Saturday, October 24, 2009

Disappointment

I was pretty disappointed with myself today. I wanted to talk to my Sunday Schoolers about Halloween, and I wound up doing exactly the thing I wanted to avoid--telling them things are "haraam."

I guess what I want to do with the class is convince them about the superiority of Islam, and its applicability to their lives. I thought I could do it today, when talking about Halloween, but now I think now. May Allah help those girls--increase them in faith and ease their difficulties.

7 comments:

Uthman said...

You could start by telling them how somethings are right and some are wrong. And why this thing is not right and then tell them the halalness and haramness of the issue. Wallah u alam!

The Dynamic Hamza 21® said...

This is an issue that really annoys me. It's as though many muslims believe Allah is unreasonable. It's not about haram or halal. Allah encourages to perform acts that displays and reinforces certain principles for successful living as human being. You perform the acts you will be successful. You don't, you won't.

Halloween is centered around going to stranger's houses and begging for food.Does any thinking person,even children ,think this is a good moral action..begging for food?

I think the problem is too many muslims don't understand the nature of things and instead fall back on what they've been told without even thinking about.

Regular Baba said...

Salam

I was having this conversation with another sister a while back, coincidentally, who is teaching kids in an Islamic school. She was upset about her kids don't seem to get the message. Personally, I really think this is a problem because most kids don't have the correct foundation of true Iman. A kid in this situation will only see the visible consequences of doing wrong... whereas Iman teaches you to see the long term consequences. So kids might say 'I know trick and treat is bad for my teeth', but they have no idea how bad it is for the akhirah.

I'm also currently talking with a non muslim woman about Islam in general, and she raised the point that when non muslims go to countries like Saudi Arabia, they are given info about the 'rules', but scant info about the one who made those rules i.e Allah. Same thing... this deen is first and foremost about Allah, about worshiping Him... rules about halal and haram are based on understanding those attributes of Allah SWT which make it important to obey him. If someone does not know Allah, that person will not be able to apply him/herself to halal and haram.

Hope this makese sense!

shamsuddin waheed said...

Salaamualaikum,

I thought of writing a post on Halloween, but you beat me to it. Some people think going out in costumes collecting candy is harmless. Even some practicing, conscientious Muslims have the same ideas!!

But what many of us fail to understand is that the origins of this holiday lie in satisfying spirits, and a host of pagan/evil symbolism. If that wasn't bad enough, the holiday as now practiced encourages people to dress up in costumes of serial killers, engage in potentially harmful partying [at least for adults], all of which has the appearance of invoking the Devil or evil in general.

It's very different from other holidays that are found in the culture. It does not have a good origin, middle or end.

Amy said...

Thanks for all the comments. I intended to talk about Halloween when I started the discussion, as a springboard, really.

What I didn't want to do, however, is classify things into haram and halal for them. I sort of did that, though. In fact that's exactly what I did--I tried to get them to answer whether it was haram or halal and tell me why. Why pranks would be haram, for instance.

My disappointment was from failing to spark within them the fire of iman. That's what I want for them, but how to get out of the rut of talking about rules is what I'm struggling with.

Jamilah said...

I don't understand why we are so squeamish sometimes to tell kids the truth. We don't need to sugar coat it... As Shamsuddin said, halloween has bad origins.. and as Muslims we should be able to keep ourselves, and our children away from that.

Just because this 'holiday' has been made so popular here does not mean we have to indulge in it.

Perhaps we need to build the foundation, as Hamayoun said but in the meantime, lets not beat around the bush... we need to explain to kids why we should not participate and go on from there.

shamsuddin waheed said...

[quote]What I didn't want to do, however, is classify things into haram and halal for them. I sort of did that, though. In fact that's exactly what I did--I tried to get them to answer whether it was haram or halal and tell me why. Why pranks would be haram, for instance.

My disappointment was from failing to spark within them the fire of iman. That's what I want for them, but how to get out of the rut of talking about rules is what I'm struggling with.[/quote]

Well, kids are kids. They just want to have fun, and Halloween, costumes, candy etc.. are all fun to them. Imaan will come later, the fact that the conversation even went that way shows they have some amount of Imaan.

So don't feel bad.You wanted to tell them in a good way, and I'm sure you did.