Question:
The Prophet (s) said, “every child is born on fitra, innocence, and their parents make them Jewish, Christian or Zoroastrian.” This hadith indicates parents are responsible for the purity of their child’s character as they grow. Can you tell me and my wife how we can keep our child in that same state of purity she has at birth?
Answer:
Mawlana Shaykh Hisham Kabbani said, in his book Fifty Days: The Divine Disclosures During a Holy Sufi Seclusion:
The worst [effect] is on those who are raised by the bottle. You do not know who is filling these bottles or what kind of negative spiritual power is put into them. Second worst are those that are breastfed, because the breast-milk of the mother creates veils in the heart of the child which come from the egoistic characteristics of both the mother and the father. For forty days after birth, the child remains not veiled from the heavenly realm. If the mother and father never fight and never shout, then the child will grow up without any veils.
Elsewhere, Shaykh Hisham Kabbani explains:
To prevent the ananiyya, egoism, of the parents from passing to the suckling infant through the mother’s breast-milk, there is a process that can be done by the mother, but it is not easy. Every time she wishes to nurse her baby, she must first make a ghusl, (purificatory bathing), then pray two raka`ts of wudu, and then she nurses the baby. By this method the child will remain pure, and will be raised pure, avoiding contamination of the egoism of her parents.
If this regiment is too hard for the mother, it is recommended that before every nursing, at least make a fresh wudu, pray two raka`ats and then proceed to nurse the baby. This should continue as long as the child is nursing.
Taher Siddiqui
