Essential Lessons for Every Muslim - Pillars of Eemaan - Belief in the Angels

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

Alhamdulillaah we are continuing with the Essential Lessons for every Muslim and we completed "Belief in the Angels' few weeks ago.

Often many sisters ask me, as for other subjects there are many wonderful resources available but how to make Islaamic studies an interesting subject to teach our kids as we are restricted and cannot find anything to make it appealing to the kids like the other subjects. Well, while it is true in some way, my experience is that Islaamic Studies is indeed not a subject rather it is our life. This is what we need to understand first and try our best to come up with acceptable creativity to make this interesting. Knowledge of the dheen is for acting upon it. And actualizing it. This should be the focus in teaching our kids our dheen. It is not like doing some worksheets and hands on activities, rather you need to make the knowledge live in their hearts and that would be the greater success Inshaa Allaah. 

So what I found best that works for us is going back to the books of the scholars rather than focusing only on text books for Islaamic Studies (as some sisters say textbooks today are usually dry and boring). There are many wonderful facts and interesting information in them that makes a child live what he or she is taught. One such example you will see in this post Inshaa Allaah, just to encourage you all that Islaamic Studies need not be a boring subject. Children are inquisitive and love to learn every little information that is fascinating and Belief in the Angels is one such topic that makes kids happy if taught well Inshaa Allaah!

So we covered the following areas:

• The Definition of Angels - Linguistic Meaning 
• The Definition of Angels - Shariah Meaning
• Arabic Singular and Plural Terms for Angels

• Belief of the Mushrik Arabs regarding Angels before Islaam
• The Fruits of believing in the Angels

• What it means to believe in the Angels
• Proofs that it is obligatory to believe in the Angels

• What comprises of the belief in the Angels

• Their relation to Man

 The above details were from the book Explanation of the Important Lessons for Every Muslim. Apart from this we read the wonderful easy to understand child friendly book "Angels are Real"( Darul Kitab Learn About Series) and got some information about the Angels and their duties and what they do and noted them on one page.

 

Maimoonah used toothpicks and paints to decorate these pages before we put in the information.

 

So we learnt some fascinating facts about Angels. While she filled in some of the information we spoke about incidents that took place to prove that Angels are Real. We spoke about Haroot and Maaroot, The Angles helping the Muslims in battles, The angel who writes when we are a fetus, the angels who make dua for us, the angels who take our good deeds to Allaah, angels who take our souls, angels who come down to punish the people who disobey Allaah and so on. Subhanallaah there are so many incidents to talk about from the Qur'aan and the sunnah. 

 

 

 At the end of the lesson, she understood that Allaah sends Angels to guard us and they are real and around us and felt secured about it. She also understood that Angels remind us to do our duties when we are lazy and support us always by the permission of Allaah. I felt this is indeed eemaan in the Angels as now the knowledge she has got has helped her understand that Angels are real and Allaah is merciful and she would be accountable.This is what I meant by "Islaamic Studies is not a subject, but our life". Alhamdulillaah, guidance is only from Allaah!

Additionally for younger kids you can use this worksheet I made two years ago from" My Downloads" page Inshaa Allaah!