Muslim parents have been urged to adopt new approaches in the upbringing of their children and refrain from the use of corporal punishment and abusive words.
Chairman of the Governance Council of the Ghana Muslim Academy (GMA), a non-profit organisation made up of young Muslim Intellectuals and professionals, Mr Mohammed Badamasi Zackariah, in a chat with The Mirror noted that most children become hardened and ruthless because of the kind of training they received while young.
‘Children learn by what they see and therefore if children grow up in a community where there is a lot of violence, chaos, abuse and too much aggression, they also grow to become as such,’ he added.
Mr Zackariah said that it was baffling that most violence incidents that occurred in Ghana included names of Muslims even though estimates show that Muslims commanded around 25 per cent of the Ghanaian population.
“That is a sense of worry and we have realised that there is the need for Muslim parents to change the way they raised their children. We have therefore urged the various Islamic learning centres popularly refered to as ‘makaranta’ to avoid the use of flogging as a means of reforming children,” he said.
Responsibilities
Mr Zackariah said the Holy Quran, the spiritual book of Muslims, enjoin fathers to take care of their children’s physical needs such as food, shelter and clothing as well as fulfil their spiritual needs.
He noted that the religion of Islam makes it mandatory for its followers to acquire both Islamic and secular knowledge and therefore it was the responsibility of parents to ensure that their children were educated.
He advised Muslim parents to reduce the size of their families so that they would be able to take proper care of their children.
“Some parents do not even know where their children sleep or the sort of company they keep. This is bad parenting and can easily expose such children to fall prey to bad influence,” he said.
Election 2016
Mr Zackariah advised the Muslim youth to refrain from being used as instruments of violence in the upcoming general elections.
He said Islam stands for peace and therefore the youth should not be corrupted by false and propaganda doctrines of so-called jihadist groups.
He also cautioned political parties against seeing the Zongo communities as breeding grounds for people they could recruit to perpetuate electoral violence.
GMA
GMA consists of Muslims from diverse academic and professional backgrounds including medical doctors, lawyers, diplomats, bankers, lecturers, teachers, engineers, Islamic scholars, public servants, nurses, and journalists among others.
It aims at promoting education, especially in deprived communities; by organising youth empowerment programmes.
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