Recently, I got an opportunity to attend a one-day Tarbiyyat Camp near Tokyo which was organised by an Islamic organisation which has strong roots in the country of their origin. Alhamdulillah, it was a nice, well-organised program and I enjoyed participating in it. People from far of place of the country came to attend the event. The speakers stressed the importance of Iman in our daily lives and remembrance of Allah at all times. The Masjid was full with people of all ages – from infants to young to pretty old people. Every body praised the organisers for arranging such a wonderful program.
However, it did not satisfy me fully and at least few other people attending the event expressed the same opinion. It lacked some thing really important for us, for the people who have been living in a country which is a majority-non-Muslim country. The overall population of the Muslims is not that much. The main target of such programs should have been spreading Dawah to our Japanese brethren in humanity.
Unfortunately, not many Tarbiyyat programs in Japan are organised to meet this most important goal. In fact, we are so attached to our respective cultures that we like to keep conducting these kinds of programs the way we usually do in our countries or the way our organisations ask us to do. We fail to think critically the genuine needs of the communities we are living in. Due to this very reason, despite all our sincere efforts, we have not able to much headway to achieving our goals.
To correct the situation, I suggest the following.
- The main focus of all our Dawah and Taribyyat activities should be our kids and newly convert Muslims of Japanese origin or any other nationality.
- We need to prepare our kids to become future leaders of our masaajid and other community centers and, generally, discourage speakers from our home countries as they do not have the domain knowledge of the Muslim community in Japan, have no understanding of the Japanese culture and thus can not give very useful advice to the local community on the matters of kids’ eductaion, social structure of the members of the community and other related issue.
- The programs should be conducted in Japanese and English instead of Urdu, Bengali, Indonesian etc. as either japanese or English are the only two languages which are understood by most of us
- We need to encourage one another to do the Dawah work and other Tarbiyyat activities mainly in Japanese and English and do not arrange programs targeted to any specific communities in their native language only.
Inshallah, I plan to further elaborate this issue in the coming days. So stay tuned and do not go away.
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