Predestination

For our final article of faith, we began by reading the relevant pages in the Safar Islamic Studies Textbook 1 (kindly gifted to us by my sister-in-law!). We followed this up with a discussion into what it meant, i.e. Allah knows everything (when I asked them this morning, "What do you want for breakfast?" Allah already knew what they would choose before they'd even decided!) and that both good things are from Allah (e.g. sunny weather so they can ride their bikes outside) as well as things they don't like (e.g. it's raining so they can't play outdoors anymore) - but everything that happens Allah knows about and everything that happens is for a reason, even if we don't understand it.

Then we looked at the above worksheet: the first part is a fill-in-the-gaps activity (with an accompanying list of words/phrases to choose from as prompts, if needed). We did this together and continued our discussions to strengthen their understanding as we did it.

The second part looks at two ayaat from Surah Al-Baqarah. We did them one at a time; we read the Arabic together and the translation, then discussed its meaning in a way they could relate to. For the first, about liking a thing which may be bad for us and vice-versa, I explained it in the context of sweets (they taste good but if we ate too many of them it wouldn't be good for our health!) and used examples like playing outside (e.g. having to come indoors when it's raining, maybe they don't want to stop playing and it makes them sad but what about the flowers and the worms and frogs? Are they happy it's raining? And if they kept on playing outside in the rain, what might happen? They could catch a cold! So even though they don't like having to come inside, it was actually a good thing.). For the second, about the burden upon a soul never being too much, we talked about a "burden" being something really difficult and the word "bear" being something they were able to manage - so Allah never gives anyone anything too difficult for them to manage. If something bad happens to us, Allah knows we can manage, e.g. I might have to go to the hospital and stay there for a long time to look after the baby, so they wouldn't be able to see me for a few days,,, maybe a whole week! Would that be hard to manage? But if that happened, then Allah knows they could manage or He wouldn't let it happen. And would Papa be able to look after them and the house for all that time? If it happened, then of course he would be able to or Allah wouldn't have let it happen! We also talked about when they fell over and hurt themselves, it wasn't nice but they were able to manage the pain.

This was definitely the most complicated article of faith - and one even many adults still struggle to understand! - so as long as they just know that everything comes from Allah, then that's good enough for me at this point.

You can download our worksheet here.