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Disciplining children (ta'dib al-awlad)

تأديب الأولاد

Disciplining and punishing children in upbringing, as Abd al-Rahman Mansour presents it in the programme 'Ahalina': punishment with an aim and not in revenge, graded from advice and guidance to turning away, a stern rebuke, shunning for up to three days, reprimand and hanging up the whip, and a light smack only as the last resort and never before the age of ten, with a distinction between striking to discipline and striking in revenge.

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Region
Global / Diaspora
Review

Children and youthFamily, marriage and kinshipEducation

In Abd al-Rahman Mansour's programme 'Ahalina'

Abd al-Rahman Mansour gives the last surviving episode of his programme 'Ahalina' to punishment in upbringing. Punishment in Islam, he holds, has an aim and a direction: it is not revenge on the child, nor harming him, nor applying a hadd to him; it is one of the many means of Islamic upbringing, joined with mercy and compassion and bound by the limits of the Sharia. 1 2 3 He says some fathers strike ten blows in one place until the child swells or his arm breaks, and calls this a calamity. 3 4

He ranks punishments from the lightest to the heaviest. First come advice, guidance and reminding: he cites the boy whose hand wandered about the dish, whom the Prophet ﷺ taught to say God's name, eat with his right hand and eat from what was in front of him, without harshness. 4 5 6 Then turning away: he cites from Sahih al-Jami' that when the Prophet learned that someone of his household had lied he turned away from him until he repented, and suggests teaching the child the two rak'as of repentance. 6 7 Then a stern rebuke, citing the Prophet's rebuke of al-Hasan ibn Ali when he took a date from the charity dates. 7 8 Then shunning, for three days at most, for example when a child abandons prayer or uses foul language in adolescence. 8 9 10 11 Then reprimand, which for him is severity of speech without insult, cursing or abuse. 11 12 Then hanging the whip where the household can see it; he cites a hadith on this from Sahih al-Jami' and says the point is that the child be deterred by seeing it, not beaten with it. 12 13 14 Children differ, he observes: a look is enough for one, turning away for another, and some are set right only by striking. 15 16 17

Striking he makes the last means, once all before it are exhausted. People, he says, are divided between supporters who give the father absolute power and opponents who forbid it, while the method of Islam is a middle way that allows it within the narrowest limits under rules of the Sharia: a light smack, joined with mercy. 18 19 20 21 One of his rules is that a child is never struck before the age of ten, on the evidence of the hadith on teaching prayer at seven and striking for it at ten, which he repeats in other episodes. 22 23 24 25 He separates "striking to discipline" from "striking in revenge": the first is a gentle touch on the child's hand with a reminder of God, the second a father emptying his anger on his child, and in his view most people who strike do so in revenge. 25 26 27 28 18 He offers himself as an example: a teacher who threatened him as a boy left him unable to recite al-Fatiha in a Qur'an competition and made him hate school. 29 30 31 At the end of the episode he promises another on how to strike and its rules, which is not in the archive. 31

This is the speaker's view as recorded, attributed to him. (needs_source: the jurists' and hadith works' treatment of disciplining a child, and the findings of educational and psychological research on corporal punishment of children, have not yet been gathered in this run.)

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Subject of
Ahalina: Our Families (television programme)
Related to
Tarbiya (education and upbringing)

People and things also explored

Ahalina: Our Families (television programme)· Tarbiya (education and upbringing)· Childhood (sighar: its stages, the rights and duties of the minor, guardianship, the minor in worship and contracts, marriage, testimony and penalties)· Hadiyya (gift)· Hajr (abandonment and shunning: its rules for a believer, a sinner, an innovator and a wife)· Children's rights (huquq al-abna)· Marital companionship and the rights of spouses (ishra)· Sharh al-Hikam al-'Ata'iyya (lecture series)

Sources

  1. Assabile archive of Abd Al-Rahman Mansour's lessons , Ahaleena, episode 13, at 00:01:00 · Listen at the archive (opens the audio at this time)
  2. Assabile archive of Abd Al-Rahman Mansour's lessons , Ahaleena, episode 13, at 00:01:30 · Listen at the archive (opens the audio at this time)
  3. Assabile archive of Abd Al-Rahman Mansour's lessons , Ahaleena, episode 13, at 00:02:00 · Listen at the archive (opens the audio at this time)
  4. Assabile archive of Abd Al-Rahman Mansour's lessons , Ahaleena, episode 13, at 00:02:30 · Listen at the archive (opens the audio at this time)
  5. Assabile archive of Abd Al-Rahman Mansour's lessons , Ahaleena, episode 13, at 00:03:00 · Listen at the archive (opens the audio at this time)
  6. Assabile archive of Abd Al-Rahman Mansour's lessons , Ahaleena, episode 13, at 00:03:30 · Listen at the archive (opens the audio at this time)
  7. Assabile archive of Abd Al-Rahman Mansour's lessons , Ahaleena, episode 13, at 00:04:00 · Listen at the archive (opens the audio at this time)
  8. Assabile archive of Abd Al-Rahman Mansour's lessons , Ahaleena, episode 13, at 00:04:30 · Listen at the archive (opens the audio at this time)
  9. Assabile archive of Abd Al-Rahman Mansour's lessons , Ahaleena, episode 13, at 00:05:00 · Listen at the archive (opens the audio at this time)
  10. Assabile archive of Abd Al-Rahman Mansour's lessons , Ahaleena, episode 13, at 00:05:30 · Listen at the archive (opens the audio at this time)
  11. Assabile archive of Abd Al-Rahman Mansour's lessons , Ahaleena, episode 13, at 00:06:00 · Listen at the archive (opens the audio at this time)
  12. Assabile archive of Abd Al-Rahman Mansour's lessons , Ahaleena, episode 13, at 00:06:30 · Listen at the archive (opens the audio at this time)
  13. Assabile archive of Abd Al-Rahman Mansour's lessons , Ahaleena, episode 13, at 00:07:00 · Listen at the archive (opens the audio at this time)
  14. Assabile archive of Abd Al-Rahman Mansour's lessons , Ahaleena, episode 13, at 00:07:30 · Listen at the archive (opens the audio at this time)
  15. Assabile archive of Abd Al-Rahman Mansour's lessons , Ahaleena, episode 13, at 00:08:00 · Listen at the archive (opens the audio at this time)
  16. Assabile archive of Abd Al-Rahman Mansour's lessons , Ahaleena, episode 12, at 00:02:00 · Listen at the archive (opens the audio at this time)
  17. Assabile archive of Abd Al-Rahman Mansour's lessons , Ahaleena, episode 12, at 00:02:30 · Listen at the archive (opens the audio at this time)
  18. Assabile archive of Abd Al-Rahman Mansour's lessons , Ahaleena, episode 13, at 00:08:30 · Listen at the archive (opens the audio at this time)
  19. Assabile archive of Abd Al-Rahman Mansour's lessons , Ahaleena, episode 13, at 00:09:00 · Listen at the archive (opens the audio at this time)
  20. Assabile archive of Abd Al-Rahman Mansour's lessons , Ahaleena, episode 13, at 00:09:30 · Listen at the archive (opens the audio at this time)
  21. Assabile archive of Abd Al-Rahman Mansour's lessons , Ahaleena, episode 13, at 00:10:00 · Listen at the archive (opens the audio at this time)
  22. Assabile archive of Abd Al-Rahman Mansour's lessons , Ahaleena, episode 13, at 00:10:30 · Listen at the archive (opens the audio at this time)
  23. Assabile archive of Abd Al-Rahman Mansour's lessons , Ahaleena, episode 6, at 00:07:30 · Listen at the archive (opens the audio at this time)
  24. Assabile archive of Abd Al-Rahman Mansour's lessons , Ahaleena, episode 6, at 00:08:00 · Listen at the archive (opens the audio at this time)
  25. Assabile archive of Abd Al-Rahman Mansour's lessons , Ahaleena, episode 6, at 00:08:30 · Listen at the archive (opens the audio at this time)
  26. Assabile archive of Abd Al-Rahman Mansour's lessons , Ahaleena, episode 6, at 00:09:00 · Listen at the archive (opens the audio at this time)
  27. Assabile archive of Abd Al-Rahman Mansour's lessons , Ahaleena, episode 6, at 00:09:30 · Listen at the archive (opens the audio at this time)
  28. Assabile archive of Abd Al-Rahman Mansour's lessons , Ahaleena, episode 11, at 00:02:00 · Listen at the archive (opens the audio at this time)
  29. Assabile archive of Abd Al-Rahman Mansour's lessons , Ahaleena, episode 13, at 00:11:00 · Listen at the archive (opens the audio at this time)
  30. Assabile archive of Abd Al-Rahman Mansour's lessons , Ahaleena, episode 13, at 00:13:00 · Listen at the archive (opens the audio at this time)
  31. Assabile archive of Abd Al-Rahman Mansour's lessons , Ahaleena, episode 13, at 00:13:30 · Listen at the archive (opens the audio at this time)
Cite this page

islam.museum contributors. “Disciplining children (ta'dib al-awlad)”. islam.museum, https://islam.museum/en/concept/tadib-al-awlad/. CC BY-SA 4.0. Last updated 2026-11-02.

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Ahalina: Our Families (television programme)

A short television programme on family life by Abd al-Rahman Mansour, of which the Assabile archive keeps thirteen video episodes of about a quarter of an hour, the speaker alone: skills of communication between spouses, the keys to hearts, parents' love for their children and its signs, the 'ten destroyers' of upbringing, making children love prayer across four stages from early childhood to adolescence, fathers' harshness towards their children and what builds affection between them, and punishment in upbringing; the last episode promises one on the rules of striking a child that is not in the archive.