Learning from our Children
By Waleed Basyouni | 2026-01-10T11:40:00.171424+00:00 | Topic: Iman
Learning from our Children - Shaykh Waleed Basyouni
Opening and Praise
إِنَّ الْحَمْدَ لِلَّهِ نَحْمَدُهُ وَنَسْتَعِينُهُ وَنَسْتَهْدِيهِ 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 اللَّهُمَّ صَلِّ وَسَلِّمْ وَبَارِكْ عَلَى نَبِيِّنَا مُحَمَّدٍ وَعَلَى آلِهِ وَصَحْبِهِ وَسَلِّمْ اللَّهُمَّ تَسْلِيمًا كَثِيرًا
Translation: All praise is due to Allah, we praise Him, seek His help, guidance and forgiveness. We seek refuge in Allah from the evil of our souls and the evil of our deeds. Whomever Allah guides, none can misguide, and whomever Allah misguides, none can guide. I bear witness that there is no god but Allah alone without partner, and I bear witness that Muhammad is His servant and messenger. O Allah, send prayers, peace and blessings upon our Prophet Muhammad and upon his family and companions.
O you who have believed, fear Allah as He should be feared and do not die except as Muslims [in submission to Him].
O mankind, fear your Lord, who created you from one soul and created from it its mate and dispersed from both of them many men and women. And fear Allah, through whom you ask one another, and the wombs. Indeed Allah is ever, over you, an Observer.
O you who have believed, fear Allah and speak words of appropriate justice. He will [then] amend for you your deeds and forgive you your sins. And whoever obeys Allah and His Messenger has certainly attained a great attainment.
أما بعد فإن خير الكلام كلام الله وخير الهدي هدي رسول الله (صلى الله عليه وسلم) وشر الأمور محدثاتها وكل محدثة بدعة وكل بدعة ضلالة
Introduction: The Importance of Children in Islam
All praise due to Allah and His praise and blessings and peace be upon our Prophet Muhammad (صلى الله عليه وسلم) his family, his companions, and his followers until the Day of Judgment. I bear witness that Allah is the only one worthy of worship and Muhammad (صلى الله عليه وسلم) is His last and final messenger.
There is a word that came in the Quran around 32 times in 19 different surahs and that large number of repetitions points out the importance of this word which is "dhurriyyah" (ذرية) which means offspring, children and that shows you how much Islam cares about this concept that the Quran speaks about it very often and the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) as well because as we all know that family is the cornerstone of society and for this reason Islam placed so much emphasis on the importance of family.
O you who believe, protect yourself and your family from the fire"
"Order your family to perform salah and be patient with that"
"And those who say: Our Lord! Grant us in our wives and offspring the joy of our eyes"
"And know that your wealth and your children are a trial"
The Prophetic Guidance on Family Responsibilities
These verses show various aspects of how important it is to take care of your family. To the extent the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) said it's much better to leave your family rich than to leave them poor asking or seeking help and charity from people.
(Bukhari hadith 893, Muslim hadith 1829)
"Every one of you is a shepherd and every one of you is responsible for his flock"
The Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) also taught: عَلِّمُوا أَوْلَادَكُمْ حُسْنَ الْخُلْقِ وَالْأَدَبِ
"Teach your children good manners and good etiquette"
A Different Perspective: Learning from Children
Often when we address this topic, the issue of family and children and so forth, especially kids and children, we always think about this topic from the perspective that I just mentioned which is how to provide for them, how to teach them, how to raise them to be righteous, how to protect and provide and so forth. I understand that because that's normal.
But here I'm not going to talk about this today. I don't want to talk about our children from this perspective. I want to look to this subject from a completely different perspective that I would like you to think about it with me. It's the perspective of looking at those children as very pure heart creatures. Allah created them upon the pure fitrat - الأطفال على فطرتهم السليمة في أحسن تقويم - they are in the best of status before any corruption happened to them as they grow.
I would like to invite you today to look at our children through the lens of a learner and to look at our children as a learner to learn from them, not to teach them.
Lesson 1: The Power of Perseverance and Goal-Oriented Thinking
There is a father who said: once I saw my son holding two apples and I asked him to share one of them with me. But he quickly took a bite from both. And I started lecturing him about how important it is to share - "I have two, you don't need to eat two of them. You know, when your father asks you..." and all this kind of good talk that you're familiar with. But the son quietly told his father: "Actually, I was not trying to eat both of them. I was trying to see which one is sweeter to give it to you." He said for the first time, really for me this was a point where I can see that I learned something from my son. I learned from my son not to rush to judge, not to rush to preach, not to rush to judge them and to lecture them.
One of the first things I noticed in my children and children at large: children have a good quality which is perseverance. Children don't give up easily. They are goal-oriented. And when they have something in their heart and they want to achieve, they will do everything possible at their hands or possible for them to achieve that goal that they want. They will do all kinds of tricks. You'll be amazed how they are so persistent in seeking whatever they want.
And I wish that we as adults have the same attitude. I can tell you that there are so many of us at one point in our life - I don't know when but we lost our vision in life. We don't have any clarity of any goals that we want to achieve in our life. I can guarantee you that among us so many of us don't know exactly what they want to achieve.
If you don't know where you want to go, you're going to end up anyplace. Unfortunately, I know many people I've met in my life that they only found out about their goals when they arrived. And when they arrived at their destinations they said, "OK, that became my goal." And that's very sad.
Setting Clear Goals: The Example of the Prophet
For example, Ramadan is coming. And many of us have all these... Ramadan is coming. What exactly do you want to achieve in Ramadan? One of the things that I would love to see our Muslim community become is a goal-oriented community.
If you look and study the seerah of the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم)he was goal-oriented. He had a goal and he focused on that goal to achieve. And he would not let anything distract him from achieving this goal. When you have goals in life, you know how to set your priorities in life correctly.
Many times people say, "Sheikh, can you help me how to set my priorities? I don't know how to set my priorities. Which one goes first?" The reason for that mainly is because you don't have clarity in what goals you want to achieve in your life.
The Danger of Living Without Dreams
Many of us unfortunately are not anymore driven by our dreams. Many of us have given up their dreams
early in their life or somewhere in life. You remember when you're young you have all these dreams and all these things you want to achieve. You got lost because you got lost, basically, in life and the daily activities and working.
Many people go to work every day and they do that because they want to make a living, but in the process they forgot to make a life, and that's very sad. Very sad that you see people don't have clarity of what their life wants to be.
It's very sad when you wake up in the morning and you are not driven by your dreams; rather you are driven by your problems, by your challenges, by the problems that you have in your life as an individual, as a community.
The Power of Having Dreams Over Problems
I live in the United States and we have a very famous civil rights activist worldwide - I'm sure all of you heard of him - Martin Luther King. And when you say that name you always think of a very famous speech that he gave and a phrase that he made which is, "I have a dream."
I asked myself: if that day he didn't say "I have a dream," if he said "I have a problem," would you think that movement would achieve much of what they achieved today?
That's the reality that so many Muslim organizations today when they think, they think about the problems. When the masjid thinks, they think about the problem. When the community thinks, they think about the problem. They're driven by their problems. They're driven by their individual problems, by their debts, by their family issues, by their problems. They're not driven by their goals and dreams that they want to achieve. They're driven by the fear, by "what if, what if, what if."
So if this is your lifestyle, I can guarantee you, it's a very exhausting life. And most people live like that. They don't accomplish much in their life. And they don't reach the goal that they want to have.
I would never forget, I visited one community and I saw this beautiful building. And I asked them, "Mashallah, what are you guys planning to do?" They said, "We have not figured it out yet." So they built the building and they designed the building from inside. And they don't even know what they're going to do with it, exactly. That's a very sad example, but unfortunately, it manifests in many different ways in our life today.
Lesson 2: Learning from Mistakes
Kids have an amazing attitude towards mistakes. Before our kids go to school - I'm told in school, being wrong means being bad. In their own fitrah, they understand being wrong doesn't mean being bad. Doing something wrong doesn't mean that you are a bad person.
Making something wrong means that I learned something new. I learned from my mistakes. My mistakes make me grow. Problems or challenges in life are never meant to weaken you. They're meant to make you grow.
That's why the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) told us that people will be tested according to their iman. And one of the meanings of that - that people are tested according to their iman - is because that test makes you grow stronger, makes you grow bigger.
A lot of times we think that our mistakes are the end. Just by reflecting on the concept of tawbah, the scholars have this long interesting debate: هل الرجل بعد التوبة خير من حاله قبل الذنب؟ - "Is a person after repentance better than his state before committing the sin?"
Before committing a sin, you're in a certain status. But you committed a sin that you repented from. Is your status higher than the time before committing the sin? Or similar or lower? And Ibn Qayyim and so many others said, "No, actually it's higher." Because even though in the process you made a mistake, that repentance, those mistakes have made you understand something, learn something.
That's why the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) told us: if we don't make mistakes, Allah would have taken us away and brought people who make mistakes, learn from them, ask for istighfar and Allah forgives them.
Success never meant that you don't make mistakes. Success means that you're able to correct yourself every time you make a mistake.
Never Despair from Allah's Mercy
So I invite those who are giving up hope - القنوط من رحمة الله to give up hope and despair from Allah's mercy - is not only about forgiveness and Jannah. It's also about any form of success in life.
Don't ever think that Allah will not help you, will not aid you, will not make you a successful husband, or a successful father, or a successful student, or successful in your business. Don't give up that hope. Learn from your mistakes and grow.
Lesson 3: The Pure Heart and Forgiveness
One more thing I like about children: they have very pure hearts. Children do not hold grudges. They forgive easily. They are transparent about their feelings.
I wish that adults were like that. I wish that we learn from our children how to be willing to forgive quickly those who have harmed us.
Just reflect about the story of Yusuf (peace be upon him). Can you imagine a young boy taken by his brothers, thrown in that dark well, then taken into slavery, then going through all these difficulties in his
life, all this, then the insults continue until the moment they come to his house, to his palace in Egypt, and they told him:
- his old brother, who long time gone, which is Yusuf, and all of them are thieves.
Still, but when they come to a point, they realize their mistakes, and they said:
- "By Allah, Allah has favored you over us. We're wrong, and we admit our mistake."
What did he say?
- He said, "There is no blame upon you today," nothing, I will not hold anything against you.
In a second, a history of decades, and years, and years, and years of harm, and injustice, and bad things that they have done to him and caused him. And his brother represents that even in a much higher level. Muhammad (صلى الله عليه وسلم) when he entered Mecca, said:
- "Go, you are all free to go."
Where is that level of forgiveness for adults to learn? Some people you do so much good to them, and one time you make a mistake, one time you wrong them, it will never be forgiven. And it will never be forgotten.
The Wisdom of Forgiveness
And I always say to people, try to learn to forgive and to forget. And if you can't do both, pick one of them. Because that will make your life much easier. If you can't do both, at least pick one of them. So you can move on in your life. But holding to that negativity will not help anyway.
If you just hold in your heart this negative feeling, that hatred toward others, what are you going to gain? You gain nothing. But you harm your own self. That's why I always say, when you learn how to forgive people, you don't set those people free. Actually, you set your own heart free. But I notice, only strong people can forgive. Weak people can't.
Lesson 4: The Art of Adjusting
Children are amazing when it comes to adjusting. I remember when I moved to my new house, the first people who connected to the neighbors, who adjusted to the new schools, were my kids. They got to know the house very well. They quickly can adjust. Have you noticed that? That's a blessing from Allah for them to be able to adjust.
Adjusting is an essential element of surviving. If we can't adjust, we'll never survive. Just study biology, and study history. Those who don't know how to adjust to changes, they belong to Jurassic Park. They don't belong here.
We as a community, if we don't learn how to adjust to the changes that happen in society, in the 21st century, in the world. If we as leaders of our religion, and representatives of our religion, don't know how to adjust, if you as a father don't know how to adjust to the changes happening to your children's life your kid is not anymore in elementary school, he's a teenager. She's not anymore a teenager girl. She's a married woman with her own life.
If the mother and the father don't understand that my son should have his own experience in life, he's not anymore the high school or college kid, the single kid who lives with me. If you can't do that, you're not doing any good to yourself or your family.
The Necessity of Adaptation
If you cannot understand the things that are basically changing in your life, even in your own business. If you can't adapt to the change, and to the new challenges, new technology, you will be irrelevant. And irrelevant people have zero impact in life, in other people's lives.
It is so important that you adjust. There are people who live years and decades, and they still live somewhere else in the world, on the other side of the world. They couldn't adjust at all to their new life, a new culture, a new society, new challenges in front of them. And this is so important.
Some of us are not rich anymore. If you don't know how to adjust to the new financial status that you're in, you're in trouble. Some of us are not poor anymore, became rich. But they're still acting like millionaires. But they don't know how to act like one.
Your ability to adjust and to accommodate while holding to our principles is an essential recipe of success and surviving.
Lesson 5: The Joy of Laughter
One of my favorite things, maybe we'll end with it. Kids smile a lot. They laugh a lot. There is a study that shows that an average kid laughs 200 times or even more a day. While an average adult laughs from 14 to 17 times a day.
I think that's a very high number for so many of our community members - 14 to 17. Kids laugh a lot. And they smile a lot. They are happy creatures. And they don't know why adults don't... why we lost that.
I travel a lot around so many communities around the world. And I can tell you one of the common things when you go to any masjid, to any community, people just give you that serious look. And nobody's smiling anymore. And what's going on? I was like saying, it's okay. Your teeth are not out. You can show them. You can smile. You can laugh.
The Prophet's Example of Joy
Aisha was asked, what about Muhammad (صلى الله عليه وسلم) inside his house? She said:
- "He used to laugh and smile at home the most."
Not only angry. So many of us became borderline angry, grumpy people. Why? Smiling is sunnah. Laughing is the sunnah of the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) and his companions, as Jabir said:
(Tirmidhi hadith 2305)
- "They would laugh and joke with each other. But when serious time comes, they're real men."
That's how Muhammad's (صلى الله عليه وسلم) companions were.
The Medicine of Laughter
I live in a city called Houston in Texas. And in Houston, we have a very famous hospital that was the leading hospital worldwide in something called healing through laughter. And because of the lack of time, I want you to just do a simple research on Google. Just put "healing through laughter." And see how many research studies were done about how your laugh is actually a medicine, a cure for you.
It energizes certain parts of your immune system. It becomes stronger with something called NK cells in your body. It does not only increase in number by relieving that stress and being happy, it becomes more active, which is responsible - after the will of Allah - to protect you from so many diseases.
A common factor between those who live a long life is that they live a happy life. They laugh a lot. So if your laugh is rusty, it's a good time now to polish it.
If you come to this masjid or any masjid or anyone you pass by, make sure if you find your brother has no smile, or a sister has no smile, give them one of yours. It's a very contagious thing. And I really would like to see this as something we're known for. We do it sincerely, not because I want to sell you something. We do it because we love one another, because we care for one another.
My brothers and sisters, don't think that your smile and your laugh is the result of your happiness. Because sometimes, actually many times, your smile and laugh can be the reason for your happiness.
I ask Allah to make us all happy in this life and the next.
Second Khutbah
Lesson 6: The Importance of Trust
Kids tend to trust easily, can trust people. Very noticeable in kids is trusting. From my experience in life, I found those who tend to trust people are much happier than those who don't.
I think we do have as adults an issue about trusting. We need to increase the level of trust between us and our leaders in our masjid, in our communities, in our groups. We need to trust one another.
Why every time we see someone do something, we always think the worst of it? We don't have that trust in each other, to work with each other, to forgive one another, to know that he has his own reasoning and he has his own justification. The reason for it mainly is because we don't have trust in one another.
There is this conspiracy theory behind everything. Nobody trusts government, nobody trusts media, nobody trusts social media, nobody trusts... What are you going to trust? Nothing. What kind of life is this? That's misery.
Trust, especially when we work together, when we live together, in society at large or a community as a smaller circle, it's been said perfectly: Trust is like blood pressure. It is silent, vital to good health. And if you abuse it, it can be deadly. We should watch our trust.
Lesson 7: Self-Confidence
Finally, I really appreciate how kids have such a high level of confidence in themselves. "I'm the best football player." "I'm the most beautiful girl." "I'm this, I'm that." We as adults, we need that confidence in ourselves.
Confidence doesn't mean arrogance. No. Confidence means to have trust in yourself. Because if you look badly at yourself, you're not going to expect people to look in a positive way at you.
Conclusion and Character Building
I ask Allah to help us nurture these essential things to build our character. And building character is so important to building a good Muslim. And building a good Muslim means a good family Muslim. A good family Muslim means a good community Muslim. A good community Muslim means a good society at large.
It's a very essential thing to think about these principles and character traits and to work on developing them anew. I ask Allah to improve our character and to forgive us all our sins.
Final Du'a
O Allah, forgive us what we have done and what we have left behind. And what we have announced and what we have kept secret and what You know about us. You are the First and the Last. There is no god but
You.
O Allah, we ask You to bless this mosque and its people, O Lord of Glory and Honor. And to send upon them and upon this community, good things. O Allah, pour upon them good things. And don't make their lives a burden.
O Allah, protect us from the evil of trials that have appeared and what has entered. O Allah, protect us and our homes and our children and our families and our community and our country, O Lord of Glory and Honor. And the Muslim countries in general, from the evil of trials that have appeared and what has entered, O Most Merciful.
O Allah, we ask You, O Lord of Glory and Honor, to improve our ending. O Allah, improve our ending and improve our end in all matters. O Allah, free the oppressed in every place.
O Allah, have mercy on our dead and heal our sick and heal our afflicted and guide our astray, O Lord of Glory and Honor, and help and enrich our poor and fulfill our needs, O Most Merciful.
O Allah, O Lord of Glory and Honor, send blessings and peace upon our Prophet Muhammad and upon his family and his companions. O Allah, send blessings and peace upon our Prophet Muhammad and upon his family and his companions.
May Allah's peace and mercy be upon you.