
a
part of iman,
the strong part of iman. And someone might
ask, how is modesty going to raise a
confident person? Because brothers and sisters,
modesty is a quality
that
if it is in someone,
no matter what they do,
no matter what bad qualities they have, modesty
will fix it.
And no matter how far they get,
modesty will bring them back.
And no matter
what they
think
or how they perceive themselves, with modesty they
will be perceived
as someone who is righteous and someone who
is a good person, and that will ultimately
help them. So modesty
is like the insurance policy. It's the way
back no matter what. No matter what they
do in their life, modesty
for sure will bring them back. And that's
why
And the
third quality
to instill confidence in a child is to
teach them
to pardon others.
To teach them to pardon others. Because
you know how sometimes a parent
tells tells the child, Okay. Go
take revenge.
Oh, they hit you, you hit them back.
They did this, you do this back. They
you know, it's all the time it's not
No. There are certain situations
where you need to teach the child
how to pardon someone.
Someone took something from them. It was unjust,
you know. They took a little bit too
much chips from their chips bag.
Right? Or they shared a snack
or they bought them something. They took the
whole thing or they they borrowed something and
never gave it back. And the child has
something in their heart towards this other
person.
Teach them how to pardon.
Because the Prophet
said in the hadith,
There's 3 things that I swear by Allah
are true. 3 things.
1 of them
he
said, He said that pardoning,
pardoning others will only increase you
in honor and
dignity.
Imagine. By pardoning others,
you will only be raised
in honor.
Although it's perceived the other way around. You
think if you pardon khalz, you're weak.
Of course, pardoning has to come from a
place of power,
not a place of weakness.
Pardoning
is not when a person is forced to
pardon. Pardon is not when the foot is
on your neck, or you are already humiliated,
degraded, insulted. And then if you pardon, you're
only going to look weaker. That is not
what pardoning is. Pardoning is when you're capable
of taking revenge, capable of taking back what
your right is, capable of doing whatever you
want.
But you get to the point where you're
capable,
you make sure they understand you're capable and
then you pardon.
That is what pardoning is. And that is
what increases in the honor and dignity of
a person.
And with these three qualities, insha Allah, I
ask Allah
to increase our children,
the children of this community,
and the children
of this ummah in honor, in dignity, and
in confidence, and to instill in them a
confident righteousness
that will allow them to be beakers of
light,
and
and preachers of Islam, and people who are
not affected by the environments around them, but
only affect positively
those who are around them.
Still still, tadeeru. Make sure you fill the
rows in the back, brothers.
Anyone that's in the room in the back,
make sure you fill the the lines on
the left and the right, inshallah,
before starting a new one.
Just a couple of quick announcements, inshallah.
On Sunday, the time is gonna change. So
keep your eyes out for the the change
of salah timings
on that day or after that day Insha
Allah. And,
tonight, the tarbia program so far is still