Imam Khalid Latif

Imam Khalid Latif is blogging his reflections during the month of Ramadan, featured daily on HuffPost Religion. For a complete record of his previous posts, click over to the Islamic Center at New York University or visit his author page, and to follow along with the rest of his reflections, sign up for an author e-mail alert above, visit his Facebook page or follow him on Twitter.

Last night in Abu Dhabi I met a young man who after my lecture asked if we could talk. He, like many others I have listened to in different parts of the world, started off by saying, "I have a problem with my parents..."

Ibn 'Umar said, "Allah has called them the 'dutiful' (al-Abrar) because they are dutiful (birr) to their parents and children. Just as you have a duty which you owe your parent, so you have a duty which you owe your child."

It's easy to find discussions in Muslim communities that focus on how Islam says parents should be treated by their children. You don't always see so much that speaks to how parents are supposed to take care of our children. Many of the people who come to see me have issues in understanding their relationships with their parents. More often than not, there is a blanket misconception that somehow equates honoring one's parents to believing one's parents are always right. It's confusing to many when it's ok to disagree and if that disagreement is somehow tantamount to displeasing God. In some instances, clear limits are transgressed but somehow justified by this idea that a parent can do no wrong.

I've sat with men and women, young and old, who can tell you horrific stories of how those who are entrusted to look after them have not upheld that responsibility. Issues with abuse, verbal, physical and sexual, at the hands of fathers, mothers whose only form of communication with daughters is by yelling and voicing disappointment, forced marriages, feelings of being unloved and neglected, and much more. But somehow it is those who are going through these things that find it the hardest to say that kind of treatment is wrong.

A young woman came to see me once and told me how her father was negligent of her and her sisters and abusive of her mother. She said he drank a lot and not only had open affairs with many women, but kept their pictures around the house. She described everything with a certain calmness and at the end of asked a question that I did not expect. "Is it haraam, (religiously impermissible), for me to dislike my father?"....to continue reading please click here