As the children of immigrants know well, it is sometimes hard to relate to our parents who seem to still be living or ready to go “back home”. But for many us, that were born and raised here, our “back home” is right here in America with its good and its bad.
Shaykh Yasir Fazaga detailed this notion well in a lecture he made at the Texas Dawah Conference in 2004. In sha Allah ta ala, Muslim Apple will be at the conference this year.
Excerpt from lecture given by Yasir Fazaga:
When people migrated here, we had the notion that one day we are going to go back. So we came into the US and the notion was that we are going to finish our education, as soon as we finish, we are going to go back. We finish the school and say as soon as we make money, we are going to go back.
And then we say as soon as our kids finish high school, we are going to go back. And then as soon as they finish college, we are going to go back. And then as soon as they get married, we are going to go back. As soon as we see their children, we are going to go back.
So what happened, is that many of us people who migrated, we ended up residing in America but never living here. This created the in-between zone in which we never really lived here nor ended up going back over there. We are not living here, we are only residing here and as a result we are not able to relate to our children nor to their culture and our children are not able to relate to us.
And that is why Imam Ali ibn Abee Talib said, “In the upbringing of your children, prepare them for their time, for they have been created for a time which is different from your time.
MashaAllah.
Ify Okoye 