Mustafa Khattab – Our Kids Before Its Too Late
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
And I bare witness that Muhammad
is the seal of the prophets and the
final messenger
to all humanity.
Mashallah, in my opinion, has a very good
voice. It makes me forget half of the
football it is. Days. So
So today, inshallah, we will continue
our discussion about the problems of our youth
in Canada and in North America and the
West in general.
So to take care of these problems, you
have to start
You have to start at a very young
age.
To give them good education, to give them
manners, and to give them akhlaq.
So to solve these problems, you have to
start at at a very young age.
But most of the parents,
they always come to me with problems when
it is too late.
Believe it or not,
the imam is not a superman
or a spiderman or, for that matter, a
bad man. I'm just a man.
They always come to me when it is
too late thinking I have a magic wand
somewhere in my office. I'm gonna hit the
kid, and they'll become good again.
So the parents come to me, saying, for
example, my kid is alcoholic.
My kid is on drugs,
or my son is in jail,
or my daughter got married to a non
Muslim friend,
or my son is beating me at home,
or is raising his boys to me or
her boys to me at home. What can
I do?
So I tell him, sorry. It is too
late. There is very little that we can
do.
You should have studied a long time ago.
I'm not a Superman.
But, of course, I tried to do my
best,
but you should have studied a long time
ago.
So this reminds me of a very short
form. It's a beautiful one that I studied
at the last 25 years ago, and I
still remember this poem by Ahmed Shawty. It
says that a young girl with his father
her father were walking in the park.
Then she saw a crooked tree. The tree
was not straight. It was crooked like this,
falling on its side.
So the daughter said, oh, father, wait for
a minute. We can get a rope and
try to fix up this crooked tree.
So the father said, it is too late
now. The tree is very big. If you
wanted to fix it, you could have done
it when it was very young.
Sadly, very young. But now it is too
late.
Then the father concluded with this line, if
you don't fix
and teach Adam and Aflac to your kids
at a young age, it will be very
hard and very difficult when they grow up.
So it is very beneficial to start with
your kids at a very young age and
not to wait until it is too late,
then you come complaining.
There is this saying back home, when you
teach your kids at a young age, it
is just like writing on stone.
But when you try to fix them up
at a very young old age, it is
just like writing on the water. It It
will just disappear
in a minute or a few seconds.
So you have to give them akhla when
they are young.
It is your responsibility
on the day of judgement
that Allah would ask you,
your kids have no Islamic manners. Why? Why
didn't you teach them?
Your kids don't know how to pray. They
don't even know how to say al Fatiha
properly.
Why?
Sayyid will say, oh, Allah, I was busy
working 2, 2, 3 jobs. I was dry
I was a cab driver. I didn't have
a time.
So Allah would ask you,
why don't you take them to an Islamic
school and they will do the job for
for you?
Another excuse. Oh, Allah, I only made $500
a month. I didn't have money to take
them to the Islamic school.
Then Allah will ask you, why don't you
take them to the Masjid in the weekend?
They have free programs and free courses.
Then you will run into other excuses. And
this is something we humans are good at.
We never run out of excuses. We always
have excuses.
So the prophet
if you read in the sunnah, in the
authentic Hadid, he used to teach children at
a very young age.
He used to teach them rebadat,
how to know Allah
how to deal with the with the people.
He used to teach them Aga and Akhla
and manners.
And we'll give a few examples. If you
read in the Hadith of Abdullah ibn Abbas,
may Allah be pleased with him and his
father, Al Saheeh Tamili.
He said, I was a very little kid.
When the prophet, salaam,
then he said, oh, young man, the prophet,
salaam, is speaking, I will teach you a
few words.
Be mindful of Allah,
and Allah will always be with you.
If you ask,
ask Allah.
If you need assistance,
ask Allah to support you.
And know for sure,
if all humans were gathered to gather together
to benefit you with something, they will never
benefit you except with something that Allah has
written for you. And if they were to
gather together
to harm you with something, they will never
harm you with anything except with what Allah
has written for you. The matter is decreed
and closed.
He was the stepson of the prophet from
his wife, Umu Salam.
He said, I was eating with the prophet
one day, and the hadith is in Bukhari
and Muslim. So he said, my head was
all over the place, and I am a
kid.
So I was eating from here, jumping over
the plate, eating from here, and messing up
the whole thing. So the prophet said,
young kid,
say mismillah when you start eating,
and eat with your right hand, he was
eating with both hands,
and eat from the plate that is closest
to you. So the prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam, was teaching him manners at a very
young age.
So number 3, that the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam was always teaching adab and aflav
to the young kids, and there are hundreds
of examples in the sunnah there is no
need to mention.
The kids, they are like sponges. Whatever they
see, they imitate.
Kids are imitators.
If they see you praying at a very
young age
you know that kids, when you pray in
the masjid,
at their very young age, like 1 or
2 years old, they come stand next to
you and make salah and everything. Even when
you move your finger in the shahru,
they do it with both hands. I don't
know why. But they imitate everything you do.
But if you lie,
they will do the same thing.
If you smoke in the house,
don't be surprised if if they smoke, cigarette
butts in the house. They imitate everything you
do.
So all we need is aflav and good
manners
in the house, in the school, and in
the masjid.
Otherwise, if they see bad manners and bad
akhlaq, they imitate. This is something they're good
at.
And I gave the example of a masjid
in the US.
In
Ramadan, in the Jum'ah, the people, they disagreed
on which one of the 2 imams should
give the food.
So one group said, no. We like this
imam because they like his haircut.
And the other people know, they say, no.
We we want this imam because he speaks
our language.
So they had a big fight in the
Masjid. The people started fighting and screaming and
hallowing and bleeding in the Masjid. So one
of them just called 911
to stop the massacre in the Masjid and
the bloodshed.
So the police officer came,
and when the police officers stepped into the
Masjid, they started to walk with the shoes
on the carpet, the people got mad. Officer,
officer, haram, haram.
So the officer said, What? What is haram?
So they said, Walking on the carpet with
your shoes is haram, man. You don't know
this?
So fighting and screaming and bleeding in the
masjid is not haram, but walking on the
carpet with your shoes on is haram.
This reminds me of my favorite Somali
saying, Bastigal Baunu Lagim Marvisan Appa. Both of
them are the same thing. Does
Allah subhanahu wa'ala
So in Islam,
a son or a dul, they have rights
on their parents.
And these rights are mentioned in a story
from Muhammad Al Khattab radiAllaman.
An old man came to Muhammad radiAllahu anhu
and said, oh, Amir al Mu'mineen,
leader of the faithful,
my son has warned me. He raised his
voice to me or he hit me. He
did me something wrong,
So I want you to retaliate and punish
him. So the son said, Amir Al Uminim,
does the kid have rights on his father
or his parents in general? So Amir Al
Uminim said, yes.
So the son said, what are they?
So Omar
said, number 1, to choose
a righteous mother for you, a good mother
for you,
and number 2, to give you a good
name,
And number 3, to teach you manners and
akhlaq and ibadat and Muamlaq to the people.
So the youth said, bye, Allah.
He has he had not done any of
these.
Number 1, he made a woman who was
a pagan, Mushrikah.
She
used to worship the Islam, the idols.
Number 2, he didn't give me he didn't
give me a good name, like Muhammad or
Hassan or any of good these good names.
He gave me the name of John, and
John in Arabic means Abirow,
the Essay. Abirow.
Number 3, Balahi didn't teach me a flab
or manners. He didn't even teach me one
letter of the Quran.
So Umar al Khattab, radiallahu alanlu, looked at
the man and said, you have wronged him
before he wronged you.
So if you want to teach your kids
and to fix them up when they grow
up, you have to start at a very
young age. And don't wait until it is
too late, then you come to the shave.
Complain.
Because it is too late. There is nothing
to do.