New Literature for a New Era

The Qur’an Campaign

When we began our Read-the-Qur’an Campaign in the West Indies, this was the method we followed: the method of Each One, Teach One. Then later on, as the campaign gained momentum, we, Mashallah, upgraded that to Each One, Teach Ten.

This is the model we are working with at present: Each One, Teach Ten.

Our goals in doing this were many. One of those goals was to firmly plant the Qur’an campaign in the methodology of the Qur’an and the Sunnah. Another goal was to empower the broad masses of Muslims with the knowledge of the Qur’an and do so directly and without dependence on a selected few among us.

Our third goal was to make the Qur’an campaign movement self-sustaining. We wanted to make sure this movement will not flutter and die in a few months or years for lack of teachers and specialists – such as the Mowlanas and so-called Islamic scholars.

The resulting success of this mission was, by the Grace of Allah, nothing less than spectacular. There were people of all ages and educational and social backgrounds teaching the Qur’an Naazirah – how to read the Qur’an in its original Arabic script and language – to themselves as well as to others.

They were teaching the Qur’an to people of all ages and educational and social backgrounds.

Thus, university professors, doctors, scientists, engineers and others were sitting around teaching the Qur’an to people without much formal education or training of any kind – and vice versa. And there were 10- and 12-year-olds teaching people who were 60 and 75 years old.

Grandmothers graciously accepted being taught and tutored by their own grandchildren.

Training Multiple Generations under One Roof

Thus, multiple generations were being trained and educated contemporaneously under the same roof without too much fuss or fanfare. Take my word: The divine method of Each One, Teach One works splendidly, Mashallah.

To achieve maximum intensity, we put everyone in the same room or hall or open space and let everyone work with everyone else and teach and learn from everyone without paying any attention to what the others were doing. The resulting spectacle could only be believed by those who actually witnessed those scenes.

Of course, we had to work hard and tap our creative potential to the utmost to foster the right spirit, the right attitude and the right frame of mind among these rapidly alternating cadres of students and teachers.

The hardest thing to achieve was simple physical and mental discipline. Not strategic and general dedication and commitment, but tactical, operational and specific discipline: for would-be teachers as well as for would-be students.

It is hard for a 70-year-old successful industrialist to sit down and let a 10-year-old teach him how to read the Qur’an and to repeatedly correct him when he made mistakes. It is also not easy for a 13-year-old surrounded by others of the same age not to lose concentration and lapse into more age-appropriate behavior as some would call it.

So also, it was not easy to get grown men and women to sit down like school children and not talk to each other for hours on end, but to get on with the job at hand and give it their one-hundred-percent attention and concentration. But it did happen and in fact it happened with greater ease than we thought was possible.

When Allah’s Help Comes Calling

It is obvious that only God Almighty can make amazing things like that happen. What is also obvious is that divine help does come calling when you most need it. And when you have worked hard and prepared yourself in every way to receive it.

Mataa nasrullah, is what people most often say when they have nowhere else to turn. They have done everything in their power. And they don’t know what else to do. So, now they turn to the only source of help they know: God Almighty.

So they cry out in anguish, Mataa Nasrullah: “When will Allah’s help come?”

To which Allah responds: “Don’t you know Allah’s help is near?” A-laa inna nasrallahi qareeb!

So Allah’s help came in ways we had no way of expecting or anticipating. But we saw it when and as it came. And we knew it came from him. And when it came, it made the impossible, possible. And also made the most difficult and challenging things easy.

And it brought with it resources no one even thought existed. As the Qur’an says, Min haiythu laa yahtasib – we know not whence or how.

At the same time, we also launched an organized campaign for Muslim schools to teach Muslim children the Qur’an as part of the schools’ regular curriculum. We trained teachers and principals in how to read the Qur’an and showed them how to train their own pupils in their own schools.

Many of these teachers and administrators actually volunteered their time after work-hours to teach themselves how to read the Qur’an following our method so that they can then start teaching the pupils in their respective schools. Who says Muslims have no heroes?

Allah bless and reward them and bless their efforts and purify their motives and intentions. For, without purity of motives, Allah’s work does not get done. And in the divine calculus without right intention no human act is worth anything.

And may Allah protect them and their work.

It may be hard for those who have not passed through our programs to believe it, but these teachers and others, they all started at the beginning, that is, with the Arabic alphabet: Alif, Baa, Taa and so on. Every single one of them: adults as well as children.

So bear in mind that when all is said and done, as they say, it is Allah’s help that settles the issue. This is not to say that Allah’s help is not there in the beginning. It is. And it was. If Allah did not help, nothing will happen. Not a blade of grass will move without Allah making it so.

The truth is Huwal Awwal wal Aakhir: he is the beginning, he is the end.

But Allah is so generous and so gracious – Kareem – that he gives us credit for things that are totally and completely his doing. As if on our own and without help from him we are capable of anything. How many of us can swallow our food without help from God? Or tie our shoelaces?

They Read the Qur’an, but Their Mother Tongue Is English

And maybe Allah likes to see some action – some effort on our part.

In the case of the Qur’an Campaign in the Caribbean, we had been at it for nearly 40 years. Doors had been slammed in our face. We had been shoved and pushed and banned from mosques and thrown out of meetings. Powerful and rich people marched into our homes to intimidate and buy us.

Well-connected people tried to get the government to throw us out of their land.

But we kept at it. No. Make it “But Allah kept us on track.” He made us go after it over and over again. If not in one place then in another place. If not with one group of people then with another group of people. He made us persist. He gave us Istiqaamat.

And lo and behold, then all of a sudden, it was happening. After nearly 40 years of struggle, but in ways and at a time, when no one expected or anticipated.

Tabaarakallahu Rabbul ‘Aalameen! Blessed be his name! It is his world, his kingdom. A-laa lahul khalqu wal amr.

Christians pray: “Thy kingdom come and thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven!” Tell them, his kingdom is already here. It never left. And his will is done on earth even as it is done in heaven.

Tell them, he is the only king, of both heaven and earth. And entirely and completely, it is his will alone that works everywhere.

Tell them that it is his writ and mandate that runs this world as well as the next world. It is his law that moves the earth even as it is his law that binds and moves the heavens.

So, using this divine method of Each One, Teach One, we now have, by the Grace of the Almighty, a mini-revolution on our hands. We now have any number of people of any age and social and educational background, male as well as female, who now Mashallah read the Qur’an, with the comfort, confidence, facility and fluency of those whose mother tongue may have been Arabic.

But there is one small difference. And it is a critical one. The mother tongue of not a single one of these amazing men and women, boys and girls, is Arabic. It is English.

And God Almighty blessed us with this most amazing social, educational and cultural transformation in the unbelievably short span of about five years – if we were to look at the latest phase of this work.

So, Let Us Change the Condition of India’s Muslims

So, let us change the condition of Indian Muslims, starting from today.

Let every single one of us start from today to teach what we know to everyone else who does not: whether it is math or computers; biology or Arabic; Hindi or history; or whatever else.

Including the Qur’an. For, the Qur’an is all of that and more.

Let us do it for five years and let us see what happens. Five years are not even a blink of an eye in the lives of nations. They are not even a wrinkle on the brow of time. They will pass before they even begin.

Let us do it without excuses. And without prevarications – what people in Urdu call Tal Matol.

Let us do it by putting aside all mutual jealousies and petty grievances and animosities. And let us do it all together without getting in each other’s way.

Let us do it with nothing but the fear of Allah and the love of his creation and his people filling our hearts.

And let us do it with the firm resolve and unshakable determination to take our destiny in our own hands and to change the condition of our people. And, in the process, to change the condition of the world.

Next Article: Amazing People of an Amazing Land

Previous Article: Whither Indian Muslims – Part Two

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