Learning the Faith in Its Proper Order

Having understood this three-legged foundation — knowledge, practice, sincerity — the question becomes where to begin. The ʿulamāʾ have already paved this path and handed down the navigator for it: the first thing any Muslim must learn is the basic, foundational obligation relevant to the immediate circumstances that person is in. Ṣalāh is not yet something a small child must learn in full: the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) directed that children be prepared for prayer from the age of seven, encouraged to begin praying, and, if by the age of ten they are still not praying, given a light smack over it, disciplined without harshness, so that the habit is formed before responsibility — taklīf — begins of itself with puberty; only then does prayer become truly obligatory upon them. Before marriage, the full detail of what is lawful and unlawful within marriage is not yet obligatory to know; before starting a business, the full detail of lawful and unlawful trade is not yet obligatory; before Ḥajj, the full detail of Ḥajj is not yet obligatory. Whatever situation a person is placed in determines what must be learned first — belief, purification, ṭahārah, and prayer for someone newly come to Islam, these being the simple, basic farāʾiḍ to begin with — and then, once Ramaḍān approaches, fasting, everything in its own priority order, an order that differs somewhat from person to person.

Belief, creed and purification, and then prayer, are what is taught to children while young, along with recitation of the Qurʾān and an understanding of its message, and love for the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him), whose own teaching places on a father the duty of teaching his child the Book of Allah, Kitābullāh, and love for him. Small things are given at a time, and alongside them go the things to be avoided — what is unlawful, adapted to what a child can grasp: not to lie, because Allah does not love a liar; not to cheat; to respect one's parents; not to pick at the nose in front of others, or anywhere else; to observe manners and decorum, adab, while eating; to brush the teeth and comb the hair before leaving the house. All of this is routinely taught to children — and yet, oddly enough, when it comes to the religion itself, many Muslims today take the view that children should simply be left to choose for themselves, without pressure, in the hope that they will somehow turn out to be good Muslims by chance. That hope is misplaced. Religion has to be taught deliberately, at a young age, and the scholars have already set out the basic steps and the priority in which they are to be taught: the foundational components of the religion, the farāʾiḍ.