Family Matters Yasmin Mogahed

[Music] I'm not moving on to our next session session number 27 which is entitled family matters bridging the gap between ideals and reality our first speaker for this session is a starter yes he has been Vijaya yes been Vijaya had just launched her brand new book love and happiness which is available here at the rs booth along with her best-selling book reclaim your heart which has received international acclaim yes Minh is currently an instructor for Al Maghrib Institute a writer for The Huffington Post an international speaker and invited lecture at Oxford Harvard Yale Stanford and many other universities around the world she received her BSC degree in psychology and her master's in journalism and mass communications from University of wisconsin-madison I'd like you all to join me in welcoming you askme image of it Salam alaikum I would even let him in a Shaitan regime millena Rahim salat wa salam ala rasulina while and he was savage banging a peace rally Saturday where Sarah liamri rocked a time in this any of golly Allah subhana WA Ta'ala tells us in the Quran and anyone who has ever been invited to a Muslim wedding anyone who's been invited knows this area because it's on every Muslim invitation badda ever let him initiate on a regime I mean AIT he and her local a common enforce Akuma's wagon a Tesco alaihe wa jalla bey Nagumo Otterton Burma and from among his signs is this that he created from you for you spouses that you may dwell in tranquility with them and he put love and mercy between you now there's a lot that we can take from this area but the reason I want to begin with this area is because the topic today is about bridging this gap in terms of family bridging the gap between ideals and reality but before we can bridge that gap we have to know what ideal is what does allah subhanaw taala say should this relationship be based on and so i want to make a couple of reflections about this area because it gives us that foundation of what this relationship should be based on and i want to make another very important point because i believe that a lot of our families have fallen apart because of losing this one concept and that is that i believe that a lot of our families once children come into the equation the the foundation of the family no longer becomes the marriage and it becomes the children and that's actually a mistake the foundation of a family is the marriage and when the marriage is strong the family is strong but when we start to shift that focus and instead we give precedence and we and we in fact do injustice to the marriage for the sake of the children when we do that we are actually harming the children and the marriage and the family and so what we have to do from the very beginning is understand that the foundation of a strong family is a strong marriage and this idea that investing in your marriage is being selfish needs to be removed that people need to go back to investing in their relationship and they need to stop making the entire focal point the children that becomes unhealthy not only to the children but even to the marriage and the family itself I put it a lot of our parents they start to take their children and put their children at the center and do toe-off around them like like like literally put the children let's be honest namely the boys the sons they put them at the center and they do pull off around them and what happens is this creates a lot of issues social issues psychologically a lot of problems because of this because of this lack of balance where you've taken your son your son the son your son your child is where the son s un rises and sets right and this is a problem for many reasons but one of the reasons which is relevant to what I'm speaking about today is it can do injustice to the marriage because what happens and I'll just give you one example things like mothers sleeping next to their child and the husband sleeping alone this is an imbalance this isn't the way that that the structure should be in a family the foundation is the marriage and that is the center and the foundation of the rest of the family but when people shift that balance and make it imbalance that's when you get problems later on and you find many cases then later on where the marriage the husband and the wife have become just parents they've become just parents living under a roof right over time well what happens when you neglect a relationship what happens if you neglected a relationship with a friend or or or a colleague or anyone what happens did you start to move apart and what happens in these situations is that these people have neglected their relationship for so long that over time they just became two parents living under one roof and some stay together just for the children and then some of them when the children move out that's when they separate these kinds of things can be avoided if we invest from the beginning in the marriage and not make the children at the center this is very important and believe me you will make the children more healthy if the marriage is healthy and strong so allah subhanaw taala says women AIT and halal a common and fussy come as wagon it says kun alaihe wa jalla been a competitor rahman so the first thing i want to reflect upon in this ayah is the cocoon part that allah says that we're supposed to find tranquility in our spouses now this isn't always the case but it's important for us to know how it should be so that we can recognize when something has gone wrong we have to be able to know how it should be so we can recognize when something goes wrong right and if something goes wrong we should know how to respond so to begin with how should it be well it's supposed to be a place of tranquility the marriage is supposed to be a place of sanctuary it's supposed to be a shelter from the storm it's not supposed to be the storm that you leave the house to go to shelter it's supposed to be the shelter itself so that there is stress outside there is stress there is storms outside but you're supposed to be able to find shelter within that relationship that relationship allah subhanaw taala describes it detest cornelia for you to find tranquility in one another so it is it's supposed to be that shelter or that sanctuary in the storm and unfortunately a lot of cases it's the opposite where the storm is inside the house and people go outside to find shelter the other point I want to make is the Merida and the Rama this this this expressed love maleta comes from the root word and went to allah subhanaw taala the attribute of allah and words the one the source of love and the most loving and the source of all love and rama from al rahman and rahim this mercy that allah says he put between the spouses expressed love and mercy so again it shows us what's supposed what it's supposed to be like and if these things are missing then we know that something is not right these are the ideals now okay allah subhanaw taala also describes the spouses as garments for one another any bath now if you look at a garment I could say that a garment has maybe three main roles that it plays the first is that a garment actually beautifies this is why people put in so much money into the fashion sector so much money into the fashion industry is because clothes actually are supposed to beautify they don't only cover but they also beautify and similarly a spouse is supposed to beautify the other spouse what does that mean it means to to help the person become better to beautify the person your your marriage is supposed to be a means to get to become a better person to become closer to allah subhanho thailand it's a character builder and that's not always easy obviously building anything isn't easy building muscle ask anyone who goes to the gym it's not easy but it's something that makes you a better person it beautifies you in the end secondly a garment covers and this is very important a spouse is meant to cover the defects in the other spouse and of course I have to put a footnote here this doesn't mean that if there's abuse that you cannot seek help for that so sometimes this is one of the main misconceptions that people have that keep them from seeking help that keep them from seeking professional counseling is they think well I cannot expose their flaws or their faults yes in general when you're sitting in a in a gathering or you're with your girlfriends or with you or you're with your your male friends if men are with their male friends talking about their wives or women are talking about their husband that's what it's referring to you don't you don't expose the faults and the flaws of your spouse in that way but if you are going to seek help then that's not considered backbiting that's not what it's referring to so when you're in public for example you don't make jokes mocking the the other spouse or or exposing something about them but rather a garment covers covers so if we have a defect or or a scar on our body the garments gonna cover that right it's not gonna expose that and it's not a very effective garment if it's exposing that it's not doing one of its jobs and another thing that a garment the the garment of a spouse does is it covers a person's chastity it helps a person to keep their own chastity that that's one of the roles that we play as a spouse for one another then we help one another to stay loyal and to lower our gaze and to be modest and to be chaste and lastly it protects from the cold for example right now we're in the middle of winter in Toronto so it's cold it's been snowing but you put on a jacket and that keeps you warm so the garment in that sense is protecting you it protects you garments protect you from rain if you put on an if you put on a rain jacket it puts see from rain it protects you from cold it protects you from heat if you put on certain garments to cover you from the from the Sun and in the same way your spouse is supposed to protect you a spouse is supposed to be a protector for the other spouse now I've talked briefly very briefly about the ideal but in life we don't always get the ideal you know as allah subhanaw taala teaches us the very powerful and beautiful torah in the quran robbing ahead lemon as watching a with orientation of karate iron which i'm the limit of Cana imama is a very important word in this in this door and that's Helena oh Allah give us the gift she give us the gift of making our spouses and our children the coldest of our eyes a source of comfort but see notice that the word used here is gift Heba is a gift Helena give us the the HIPPA the gift of this which means now what a gift is a gift deserved or can you buy it you know someone someone's giving you a gift have you paid for it do you to necessarily deserve it no a gift is just given because the giver is generous and the giver is and wa hab and he loves to give gifts so we have to also recognize that this is an amma it's a it's a blessing it's a type of provision but it isn't necessarily something that everyone gets and it isn't necessarily something that's only given to the deserving this is a very important point as well because we have a lot of judgmental attitudes in our community for example when we see families that are going through difficulty when we see broken families when we see divorces when we see children who are suffering we standing from where we are perhaps maybe we've been gifted with our children and our spouses being the coolness of our eyes it's a gift but maybe we're looking at others and judging them that maybe they're not as good as us and that's why they got divorced and that's why their kids are off the right track you know what I'm saying this very judgmental and honestly arrogant attitude and by the way it's extremely dangerous because guess what happens when you are not grateful for a gift when you are not grateful for a gift you can become tested in those gifts and those gifts can be taken away from you it's like a person who's been gifted with health and looks at someone who's sick and judges them and says you know why it's because they're just not as good as me they don't work out as much as meaner they don't eat as much raw organic greeny green vegetables as me you know I mean and you judge that person and you and you shame that person we would never do that because we realize that health is a gift hopefully same thing with wealth if you have money you've been gifted with that money don't think that it's only because of your hard work because guess what there are children working in sweatshops who are working harder than you and they're not making the money you're making so at the end of the day we have to understand that all these things are provisions and they are gifts and a lot very accurately puts it he uses the word Hiba which is a gift Ravenna Helena - Wow Jeana with Ariana burrata iron that make our our chew our spouses and our children the coolness of our eyes this is a gift so be careful if you have it be grateful don't be arrogant and do not take credit for it that's very important I'll tell you one of the pitfalls we fall into as as parents and as spouses imagine that you've been gifted with a righteous child please don't take credit for it please thank Allah please be grateful because I will tell you you are not better than no holidays to them and he was not gifted with a righteous child and it's not because he was lacking you understand so the point here is be grateful for your gifts do not be arrogant and do not take credit what happened to someone who took credit for what he had as we know in the Koran were given the story of Karan Karan was a man who had so much wealth Allah describes and sort of causes he had so much that the the keys to his wealth was wealth that's how much he owned and he used to be very arrogant and when people would tell him to be grateful he said in Emma ot to Allah and II that I got all of this because of a knowledge in me do you see what he's doing he's taking credit for what he has he says because of me it's because I'm so smart and sometimes we have this attitude but Allah shows us what happened to him Allah says that the earth swallowed him and his home was pretty intense and I mean sometimes I used to read about this and be like how does that even happen and then I learned about this thing called sinkholes and I was like OMG it's like a real thing alright so the point here is that he was taking credit for his gifts be mindful never to take credit your children if they are righteous and on the straight path it is because Allah has protected them and Allah has guided them and Allah has gifted you with that and always remember that even prophets had issues within their family Luke I lay his salams wife was not righteous it's not because he was a bad husband Ibrahim ELISA Lam's father was one of those who was making the idols asea alehissalaam she was married to the worst tyrant who walked the earth who used to say and a taboo Kemal Allah I am your Lord Most High why do we learn about these stories because on the one hand yes allah subhanaw taala tells us the ideal it tells us how it should be but then he's also giving us examples that even the most righteous had shoes in their family and we need to number one stop being so judgmental and stop thinking that we are better because we've been given a specific gift and someone else has it allah subhanaw taala he passes out his gifts according to his wisdom it doesn't mean that if you're better you can you get this gift and if you're worse you get you don't get that gift that's not how it works because as you know some of the worst people have health have wealth and even have good families isn't it we have people who who make curses them and they're still given some of these things so don't don't think that way now what should we do I don't have much time left but what I want to leave you with is a principle supper doesn't mean turning the other cheek patience southern doesn't mean you allow yourself to be abused it is not righteousness to allow yourself or your children to be abused in fact yourself and your children are an Amana they are a trust given to you by allah subhanaw taala and you will be asked about that trust and if you put your children in a situation where they are in danger or they are being abused and you allow that you will be asked by allah subhanaw taala what did you do to protect your children so please please do not swallow this this narrative that your being righteous by turning the other cheek and being passive you're not that's not what the prophesy said them said to do he said if you see something wrong you have to try to change it please don't buy into this idea that Islam is a is a passive deal it's not it's extremely active it is an active deed we're supposed to be people of action when we see injustice we have to take action we not turn the other cheek that's that's a different religion that's not our religion so when you see something wrong the prophesy Salem said you have to try to change it with your hand and if you cannot then with your tongue by speaking out against it and if you cannot do any of that then at the least you have to hate it in your heart and this is the weakest of amen look at that the prophesy centum has linked amen faith with taking action against injustice so don't let anyone make you believe that you are being a a more righteous Muslim by by putting up with injustice by putting up with abuse it is part of your worship to take action against abuse and against injustice allah subhanaw taala does not approve of injustice by himself or by anyone else there's a hadith in which the prophets I seldom said help your brother if he is the oppressor or he is oppressed out chemical whether help your brother if he is the oppressor here so present the Companions said we know how to help him if he is the oppressed but how do we help him if he himself is the oppressor and the prophets I Salim said by stopping him from oppressing that's how you help your brother or your spouse is by stopping them from oppressing Akula kolyada was tough for a lot a welcome in Nepal Rahim zupanic Allah be under a shadow and I yell at him ancestor to the party winning you

Channel: OthmanDigital

Views: 45,093

Keywords: RIS, TORONTO, REVIVING, ISLAMIC, SPIRIT, 2017, DECEMBER, YASMIN, MOGAHED, YASMIN MOGAHED, Reviving islamic spirit 2017 Toronto

Id: sl-O2pDVb7E

Length: 22min 39sec (1359 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 25 2017