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.