Fatherhood & Islam

Imam Tom Facchine opens by saying that fatherhood is an essential thing to understand, especially in a time when, he believes, the dominant culture downplays the importance of fathers. He says Islam contradicts that view, and he notes that each of us carries an inheritance from a father and a mother that most of us hope to improve on for our own children. He grounds the talk in the Islamic teaching that humanity is created as male and female, which he says is meant to invite reflection, and he suggests that having to depend on and negotiate with someone different from ourselves is part of how people grow morally.

From there, Imam Tom offers a way of seeing life as a series of stages. Drawing on a podcast idea about women moving from maiden to mother to matriarch, he proposes a parallel for men: a young man in training, a father, and an elder. He says a sense of purpose comes from knowing your role and where you are on that path. Becoming a father, he says, comes through marriage and children rather than through simply identifying as one. He describes marriage as a relationship with accountability built in, because a spouse knows your strengths and shortcomings in a way no one else does, and he points to a saying of the Prophet ﷺ that marriage is half of one’s faith. Having a child, he adds, brings a level of responsibility that changes a person.

Imam Tom reads the story of Musa as a picture of this kind of growth. He describes a young man who at first sides with his own tribe, who later steps in to protect two vulnerable women without asking for anything in return, and who eventually, as a husband and father, tells his family to stay put while he goes to investigate a distant fire in the dark. In his reading, the responsibilities of fatherhood both require and draw out virtues such as truthfulness, trustworthiness, sacrifice, patience, and protection. He speaks of protection as both physical and spiritual, pointing to a verse about protecting oneself and one’s family from the Fire and to Ibrahim’s father as a father who failed on both counts. He says abuse of children by a parent is prohibited in Islam. On authority, he discusses a verse about men’s degree of responsibility toward women, which he says most scholars connect to strength and financial provision, and he argues that authority without fulfilling those duties is not what Islam intends. Every privilege, he says, comes with a corresponding duty, and power is meant to be used justly.

Imam Tom then turns to balance and obstacles. He cautions fathers against providing only materially at the expense of their children’s religious education and practice. He describes a culture he believes is hostile to men and suspicious of male authority, and he calls the smartphone one of the greatest obstacles, saying it can pull a father’s attention away from his wife and from a child who is trying to connect. As support, he points to a real, active connection with Allah, to mentors, peers, and younger people who look up to us, and to friends with whom men can be vulnerable without being punished for it. He closes with an image he attributes to Martin Lings: a boy who inherits his father’s oversized robes should be allowed to grow into them rather than have them cut down. For Imam Tom, this is a matter of morality, and he says that when everyone fulfills their position in a moral way, justice will follow.