Author: Alaaddin Başar (Prof.Dr.), 09-5-2006

The basic message in this hadith is to warn parents about their great task and responsibility in respect of protecting their children, who are born with Islamic nature, from superstition, devastating ideologies, or networks of dissipation.

Every person is born pure, like a piece of paper on which you could write anything, a cassette which has not yet been recorded, some paste yet to be shaped, a sapling which is easy to be bent down, in a state most appropriate fashion for faith and Islam. Just as clean spring water is proper to be useful and healing as comes from its source, or it can be made solid by spreading soil on to it and thus could be put into another shape, likewise a newborn baby is appropriate to accept truths in accordance with rules of the universe or disagrees it if it is fallacy. Therefore whatever you tell the children 10-15 years old, they immediately take them in their memories and place them in their inner-world in the name of faith and Islam. For example, when you say, “A village cannot be without a governor, a needle without a maker, then how come this huge universe could be unowned, its owner is Allah Almighty” the child is so appropriate to these messages that s/he records them as they are.

Clean and sound nature can be made filthy and corrupted through disbelief and sins.
Man makes himself blind to the evidences around the universe through disbelief and denial, extinguishes his conscience, and deprives him from all sources of light. On the other hand, man, through faith and good deeds, preserves his inborn nature. Therefore, faith is an inborn phenomenon while disbelief is a contingent one. Nature, which is innately clean, dirtied later. It is probable and possible that if the initial state of nature is not preserved, man is likely to be carried away with some current of unbelief such as Christianity, Judaism or fire worshipping.

When the clean nature is corrupted, man gains a second nature. Young bird, which comes out of the egg, is still a bird even if it cannot fly. It is innately programmed to fly. During the period of growing-up, upon seeing its attempts to fly, we say “it will fly” Yet if an exterior cause interferes and takes away the ability of the bird to fly, then it can by no means fly. Now unbelief is like this. It is like breaking the wings of a bird, which possibly could fly and gaining it a second nature. A person whose nature has been made blind through the abuse of personal will and exterior causes gains a second nature and deteriorates the first one, which is clean and pure. Just as we say, “this bird will fly” upon seeing its state, likewise, so we say, “this child will be Muslim.” However, if his/her parents influence them in a bad way and also the child misuses his/her free will, then s/he has got broken wings, and consequently necessary elements for his/her spiritual progress is halted and s/he gains a new and black nature in darkness.

Yes, everybody is born with Islamic nature, but through exterior influences such as parents, friends, social milieu, and school and also free will, which would handle them in a positive or negative way, interfere to the nature positively or negatively.