How to Respect Toxic Parents in Islam

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One of the most frequently asked questions in Islam nowadays is:

“How am I supposed to respect, obey, and be kind to my toxic, abusive, narcissistic, negligent, disrespectful, unfit parents?!”

In this post, I’ll break down what's needed to obey Allah ‎_{سبحانه وتعالى} by being good to your parents while also protecting yourself.

I'll talk about the commands as well as the wisdom behind them, so you can better appreciate why it's been made obligatory upon us.

Then, I’ll show you how to set healthy boundaries with your parents that you can implement right away using the free mini-workbook in the exclusive Notion Site (subscribe for access).

I was no contact with my dad and limited contact with my mom and I’ve been able to completely change the nature of both relationships using the strategies I’m about to explain in a moment.

Before we begin, there are 2 things that I have to emphasize.

1. You are a blessing from Allah ‎_{سبحانه وتعالى}, even if your parents deny it. They will be held accountable for that ingratitude on Judgment Day.

2. Allah ‎_{سبحانه وتعالى} gave you rights as a child, and you still have rights. It’s completely natural to feel upset when your rights aren’t fulfilled. So, don’t be too hard on yourself for wondering, “What about me?” When you’re constantly being told about their rights over you.

Now, let’s get into it, bismillah.

1. Healing with Islam

The first thing you need to do is begin healing from the damage caused by their parenting—or lack thereof. The key to this is healing while increasing your imaan.

This means:

• Increasing your taqwa

• Seeking knowledge of Allah _{‎سبحانه وتعالى}, His Names, Commands, and Promises

• Learning about the Day of Judgement, Jannah, the purpose of creation, and the nature of this life.

You’ll also need to engage in muhasabah—looking within yourself to see what needs to be removed and replaced with something more pleasing to Allah ‎_{سبحانه وتعالى}. These include negative/haram emotions, habits, beliefs, and people. This helps to begin the process of tazkiyah so that you may elevate to the nafs al-mutma'inna, in sha Allah, through a heightened sense of shukr, sabr, and tawakkul. When you’ve created an Islamic identity, dealing with difficult people becomes much easier.

2. Acceptance

Next, you must accept that:

• Your parents are who they are. They do what they do, say what they say, believe what they want to believe, and you cannot change or please them.

• You may never get an apology or even an acknowledgment of wrongdoing.

• They did what they did and though they may have seemingly, gotten away with it in this life know that they won’t get away with it on the Day of Judgement. Allah ‎_{سبحانه وتعالى} knows exactly what they did and how much hurt they’ve caused. You must believe that fully.

3. Learn How to Emotionally Regulate

Remember these two words: The Pause.

This pause allows you time to switch from your usual response to how you’d like to respond—changing your tone, word choice, and facial/ body expressions.

What I like to do is ask myself: Is there truth to it or is it false?

If there’s truth to it then I accept it, even if it’s only a little true. And if it’s false, I dismiss it and accept that they have a right to their opinion.

For example, if your mother says, “Oh wow, you’ve gained some weight” Of course, this statement is insensitive but what you’re gonna do is look past that and ask yourself “Well, have I?”

If the answer is yes, even if it’s just 1 pound, you let it go.

And if the answer is no, you let it go.

Because either way, whether you’ve gained weight or not it puts you in a position to defend yourself with a full justification as to why you gained weight and exactly how much or you go on about how you’ve been the same size since high school and your clothes all fit the same.

No matter how much defending you do, you’re not gonna change her mind.

Instead, you’ll be draining your energy and giving it to her. People like that feed off your energy. You have to starve them out by not taking the bait.

Defending yourself against verbal attacks or the opinions of others is a defense mechanism. You have to rewire your brain to know that you’re not going against yourself by not responding — you’re protecting yourself from further harm.

You don’t need to defend yourself anymore because Allah ‎_{سبحانه وتعالى} will on The Day of Judgement. Even their own tongue will defend you on that Day. Alhamdulillah.

A major factor to emotional regulation is actually energy management.

Our energy is meant to be used worshipping Allah ‎_{سبحانه وتعالى} so we have to be mindful of how and when we spend it.

Another perk of not defending yourself is that the more you do this the less external shame you’ll feel.

Contrary to the majority of the self-help industry, not all shame is bad. We’re expected to have shame before Allah ‎_{سبحانه وتعالى} and the angels in our presence.

Shame is just self-dissatisfaction. Good shame comes from taqwa and self-reflection.

Another super helpful technique is the physiological sigh.

Which is when you take a big inhale then you inhale again trying to fill up your lungs then you slowly exhale. Do this a few times when you feel yourself being triggered. You can also do some tasbeeh while you do it.

It’s very important that you recognize when you’re dysregulated as soon as possible.

That’s when you start to feel it in your body — you’re sweating or shaking, your heart’s beating fast, your chest is heavy, you feel like crying, there’s a knot in your stomach — listen to your body, calmly go off to yourself and recenter. You’re not suppressing the emotion, you’re allowing it to pass.

If you’re lashing out and exploding on people then you’ve waited too long to regulate.

4. Know what the commands regarding parents are and the wisdom behind them.

In the Quran, Allah ‎_{سبحانه وتعالى} commands us to honor them with respect and to be kind, humble, giving and grateful to our parents.

The command that is probably most challenging is the one to be grateful because you may be thinking, “how am I supposed to be grateful for the pain they’ve caused and/or still causing?”

But you’re not being told to be grateful for the actual injustice, you’re needing to be grateful for what they’ve accidentally taught you. Usually, we come out of each hardship with a new skill or skillset.

In my case, I had to take care of my younger siblings and I since I was 12 and from that I learned how to cook, clean, and tend to children early on and it made it easy for me to do so as an adult. However, because of that I didn’t have much of a childhood; I had to grow up faster than other kids.

So of course, I’m not happy that I didn’t have a childhood but I am grateful for the skills that I’ve gotten out of that experience.

And for some of us, our parents weren’t 100% bad. You may remember some good times with them and Allah ‎_{سبحانه وتعالى} is requiring us to remember that and to be grateful for those times.

Now in regard to being kind — kindness is not gonna look like how it does in the movies or how it does for those in functional families.

It’s gonna be as simple as not bringing up the past and not holding any grudges. Instead, you’re gonna patiently wait for the Day of Judgement and treat them well to the best of your ability without being too self-sacrificing.

Kindness is not a weakness. It takes great strength to be kind to someone who’s mean or misguided or rude. It requires a lot of mental focus to restrain from saying the things your nafs al-ammarrah really wants to say.

Also, keeping in contact is a kindness in and of itself.

Cutting them off doesn’t serve you nor does it serve Allah ‎_{سبحانه وتعالى}. There’s no learning in it. To cut them off is to reject a God Given Test. But here’s the thing, you can’t avoid what Allah ‎_{سبحانه وتعالى} has decreed for you.

That test was tailored to you. Allah ‎_{سبحانه وتعالى} knows what you can handle and He gave you a test within your ability to pass and He isn’t setting you up to go to the Hellfire. Astghfirallah. He’s setting you up to succeed but the only way to Jannah is through the dunya. There are no shortcuts in Islam. There’s just one straight path, alhamdulillah.

If you have really strong bodily reactions or PTSD from your parents and being around them really is too much for you right now, you have no choice but to heal first and then slowly start to reintroduce them into your life.

Your intention has to be that you’re not cutting them off, you’re taking a break to work through what you need to and to build a strong connection with Allah ‎_{سبحانه وتعالى} and then bring them back into your life with firm healthy boundaries so you can obey and please Allah ‎_{سبحانه وتعالى} while protecting yourself as well.

Now, Respect is simply keeping your emotions, your tongue, and your face in check.

Not yelling at them, cursing, raising your voice, being sarcastic, calling them by their first name, broadcasting their sins, rolling your eyes, mean mugging, sighing, complaining, storming off, slamming doors, hanging up the phone - this is all emotional dysregulation.

I often hear the question “why should I respect them when they don’t respect me?” and the answer to that should be because you’re a respectful person. Right?

It doesn’t matter what they’re doing because who they are shouldn’t change who you are. You’re respectful because you’re a respectful person and respect isn’t something that should be earned. Respect is meant to be internalized. It’s something that you give freely because it’s something that you are.

When you look at these commands you see that they make up the majority of the Islamic akhlaq. We’re expected to strive to obtain these characteristics anyway.

Anything that you give your parents is ibadaah and a sadaqah, and it pleases our Lord.

Being humble is just accepting their position and being patient with them. Humbly acknowledging that you don’t know everything there is to know about them. You don’t know everything they’ve been through that turned them into who they are or motivated their poor behaviors. You don’t know how they were as children or all the traumas they’ve experienced. But Allah ‎_{سبحانه وتعالى} does. So you remain patient because of that fact.

Obedience mainly applies if you’re still living with your parents because it’s their rules in their home. If they tell you to clean or be home at a certain time without any reason then there’s not much you can do but obey.

However, this obedience doesn’t apply to your rights. They can’t tell you who to marry or what college to go to or what major to take, etc.

These commands were given so that you:

• Learn how to do hard things for the pleasure of Allah ‎_{سبحانه وتعالى} and for your betterment. Learn to stop avoiding things. To stop running away from what’s hard or uncomfortable because that only leads you in the opposite direction of our Lord.

• Learn how to create an identity of Islam and be secure in it by not allowing another human being to cause you to lose yourself or act outside of yourself. You take away their power to change you or how you view yourself.

• Learn to trust Allah _{سبحانه وتعالى} and submit to His Plan even when you don’t understand it or you don’t see a way out. We’re very near sighted and for us hindsight is 20/20. We have to look back to learn. But Allah ‎_{سبحانه وتعالى} doesn’t - He Knows Everything so we have to consent to His Guidance and then follow it.

• Learn to grow spiritually and elevate to your nafs al-mutma’inna. Allah _{‎سبحانه وتعالى} calls us to meet Him in this state of self (89:27).

We learn to reach contentment, in sha Allah, by knowing our purpose, our obligations, and the ultimate goals of this life and then living in alignment with them.

5. Set Nonverbal Boundaries

It’s important that these boundaries are shown versus told because you’re dealing with someone who’s negative and once they catch on that they’re beginning to lose control over you, they may become more aggressive to try and stop that from happening.

They may:

• Try to isolate you by ruining your reputation, lying on you, telling your business, or rallying others to their side.

• Become angry and even more hostile to try and get a reaction out of you to see how much control they have left.

• Throw a pity party and be the victim and throw everything they’ve ever done for you in your face to try and guilt trip you.

• Try to destroy your relationship with the source of your change. Once they realize that it’s Islam, they may try to use it against you. Once they see that self-love is a factor, they may try to remind you of your past mistakes and failures and current flaws to devalue you. Trying to use you against you.

• Cut you off because it gives them some sort of control.

Or they’ll adjust to you and your relationship will actually grow and improve into one that isn’t harmful anymore because you’ve been able to properly reintroduce yourself. Which is what happened in my case.

Either way, they’ll be forced to pick a new victim because you’re taking that power back and giving it to the One who is Most Just and who doesn’t cause harm in the slightest.

So first, pick the parent of concern.

If necessary, you'll go through this process twice if you need to set boundaries for both.

Start by listing what they do that negatively affects you, then list the things they say that negatively affect you.

Include actions of the tongue like lying, gossiping, yelling, cursing, etc.—on the "say" list.

Once finished, look at your lists. If most of their transgressions are on the "say" side, that’s actually good news. It's often easier to reset the relationship when the issue is with words.

Next, decide what type of boundary is needed based on their actions.

Is it physical for an abusive dad? Privacy for a gossiping mom? Or spiritual, for a parent who manipulates Islam when you say no?

Focus on the big things which are the actions that cause the most harm. Some things might just be annoyances that you’re willing to tolerate because you know that forbearance adds good to your scale, while other things have to be addressed in one way or another.

Then reflect on how this parent controls your emotions and think about how to give that control back to Allah ‎_{سبحانه وتعالى}.

If their insults have lowered your self-esteem, their words might often echo in your mind, overshadowing the healing words of the Quran. You know their words more than the words of our Lord or you’re reciting their insults and criticism more than you recite the uplifting and guiding words of the Quran, which is the real issue — they’re occupying space that belongs to Allah ‎_{سبحانه وتعالى}. Reclaiming and redistributing that space will change how you think and interact with them, allowing you to reintroduce yourself as the person you’re working towards.

Now, you have to actually determine what the boundaries are.

Understand that boundaries aren’t rules - they have nothing to do with trying to control them or their actions. It’s a guide and a standard of what you’re willing to tolerate.

For example, if your mom tells your personal business without consent, the boundary is that you’ll stop telling her confidential information. Anytime she asks about you, you keep it brief and redirect the conversation back to her instead. The boundary isn’t telling her that she needs to stop going around gossiping about you. Instead, you’re changing how you interact with her.

However, there are exceptions to this if the transgression is a physical one.

Maybe you have a parent with the history of physical abuse towards you, the boundary could be no physical contact. So if they try to go for a hug, you’ll decline it. That can come off as a rule because they can’t hug you though you’re actually telling them that you’re uncomfortable with physical touch from them. The boundary may also be that you can tolerate being in their presence for a family gathering or in a group setting but not alone.

Or if your dad yells and curses at you when he’s angry. The boundary could be that if or when that occurs, you’ll leave.

The point is that boundaries are based on what they do and say, what they’ve said and done, and what you will and won’t tolerate.

Allah ‎_{سبحانه وتعالى} rewards us for forbearance so it’s actually beneficial to ignore the little things. The big things that cause harm require boundaries.

If you’re a visual person, you’ll find this page in the freebie really useful because it helps you to fully see your boundaries laid out, making it easy to reference it when you need to.

What’s great about this page is that you can duplicate it so you can use it to set boundaries for any family within your responsibility because it’s likely that if you’re having to create a boundary with your parents for yourself, you’ll have to create some for your spouse or children as well or you may start to witness small breakdowns of trust between you.

For instance, if your mom constantly criticizes your wife in front of you—about her cooking, appearance, childrearing, or anything else—and you don’t at least try to distract your mom by changing the conversation or openly praise your wife, your wife may start to lose trust in you and your ability to protect her image or emotions and that mistrust will spill over into other areas of your marriage. Of course, your wife can set her own boundaries but this is your mom and you’re the leader of your household and the tone is set by you. And the same goes for your children.

Once you’ve determined what your boundaries are, you now just have to stick to them and reinforce them through your actions.

For instance, if you told yourself that you’ll leave after your dad curses at you — leave. Don’t allow yourself to be persuaded to stay. Even if he manages to calm down. Especially in the beginning of this reintroduction period.

This is because you need to show them what the consequences to their poor behaviors are. Again these are nonverbal boundaries so you have to show them that if they want you around they have to speak to you properly or you’ll leave every single time. Don’t let the “you’re being dramatic” comments sway you. Once the relationship has been reestablished and is in a much better state, you can choose to loosen up a bit.

I know this post is long, but the free Respect Unfit Parents mini workbook will help you create these boundaries. Please tell me how it works for you!

As-salamu alaikum, until next time, in sha Allah.

Khalisa.

If you’re ready to do the inner work necessary to get close to Allah ‎_{سبحانه وتعالى}, get the Heart Recovery Workbook (a heart purification course that’s been condensed into a workbook for simplicity, effectiveness, and your convenience).