My sister who is currently in her final year at Al-Huda school would currently be preparing for MIST, an interscholastic tournament between (mostly) Muslim high schoolers. Last year's competition had some 600 competitors. I participated in MIST 8 times during high school. I wrote a piece on it after my last tournament, you can read it here if you want to get a better idea of the tournament.
Al-Huda School has dominated the regional tournament since its inception in the D.C. area. Everyone's goal was to upset them but nobody ever did. Eleanor Roosevelt (my team) came close in my final two years but missed them by a few points.
Al-Huda is electing not to participate in this year's tournament, and is specifically prohibiting all students from participating under any other team, citing their code of conduct which states that all extra curricular activities must be properly aligned with the values of the school and the values of Islam. Now it is my understanding that this decision is based on the "gender mixing" that happens at MIST, as this is the only thing that could potentially not comply with their values. If this is false, I'd love to hear an alternate explanation.
I've spent grades 1-6 and 8 at Al-Huda and what I'm speaking to comes from that experience, along with having a mother who teaches there and three siblings who are going there right now. This decision is, in a word, asinine. Al-Huda tries too hard to shelter it's students from the outside world. From my years as a student I was made to believe that outside world is cruel, that public school and college teachers won't care about me like the teachers at Al-Huda do. I was told about how all this haraam (Islamically prohibited) stuff is out there and I need to shield myself from it. For all the talk of the outside world Al-Huda did nothing to prepare me for HOW to deal with it.
There are technically two schools at Al-Huda. Two sets of each grade. One for the boys and one for the girls. This separation starts at kindergarten. And I think at the beginning, it's fine. With all the sexual images in mainstream culture today, be it television, billboards, a Disney movie or whatever there is no need to further this while a child is young. It's extremely key for kids to have a sound Islamic foundation that a full time Islamic school can offer. That's not to say that children who go to public schools are somehow "corrupted" just that in my opinion it's better for them in the beginning. This helicopter schooling can only go on for so long, however.
Eventually students are going to go to public school and college and they'll be ill-prepared with how to smoothly handle the transition. The big issue is that at MIST there are instances of people hooking up, now in my 4 years I've never personally seen it happen but I'm pretty in confident it has. This would be the extreme I guess, people also tend to have an issue with how "friendly" guys and girls get at this competition. This guy-girl interaction is the reason that Al-Huda has decided to not only withdraw, but ban its students from competing. MIST has acknowledged the issue from the beginning and does what it possibly can to stop it when they see it.
Instead of trying to address the problem of teaching these children how to interact properly with the opposite gender they've simply cut it off. What kind of message does this send to students? We don't agree with this one aspect of the event and hence we are not allowing anybody to compete. And I can almost guarantee 99% if not 100% of Al-Huda's competitors were not involved in the small minority that use MIST as a marriage proving ground. This is not how we address problems. What better place to learn how to handle interactions in an un-Islamic sexualized country than inside an Islamic school taught by educated teachers who go through the struggle everyday of their own lives. What should you do if a woman tries to shake your hand? Can you look her in the eye? What if she smiles at me? Am I going to hell for that? These are all questions I had as I went from tiny, secluded private school to a giant, co-ed public high school. I can't begin to tell how awkward I was my first year as I had to learn all this stuff on my own. This is stuff Al-Huda should be addressing head-on, as opposed to shutting the dialogue down via an email to parents.
If nothing else the email to parents should've made them aware of the problem and encouraged them to discuss it with their children. Because if it isn't addressed now and simply brushed under the rug then the kids with the tendency to do whatever it is Al-Huda is trying to prevent will simply do so in bigger force when they get the chance. Be it in an unsupervised competition outside of MIST or whenever these high schoolers go off to college.
And let's be clear, it's not like MIST is some sacrilegious strip club where Muslim kids go to do nasty haraam stuff.
MIST is single-handedly the best thing that happened for Muslim youth in the D.C. area. It builds leadership, and many other important skills that you don't necessarily cultivate in a traditional learning environment. Many people develop their talents through MIST. I became a better public speaker and debater, my sister became a better film-maker and photographer to the point where she opened her own business. And through the competitions and workshops these kids not only hone their creativity and other skills but have fun in a relatively wholesome environment (being a college student I can tell you first hand that MIST is NOTHING compared what these kids are going to see when they graduate) while learning more about their religion through the competition, speakers and workshops. And they build brother/sisterhood with their teams throughout the months of prepping and at the competition. Then those who excelled get to push themselves against the best of the best at Nationals where every region comes into compete. This experience is like nothing else. I feel so sorry for all those students who won't be able to experience the absolutely amazing journey that is MIST.
Al-Huda School has dominated the regional tournament since its inception in the D.C. area. Everyone's goal was to upset them but nobody ever did. Eleanor Roosevelt (my team) came close in my final two years but missed them by a few points.
Al-Huda is electing not to participate in this year's tournament, and is specifically prohibiting all students from participating under any other team, citing their code of conduct which states that all extra curricular activities must be properly aligned with the values of the school and the values of Islam. Now it is my understanding that this decision is based on the "gender mixing" that happens at MIST, as this is the only thing that could potentially not comply with their values. If this is false, I'd love to hear an alternate explanation.
I've spent grades 1-6 and 8 at Al-Huda and what I'm speaking to comes from that experience, along with having a mother who teaches there and three siblings who are going there right now. This decision is, in a word, asinine. Al-Huda tries too hard to shelter it's students from the outside world. From my years as a student I was made to believe that outside world is cruel, that public school and college teachers won't care about me like the teachers at Al-Huda do. I was told about how all this haraam (Islamically prohibited) stuff is out there and I need to shield myself from it. For all the talk of the outside world Al-Huda did nothing to prepare me for HOW to deal with it.
There are technically two schools at Al-Huda. Two sets of each grade. One for the boys and one for the girls. This separation starts at kindergarten. And I think at the beginning, it's fine. With all the sexual images in mainstream culture today, be it television, billboards, a Disney movie or whatever there is no need to further this while a child is young. It's extremely key for kids to have a sound Islamic foundation that a full time Islamic school can offer. That's not to say that children who go to public schools are somehow "corrupted" just that in my opinion it's better for them in the beginning. This helicopter schooling can only go on for so long, however.
Eventually students are going to go to public school and college and they'll be ill-prepared with how to smoothly handle the transition. The big issue is that at MIST there are instances of people hooking up, now in my 4 years I've never personally seen it happen but I'm pretty in confident it has. This would be the extreme I guess, people also tend to have an issue with how "friendly" guys and girls get at this competition. This guy-girl interaction is the reason that Al-Huda has decided to not only withdraw, but ban its students from competing. MIST has acknowledged the issue from the beginning and does what it possibly can to stop it when they see it.
Instead of trying to address the problem of teaching these children how to interact properly with the opposite gender they've simply cut it off. What kind of message does this send to students? We don't agree with this one aspect of the event and hence we are not allowing anybody to compete. And I can almost guarantee 99% if not 100% of Al-Huda's competitors were not involved in the small minority that use MIST as a marriage proving ground. This is not how we address problems. What better place to learn how to handle interactions in an un-Islamic sexualized country than inside an Islamic school taught by educated teachers who go through the struggle everyday of their own lives. What should you do if a woman tries to shake your hand? Can you look her in the eye? What if she smiles at me? Am I going to hell for that? These are all questions I had as I went from tiny, secluded private school to a giant, co-ed public high school. I can't begin to tell how awkward I was my first year as I had to learn all this stuff on my own. This is stuff Al-Huda should be addressing head-on, as opposed to shutting the dialogue down via an email to parents.
If nothing else the email to parents should've made them aware of the problem and encouraged them to discuss it with their children. Because if it isn't addressed now and simply brushed under the rug then the kids with the tendency to do whatever it is Al-Huda is trying to prevent will simply do so in bigger force when they get the chance. Be it in an unsupervised competition outside of MIST or whenever these high schoolers go off to college.
And let's be clear, it's not like MIST is some sacrilegious strip club where Muslim kids go to do nasty haraam stuff.
MIST is single-handedly the best thing that happened for Muslim youth in the D.C. area. It builds leadership, and many other important skills that you don't necessarily cultivate in a traditional learning environment. Many people develop their talents through MIST. I became a better public speaker and debater, my sister became a better film-maker and photographer to the point where she opened her own business. And through the competitions and workshops these kids not only hone their creativity and other skills but have fun in a relatively wholesome environment (being a college student I can tell you first hand that MIST is NOTHING compared what these kids are going to see when they graduate) while learning more about their religion through the competition, speakers and workshops. And they build brother/sisterhood with their teams throughout the months of prepping and at the competition. Then those who excelled get to push themselves against the best of the best at Nationals where every region comes into compete. This experience is like nothing else. I feel so sorry for all those students who won't be able to experience the absolutely amazing journey that is MIST.
Very well put Faraz. Although I didn't necessarily agree with it, I understood Al-Huda's reasoning. As an institution they have certain values they want to instill in their students and they don't want to partner with an organization that they feel doesn't share those same values. That being said, this article really helped put into perspective how detrimental it is for them to continuously shield their students from everything. Hopefully this article gets a conversation started down at Al-Huda...
ReplyDeleteI couldn't say is better. You know, I've noticed that the more shield your child, banning them from every outlet and not letting them experience life by themselves, they will NEVER learn to be an individual in this society. This is the world. Bad and good is everywhere, NO MATTER where you go. You think Al huda isn't corrupt? It's not a safe haven as many people like to portray it. As a former Al Huda school student, I can honestly say from an 'insider' that, many of us found the wrong or haraam things to be more amusing because we weren't exposed to. It made us want to do many things behind our parents backs, and resent our deen more. Our deen never teaches us to ban the interaction between the opposite gender. It SHOWS us how to DEAL with them. Something Al Huda isn't very good at. I also just think it's more about the image and reputation of the title.
ReplyDeleteMaa Shaa Allah. As an Al-Huda student, I can say that I couldn't have said this in any better way myself. If only they would listen though....
ReplyDelete