Our Ways in Raising Children, Part 1

Sheikh Ali Hammuda opens this episode of his series “Our Ways” by moving from our ways with parents to what logically follows: children. He frames raising righteous, capable children as a serious responsibility rather than an optional extra, reminding listeners of the hadith that every person responsible for others will be asked about them, including about their own household. He adds that children carry a parent’s good work forward after the parent has died. Many things compete for children’s attention today, he says, such as social media, anime, music and cultural change, and he argues that the greatest protection of all is parents who know how to raise them well. Some parents answer that guidance is in Allah’s hands. Sheikh Ali agrees that it is, but says Allah has also given parents agency, and he points to Prophet Nuh, who kept calling to his son until the last moment, as an example of not giving up.

He then offers six steps as a sample of the protection the Shariah places around children, and invites listeners to compare themselves against them. The first starts before marriage, with choosing a spouse. Raising children does not begin at puberty or at the first difficult conversation, he says, but when a person decides what to look for in a husband or wife. He cites the Prophet’s ﷺ advice to marry someone whose religion and character satisfy you, and the hadith that people marry for wealth, lineage, beauty or religion, with its encouragement to choose religion. This does not mean attraction is unimportant, he says, only that it should not dazzle a person into losing sight of the family they hope to build. He warns against hurried marriages made to repair earlier mistakes, saying children are rarely part of that thinking, and urges listeners to know what they want from a marriage before asking what questions to ask. A shared vision, he argues, can still carry a family forward if one parent is lost or absent, and he gives historical examples of mothers who raised notable figures after their husbands died or were away.

The second step is to be righteous yourself. Sheikh Ali tells parents not to expect children to avoid what they themselves do, and he calls a parent’s taqwa, repentance and fear of Allah in private and in public the greatest form of insurance for a child’s future, by Allah’s permission. He points to the Quran’s account of the wall repaired for two orphans, whose buried treasure was kept safe because their father had been righteous, and quotes a scholar who draws from it that a righteous person is protected in respect of his children. He suggests parents intend their own worship and self-restraint as protection for their children too, and mentions a scholar of the early generations who lengthened his prayer thinking of his son. He adds that the source of a family’s income matters, saying that haram earnings disturb a household’s ability to raise righteous children.

The third and fourth steps are about dua. Before conception, Sheikh Ali cites a hadith, which he places in Bukhari and Muslim, in which the Prophet ﷺ taught a supplication asking Allah to keep Shaytan away from the couple and from any child He grants them, with the report that Shaytan will not harm that child. He notes that many parents have never heard of it. He then says, without having researched it, that the Quran’s duas seem to be most often about children, and recalls the pledge of a woman for the child in her womb, a prophet’s request for good offspring, and another prophet’s request for his own offspring when told he would be a leader for humanity. He encourages dua for children during prostration, while drinking zamzam, when breaking the fast and while walking to the masjid. He also tells of a simple father whose sons stood out for their religion and character and who said his one habit was to pray for other Muslims’ children whenever he prayed for his own. Sheikh Ali links this to the hadith that an angel says the same for the person who prays for his brother in his absence.

The last two steps come at birth. Sheikh Ali says the adhan is called in a newborn’s ear so that the child’s first words heard are that Allah is the greatest, followed by the testimony of faith and the call to prayer and to success, which he describes as a definition of success based on devotion to Allah rather than wealth or status. Then comes the name. Citing an Arabic saying that everything has a share of its name, he argues that a name of nobility and virtue encourages a child to live by those traits, and he urges parents to know what a name means before they choose it. He cites hadith guidance to name children after the prophets, names the Prophet ﷺ loved and disliked, and names he discouraged, such as ones meaning success or wealth, because telling a caller that success or wealth is not here sounds like a bad omen. He adds that the Prophet ﷺ changed names with troubling or self-praising meanings. He closes by asking listeners to measure their own attention to these steps and to make amendments where needed.