Passing faith from one generation to the next

Children rarely remember lectures. They remember the sound of a parent praying in the next room, the smell of a kitchen before Ramadan, the guest who was never turned away.

Faith is transmitted through atmosphere long before it is transmitted through argument. The home is the first curriculum.

This places a demanding standard on parents: what is practised inconsistently will be received as optional.

Yet the standard is also forgiving. Small rituals, repeated without spectacle, accumulate into something a child can carry for decades.

The inheritance we leave is rarely what we intended to teach. It is what we could not help but live.