The Rights of Children — Ḥuqūq al-Awlād
What a child is owed from the first breath to bulūgh: a name, nursing, provision, justice, faith, mercy and protection. Each right is traced to the Quran and to graded hadith, with the text kept apart from the wisdom.
The Rights of Children
- 1The trust and the questionEvery parent is a guardian who will be asked
- 2A gift not chosenWelcoming sons and daughters alike
- 3The first daysTaḥnīk, protection, and the adhan stated honestly
- 4A good name and a known lineageWhen to name, what to change, whose name to carry
- 5Nursing and the mother's rightTwo years, milk-kinship, and the nursing mother's fast
- 6ProvisionNafaqah: the father's standing charge
- 7Mercy and open affectionKissing, carrying, playing, and shortening the prayer
- 8Justice between children“Be just to your children”
- 9Faith firstThe fiṭrah, Luqmān's counsel, and “be mindful of Allah”
- 10Prayer, fasting and discipline within limitsSeven, ten, and the line a parent may not cross
- 11Modesty, privacy and the approach of bulūghAsking leave, covering, and the pen that is lifted
- 12The child without the usual homeOrphans, custody, loss, and the circle that returns
How to read this book. Three kinds of material are kept apart. The text (Quran and hadith) sits in quotation boxes with its reference and, for every hadith, its grade. Scholarly explanation sits in plain boxes like this one and says whose it is. General wisdom, counsel that no text dictates, sits in gold boxes; you may run your house differently without sinning.
About the references. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī is cited by standard number; Abū Dāwūd and al-Tirmidhī with the grade the site's corpus gives each report. A report graded ḍaʿīf is never used as evidence; a well-known one is named and set aside. Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim is not cited by number in this edition: where it carries a narration used here, the same words are quoted from al-Bukhārī or a graded Sunan report. The Quranic translation is the one the site carries (Abdullah Yusuf Ali), quoted as it stands.
The trust and the question
A child cannot choose a name, demand milk or insist on fairness. Every right in this book is owed before it can be claimed, so someone must hold it on the child's behalf. Islam names that someone, and tells him he will be asked.
Both parents are named, each with a sphere. The word is guardianship, not ownership: a guardian holds what belongs to someone else and answers for how he kept it. The Quran extends the charge to the next life:
"Yourselves" and "your families" (ahlīkum) share one command. Food and a roof are part of what a parent owes, but the verse points further, to whether the child is kept from the Fire. The site's answer on children's rights calls religious upbringing "the weightiest right" (qa-745).
The believer also asks for good children, and the Quran teaches the words:
"The comfort of our eyes" is a prayer, and it comes before the work. A parent who does everything in this book still asks Allah for the result.
The order of this book
The chapters follow the order in which a parent meets these rights: the welcome, the first days, the name, the milk and the money; then affection, fairness, faith and prayer; then adulthood and the hard cases. Each chapter carries its own evidence and can be read alone when the situation arrives.
A gift not chosen
The first right of a child is to be received as a gift. The Quran is plain that the parent does not choose what comes:
In the Arabic, the verse names daughters (ināthan) before sons, although the English above gives them the other way round. It closes on Allah's knowledge and power: a parent who wanted a son and received a daughter has received what the One with knowledge decided to give.
The Quran then describes the attitude it came to end:
The outward practice is gone. Its traces remain in the father disappointed by the scan, the relatives who commiserate, and the mother pressed for "a boy next time".
Daughters as a shield
The Sunnah answers with a promise attached to daughters. ʿĀʾishah gave a poor mother her only date, and the mother split it between her two girls:
The corpus grades the second report ṣaḥīḥ; al-Tirmidhī himself, in the same row, calls this chain "ḥasan gharīb". It is accepted evidence either way. A report popular in sermons about "three daughters, or three sisters" is graded Daif in the corpus (Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī 1912) and is not used here.
General wisdom. Congratulate the parents of a girl exactly as you would the parents of a boy, and never offer "next time, in shāʾ Allāh". Give a daughter the same welcome and the same celebration.
The first days
Some first-day practices rest on authentic hadith and some are weaker. A parent should know which is which before the relatives arrive with advice.
Taḥnīk: a taste of date
Both reports join the date to a duʿāʾ for blessing. The raising-children page suggests a person of piety do the taḥnīk; that is advice, not the hadith's words.
Seeking protection for the child
The Prophet ﷺ sought protection for his grandsons with a formula he traced back to Ibrāhīm:
This is the clearest authentic protection to say over a baby. The site holds it in English only, so no Arabic wording is printed here; learn it from a teacher or a printed al-Bukhārī.
The adhan in the ear: what the evidence supports
The reports behind this common practice are printed in full, with their grades:
Scholarly explanation: the grades disagree. The corpus grades both reports ḥasan. The raising-children page records the other side (raising-children:194): the chain contains ʿĀṣim ibn ʿUbaydullāh, "who is graded weak by the hadith critics, so a large number of scholars judge this report to be daif (weak)", and "other supporting narrations for the practice are weaker still". It names two positions: some count the adhan recommended, "acting on the weak report leniently in a matter of virtue"; others hold it "not an established Sunnah" (raising-children:201–202).
So the adhan is not presented here as a confirmed Sunnah. Whoever does it should not condemn whoever leaves it, and whoever leaves it has missed nothing established. What is certain:
A good name and a known lineage
When: the day of birth or the seventh day
Both are in the Sunnah. The Prophet ﷺ named Abū Mūsā's newborn Ibrāhīm when he was brought to him (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 5467), and a sound report ties the name to the seventh day:
Hence the raising-children page: naming "can be done at birth or around the seventh day" (raising-children:166).
What: names to prefer
The raising-children page adds ʿAbd- names and the prophets' names as excellent, and warns against names of servitude to other than Allah and names with boastful or mocking meanings.
Names the Prophet ﷺ changed
The Prophet ﷺ "would change abhorrent names" (Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī 2839 Sahih). Two cases:
Hazn means "rugged" and Sahl "smooth", as the fuller chain in Sunan Abī Dāwūd 4956 Sahih glosses them. One name was too harsh, the other too self-praising; a good name sits between.
The often-quoted "you will be called by your names and by your father's names" is graded Daif in the corpus (Sunan Abī Dāwūd 4948) and is not used here.
Lineage: calling a child by his father
A child is owed a known, truthful lineage (nasab), listed beside a good name in qa-745. The verse follows "nor has He made your adopted sons your sons" (33:4): a child is called by his real father. Where the father is unknown he is a brother in faith, and an honest mistake carries no blame.
What this book does not rule on. The site does not yet hold sources for the positions on two neighbouring questions: the lineage and registration of a child born soon after a marriage or outside one, and how Malaysian bin/binti conventions relate to this verse. Take both to a qualified scholar and your country's religious authority.
The ʿaqīqah, in brief
The measure of the seventh-day sacrifice:
Timing, who performs it and sharing the meat: see the ʿAqīqah guide (deen2u.com/aqiqah/).
Nursing and the mother's right
One verse sets out the infant's feeding, its cost and the weaning:
A note on the wording: the site's copy of this translation reads "give such", which appears to be a misprint of "give suck". It is quoted here as the site carries it.
The child is owed two full years where wanted; the mother, food and clothing "on equitable terms"; neither parent may be harmed "on account of his child"; weaning is "by mutual consent, and after due consultation"; and a foster-mother is allowed, paid "on equitable terms". The grown child is reminded what it cost:
Quran 46:15 adds that the bearing and weaning took "thirty months". The child's right to be nursed is the other side of the mother's right to be thanked.
Milk makes kin
Nursing also makes kin:
A family should therefore record who nursed whom. How much nursing establishes the relationship is a real difference between the schools, recorded on the site's Riḍāʿah page. The Shāfiʿī and Ḥanbalī schools require five separate, satisfying feedings. The Ḥanafī and Mālikī schools hold that any quantity of milk reaching the child's stomach counts (rada:133, 140). See the Riḍāʿah guide (deen2u.com/rada/).
The nursing mother's fast
The narrator records his own doubt, "both … or one of them"; the report is still sound. How the missed days are made up belongs to the fiqh of fasting and is not settled here.
General wisdom. The verse lays the nursing mother's keep on the father and makes weaning a consultation. In practice he carries more of the household in these months, and asks rather than decides.
Provision (nafaqah)
2:233 laid the cost on the father. This verse sets the measure:
The duty is sized to the father's means, and poverty is no excuse for neglect:
“What is sufficient for you and your children”
The after-divorce page reads from this that the children's maintenance is "a debt-like right in the father's wealth, not a favour", which their carer may secure if he wrongfully withholds it, limited by need (after-divorce:362–365).
Scholarly explanation: what maintenance covers. Per the after-divorce page: the content is food, clothing and housing, "and by the same reasoning the child's medicine, schooling, and the costs of ordinary life in that society". The measure is the child's actual need against the father's actual means (65:7). The duration runs until a son can earn his own living, and for a daughter until she marries; a child who remains unable to support himself remains a charge.
Family before other giving
A man generous to every cause and mean with his children has, as the after-divorce page puts it, "the order backwards".
It does not move with custody
The after-divorce page (after-divorce:350): "the father maintains his children. The mother's keeping the child does not make her the payer, and the father's losing daily custody does not release him from a single coin." Custody: Chapter 12.
Mercy and open affection
Where distance passes for authority, the Sunnah does the opposite, in public:
Both men were proud of not kissing children, and both were answered in the language of Allah's mercy, not of parenting style.
Children at the prayer
A small child was carried in his own prayer, and children were near enough to his congregation to be heard; he shortened the prayer rather than send them away. Today's arguments about toddlers at Jumuʿah or tarāwīḥ should start from these two reports, not from irritation.
Play, and taking a child's world seriously
He called a newly weaned child by a kunya ("Abu ʿUmar" in this translation) and asked after his bird whenever they met.
General wisdom. Kiss your children, sons included. Ask about what they care about by name. When a child cries in the masjid, the Sunnah's answer is a shorter prayer, not a glare at the mother.
Justice between children
The clearest ruling came to a father who meant well:
He came openly, to have the gift witnessed. One question, "to everyone of your sons?", and the gift was taken back.
Scholarly explanation: the strength of the command. The site's Hiba page records that "the scholars agree that fairness between children in gifts is commanded", and that they differ on its weight. One view holds that favouring one child without cause is ḥarām and the gift should be corrected. The page associates it with Imam Aḥmad, the apparent choice of al-Bukhārī, Ibn Taymiyyah, and among later scholars Ibn Bāz and Ibn ʿUthaymīn, and judges it the stronger view. The other view, attributed to "the majority of the earlier jurists (including positions within the Hanafi, Maliki, and Shafi'i schools)", holds that favouritism is disliked but the gift remains valid.
The page records a second difference over how fairness is measured. Strict equality gives a daughter the same as a son. Division by inheritance shares, "a well-known position within the Hanbali school", gives the son twice the daughter's share. Both are presented as honest readings of the same command (hiba:126, 160–162, 188–189).
Beyond gifts
The hadith concerns property. Extending it to attention and affection is a reading of "be just to your children", not a separate text. The site notes favouritism "in gifts or attention" as a common source of lasting family rifts (qa-234).
General wisdom. Justice is not identical treatment: a toddler, a teenager and a sick child need different things. When need makes one child receive more, say why, out loud. Property rulings: the Hiba guide (deen2u.com/hiba/).
Faith first
Faith is the weightiest right, and the most exposed:
The child arrives on the fiṭrah, and the parents are named as the ones who can change it. In Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 1359 Abū Hurayrah follows the same hadith with the verse of the fiṭrah. Upbringing protects something already there.
Luqmān's counsel to his son
The Quran records a father's teaching in the order he gave it:
Tawḥīd first, then Allah's complete knowledge, then prayer, enjoining good, and patience, each opened with "O my son!". Between them (31:14–15) the Quran commands gratitude to parents, with one limit: if they call to shirk, "obey them not; yet bear them company in this life with justice".
“O boy, be mindful of Allah”
The Prophet ﷺ taught Ibn ʿAbbās, then a boy who was behind him that day, some of the deepest words in the Sunnah:
These words were not saved for adults.
Patience at home
"Thy people" renders ahlaka, from the same root as "your families" (ahlīkum) in 66:6. The command to the household comes joined to "be constant therein" oneself.
Prayer, fasting and discipline within limits
Here text, explanation and household policy are most often confused, so they are kept apart.
1 · The text
Also Sunan Abī Dāwūd 494 (ṣaḥīḥ), for a boy. The corpus grades 495 ṣaḥīḥ; the raising-children page labels it ḥasan. Either is accepted evidence.
Anas came as "a wise boy", and in ten years was never once told "Uf" (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 6038). That is the setting in which the one permission above is read.
2 · Scholarly explanation: the limits. The site's raising-children page sets out how the scholars who explain the hadith of seven and ten "hem it in tightly". Any firmness must be light and non-injurious. It must never strike the face, never leave a mark, never come "in a flash of anger", and never humiliate the child. The page states its sourcing: "the permission for measured firmness at ten is the text; the detailed limits are the scholars' explanation from the sharia's general principles — and the prohibition of injury and humiliation is agreed upon." Many scholars add that encouragement and withheld privileges are better when they suffice.
3 · Household policy: general wisdom. Three years separate the command from any firmness: use them to pray beside the child and praise what they get right. Train fasting as the Companions' households did, with a distraction and not a contest of hunger. Decide consequences in calm, never in anger. "Separate beds" means separate bedding, not necessarily separate rooms; the raising-children page notes that a private room per child "is a cultural expectation, not a sharʿi one".
| Age | What the text fixes | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Before seven | No specific command; the fiṭrah is protected and faith is taught gently | Bukhārī 1385; Tirmidhī 2516 |
| Seven | Command the prayer | Abū Dāwūd 494, 495 (ṣaḥīḥ) |
| Ten | Measured firmness over the prayer; separate beds | Abū Dāwūd 495 (ṣaḥīḥ) |
| Young children | Trained in fasting by the Companions' households | Bukhārī 1960 |
| Bulūgh | Full accountability begins | Abū Dāwūd 4403 (ṣaḥīḥ); next chapter |
Modesty, privacy and the approach of bulūgh
The Quran teaches the boundaries of the home before adulthood arrives:
Children not yet of age ask leave at three times; once of age, at all times. Parents are owed privacy, and children a home where they learn it before it is demanded of them.
Covering at puberty
The report ties the covering in prayer to puberty itself, and not to an age on the calendar. The site's Bulūgh page records that "the first period is bulūgh by agreement, whatever the girl's age" (bulugh:230), so a girl's first period is also the start of an obligation.
The pen that is lifted
Before bulūgh a parent trains; at bulūgh the obligations become the child's own. The training years exist so that accountability "does not arrive as a stranger" (raising-children:316). Signs and preparation: the Bulūgh guide (deen2u.com/bulugh/).
General wisdom. Tell sons and daughters about puberty before it arrives, plainly, at home. Knock on your older children's doors yourself, so the whole house keeps 24:58–59.
The child without the usual home, and the circle that returns
The orphan
Also Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 5304. The orphan's property is a trust:
The child between two homes
The site's after-divorce page records that the four schools drew "close but not identical maps" from these texts, and that the one thing none of them disputes is "the axis on which every branch turns: the welfare of the child" (after-divorce:235, 241). Maintenance stays with the father wherever the child lives (Chapter 6). See the After Divorce guide (deen2u.com/after-divorce/).
The child who dies young
For the child who does not live to claim these rights:
A mother who loses even two young children is promised they "would screen her from the (Hell) Fire" (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 1249). The Prophet ﷺ lost his own son, and wept:
When Ibn ʿAwf exclaimed, "even you are weeping!", he said, "this is mercy" (same report). The site records that the scholars of Ahl al-Sunnah hold the young children of believers to be in Paradise (qa-554). Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 1384, "Allah knows what sort of deeds they would have done", is about "the offspring of pagans", on whom qa-554 records a difference; it is not the text of hope for a Muslim parent.
A miscarried child
"Abortion" renders as-siqṭ in the report's Arabic: the miscarried child.
Scholarly explanation: when the prayer applies. qa-969 ties the ruling to the soul breathed in after 120 days (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 3208) and names two positions. The Ḥanbalīs "and many other scholars" hold that a child miscarried after four months is washed, shrouded, prayed over and buried. The Ḥanafīs hold that the prayer is offered only if the child was born alive, "so a family following that practice should not be rebuked". Before 120 days there is no janāzah prayer; the remains are buried respectfully, and many scholars recommend naming the child. See the Janāzah guide (deen2u.com/janazah/).
The circle that returns
The book began with a parent who will be asked about a child. It ends with a child who prays for the parent:
Also Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī 1376 (ṣaḥīḥ). The name, the milk, the fairness and the patient years of prayer are repaid, if Allah wills, as a duʿāʾ the parent cannot hear. The duties then run the other way, in this book's mirror, the Birr al-Wālidayn guide (deen2u.com/birr-al-walidayn/).
Where this book draws from. The Quran (Arabic from the site's Tanzil text; English of Abdullah Yusuf Ali as the site carries it). Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī by standard number. Sunan Abī Dāwūd and Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī with the corpus grade; ḍaʿīf reports named only to set them aside. Scholarly explanation is quoted from the site's pages: Raising Children (deen2u.com/raising-children/), After Divorce, Hiba, Riḍāʿah, Bulūgh, and answers qa-234, qa-554, qa-745 and qa-969. Where the site holds no sources, as on the lineage of a child born outside marriage, the book says so rather than fill the gap. This guide is educational, not a fatwā and not legal advice; take your situation to a qualified scholar, and questions to deen2u.com/ask/.
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