Passing the Baton
"It seems the time approached when I shall be called away (by Allah) and I shall answer that call. I am leaving for you two precious things and if you adhere to them both, you will never go astray after me. They are the Book of Allah and my Progeny, that is my Ahlul Bayt. The two shall never separate from each other until they come to me by the Pool (of
The Holy Prophet declared in Ghadir e Khum that Imam Ali (AS) will be his successor and will continue to propagate the message of Allah and continue to illuminate this world. We learn from the best of creations that we need to have a succession plan to ensure the message of Allah continues until they day of reckoning.
This principle and ethos of succession planning is applied across all disciplines, whether religious or secular to ensure the good work is continued for future generations to come.
From the commercial world….we have just learned of the death of Steve Jobs. So what has Apple done about succession planning? They appointed Tim Cook as the CEO in anticipation of his death to ensure a seamless transition for their organisation.
The Madressa is no different in its succession planning and follows the principles taught to us by the Holy Prophet. The time has come for me to step down at the end of this year and pass on the baton to Brother Sajjad Govani, who will continue to drive our organisation forward to fulfil the mission of the Ahlul Bayt. I trust that you will support him and his team as you have supported me over the last three years.
However, there is still plenty of work to do until the end of the year. I would like to keep you abreast of the recent developments. In order to ensure that we are applying the best techniques available to maximise the output for our students, we are continuously investing in our teachers to improve the quality of their delivery. We are equipping them with more training, providing them with teaching aids and continuous overview with feedback.
Once again, our students and teachers have done us all proud for their excellent performance in the Quran Competition at the Islamic Centre where they all achieved outstanding results. May Allah continue to shower his blessing onto them and maintain their deep love of reciting His unique book, the Holy Quran.
Our teaching isn’t just restricted to the classroom in our Centre. In June we took a group of older children to Willowbrook Organic Farm based in Oxfordshire. The purpose of the visit was to gain an insight to our duties to the environment as Muslims and the practical aspects of animal rearing for the Zabiha slaughter process in particular.
Information technology is at the heart of our progress and we are continuously updating the “dashboard”. We now provide parent logging where they can see details about all their children, rather than logging on individually.
SIM Principal
Teachers Training – September 2011
Islam has paid considerable attention to teachers for their being the first brick in the structure of social development and perfection and the cause of guiding and developing behaviors and mentalities of individuals and communities. The Prophet (SAW) cared for teachers and showed their elevated standings.
The Prophet (SAW) said, ‘The best form of charity is for a man to gain knowledge and then teach it to others.’
Imam Ali (AS) said, ‘Command your children to acquire knowledge.’
Students acquire the good traits and sound trends, as well as the virtuous behavior and composure from their teachers whose guidance and conducts penetrate to their hearts. On that account, teachers must over discipline themselves and train on virtuous and noble Islamic morals and manners to be the best exemplars of their students. The desires of seeking knowledge should be evolved in their minds. Teachers should refer to the most significant matters that advance them and their societies plentifully. Students will surely pursue knowledge resolutely if this noble tendency is sewn in their minds and, consequently, the conceptual and Islamic life will be prosperous in the community. The responsibilities and duties of a teacher are many and varied.
Teachers act as facilitators for incorporating and encouraging intellectual and social development in the formative years of a student’s life. The emphasis that Islamic education will help uplift one socially, intellectually, emotionally and professionally.
Over the past year SI Madressa has run a number of teacher training sessions. This is in recognition of the fact that our teachers, whilst steadfastly dedicated, extremely resourceful and blessed with an insight into the need to impart the religion of Allah (SWT) to our children, require additional support to enable them to carry out the responsibility that they have endeavoured to fulfil.
To this end, SI Madressa organised a teachers training session on professional teaching aspects as well as on understanding our children and the social pressures that they face. We were fortunate to have experts in these fields within our community present these sessions to our teachers, on the gents side we had Ali Mawji and Abbas Merali to run these respective sessions, whilst on the ladies side we had Masooma bai Hasan.
Our initial training session at the beginning of 2011 was designed to follow on from what we had started the year before, which was to introduce the professional tools deployed by teachers within secular institutions. We began by exploring the different ways in which children learn and how we can and should cater for all these learning styles within the classroom. To this end, the Madressa embarked on introducing a group project for our older students that replaced their traditional first term Akhlaq test. This allowed the children to organise themselves into roles best suited for their learning styles and produce a piece of work to show to their peers. The result was an outstanding success and a tribute to our professional trainer as well as all the class teachers involved.
Some of the additional aspects of professional teaching which were covered within the training sessions were:
- Lesson planning: Its importance / significance as well as how to create a good plan in 10 minutes utilising different types of media and / or activities in order to keep students engaged and to also target those students who may have different learning styles
- Classroom control and behaviour management, including how to get the best out of students and keep them on task throughout the lesson. Within this discussion we looked at a video of an actual classroom and analysed where the teacher succeeded and where they could have achieved better results as they tackled various behaviour issues.
Our next session focused more towards understanding our students through the pressures they are facing externally and how this may impact their performance / behaviour within the classroom.
We initially began by looking at what attributes created the best teacher - the Holy Prophet (SAW). We then moved on to identify the plethora off issues that our students may be facing, tracked the potential causes and discussed solutions for these issues.
Finally we discussed many of the common social phenomenon that may be influencing certain patterns of behaviour. The aim of this discussion was to explore what teachers can do within the classroom to help facilitate an increase in quality time between parents and children at home in order to create greater cohesion between parents, children and Madressa teachers.
Teachers need to be good at TEACHING, INSTRUCTING and MAKING PRESENTATIONS, but they also need to have good LISTENING skills to understand the problems a student may be having. They need to be able to ANALYSE the reasons why a potentially bright student is not making progress, to have good WRITING skills, and be able to PLAN the next terms work. Remember, we are accountable to Allah (SWT) for every minute spent with students in the classroom.
Our training sessions will resume again in the 2012 Madressa academic year inshaAllah, and once again we thank all those involved in their organisation
QUR’AN COMPETITION HELD AT ISLAMIC CENTRE – MAIDA VALE ON 27 AUGUST 2011 - 26 RAMADHAN 1432 – An Achievement
The Holy Qur’an holds a unique place in the history of religious scripture because it is the only book that has remained unchanged from the day it was revealed until today.
Reciting and reflecting on the Qur’an has tremendous benefits, The Prophet (S.A.W) has said:
“Recite the Qur’an in such a way that your hearts develop a love for it and your skin becomes softened by it.”
Reciting the Qur’an with correct pronunciation is a delicate art and memorising whole or parts of the Holy Book is also considered very important to Muslims.
The competition is a platform for everyone to exhibit his/her talents. From experience, Qur’an competitions help and encourage Muslims to recite/ memorise the Qur’an in shorter periods of time, and to pay more attention to the proper ways of pronouncing the words of Allah.
On Saturday 27 August 2011 (26 Ramadhan 1432), number of anxious young/old reciters turned up at the Annual Qur’an Competition at Islamic Centre – Maida Vale. With both excitement and nervousness, people from different Arab communities took to the microphone one after the other, all day, carefully reciting verses from the Holy Qura’n.
In the midst of the crowd of participants, some of our community students were seen notably. SI Madressa had entered 14 Boys, 6 Girls and 8 Teachers in this Competition in two categories – Tarteel (Recitation) and Memorisation.
Out of 14 Boys from our community under the age of 15 years, 7 of them took part in the memorisation of Juz 30 and 7 participated in the Tarteel category. Whilst in the Girls/Teachers; 9 participated in Tarteel and 4 took part in memorization of Juz 1, 2 and Surah Nur.
The participants recited in front of panel of 4 experienced judges. They were adjudicated on the areas of Tajweed, Voice, Tune (Maqamaat) & Start/Stop. While majority of our students/teachers achieved the highest positions in their respective group, everyone was a winner for demonstrating their love for reading and applying the Book of Allah (SWT) in their individual and collective lives.
Darul Qur’an – Al Itrah under SI Madressa is putting every effort in enhancing its students’ capabilities and confidence and is sure to satisfy the objective of raising the standards of Qur’an recitation and memorisation in our community.
Darul Qur’an – Al Itrah held classes for Qur’an reciters and memorisers prior to the competition in the month of Ramadhan, whereby the participants were trained the requirements regarding the areas of judgment mentioned above and frequently given exercises and tutorials.
Food appreciation by senior students at SIM
On 9 June this year, 16 students and four teachers of the Higher Education department at the SIM visited an organic farm in
Willowbrook Organic Farm is a 34 acre farm based outside the
The couple who run the farm, Sister Ruby and Dr Lutfi Radwan, extended a warm welcome to the SIM students and teachers. The group was joined by other adults interested in growing their own vegetables on allotments as well as a group of teachers from the Muhammadi Madressa Birmingham. The visitors met a local convert who was possibly the first native of Oxfordshire to convert to Islam in the 1940s. He spoke about his experiences as a Muslim convert over the 70 years of living in this country and propagating Islam. Despite being in his 90s Brother Ahmad is a keen archer.
After zohrain salat and lunch, consisting almost exclusively of produce grown on the farm, Dr Radwan gave an inspirational talk to the group. He spoke about recognising that Allah created the earth for us to obtain benefit from, but also gave man responsibility over the land and the animals reared on it. He highlighted that is the duty of man to carry out this responsibility in an ethical manner and not to abuse his position.
In all their work on the farm, Dr Radwan and his wife uphold the principle that the benefit of their work must outweigh the harm caused by their work. Unlike modern farming methods that are principally driven by increasing the profitability of large scale farming, at Willowbrook the Radwans work hard to earn a living whilst being in harmony with Allah’s creation.
Dr Radwan went on to show how he has practically overcome the challenges of modern industrial farming methods to rear animals in keeping with the guidance of the Holy Quran and Ahadith. The following solutions from Islam to the dangers of industrial farming methods were specifically considered:
- In modern farming methods, animals are confined to very limited space, often being unable to move around throughout their lives. This leads to deformed animals, many of whom may not get any natural light throughout their lives. Animals raised at Willowbrook are free to roam a wide area and can enter sheltered parts if they chose to.
- Large scale volume farming techniques mean that illness and injury are dealt with superficially by use of strong antibiotics which in turn becomes part of the food we eat. The animals are unnaturally inactive, and the inhumane rearing systems allow daily deaths and suffering in pursuit of cheap meat. At Willowbrook, Dr Radwan would look to natural herbal based remedies to treat the cause of the illness and injury. Smaller flocks allow for observation of discomfort and unnatural behaviour.
- The animals reared on modern industrial farms are force fed to fattened them up and get them ready for slaughter in a very short time. This often involves feeding cattle and poultry, which are naturally herbivores, with dead meat of their own kind mixed in with their feed. This unnatural process is not in keeping with sharia, and has led to instances of food poisoning and previously unknown illnesses in cattle such as ‘foot and mouth disease’. All the animals at Willowbrook are fed grain or they graze on fresh pastures and are slaughtered when they are ready to be consumed.
- At the point of slaughter, animals are often on a conveyor belt and see other animals being slaughtered before them. Due to the volumes involved, little care is taken to make sure the animals are healthy. Furthermore stunning can cause death to chicken before they are slaughtered and these non-zabiha chickens will be mixed in with those that have been alive at the point of slaughter. Animals at Willowbrook are either slaughtered individually on the farm or at an abattoir where care is taken to ensure that all animals are well at the point of slaughter and that they are shielded from other animals being slaughtered.
The farm also has an extensive vegetable patch that supplies food boxes of organic vegetables that are in season to several local families. The use of fertilisers or pesticides is completely avoided due to the harmful effects it has on our bodies and to the environment.
The whole family participate in the laborious farming activities. The visitors had ‘hands on’ experience of some of these activities, such as penning sheep and checking them for diseases and digging up root vegetables. The group also participated in egg collecting and packing though they were no match for the skills of Adam Radwan, who grew up on the farm and with his bare hands can pack almost 140 eggs in 2 minutes without breaking a single one!
The group learned how local production is energy efficient. 90% of the farm’s produce is sold within 10 miles of the farm. Organic inputs are sourced from the farm and locally, waste matter is composted and nutrients recycled. An energy efficient farmhouse was built under the supervision of the Radwans which used clay from the farm mixed with locally produced straw.
Communal spirit and awareness of food consumption, aspects which are encouraged by Islam, was further explored during the visit. Much of the process of how food goes from the farm to the plate was witnessed. When a consumer is aware of the character of the producer and has been able to visit and the farm to verify conditions of rearing, he is taking responsibility for his sustenance. This encourages greater moral and ethical behaviour on the part of the consumer as well as the producer as they are known to one another and each is dependent on the other for their well being. This contrasted with the production of food thousands of miles away in distant lands (
The meat from Willowbrook is sold at local markets and many of the customers visit the farm. The best practices from organic farming methods are used to ensure good quality produce that is reared according to the principles of sharia. Freshly picked vegetables that are in season are offered to customers to complement the quality meat and eggs on offer. The engagement of the Radwans with local communities allows them to explain the benefits of the teachings of sharia with regards to the food cycle.
Whilst the boys were disappointed not to have played cricket on the lush farmland, they did leave with greater appreciation of Allah’s bounties to us and a realisation of how we should be more conscious of the source of our food. They learnt how locally grown vegetables that are in season make for a nutritious diet and they were encouraged to explore the teachings of Imam Ridha (as) in Risalah Zahabiya about the types of food in our diet.
IT Update
Integrating Islamic learning with technology has been a 'way forward' for the Madressa since the launch of the virtual learning platform in September of 2008. Three years on, the platform is now commonly referred to as 'The Dashboard' where parents and students of Classes 1 to 8 can participate in submitting Salaat and Qur'an charts on a weekly basis, while students in Classes 9-11 have online Fiqh and Quran assignments. In addition to this, the 'Dashboard' will also display Contact information, Attendance history and Test Marks, which will enable parents/students to review the information on record. Alhamdulillah, over time, we have been able to further integrate features into 'The Dashboard' such as parent login, comments and feedback and Subject Timetable. The parent log in has been a significant improvement as it allows parents to view all their children’s record from one log in.
Currently, the Madressa is working to incorporate an enrolment module, scheduled to be ready for Mid-November, just in time when we will be starting Enrolments for 2012. This feature will enable Parents to use 'The Dashboard' where they can re-enrol their child(ren) and pay fees on-line, and also have a record of the enrolments at all times. Furthermore, Parents will also be enable to edit their contact details directly on the Dashboard, which will update our system automatically and this will ensure Madressa always holds the most up to date record.
Muslim Mums Issue 14 – Muharram 1433
Watch out for this Issue soon. It contains numerous features:
- "Relationship between stealing, disobedience, speaking lie, hiding one's activities - how are they related and how to handle kids with such habits."
- Skiing Holidays
- Growing Feet
- Blog Spot
- Asma-ul-Husna
- Kids say the funniest things
……..And More!
Please pick up your free copy during program at Hujjat in the month of Muharram or download your e-copy from www.madressa.net nearer the time.
2011 - Dates for your diary
Sunday 6 November – Sunday 20 November – Term 3 Tests
Sunday 27 November & Sunday 4 December 2011 – Madressa Closed for Ashra e Muharram
Sunday 11 December 2011 – Madressa Annual Presentation Day