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I want to remind myself and you that as far as children are concerned, the only thing that parents will be questioned about before Allah is how those children were raised, about their tarbiyah. Right? You will not be asked whether your child was a doctor or an engineer or a pilot or an architect and so on. None of which are bad things to have. All good things, I am telling you. But you will not be questioned about that. You will be questioned only about the tarbiyah of the child. What is it that the child did with respect to his beliefs? And with respect to his akhlaq, his dealings? And that is why it is so important to pay attention to that. See, I want to draw your attention to is this, that people in our normal sort of, you know, we will talk, say, well, so and so has been blessed with a child. Right? Or so and so has not been blessed with a child. Some people have children, some don’t have children. Although Allah swt in the ayat of Mishra Allah swt made it very clear. Allah swt said, Allah is the one who has control over everything. . Allah said, He gives to whoever He wants to give. He gives to whoever He wants daughters. And He gives to whoever He wants sons. And Allah said, to some He gives both. And to some He gives nothing. So it is the, something which is given by Allah swt. Children. So I know many people, some friends, some others who talk about, who are so desperate to have children. And if they don’t get children, they feel very bad about it. Society also puts pressure on them. How is it you don’t have children? How long have you been married? Did you seek particular attention? Did you do this, do that? People ask all these funny questions. So there is a lot of sort of psychological pressure, social pressure. And then of course desire also. Alhamdulillah. No one can say, No one can say. No one can say. No one can say. No one can say. No one can say. No one can say. No one can say. Alhamdulillah, the world today has, how many, 7 billion?
7 billion didn’t happen by accident. Because people have a desire to have children, so they have children. So, Alhamdulillah, this is all the Qadar of Allah. Allah made the earth, He created human beings, and then He put this desire to propagate the species in the hearts of people, so they are doing it.
So, we talk about this, people who don’t have children, they feel as if they are somehow, I won’t say cursed, but not blessed.
But the thing I say to them, I say to the others also, which is,
look in the Quran and show me where Allah called children a blessing.
Find me the place. Niyama.
Allah, Subhanahu wa ta’ala, called children fitna.
Trust.
Inna wa alhamalukum wa auladukum.
Niyama or fitna? Fitna.
In Surah Al-Taghabi, Allah said this, In Surah Al-Taghabi, Allah also said, Inna wa alhamalukum wa auladukum, aduwan lakum. They are your enemies.
Azwajikum wa auladukum. Your spouses and your children are your enemies. Except those who you have. So, forgive them and treat them and guide them correctly and so on.
So, I’m not saying you should not have children. I’m saying, hamza merla givu. But don’t just imagine that because you have a child, you are somehow blessed in this special manner. You’re not. You have now entered the testing ground. If Allah gives you a child, Allah is giving you a child. He does not give you a test. If Allah does not give you a child, seriously, when people come to me and ask me, I say, thank Allah. Say, Alhamdulillah.
Should I do this operation, that operation? No, I’m not. You’re asking my opinion, I say no. Don’t do any operation. Ask Allah. Allah will give you.
So, I want. Why do you want? What?
Huh? Huh?
You’re not sitting in this house in a bad manner.
Don’t feel at peace at all. Don’t feel at peace at all. Don’t feel at peace at all. Don’t feel at peace at all. Don’t feel at peace at all. Don’t feel at peace at all. Don’t feel at peace at all. Don’t feel at peace at all. Don’t feel at peace at all. Don’t feel at peace at all. Don’t feel at peace at all. Don’t feel at peace at all. Don’t feel at peace at all. Don’t feel at peace at all. There is no one to sit and eat. And it will be left.
So the point is that, first and foremost, think about this. Those of you who are, who don’t have children, or who are not yet married, and once you get married, you will want to have children. Don’t make that into a default setting. Right?
So spend some thought on this. Say, do I really want children? Alhamdulillah, by all means have children. But do that thoughtfully. I’m not discouraging you. I’m saying, do it thoughtfully. Spend some. It deserves that thought. And if you don’t have children, if you don’t have children, don’t need to feel bad about it. Don’t need to feel somehow defensive. Alhamdulillah.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta’ala has Qadar. Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta’ala has Qadar. He gave us, if you look in Islam, there are many examples of some of the biggest names in our scholars, in our Sarbh Sali, who never had children.
And they did not even marry woman after woman after woman until they have a child. No, they didn’t do any of that.
They accepted the Qadar of Allah. Alhamdulillah.
But now you have, you have children.
What must you do?
Today, unfortunately, we have this situation where this title again, one of Nathiv’s creations, he always makes very good titles for lectures and stuff. Keeps you, gets you thinking. So, raised by iPad or Takwan.
iPad, iPhone, Android, whatnot.
The title is good because this is the actual reality. And the excuse that people usually give is, for example, in Majlis Nabawi Shari, if you go there, and if you have, if you pray anywhere, I actually, even if you pray far away, it’s still here, but if you are praying anywhere close to the women’s area,
the children screaming and children crying is like,
you know, a may amount of noise.
So, the argument that is given is, you know, what is the mother? What is the mother supposed to do?
So, she turns on some cartoon or something on the phone, puts it in front of the child, the child listens to that cartoon and
keeps quiet.
What else can she do?
So, I say, do whatever your mother did.
Because at the time when you were that age, there was no iPhone. So, do what your mother did. Oh, my mother never brought me to the Haram. Good. So, why do you bring a little one-year-old child to the Haram? For what?
Take turns. There is a responsibility, no?
And people give the example always, the moment you say this, forget about the Haram, okay, Haram, somebody’s got an excuse, I’m going for Umrah, I’m there, I want to do it, I don’t want to be like, okay, khalas. But, much in itself,
especially in Tarawih, every much in the world, same issue.
And if you tell them, people object.
Then the example they give you is, oh, what do you see, with Rasool Allah ,
his grandsons, they used to come and, you know, they would climb on his shoulders, she was in his childhood, she was in his childhood, she was in his childhood, she was in his childhood, would be, you know, one of them climbed on his blessed shoulders and his neck. So, my answer to that is, I have written two books on Sira. So, my answer on this is, how many times did that happen?
To the best of my knowledge, it happened once. So, my guess is that, I don’t know which one it was, whether it was Hassan or Hussain, but there was Hanuman. He must have gotten away from his mother. You know, she must be busy with something else. The little kid would have gotten away, his grandfather is there. He would have run to the grandfather. One time. And that one time, was he running around screaming like a banshee, you know?
Quietly he came, he climbed on his grandfather’s shoulder. Alhamdulillah, grandfather held him.
And then another time, the granddaughter of Nabi Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, she came, he was giving a Jum’ah Khutbah. She came inside, she looked like she would fall down. He got up, he got up, picked her up, held her.
Alhamdulillah, we get a hukum from this, in Fakhr al-Sira, to say that, is it possible, Thabit Dhamudi asked you a question, is it possible, is it permissible, if the Imam is holding, a child in his hand? Yeah, sure.
But do you want to make this a part of how an Imam should give Khutbah? Find a child. You can’t find a child, you catch one child from somewhere, hold it.
It so happened, there was something which happened that, that day, some incident. Okay, we have a hukum, but.
So, taking care of children. The reason I am going into such detail is because he said, it’s a very, it’s a very daily thing, it’s something which is there.
And because of this now, we have the other issue of, how do you take care of them? And we have forgotten, for example, if you have very small children, obviously one way is to have a place where there is someone to take care of them.
In Dharam, I saw this, this time, I went around the other side. And there is a whole, yeah, there is a grease and grease building, there is a complete building, there are, you know, babysitters and what, but people won’t leave their children. I mean, this is, why won’t you do that? They won’t steal your child’s energy, it’s all, everything is accounted.
They insist on bringing the child into Dharam and screaming and doing all kinds of stuff.
So, the key thing is, what is the alternative? So, as I said, one alternative is, control the child. Second alternative is, have some babysitters. Third alternative is, toys.
Get children, if they are only enough to read, let them start reading. If they start reading, even at two or three, because, you know, book with pictures, sit down there, let them read.
Why, where does this phone come into the picture?
I’ll tell you why it’s very, very lethal in nature. There’s a chap called Jonathan Haidt. H-A-I-D-T, right? Jonathan Haidt. He has literally made it his life mission to open the eyes of the world about the dangers of electronics and screens
on the lives of children. There is, very good research-based data to show that children who are addicted to screens, believe me, all of us are addicted at some level or another. But especially those who have social media, who have social media accounts, whether it’s Instagram or Twitter or Snapchat or you name it,
that addiction actually results in, you know, poor grades in schools. Your child will study worse than he would have otherwise studied. Right? You are destroying the child’s ability to succeed. How intelligent is that? Tell me. I’m talking about research-based data. As I give you the name of the person, go read up. See what they’re saying. Challenge them. If you don’t agree, write to them. They are very responsive. But you can’t not agree with data. If you don’t agree with data, you can’t agree with the data. If you don’t agree with the data, you can’t agree with the data. If you don’t agree with data, you must have counter data. No? You can’t say, I don’t agree. What do you mean by that? This, this, this. Don’t agree. Destroy your child. Who cares? Your child. And giving you actual measured data, which is valid according to the principles of statistics, you can’t say, I don’t agree. Then find me data which goes counter to that.
That’s what I’m saying. That’s what I’m saying. That’s what I’m saying. That’s what I’m saying. That’s what I’m saying. That’s what I’m saying. That’s what I’m saying. That’s what I’m saying. That’s what I’m saying. That’s what I’m saying. That’s what I’m saying. That’s what I’m saying. That’s what I’m saying. That’s what I’m saying. That’s what I’m saying. That’s what I’m saying. That’s what I’m saying. That’s what I’m saying. That’s what I’m saying. That’s what I’m saying. That’s what I’m saying. That’s what I’m saying. That’s what I’m saying. That’s what I’m saying. inability to resolve conflicts.
If you ask me, as you know, I’m a leadership consultant. If you ask me, what is it that the qualities of leaders, what qualities must leaders have? And if I give you a list of qualities,
the exact opposite of that is what the phone does for you. Exact opposite.
Good communication ability. Good ability to resolve conflicts. The ability for concentrated focus on one thing for a long time. Long attention spans.
The ability to read, analyze and extract lessons from what you read.
All of this gets destroyed by the ability to resolve conflicts. By the phone. By social media.
So you are scripting for your children to become losers in the world. To become slaves. Because believe me, the people who actually run the world, they don’t give these phones to their children for a very, very long time.
Steve Jobs. Bill Gates. Bill Gates. Big names. They are on record. They are on record to say, I do not give, we do not give. Those days they didn’t have smartphones. We are talking about, you know, other screens, with iPad and so on. He said, we do not give those screens to our children until they are in their late teens.
So I want to begin with this. The bad news. We are all in this. My question to you is, at the end of the seminar, what are you going to do? What you should do is take away the phone. Simple as that. If you are not doing that, then there is a waste of time. But today, parents are afraid. So I take away the phone and my child will throw a tantrum. Let them throw a tantrum. Nothing will happen. How many tantrums will you throw?
Addiction to this is worse than cigarettes smoking. Worse than cigarettes smoking. How many of you are ready to give children this age cigarettes? Any age, in any case, it is a bit of a disaster. But my point is that, you know, seriously, please, take away the phones. As simple as that. If you do nothing else, just go home now, take away the phones. Believe me, you are a winner. You are an absolute winner. Inshallah, your children will not throw tantrums and so on. Even if they do, let them get over the tantrum. After that, give them books. Say, read. Go out and play. Climb trees, fall down, break your arm, no problem. Every boy worth his name should have broken his arm at least once. Then you get a nice cast and everybody sang on it and so on. Life stories. Life stories. Right? So, I want you to think of this. I want you to think of your role model. And ask yourself a question and say, for how many of you is that a parent? Instantly. Who is your role model? Is it a parent? Don’t change it. Don’t have a picture first and then, now because I said parent, now you put your father into it. No. And then ask yourself a question and say, if your child is sitting here, and some children are here, I don’t know who belongs to whom, but will they name you as a role model? If the answer is yes, Alhamdulillah, good for you. If the answer is no, you should think about it. Right? So, if you are a parent, you should think about it. Because your children, you know the hadith of the Prophet where he said that when a person dies, all his aamal stop except three. Right? And the first of them is Waladun Saleh. A child who is Saleh. Who is naikh, who is good, who is pious, means dua for you. This is your Salaah. This is your Sadaka Jariya. This is your number one Sadaka Jariya. This is your Sadaka Jariya which goes with you after you die. And then Sadaka Jariya as in Maal. And then knowledge which you, beneficial knowledge which you teach others. But the first one is Waladun Saleh. And the reason for that is the same reason for all of these, which is that this is what you spent your energy on. You created that Tarbiyat-ur-Rijal. You spent your energy, your time, your money and so on in raising this child and then this child you raised it in a beautiful manner. May Allah make that for you. Where this child now is a pious person. He is Saleh. He is a Muttaqee. He and Shiva, I say he, I mean both. He is a Muttaqee. He is connected to Allah . Connected to Rasool Allah . Right? You have done this. This is your job. This is what you have done, Alhamdulillah. So Allah allows that to benefit you and continue to benefit you even after you have died.
But remember everything has, the opposite is also true. If Allah gave you a child and you, Allah gave the child to you, you gave the child to the iPhone,
then the iPhone will get a Sadaqah of this child, not you.
So I question to you, therefore are you a parent by choice or a parent by chance?
And whichever it is, it is changeable. You can change it now. You can say even if I became a parent by chance, I didn’t really think about it. Alhamdulillah I got a child. Now I am going to change. Now I am going to become a parent by choice. Because this is my legacy, this is my sadaka jaya, this is my asset in the Akhira. So I am going to ask you this question and leave you to answer this. Three things. One, what is your dream for your child? Do you have a dream? I won’t ask you how many of you have a dream because many of you will not have a dream. You have a child, you don’t have a dream for the child. You will start thinking up now, what is your dream? Now you will say, no, no. How old is your child? Ten years old, five years old? What will you do in five years? What will you do for ten years? Do you have a dream for the child? If you don’t have a dream, do it now. Get a dream. Five children, five dreams. You can’t have the same dream for all five children. They are different. Seriously sit down and do this actual exercise. Those of you who are carrying notebooks, write it down. What is your dream for a child? Number one. Number two, what is necessary for that dream to come through? And number three, what are you committing to make that dream come true? So let me give you some time. Please spend some time and then I am going to ask you to share some of your dreams. Share some of your dreams, InshaAllah. I say to you, this is the word of Allah, and to you and to all Muslims. So be it. And it is the Most Merciful, Most Merciful.