TARBIYYAH - تربيه

 

Literally means a rearing, a nursing, training, inculcating, improving, or educating. Maintenance. Culture, good manners, good breeding. A correcting or a chastising; an admonition, a chastisement. Regulating or improving by the use of chemical or other agents; a treatment. To bring up and train. To correct or punish. To treat with what will improve or preserve it. The family's — particularly the mother’s — raising a child is also called ‘tarbiyyah’.

As an Islamic term: The action of Allah that emerges from His rubûbiyyah. It is as follows:

رَبِّ That is, He Who does tarbiyyah the ‘âlam with all its components, each of which is an ‘âlam, and particles of which orderly move like stars.

Know that Allah ‘azza wa jalla determined a point of perfection for everything and deposited in each of them an inclination towards it. Everything moves to that point of perfection as though they received a ma’nawî command. In its journey to its perfection point, each thing is in need of what will help it and what will repulse the things that hinder it, and this is the tarbiyyah of ‘Azza wa jalla.

If you look at the universe carefully and reflect, you will see that there are many groups and nations, like the sons of Âdam, individually and collectively employed in the duties their Sâni’ has assigned to them; they strive diligently and obey the laws of their Khâliq. How strange it is that man deviates from the sphere of such general law and order of the universe!

 Signs of Miraculousness-43

 

اَلرَّحْمنِ الرَّحِيمِ Their positioning: These two names point to the two fundamentals of the tarbiyyah. Since the name Rahmân possesses the meaning of Razzâq, and Razzâq is suitable for the attraction of benefits, so too, the name Rahîm possesses the meaning of Ghaffâr, and Ghaffâr is conformable with the repulsion of harm, and these are the two fundamentals of the tarbiyyah.

 Signs of Miraculousness-45