Tawheed is the key

Raising your children on jihad

By: Sayf ad-Deen al-Ansary

Source: sadaa al jihad magazine. 14th of rabi’ al-Awwal, 1428H.

All praise is due to Allah, and may Allah’s blessing be upon His messenger, family and companions and those guided with his guidance.

To proceed:

“O ye who believe! save yourselves and your families from a Fire whose fuel is Men and Stones, over which are (appointed) angels stern (and) severe, who flinch not (from executing) the Commands they receive from Allah, but do (precisely) what they are commanded.” [66:6]

And the prophet (saws) said: “Indeed, all of you are shepherds, and all of you shall be questioned concerning your flocks. Hence, the leader of the people is a shepherd, and he shall be questioned concerning his flock, and the man is a shepherd amongst the people of his household and he shall be questioned concerning his flock. And the woman is shepherd over the house of her husband and his children, and she shall be questioned concerning them. The slave of a man is a shepherd over the property of his master and he shall be questioned concerning it. Surely, all of you are shepherds and all you shall be questioned concerning your flocks.” [Agreed Upon]

Furthermore, the Prophet (saws) states, “Any shepherd who deceives his flock shall be in the Fire.” [Sahih al-Jami’: 2713]

The goodness of any community is dependant on with the goodness of its foundation. And the foundation will not be correct or firm without the correct bricks that will support the structure and maintain its strength and firmness in fighting the forces of erosion and the blows of time and the turbulent tribulations. It is likewise with the Muslim community - it will not be good without the correct bricks.

The tree of this Ummah will not stand except with excellent soil and good seeds, until the roots take hold, then the trunk will rise and the leaves will become green, and the flowers will grow and we would reap fruits that are ripe and pure.

And just as there’s a need for a tree, then there is a need for it to stay standing. So it is in need of one to water it and guard it and take care of its needs. And if we are sure about the goodness of the soil and cleanliness of the water, then we must take care of the seedlings. And for the growth to be completed and to stand on a firm foundation, then we must choose the primary building blocks carefully, and that is the family. And taking care of the family begins even before it is built

So it is on the man to choose a good wife (future mother) and to select the one with Deen “Choose the one for her Deen, you will be successful,” who possesses good character, a sound mind, and has knowledge; the one who is loving and is child-bearing, the Mujaahidah in speech and actions, and the other characteristics, like nobility, wealth and beauty if it is there, but they are not called for by necessity.

And its on the wife to choose a good life partner and not to turn away the one with Deen and good character, the righteous man, the Mujaahid in the path of Allah, the one with Gheirah for the women of the Ummah and for their honour, who loves his Deen and is generous - so generous that he sold his life to his Lord – the courageous one who doesn’t fear death and is not softened by the passing of time, the one who doesn’t fear the attack of the enemy, the one who fear never enters his heart because the fear of Allah has removed the fear of anyone else. “When someone whose faith and conduct is acceptable to you, comes to you with a proposal, then marry him.”

As for the search for the likes of men because of their worldly posts, their wealth or their lineage (tribal or otherwise), they forget or are made to forget that all humans and tribes come from Adam and Hawaa’, and that Adam came from dust, so from where did all these Jaahili divisions come? Searching for these characteristics, if it shows anything, it shows the deficient thinking of the woman and her narrow-mindedness. She will encounter misfortunes because of that matter from the first day she enters upon that husband, and Allah is the one who guides to the straight path.

After the commitment of the couple come the offspring, InShaa’Allah. And children are the beauty of this Dunya. They are the hope of their parents and the soldiers of their Ummah. Their upbringing begins while they are still a foetus inside their mothers’ stomachs.. The child will feel the love of Islam while he is still in his mother’s womb, and this is through her love and sincerity towards her Deen, and her practicing of the Deen as was commanded by Allah and His Messenger, sallAllahu alayhi wa sallam, and her constant listening to the Qur’an with her heart before her ears, for her feelings are transferred to the child- by the power of Allah- no doubt. And this was proven in recent studies, Subhan’Allah.

And before that the prophet (saws) told us that “Every new-born child is born in a state of fitrah. Then his parents make him a Jew, a Christian or a Magian“. If the child is left on that fitrah without any influence, it would only turn a Muslim, but the distance caused it to turn to the wrong beliefs.

Ibn al-Qayyim Rahimahullah said: “Most children’s corruption is due to their parents and their neglect of them and their failure to teach them the obligations of this Deen and its Sunan. They lost them while young and so they don’t benefit themselves or their parents when they grow older. A parent criticized his son’s undutifulness to him, so the son said to his father: “O father, you were not dutiful to me while I was young, so I was not dutiful to you while you are older, you neglected me while younger so I neglected you as an old man.” And the child in his first years at least is in need of a mother who is there for him and not occupied by anything else from taking care of his childhood and raising the coming generations. Everything she does from house chores and taking care of the children is done on the account of those children and the new generation of humans.

And if we stressed the importance of the woman, it is because the child is closer to her in the first years due to his great need of her. The family is not only on the mother, but every spouse completes the other, and each one has his/her role. The men and women are the leaders of humanity, as it was said by Malik bin Nabiy, Rahimahullah. The man also has a big role in what he grants to his wife from personal comfort and tranquillity and guaranteeing the income that provides for her and her children an honourable life, so that she can fulfil her role in peace. And he also helps her in guiding the children and discussing their problems and finding solutions together on how to deal with them.

Here, sister, we start with you- the upbringer, the Dai’yah, the Mujahidah, and mention points we will take together, holding our children close to our hearts, and putting our weapons on our shoulders, towards loftiness. We seek to fulfil our fundamental role, and that is to bring lions to the fields and inciting them like al-Khansaa’, so they would intercede for us on the day when neither wealth or children would benefit us, and let us agree from now on a principle we wont abandon, and that is: our first jihad is raising our children.