Among the pristine teachings of Islam on family include, equality, cordiality, supervision of son’s behaviours, disciplining, taking the children away from sexual relationship and ill-gotten food.
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Equality
Fathers should cover their sons with equal amounts of love, affection, and custody to their Family and Children.
Many psychological complexities, jealousy, fury, and the arising of mental passive revolts may occur to the children who notice any distinction in the father’s conservation. These effects may lead to serious psychological ailments.
The holy Quran exposes the story of Joseph the prophet (PBUH) when his father favored him to the other brothers.
Consequently, they plotted for an artifice by which they threw him in a well and came to their fathers weeping. The father “Jacob the prophet (PBUH) – was so regretful that his eyes turned into white.
A calamitous crisis that he had to suffer was owing to favoring a definite son to the others. The Prophet (PBUH&HP) is reported to say, treat your sons equally as you like to be treated fairly in benevolence and kindness.
As he noticed a father of two sons kiss one and neglect the other, the Prophet (PBUH&HP) reproached, you should have treated them equitably.
Equality among sons is one of the components of the Islamic education. Fathers should never distinguish between brothers.
Fathers who address charity and benevolence at certain sons exclusively, or give the heritage exclusively to the sons and neglect the daughters, are definitely out of the circle of Islam.
Such procedures arouse hostility and hatred among the brothers and cause retardation in their educational entity, and mental disorder and slowdown in the social relations.
It is proven that the sons that are deprived from paternal affection and benevolence are stroke by psychological complexities, social antagonism, and severe conduct.
Fabrication, larceny, cruelty, evildoing, and assaulting deeds are the effects of the children that lack paternal affection.
Children’s paternal hatred stops against the social conditioning. It cancels the feelings of security and self-confidence.
Modern psychological surveys have confirmed that the most critical causes of disquietude are the nullity of the family emotional warmth, feelings of others negligence, deprivation of love, kindness, and affection, and feelings of weakness in the aggressive world.
Secondly, inequality among brothers arises the feelings of disquietude in the children’s minds, and kills the spirits of keenness that help in pushing the way easily and tranquilly.
Disordered men feel of depression and mental torment everywhere.
Fathers should treat their sons equally, lest the sons will be affected by such serious ailments that smash the mental entities.
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Cordiality
Fathers must cover their family members, especially spouses, with cordiality, affection, and benevolence, and meet their needs entirely. God has instituted this as one of the wife’s rights.
It also contributes in the children’s prudent education and personal contentment that live in aspects that are filled with love, affection, peace, and settlement. Islam has urged on caring for wives.
The Prophet (PBUH&HP) said: The best of you are the best to their wife. I am the best to my wives. He also said: Wives are the husbands delight. Almighty God favors those who deal with their delight in the best way. Imam Muhammad Al-Baqir (PBUH) says:
May God’s mercy be upon those who enjoy good relations with their wives. Allah the Exalted gave men the wives in possession and made them their custodians.
Imam Jafar As-Sadiq (PBUH) says: Fear God while you deal with the two weak; women and slaves.
Fathers ought not to displease or wrong their wives. The Prophet (PBUH&HP) says: The best men of my nation are those who do not encroach or wrong their wives and those who treat them kindly. He then recited Gods saying:
Men are the maintainers of women because Allah has made some of them to excel others.
Fathers natures and manners to their family members leave the greatest influence on the children’s consonance in the society. The children’s personalities achieve prosperity only when their father’s treatments are well.
Contrariwise, children’s behaviors and intellectual maturity are badly affected and ceased if fathers use rudeness.
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Avoidance of Obscene Language
Fathers, as paterfamiliases, are in charge of constituting the educational entity of their families. They should avoid obscene language, vulgarity, and any matter that injures the general manners.
Chastity and homogeneity should find a considerable place in every house. It is obligatory upon fathers, whose words and deeds penetrate the hearts of their sons who are influenced by their manners and morals, to shield the family members from evil and obscene language.
Children who notice their parent’s ill deeds can never have sound education and growth up. Similarly, children who notice their fathers say false things will never comply with their instructions of truth and sincerity.
They pursue their father’s deeds and actions. On that account, fathers must apply the noble traits and manners to their lives to be good exemplars for their family members.
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Supervising the Son’s Behaviors
In most cases of the ethical crimes that are committed by juveniles, the source is heeded to be the fathers’ negligence of superintending their sons and discounting the signals of aberrance they show.
Naturally, children whose conscience and mind are imperfect cannot distinguish between good and evil. As children notice that no problem or reproach occurred owing to their doing a bad deed, they will certainly keep up doing it habitually.
Islam has urged fathers on associating and supervising the behaviors of their early children for saving them against the pollution of crimes that are arisen from aberrance.
Nowadays, it is unfortunately noticeable that fathers disdain a condition on which the future of their children relies.
This terrible negligence led to the young’s deviation and moral degradation. Violence and irregularity have become the nature of youngest men’s behaviors and morals.
One of the ugliest sorts of negligence and deviation from the sound educational courses is the unsupervised mixing of the two sexes of the same age in schools and universities.
In most cases, such mixing may induce young women to lose chastity and avert the behavioral criteria of probity.
Fathers are liable -before God- to supervise their son’s behavior and turning them aside from all of the evil tendencies.
Based on Islamic Scholar teachings opting for certain methods of educating is one of the most significant and considerable tasks.
A child is his father’s trust. His stainless heart is a precious gem that is clear from any image or picture. It is becoming to receive any image and follow any way.
If a child is inured to good, this will stick to his mind, and the pleasure of this world and the Hereafter will be amassed for him.
Parents, tutors, and trainers of children have a share in his rewards. Inversely, if a child is inured to evil, and neglected like animals, non-success and loss will be the result.
The guardian will undergo the sin of misguidance. God the Exalted says:
” O you who have faith! Save yourselves and your families from a Fire whose fuel will be people and stones, over which are [assigned] severe and mighty angels, who do not disobey whatever Allah commands them and carry out what they are commanded”. (1)
Fathers should save their children against the hell-fire and that of this world. Father’s salvation is educating, disciplining, and leading their children to the noble traits and keeping them against associating with the evil.
Fathers should avoid inuring their children to luxurious living, otherwise the sons will spend their lives looking for such things, and this will definitely cause damage. Father’s supervision should be initiated with the children’s early years.
It is also essential for fathers to choose chaste and religious nurses and nursemaids. Children who are brought up on such illegitimate food will tend to evil and illegal matters.
The previous opinion of some of Islamic Scholars is, to great extent, exact. Modern educational surveys have accepted this opinion.
Early supervision, encouragement on the noble traits, and the avoidance of the evil tendencies; all these are the matters that incite prosperity of this world and the Hereafter. In like fashion, negligence and non-supervision lead to non-success and damage.
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Disciplining
Fathers should take initiative in disciplining their children as soon as they notice a behavioral irregularity or any offense that contradicts the religious and social traditions as well as the general manners.
Precipitation in disciplining the wrong children is a sufficient means for removing evil and rebellious spirits. Islam has confirmed this matter. The Prophet (PBUH&HP) said: “Discipline your children.
This is better for you than a daily giving of a big sum of alms” (2).
He also said: “O you who have faith! Indeed, you have enemies among your spouses and children; so beware of them. Yet if you excuse, forbear, and forgive, then Allah is indeed all-forgiving, all-merciful.”(3).
In most cases, irregularity that accompanies the children is the consequence of the fathers negligence and failure to discipline the children who deviate. Sheik Naraqi says:
Children that are neglected in the earliest stages of growth up will mostly opt for ill manners. They chiefly prefer fabrication, envy, and obstinacy, and become thieves, traitors, and impolite.
In other cases, such children may be weakling, licentious, and profligate.
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Taking the children away from the sexual activities
Islam has warned spouses against copulation near their children, since this may incite their lust and give them a motive to seek fields of harlotry and depravity. Imam Muhammad Al-Baqir (PBUH) advised Jabir saying:
Avoid copulating in a place where a boy that is able to distinguish you’re doing” (4).
Imam Jafar As-Sadiq (PBUH) says: “Men should never copulate with their ladies where there is a boy. This brings about fornication” (5).
The Prophet (PBUH&HP) said:” I swear by the Prevailing of my soul, success will never approach boys who see or hear even the breath of the copulating spouses. Fornication is the result” (6).
Specialists in sexual education have affirmed the necessity of taking the children away from the sexual relations.
Sir Pepsi says: The sexual sense is existent to every human being including babies to whom this state begins to gush after maturity.
Therefore, it is very much important to avoid any activity arousing this state before its proper time.
Some fathers undervalue the necessity of preventing the children from noticing them when they strip their clothes. Such fathers go to extremes in this regard, as they think of being intellectuals or progressists who should give us the opportunity to see them naked.
As children frequently notice such manners, they will soon be paying great interest to the sexual characteristics in their minds.
Children’s minds are quickly affected by what they notice. On that account, it is essential to take them away from whatever stirs up the lusts and corrupts the moralities, for guarding them against aberrance and irregularity.
As the western education paid no attention to this regard, their sons had to encounter mental damage, many sorts of sexual troubles, and moral downfall, as well as the absence of social bonds.
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Taking the children away from the ill-gotten food
Fathers should provide legal-gotten foods to their children, and protect them against any food that the Lord has forbidden.
The forbidden foods are the usurped, the real filthy things -such as pork-, the external filthy things -such as foods affected by external impurities-, and the like things that are detailed in the theses of the jurists.
Fathers should exert all efforts for habituating their children to have legal food only since, as it has been proven through modern clinical surveys, the sources of nutrition leave a great influence on the behavior and maturity.
Islam is terribly sensitive to any matter that may delay the children’s growth and personal prosperity. Ill-gotten foods have internal aftereffects on the mental constituents.
They may cause the hindrance of the behavioral activities in a way permitting the composition of evil tendencies, such as severity and extreme assaults.
As Islam has cared for these aspects, it issued the obligation of keeping the children clear of the ill-gotten foods. It is related that as the Prophet (PBUH&HP) noticed that Imam Al-Hassan (PBUH)-when was a child- put a fruit of date palms in the mouth, he disciplined, Throw it out!
Have you not known that we “the Prophet and his household- do not have from foods given as alms?
After the calamitous incident of Karbala, Imam Hussein’s family and relatives were taken to Kufa as captives. As some people noticed that the accompanying children were starving, they gave them some fruits of date palm as alms.
Ummu-Kulthoum, the Prophets granddaughter, reproached the children and informed that it was forbidden for the Prophets household to receive alms. Immediately, the children took the fruits out of their mouths.
As the Prophets household kept up this illuminative behavior in the educational fields, they produced those unprecedented and unparalleled young men and women who formed the greatest exemplars in veracity, chastity, and decency.
Notes:
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- The Holy Quran (66:6)
- (Vasael Al-Shia, Vol.15, P.195)
- The Holy Quran (64:14).
- (Vasael Al-Shia, Vol.20, P.133)
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