Tom Facchine – Minute with a Muslim #066 – Should I Raise My Children Secular & Let Them Choose Their Own World View

			Some people think that you shouldn't teach your children of particular religion that you should
just, you know, teach them nothing or bring them up, quote unquote, in a secular way and let them
choose for themselves. There's a lot of things wrong with this. And first of all, is that, you know,
secularism is not a neutral space. It's not an empty space. You know, it's that relies upon a
particular definition of religion and a particular understanding of secularism, that's just not
true. Secularism is another group of values. It's another worldview. It has values. It is a
worldview among worldviews. So Islam has a worldview, secularism has a worldview, Christianity,
		

			various types is a worldview, etc. And so you're not retreating to a neutral space, and then letting
your child choose, you're actually replacing whatever indoctrination that you thought you were going
to give through a religion, you're replacing it with secularism, that's a different type of
indoctrination. It's a different type a different set of values. So there is no neutral space, you
have to decide. And the second thing is that, that sort of question, and that sort of line of
thinking is extremely individualistic, okay? We imagine that every single individual is just off by
themselves and morally autonomous. And so they should have some sort of completely free choice.
		

			Well, what is freedom? And what is choice? Right? Well, that's another conversation. But you know,
people and when you become a parent, I think you realize this, or most people, I think, that are
honest with themselves realize this, you actually have a duty, the nature of your relationship with
your child gives you a duty to save them from making the same mistakes that you make, right. And
when it came, when it comes to materialistic things, we would accept this right away. So for
example, if you were an alcoholic at one point in your life, or you were addicted to drugs, would
you stand back and just you know, let your child experiment with drugs or alcohol? No, you would
		

			probably try to drill into them the dangerous and try to do whatever you could to ensure that they
had better than you did write that they were a better person and in a better situation than you.
Okay, so what if you, you know, floundered around and you didn't know it was true? And then you come
across the truth, you become a Muslim, okay? Are you going to set your child back to square one and
have to relearn the same lessons that you learned the hard way, there would be no sense of progress.
And it would violate the duty that you have to your children, the next generation, there's supposed
to be a cumulative effect to human knowledge and to human experience, right. And so we don't set our
		

			children back, we don't start them out with a tabula rasa with a with a blank slate. There are some
things that they're going to have to learn for themselves, but we hope to give them a better life
than we had. And so if you believe that something is actually true, then you're going to try to
instill that truth in your child so that they are better prepared to deal with life than you were.
And if you're doubting whether to instill Islam or secularism and you think of it as a choice like
that, then all that reveals is that you don't really think that Islam is the truth. And so you need
to do some work on yourself and bring up your conviction or deal with some underlying doubts.