Friday sermon 8/8/26 - A Father's role in the family.

You can listen to it on YouTube, or read the transcript below.

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إنَّ الْحَمْدَ لِلَّهِ نَحْمَدُهُ وَنَسْتَعِينُهُ

وَنَسْتَغْفِرُهُ، وَنَعُوذُ بِاللَّهِ مِنْ شُرُورِ أَنْفُسِنَا وَمِنْ سَيِّئَاتِ أَعْمَالِنَا، مَنْ يَهْدِهِ اللَّهُ فَلَا مُضِلَّ لَهُ، وَمَنْ يُضْلِلْ فَلَا هَادِيَ لَهُ، وَأَشْهَدُ أَنْ لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا اللَّهُ وَحْدَهُ لَا شَرِيكَ لَهُ، وَأَشْهَدُ أَنَّ مُحَمَّدًا عَبْدُهُ وَرَسُولُهُ.

يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا اتَّقُوا اللَّهَ حَقَّ تُقَاتِهِ وَلَا تَمُوتُنَّ إِلَّا وَأَنتُم مُّسْلِمُونَ

يَا أَيُّهَا النَّاسُ اتَّقُوا رَبَّكُمُ الَّذِي خَلَقَكُم مِّن نَّفْسٍ وَاحِدَةٍ وَخَلَقَ مِنْهَا زَوْجَهَا وَبَثَّ مِنْهُمَا رِجَالًا كَثِيرًا وَنِسَاءً ۚ وَاتَّقُوا اللَّهَ الَّذِي تَسَاءَلُونَ بِهِ وَالْأَرْحَامَ ۚ إِنَّ اللَّهَ كَانَ عَلَيْكُمْ رَقِيبًا.

Brothers and sisters, the last time, um, when I was here, we had a discussion, we discussed the honorable role, and the very crucial role, and the very righteous role that a woman has in the household. And today, Inshallah, I'm going to expand on that, but I'm going to be discussing it from the side of the fathers. And what the father's responsibility is within the family.

And first of all, when I think of these subjects, it reminds me of the hadith, of the Prophet ﷺ, where he had said, and this is reported by Abdullah bin Umar, the son of Umar bin al Khattab (RA), he said, 

“every one of you is a shepherd and is responsible for his flock. The leader of people is a guardian and responsible for his subjects. 
A man is the guardian of his family, and he is responsible for them. A woman is the guardian of her husband's home and his children, and she is responsible for them. The servants of a man is a guardian of the property of his master, and he is responsible for it. 
No doubt, every one of you is a shepherd and is responsible for his flock.” 

So as we can see from this Hadith, at some point in our lives, whether you're a man or woman, you are going to be responsible in some capacity, even if you are an older sibling, and you have younger siblings, you are responsible, because you have to set an example for your younger siblings. And we notice from this, that there's 2 sets of authority when it comes to the children. 
We have the mother who is the more closer authority of them, and then we have the father who's on the outside of the Hadith, and he's also the authority of the family, the wife and the children. 

Now, a lot of brothers, unfortunately, sometimes when they hear this hadith, and they hear that they're responsible and that they're in charge, they think of it as a flex, they think of it, yes, look, I'm in charge, I can do whatever I want, and you just, and I can sit back and I don't have to do anything, and it's all good. But actually, it's not a flex, brothers and sisters, it's actually a responsibility, it's a huge responsibility, and it's a burden on a true believing man. 


When he hears this, he doesn't smile. He has to rise to the occasion, right? It's something it's a call of duty, as you can say. 
And it could very, it could very well be that on the Day of Judgment, your family can have a case against you because you did not do what you were supposed to do as the leader. So don't take this lightly and don't take it as a way to be like a, for example, a dictator who thinks that just because he has power that Allah must love him because he has all this power and everything. But no, it's not like that. 
It's mutual with the, with your family, just like the Prophet ﷺ, where he was in charge, but his relationship with his wife was very loving, very caring, and he would consult with them at certain situations. 

So, And unfortunately, sometimes when we get lazy, and we don't take responsibility, what ends up happening is that the women have to step up and become leaders sometimes and a lot of times against their own will. So we should definitely be careful in terms of this responsibility. 
And today, Inshallah, I'm going to be discussing some of the points of what we should do as we raise our kids. 

Now, I know with fathers generally speaking, they're more busy, right? They're more outside, they're busy at work, and they might not see their children as much as the mothers do. 
But with a mother, it's about the amount of time. The quantity of time. But when it comes to the father, it's not about the quantity of time, it's about the quality of time. 
How much time you spend, and what you can do to increase the baraka in your house. You can be at home for a whole week when you're on vacation, for example, or even all summer long, but you're watching TV, or you're doing your thing, and your kids are in their rooms, playing games all day long, and there won't be any sort of progress between your relationship with them, because you're both in the same house, but you're technically in different worlds. But you can spend 15 minutes a day with your child, with your children, with your family, and you can literally change the world. 


Our boys and our girls, they need a father who needs to know what it means to be a real man. And, ideally, a man who is trying to copy what the Prophet ﷺ, used to do. And we need to follow his path in order to lead our boys and our girls and our families to the right path. 


And this reminds me of the verse in Surah Tahrim, where Allah SWT says,

يَـٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ قُوٓا۟ أَنفُسَكُمْ وَأَهْلِيكُمْ نَارًۭا وَقُودُهَا ٱلنَّاسُ وَٱلْحِجَارَةُ

He says, oh, believers, save yourselves, and your families from the fire, whose fuel is men and stones. Subhan Allah. 
So imagine the fire that Allah has created, the fuel of it is what? Humans and stones. So, may protect us and our families from such a fate, Ameen. And when you study the life of the Prophet ﷺ, and this used to be the curriculum of the, of the, you know, the Sahaba and the Tabi’in, they would study the Quran, the Sunnah and the Seerah. That was the curriculum. 
And there's a statement that's attributed to Ali RA, and it's a very wise statement about how to raise a family and how to raise children. 

So he said, for the 1st 7 years, play with your children. 
In the next 7 years, teach your children, and then in the final 7 years, advise your children. So today, Inshallah, I'm going to be focusing on the 1st 7 years, which arguably are the most critical and give some pointers that relate to fathers, but you can also, there's some cross here between mothers as well. 

So the 1st and most important thing that we should be doing is calling to Allah SWT. 
Even when we give Dawa to a non-Muslim or anybody, it's never about Zakat or about rights or about hajj or fasting or none of that. It's always, it all comes down to the central concept of calling to Allah SWT alone. And even when your kids are very small, they might not even be able to understand what you're saying. 
It's good to have a discussion with your family at home, let's say after prayer, you sit down, and you talk for 5 or 10 minutes. Even if they don't understand you now, if you do that regularly, ideally once a day, but if not three times a week or something along those lines, by the time that kid is two, three years old, and they can have some understanding, you'll be a professional now, at speaking about Islam. 


And you don't have to be speaking in a scholarly way. It could just be some basic examples, like, when you go to the grocery store and you take your kid, and you see the fruit section, and you see all the different apples. There's, like, maybe 12 types of apples, all the colors, red, yellow, green. 
There's four types of red, you know, three types of green, and you can just say, you know, Subhan Allah, look at how beautiful Allah has created the food for us. It tastes good, and it even looks good. Right? 
As compared to some of the other foods that are manmade that are not healthy. 

So, and then you can turn that into a talking point for your child, and they can appreciate that and learn. So once again, it's not like you're sitting down in a madrasa with a stick, and you're teaching them, and if they don't repeat, you smack them, right? 
That is not from Islam, and that is obviously gonna cause a lot more damage than any good. 

So you have these organic conversations, you know, and then as you go out in the day for work, what you should be as a hunter. Now, what do I mean by being a hunter? 
You should find a story in that day that you can come home and tell your family, and once again, you can relate it back to Allah SWT. Maybe, and when it comes to some advice and hints, it's just like Allah says, in the Qur’an, where He says, 

Don't you see the skies? Don't you see the mountains? 
Don't you see, don't you see the ships that are sailing? Right? And now Subhan Allah. 
We appreciate the ships, right? Because of what's going on in the world. We know that those ships are good, because if they come, the prices go down, and if they don't come, the prices go up. 
So, once again, a reflection, something like that, even, you can have an organic conversation, and be like, you know, Allah said, these are blessings, and now we can finally appreciate it, because look at what's going on. Maybe that's for an older kid, obviously, not a four year old. But you keep doing these things, and they will appreciate who Allah is. 


And at the same time, The advice of Ali RA, which is to play with them. Now, with moms, they'll play with the kids, but it's very, you know, controlled because they don't want to hurt their kid and so on and so forth, but fathers, as many of us fathers know, we like to wrestle with our kids, boys and girls, and we'll carry them through them here, this and that. And they'll laugh, and they'll laugh, and then they might push a boundary here and there, and then they'll cry, right? 
And then after that, after they're crying, at the same time, they're coming back towards you laughing again, because they want to do it again and this and that. And they're learning a connection with you. They're building a connection in their brains that are very young, and they're developing brains, and they're actually connecting with you, they're learning confidence, they're learning boundaries, they're learning social interaction, all these things that you can't see. 
All you see is crying and laughing, right? But that's what's going on in their brains. 

And we know this for a fact, because if you were to take a child, and may Allah protect all of our children, but if something were to happen in their brain, and half of their brain had to be removed, at a very young age, that child can still function, for the most part, as a normal human being, as they grew up, because their brain can rewire itself, for that lack of that other half, and it can rewire itself, and they can still function, pretty much at, like, 85 or 90% of a person. 
Whereas if you would take any adult brain, if... And Subhan Allah if half of our brain was to be removed, we would be a vegetable, at best, we probably wouldn't even survive. So you can see how their brains are very critical and crucial at that young age. 


So playing with them, teaching them who Allah is, and with all of these different interactions, we can build upon that, and teach them how actions can be good deeds. So now you're telling them how merciful Allah is, and how, you know, if you go to bed early, you can make intention with Allah that when I go to sleep, then I'm gonna get stronger, and then the next day, I'll be a better Muslim. And they'll be like, oh, okay, you know, they might not agree with you all the time, but they'll hear you, and they're gonna remember these things. 
Even if they might not listen to you, but they'll still remember these things. And they'll remember that, you know, if you eat your food, you'll get stronger, and you can make intention that, I want to be a stronger Muslim, and then I can worship Allah better, because I'm stronger, I'm eating this food. And once again, organically having these conversations, and once again, following the attitude of the Prophet ﷺ where you do not get angry. where the Prophet ﷺ emphasized not to get angry. 
And the only time he would get angry ﷺ, was, when the commands of Allah were being violated, and even when that happened, he wouldn't tell somebody, you know, sit down or hit him, or yell at them, and call them crazy, or what's wrong with you in front of everybody, he wouldn't do these things, right? He would not do these things. 

As a matter of fact, there was a young man who came to the Prophet ﷺ. 
And he asked him, Ya Rasulullah, allow me to commit, zina. Allow me to have a relationship with a woman outside of marriage. Did the Prophet ﷺ get up, yell at him, and smack him, and do all of that in front of the Sahaba? 
No, he did not ﷺ. He brought him close. 
He advised him. And he convinced him because he said, would you like this for your own family? Would you like this if someone did this with your mother? 
And then the man said, No, ya Rasulullah. Would you like this if someone did this with your sister? No, Ya Rasulullah. 
And he kept on going, and he eventually made dua for the man, and then he stopped having these thoughts. 

So, you see, this is how we should model when our kids are young, and when they're older. And also think of the other part of this question of this Hadith. 
The fact that that young man was able to come to the Prophet ﷺ, in the first place, and ask him this question that is very controversial. How many of our children come to us and ask us these kinds of questions? And that'll only happen the way you treat them when they're younger. 
If you are harsh, if we are harsh, and we're, you know, may Allah protect them, if we're punishing them with physical force, then they're not going to come to us because they know what's going to happen if they do. 

So we have to be gentle. We have to realize they're young, they're ma’soom, they don't, they can't control themselves, and the more you study these things, and the more you study the Seerah and the Quran, the more you will realize that this is the case. 


And our kids, in this society, they're already trying to fit in. They're always trying to fit in in their schools and in other groups, and we're already the “other” category, right? Even on the paper form, it says, What are you? 
this, this, this, and that, or other? Right? And sometimes you just gotta fill the “other” box, right? 
Because there's no other box to fill. 

But they're already trying to fit in, and if we're not there to nourish that environment for them, they're gonna try to fit in in those other environments. 

One other thing that will save you a lot of money, actually, is getting them involved early on inside of doing chores in the house. 
And fathers and mothers as well can be part of this, where you can do small things, even if you're cooking, for example, if someone's cooking, they could just give you the plate, hey, get me that plate, hey, give me this spoon, give me this, throw this in the trash. Or if they're really small, and they can't do any of that, put them in the high seat and let them watch you do stuff. Because they want to belong in your family, and they'll, and like many of us know, they'll follow you. 
If you have older siblings, they follow them, because why? They want to belong and do things. But instead, what do we do a lot of times? 
And I can understand why we do this sometimes because we all need to have, you know, dedicated time to do certain tasks and do them well and do them fast. But most of the time, if not all the time, we take the child, hey, you, you sit over here, you take this (handing the child a device). I gotta do stuff over here. 
Right? And then I talked about this last time on how the effect of screens on the brain, which acts like a drug. So we're actually medicating them in a sense, in a bad way. 
And then we're going over here doing our own thing. And then later on, we wonder why my kids have certain, you know, these problems. 

And subhan Allah the other day, I was at the grocery store. You know, there's a kid, he's probably like 6 or 7 or 8 years old sitting inside the cart. And the mother's going around with the cart. 
He's sitting there on a screen because he's because that's the only way now that he can be controlled or he can be taken out of the house for getting this job of getting the groceries done. But ideally, when a child is that old, he should be helping you put the groceries in the cart. You should be teaching him, Hey, this is a good apple, this is a bad apple. 
This is a good tomato. This is a bad tomato. And they should be able to learn a skill in life. 
Basic shopping and how to survive, in that sense. 

So being a parent, brothers and sisters, is a blessing, but it's also a test. And if we don't do justice in the first seven years and develop that deep relationship with them, it will only be harder during the next two stages of life. 
So now, in these first seven years, if you do these things, as best as you can, because obviously we're all human, we're not going to do this 100%, even if we're 80%, or even 70%. At some of these things, and we talk about Allah, for 7 years, imagine you're talking about Allah to your kid, you're telling them these stories, and why Allah's merciful, and so on, and so forth, and then at 7 years old, we all know the hadith about, that's when your child should start praying. 

Now, if you're praying at home, they're already going to be starting to pray with you. 
They're gonna jump on your back, this and that. They’re going to copy your movements. And we’ve all seen that. 
And the more we build on that, the question no longer will become, why should I pray to Allah? The question will no longer become, Why should I pray? The question will become, why shouldn't I pray? 
Of course, I should pray. Look at all these amazing things that Allah has given us. Look at how the earth, if we were just one or 2 feet left of the sun, or if we were one or 2 feet further away from the sun, life would be (un)sustainable and everything would be frozen. 
If we were just a little bit closer to the sun, what would happen? Everything would be too hot and life would not be sustainable. 

And all these different things, you tell your children, once again, in an informal manner, Sometimes maybe you can have a formal talk, but all of these things, you build it, you build it, and the question is no longer, why do I have to pray, Mom, why do I have to pray, Dad? 
Who cares, this and that? No, the question is gonna be - Now the question is, why shouldn't I pray? 
Of course I should pray. So that's not even an issue anymore, right? For the most part, Inshallah. 


أَقُولُ قَوْلِي هَذَا وَأَسْتَغْفِرُ اللَّهَ لِي وَلَكُمْ وَلِسَائِرِ الْمُسْلِمِينَ ، فَاسْتَغْفِرُوهُ إِنَّهُ هُوَ الْغَفُورُ الرَّحِيمُ.

So now, I want to fast forward a little bit, brothers and sisters. What happens when parents are not serious about their religion, and what happens when fathers are not serious about leading their families, and they have a lifestyle where they come home, they watch TV, go to bed, and they... and they, and they repeat the cycle, over and over, not really teaching their kids. It's more like just reprimanding them for not doing something that they should have done. 
And this lifestyle keeps on building on itself. 

Maybe this lifestyle could have worked at a certain time and place, maybe 50, 60 years ago, when the environment you were living in, was an Islamic environment, because you were back home, and the Adhan was being called, and so on, and so forth, but in today's day and age, it's different. You have to adapt in order to keep your values intact. 
So what happens, and I've seen this growing up, born and raised here. I've seen this myself, brothers and sisters, I've seen fathers who were not involved, and when it comes to boys, it's actually a crisis, and there's a whole book and studies on this whole topic, there's a crisis with the boys, because they're trying to learn what a man is supposed to be like, and there's, with their fathers not being around, they don't know what it really means to be a man because they're around their moms and so on all the time. And that's fine. 
Obviously, a mother is going to be a mother. 

So they have a loss of purpose, and this is a big problem in society, not just for boys, but of course, if you don't have Islam, not just because you're a non-Muslim, but if you're a Muslim, but you don't have Islam, because you're just a Muslim by name, then you don't have a purpose, you don't know what it means to be a man. You don't have anyone who's giving you attention. 
So then these types of people, unfortunately, are the ones that you can pinpoint in the school system even, according to the teachers, what they've said is, if kids act out, if they're bullying, if they're bullying others, these types of kids are usually the ones that don't have a father figure in the house. And it leads down a huge downward spiral of drugs, of alcohol, of girlfriends, all of these things, and I've seen it from Muslims families, where, eventually, you're trying to chase somebody halfway across the country, because you're in love, only to die on the way there, or on the way back. Subhan Allah.


Or you get involved in gangs, you know, the same kid I knew, when he was a kid, we'd play, he was, like, five. I was, like, eight. You know, he would kiss me on the cheek, like, just 'cause he was a kid, right? 
And whatever. And it would be wet. That's how I remember he would kiss me because it'd be a wet, blobby kiss. 
And then he grows up, and what happens? He gets killed in gang violence, right? So, subhan Allah, so that's why the father has to be there. 
He has to give his boys guidance. 

And when it comes to the girls, the father is their first man in their lives that they will have a relationship with. The father is the first man, a daughter will have a relationship with, a father-to-daughter relationship. 
And we know girls like to seek validation and attention, and this is part of their fit, and their nature. So, as a kid, it's easy for you as a dad to grab your daughter and call her a princess and this and that, and she loves that stuff. You can't see it, but she loves it. 
It's in her head. Because women are very emotional when it comes to, um, love. As compared to men, we're very visual when it comes to love. 
So they're very emotional, so they want to get attention. They want to hear people complimenting them. 

So when as your daughters get older, you should still compliment them, and you should treat them nicely, and follow the example of the Prophet ﷺ. 
Once again, whenever Fatima RA would come, the Prophet ﷺ  would get up for her, he would get up, he would go to her, he would kiss her on the forehead, he would walk her to where he was sitting, and put her down, and have her sit there, as to honor her, right? Subhan Allah. And then likewise, when he would go to visit her, she would kiss him on the forehead, she would grab his hand and put him where she was sitting and have him sit there to honor them. 
So this is that love a father should have for his daughters. So they feel satisfied, and they can express their beauty to them, and they don't have to seek that from other men, who are obviously ill intended or, or the sorts. 

So brothers and sisters, my final reminder to all of us - the globe changed, the whole global map changed. 
The whole Arabia changed. The hearts of millions and now billions have been guided when Allah SWT revealed the Quran, and the 1st word to have been revealed, was IQRA. 


Read. See, so read, Allah changed the whole world, the map, the beliefs, and He shed light upon light to, all of humanity with the 1st word, of READ. So my brothers and my sisters, we don't have, quote unquote, a lot of free time, as we think we do sometimes. 
We have to learn. We have to learn, so we can be better as well. And always purify your intention that you're doing this for Allah's sake, and not just so your kids are good Muslims, no. 
Do this, to purify your hearts, I'm doing this for Allah's sake, and that you can develop more knowledge, and you speak to your family, and at the same time, you become a better speaker yourself. 

And then you develop more confidence, they develop more confidence, and it only brings unity when everyone is becoming closer to Allah SWT.