ISLAM FOR CHILDREN:

From Religious Rituals to Religious Responsibility

Buya Abdul Aziz Aru Bone

Most of parents strongly encourage their children to do some religious rituals every day, such as, pray five times a day without knowing the spiritual dimension of the religious obligation. Many parents strongly obligate their female children for wearing veil but the children know nothing about the meaning of veil obligation. Parents forget that the prophet Muhammad need 15 years preparing the first Moslem community before the veil obligation.

Parents strongly compulse that these religious rituals are obligated by God for every male and female moslem. Parents even know that their children are not being adults or unlawful by age according to Islamic Law (Syariah), but they prefer to obligate the religious rituals for children earlier without understanding do their children feel convertible or unconvertible of it.

On another words, at the beginning of our ages most of us had learned that Islam is a juristic religion with certain religious rituals an sich. At the beginning of our ages we were learning that Islam is a juristic religion an sich obligating believers about what is forbidden and what is permissible.

Most of parents forget that the first elements of Islam that Allah gave to the Prophet Muhammad SAW were not juristic elements but Tauhid, which is about religious responsibility. Specifically, some of the first wahyu (ayat or surah in Qur’an) that Allah gave to the Prophet were not obligation of prayer five times a day, shoum of Ramadhan, or another Islamic rituals. But about religious conciseness and religious responsibility about God and people as the representative of God in the earth (klalifatullah fi al-ardh).

Allah gradually had legislated the Islamic juristic elements step by step during 23 years of the prophet times. Those Islamic juristic elements had legislated gradually and simultaneously according to the growing of religious responsibility of the first Moslem community. On the other hand, the Islamic juristic elements were legislated according to some circumstances, conditions of the prophet friends (shohabah) and situations of the first moslem community in Makkah (before Hijrah) and Madinah (after Hijrah).

Based on the prophetic experiences, parents should realize that the religious responsibility must be the first element of Islamic teaching for children. It must be the fundamental element of developing moslem at the individual level.

The meaning of religious responsibility in Islam is that every man and woman have responsibility to God and another people. In doing so, Islam determines three fundamental values; correctness, ethic dimension and priority of values. A good moslem is not who perfectly do all of the religious rituals but put behind the ethic and priority values of individual and social orientation.

It means that all of the religious rituals, such as, veil obligation, pray five times a day and shoum of Ramadhan have ethic dimension and priority values for transformation Moslem at the individual and social level.
Islamic teaching for children should be focused on introduction children to the ethic dimension and priority values of the religious rituals at the individual and social level as main part of religious responsibility.

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Nb: Ya namanya juga belajar nulis dalam bahasa Inggris, jadi maaf kalau secara kebahasaan ada kekurangan.