Answer
Wa `alaykum As-Salamu wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuh.
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.
In this fatwa:
To make our children love the Prophet (peace be upon him), Muslim parents can apply the following suggestions with their children:
- Travel with the Prophet
- Wake up with the Prophet
- Organize Storytelling Night
- Sleep Like Him
- Eat Like him
- Pray Like the Prophet
- Play like the Prophet
We all love our Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him). Simply, because he brought us Divine guidance and helped us a lot find our way to Truth.
He is called the light, as Almighty Allah says: {Now has come unto you light from Allah and a plain Scripture.} (Al-Ma’idah 5:15)
Therefore, it is natural to instill into our children the Prophet’s love. We also should make sure that his love grow daily in our heart.
But we would like to stress that our love for the Prophet should be a motivation for us to follow the noble principles he set to govern our lives.
It’s inconceivable for us to be claiming of loving the noble Prophet and, at the same time, doing all what contradicts his teachings. That is not love. That’s self-deception!
The tongues of Muslims all over the world never cease to mention the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) and send blessings to him.
But why not organize a week-long family activity around the life of the Prophet? Why not spend one day of the week on each of these activities, devoting the whole seven days to a different project?
Or we could incorporate some aspect of each activity daily. Whatever method we choose, these are rather token present we could offer in showing acknowledgment to the great role the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) played in our life.
In order to promote such noble feelings inside one’s family, let every one sit down with a pen and a paper, think and decide together about the activities you can do concerning the life of the Prophet.
Following are some tips that help in this concern:
1- Travel with the Prophet
Get a map of Arabia, or better yet, get the children to draw or trace one from an atlas. Then, note down the different places he traveled to from Makkah or Madinah.
2- Wake up with the Prophet
The Prophet would wake up every day before Dawn (Fajr), to worship Allah through and make dhikr (remembrance of Allah). While looking at the sky, he would read the last portion of Surah Aal Imran, thinking and reflecting on the universe and its Creator.
This is an excellent way to get closer to Allah, at a time when concentration is at its peak, minds are clear of daily worries and according to one Hadith, Allah is very close to us.
Once Fajr began, the Prophet would pray and then chat with people who stayed behind for some time.
Get the whole family to get up in time to perform this special prayer on a Saturday or Sunday. Encourage them, to the best of their ability, to stay awake to worship Allah as the Prophet did.
3- Organize Storytelling Night
This can be done at bedtime, after the children come home from school or any other time conducive to learning. The first step of loving and learning from the Prophet and his life is to know about him and what made him great.
You can buy children’s books about his life, or even listen to them on a cassette tape while you’re in the car on your way to or from school. Maybe each person in the family can choose their story to tell. This will allow some research and reading as well.
4- Sleep Like the Prophet
The Prophet used to sleep in a unique way and would say a supplication or two before it. Maybe as a token of your love you want to sleep one night the way he slept. Some Muslims do sleep that way all the time, although it is not a requirement of our faith.
The Prophet used to sleep on his right side, with his right hand under his right cheek. He used to make wudu before going to bed also. He used to recite one or two supplications before sleeping and recite a few short portions of the Quran.
If you adopt this item, you can memorize the supplication, understand their meaning and make copies of them for everyone.
5-Eat Like the Prophet
There are reports about the type of food he used to eat or liked most. Make a list of those items. Once the whole family is together with a selection of his/her favorite food, why not have one person talk about it and remind everyone of his table manners?
A young person may be the best one to do that. For instance, he advised Muslims to eat in a way that after eating, the stomach is only one-third full.
We also should wash our hands before eating, recite “bismillah” (in the Name of Allah) and other supplications before we begin, as well as eat only with our right hand. These are just some of the ways the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, ate.
This may require you to do some research and it may involve calling some Middle Eastern friends to get some recipes as well. You can have one night where dinner is devoted to the Prophet’s food or one dish like that per day.
6- Pray Like the Prophet
During the lifetime of the Prophet if a person made a mistake in the recitation of the Quran, he would be corrected by others present during the prayer. This is exactly the way it is done throughout the Muslim world in Ramadan.
During this week when you’re teaching your children how to live like the Prophet, have a different person lead prayer each day and correct their mistakes if they make any. This will not only be an exercise in one aspect of the Sunnah, it will also be one teaching humility.
7- Play like the Prophet
The Prophet understood the importance of fun and games. He would race with his wife Aishah who used to outpace him most of the time. He would swim and wrestle with his Companions.
He would joke with them too. He played with and loved children. Muslims mustn’t forget this aspect of his life. Race with your spouse in your backyard; set up a swimming pool for the kids; enroll the kids in an archery class.
Allah Almighty knows best.
Editor’s note: This fatwa is from Ask the Scholar’s archive and was originally published at an earlier date.
Source: www.soundvision.com