Yusuf Estes – Beauties Of Islam – EP04

			Welcome to this edition of beauties of Islam. I'm your host use Festus. Today we're going to
continue talking about the rights and limits. And that is one of the beauties of Islam.
		

			I recall when I first came into Islam that I was pretty much impressed with some of the Western
teachings and some of the incidences that were taking place at the time. We were talking at that
time about the rights of children children's rights. And I remember thinking that that's an
important thing, you know, children have rights, and we should do, we should find out, you know,
what are the rights of children?
		

			The same time though I'm discovering Islam, and I'm looking at Islam and asking, Well, what about
rights in Islam? You claim that Islam is a way of life, Islam is complete and total package for all
times in all places in all people. So is there anything in Islam about rights for children?
		

			And it's funny, you know what, Islam is all about rights. In fact, that's one of the keys one of the
most beautiful things about Islam is the rights, rights and limits, that we don't go past somebody's
rights, because for instance, we give rights to the children, you could say what children have all
rights, total rights. Now, all of a sudden, the children are telling the parents what to do.
		

			That's not a good idea.
		

			And it was Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him that said that this one of the signs of the last days
is going to be that the children will actually be superior to their own parents treating their
parents like slaves.
		

			This means they will be going beyond their rights, doesn't it? And that's exactly what we've
discovered, you know, that today, by going out here and talking about children's rights and
promoting children's rights, without putting a check and balance in place. It seems as though
there's no way to stop the children today.
		

			When my mother, who was a school teacher for many years, came home from school one night, and she
said, I'm going to stop teaching. We asked her why. She said, the teachers have lost their rights.
It's all about the students rights. But the teachers have no rights anymore.
		

			I didn't quite understand what she was saying it didn't the gravity of the whole thing didn't catch
me until until I realized that this is exactly the downfall of a society when you give all rights to
one group, but you infringe on the rights of another group. Now, when I grew up, many years ago, the
teacher had the right to paddle the child, if they got out of line, they had a little like a ping
pong paddle or something like that. And they would paddle you with that if you misbehave. But then
they passed the law and said no more. No teachers can use this paddle anymore. Well, then what
happens? Well, some of the teachers, they would try to swap the child with their hand. Well, they
		

			made a law against that as well. They said, No, you can't do that. That's not gonna work. So now
that the teacher has no way to say anything over the student, they can't stop them. In fact, it got
to the point where the students would challenge the teachers and say bad things in the face of the
teacher and say, What are you going to do about it?
		

			Well, what could the teacher do? What can they say? Because here you are, you know, you're trying to
teach a class and you got students that just stand up and say anything, do anything? And what can
you do? It got to the point where some of the students were actually striking the teachers. Now,
that became a serious problem. And of course, then the students began striking each other, hitting
one another. And now who can stop them because if you put your hand on the child, maybe you grab
them too tight, you leave a mark on him or something, they can go to the authorities, you can go to
jail.
		

			You started out in the morning, as a teacher, you wind up at night as a jailbird. Because why?
Because you don't have any longer the right to discipline the children.
		

			Now, according to the Bible, and that was one of the things that I was very impressed with, of
course, in those days is a preacher in Christianity. We find the teaching, that's very clear, if you
spare the rod, spoil the child. And I always derive the meaning out of that, that it meant that you
have to use the rod at least let the child see that you're in authority here, you know, then the
child will behave. Otherwise, they don't see any reason to follow the rules because there's not
gonna be any punishment if I don't so who stopped me
		

			spoil the rod.
		

			spare the rod, spoil the child. That's what it says, bear the rod, spoil the job. But when I got to
Islam, I said, Well, what does that teach? They said, well, in Islam, you're not allowed to pick up
a stick and beat children. That's not permissible anyway, so we don't have that. But we do have the
thing where we teach the children from early on the proper respect for authority. And this is
instilled on the child from the time that they're able to move around that time, they're able to
start thinking they learn what they can do and what they mustn't do. This is pretty normal amongst
most homes, you know, you see the mother, she'll say, No, no, no, no, don't do this. Don't do that.
		

			That's normal, and it's good. And of course, in Arabic home, they will be saying, la, la, la, la,
la, la, St. Meaning, don't do it.
		

			But as they get older, and they begin to talk, speak, think, and converse with their parents. That's
when the importance of teaching rights and limits really comes into play. Because it is right for
the child to have a time to play with their toys. And it's also right that they should share their
toys.
		

			But there has to be a limit. And the limit is going to be that the child cannot go and take from the
other children without their permission.
		

			So we begin to teach them about asking permission.
		

			I remember one of the things that my dear friend, Mohammed Abdullah Rockman, who was the one who
helped me get to Islam, that he taught us this by example. He was very good at giving examples of
things so you could see it. One day he went to my daughter was about six years old at the time. And
he asked her if she would like to borrow $1.
		

			I said, borrow $1? She said yes. So she borrowed the dollar from him. She borrowed $1. He said,
okay, and you're my witness. I was witness, okay, that a witness? You borrowed a daughter?
		

			A couple of days later, he asked her, do you have $1? She said she had four quarters. He said, Okay,
can you pay me back the dollar you owe me? She said, okay, and she gave him back to four quarters.
		

			After she went on to play, I asked him What was that all about?
		

			He said, didn't you get it? I said, No, I don't think I understand what's going on. He said, Okay. I
was teaching her that if you borrow something, you must pay it back. But you don't pay it back with
anything extra. For instance, if she would have said, Thank you for loaning me $1 here's the dollar
back when maybe a piece of candy. He said I wouldn't take it that would be wrong in a slump that
goes beyond what's right. The rights of borrowing are that you give back exactly what was borrowed
without anything extra with it. Otherwise it would be called Riba or usury. And I thought, whoa,
you're teaching a child something this. I mean, this is too complicated. You're starting out a
		

			little kid. He said, No, this is when it started. And I thought, well, that really work. Well. I
found out about it later. Some years later.
		

			It happened at the time of Ramadan. And they have this festival called read of it. And this is the
celebration after Ramadan. And one of the things that happens is the children go around and and
smile real big and parents faces who may give them candy, they give them gifts, and they give them
money.
		

			And my daughter, sure enough, she came running up to me, Daddy, Daddy, look what somebody gave me.
It was $100 Bill and I looked at that $100 Bill and I was thinking wow, we can buy her clothes with
this. She can get you know some toys with this. Maybe we even buy her you know an outfit we can so
many things I was thinking about could be done with that $100 bill.
		

			But she went over to the masjid. The mosque is called Masjid to a box that was there for donations.
And she put the whole $100 bill in that box.
		

			I said what
		

			would you do? She said I put it in there. I said Why? She said I always wanted to have $100 to put
it in the mustard box because so many times people talked about things that we need things that the
masjid needs things the school needs, she said and I knew I didn't have any money but I knew if I
ever got $100 I would put it in there and I just got to do it. Isn't that good? And I thought about
I said Look at this. This child is understood something better than I did. Whereas I was thinking we
can get her some clothes. We can get her some doors, candy gum
		

			Things like that with the money and look at what she's understanding value of value, that's a higher
level of value, not just dollars and cents. So what we're learning from this this kind of rights is
that there is something with limits to you don't just think about what I get for me, you don't just
think about, oh, how is this gonna benefit my circumstance right now. But you think about how it
will benefit others. And by the way, all the time you're doing that a lot is for sure, going to be
		

			recording, and making sure that you get full reward here and in the Day of Judgment. So this is
something really big for us. This kind of writes that we're talking about, really, we could talk
about this for a very long time, there's a lot of depth behind it. But I would encourage you to do
is to study this, sit with your teachers, they'll be slam and read the Quran and read some of those
stories from the books like this is Sahih Bukhari. These are some of the teachings of the Prophet
Muhammad peace be upon him. And we find a lot of things in there that that will really help us to
understand about rights, rights and limits. And I give you an example of just one of the things that
		

			that impressed me an awful lot about this was the rights and limits is spelled out in one of the
chapters of the Quran. Now, in another program, we're talking about the same subject in a bigger
detail, but I'll just refer to it for you, so that you can look it up chapter 49. In the Quran, it's
called circle hoodrat. Circle, Hydra. And when you go to this chapter 49 in the Quran, you're going
to be surprised to discover how it's telling you the proper dealings with men and women both what a
man should do what a woman should do, what women together should do as groups, what you shouldn't
do, how to behave, how is your behavior, and the clock is what they call it. This is a flop the
		

			behavior. And all of these things are dealing with the rights and limits rights and limits of a
human being. I think this is a good chance for me to sum it up and tell you that if you go to our
website, the website, it's called beauties of islam.com. And you'll find programs like this will be
displayed there. And you'll get a chance also to find our other links that will take you to the
Koran and the teachings of Mohammed. And when you go and watch for yourself, these little programs,
the snippets that we'll have on there for you, I think it'll help you to put all of it in
perspective. But the rights and limits that come with Islam are definitely one of the many beauties
		

			of Islam. And having said that, I find myself now we're at the end of another program with so much
more to go. So we'll ask you to just be with us the next time right here, right here for more beauty
service land. Until then sell out.