Is it lawful to kill one’s daughter that left the house and became a prostitute?

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Question: Once, one of my friends told me that his daughter had left his house, and it was said that she had been a prostitute. He asked me if Islam permitted him to wipe off this disgrace by killing her.

The answer: Ask your friend to review himself first whether he has been wrong in his conducts towards his daughter that led her to practice this sin!

I know someone whose two daughters have openly been prostitutes. When I asked one of his relatives about the family circumstances of the two girls, he confirmed to me that their father was a drunkard. I said that the offspring coming out of drinking would not be better than that!

I hope that your friend is not of this kind! On the other hand, when some fathers see a mistake or a suspicious behavior in their children, they begin inquiring suspiciously, and then they treat the guilt as if it is true. They begin insulting their children, beating them, and demeaning them in the presence of others. And consequently, if that child has not committed that guilt, he will then commit it defiantly.

This way of education has led many youths astray because they think: as long as our parents suspect us, then let us be as they suspect! They begin looking for bad friends, bad films, narcotics, or the like. Thus, they begin the journey of deviation. Therefore, the first thing that leads the youth to go astray is the kind of conduct displayed by parents towards their children, whereas parents can protect their children by following another manner in dealing with them: it is the manner of the holy Prophet (S), about whom Allah the Almighty has said, (Thus it is due to mercy from Allah that you deal with them gently, and had you been rough, hard hearted, they would certainly have dispersed from around you).

Leniency, mercifulness, and kindness are basic elements of the successful manners of education and guidance. Unfortunately, most Muslims have given up these elements, and therefore, Allah has not blessed their lives!

Sometimes, youth are led astray by the habits of the masters of the family themselves. For example, you find a father forbidding his son from smoking while he himself smokes, or forbidding him from watching bad films while he himself watches them, and, on some occasions, talking about his past youth and how he spent his nights watching bad films or going with his friends to the cinema. Or you may find a mother talking about the past days of her unveiledness or showing photos of herself while unveiled, whereas she now asks her daughter to veil herself without criticizing her own past behaviors or feeling sorry for it. This duality in the parents’ personalities will be planted in their children’s personalities.

Let us first watch ourselves to make sure that we are not unknowingly the cause of our children’s deviation.

Regarding permission for killing one’s daughter after the guilt has been proven, it is to be determined by the religious authority (marji’ at-Taqlid) who the father imitates. Let this father ask his authority about the matter. However, I think that there is no one who will permit him to kill his daughter. There is a certain punishment for adultery, but that is carried out only when it is possible and justifiable. We wish he would guide her with leniency, love, and kindness and forgive her for what she has committed, for surely Allah loves those who repent and purify themselves.

FOR A BETTER FUTURE

How can I sow the love of religion in my children so that they will adhere to it up to the last moment of their lives?

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Question: How can I sow the love of religion in my children so that they will adhere to it up to the last moment of their lives?

The answer: There is no doubt that the true religion of Islam has intellectual and practical teachings that feed man with a sound sustenance and make him happy in all fields of life. Since it is so, then the importance of religion in man’s life makes it obligatory on him to make every effort to arrive at religion. Allah has said, (O you who believe! save yourselves and your families from a fire whose fuel is men and stones).

Now, what should we do to sow the seed of religiousness in our children and to assure their adhering to it throughout their lives?

It is very important for fathers and mothers to know that children are born with a certain nature, but the environments they live in take them away from that nature. And there is no difference between home, school, and the street.

Watching the environment and purifying it from cultural poisons is the first step in the educational task. After that, you can make your children memorize the Qur’an, Hadith, or some religious oratorios and anthems according to their ages and incorporate that into their daily affairs; for example, when they want to go to bed, you can teach them to recite some Qur’anic verses and some supplications. You can say to them that these verses and supplications will make them sleep comfortably and they will see nice dreams and on the Day of Resurrection their reward will be great, or when they have their examinations, you can teach them to give alms and recite certain Qur’anic verses and certain supplications so that Allah may grant them success. You can also prepare some religious competitions for them and give prizes to the winners. Besides this, you should continuously take them to religious meetings.

Religious stories have great influences on planting Islamic concepts in children’s minds, especially the stories of the prophets and imams (a.s.) and the stories of Paradise and its pleasures. Children must be taken to religious meetings and given a role there, such as distributing sweets, arranging books and the copies of the Qur’an, or the like.

You have to protect your children with spiritual relations and strengthen religious values in them before they reach adolescence or adulthood, because this stage is the stage of physical, psychological, mental, and intellectual changes. If their foundation is solid and firm, they will not be defeated by suspicions, and they will pass the stage of adolescence soundly and successfully.

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I need advice on how to manage my children given their own unique characteristics and ambitions.

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Question: Each one of my children has his own special characteristics and ambitions. How should I deal with them in the house? I love them from the depths of my heart, but I am too arbitrary with them, and I fear that it will affect their futures. I do not know whether I am right or wrong in my way of dealing with them!

The answer: Dear brother, I have read wonderful educational statements of an Iranian writer called Muhammad Taqi Ma’soomi. I translate them here with my additions in reply to your question. The author says,

1. If you want your children to live psychologically and mentally in safety and soundness, you should avoid quarreling in their presence.

2. If you want your children to not be obstinate, you should not always reject their requests, insult them, or shout at them before others.

3. If you want your children to listen to you, you should listen to them carefully and respectfully.

4. If you want your children to not get used to bad morals and nervousness, you should not treat them with rude, superior orders and strict instructions.

5. If you want your children to not feel desperate or disappointed, you should not scold them with severe words when they fail to achieve success in something.

6. If you want your children to not mistrust you, you should not promise them what you cannot fulfill.

7. If you want to strengthen your children’s self-confidence, you should praise them for their good deeds and reward them with some gifts.

8. If you want your children to obey you, you should not scold them or insist that they obey you.

9. If you want your children to be successful in the future, you should be a good example for them in orderliness, planning, and deliberation.

10. If you want your children to not be slack in speaking and talking to you, you should smile at them whenever they want to speak and show them that you will listen carefully to them when they want to talk.

11. If you want to help your children in studying their lessons, you should not do that without consulting someone who specializes in school affairs.

12. If you want to guide your children out of their troubles, you should listen to their questions carefully and react to their sufferings.

13. If your children are weak in their studies and you want to help them, you should not blame them with words like “failure”, “weak”, “dull”, “stupid,” etc.

14. If you want your children to not be defeated by despair and to not submit to failure when disappointed, you should assure them that bitter events pass away quickly.

Finally, dear brother, you should not lose your patience and be desperate because life is full of difficulties and memories. You should write down on its pages what pleases you and what will make your family remember you after your death with good thoughts and prayers.

FOR A BETTER FUTURE

I feel ashamed about my child’s bad behavior; what can I do?

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Question: My child is quick-tempered, quarrelsome, and aggressive. He asks for some things at inappropriate times. He wants to possess whatever he likes, and sometimes he seizes others’ things and holds them whiningly and stiffly. I feel ashamed before others because of him. Would you please give me a solution?

The answer: Anger is a kind of excitement inside man that appears through his words and gestures. Excitement has external incentives at some times and internal ones at other times.

In fact, the power of angriness is a good defensive instinct in the life of man and nations that Allah has created in man to help him be in certain situations brave, valiant, and heroic. However, it is like other instincts. If it is not guided in the way of goodness, reform, and piety, it will move in the opposite direction and destroy the noble values.

There is a saying that courage and full-heartedness are among the hereditary aspects, and so are anger and quick-temperedness.

As for anger in children, educationists say that it begins in the third year and decreases when the child becomes five and a half years old. Children learn anger and nervousness from their parents and the persons around them in the house, kindergarten, or school. Children also learn that from some exciting films. They imitate what they see in those films thinking it is a condition for them to be accepted by society or to prove their personalities and existence among their fellows. Thus, they feel the pleasure of pride and importance.

Regardless of the age differences of those who show their anger, the common thing between all kinds of anger is that the angry person places himself at the center of all things and becomes utterly selfish when he wants something, which could be his or others’, and he then disagrees with others.

On the other hand, an angry child provokes his parents’ anger and then his desire to defend his pleasure and aim increases in him. In this wrong way, angriness deepens in the child while his parents and relatives do not feel it.

To cure this state, one should not reciprocate the angry child with anger. When the child becomes angry, parents should not be angry with him, because in order to put out the fire, one needs to pour water on it and not add fuel!

Besides, you should make the child understand that the pleasure of proving his personality and existence among others is not gained through anger or forcefully seizing things but is instead gained through love and cordiality.

At the same time, the parents should not submit to the unreasonable desires of the child. Submission to all his desires makes him ask for anything at anytime and deepens in him obduracy and obstinacy, and then he does not care whether his parents are able to meet his requests or not. In fact, excessive pampering makes the child ask for everything and with no limits. Of course, he becomes angry if he faces a limit that he has not faced before. Hence, the parents may be, most of the time, the cause in making the child grow accustomed to asking for everything because they meet all his requests in order to avoid his insistence, as they think, but the fact that is not known to them is that their child will now ask for new things again and again.

Yes, if parents are able to buy for their child what he sees in the hands of others and wants, they should do so; otherwise, they should be patient enough to tolerate their child’s angriness and insistence.

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What do you think about beating children?

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Question: What do you think about beating children? Do you think it is one of the successful ways of education?

The answer: Most people prefer beating and neglect using kind and persuasive words. I think that those who beat the children are in greater need of education than the children who are beaten. Children do not perceive the mistakes they commit nor do they understand the cause for being beaten.

Hence, the beater is worthier of being punished according to the very principle he follows in beating the child.

We should know that the child who is insulted and who suffers the pain of beating will not give up the thing for which he is beaten; rather, he will continue doing it secretly or will learn how to beat and practice beating another child or he will hide inside himself his hatred against the beater until a day when he will show his hatred to restore his dignity due to his childish understanding. The children that are deterred by beating are very few. Therefore, it is not right to utilize beating as a successful educational means, except according to the limits of necessity as studied by a wise educator.

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Would you please explain to me the most important bases of education?

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Question: I have just one child, and I have prayed to Allah for so long to grant me her. Therefore, I am very concerned to educate her as Allah the Almighty wants. Would you please explain to me the most important bases of education? I will be very grateful.

The answer: Islam has divided the education of children into three stages.

The first stage begins from birth and lasts until the seventh year. In this stage, the child should taste the full meaning of freedom. He should be free to do whatever he likes except if he wants to do something that may harm him, and then he should be prevented in a way that his dignity is not harmed and his freedom is not restrained.

The second stage is from the seventh until the fourteenth year. In this stage, the child should be taught useful knowledge especially the beliefs, juristic principles, morals, and contemporary sciences.

The third stage begins after the fourteenth year where the parents by now should have prepared him to be as their friend and as an independent person. However, in this age, the parents should help him in the field of life and teach him good lessons from their experiences.

This is in general, but as for the conduct required from you as a mother towards her daughter, I would like to draw your attention to the following points:

1. You should teach your daughter good habits and morals.

2. You should strengthen in her the motives of goodness, knowledge, and longing for Paradise.

3. Let her see in you the exact practical example of what you tell her!

4. Let yourself be so close to her to the extent that she can speak frankly to you about anything that is in her mind!

5. You should plant in her self-confidence and teach her to not be satisfied with a certain level of success! Always tell her: “High determination is from faith”.

6. You should continue reading books concerning your goal!

FOR A BETTER FUTURE

My son is lazy and does not like his lessons. How should I deal with him?

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Question: My son is lazy and does not like his lessons. How should I deal with him?

The answer:

1. He has not found a motive that makes him love studying. Such a motive must be created in him by explaining to him the advantages of knowledge either by you or by others. You can talk to him about the great scientists, scholars, and inventors and explain to him how they have gained the respect of people and will gain the high degrees in Paradise.

2. He must be taught the right ways of learning and understanding the lessons.

3. The actual reasons for his hating studying must be identified. He may be harmed by his classmates or mistreated by his teachers or something else.

4. He should not be blamed too much, because this will make him more obdurate and obstinate.

5. Laziness sometimes is symptomatic and it would be better to see a doctor too.

6. If there are around him family problems or marital disagreements, you should try to determine them because such problems are the main reasons that cause laziness and boredom, and they are the key to every evil.

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What are the causes of envy among children and what are the solutions?

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Question: What are the causes of envy among children and what are the solutions?

The answer: There are many causes that prepare the ground for this bad quality. Here are some of them:

1. Moral defects in the family, such as the lack of indulgence, not pardoning one another, watching each other suspiciously, and the like

2. The parents’ disagreements and quarrels

3. Discrimination amongst the children

4. Natural differences between the children themselves, like cleverness, beauty, good speaking, activeness, etc.

5. Siding with one of the children against the other when they quarrel without listening or being certain about who is actually guilty

As for the solutions, they are:

1. Holding family meetings from time to time to discuss the matters that often cause quarrels, and the children should be given a full opportunity to talk freely while being listened to carefully and respectfully

2. In spite of all the quarrels between the children, the parents should deal with all of them equally and fairly

3. Making efforts to end every quarrel between the children from its very beginning

4. Avoiding discrimination; the parents should accept their children as they are and not make them feel that their parents love or care for a certain one of them more than the others

5. It is very important too that parents should adapt themselves to the natural rate of envy in their children, and at the same time that they explain to their children the harms of envy, they should not, by their actions, encourage it to increase in them

FOR A BETTER FUTURE

How can we teach children not to be envious?

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Question: I am a teacher. I find that some of my students are envious of their classmates. I try my best to remove this bad feature from them but with no use. I can say that this feature is present even in my children in the house, and I do not know how to control it.

The answer: Envy has many causes such as:

1. The discrimination in parents’ treatment of their children; showing love to some children and depriving the others of it is an educational error that is widespread among families. This discrimination may lead the children to even commit crimes against the parents, the newborn child, or people outside the house. Wisdom requires parents to show love to their children equally in order to not shed tears of regret later on.

2. The natural gifts in individuals like beauty, neatness, tactfulness, and the like; here a wise teacher and a kind father should not prefer one (student or child) to another according to inexcusable sentiment and love. Preference is right when someone makes efforts to be successful and the teacher intends by that to draw the attentions of the others that whoever makes efforts to be successful will be preferred, and thus, preference is just a result of efforts and success.

3. Praising someone before his mates without justification; when one is praised before his mates, the reasons behind that praise, such as personal efforts, success, and the like, should be declared to make his mates understand that praise is a fruit deserved by whoever does good.

4. A teacher or a father should explain moral concepts and stories about the outcomes of enviers and then ask the listeners to give their opinions about envy and after that advise and warn them of envy.

5. It is good for a teacher sometimes to ask his students to write articles on envy and assign a prize for the best of them. Doing this leads them to read and ponder more over what they suffer from, and consequently, they try to rid themselves of this bad feature.

Parents have to prepare the mentality of their last child to respond to the coming of their new child. They should plant love inside their child for his coming brother or sister so that he can be delighted when it is born, and this will remove envy from him.

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When my son became a teenager, he became disrespectful; why has this happened?

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Question: My son is fifteen years old. Now, he is different from how he was before. He used to be quiet and well mannered, but now he is very mutinous. He refuses to be advised and turns his back on me whenever I ask him for something. I do not know why he has suddenly become like this.

The answer: Your son is now passing through the stage of moving from childhood to youth. Physically and mentally, he is undergoing changes of cells and reactions of hormones. He is at the threshold of a new stage, where he will like to know about what he has not known before. Things around him are new for him. He does not like to deal with them as before when he was a child. Now, he considers himself an adult. Socially, people, friends, the media, and all that he sees in the street affect him. Intellectually, he looks for the proofs of everything that has been said before about beliefs and ideas. Questioning in this transitional stage is natural for him. If parents scold or shout at him in their manners of guiding, he will slip into deviation and then into the major deviation, especially if he falls into the traps of bad friends.

It is necessary for parents to be accurate and careful in dealing with children in this new state, regardless of whether they are boys or girls. It is a temporary state that just needs wisdom and great care, and then both, you and your children, will be comfortable.

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