How do we make our children love Allah? Love the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ? The Prophets? The sahabah (radhiAllahu anhum)? The scholars? The Righteous Predecessors?
This is a common question parents ask, and a quest that I myself am constantly struggling to fulfil.
During some conversation with her fellow mommy friends, my wife was discussing what kind of food they feed their infant children: what they like/dislike, what they should feed. One her friends tried to feed avocado to her infant son – knowing the health benefits – but she complained that despite multiple attempts, he hates it and refuses to eat.
When my wife told me of this, the first thing I asked her is: “Does the mother herself eat avocado?”
She said, “no. She doesn't like it. ”
I said, “Exactly.”
So, how do we get our children to love Qur’an?
If we want to instill in our children the Love for anything, WE need to love it first.
Let the passion and earnest enthusiasm flow through our actions, let it be infectious, allow that curiosity to flourish in them.
There is no secret backdoor. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, it all comes back to the tried and true clichés: Lead by example. Actions speak louder than words.
You cannot “impose” others to love something, even your own children. Neither can people be forced to love what is alien or unfamiliar. But as parents, you can, out of your actions, lead by example and create an environment that nurtures that love and pave the way for them to organically make that choice.
Mufti Menk once shared that as a child while growing up, his role models were the imams of Masjidil Haram. He grew up attempting to “imitate” their recitation style and wanting to “be like them when he grew up”. He had never met them, nor did he even know how they looked like.
In those days, there was no YouTube. They had this thing called “tape cassettes”. His parents created an environment in the home that naturally ‘steered’ his inclination and ambition towards that. He didn’t grow up wanting to be Iron Man or Batman. He grew up wanting to be like the imams of the Haramayn. Look where he is now.
We can observe this in other, non-religious aspects of our lives, too.
A friend of mine once told me that he that up to today, in his adult years, he can remember the lyrics and the tune to every song by the Beatles – he can even recall the sequence of songs, which side of the cassette they appear in. Even years after not even listening to them. Why? In his years growing up, his parents would put on the same cassette again and again. In long road trips going back to their hometown, being stuck in traffic – repeat the same thing, until eventually it becomes engrained.
Did their parents ever “tell” him to “love the Beatles”?
No words. Only actions: their passion showed through their constant repetitions. The passion was so infectious, that the children caught on to it, and it left a childhood mark that still has its stain decades later.
If we want them to love the Qur'an, we must strive to develop that passion in ourselves, first. Let our love for the Qur’an flow through our daily actions – our love in reciting it; in learning to perfect our recitation (tajwid) in it; in our continuous efforts in attending or listening to tafsir classes to develop a better and deeper understanding of it; our earnest efforts in memorizing it; our enthusiasm to revise our memorization.
Let our actions clearly demonstrate that the Qur’an is not a chore or a burden – rather it’s our genuine passion and something we yearn for. Make it so infectious that they can't ignore it!
After that has been established, then teaching it or sending them off to learn or memorize Qur’an – can become a natural progression of our love. Not a burden or chore. Not a one-off switch that we turn on only in Ramadhan.
The same principle applies for any other aspect of the religion – loving Allah, loving the Prophet ﷺ, loving the sahabah, of seeking knowledge. In fact, we can extend it to love of non-religious good habits – reading, exercise, healthy eating, and so on.
How have we – through our actions – demonstrated that love, that we want our children to have? How do we spend our free time in a way that nurtures that environment? How often do we even speak about these matters to our children, if it is so important to us?
Consider the following hadith about “friends”, but looked upon from the perspective of parenting and the impact of our influence as parents:
مَثَلُ الْجَلِيسِ الصَّالِحِ وَالْجَلِيسِ السَّوْءِ كَمَثَلِ صَاحِبِ الْمِسْكِ، وَكِيرِ الْحَدَّادِ، لاَ يَعْدَمُكَ مِنْ صَاحِبِ الْمِسْكِ إِمَّا تَشْتَرِيهِ، أَوْ تَجِدُ رِيحَهُ، وَكِيرُ الْحَدَّادِ يُحْرِقُ بَدَنَكَ أَوْ ثَوْبَكَ أَوْ تَجِدُ مِنْهُ رِيحًا خَبِيثَةً
"The example of a good companion in comparison with a bad one, is like that of the perfume seller and the blacksmith's bellows (or furnace);
From the first (seller of perfume) you would either buy musk or enjoy its good smell (from being in his presence);
while the blacksmith; he would either burn your clothes or your house, or you get a bad nasty smell from him” (Narrated by Al-Bukhari)
#LoveForQuran #Parenting #LeadByExample #IslamicParenting #LeadByExample
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