I was a guest of the Islamic Community of Bryan TX this Friday and mentioned to those in attendance the necessity of constant self-improvement and learning to combat misconceptions and misapplications of faith. One of the problems that I feel leads many young Muslims to feel irresolute about their faith is the fact that their knowledge of what Islam is is limited to two sources: Their parents and their Sunday School experience. Given that many teens refuse to attend Sunday school after the age 13, we have hundreds of college freshman engaging advanced philosophical and theological concepts that are absolutely foreign to them because of the stagnancy found in community education efforts. This is equivalent of a person with the math and science level of a middle-schooler engaging in theoretical physics. I was shocked to learn from one of the sisters in attendance that many Sunday school curricula do not go past the 7th or 8th grade, effectively excluding a large swath of the community. This is not a rant. Im mentioning this, because I feel that it is important for us to remedy this problem. I myself have been working on a program for community education in conjunction with a few of my friends. The only roadblocks Ive found are found within communities themselves, and whether they value these sort of programs or not. What resources are out there that you value and think can be built upon?
Posted on: Sun, 21 Sep 2014 04:12:41 +0000