Assalamu alykum Warahmatulahi wabarakatu

AT my local Masjid a sisters committee was formed they took the intiative to set up a saturday program for girls between the ages of 8 all the way up to 20 Masha’Allah TabarakAllah.

Each has a set of girls they are responsible for very Saturday..Thye have programs such as hadeeth studies,Qur’aan, studies, seerah,Discussion periods.

Each month they sit and have a one on one with the girls and ask them certain question, like do they come to teh masjid, whats their realtionship with their parents like?? They have them write a list of goals for a one month period and at the end of each month they look back and see if they have met their goals.

Masha’Allah if you meet these sisters they are mature and truly want to practise their deen, coming to the masjid each Saturday increases their Eeman and their love for one another.

They attend everything from lectures around our area to Al-Maghrib.

One of the things taht failed was trying to stop the formation of girls only hanging around with a certain group each week, they tried to get people to sit with one another but eventually the girls just kept coming back to their original groups. They stopped and relized they couldnt really stop people from sitting and talking with who they choose., As long as there was no drama and everyone had common respect for one another they were satisfied.

The grils truly love disscussion period b/c they can discuss what issues they are going through and seek help from older sister who have gone through it.

I find that this program has been very sucessful compared to the Brothers section of the masjid..Who really doesnt have a youth program but attracts Brothers a guess in a different way..Masha’Allah b/c a lot of Youth brothers come to the masjid too.

I think to make a Youth program a success you need to be committed and have Youth that truly wnat to come to the program b/c they wnat too, not b/c they are forced.

You need to teach them the deen but also allow them to choose and activity each moth outside of the masjid it doesnt have to be anything costly.

Have a strong team behind you b/c you will surly get critized from someone for something you are doing with the Youth.

Ok…I didnt mean for this to be lonng..

Wa alakium asalam Warahmatulahi Wabrakatu

I think my community is a mix between kids who practice somewhat and those who don’t practice at all. As a youth leader, I believe one should not nag or frequently lecture them…one thing they hate is when you shove Islam down their throats and don’t give them time to increase their emaan. For example in the islamic school, the children are “forced” to pray the sunnah prayers, this isn’t bad but subhanAllah if the teacher isn’t there will the child pray the sunnah? Will they pray because they love Allah ta’ala? I don’t think so.

I think for young men they need a mentor who they can look up to and will listen to what he says. My brother’s have their Qur’an teacher, he takes them out for pizza while teaching them about the battles, and he’s taking them canoeing, camping, playing sports and after these activities he will sit them down and teach them about any topic, he even did hijab once. I believe this method works the best, wa Allahu ‘alam…when you have a program that centers around them having fun AND teaching them at the same time, inshaAllah that should help. The parents will trust you because you’re doing other activities with them. When you’ve gained their trust then you can slowly and gracefully begin advising them in the forbidden matters.

Also, they need new role models…I told my brothers (who are 16 and seniors in public HS) about the sahaba and how they were in battles, they loved it alhamdulillah. I sat them down and we listened to yasir qadhi’s battle of uhud lecture and they got so pumped afterwards. Whatever you teach them you should compare it to things going on nowadays so they’ll understand.

(I also think the parents need some type of program if they don’t want their children wearing hijaab or growing a beard… wa Allahul Mustaan)

I just remembered something else – for the older teen class, my dad once got them to write a short report on the challenges they face being Muslim here, issues that they might have, things that they wish were available, suggestions on how to make us better able to teach them, etc. In addition we had an open discussion on the same subject.
This way we found out exactly how THEY felt about Islam and on being Muslim, on what their needs were and how we could address them, which has helped a lot.

As part of youth outreach here, my dad is planning on doing a series of workshops after Ramadan (insha’Allah), with the focus actually being on the parents, gauging their thoughts and opinions on their kids and helping them learn how to better understand them and make practicing Islam a “joint” project between both youth and the parents.

Also, I recall my dad mentioning that at our old Islamic centre, there were quite a few youth (in their 20s, though, not their teens) who ended up attending regularly and changed drastically from the typical “lost” scenario (not praying, drinking alcohol, partying, all that stuff) to becoming really practicing Muslim men, masha’Allah – the more they hung out with the right company and attended halaqas and duroos, the more they actually made the effort to change and better themselves. The difference between what you’re asking about and what happened here is that they made the initial effort to learn and didn’t need someone to come to them in the first place… so I don’t know how that would work w/ the scenario you gave.

This is good information from everyone, jazakum Allahu khairan.

My 2 cents:

There are a few different types of programs that can make a big difference if done right: They could be heavy on sports, games and whatever halal things youth find interesting, and light on lectures and similar things.

Some examples are summer camps, weekend sleepovers at the masjid, basketball tournaments, etc. In this way, the youth are around muslims but they’re having fun. They would begin to associate the masjid with enjoyable activities. Hopefully in the long term, they would benefit from the other programs at the masjid.

In that case, I would suggest that the most religious activities would be the 5 salah and maybe a couple of short discussions where the youth themselves are doing most of the talking. ie no long lectures

The youth would enjoy the activities and inshaAllah be away from negative influences (like the parents who don’t pray salah)

This idea and other ideas still suffer from the main problem though: There have to already be religiously committed older people willing to do all of these programs.

I’ve personally seen in most cases, when programs like this are arranged: an uncle just gives the teenage guys a basketball and tells them to basically run off and play. No one supervises them, and there is no akhlaq or improvement in anything other than basketball skills.

Or, the uncles decide how the program is going to be, _then_ they start calling all the twentysomethings / thirtysomethings to run it for them. And then they get mad when they find all those people are busy because they’ve got young families to take care of.

I think Shaikh Kamal El Makki said it best when he mentioned something like: There’s no shortage of ideas, but there’s an incredible shortage of people and money, for every dawah activity out there.

I’ve mainly lived in one place for most of my life, so i can only speak about the few communities i know. People get excited about some new program and it’s real popular at first. Then, parents use it as a dumping ground, the few volunteers get burned out, and in a few months the program dies, never to be seen again.

It might work better if the program was done by paid people who truly believe in it, but I’ve never ever seen that here.

Please feel free to delete this post if it’s too depressing :-) , and sorry for the rambling. :)

was salaamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu,

For the youth, by the youth.

My 2 cents.

Assalaam alaykum. Youth issues are one of the core concerns of any community and society. And we muslims are no different. The situation is more grave because our youth are bombarded by images of Muslims seemingly engaged almost constantly in internal conflicts, or presenting the worse in behavior among humans, not to mention Muslims.

To try to seek success stories may be commendable, but I would suggest that there be an “eye-opening” if you will that there is a problem. Then we can talk about seeking solutions. All crises in the world have incidental success stories, but they don’t necessarily indicate a solution to the crises.

Why do Muslim youth so easily become distracted? What has been the historical precedent among the Muslim youth? How is a young Muslim supposed to transition into a responsible, Allah-fearing adult? How do other communities address this issue? For example, the Amish have a period where their youth actually go away at age 16; and the Mormons have the practice of two-year missionary work for their young men (remember seeing the two guys on bicycles in white shirts and dark trousers?).

What do the Muslims have culturally, and being a Muslim American convert, what will we do to establish our own community and social tradition & culture in America that defines how we will function?

Then we might be able to talk about successes.

Allah guide us all to the best in practicing and living His deen.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think most of the Muslim bloggers and readers are considered “young” or were considered part of the youth at some point in their life growing up in here. I’m sure most of us had gone through the “high school or freshman college or just college, etc. jahilyah” phase.

We should ask ourselves, what brought us back to Islam and closer to Allah?