A Guiding Address to Protect Our Sons and Youth from Deviant Ideas

Question:
In the beginning, Your Eminence, this question is truly important and is needed by fathers and by families as well, especially given the destructive acts and the deviation from the path of the believers and the straight path that our country is currently experiencing. The question, Your Eminence: How do we protect our sons and youth from deviant and aberrant ideas that depart from the methodology of the people of the Sunnah and the community? And from the community of Muslims?

Answer:
In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. Praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds, and may Allah send blessings and peace upon our Prophet Muhammad, and upon his family and all his Companions. There is no doubt that trials threaten us now, and the callers to misguidance are sneaking in among us, using against us whatever means they can to undermine the religion first, and the creed; then the community of Muslims. This is especially in this land, which is the land of the two Noble Sanctuaries, containing the qiblah of the Muslims, and whose security is the security of Muslims in the east and west of the earth. For if the two Noble Sanctuaries are secure and the delegations to them are safe, then this is security for the Islamic world in the east and west of the earth. And that is a favor from Allah upon this land. It is obligatory upon us all to cooperate in righteousness and piety, and to know our place in the Islamic world, and to make our efforts to protect this land, its people, and its youth from the aggression of aggressors, from misleading propaganda, and from destructive ideas. This is through the homes, the homes of Muslims and families; families must protect their sons from their youth, gradually exercising care and protection within the homes, and keeping their homes free of the means that poison the ideas of these young people. Likewise, the imams of the mosques and the preachers must perform their role in guiding the Ummah and warning the Ummah of what is being plotted against it. And likewise, the role of the schools, the role of education, the role of the schools in preserving this Ummah, its youth and its society. And they have—praise be to Allah—sufficient provision from the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of His Messenger and the guidance of the righteous Salaf. So the Book and the Sunnah and what the righteous Salaf were upon are to be disseminated, and therein lies protection and sufficiency, by the permission of Allah, for this society. And if the society in this land, which is the land of the two Noble Sanctuaries, is reformed, this reform will extend to the rest of the Islamic world. So this land has a great responsibility. We ask Allah to assist those in charge of it, from the rulers and its scholars, in attending to this responsibility, and they are so, if Allah wills. But in the context of advising one another to truth and advising one another to patience, we say: Stand firm upon your religion, stand firm upon your creed, and stand firm upon your land and your society. Let it be the source of good, its origin and its spring, as it was in the previous era from the land of the two Noble Sanctuaries, the cradle of the message and the place of the descent of revelation. So the responsibility is great, and there is no doubt, but with the facilitation of Allah and seeking His help, every difficulty becomes easy and every hardship becomes facilitated, with reliance upon Allah and exerting the helpful, useful, and beneficial means. So this is a very important matter, and the position of this land now in relation to the Islamic world is an apparent and important one. We ask Allah to guide those in charge of this land, from scholars and rulers and society, to know their responsibility, their mission, and their status before the world.