Every time someone asks me for help with abusive parents/guardians, I think about the story of Mus’ab ibn Umayr & how his mother abused him for converting to Islam, & how the Prophet ﷺ advised him to leave for Abyssinia to escape her control over him.

And I think about it in the context of Muslim parents who are abusive toward their children while claiming to embody the principles of this religion.

My recommendation & assistance ends being the same: finding a way to away from them & putting a stop to the abuse.

Because the principle of being good to your parents will never encompass the first mandate that life & well-being is to be preserved, & taking their abuse quietly & without a means of distancing oneself from that harm doesn’t fall under birr al-walidayn.

If you want people to lose their connection to Islam, one of the quickest ways to do that is to tell them that they need to accept & bear abuse as a testament of their faith in Allah from those who are supposed to take care of them with compassion.

There is no “if” here.

We keep telling people to just be quiet & take it “with sabr” from their families, guardians, spouses, imams & shuyukh, & leaders...

It’s immoral & an antithetical lie to the ethics of this Dīn.

We have to put a stop to it.