Muslim Parenting

I’m not much into consumerism, so it was nice to come across this low-cost idea for a gift for a baby - a hand-decorated onesie.

With a little fabric paint and maybe crochet hook and thread Umm Nour created personalized, special little somethings for friends’ babies.

You can get as simple or fancy as you want.

For fancier ideas, I came across these appliqued versions.  If the results are good you may even be able to make a little money by selling them on Etsy (an online marketplace for handmade items).

If you aren’t up for crafting, maybe you can support another Muslim.

I Have Two Hands

I have two hands

To grasp and throw

My bouncy ball to you

We play together happily

And Allah I must thank you.

The above are the first few lines of a poem created by Sumayyah Umm Sadiqah wa Asma to teach her daughters about their bodies and how they were created by God. You can read the full poem here on Umm Sadiqah’s blog, Educating the Muslim Child.

MashAllah! There are so many other wonderful entries on Educating the Muslim Child. Umm Sadiqah has done an excellent job of thinking about and planning lessons and then kindly shared them with the rest of us.

Umm Nour shared a wonderful lesson idea, built on what Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) had to say about tasting the sweetness of faith, with the rest of us this week.

RasoolAllah used expressive language to get the idea of the benefit of holding fast to one’s faith across and by using his hadith Umm Nour insha’Allah has developed a lesson that will help children to see this as well as to learn to use metaphor and integrate abstractions (relating “food with something we cannot touch”) into their thoughts.

She used the lesson with her school students, but it seems as if it would work well with home learners, also. You can check out her post on the lesson here.

Umm Nour is an experienced homeschooling mother of three and a Language Arts teacher at an Islamic school. You can read her blog posts at Loving Allah and Raising My Kids. 

Okay, so An American Family’s Blog, is quite different from the other Muslim parents and family blogs I usually read for this site. It is the brainchild of Hijabman of Muslim t-shirt fame.

It seems that he is part of a very tight-knit “eight-person American [Okay, so we have one Brit…]Muslim family.” Hijabman’s family includes, his parents, sisters, brother and their spouses and children.

The family seems to spend a lot of time together - it’s almost as if they live in a joint household, though I know from their posts that they just live near one another.

They have been careful on the blog not to reveal too much. You don’t know where they live and you don’t see any of the adults’ faces, though you do hear their voices and sometimes see their feet.

The posts (especially the video posts) are all fairly off-beat: they talk about lotas (Urdu/Hindi name for waterpot used in the bathroom), mayhem in Karachi and Palestine, chocolate and all sorts of other topics. Remember that, in theory, there are eight very different family members contributing to this blog.

Hijabman, the impetus behind An American Family’s Blog, is himself unmarried and not a parent, but don’t let that stop you from at least checking out this Muslim family’s blog.

Perhaps, like his sisters you have some advice to offer him on finding a wife or even have a special someone in mind, so that he can too can join the parenting ranks. LOL.

Tackling your children’s questions about being Muslim and therefore “different” if you live in a non-Muslim country can be really daunting. Especially when their self-awareness of being Muslim comes with awkwardness and maybe even shame around “not fitting in.”

Sr. Tasmiya who lives in Brisbane, Australia, had to confront just such a dilemma early on with her five year old son. She writes:
‘Yesterday we managed to get ourselves organised enough to be EARLY for school. We decided to head over to the library where 5 year old could drool over his favourite science book.

As we walked towards the library we passed one of 5 year old’s classmates. The two boys greeted each other in that 5 year old way - awkward wave and mumbled hellos and all without any eye contact.

I asked 5 year old if he would like to invite his friend to the library. Without hesitation he whispered, “No, mummy. He doesn’t know about the scarf…oh maybe he does know about it..no, no I don’t think he does.”

I was floored. Could my son actually be embarrassed about my scarf?’

You can read more of what she had to write about this crisis with her son and also view the many interesting responses she received from other Muslim parents on how to deal with the situation here.

To summarize these comments (coming from several different Muslim perspectives):

- Make sure to instill a sense of confidence in being Muslim in your child

- Point out that outside of where you live, there are large areas of the world where most people are Muslim. In other words: “You are not an anomaly.”

- Emphasize similarities between Muslims and non-Muslims

- Make an effort to explain the reasons behind why Muslims do things differently. Explain as much as you
can.

- Instead of just framing non-Muslims and Muslims as being “different” from one another, emphasize the concepts of right and wrong, stressing the Muslim way as the right way.

- Encourage your children’s friendships with other Muslim children and discourage their friendships with non-Muslim children

- Ask your children about what they are thinking as regards their Muslim identity, especially when they make a comment like the one Tasmiya’s son did. Find out just what he meant by it. Otherwise, you may be jumping to a conclusion not intended by your child and/or your response may not best serve her needs.

- Be proactive. As part of developing a strong Muslim identity encourage your children to give dawah - in the form of telling others at school about Muslim holidays, for example. This reinforces the idea that they have something valuable to share with others and are not simply passively comparing their lives with those of the non-Muslim children they encounter.

First posted in August 2006.

From Tasmiya in Australia, who describes herself as “- Muslim - Australian- 30-something - wife - mother to 3 beautiful boys - owner of 2 boy cats - thoroughly enjoying being the matriarch in the home - part-time veterinarian - procrastinator extraordinaire”:

- You can wake up whenever YOU want to wake up. You don’t need to dress up and run around madly in search of that matching scarf

- You can relax. Breakfast is time for chatting, eating and joking. Not a time for yelling, “Hurry up - we’re going to be late!”

- Baby doesn’t get his routine interrupted while you pick up or drop off the school boy

- There are no emotional upheavals for you to deal with. Your child won’t be angry, tired or hungry in the afternoon because you will have taken care of his needs

- You can go on holidays ANYTIME instead of having to wait for school holidays (busiest and most expensive times of year)

- You can live abroad for a while, wherever and whenever since the kids’ school is wherever you are.

You can read Tasmiya’s great blog here.

First posted August 7, 2006.First posted August 7, 2006.