Relationships between Muslim youth are common. Imagine if you discover your son has a girlfriend! Not setting up barriers for certain values at an early age is taking the risk that later on your children won’t understand them.
In our “modern” societies, Islamic values are seen as “back warded”. This is especially true when it comes to boys and girls relationships.
Hina Khan-Mukhtar is an author and a teacher. In this video she explains something very crucial when it comes to educating our children in Islam: never disregard foundations of our Deen (religion).
Indeed through a real life example she will explain how two mothers reacted when they found out that their son had a girlfriend.
The first family doesn’t have a clue about what to do. As a matter of a fact they never taught him any Islamic value or any rules (shariah). Hence the dialogue isn’t going well because the son cannot understand why it is so wrong to have a girlfriend.
The second family has always stressed on how important our religion is and what is halal and haram. Yet the son has a girlfriend. Nevertheless, the mother is following the rules of Islam by giving her son 3 choices:
First is that he breaks up with her and leaves the haram. And yes it will be painful.
Second is that he marries this girl because in Islam she has financial rights even if she isn’t a Muslim. And she explains that it will be a halal relationship within the boundaries of Islam. As well she is teaching him that he has to be responsible.
Third is that he continues living in haram, risking going to hellfire
Finally he chose the first option and it was very painful and his mother cried with him. This shows that empathy is always in the picture even if we disagree with our children’s choices.
The whole video is really interesting to watch as it gives more details about how to handle such case.
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If you want to read more about her work, you can start by checking our article: