Mustafa Khattab – Raising Kids Challanges And Solutions
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AI: Transcript ©
I bear witness that there is none worthy
of our worship except Allah
And I bear witness that Muhammad
peace be upon him is the seal of
the prophets and the final messenger to all
of humanity.
Whoever Allah
guides, there is none to misguide, and whoever
Allah
leaves to stray, there is none to guide.
Aliyomishallahuwah
Awal Jumafi
al Sanah.
Farasul Allah and yalalaha sanatan Mubarakat
alil Islamu al Muslimi.
So today is the first Jum'ah of this
year, 2017.
And I ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to
make it a blessed year for the community
and for Islam and Muslims. I know that
the winter break is still on, and the
students will go be going back to school
on Mondays.
So this is why I'm gonna talk about,
raising our children in this society,
among all the challenges that we face. I
gave a similar talk about 2 months ago
at the Anatolia Motivation Conference, but most of
you were not there, so I thought it
might be useful and beneficial to to share
some of the information
that I mentioned at that talk.
I started off with a story
about a guy,
who was a Tim Hortons,
and he was drinking coffee, and someone came
and
said, You Abdullah, your wife is giving birth.
So this guy dropped off the coffee, and
he started to run-in the street, he didn't
have a car, it was late 11
PM, and he couldn't wait for the bus.
So he started to run 2 or 3
minutes, and after 2, 3 minutes of running
he stopped and he said, SubhanAllah,
my wife is not 9 months pregnant, she's
only 3 months pregnant.
But he said, okay let me go and
check on my wife. He started to run
again 2 or 3 minutes, then he stopped,
and he said, wait a minute, what is
going on here? I'm not even married.
And he started to run again, and he
said, okay, let me go check on the
house, maybe there's something. He started to run
again 2 or 3 minutes,
and 200 yards before he could reach his
house, he stopped again and said, okay, what
happened here? Have I lost my mind? My
name is not even Abdullah.
So this is an example
of Al Ghafla, the heedlessness that some of
us live in, in in this world,
so we basically
know that there are some things that are
important, significant,
and precious in our lives, but we don't
care for them. For example, everyone knows that
salah is the number one priority in your
life.
But many Muslims don't even pray. Although this
is the number one thing that you will
be questioned about in the Day of Judgment,
as the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said in
the hadith, that the statistics show
that only 1% of Muslims in the West,
in North America and Europe go to the
masjid regular regularly.
For Jummah, about 10 to 15% of Muslims
go to masjids,
the rest don't really care, or they can't
go because they have something to do,
and for 25%
to 30%.
Right? So salah is the most important thing,
but some of us, or actually many of
us, don't pray regularly,
or they don't keep up their salah.
If I ask anyone here,
what is the most important thing in your
life?
And the number one reason why you left
your country,
you left your family, and came here. They
will save my kids
because this is the most important thing in
my life. I'm willing to sacrifice
everything and everyone in my life just to
give my kids a good life. This is
why I came here all the way, I
traveled
10,000,
15,000 miles to come here because, alhamdulillah, we
have some freedoms, we have some opportunities, and
this is a good place for our kids
to grow.
But do we really
give our kids quality time, we care about
them? They'll say, yes, we we pay a
lot of money, we buy them
laptops,
we take them to, daycare all the time,
we buy them clothes, we buy them food.
If you buy all these things, it doesn't
mean you're a good father
or parent, it means you have good money.
So this is what it means. Right? Because
sometimes we ignore some important things or components
in raising up our kids, we think that
it is as long as we take care
of the materialistic
things, our kids would be fine, they'll be
okay, they'll be good Muslims like Abu Bakr,
and Umar, and Uthman and Ayl.
So we have to keep all these things
in our minds.
So raising the kids here
is not an easy thing. I've been doing
counseling for so many years, there are so
many challenges.
Some of our kids, Alhamdulillah, by the help
of the Tawfiq of Allah, they are on
the Surat al Mustaqim, they are doing a
good
job. They go to school, whether Islamic schools
or the public schools, they're good Muslims, alhamdulillah,
some of them memorize Quran, they have good
akhlaq.
Right? But there is a significant
number of our children
who,
you know, get misled
by all the distractions
and the temptations around them. And again, I
know because all the problems come to my
office all the time, and I deal with
this, and some parents come to me and
complain.
In the US and Canada, people come to
my office.
My kids don't listen to me.
My kids always challenge me, my kids talk
back to me, and
my kids are not practicing, which is the
worst level. My kids are not practicing Islam.
They, you know, I try to teach them
to pray, I take them to the Masjid,
they don't listen, they don't want to pray
because they think it's too much for them.
They want to play with their iPads the
whole day.
They want to watch
cartoons the whole day. They want to play
video games the whole day. When it comes
to the 3 or 4 or 5 minutes
for Namaz, this is like too much for
them. Like,
why you always pressure me?
Or in some worse situations, I'm gonna call
911 because you're bothering me. I've heard some
situations.
And once they go to high school,
it gets even worse. Sometimes it gets out
of hand. Your kids, some of them,
again counseling problems, some of them they start
dating,
doing drugs, especially if they go to the
public system,
and I'm not saying that it is all
bad, but they they have friends.
And their friends, their values are some of
their values are totally different from ours, and
this is why they run into problems.
And some youth, like in one case in
the US, a father showed me an email
from his friend to his friend, that he
was telling his friend that once I hit
18 I'm gonna leave the house, I'm gonna
leave Islam, and live my life.
And SubhanAllah, when we give shahadas, we have
a good Dawah team in the Masjid, we
give shahadas to so many people,
and they come to Islam because they see
the discipline and the beauty of Islam,
and we see some of our kids, they
think when they leave Islam it will give
them freedom.
And we see 100 and 1000 of people
taking shahada, and some of our kids they
leave because they think this will give them
freedom. Pray 5 times a day, fasta,
they think this is too much for them.
So these are some of the challenges.
So
our kids spend most of their time
either at home,
or
at the school,
or in the masjids, and and so on
and so forth. So at home,
this is the truth, this is the reality,
most of us we don't have time for
our kids.
If you're new to Canada, you have to
work 2 or 3 jobs
to pay for everything, the house, the rent,
the car, the insurance, the shopping,
your kids' education, and on top of that
you have to send money all the time
to your family back home, because your mom
needs to buy
like something, or she needs to go for
Hajj, or she needs an iPad.
We all live this reality, this is the
problem. So you need to work all the
time, and some of us, some of the
parents, even if they don't that work that
much and they have time,
they don't have the educational background to take
care of their kids.
And some of us still speak English with
a with an accent, and our kids, Mashallah,
they are born and raised here, they are
advanced in their level of English, and sometimes
they make fun, and and all these things,
and sometimes we lose the connection because of
the age gap.
So this is the reality, we either don't
have time for them, or we don't have
the religious or academic qualifications to help them.
Especially if they go to the public system.
If they go to Islamic schools, alhamdulillah,
or if they go to the public system
at least in the weekend,
Saturday, Sunday some of them go to the
masajid, they have programs
for Islamic Studies, which is okay Alhamdulillah.
The second place is the school. They spend
most of the time with their friends at
school, and this is the place where they
get most of the influence because of the
peer
pressure.
Again, I'm not criticizing the public system or
anything.
Yes, they teach them discipline, respect for time,
and so on and so forth,
and secular things like math and science and
so on and so forth, but their religion
is completely out of the window.
They don't teach about God, they don't teach
about religion. This is something you have to
learn on your own.
But sometimes you get influenced regarding Christmas, they
talk about Christmas, of course, they talk about
Halloween, they talk about Valentine's, all these things
in the system.
And you have friends
who have values that are different from yours,
they have no problem with drinking, dating, doing
drugs, some of them. I'm not saying all
of them.
And even the educational system itself, like 2
3 years ago we had this debate about
the new * education,
your kids go to school from grade 1
to grade 8 or whatever, and they start
to teach them about
physical education and and things. Yes, there are
some important things you need to learn about
your body, and about maturity, and so on
and so forth. We studied some of this
stuff at Al Azhar
in terms of purification,
and so on and so forth,
but there are some things that are age
inappropriate,
and who is teaching them? Like, the perspective
is totally different. Like, in their perspective, yes,
they teach, for example,
at at certain age you can do whatever
you want, you have the freedom, once you
are 18, whatever, but take precautions
so other things will not happen. In our
faith, you don't do it, period. Totally different
perspectives. They're totally different. So this is why
when I meet with someone from the board
of education,
the district district Board of Education, I tell
them,
yes, it is good if the students learn
about some of the things related to maturity
and so on and so forth, but they
should be taught, at least to Muslim students,
from a Muslim perspective, because they are totally
different things. And this is something we did
in Edmonton. The schools used to invite us
to teach Muslim students about maturity from a
Muslim and filthy perspective, and that was very
successful.
So this is another challenge.
When they go to the masjids, our kids,
the great majority of masjids in North America,
and this is according to recent studies,
more than 60% of masajid in North America
don't have
qualified imams, or professional imams. They are run
by volunteers,
and this is why the communities are always
divided
because you don't have someone who is an
authority leading the community, it is just a
volunteer guy, so people don't listen to him.
And they don't have the qualifications to teach,
so people don't give much weight to what
they say. So some of these imams, they
don't speak the language, for example, of the
youth, they don't talk the talk or walk
the walk, so they don't connect with them.
And some of these volunteers they think that
the projector
or,
the internet is religious women, hamalish shaitan is
horrible. Harambeelah. So they don't use it, and
this is why they lose touch with the
community, especially with the youth.
Some of us,
especially those
of an older age,
especially in I've been in many places.
Most of the boards
in North America, they are,
overwhelmingly
old age. In many cases they don't allow
youth to join the board, or some sisters
to have a voice. This is the sad
reality in many of the boards in Masjid
in North America, and this is part of
the reality. Some of us when we come
to the Masjid, and I've seen it, we
see a youth or a little kid in
the Masjid, we go crazy. Oh, he's gonna
ruin my life and make me miserable. Go
back or leave the Masjid.
Especially,
I've seen cases in Allah, in other places
not necessarily here,
where a kid will come to the Masjid,
and they have a certain picture on their
clothes,
Justin Bieber, or whatever,
and some of us go nuts.
This kid came to the Masjid, it means
that there is some goodness in them. Because
there are thousands
who are roaming the streets, they never come
to the Masjid. This kid came a long
way, so we should welcome them and correct
them in a very good way. But to
kick them out and say leave, what is
this haram, your fasubs, zindeel,
what is this? We're we're kicking them out.
This is not the way to approach them,
and this is not the way to teach
them. And subhanAllah, sometimes we don't lead by
example when the youth come to the Masjid
and they see us behave, when we raise
our voices in the Masjid and fight over
small issues.
Especially when they don't have a, qualified Imam
in the Masjid. If you go to it,
like, Edmonton,
Alberta in general, or if you go to
British Columbia, they buy 7,000,000, $10,000,000
Masjid,
and they have beautiful carpets,
beautiful chandeliers,
but they cannot afford to have an imam.
This is why the communities never grow.
They never improve in any way. They always
fight over different decisions about expansion, about having
a school. They always fight. The communities are
always divided.
Before the Prophet
built the Masjid in Madinah,
the Imam was already there, Rasulullah SAW. So
the Imam existed before the Masjid was even
built.
So,
when they don't have an authority to decide
in the disagreements in the Mas'id, and the
people fight, especially older generations,
our kids look up to us and they
see, this is not a nice place to
be because I'm kicked out all the time,
and I see people fighting over decisions,
like for example, the fight over the beginning
of Ramadan.
Should we go by the calculations or the
moon?
If Tara if Ramadan is tomorrow,
and we are going to pray Taraweeh
8 raka'ah or 20 raka'ah, another fight.
A third fight, are we going to finish
Quran in Ramadan or just thank
you. Are you tomorrow or the day after?
Calculations or the moon? Our kids look and
they see all these problems and the tensions
we have. And I give the example of
a friend, an imam from the US in
Texas, he said this is a true story
that happened many years ago, 1st night of
Ramadan,
and everyone was there, and the kids were
there for the 1st night of Taraweeh,
and they had a fight in the Masjid.
Because some,
they said, Yeah Habibi, we want to pray
a Taka'ah and go home and eat Mapluva
and Halaoyat,
and take it easy.
And some say, no brother, we have to
do the 20 raka'ah, this is a special
time, which is is correct, alhamdulillah.
The Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam, anyway, he
didn't do more than 11 raka'ah. Inside Ramadan
or outside of raka'ah, Ramadan. It,
salah and with 3 rakah and khalas. But
it's a special time if you want to
do more 20, 50, Alhamdulillah. It's a it's
a golden opportunity.
If you want to do 4 or 8
or 12, Alhamdulillah.
It's a it's a Sunnah, it is not
an obligation, so we take it easy.
So those who said 8, and those who
said 22 or 20, they started to fight
in the Masjid.
Chairs, and baseball clubs, and you know how
Muslims fight, weapons of mass destruction.
Big problem.
15 minutes and, you know, people were falling
down and some were bleeding, and the kids
were screaming, and the sisters were saying Takbeer,
and the brother was saying Jihad.
Big problem.
Eventually someone decided to put an end to
the fight, they called the police.
So police came 30 minutes through the fight,
the police had never been into a masjid
before, so they walked inside the carpet, like
on the carpet with their shoes on.
Now the 8 rakam Muslim, and the 20
rakam Muslims were both mad at the police,
what's wrong with you, haram? Like,
How dare you walk in the masjid with
your shoes on? So walking with your shoes
on is haram, but fighting and bleeding and
taking asra and jahala in the masjid
Come on man. What kind of example do
we give to our children? We have to
lead by example. I'm not saying that all
masajid are bad.
These are some examples that exist, and this
is the reality, and our kids look at
this, and they learn, and they see, and
they say, well, I feel like I'm not
welcome in this place. They don't allow me
in boards, they don't ask me for my
opinion, and in many cases they don't have
programs for me, for the youth or the
children
to learn about the din. This is the
sad reality.
What is the solution?
What is the solution? Because I know some
of you feel bad right now. So what
is the solution? The solution is, I'll give
you some points from Islam, from the Quran
and hadith, and allay they are effective.
Number 1, you have to give quality time
to your kids. If you are busy every
day, at least on your day off,
give them your quality time, like 1 hour.
Play games with them,
tell them stories,
talk to them, eat with them.
How are you doing at school?
You know,
things like this. Connect with them, build trust
with them.
And I think one of the most important
things that you need to do with your
kids
is spend twice as much time with them,
and spend half as much money on them.
Because
again, buying them laptops and Ipads, and taking
them to daycare, buying them clothes, and, the
fanciest food, going to places,
this would not help them become good Muslims.
It would help them look good,
but from the inside,
spiritually, you are not helping them in any
way.
We are
we have a physical component, like the body,
which we take care of most of the
time. We feed them
nice clothes, we take them to the YMCA
to play.
But when it comes to what is inside,
the spiritual
thing, the spiritual component, most of the time
we don't care take care of it. So
a human body is like a computer. You
have the hardware,
which is the body of the computer,
then you have the software
or the operating system like Windows or Apple,
different
This is what we need to take care
of. What is inside? So we take care
of the outside, the shell, we need to
take out what is inside.
You teach them.
The best thing you can leave to your
children is good adab, as the prophet
said in the hadith.
You heard of the story
of Al Mansur Al Khalifa when he became
Khalifa, Muqaddil ibn Surayman, a scholar came to
him.
So, Mansur the khalifa said, okay, give me
nasiha
for my children. What should I do with
them? So Al Muqatil, which was one of
the biggest scholars, said, should I tell you
nasiha, give you nasiha based on something I
heard from someone else, or something I saw
with my own eyes? He said, no, something
based on what you saw with your own
eyes. So he said, Umar ibn Abdul Aziz
radiAllahu with a khalifa,
when he passed away,
he left 11 children,
and he left
18 dinars.
That's not a big amount of money. So
they used half of that amount, 9 dinars,
for his kafan and for his janaza funeral,
the rest was given to his 11 children,
each received less than 1 dinar,
but he gave them good Aflaq,
good Islamic education.
He got someone to teach them about Islam,
so they were ready from that aspect. A
good relationship with Allah, and a good relationship
with the people.
He said,
Abdul Malik ibn Marwan,
another khalifa, when he passed away, and I
was there,
he left 11 children,
and he left for them, for each of
them more than a 1,000,000 dinars,
but he didn't have time to teach them
anything, or nothing.
They were just playing the whole day, he
didn't teach them nothing. All he left for
them was money.
Alhamdulillahi
tried to secure their future, but he didn't
leave them good education.
He said,
After many years, on the same day in
the market, I saw one of the children
of Umar ibn Abdul Aziz who received less
less than 1 dinar by Guadad and Guadaflah,
giving a 100 camels fee Sabi Illah, charity.
Because Allah gave him.
And one of the children of Abdul Malik
ibn Marwan, who received more than a 1000000
dinats, golden pieces,
begging people for food in the market. Why?
Because he was a gambler, no aflak, he
lost all his money, he started to beg
people for food.
So if you leave good Adam and akhlaq
for them, Allah
will take care of them, and so Allah
I'm gonna kindly ask you to,
request you to move forward because the people
are waiting on-site, a lot of people.
Move up a bit, a lot of people.
So the Prophet
used to teach the children in his family
about adab and about akhlaq.
And you know about Abdullah ibn Abbas when
he was a little kid, 5,
And he said, he told him, Look at,
if everyone came together to harm you, they
cannot harm you with anything except what Allah
has written against you. And if they came
altogether to benefit you, they can't except with
what Allah has written for you. Everyone knows
the hadith. And the Prophet said, teach them
salah when they are 7, and so on
and so forth. Everyone knows the hadith. We
know from authentic a hadith that the Prophet
used to teach
the children in his house,
Hassan wa Hussain and his other grandchildren,
the last ayah from Surah Isra. This in
the books of Sira and the books of
Hadith. He used to make sure that they
memorize this ayah.
He made sure that each and every one
of them
memorized
this Al, all the children in the house.
They basically this verse, the last one, Ayah
111
from the end of Surah Isra, talks about
tawkidu fa, there is no other god, and
so on and so forth. So he was
taking time to teach them about the relationship
with Allah, and the relationship
with the people. Like Umar ibn Salamah, when
the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam told him,
You gulam samillah, waqulbi ameenik, waqulbi madik, say
Bismillah when you eat, and eat from what
is in front of you, and so on
and so forth. So the Prophet SAW Alaihi
Wasallam was actually teaching children and he was
giving them time, and teaching them Quran, and
teaching them akhlaq and so on and so
forth. One of the most effective things that
you can do with your children
is make du'a for them. Because even if
you give them quality time, and you send
them to the best schools, this is not
a guarantee that there will be a righteous
Muslim. Because Hidayah comes only from Allah. And
everyone knows the story of Nuh, his son
lived with him for 100 of years, and
he died as a kafit, and so on
and so forth. Hidayah comes from Allah. And
this is why As Salihun, Ibadur Rahman,
they make dua for their children in the
Quran.
At the end of Surah Al Furan, the
ayah I recite in the beginning,
to the children about tahid. And this is
why in the story of Yusuf alaihi salaam,
many years after he was taken away from
his away from his father, and he was
put in jail, he left at the age
of 12,
but he had the knowledge of tafid, and
this is why when he was in jail
with the 2 prisoners, he was he a
whole page, he was teaching them about tafid
and about Allah
He learned this when he was young,
not when he was old. So he was
learning all these things.
I'd like to conclude with this, beautiful story.
From one of the scholars, his name is
Abu Ayyub,
Suhail al Razi. He's different from Al Fakhr
al Razi al Mufassir.
So Abu Ayyub,
al Razi
was a little kid. He was 4 years
old. His mom took him to the Rashidun
in Iraq, in Baghdad,
to learn from one of the biggest scholars
of the time. So he was trying to
read Fatiha, it was very difficult for him.
He was making mistakes in Tajweed,
in Arabic, in Tashkil. It was very difficult
for him. So eventually he gave up and
he said to me, Chisha, how can I
learn it? It's so difficult, I can't.
So the Sherif said,
Is your mom still alive so she can
make dua for you? He said, yes. His
mom made dua for him, and according to
this story,
Abu Ayub
Arazi
said Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala opened the doors
for me by the barakah of the dua
of my mother.
And for 20 years he was learning, he
became a big scholar of hadith and fiqh,
and so on and so forth. He became
the most popular scholar of Iraq at his
time. He said after 25 years, I was
in Iraq in Baghdad teaching in the biggest
Masjid.
His Shaykh
from when he was 5 years old, 4
years old, came to visit the to visit
Iraq.
So he said, my Shaykh came to the
Masjid, he didn't recognize me because now I
have a beard, I have the nice clothes,
I look like a prince, he didn't know
me. And I was teaching and people were
impressed and everyone, mashAllah, was excited,
so my old Shaykh
came to me after my talk and he
said,
How can I have,
you know,
excellent knowledge like you? So he said, I
was about to tell him,
is your mom still alive so she can
make dua for you? The same advice he
gave me,
I was trying to tell him that, so
I just said, Allah will will will give
you. So this is the barakah of Dua
for your children, we ask Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala to make our children good Muslims, and
we need insha'Allah to help them love and
learn Islam, and this is the best way
to connect them with their religion, and And
if there is any program Insha'Allah in the
Masali that are on you, make sure at
least in the weekend they join. Tomorrow Insha'Allah
from 12 PM to 7 PM we have
the main gate leadership program in this masjid
from 12 to 7 PM.
Ages,
grades, j k to grade 8. So make
sure inshallah they come, we have excellent speakers,
we have food for them, we'll take good
care of them inshallah.
And also, January 14th,
we're starting a professional Saturday school here in
this masjid for Torah and Islamic Studies,
ages 6 to 14, and it is going
to be from 1 PM to 6 PM.
So if your kids are not on any
program, make sure inshallah they come and benefit
from this knowledge. We ask Allah, Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala, to give us the best in this
life and the best in the life to
come, and we ask Allah, Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala,
to bless our children and make them good
Muslims