Waleed Basyouni – Is Sending Your Child To A Private Christian School Allowed to Avoid Public School-Ask The
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullah, welcome to a
new episode of Ask the Imam, a program
that we host at the Clear Lake Islamic
Center.
You can see the answers to your questions
on our YouTube channel.
If you want to ask a question, send
us an email at asktheimam, one word, at
themasjid.org.
That is asktheimam at themasjid.org.
As-salamu alaykum, Sheikh.
Wa alaykum as-salam.
We have a long question, and it's really,
it's a very difficult question for me to
read.
So I'm going to read it as it
was written.
So this sister is asking, is sending your
child to a private Christian school allowed, trying
to avoid public school?
The child was suspended from the Islamic school
in the area.
And regarding the Christian school, one of the
requirements is to take a class in religion,
studying the life of Jesus, peace be upon
him, based on the Bible.
And of course, a weekly service every Wednesday,
which requires also that the child will be
in the church attending that service every Wednesday,
I think, afternoon.
And then she's asking, is purchasing a Bible
allowed in this case?
So how do you tackle a question like
this?
No doubt, the most important thing to protect
and to take care of when it comes
to children is their deen, their faith, their
aqeedah, their belief, their creed.
And that's more important than any degree, more
important than any diploma, nor more important than
anything else, education, whatever.
So by putting your child in such environment,
I see there's a very high level of
risk for this child to be impacted and
confused, the least we can be saying, and
also to be participating in things which is
not allowed.
So if you tell me I'm going to
put him in a Christian school, but you
know what?
He's not going to be required to participate
in going to church or to pray to
Jesus or to services or to do some,
you know, theological studies and anything like that.
No, they will allow him to be excused
because some Christian schools do that.
Even in Middle East, I know people who
study in Christian schools and in Jordan, Egypt
and Palestine, stuff like that.
Here in some Catholic school, good private school,
but they will accommodate a Muslim or a
Jewish person, so they will respect their theology.
If that's the case, you know what?
Maybe we'll say if there is really need
for it, it's okay.
But with what you're describing, no, I don't
believe it's allowed for you to send your
child there, put him in public school, put
him in an online school, like homeschooling, you
know.
And this is a message to also to
the Islamic schools.
I'm not going to judge them because I
don't know why he was suspended.
Maybe he's not behaving good enough, but I
just want us in Islamic schools and Muslim
organizations to understand sometimes when we take a
strong decision like that, we might push people
to go to a very, very extreme, you
know, choice in life.
So I am for being following the rules.
I'm, you know, sometimes that's the right thing
to do, to dismiss somebody or to suspend
them, sorry, suspend a child.
But I hope this was done for the
right reason.
And may Allah make it easy for you
and your family to protect your child and
all our children.
She's asking about purchasing a Bible.
Purchasing the Bible.
You are allowed to purchase the Bible to
learn from it.
It's like any book of knowledge.
You purchase it for that purpose.
But if this been said, you have to
make sure that you have already a good
foundation and aqeedah.
Because when the Prophet saw Omar, and that
was the beginning of Islam, according to many
of the scholars, and Omar was looking at
like a chapter, like in his hand, part
of the Bible, and Bible in a general
sense, like it could be the Jewish Torah,
Old Testament.
Or you have a doubt about what we
have.
And that's because the Prophet wanted to protect
the religion from being mixed with anything foreign
to the message of the Prophet at that
time.
So there were strict rules.
After the Prophet died, we see there is
a leniency from the sahaba, later sahaba, involved
in like reading the books of Ahlul Kitab,
acquiring them and stuff like that.
But from this we learn something.
It's important for someone has to be, make
sure that you have a very strong foundation
in your being before you start looking at
other sources when it comes to theology and
aqeedah.
Very good.
That's the bottom line basically.
Yes.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Thank you very much for your questions.
We'll see you next episode.