بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
Shaykh Bakr Abū Zayd said: “It is not lawful for a Muslim who believes in Allāh and the Last Day to cast his children into destruction in the embrace of foreign schools while they possess no capacity to benefit or harm themselves, and while they know nothing of Islām — little or much — and so they receive disbelief, atheism, evil, and corruption.
And sufficient [is the consideration of] the effect of that upon the natural dispositions (fitrah) of the young and naive. The Prophet (ﷺ) informed [us] that: “There is no child except that he is born upon the fitrah (natural disposition), and then his parents make him a Jew, a Christian, or a Magian.” Every child is born upon the fitrah of Islām — were he left to his own state and inclination, he would choose nothing other than Islām, were it not for the causes that befall this fitrah that necessitate its corruption and alteration. The most significant of these are false teachings and corrupt, wicked upbringing, to which the Prophet (ﷺ) alluded in his statement: “And then his parents make him a Jew, a Christian, or a Magian” — meaning: they employ with the child such causes and means as make him purely a Christian, or a Jew, or a Magian.
Among these [causes] is: the handing over of young, naive children to disbelieving or irreligious schools under the pretext of learning, such that they are raised in their laps and receive their education and beliefs from them. The heart of a young child is receptive to whatever of good or evil is cast into it — indeed, it is like an engraving upon stone. So they hand them over to these schools clean, and then receive them back polluted — each to the degree of what he has drunk and absorbed from them. A child may enter as a Muslim and emerge from it as a disbeliever — we seek refuge in Allāh from that.
So woe — all woe — upon whoever causes the misguidance and straying of his son. Whoever enrolls his child contentedly and of his own choice in a school knowing that it seeks through its curricula and activities to remove the children of Muslims from their religion and cast doubt upon their ʿaqīdah, is an apostate from Islām — as a group of scholars have explicitly stated.” (al-Madāris al-ʿĀlamiyyah pg. 76-77)
Q8: “What is the ruling on a man taking his son or daughter and enrolling him in a French or English school that contradicts the teachings of the religion, while claiming to be a Muslim and claiming that he is choosing a good future for them?”
A8: “It is obligatory upon a parent to raise his children — male and female — with an Islamic upbringing, for they are a trust (amānah) in his hands, and he is responsible for them on the Day of Resurrection. It is not permissible for him to enroll them in the schools of the disbelievers, out of fear of fitnah (fitnah — trial [and corruption]) and the corruption of [their] ʿaqīdah (creed) and character. And the future is in the hands of Allāh, The Most-High. Allāh, Perfect and Most-High, says: {And whoever fears Allāh — He will make for him a way out of every difficulty} [al-Talāq: 4].” (The Permanent Committee for Scholarly Research and Iftāʾ, Kitāb Lajnah al-Dā’immah 12/141)
The Question: “In recent times, negligence regarding [enrolling children in] foreign schools in our country (i.e. Saudi Arabia) has spread, to the point that it is mentioned that [such schools] exceed one hundred in number — thirty in Riyādh, fourteen schools in the Eastern [Province], twenty-three schools in Jeddah, one school in al-Qasīm, and so on, distributed across the regions. So what is the ruling on enrolling our children in these schools? And what is the ruling on renting [out] residences for these purposes? Inform us — may Allāh reward you with good.”
The Answer: “I see that one should first look into their curricula: what are these curricula, and what is to be feared from them in the future? For it may be that in the first year their curricula are sound (100%), but in the second year they change, and [by then] the person has fallen into their snare and their trap and [finds it] impossible to withdraw from them.
Secondly: I see that we should not enroll our sons in these schools absolutely, because no matter what they are, our schools are better than them — and all praise is due to Allāh — and in the schools affiliated with the Ministry of Education there is what suffices and satisfies.
My view, then, is that it is not permissible for any one of us to enroll his sons or daughters — if schools [of this type] are opened for girls — in these schools, and boycotting them is obligatory. This is my view regarding these schools. As for the [broader] situation of these schools, that matter is not [in the hands of] myself nor of you, but rather [rests with] other authorities.” (Liqā al-Shahrī 18/69 – Shaykh ibn al-‘Uthaymīn)
Shaykh Al-Albānī said: “…it is not permissible for a Muslim to hand over the flesh of his liver (i.e., his beloved child) to a disbelieving educator who does not believe in Allāh and His Messenger. This is on account of what is known both by religious law and by experience: that one who lacks something cannot give it. So whoever disbelieves in Allāh and His Messenger, it is impossible that a child raised under the hands of these disbelievers would emerge as anything other than a disbeliever like them. For this reason, he (ﷺ) said: “Every child is born upon the fitrah (natural disposition), and then his parents make him a Jew, a Christian, or a Magian.”
What immediately comes to mind from this hadīth is one thing, and what is indicated by the meaning and import of the hadīth is another. What the hadīth explicitly indicates is that if a child’s father is a Jew, a Christian, or a Magian, they make him a Jew, a Christian, or a Magian.
However, the hadīth carries another implication when combined with the statement of our Lord, The Most-High and Perfect: {Protect yourselves and your families from a Fire whose fuel is people and stones} [al-Tahrīm: 6] …to the end of the verse.
When we combine this noble verse with that authentic hadīth, we derive from this authentic hadīth a jurisprudential conclusion: that a Muslim father may make his Muslim child a Jew, a Christian, or a Magian — and it is valid to say: he makes him impure — even if this comes about unintentionally. For Magianism is without doubt impure (najisah), like all the other religions that exist and are known today, except for Islām, as the Lord of all creation said: {And whoever seeks a religion other than Islām, it will never be accepted from him, and in the Hereafter he will be among the losers} [Āl ʿImrān: 85].
So then: we are able to understand from this hadīth that the Christianisation of a child does not necessarily require his father to be a Christian; rather, the father may be a Muslim — but one of those Muslims who are said of, or described as, “geographical Muslims” or Muslims [only] in the chattering of souls — because the true Muslim cares first and foremost about raising his child in response to the statement — or rather the command — of his Lord: {Protect yourselves and your families from a Fire} [al-Tahrīm: 6].
And secondly: out of consideration for his child’s future welfare, and for the welfare of his future children as well. For if a disbelieving Christian takes charge of raising a child, his destiny will undoubtedly be one of two things: either he will become a Christian, or he will become an atheist. He will be neither a Muslim nor a Christian — and we do not wish to prefer Christianity over Magianism, for all disbelief is one creed — but without doubt, atheism is worse than the other religions for all the deviance they contain, such as communism and the like.
Based on this, it becomes clear beyond any concealment/ambiguity that since a father is responsible for raising his child, it is not permissible for any of these fathers who truly believes in Allāh and His Messenger to entrust the upbringing of his child — or children — to [a disbeliever], especially when they are in the tenderness of their youth; because a child at this age is readily and easily susceptible to being shaped from good to evil, or from evil to good. Therefore, it is not permissible for a Muslim to entrust the upbringing of his child to a disbeliever who does not believe in Allāh or in the Last Day.
And how, I wonder, could the soul of a Muslim father — if he is a true believer — find contentment upon hearing the like of Allāh’s statement: {Fight those who do not believe in Allāh or in the Last Day, and who do not forbid what Allāh and His Messenger have forbidden, and who do not adopt the religion of truth from among the People of the Book — [fight them] until they pay the jizyah willingly while they are subdued} [al-Tawbah: 29].
I say: how, I wonder, could the soul of a Muslim father who hears this verse — commanding the Muslims to fight these Christians — permit himself to hand over the flesh of his liver to his manifest enemy to raise and to teach him? What will he teach him?
The excuse of these [parents] may perhaps be that the child is learning a foreign language — English, for example, or French. I have said: we do not deny that Islām does not prohibit a Muslim from learning the language of another nation, especially if that nation is an enemy of the Muslim community.
Islām does not prohibit the learning of other languages; rather, it commands it and makes it a collective obligation upon the community — if some fulfill it, the obligation is lifted from the rest. We do not say this in response to the well-known hadīth: “Whoever learns the language of a people is safe from their scheming,” because this hadīth has no basis [in authenticity]. Rather, we rely in this matter upon two things:
The first: what is established from the legal religious principles: that everything whose learning benefits the [Muslim] community is a collective obligation.
The second: what is established in the Sunnah that the Prophet (ﷺ) commanded Zayd ibn Thābit to learn the Syriac language, and he learned it in half a month.
So we do not deny the Muslim the right to learn this language, but — firstly — not at the expense of the Arabic language, and secondly — and this is more important — not at the cost of Islamic upbringing. Therefore, those who enroll their children in all these foreign schools, whether English or French, are [in the position of those] about whom it was said of old: “Like one who builds a palace and demolishes a city.”
And surely, this father who enrolls his child in foreign schools will be falling short — not only regarding what we have mentioned from the verse and the hadīth — but also regarding the methodology that Allāh, Mighty and Majestic, has imposed upon parents in raising children, [as expressed] in the like of his — upon him be ṣalāh and salām — statement: “Command your children to pray when they are seven years old, and discipline them for [neglecting] it when they are ten, and separate them in their beds.”
For surely, this child — when he reaches the age of seven while being taught there things that contradict Islām — will not respond to his father’s wish to command him to pray at the age of seven; let alone the father being able to discipline his son who does not comply with his command to pray when he reaches the age of ten.
Therefore: every Muslim should anticipate (an) evil (outcome) if he resolves to enroll his child in a Christian school, for his consequence before Allāh, Mighty and Majestic, will be to be [counted among] fuel for the Fire.” (Abridged, Jāmi al-Turāth 8/106-114)
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