Child Upbringing and Moral Teaching in Islam
Child Upbringing and Moral Teaching in Islam A paper presented at Abuja Muslim Forum Seminar on Child Upbringing: a Divine Obligation, a Complementary Responsibility December, 1997 By Aisha Lemu Each one of us in this hall came into this world as a baby, about the size and weight of a yam, but containing all the potential of the adult human beings that we are today. That baby that we once were was endowed with a number of innate faculties beyond the obvious physical or biological ones. These are mentioned in the Qur'an and are therefore worth noting in any discussion of child upbringing and moral teaching. These innate faculties include the following: 1. Allah has breathed into that small human being of His spirit and has endowed it with a soul (Qur'an 15:29). Therefore although it is a created being, yet it has something of the divine spirit within it, and its life is sacred. It is not to be killed off or buried alive because its parents did not want i