The aim of this blog

Bismallah Ar Rahman Ar Raheem, Wa Salat Wa Salam Ala Rasool Allah.

The aim of the blog is for myself to try get to know my ummah as well as my ummah to get to know me.

As a member of this ummah (Islamic Nation), I believe that every Muslim individual should have a responsibility in contributing some of his spare time in promoting Islam. A good way of promoting this beutiful religion is by communicating with each other, and to have a successful communication we need to learn from each other. 

As we are one body moving collectively, I believe an ideal way of learning is from our experiences, a Muslim is a reflection to another Muslim. What one Muslim faces in one part of the world can have an impact on the other Muslim in the other part.

I first thought of creating this blog after acknowledging that if you are not going to write down your experiences or share it then it will simply fade away and no one will benefit from it.  I would also love to hear some real cases of other Muslim individuals and their stories that they go through at this time around the world.

My idea is to start writing down any experiences, stories or travels I go through that I feel like I have learnt something from, this will be from the perspective of someone that is trying to practise his religion in this day and age.

As a young Muslim I hope in my journey of life I gain many experiences that will give me strength in faith and closeness to Allah. I also hope that the challenges I face is overcome by patience and it is something that I will successfully pass by following the right thing. The world and the people that are in it is different and fascanating, it is a school that I hope I will be a good student of.

We always read about different places and situation from an outside perspective but I prefer to read stories of people from their own inside view. 

As the world is different and the people are too, It will be interesting for me to read inside stories of Muslims practising their religion in other places for e.g India, New Zealand or South Africa.

Allah mentions that the believers are allies to one another, and the Prophet Muhammed (SAW) mentions that the believers are all part of one body, if one part of the body is in the pain, the rest of the body is in pain.

I hope other brothers and sisters can also do the same with the intention to help strengthen the ties of our Ummah by knowing each other more.

“and help each other with good and piety” Al Quran.

May Allah bless you all.

My Summer Holiday 2010

Bismallah Ar rahman Ar raheem Wa Salat Wa Salam Ala Rasool Allah

What have you done?

In my summer holiday 2010 I worked in my local mosque as a youth worker for three weeks. My masjid (Mosque) has been running for around 25 years and they have recently dedicated a youth development department. This department aims to establish a second home for young Muslims to be able to meet other Muslim youths, to help them develop in education and skills, and to teach them Islamic ethics and morals. The masjid has a good reputation both in the UK and Saudi Arabia, and specialises in services such as education, dawah (Calling people back to the purpose of life), and family affairs.

Our programme included a variety of activities. We have been doing daily workshops and sessions, football tournaments, took part in a local council project, a camping trip in Harlow, personal development seminars, Islamic DVDs, Drama and Art.

The daily sessions often started in the morning. Abu Maudh and I tried to focus on topics related to their age and their experiences. We have done lessons on Tahara (Purifacation), Salat (Prayer), Wudu (Ablution), Etc. We also spoke about relationships and how to be modest with your sexuality. We also tried to understand the youths cases by allowing them to state their own views in our discussions.

The benefits of the football tournaments were mainly to get the youths to work with each other as a team and to teach them to be responsible in watching their behaviour off site (Masjid). The youths understand that after 9/11 they face stereotypes from people, for this we tried to stress to them why watching our behavior is twice as important. The tournaments took place in Ealbrook Park - 5 minutes’ walk from the masjid. We are happy that if they are interested in football that it will keep them busy from other negative aspects you find in youth culture. It was also good to give them a balance of mind activities (Lessons, workshops) with body activities (Sports).

The local police and another organisation were holding a summer programme in Hurlinghum and Chelsea School. They have table tennis, Fuzball (A new sport), Boxing and many more activities. It was good in making our youths work with all the other youths in the council, I thought that we have showed a good representation and had made the organisers and the police think better of us. 

The camping trip in Harlow was for 3 nights and 4 days and was scheduled near the end of the programme. The trip included some sport activities, group discussions and plays. We have tried to focus on practising what we have learnt, we believed that the camping trip is ideal for this because the youths are away from the parents and their daily life style which puts them under pressure to work as a team, be more responsible and to experience good life skills.

The seminar on personal development was given by Bro. Musa from Al Muntada. The seminar was designed to motivate the youths on to think about what career direction they want to go to. I believe the seminar has influenced some of the youths to think themself as abled young individuals who with commitment will be able to achieve their goals.

The play competition has showed there good acting skills, most of the youths including the supervisor’s enjoyed taking part in the plays the most. The youth’s had some very creative and fun ideas, they quickly implemented their stories in a short amount of space and time, and this impressed us a lot.

The DVDs aimed to illustrate some Islamic history in a simple way. One DVD in particular was about the Muslims war against the Mongols which inspired some of the youths to be honoured and proud to be a Muslim. We also set some presentation tasks for what they have learnt from each workshop which they performed in front of up to 400 people.

What have you learnt?

Running the programme alongside Abu Muadh has taught me a number of things:

1.) I have learnt that a three weeks dedicated programme like this needs a lot of preparations and planning. This is because you have the youths under your responsibility for 7 hours a day, the youths are always depending on you to tell them what to do and direct them in the programme. For this reason it will help to have a well-established timetable and an advanced booking in activities.

2.) That your actions as a supervisor are very important. Although you will not notice, but to some of the youths you may be seen as a role model and your actions will influence others. This teaches me to be very careful and to remind myself to be fair and patient with all the youths.

3.) A punishment/reward foundation helps to maintain the programme. If someone does something wrong then it is important that you identify this problem and make sure there is a consequence. This is because if the person carries on doing a wrong action without being stopped he will then believe that it is acceptable. Likewise when someone does a good action it is important that is recognised and praised or encouraged. This will be a good example for the other youth’s as well as a motivation for the individual to regularly practise good actions.

4.) Youths mentality has changed. I've learnt that there is no such thing as a "lack of", but rather there is a "replacement of". For example if the youths do not have much Islamic knowledge, it means that other sorts of knowledge has replaced it. I believe that there is some negative habbits that we need to not just get rid of, but rather replace them. Some people may behave bad but have a strong character or good leadership skills. These types of people we want them not to change their personalities but just their habits. So if they have bad friends change them to good ones, or if they use bad words change them to good words. This I believe will make the leader influence his followers to do good rather than bad. Omar bin Khattab ( A Great Companion of Prophet Muhammed [Peace be upon him]) was strong in kufr (Disbelief, Arrogance, rebllious) but then when accepting Islam he became strong in Iman (Faith, Obediance, Piety).

5.) The youths "Tarbiya" (Upbringing) is extremely important. The home of the child is there primary education and the way the parents bring them up has a strong impact on the child’s behaviour. We learnt this through the meetings we had with the parents which allowed us to find out why the children are the way they are. I have also noticed that the youths who are not born and raised in the UK are better behaved the youths born and raised in the UK. I have no logical explanation to this but I am guessing that the youths outside the UK probably have more experience with different cultures and people and maybe that the lack of guidance in the UK compared to Muslim countries means that the youths coming from the Muslim countries have more manners.

What will you do next.

I hope to see more of the youths regularly - attending the mosque. I believe that there is still a lot of work to do. I hope to carry on throughout the year to help out in projects and to be a regular mentor for some of the youths. Al Muntada should maybe make a project of hiring 5 - 10 different young mentors (18 - 25). This will give the youths a role model as well a person they can speak to and get advice. This will help them in guidance and directions by the will of Allah in their life.

I plan to improve the service of the department. I want people to see the hard work that the brothers are putting into this. We can do this through handing out small booklets, improving our website page, maintaining facebook, small video clip and word of mouth. We hope to collect all images of the programme and create a small video clip to publish.

To research and keep a eye open for any events in London that will benefit the youths. Create a database and strong ties with the youths we have. Empower unity and friendship between the youths. Another idea is to make our database updated by having new and diverse people added to our projects.

We should also think of targeting young Muslims who are not practising their religion and involve them with us.

I am happy that I worked in this programme for my summer holiday. I have learnt a lot of things from the youths itself. I have dreams to focus my time and work in pomoting Islam in any way I can so I hope I involve myself more with the Muslim community. I will recommend working with young Muslims to people; it will make you have hope in the future of the Ummah. Also we want them to love Islam not be afraid of it, for that reason we need to have better role models for them and involve them more in Islamic projects.

I ask Allah to accept this from us; I seek refuge in Allah from any insincere intentions or any of our shortcomings.

All Praise is to Allah, Lord of the Mankind.