These rights include...

These rights include: 1) Honouring the birth of the child; 2) The ritual bath of birth; 3) Reciting the Adhan in the right ear of the child and the Iqamah in the left ear; 4) Giving the newborn a taste of the water of FurÁt and the soil of Karbala; 5) Choosing a good name for the child; 6) Shaving the child’s head and donating the weight of its hair in gold or silver, 7) The slaughtering of an animal; 8) Circumcision. The second chapter is about the rights of a suckling infant.

This chapter deals with the child’s nutrition from its mother’s milk or the milk of an appropriate wet-nurse, and the necessity of respecting a child’s feelings. The third chapter explains the child’s upbringing, being his most important right, then the importance of the child’s education and the responsibilities of the Islamic government and the families in this regard is explained, along with the most important aspect of this discussion, which is the method of upbringing a child.

Chapter four deals with the ethics of the upbringing of children, such as: being kind to them, respecting and greeting them, being just between them, fulfilling promises made to them and making them happy. The fifth chapter turns the upbringer’s attention to the role of the child’s outer appearance, his sense of beauty, his desire to play and how these things lead to the enhancement of his growth.

The sixth chapter emphasizes on supplicating for children and refraining from cursing them and the role it has in their upbringing along with the parent’s program of raising them. This is why it is referred to as one of the rights of a child. The supplication of Imam al-Sajjad (a.s.) for his children that is mentioned at the end of this chapter is a worthy guide for Muslim families. The third section explains the duties of a child.

It is incumbent upon a qualified trainer that along with fulfilling the duties mentioned in sections one and two, he/she must provide the grounds for children to adopt a sense of responsibility. This section which is divided into four chapters speaks about the personal duties of a child, and his duties in relation to his parents, his teachers, those older than him and his friends.

The targeted readers of this book ‘ Children in the Qur’an and the Sunnah ’ are families, upbringers, trainers and researchers of children education, and so children themselves are not the direct addressees in this compilation.