Mercy to Children

Children sat in the lap of the Prophet ﷺ. They climbed on his back during prayer. They pulled at his beard when he sat among them. He never pushed them away. The man who carried the revelation also carried his grandsons through the masjid on his shoulders.

This is one of the easiest signs of mercy in the seerah to see, and one of the easiest to copy.

The man who never kissed his children

Al-Aqra' ibn Habis was a chief of the tribe of Tamim. He came to visit the Prophet ﷺ in Madinah and saw him kiss his grandson Hasan ibn Ali RA. Al-Aqra' said, I have ten children and I have never kissed one of them.

The Prophet ﷺ looked at him and said:

The one who does not show mercy will not be shown mercy. (Sahih al-Bukhari 5997)

The hadith is short and sharp. Mercy is the test. Whoever does not give it does not get it.

The pre-Islamic culture in Arabia held that public affection toward children, especially from men, was weakness. A chief was supposed to be cold and distant. Al-Aqra' was performing what his culture told him a man was. The Prophet ﷺ corrected him in one sentence, in front of others, without dressing it up.

He did not tell Al-Aqra' to start kissing his children that afternoon. He laid down a principle. Mercy is mutual. The hand that gives it gets it back from Allah. The hand that withholds it is asking for the same withholding in return.

The grandson on his back

The Prophet ﷺ once led the believers in salah and went down into sujud. He stayed in sujud longer than usual. The companions waited. When the prayer was over, one of them asked him if revelation had come down during the sujud. He said no.

My grandson was riding on my back and I disliked to hurry him until he finished his need. (Sunan an-Nasa'i 1141)

The "grandson" was Hasan or Hussain ibn Ali RA. Scholars differ on which one. The point is the same. The Prophet ﷺ held sujud, the deepest position in salah, the closest a believer comes to Allah, because a child was using his back as a horse.

He did not stop the prayer. He did not put the child down. He did not glare at the parents. He stayed in sujud until the child finished his game.

This is not a small detail. The leader of the Muslim ummah, in front of his companions, in the middle of the most important act of worship a person can perform, gave a child the time the child needed.

If you have small kids at home and you have prayed with them climbing on you, you have walked in the footsteps of the Prophet ﷺ. He did the same thing on the same floor.

Kissing his grandsons in public

The hadith of Al-Aqra' is one example. There are more. The Prophet ﷺ would carry Hasan RA on his shoulder through the streets and say, O Allah, I love him, so love him. (Sahih al-Bukhari 5884.) He would let Hasan and Hussain RA climb onto his back during the sermon. He would interrupt the khutbah, come down from the minbar, pick them up, and carry them with him back to the minbar to finish (Sunan Abi Dawud 1109, graded sahih).

Aisha RA narrated a second hadith on this theme. A woman came to her with her two daughters. Aisha RA gave her three dates. The woman gave one date to each daughter and held the third date for herself. The girls finished their dates and looked at the third one. So the woman split the third date in two and gave one half to each girl. When the Prophet ﷺ came in, Aisha RA told him what had happened. He said:

Allah has made paradise obligatory for her because of it, or He has freed her from the fire because of it. (Sahih Muslim 2630, also Sahih al-Bukhari 5995 with similar wording)

A date and a half. That is the size of the act that earned that promise. Mercy to a child is mercy that buys paradise.

Why this matters now

Australian Muslim parents are tired. The week is long. The kids ask for things at the wrong time. The instinct to push them away when you are in the middle of something is human. The Prophet ﷺ knew the instinct and corrected it.

He did not say mercy to children means giving them every toy in the shop. He did not say mercy means never disciplining. He said mercy means not turning your face away. It means staying in sujud while they ride on your back. It means kissing them when other men are watching and being told it is weakness, and answering with one line that puts the questioner in his place.

The masjid uncles who tell off the kids for running, the dads who scroll while their daughter waits for them to look up, the mothers exhausted past patience, all of us have been the chief from Tamim at some point. The Prophet ﷺ left this hadith in the books for that exact moment.

What this teaches the reader

Three small things.

One. Mercy to children is not optional. It is the doorway to receiving mercy yourself.

Two. The act does not have to be big. A date split in half buys paradise.

Three. Public affection from fathers is sunnah, not cultural softness. The Prophet ﷺ kissed his grandsons in front of a tribal chief and did not lower his voice.

The Prophet ﷺ was a mercy to the worlds (Qur'an 21:107). The worlds include the smallest hands at the back of the prayer line. Especially those. To read more, see the Prophet ﷺ as a mercy to the worlds and the mercy that introduces Allah by name.

These are the duas the Prophet ﷺ taught when raising children.