How much did these propagandas attract the Muslim youth...

How much did these propagandas attract the Muslim youth, who suffered, in their early childhood from the pressure of parents to perform wudhu’ and prayer, to a terrible degree in some families? You see that some parents, especially unlearned ones, want their children to be exactly like Rabi’ah al-Adawiyyah[^1] if they are females and like Ahmed al-Badawi if they are males. They wake them up before the dawn and tire them with prayers.

They watch them day and night, and blame and punish them severely for everything. They beat them sometimes just because they forget something. They send them to government schools and burden them with duties, until they become boring, and then hate the religion while they are not yet adolescent. I do not say except what I have already seen.

I saw many children from my relatives, who offered the prayer under pressure; give up the prayer when the authority of parents was no longer over them, or when they were far from the family and its ties.

Many times, I tried to convince some parents from my relatives not to beat or force their children to offer the prayer and that they must treat them kindly and leniently, to endear the prayer to them and not to make it as a nightmare to them, but I often faced their saying that the Prophet (S) had said, “ Beat them (children) to offer the prayer when they are seven years old (or ten years in some traditions) ”.

In this way, the Muslim youth lose their prayer and give up on their religion, even if they do not follow the missionaries. In addition to that, the television, games and many other things take the youth away from the remembrance of Allah. [^1]: An exemplar in faith and piety. Previous…