Something very important and that is the principle of encouraging your children to love Islam. to love learning Islam this is something that I personally find to be somewhat deficient in the way that many of us deal with our children.
Sometimes you have some parents who are negligent, they just don’t teach children Quran and Islam, they don’t have any concern for their children to learn about Islam, their primary concern is their secular Dunya education and that’s what they put the pressure on, but you see some other parents who put so much pressure on their children that they push their children away from Islam, by putting enormous and unnecessary pressure upon their children when it comes to learning Quran and Islam.
You have to make people love Islam and want to study Islam, for that reason we don’t overburden with the number of classes that are taking place in a week, for example even when it comes to adults we don’t overburden people by having like eight hours of classes on a Friday and then you know two hours every single night.
why do we not overburden people? I mean the resources are there, but we don’t overburden people, because eventually you push people away, so it is important that when you think about your children and when you think about your children’s Islamic education, that you think about making them love Islam and instilling the love of Allah in their hearts.
The love of Allah Azza WA JAL is a fundamental principal it’s a fundamental part of la ilaha ill allah,
Allah SWT said: from man are those people who have taken partners besides Allah they love them as they should love Allah, but those who believe love Allah more.
This is a fundamental proof for instilling the love of Allah into the hearts of ourselves and our children, and the love of Allah should be one of those fundamental driving forces in our lives to motivate us. not only the love of Allah, but also hope and fear.
Hope and fear in terms of hoping in Allah’s reward and fearing Allah’s punishment. and this is the secret behind the first three ayat of surah fatiha: al-hamdu lillahi rabbil alameen. Ar-rahmanir-rahim. Maliki Yawmiddin.
The first verse instills the love of Allah. Allah who raised you up and look after you and nurtured your Eman.
The second ayah instills the hope of Allah in your heart, in His mercy, in his forgiveness.
The third ayah instills the fear of Allah in your heart, that Allah is Maalik of doomsday, the fear of what will come on the day of the judgment, and the fear that allah subhanho wa taala will take you to account for what you do.
A similar kind of principle you want to still instill in our children, now hope and fear take time to build, they come with knowledge, they come with maturity, when children are very very young they might not fully understand, especially when they’re extremely young they might not fully understand what it means to hope in Allah’s reward or to fear Allah. but these are things that you’re constantly working on building in them, and above all the love of Allah azzawajal that they love Allah, that they love Islam, that they love Iman.
When Allah SWT said: Allah made Eman beloved to you, he made you love Iman, and he made it something beautiful in your heart, and that’s all we want to do it with our children, we want to be a cause for the love of Iman to enter into their hearts.
Now some of that is to do with reward and Punishment, so some of that is to do with rewarding them for Islamic achievements, rather than Dunya based achievements because when you do this you are setting the standard, that Islam is what matters. Yes, I’m worried about your education, I want you to do well, but what really matters to me is Islam. that’s why your success in your Islamic studies I’m going to reward it many times more than I reward your success for example in your secular studies.