Raising a Multicultural Family with Love

The honor to introduce our next speaker, Xu Fei, Brahim is joining us from Perth, Australia, I believe, very early morning, I think 4:15am I believe, yes, I've come to realize it's getting a little bit before fragile in shot loss. So from Alex up from all of us, y'all was wondering, I wanted to make sure that we don't interrupt your your father each other. But like, have a favorite joining. I have a quick intro, if you don't mind. I'll just quickly go through that and then we'll give you the platform inshallah. So,

actually, I met him

as part of one of the aura groups. We met a couple of times. And I hope that we meet again soon. And

so, as a principal of aalameen College birth, and also Islamic champion of Curtin University and the University of Western Australia. He's a specialist in spirituality and put on study of theater, film and TV, with scholars from Hejaz and Asia. Mashallah, he is sought after by Muslim and non Muslim organizations and does not come with that again for attending this is also very, he educates on domestic violence, misogyny, gender discrimination, Child Protection,

disability and mental health

was also awarded West Australian multicultural Community Service Award for individual excellence and hamdulillah. He's also written a few books, even an author of love stories from the Quran, tears of the prophets of Salaam, Jews and a summary of the Quran.

So welcome again. And just like a fan for your time today

on Mikey Redick fi comm just before we begin, I just wanted to know what was the time that we had allocated for the talk how just so that I can keep my face a bit in mind as well. Yes, so about 30 to 40 minutes of, of speech in Charlotte, followed by about 20 minutes of questions and answers. Okay, we'll do our best inshallah. It might be a little bit shorter than that just due to the coming prejudiced child. All right. Alhamdulillah Hamza Shekar, in WA Salatu was Salam O Allah say you didn't want to study and so you didn't want to be you know, have you been to Mohammed in Salalah? Who it who either early he was like me he was sending to Sleeman kathira

La Ilaha Illa enters of Hana Can you confirm in our volume in Urbana, Urbana, in

fact of Namah shahidi we always begin with the praise of Allah subhanho wa Taala we send our prayers and now we're peace and salutations upon our Nabhi Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, we testify that none is worthy of worship of Allah and that I will never use of Allah Why do you send him as his worshiping slave and final messenger? I always command myself in you and beginning and to be conscious and aware, fearing and loving and hoping in the mercy of Allah Subhana Allah

and Allah subhanho wa Taala commands us in the Quran by saying Yeah, are you Hello, Dina and topo la Hakata RT O you who believe fear Allah subhanho wa Taala the fear the consciousness the awareness that he is most deserving of you? one atom Alterna Illa enter Muslim moon and do not depart this worldly life in any condition other than a willful voluntary submission to Allah. So again, I pray that Allah subhana wa tada makes the gathering that we have, although it is virtual, although it's from you know, so Pamela are different time zones, different continents, one that is pleasing to Him and one that is fulfilling the aims in the tradition in the Sunnah of our interview, Muhammad

sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, I wanted first to congratulate

our your sisters and brothers who convened this,

this conference on parenting. And I thought it was a really important kind of discussion to have, that as men that we kind of get together and we speak about fatherhood. And we speak about being the right type of role models, the right ideals that we seek to instill within our children within our homes, within our communities, that we kind of set a tone within ourselves within our households and hope that it reverberates and that it cascades broader than us into our broader Islamic communities and and our neighboring communities, those who are familiar with our Islamic tradition and those who are not. It's important for us to take ownership and to take stock of what it is that we feel is

important for us first rather than be worried about

when other people are assuming about us and that's one of the first places that i wanted i guess to begin that many times

we are very reactionary to other people's sensitivities and sensibilities so we want to parent our children or we want to rear our families or guide our families through the eyes and the lens of what we believe people see of us and what we believe people are judging on us you could see this to pamela as you walk through the shops right a young child wants to buy something you know they're three four or five years old and they come to the mom they're holding in the mom says no no no we're not going to buy it so the mom might take it out of their hand and put it back on the rack and the child gets upset and the child falls down on the ground and starts crying and it's at this point

where the mother kind of looks around the father kind of looks around and it's now a source of embarrassment for them rather than having the interest of what is best for their child at that moment it's now more about i need to show others that i'm a strong parent i'm a disciplining parent i'm not going to let this kid get away with it so you'll see you know the posture will change a finger may be pointed a voice may be spoken they'll walk away from their child and say you better come here right now you know all of these kind of mannerisms are not normally the first instinct that a parent would have with their child if they were in an environment that was putting the child

first or their family considerations first or their ideals as a muslim first

the topic that was chosen for me and just qumola hair for this is raising a multicultural family with love now so kinda love there's a lot of words in that sentence that need to be unpacked

you know multicultural is a powerful world word it means different things to different people though and it deep means different things in different contexts and it's used

in different ways by those who seek something from it

and the other word of course is the word love and though that word love is also a powerful word it's a spiritual world it's a word it's a word of a baddha of servitude of endearment of sacrifice of love to not the one who is an object of love but the one who is beyond them allah subhana wa tada and in sha allah i hope over the next 20 minutes as we spend a little bit of time that we can kind of speak a little bit about those the bridging the gap between those two words and bringing them in together and the final of course word is the word family and that's the word i wanted to begin with first so i wanted to speak about the concept of family that we have as muslims in the koran so in

the very beginning i wanted to establish that there is no ideal family so if you were to look at the hold on and you would see that there isn't a box that allah asks us to fit into that if you want to be a muslim family you need to fit yourself in this box this is it this is this is what an islamic family looks like that's not the reality there are multiple multiple examples of different types of families that are structured in the form on that are viable and other families that are not viable healthy and unhealthy and all of them are structured in a way that is meant to speak about relationships so one of the things that i like to talk about is that the foreign is a relationships

book it's a book about how to live with other people and how can it not be when allah subhanho wa taala says that he sent us in this earth was stephen dafina feel that you are those who give the earth and inherited it and pass it on to those who will come after you meaning that my job and your job as holy allah even odd is that we are those who maintain the earth without corruption lack of sudo fill out the banda hustler he had that we maintain the earth the way it's been given allah subhana allah tells us and sort of get in there john the man of the xena atlanta blue whom are you whom as i know that i created this earth and i placed them on it and i put in this earth xena a

beautification so that they may become acquainted with who have

them is best in deeds or your home asset or amma who have them that their deeds is best within themselves and the race that you and i have is within ourselves not in consideration to others so this earth is meant to be something that you and i

find our place and our time and our neediness and our contentment and our fidelity with each other in terms of relationships everything in the form and everything in our deen is built upon relationships the relationship we have with allah subhanho wa taala this vertical relationship we have with a lot the horizontal relationships we have within society and accountable for for those who are nearer to you in blood in lineage in laws in marriage in business in friendships in community those who are closer to you have a greater right upon you and you have a greater right upon them that you will be of an elevated more questions status in front of allah in how well you

fulfill those obligations and duties so if you were to look into the hole and into this concept of family you would find that every teaching moment of the quran is a family moment so whenever allah some kind of went to allah wants to lead a through an ns an authoritative process that allah is going to lead us to this is how you should live your life allah is going to give us examples of the right lifestyle and how you have plenty of other good lifestyle in comparison to a lifestyle that is wretched for men out there and victory for in their level marriage on dunka the one who turns away from the remembrance and the reminder that was meant to adjust your life for them will be a life of

of difficulty where are these lessons taught they are taught in those families structures and relationships so the book that one of the books that i've written is called love stories in the quran and it's about the love stories in the quran that discuss some of the family relationships that are found in the quran some of the different moments where allah has shared these relationships and if you give me just you know a couple of minutes i thought i'd just to to set the stage for our discussion if you were to look at the families of the quran if you were to say you know i want to see a reflection of my unique household as being found in the quran allah tells us no bronwyn and

rob nellie nurse if you have them for animal cruelty method i've given in this plan as similitude a parable a metaphor an example of you know something that can be found as an example in this foreign in all circumstances so you're like okay well i have a very unique kind of life i have a unique kind of makeup in my home really does the foreign address and well let's take a look so if you want to see a righteous man and a righteous woman who come together with righteous children you could see the example of prophet ibrahim and his wife slaughter and their son is hard but that same man who is a devoted father who lives with his wife who raises his son is hard you can also see him as a

righteous husband who is absent from the life of his wife and his other son his smile and hairdryer so he's a fly in fly out he's a come into the household depart from it he's the you know he's the father who is not present in the home every day of the year he's the one who's coming and going due to the circumstances of life and that's the example of prophet ibrahim alayhis salaam with headjam and his marine he's still the same righteous father but he's now found in a different relationship style and one ideal family and the other ideal family are not in contradiction to the spirit of righteousness that is being taught amongst both of his children and shared with both of his wives if

you want to see the example of a righteous man with a wretched woman you see the example of noah and his wife or the example of lord and his wife if you want to see the opposite example the example of a righteous woman who is under the tyranny and the strife of this desk pot and a tyrant of the most vile of human beings you see asya immoral to fiddle around as the wife of pharaoh who's under his tyranny if you want to see the example

of a father son relationship that is positive there's ibrahim and it's mariela brahim and his half if you want to see that relationship of a father

Son that is toxic when the sun is righteous and the father is immoral. You see the example of aza in his relationship to the Great Prophet of Allah Ibrahim, who seeks to lead his son away from the truth. If you want to see the inverse of that, if you want to see a righteous father and a disobedient, rebellious, disbelieving, hateful son, you find the example of Noah and his son who disbelieves in Allah, Who rebels against the truth, and who maintains an evil status as is condemned by Allah in the Quran. If you want to see the example of a single father, who's raising up daughters, there's Luke and his daughters, if you want to see the example of, you know, sisters, who

are looking after an ailing father, who have to go out into the world to work and work hard and, and provide for their household because they have no other means to survive, except by them going out into the workforce, although they don't want to as young women, you see the two daughters of medion, who one of them would later become the wife of Musa alayhis salam. If you want to see the example of you know, a son, who is,

you know, inheriting his father's righteousness and inheriting the command of leading people to good You see, Suleiman inheriting it from the wood Well, when he first saw a man with a wound, if you want to see the example of Prophet

zekeriya, and yet here, where they are staunch in the truth, even though it costs them their life, there is the statement of the prophets I seldom. yahia Shaheed IGNOU Shaheed yeah here is a martyr the son of a martyr because both of them were put to death for standing their ground against the the corruption that people wanted to enter into the land. So you see these righteous examples if you want to see the example of brothers who cooperate together in good, there is Moosa who asks Allah for his his brother Harun to assist him in the journey to an island. And if you want to see the opposite, where you see brothers who cooperate in wickedness, against one of their own, you see the

brothers who cooperate against use of Allah has set up

all of these and many, many others, you know, Ibrahim alayhis salaam marries a woman who is not of his culture, who does not of his language, in had earlier said, you know, there are so many different complex relationships and, and that which is not seen in the portal and is then clarified and established in the sooner and in the tradition of the Prophet Mohammed Salah Lo, it was seldom. So what you find then is that the prophets of Allah, how do you ascend them in his capacity in his lifestyle, you see that he becomes a great example in the relationships and in the in the wives that he took on peace and blessings be upon him. He married a woman who is far older than him. He married

a woman who is younger than him. He married a woman who was previously married with children, a woman who was previously married with children and now widowed, a woman who was divorced. He married a woman who did not speak his language and was from a different culture. He married a woman who was of a different faith who entered into Islam. He married a woman who was darker in color and lighter in color. He married a woman who was

solo and he was sending more of the alone didn't want meaning upon the wives of all the prophets. I send them our mother, the mother of the believers, he married women, who he had children with. And he married a woman who women who he did not have children with. He married some Allah who sent them into a different tribal structure than what he was familiar with into a different culture than when he was familiar with and he married from with his own household and from his own culture of what age he married those who were family members who were cousins to him, and he married those who were not from his tribe and not from his family, and culture. All of that was to kind of give us that there

is not one ideal family, and I thought that was an important place to start. The second concept that I wanted to solidify was the concept of multicultural, multicultural, multiracial, multi ethnic, multi lingual. We're not things that were ever seen as being strange in the lifestyle of the prophets of Allah or in our Navy.

Allah How do you sell him and his will have his lifestyle. In fact, what you find is that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam

was one who broke down those kind of cultural stigmatization, and the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam would say ladies that laugh up Lily Arabi and allege me that there is no virtue to an Arab over a non Arab.

Over over Hiroshi over a non Qureshi over a person from Mecca to a person from Medina. And I want you to understand that the cultures between these two places was very different to each other. One of the you know, one easy way of highlighting this is the hadith of Mr. Milkha Guevara the Allahu anhu. Remember the Allahu anhu He says, peace and blessings be upon me. I mean, he says natinal

Allah for age we the people of courage, the people of Mecca, couldn't enter su denisa and we used to govern and maintain a power structure over our women. So I would say to my wife at that amount of too heavy amarin atapi baby when I would say to my wife get something done, you would just be done. Like the structure in in Mecca. In that in our culture was men had a domineering dominating position where they could ask their women to do certain things. It was really not question number two, he says Falun Maha jhana when we made hidrive to Medina, we came to a new culture For he that Nisa Oh, I'm sorry. Yes, should not be jealous that the women of the unsolved used to be the ones who

domineering or who were the ones who had a position of authority in the household structure, and they would be the ones who would say to her husband, hey, Habibi, can you get this done? I would say yes, of course. I'll get this done my love, right? So of course, there's this cultural clash. So Phelan, Matt had German Maha gerat to alumnium in a hottie, hiner Ansari, when our wives of the mohajir came to Medina, they began to lemna they began to take dallying, they began to learn lessons from the women of Medina.

Until one day, the prophets of Allah Allah, he was seldom I remember no photography Allah and he says, for either vo woman among zoji is ljt which I one day I came home and I said to my wife, hey, you know can you get this done for Raj? I nee she returned back and forth with me. She was like debating with me No you go do it or you know this and why do I need to do it? And remember the Allahu anhu He says, I became upset you know how what you know you even you lost your mind man. We came from my what's going on over here. These unsalted women are ruining our you know, the way the structure that we had in our households what's going on over here? So Ramona says that at the abbey

I put on my clothes posse, the newbies I tell him to head out to talk to the prompter guys, I'm telling you know, these women Well, what's happening Rasulullah sallallahu. Mohammed Rhonda early on Saturday or send them to steam and cathedra they either they don't to invade either. As for either. In Murata who told Giroux, as I came close to the house of the Prophet, I tell them I noticed that his wife inside his home I can hear is responding back to him in the way my wife was responding back to me if I do so, I was worried I you know, I became fearful of what is to come. Now of course, the wife that is in question of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam is hutzler, the daughter of Mr.

Ababa Yella almondmilk Mini in the green virtuous

daughter and for all the wife of our interviews, I sell them the mother of the believers. So this is something that shows you that one culture and another culture, even within our communities, at times they have, they have space to coexist. One was not meant to outdo the other, and one needs to adapt towards the other. And of course, when Nirvana finally speaks to the prophets, I seldom the Prophet smiles at him. And basically it's like this is what it is. This is just how life is this is what life is meant to be like. So understand, therefore, that within our tradition as Muslims, there were those who

favored the importance of allowing people to see the expression of Islam as being what what leads the relationship, rather than cultural manifestations that are beyond the limitations of

Islam. So we've spoken about two important words family and multicultural, multi ethnic, multi lingual, multi, you know, multi heritage. And we said that within our tradition and their scope as Muslims, there's lots of evidence from the lives of the prophets of the past from our nebulizer lands life and from the life of the Sahaba that this was not seen as something objectionable, and in fact, was seen as something that was praiseworthy in different lights and in different ways for different reasons. If if the context was in the spirit of fulfilling the aims of our faith and our tradition, the final word, of course, is love. And love, of course, is something that is

placed in the hearts by Allah subhana wa Tada. And the love that I'm speaking about is the love that is love, love, not the infatuated issue that is at times placed in the hearts by the shavon. And due to the immortality of our souls beckoning to that which is sinful. And I want there to be a clear distinction between the purity of hope that because that's what the word hope means. So the word hope, it comes from the concept in the Arabic language had there been as none the whiteness of teeth, the Safa and esna and the whiteness and the clarity and the and uncorrupted, unsullied,

something that isn't dirty, something that is pure. So when you see someone with really white teeth, that is Habilis, none, it's so wide, it's so pure. And that's the way the word love comes from. Another context of the word hub is that you get it from the word hub, meaning, you know that, that it's not just the tooth, but it's also a seed. So a seed is called, you know, have the meaning have that a small little thing that has the potential to become something great. So you look at an apples seed, and that is going to become an apple tree that will fruit hundreds of 1000s of apples over the course of its life. The Super potential that is found in that little seed may be seemingly

insignificant until you planted in the fertile soil, and you irrigated and tended and look after it and maintain it and care for it and show it the love that will make it bloom. And from fertile grounds a small seed can become a superstructure that is nourishing and sustaining of itself and sustaining of many around it. And that's another reason that the word hadn't and hope are phonetically and and morphic Lee from the same origin from the same letters. So hope is meant to be something that is pure and pleasing to Allah. Allah male female is a very simple statement. He says hope which is divinely placed which is something you and I seek Allah Subhana Allah tells us in the

Quran, and alladhina amanu I'm a little slightly hard so yeah, I do level more rock man with those who believe in God and work righteous deeds as a consequence of their faith, the Merciful Lord, Allah Subhana Allah to Allah that will grant them love wood. And wood is the byproduct of that whom which is something you and I seek. So in doing that, which is right because of correct faith and believe we are able to attain a place of love with those who are with us. The great demands they would say,

I'll select Marina Covina, la he'll stay level maybe Nicole been a nurse that if you maintain what is between you and Allah with a righteous posture and a good conduct, Allah will assist you in fulfilling

that which you seek with others with humanity. So you know, one of the ways that you can I can engender love within our household is to make our life with a lot better and our relationship with him better than what it is at the moment.

So love is meant to be something pure cheerful as I'm claiming says hope which is divine which is sent from Allah Subhana Allah is something that is divinely placed on account of our coming together, seeking a lot as though a journey, that there is something more than just the desire of the heart, the intent of the heart, the flame of passion, the other type, the sinful love, or a love that leads to an issue, which is an act crazed love and infatuated love. A desire is a burning passion of love, that is empty of faithfulness is one that is pleasing to the shavon and not to man and that type.

Love is where a person will cross the boundaries of halal and haram to attain it. So what's the difference between halal and haram is the difference between love and an infatuated desire is sick, sickly love, crazed, and on

unhealing and unclean in love. The difference between them is that a person decides to commit haram to attain it. So to have the true love, it's within a marital context. It's it's, it's increasing as the days go by. Because as you commit further to each other, as you sacrifice more for each other, as you prove your genuineness to each other, the love that is meant to take heed in the heart and seat in the heart becomes true, because you are seeking Allah through it, while the other love diminishes as time goes by. Because as the desire is fulfilled, and nothing else is there to sustain it, it begins to erode away. And that's why you see the hookup culture and people going from one

relationship to another. And sadly, when that same type of principle is applied within a household, you find that there is the propensity and the great deal of divorce epidemics raging through different parts of the world. So we ask Allah subhana wa tada to protect us our homes and our lifestyle. So I wanted to end with the three top tips three top tips from UCLA and and the sooner to allow us to establish

our an ideal ideal family that is multicultural or not upon a pathway to love. So the first most important aspect that you and I

should have the first step towards this love that we seek is the light to add up

is to always put

Allah as the center of all of our decisions, deliberations disputes. And that is not always easy. It is not always easy that you come back to the book of Allah, you come back to the shooting of the prophets, I sell them to be the hacker to be the judgment and to be the place that you and I returned back to. And Allah subhanho wa Taala warns us in the poor on out where other people you redo a year to hackamore in a bar hood, where they would rather take their counsel and take their judgments from that which is other than Allah Subhana Allah guidance and light. Allah says and zela l keytab. When we Zana Leah Hoeven, NASA will list I sent this book and the balance that it brings

so that people can establish justice and equity amongst each other. And at times, it is difficult for people to say I'm happy

to not win the argument, I'm happy that the word of a law came to be known and that it closed my mouth that I I was wrong. I'm happy to come back to the truth. Because the word of Allah is more important than me scoring a point than me showing, you know that the mean getting what I thought I wanted. And if you can establish that in your home as a first step, in irrespective of whatever type of relationship you find yourself in, you will always be better than if you had any other perspective. The second rule is the Hadith of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam never is kindness added to something accepted beautifies it and never is kindness absent from something

except it degenerates it, and destroys it. Subhana Allah, how true are the words of how profound is that sentence of the prophets I send them you know, never is a roof, a roof

added to something in lezana except that means it is mozillian you know it adds beautification to it. Never in your argument Will you be Will you seek to be kind, never in your relationship or you seek to add kindness to always be more considerate me more careful with your word choice be more softer with your your words with your tone with your body language. Never Will you try to be kind that you are mindful of your kindness, except your relationship will flourish and bloom and be better than if you were not kind SubhanAllah. The sooner is kindness not

Establishing

fault and blame. The sooner is establishing kindness, not pointing out the mistake. Could you imagine that the Prophet is lm was a fault finder, that every time somebody, there you go, look what he did look what she's doing, because of the nivia size and there would always be something on the street everywhere I went that he could point, a hand to and incriminate. But the sooner the better Islam is about establishing kindness is about establishing a set. And it's about establishing a process where people can begin to reform themselves from within insha Allah.

Finally, and the third value that I wanted to leave you with insha Allah is that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he teaches us that could be either mahatva or hydro hopper. In other words, every human being has the capacity to make mistakes. The best of those who make mistakes are those who make their mistakes and ask Allah for forgiveness. Do not ever assume that you can live faultlessly and that your partner, your spouse, your children, your father, your mother, your in laws, your sister in law, brother in law, that they will not have their own faults, you need to know from a frame of reference in mind that all of us are going to have our incursions into that which is

unacceptable, on

unworthy of our faithfulness, unworthy of the kindness others have shown us in the past, that we are heedless at times and make those mistakes. Having said that, I'm not excusing somebody making mistakes, but it is important to always keep in mind that we are human beings and there will be lapses. And if you go back one more step to kindness, you will see that that's the greatest way of dealing with your children's mistakes with your spouse's mistakes, when they are not fatal in bringing closure to a relationship that can still have hope. I pray that Allah Subhana Allah grants you and I success Subhana Allah morbihan decrescendo Allah ilaha illa and Salford, oka where to go

la Alma, our brothers in sha Allah maybe share one or two questions before I depart in the next 10 minutes in Sharma.

does that go?

So we do have a question from audience. I'm going to display it on the on the screen shuttler. So I think very timely, with a lot of Western Muslims, people living in non Muslim countries, we always struggle with this. So any piece of advice or how to handle that? How do how can we raise children in our Western society where their religious beliefs and their festivals are commonly celebrating schools and kindergarten? Well, that's a part and product of of where you live. And I see no problem with you. You know, being able to navigate that I was born and raised in Canada. I used to sing Christmas carols in public school, I was a person who, you know, in in Halloween, you know, we did

the Halloween parades up until grade three or four, whatever years old, I'm talking about myself, right? So I dress up as Michael Jackson or whatever, I can't even remember what it was right.

And that was not something that tore away my Eman because our home life. And the messages taught us that your Islam is not in danger of something that just as simply as you know, the rituals or some of the celebrations that you're found in school, that it was clearly there was a clear distinction between what we as Muslims do, and when other people celebrate that there is no no blurring of the lines in that fact. So there are certain things that we don't take part in, you would not want for example, your your your child to play a nativity scene in a church production. So if you've sent your children to a Catholic private school, and you've made that choice, and you put them in their

drama club, and then they say we want you to be Mary, the mother of baby Jesus, who's that, then that's something that, you know, those are decisions that that have led you down down that path. But what is it necessary for you to to understand is that not because your child sees other children wearing a Halloween costume or that other children, you know, bring a birthday cake to class on their birthday, or that Christmas is celebrated in public schools and your child is asked to, you know, color a Christmas tree in kindergarten, that that's going to ruin their Islam. That's not something that was my experience or hundreds of 1000s of months.

As experiences growing up in North America in Canada, what does undo your child's Islam is that there is an innate kindness in the home. There is a cultural practice of Islam that is not consistent with what Islam actually is. There is a hypersensitivity of

a hyper conservatism that isn't found within our culture and tradition, where you're trying to bubble wrap your child that they don't experience anything around them, so everything is foreign. So when they finally go out into the world, they're like, what is this? I've never heard of this. I've never had any nobody's ever spoken to me about this. All of those are things that are really worrisome.

I have an online Islamic school. through my website, yeah, Abraham calm. And one of the modules in it is called a young Muslims guide.

It's called The Art of Manliness. For for, for the young men, and heart to heart, which is led by my offsider Dr. Amina Matt.

You know, it's part of the OSI and the online Islamic school curricula, it's free for those who can't afford it like anybody there's nobody is ever turned away because they don't have the $50 subscription or whatever it is a year. That's not the issue. But I want you to know that there are solutions so wherever you are in the world, there are solutions for your young 10 year old to be able to hear something good to interact with other people to read what it is that we believe it will be things in a nuanced way in a way that gives you information to deal with it as well. Right? But don't get hyper conservative hyper sensitive about things like you know, I had one mother or chef

they're asking my dad Christmas tree so Pamela if you look behind me here we got little you know, we got our green lights. Oh my God, is it Ramadan? Is that big? I had one brother saying chef, why do you have a green I like green I can make a red free if you want me this hyper conservatism when you're trying to control everything everybody does from one lens. Because my culture doesn't I doesn't have this my my way of life is in my that's unacceptable. May Allah Subhana Allah protect us era. Build Eman and confidence in your faith in your children? Show them a love for Allah in your practice, show them that you're continuing to learn about Islam that you don't have the answer for

everything. And not everything is wrong, and your children will do just fine.

So I just want to

share with you and with everyone that I'm actually one of the subscribers, I've taken that module and it is absolutely, I would say very helpful, very thought provoking and very simplified for anybody to be able to learn from each other. So definitely do that.

Just before we let you go, there is something else I believe that your your, your you have taken on and you're working on right now. Around the Islamic Studies curriculum around for teens how these were teams and then for the adult reentry program, do you want to say something about that and if there's any way we can help in that regard? Yes, inshallah. So there's, you know, Mashallah, when COVID struck last year, it was kind of the first time that I took this whole online thing a little bit seriously, I'm actually going to leave from here pray my vision, and I'm heading to the studio in the city. So I'm recording, you know, for season three and season four. So the way the online

school is there, season one like fortnight, right, season one, season two, season three. So season one, it's about our relationship with Allah Me, Myself and Allah season two is you me and Allah, season three, which I'm recording today, Allah and all of us. How does you know? How do we see people who are beyond our religion? Me and Allah is me and Allah, you and me as Muslims with Allah, how does Allah What does Allah want me to do with all of us who are not Muslim, the people that I mean in life, which is exactly what this, you know, sister or brother is asking. So I want there to be something that our young students are able to study the photo and in a way that gives them enough

knowledge of it, that they are intelligible and confident about it. That, you know, when when somebody says something ridiculous about the Quran, that they have enough of a background,

that they can not just respond, but educate, you know, sadly, we're trying to always put out fires rather than leaving, you know, rather than back burning and preparing before these fires arrive in our children's lives. So I would I would rather that we have a much proactive approach.

Insha Allah, there's a training the trainer's program for Islamic Studies, teachers that's coming. Something that I believe will be of great value to those who teach in Methodist says who those who teach at home for their children, to those who teach in the Islamic community censors. I want there to be something that is that there's a resource in that sense. And

I guess Finally, is the doctrine and sooner we're not ever meant to be for adults alone. Like when the prophets I send them with teach the Quran and sooner he would demonstrate it. So these Hadith where the Prophet brings a young man, and he said, and he says, Come sit next to me while they're eating. And then he sees the boy eating from different parts of the plate. He says, You have to learn a young man, let me teach you that, you know, eat from what's in front of you say Bismillah before you eat, you know, all of these kinds of things is not the suit not in Word, but it was demonstratable and I hope that that's something that we can carry on that living tradition of the

suit of the prophets of Allah what he was saying.

Thank you so much for joining us for this inspirational talk. I know that I definitely benefited from this and with the comments that we have received, it was definitely something that was inshallah benefit all of us.

Keep us in your heart and I look forward to collaborating with all of you and this wonderful parenting initiative in the future in sha Allah was said I want to live on a campus of Himachal Mama. I shall do