Raising Children Is Obedience to God, Not a Deal

Occasion: A transcription of a lecture delivered on 7 November 2017Source: A transcription of a video lecture by Dr. Ahmed Abouseif — Watch the original video on YouTube

Praise be to Allah, and peace and blessings upon the servant of Allah, His Prophet and Messenger, our master and our Prophet Muhammad, and upon his family and Companions, with abundant peace. O Allah, we ask You to set our hearts right, to guide us, and to manage our affairs for us, O Lord of the worlds, by Your mercy, Your kindness and Your generosity. O Allah, amen.

Today I read an episode between ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz and a son of his.^[1] ʿUmar was the caliph, Commander of the Believers, and people stood at his door; they had come to have their needs met and were asking the caliph, and among them were the needy. He strove to give them what they wanted and spent on them what he could, but he became exhausted and tired from so much standing and so long an effort, so he asked permission to rest for an hour; it was granted and he went in. While he was inside, one of his sons came; he was used to seeing his father at this time serving the people, so he asked: where is my father? They said: he was exhausted, so he went in to rest for an hour. The son asked permission and went in to him, and when he saw him he said: Father, what is the matter? He said: I wanted to rest for an hour. And how did the boy answer? He said: Are you sure the Angel of Death will not come to you while your subjects are at your door waiting for you and you are veiled from them? The report we have says: so ʿUmar went out that very hour.

What do you make of this episode? Is there anything in it contrary to the sharia or to reason? A man standing all day serving people, then he tires and asks permission to sit for an hour to catch his breath. Even so, his son came in to him and said what he said, and he heard the word and rose at once to complete the rest of his work. And what happened here was the result of an earlier episode. ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz had learned one day that his son had bought a ring whose stone cost a thousand dinars, so he summoned him and said to him: I have learned that you bought a ring whose stone cost a thousand dinars; why did you not feed a thousand hungry people with it, then take a ring of iron and engrave on it: «May Allah have mercy on a man who knew his own worth»?

For we always hold that what happens tomorrow is the result of what we do today. When ʿUmar emerged with this kind of upbringing for his children, the son emerged with this kind of upbringing for his father too, for each of them raises the other. So which of our children will stand before us one day to turn us back, as it seems, from the error we are committing? Or to increase the proportion of right that we practice? Or to qualify us to draw near to Paradise? Which of our children will be the one who…? Let us talk.

Why do we raise our children?

Do we need to raise our children, and why? The most important reason that makes us raise our kids is that our raising them is obedience to Allah, and a very large part of your obedience to the Lord of the worlds, Glorified and Exalted, is that you raise your children. If one of you says to me: I have now prayed ʿishāʾ and gone home and sat with the children for a while, is this obedience to Allah? I say: yes, this is obedience to Allah, Mighty and Majestic, that you sit among your children, talking to them and they talking to you.

And why is it obedience to Allah in particular? Because this talk is in itself an exchange of experiences, an exploration of what is in the children's souls, an acquaintance with their inner secrets, or an attempt to address the problems they have. If you sit with them there is dialogue, and between us there is an exchange of conversation and discussion, and this leads to their being closer to you and your being more informed about them. So you come to anticipate even the mistakes that may come from the boy or the girl, and you know when and how to address them, and so you are safe from the dangers of the future, and safe from the dangers of old age, as will come later.

But our first goal is that Allah, Blessed and Exalted, says: ﴿يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا قُوا أَنفُسَكُمْ وَأَهْلِيكُمْ نَارًا وَقُودُهَا النَّاسُ وَالْحِجَارَةُ﴾ (O you who believe, protect yourselves and your families from a Fire whose fuel is people and stones).^[2] «Protect yourselves,» that is, ourselves, «and your families,» that is, our children and our wives. A Fire. So how do I do that? How do I protect them from the Fire, and how do I keep them away from it? If you want to keep someone away from water, where do you put him? On dry land. And if you want to keep him away from dry land, you put him in the water or in the air. So if I want to keep them away from the Fire, where do I put them? In Paradise. So it is not a matter of saying to the Fire: go away, you're not good! We want to work on Paradise. How do we put the kids in Paradise? We put them in the environment that qualifies them to be in it.

Countless good deeds in your scale

And the important point is that accustoming your children to obedience will be in the scale of your good deeds, not the scale of your bad deeds; this is certain. When I teach the boy how to pray, and I insist that he make wuḍūʾ before he prays, knowing that he laughs at me and goes off to dodge it and fold the matter up, then I ask him: did you pray? He says: yes. Are you in wuḍūʾ? He says: of course, the believer is always pure, I have been in wuḍūʾ for seven days, don't worry, I make wuḍūʾ once a week. So I overlook it, and I treat it, and I am patient and soothe. This giving, this raising, this effort, is in the scale of good deeds. You will find in your record ten dollars as charity for the mosque we are building, and a dollar with which you fed so-and-so for the sake of Allah, Glorified and Exalted, and next to it a very large column: forty-five hours you spent with your wife, and fifty-three hours you spent with your children, and seven days you spent in such-and-such. So even the time spent with the children you will find present.

Then if the children grow accustomed to good habits, imagine. If you have your son memorize Sūrat al-Fātiḥa, «الحمد لله رب العالمين، الرحمن الرحيم» (Praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds, the Most Merciful, the Especially Merciful), and he memorizes it, how many times will he recite it in his life? Seventeen times a day. Come on, multiply seventeen by three hundred and sixty-five, if you will, so we can give people a number. He recites it in the prayer, praise be to Allah, in the obligatory prayers alone seventeen times; he prays Fajr two rakʿas, Ẓuhr four, ʿAṣr four, Maghrib three, and ʿIshāʾ four, and he recites al-Fātiḥa in all of these, and that is apart from the sunna prayers. So the result is about six thousand two hundred a year.^[3] If Allah decrees that he lives ten years, then ten more, then ten more, how large will the number reach? Allahu akbar, about a hundred and eighty thousand times he will recite al-Fātiḥa. Then multiply by the number of letters, and each letter earns ten good deeds, and Allah increases for whom He wills, Glorified and Exalted. You might be a "billionaire of good deeds" merely because you had your son memorize Sūrat al-Fātiḥa! And in Ramadan, Allah opens for you, the tarāwīḥ…

And he will not pray with al-Fātiḥa alone, but will memorize with it «قل هو الله أحد» (Say: He is Allah, One) and «قل أعوذ برب الفلق» (Say: I seek refuge in the Lord of daybreak), and will memorize with it Sūrat Qāf and Sūrat al-Ḥujurāt and Sūrat «Qad samiʿa» (al-Mujādila), and so he will recite with all these sūras. And he, who has entered this field, and learned to say after the prayer: «أستغفر الله، أستغفر الله، أستغفر الله، اللهم أنت السلام ومنك السلام وإليك السلام، تباركتَ وتعاليتَ يا…» (I seek Allah's forgiveness, I seek Allah's forgiveness, I seek Allah's forgiveness; O Allah, You are Peace, and from You is peace, and to You is peace; blessed and exalted are You, O…)^[4] O Allah, help us to remember You, to thank You, and to worship You well. And he recites Āyat al-Kursī after every prayer, and he ends the prayer with two words in which he supplicates the Lord of the worlds, Glorified and Exalted, and he will learn, even by mistake: «O Allah, forgive me and my parents.» How many times will he say it in his life? And how many times will he say: ﴿رَّبِّ ارْحَمْهُمَا كَمَا رَبَّيَانِي صَغِيرًا﴾ (My Lord, have mercy on them as they raised me when I was small)?^[5] And when he grows up, if the Most Merciful wills, he will remember that this effect he is in is from the effect of the upbringing he received when he was small, and so he supplicates to Allah, Glorified and Exalted.

And all of us without exception, when we were small, used to say: How harsh you are, Father! It's not right, why are you doing this to us? But as soon as we mature and begin to understand and take in, we supplicate for him. Had it not been for this "grinding," we would not have known how to talk with people, and had it not been for the harshness that was upon us we would not have known how to raise our children, nor how to build the future, and so on.

The ʿishāʾ question: obedience for which we expect no pay

So, in principle, when we raise our children we raise them in obedience to Allah, Glorified and Exalted. And I ask you: when you pray ʿishāʾ on your way back, do you expect anyone to give you your wage? Do you expect a sum of dollars because you spent "spend time" in prayer? No. Why? Because you considered the ʿishāʾ prayer obedience to Allah only. By the same conception, if you understand that you are raising your kids in obedience to Allah, you will spend time, effort and money on them and expect nothing from them; for no one pays in order to receive. And if among the aims of upbringing is also the following: that when you give to them while they are small, they become accustomed to seeing someone who gives, so when they grow up they give in turn. And to whom? To the closest of people to them, their father and their mother.

Responsibility is a "job description"

Then there is another matter, which is responsibility. I mean that there is something I gave you, and at the end of the year we sit down for a review and I say to you: come here, man, did we do this or didn't we? We have such and such, is this true or not? Yes, it's true. Did I do this? No, I influenced this. We increased here. So if you are certain that you are responsible on the Day of Resurrection before Allah, Glorified and Exalted, then it is natural that you perform your work. And when I hear the word responsibility I understand it as part of my own "job description" in life, that is, the functional description of my work. And you say to me: and I am an employee of whom? You are an employee of our Lord. Understand this: that from the beginning you are under a preliminary contract since the day you were created, and that you are a servant of whom? Of Allah, Glorified and Exalted. If you consider this a preliminary agreement between you and Allah, Glorified and Exalted, and that you have your job descriptions, then you will return to our Lord and He will ask you: did you do this or not? And did you do such-and-such?

And do we have evidence for this? Of course. The Prophet ﷺ said: «لا تزول قدمُ عبدٍ يوم القيامة حتى يُسأل» (The foot of a servant will not move on the Day of Resurrection until he is asked) about what? About wealth, life, deeds and knowledge.^[6] And all this means that I will be asked about all of that, so if I understand that this is part of my responsibility, then I am performing the responsibility and nothing more. I came today to work in this place, and at the end of the month I take my salary, then I came and prayed ʿishāʾ, which is also part of my work. So when I have prayed ʿishāʾ and gone out to the door, am I waiting for people to say to me: thank you, may Allah reward you well? How sweet that is! You came to pray ʿishāʾ! And what is normal? That I be present at the ʿishāʾ prayer, while what is abnormal is that you not find a person in the place where he ought to be. Likewise what is abnormal is that you not find a father raising his children, that the mother abandon her responsibilities, and that you have priorities you choose for yourself and leave your job. And your job is what? To look after the rights of those who have rights over you. And the Prophet ﷺ says: «كلكم راعٍ وكلكم مسؤول…» (Each of you is a shepherd and each of you is responsible…)^[7] Do you see this word "responsible"? It means that you will stand before the Lord of the worlds, Glorified and Exalted, and He will say to you: the child did such-and-such on such-and-such a day, so why did you not respond to him? And you say: My Lord, I forgot altogether, it was a small incident. And it is said to you: the incident you saw as small affected his behavior ten years, three months, five days, four hours and thirty-seven seconds later! Allah! The matter is big. Yes, of course. Why did you not perform what was upon you? Because I did not pay attention. And why did you not take notice? How? And it is deducted from the balance of deeds.

The home before the mosque, and the mosque before the school

And the responsibility here is on whom? We have three circles before any others. So who comes before the mosque? The home. So the home comes before the mosque, the mosque before the school, and the school before the rest of things. And if he goes to a club or joins an activity or the like, then I have three basic places in the matter: home, mosque and school. And what is natural is that the boy comes here before he goes to school, so take note, then the school, and after the school any other place.

Well, what is the proportion of responsibility on the home? I want to divide it. Shall I put ten on the home and twenty on the mosque, leaving seventy for the school, so that the total is a hundred? Is this calculation correct? No, it doesn't work. So come, let me flip it and say: the home has seventy. And the mosque? Only twenty? No, I imagine the mosque should carry more than this. So I make the mosque fifty percent. But we agreed that the home has seventy, or do you want to reduce the home's share to thirty percent? Is your conscience content and at ease as you say this? No. So the home is seventy, and the mosque is fifty percent, so we are at a hundred and twenty, by the way. Then we have not yet gone to the school, so the school has roughly forty percent. So we have seventy, fifty and forty; what is their total? A hundred and sixty percent. Yes! And if you can say five hundred percent, say it. Why? Because I have an extraordinary product.

Is the merchandise in your shop, sir, divided into levels or not? There is something for a piaster, something for five pounds, something for two hundred, and something for a thousand. Are they all placed in one spot? No, there are things that are shut behind glass so dust does not touch them, so that not even the "dust cloth" reaches them. And there are important things, so the intensive care is focused on some of your items, and not merely a hundred percent, but you give them more than two hundred percent in precautions to protect this merchandise. So when I speak of my son, how much is he worth to me, I wonder? A hundred percent only, or a little more than that? I imagine I will give him five hundred percent. So I put two hundred percent for the home, and a hundred and fifty percent for the mosque, then I put for the school whatever I want.

We are in a land of exile

And I return to the point one of the brothers spoke about, which is that we are in a foreign land, and the environment in which the kids live is completely different, even though hearts have now become alike, and the conditions of people in many countries have become close, we ask Allah, Glorified and Exalted, for safety for the servants and the lands, O Lord of the worlds. But at the very least we have basics: the society here looks at them as ordinary, and we look at them Islamically as not ordinary. That a boy goes and sits with a girl in a place, this is illogical for us, but ordinary for the society we live in. That a family wears clothing in a certain way, is ordinary for them, not ordinary for us. These matters exist and we must look at them.

And accordingly, if my son came out of the home very strong, then went to the mosque and found greater strength he gained from the mosque, matters of faith, then went to school, how much have we given him by the time he went to school? We agreed on seventy and fifty, that is a hundred and twenty percent, so he is already saturated. And anything the school will give him after that, if it is not in agreement with the fixed principles he has, will be rejected from the start and he will not receive it. Why? Because it does not run along the tracks that you set. And when I raise my son it is as though I divide him: this is a line, and this is a line, and this is a line, and this is a line. This is kindness, this is good conduct, this is dutifulness, this is truthfulness, this is trustworthiness, this is character. I make streets and lanes, and I am the one who divides my son like a neighborhood. So anything that comes and has no tracks here does not enter. You made the street five meters wide and a car seven meters wide comes to you, so how can you get it in? It doesn't work. So the boy who is used to truthfulness and the girl who is used to chastity and purity, when they go to school and something other than this comes to them, there is something strange, a foreign body has entered the place, and straight away the antennae pick it up, the cameras spot it, the radar catches it, and they recoil from it at once.

And for this reason I make this large division: seventy percent here. And when our Lord questions the teacher, He will question him about the child, but not like the question to the father; impossible. And when He questions the Qur'an teacher at the institute or at school or at the mosque, He will question him too, but not like the question to the mother; impossible. Unless there are special cases, or the teacher learned what the father does not learn, and he neglected his role or fell short in his duty, then that is another matter. But we are speaking about general responsibility.

Children may be enemies

And we have a point of the utmost seriousness as we talk about this subject, which is that children may one day be enemies. May Allah protect us! How can this be said? I seek forgiveness from Allah, is it possible? Yes, of course. The Lord of the worlds, Glorified, says: ﴿يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا إِنَّ مِنْ أَزْوَاجِكُمْ وَأَوْلَادِكُمْ عَدُوًّا لَّكُمْ﴾ (O you who believe, indeed among your spouses and your children are enemies to you).^[8] O you who believe, He is addressing the believers by the way, not "O people." ﴿إِنَّ مِنْ أَزْوَاجِكُمْ وَأَوْلَادِكُمْ عَدُوًّا لَّكُمْ﴾. Allahu akbar!

Let me give you an example: a wife who is constantly discontented, who says to her husband: nothing pleases me. What do you want, ḥājja? I want you to bring me such-and-such and such-and-such, so-and-so is wearing this. So what does our poor husband do? He cannot bear it, and you know that the "beating" is severe. Why are you laughing? So he goes and embezzles to bring her what she wants. So when he embezzled, who brought him to the Fire? Was she not a cause of his going to the Fire? Agreed. Or a wife who withholds herself from her husband, we ask Allah for well-being and safety,^[9] and our man does not have complete faith, so he is driven, we seek refuge in Allah, to adultery; who drove him to that? He is of course not exempt from responsibility, and let no one misunderstand me, for I said if he does not have the faith that protects him. And what is required is that each one of us have faith by which he understands right and wrong, correct and mistaken, truth and falsehood, and so on. But if he did not have this measure and he did it, it could have been that he would not have done it had the wife given him his right and what he asks. And the reverse is true: if he fell short regarding her and neglected her and dealt with her with contempt, and counted her an animal and something under his foot, and so on, and she fell into a calamity and did not have sufficient faith, who drove her to that? Who is responsible at the beginning and at the end? It may be the child or the mother, that is, the wife, ﴿إِنَّ مِنْ أَزْوَاجِكُمْ وَأَوْلَادِكُمْ عَدُوًّا لَّكُمْ﴾.

Well, never mind this talk, forget everything I said. Let me raise a son who is, we seek refuge in Allah, what you call "stingy"; how do we translate it, what do we call him? "Jarīdī"? Miserly. No, not merely miserly, but he is, we seek refuge in Allah, the one you have just said. If he is of this description, his own soul has seized him with miserliness so he cannot give, and the first of the children of Adam he is stingy toward is me. So the money became my money, and yet he is an enemy.

Let me give you a practical example. Imagine, may Allah, Glorified and Exalted, honor you, that you have a business you are carrying, may our Lord protect you for your father and preserve you all, O Lord of the worlds, and I gave him the credit card and everything, and gave him the authority to access everything I have. And our man came and what did he do? He used all these powers to increase the good things I have. So is he now my friend or my enemy? What do you think? My friend. Well, if he wasted it, my friend or my enemy? Imagine that. We ask Allah for pardon and well-being. So who is the enemy and who is the friend, and how can we make...?

But what is striking is that the Lord of the worlds, Glorified and Exalted, says: ﴿فَاحْذَرُوهُمْ﴾ (so beware of them). What does «so beware of them» mean? It means: try to be careful in everything you raise them upon, because the possibilities of souls slipping out of the frame of truth are present at any time. So always be careful as you deal with them that they be kept disciplined on the straight path, because deviation is closer to the human soul, especially at certain stages of life. We agreed on this. But the Lord of the worlds, Glorified and Exalted, says after it: ﴿وَإِن تَعْفُوا وَتَصْفَحُوا وَتَغْفِرُوا﴾ (but if you pardon, overlook and forgive).^[10] Allah! Why all this? Because you are dealing with a human soul in which the possibilities of error are present. So just as you are required to be cautious and aware, if a small mistake happens, sometimes you pat and soothe, and sometimes you say: never mind, we'll let it pass this time, all right, God willing our Lord will make it easy, all right, let's not do this again, all right, watch out for such-and-such. So the approach is integrated between caution and mercy, and it is a respectable and integrated approach.

So do not make an enemy with your own hand

So we have now spoken about our obeying the Lord of the worlds, Glorified and Exalted, and fulfilling the right of the responsibility that is upon our shoulders. And number three is that we make enemies or friends. So do not make an enemy by yourself. The child who will be raised on good character, whom you will bring with you to the mosque, who will be raised with you with a good upbringing, will be your support one day, and he is the one who will carry for you, and he is the one who will know your right over him, and he is the one who will say: By Allah I do this for my father and for his benefit, and I do not want him to be tired, and I do not want such-and-such. All of this is talk in the right direction. But if we find the opposite, we seek refuge in Allah, it is in completely the wrong direction. So who made this? I have never found a boy acting wrongly against his father except that I found his father had been acting wrongly toward him when he was small,^[11] and there is no boy who is dutiful to his father when grown except that his father did so with him when he was small. If it is the reverse, then the father either did not intend it or did not know.

So in many cases we judge our fathers and mothers because they were harsh with us in their dealings. But we do not notice that this was his information about upbringing; the man did not know more than that, he did what he could, and he did not deliberately intend to hurt me, did not deliberately intend to humiliate me, but this was the method he saw and came to know and lived in his life. And his father raised him in the same way, or the environment in which he grew up was so hard that nothing escaped from between his fingertips. Accordingly that was his wealth which he passed on to you. It may be a mistaken wealth, but he does not intend it. At that time too that man must be repaid, to the extent that you desire for yourself repayment from Allah, Blessed and Exalted,^[12] and then, beyond that, kindness to his parents, if Allah, Glorified and Exalted, wills.

We will content ourselves with this, and I ask Allah, Mighty and Majestic, to make us the best of children to the best of fathers and mothers, and to grant us from our sons and daughters those through whom He favors us with dutifulness and kindness. O Allah, amen, O Lord of the worlds. O Allah, we ask You for Your covering, Your well-being, Your security and Your goodness. May Allah, the Exalted, reward you well, and bless you, and peace be upon you and the mercy of Allah and His blessings. There is no god but Allah.

--- ^[1]: Editor's documentation: the lecturer said he read the episode "today" and did not attribute it to a book; I have conveyed the story according to his account, and it needs a check of the source before it is cited, and likewise the story of the ring that follows. ^[2]: Editor's documentation: the verse is from Sūrat al-Taḥrīm: 6, and the lecturer did not name its location. ^[3]: Editor's documentation: 17 × 365 = 6205. The cumulative figures after that were garbled in the transcript (6625, 600000, 120000, 180000) so I did not record any of them, and I kept the overall meaning, and recorded what the lecturer stated at the end of the calculation (about a hundred and eighty thousand times). His wording about Ramadan and the tarāwīḥ is garbled in the transcript. ^[4]: Editor's documentation: the lecturer stopped at «yā…», and the full transmitted dhikr is: «يا ذا الجلال والإكرام» (O Possessor of Majesty and Honor). ^[5]: Editor's documentation: the verse is from Sūrat al-Isrāʾ: 24, and the lecturer did not name its location. ^[6]: Editor's documentation: the ḥadīth in full was reported by al-Tirmidhī from the ḥadīth of Abū Barza al-Aslamī (may Allah be pleased with him): «لا تزول قدما عبدٍ يوم القيامة حتى يُسأل عن عمره فيم أفناه، وعن علمه فيم فعل، وعن ماله من أين اكتسبه وفيم أنفقه، وعن جسمه فيم أبلاه» (The feet of a servant will not move on the Day of Resurrection until he is asked about his life, in what he spent it; about his knowledge, what he did with it; about his wealth, from where he earned it and in what he spent it; and about his body, in what he wore it out). ^[7]: Editor's documentation: agreed upon (muttafaq ʿalayh), and its completion is: «…عن رعيته» (… about his flock). The lecturer did not complete the ḥadīth, but stopped at the word «responsible». ^[8]: Editor's documentation: the verse is from Sūrat al-Taghābun: 14, and the lecturer did not name its location; here he stopped at «an enemy to you,» then mentioned «so beware of them» afterward. ^[9]: Editor's documentation: the wording in the transcript is unclear («تتابع على زوجها… وتتمنى عنه»), and what was established from its context has been conveyed, namely the wife's withholding herself from her husband. ^[10]: Editor's documentation: the lecturer limited himself to this much of the verse; its completion is: ﴿فَإِنَّ اللَّهَ غَفُورٌ رَّحِيمٌ﴾ (then indeed Allah is Forgiving and Merciful), and the verse is from Sūrat al-Taghābun: 14. ^[11]: Editor's documentation: this is a generalization by the lecturer, conveyed in his own wording. ^[12]: Editor's documentation: the wording at this point is garbled in the transcript, and the meaning recorded is the obligation to repay the father to the extent that one hopes for repayment for oneself, then kindness to his parents.