Revitalising Ramadan - Ust. Hisham Abu Yusuf

Revitalising Ramadan: The Family, the Food, and the Qur'an

بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ، الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ رَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ، وَصَلَّى اللَّهُ وَسَلَّامَ عَلَى نَبِيِّنَا مُحَمَّدٍ وَعَلَى آلِهِ وَصَحْبِهِ أَجْمَعِينَ

The brief time I have with all of you — the discussion that I'm going to have with all of you — is about Ramadan and the family. Everywhere we look today, the family unit is broken. We have a divorce rate of one in four couples experiencing divorce. We have single mothers looking after children up and down the country. We have Muslim families themselves living together but still fragmented — husband and wife like housemates, living in different rooms of the house. Everywhere we look, it doesn't look very good — the state of the family today.

Ramadan is an opportunity to change that. Ramadan is an opportunity to revive the bonds within the family and revive that community experience — on a large scale and on a smaller scale within the family. I'm going to divide my talk into three points.

Point One: Build vs. Buy

The first of those points I call build versus buy. This is a famous phrase used in companies when they want to, let's say, get some software to do some accounting or to look at their operations. They say: do we build the software in-house, or do we buy it from elsewhere? Buying is always a shortcut — it's quick, it's easy, you get it off the shelf, done. Building takes longer. It's more tiring. You have to build the expertise from the ground up. You have to train people. You have to be patient.

As a Muslim community, as parents, as families — what is the approach that we take when it comes to tarbiyah, the nurturing and the development of our families? The vast majority of us, we buy, we don't build.

Parents today are glorified drivers — picking their children up and dropping them from madrasah, from football, from school, from chess class, from this class and the other class — so much so that the only quality time a parent gets with their child is perhaps in the car. During which the parent is shouting at the child to be quiet in the backseat while they try to reverse the car. Psychologists say that on average today, the average parent gets 15 minutes of one-to-one time with their child.

As we enter into Ramadan, we have to change this narrative. And to do that, we have to recall one of the greatest examples of fathers that we have had in the history of Islam. I want to take you many thousands of years ago to the father of all prophets, Ibrahim (peace be upon him).

When Allah discusses Ibrahim (peace be upon him) in the Qur'an, Allah says:

I want you to imagine this moment. Ibrahim (peace be upon him), on the command of Allah, had left his child and his wife in the middle of the Arabian desert. And after many years, he returns to this desert with another instruction — to finally build the house of God himself, to build the Ka'bah. Now he has two options. He can hire a bunch of contractors, pay them a daily wage, and somebody else can build the house for him. Or he can build it himself with his own hands.

He looks at his son Ismail (peace be upon him). Small lad, small grubby hands. How much is he going to be able to contribute to the building of this massive house that's going to be the Ka'bah — the house of Allah for centuries to come? It's probably a smarter move to just tell him to stay at home with his mother while Ibrahim (peace be upon him) does the heavy lifting himself. But no — Ibrahim (peace be upon him) brings Ismail (peace be upon him) to the construction site. And brick by brick, they build the Ka'bah together.

When Allah mentions this in the Qur'an, Allah delays the name of Ismail:

Because it was unexpected. It wasn't part of the plan. But Ismail (peace be upon him), this small child, was brought into the construction project for one reason only. When you build something in-house — when children watch their parents sweat for the sake of Allah, bleed for the sake of Allah, weep for the sake of Allah, tire for the sake of Allah, lose sleep for the sake of Allah — that child is never going to forget that sight for the rest of their life. It will be imprinted, embedded in the fabric of their memory for years to come.

Children do not remember stories, words on a textbook, bland ink on a white page. No. Children remember most the live example of their parents as they move, and as they sway, and as they bow in front of the Almighty. And this is what shaped Ismail (peace be upon him).

Look at Musa (peace be upon him). His mother, Umm Musa — an understudied figure in the Qur'an. As Umm Musa herself stands in front of the River Nile with her child in her hands, Allah commands the mother of Musa: nurse this child so that his cries do not alert the guards. But if you fear for him, do the opposite of what you would naturally do. Don't hold him tight — throw him into the river. One day We will return him to you as a messenger.

Fast forward a few decades. Musa (peace be upon him) finds himself in a very similar situation — standing in front of an ocean. And Allah tells him: jump in, don't run away. This movement, this action of Musa to trust Allah and to step into the ocean, is the same thing his mother did decades ago when she cast her son into the river. As parents do, so too the children will imitate. As Ibrahim (peace be upon him) builds the Ka'bah, so too his son one day builds the Muslim civilisation.

If we become glorified delivery drivers — delivering our children from point to point, with very little quality time with them — what are we building within them? We have outsourced so much of our tarbiyah, the nurturing of the future generation. We have outsourced their Qur'anic education. We have outsourced their skills. We have outsourced their secular learning. What is left for us to give them? There is nothing left for us to give them.

This Ramadan has to be a game changer for every family that is hearing this. There are so many ways that we can cultivate a family environment in Ramadan. And the first of those is that the family unit has to be a complementary, cooperating unit. It should not be the case that a husband or a father is getting all the peaceful worship while his wife — the mother — is slaving away in the kitchen to produce 16 dishes for the iftar platter. It's got to be teamwork. The children have to be part of the journey.

We cannot outsource their religious learning. There should be a daily or weekly circle with the family. With younger children, stories work really well. With older children, a Qur'anic circle works really well. For many parents in the audience, when we share this idea — sit with your family daily, have a competition in the household, have a goal to reflect on some Qur'an together — the first thing that comes to mind is imposter syndrome. "I don't know how I'm going to teach my child. I feel like an imposter. That's why I'm paying the Mawlana. That's why I'm paying the masjid."

You do have something to give them. The Prophet ﷺ said:

"Convey from me, even if it is one verse." The one verse that a parent recites to their child is a verse the child will remember till the day they die. The one verse a child hears at a conference will be forgotten 30 minutes from now. You are much more powerful, much more impactful, much more effective than you think. So build that Ramadan environment at home — that weekly or daily Qur'an circle, that story time with the kids. Build it, don't buy it, don't outsource it. Some things can never be outsourced.

Point Two: Fixing the Food Culture

When many of us think of Ramadan, we think of feasting. There are particular dishes in every culture that we never see during the year except in the month of Ramadan — Ramadan-unique, exclusive: the pakora, the samosa, the kanji, whatever you want to call it. Special soups, special fried dishes that only turn up in Ramadan. Yes, it's understandable — we are hungry, so we want more textures, more flavours.

But when we think about the damage this culture does — and this is where human culture can really damage the purpose of the month of Ramadan — the purpose of the month is for us to go hungry, and instead the month is turned into a feasting ritual. The feast is supposed to be happening on Eid, not at iftar time. And the brunt of this culture is mostly felt by the ladies, by the mothers, by the wives, who have to slave over the stove for three, four, six, eight, ten hours a day to cook a variety of dishes.

This Ramadan, I'm going to challenge you. It's called the one-dish challenge. On the table, there should be just one dish. One dish every day. No more — no condiments, no sauces, no special soups, no fried fritters. Try it for a month.

Why? When you strip away all of the extra stuff from Ramadan, Ramadan becomes about the core — the fast. It becomes about the hunger. It becomes about the God-consciousness. Food is just a means; it's a break — but we have to rush off to prayer. And if we fill our bellies, what example are we setting for the kids? What example are we setting for the ladies? What example are we setting for the men? We have created around Ramadan a foodie culture. That foodie culture has to go, brothers and sisters.

We know that the Prophet ﷺ — if I take you for a moment to the food culture in the house of the Prophet ﷺ — he would wake up some days and ask Aisha (may Allah be pleased with her): "Oh Aisha, is there any food at home?" She would say: "No." He would say: "I'm fasting today." How many of us in this audience can do that?

As it comes in Sunan al-Tirmidhi, months would go by and nothing would be cooked in his house. The fire would never be lit. What would he live on? On dates and water — al-aswadan. Simplicity. Minimise. Cut it down. Live a minimal Ramadan rather than adding all of the bells and whistles to the food and to everything else — the festivities — such that Ramadan becomes a month of stress and cooking and feasting, and we forget about the core: the Qur'an, the Salah, and the Du'a.

Point Three: Understanding the Qur'an

When it comes to Ramadan and the family — when it comes to Ramadan and your children, and as a household — one of the most important parts of living Ramadan as a family is engaging our children and ourselves in understanding the Qur'an. Many of us grew up with the goal that in Ramadan we're going to recite the entire Qur'an. But what that does for children, for youngsters within our family and for everybody within the family, it creates a culture where the Qur'an is meant to be recited, not understood.

I would say this Ramadan, add an additional goal. Have a goal to recite a portion of the Qur'an, but also have a goal to understand and reflect on certain chapters of the Qur'an. It could be five chapters. Five short chapters:

Every week we're going to understand, reflect, and discuss the meanings of one surah as a family. We know what this Qur'an was revealed for. Allah informs us in the Qur'an itself:

"A Book We have revealed to you, blessed, so that they may reflect upon its verses, and that those of understanding may be reminded." The Qur'an was revealed in order for people to reflect on its meanings. That is the purpose of the Qur'an. The recitation, the memorisation, the prayer — these are a means to an end. They are a pathway to the meaning of the Qur'an. They are not the end goal themselves.

How many of us can say confidently that we can explain the verse "Allahu al-Samad"? This is the test — I call it the Samad test. Go home, and as a family, ask everybody: what is the meaning of "Allahu al-Samad"? This is one of the shortest chapters of the Qur'an. All of us have memorised it. It is said to be one third of the Qur'an in meaning. Just tell me — what does that one word mean? And if we realise we don't know the meaning of "al-Samad", we have exposed our own ignorance. We have exposed our own priorities.

For many of us, our relationship with the Qur'an is superficial. It is recitation, but we're not bothered about the meaning. It is memorisation, but we're not bothered about its principles and its teachings. This is the very culture that led those before us — the Jews and the Christians — down the path of completely disconnecting from their scripture.

Allah says in the Qur'an:

There are people from among them — all they know of their scripture is empty recitation. It's an empty ritual, empty hopes. They don't know the meaning of what is inside that scripture. When Allah describes such people in the Qur'an, He says:

"The likeness of those who were entrusted with the Torah but did not carry it is as the likeness of a donkey carrying books." Imagine — what happens to a donkey if you put an encyclopaedia on its back? Number one, a donkey cannot understand what's inside the encyclopaedia. And number two, it feels the book on its back as a burden. It's a chore. It's a weight. It's an annoyance.

For many of us, in our families, we have created that culture — that the Qur'an is a chore. It's an annoyance. It's something you don't have to understand, but you have to do it because Baba and Mama said so. Do we laugh? Are we surprised when our children drag their heels to their Qur'an lesson? When their entire relationship with the Qur'an is one of pure recitation, and they have never been told the meaning of a single verse?

This has to change this Ramadan. Reflect on the meanings of the Qur'an as a family. Don't only suffice with the recitation. This is not minimising the reward or the power of recitation — but it is a means, not the end. Don't forget the purpose. Don't forget the objective of the Qur'an, which was to make us think, to provoke our minds, to provoke our hearts.

Even if the goal is minimal — reflect on one surah this Ramadan, two surahs, three, four, five — but don't neglect the meanings. Lest our children grow up and say: "Oh, the Qur'an — that storybook. I don't really know what it means, but as a kid I had to read the Arabic."

This actually happened to me once. No less than with an Arab. I was at lunch at work, having lunch with my colleagues. A non-Muslim colleague asks me: "Hey, you know the Qur'an — is that a book that everybody reads and understands, or is it only for the clergy?" And a colleague of mine who was an Arab turns to this non-Muslim and says: "Yeah, the Qur'an is only for scholars. Us simple people don't understand it." Ya Allah.

What will we say in front of Allah? What will we say when we meet the Messenger of Allah ﷺ — and the Messenger of Allah complains to Allah in the Qur'an:

"Oh my Lord, my people have abandoned this Qur'an." They haven't abandoned its recitation, they haven't abandoned its memorisation — but they forgot the very reason it was revealed.

Summary

To summarise my points:

Number one — Build, don't buy. Build the relationship with your children. Build the Ramadan habits with your family. Don't outsource it. Do things with your children — don't just pick and drop them to things. Block out that quality time with them as families. And if you have no children, then as husband and wife. If you're not married, then with your housemates, your colleagues, your brothers and sisters. Do things communally; build it internally.

Number two — Fix the food culture. Have a minimal iftar. The one-dish challenge. Can you live up to it? One dish a day, no more, no less.

Number three — The meanings of the Qur'an. Create a culture of reflection, thought, and contemplation of the Qur'an at home. Make it a story, make it fun. Don't just stop at the recitation and the memorisation. Don't forget the purpose. Don't forget the objective.

And with these three points, I leave all of you. Jazakumullahu khayran for your time. Wassalamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.