kkHow to be a Muslim youth in this world of civilization
Who is a Muslim? One who is of the Islamic Faith.
Who is a youth? Childhood, Adolescent, Teenage or a Young Adult.
What is Islam? Islam means Pease and total submission to the will of Allah,
Allah is Arabic meaning for GOD.
Let us look out for the underline words Pease and Total Submission
Pease: - the nearest in meaning are
Be in order
Harmony
Total Submission: - the nearest in meaning are
Obedience
Compliance and
Surrender
Giving in
Now as a Muslim youth how do you keep Pease and submit yourself totally to the will of Allah? There is this word I really want us to put into consideration, to me I think the word has broken down the true meaning of being a Muslim, the word is “Will”
Will: - the nearest in meaning are
Determination,
Motivation
Self-control
Strength of Character, if you look at the selected words nearest in meaning to the word will, you will understand the through meaning of Islam and who a Muslim is, some one who is motivated and determine, these two words give him the strength of character, he/she have is highly disciplined (self-control)
Talking about character you will be having in mind the word attitude and behavioral pertan. So people see you as a model or a role model in the society and you are well respected.
They even correct you when ever you are going contrary to all the above.
With all of the above explanation you will agree with me that a Muslim is a true personality to be with and any time he show’s up, people see him/her as an ideal human been.
A Muslim youth; Now as teen ager, an adolescent or as young adult, this is the best time in your life to unleash your potential, have fun and the best of your ability will be put to test, what am I talking about? YES! You are full of talents, Intelligent, Smart and full of energy BUT YOU ARE A MUSLIM, Ho! Won’t I have fun? WHY ALL THIS SERIOUSNESS? No one is stopping you from having fun, as a Muslim youth, like any other youth, you’ve got your potentials too, so you are free to express your GOD given talent, but as a Muslim you have to do all you want or intend to do with all sense of modesty.
As a Muslim youth,
you do not take alcohol
you don’t join Gangs
you don’t do drugs
you don't dress to expose the sensitive part of your body etc.
Ever wonder why people of other faith see Muslims as been too extreme? Muslims are not extremist. We are just people of good behavior who like to enjoy what is good and forbid what is bad, (be in order) because in everything we do we are worshiping, BIS-MIN-LLAHI RAMONI RAHIM comes first in everything we do and ALHAM-DU-LIL-LLAHI when we are done with it. Ma-Sallam.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Why NASFAT Is Growing
The Nasiru-llahi Fatir Society of Nigeria, NASFAT, was established in the country 14 years ago with less than 10 members. Today, however, the membership is in millions and spreads across several continents and age levels. In this interview with ERNEST OMOARELOJIE, NASFAT’s Chief Missioner, Alhaji Abdullahi Akinbode speaks about its growth and other issues
Q: What is the philosophy behind the setting up of NASFAT?
A: NASFAT started in March 1995 in Lagos as a prayer group with about seven people.
But as time went on, what began as an in-house thing began to increase in number.
At a point they decided to have branches and the first branch of NASFAT was established in Offa, Kwara State.
The reason is very simple – some of the members had appointments when the Polytechnic in Offa started and they had to commute from that place every week. And because of the need to avoid risks, a branch had to be established in Offa for them.
From what was one branch in 1995, I can assure you that today, we have more than 180 branches all over the world. It has gone beyond what we expected.
Initially, as I said earlier, it was purely a prayer group.
That was the objective.
But as time moved on, we never expected that it would blossom like this. But even with the number of branches we had, we still found out that it was still more elitist in nature.
We had to put some processes and procedures, have a constitution and some shared values to avoid ambiguities.
From there, so many other things came up.
You know, it is very easy to put a procedure in place but as you move further on, you will discover that there are so many other things you have to put in place for things to work out well. For instance, you can see NASFAT branching into universities.
Some people thought it was probably because some Christian groups have established their universities and so we had to do the same thing.
That is not true.
It is because in one of our shared values, pursuit of knowledge is a cardinal objective and because we are in pursuit of knowledge, we have to explore all avenues to achieve that goal.
That is why the focus on universities.
But for emphasis, let me tell you, that objective did not just start today.
Before now, NASFAT had established a number of nursery, primary and secondary schools all over the place.
Even though we have not had so many secondary schools as our brother groups like Ansar-Ud-Deen, Anwar-Ul-Islam, etc, we have secondary schools in places like Ibadan, Akure, New Bussa, just as we are trying to establish one in Ilorin.
At a point we decided to have an education policy, which has it that we leave the formation of nursery and primary schools to the branches.
But we have another stratum of NASFAT which is called the zone.
Before now, it was from branch to headquarters. That has been eliminated because the task was so enormous.
So, we now have decided to establish the zones, which are given the responsibility of establishing secondary schools while the headquarters will take responsibility for establishing and running the university education policy.
That is what is happening.
Q: You said something about NASFAT being an elitist group.
How do you mean?
A: That was the way people, especially within the Islamic fold, saw NASFAT.
I can say that 80 per cent of the group, people working in the banks, oil companies, schools, professors, doctors, etc, which you cannot readily find in any of the other groups, constitute the bulk of those in NASFAT.
So by that we were seen as more of an elitist group.
In so many states, you have a lot of DGs, members of the House of Representatives, even some governors are part of the group.
Q: With the coming of NASFAT, muslim prayer took a more appealing form, with mostly young people readily identifying with it. Was there a deliberate attempt to make it more attractive to them?
A: The truth is that, when you put a lot of processes in place, a lot of things will readily manifest. When you look at some best practices even in the other religions, like when you see people go to church, you see them with souvenirs when they are having anniversary or the like.
Before now, many people viewed such things as a sign of not being serious.
But on a second look, nothing is actually wrong with that.
More than anything else, it goes a long way to creating awareness.
And then we asked ourselves, why can’t we do the same thing? Before now, too, most of us attached ourselves to our fathers.
At a point, we realised that it is not always easy for young people to comfortably be with older people with their peculiar ideas.
I for one, cannot be in the same group with somebody who is 60, 70 or even 80 years old and you want me to be saying no to certain things he wants to do.
He is used to the old fashion.
The best thing for me is to come out of those societies and form my own with people who share the same values as me so that I will not be disrespectful to the elders.
I will have more affinity with people of like minds and without condemning what the elders are doing we can carry on with our own ways.
It is more of a way of conforming to modernity without losing trend with the dictates of Islam.
Q: Along the way, NASFAT also introduced business into it curriculum.
What informed that?
A: NASFAT as I said operates with processes and procedures.
This culminated into what we call the constitution. If you look at the Constitution of NASFAT, we have what we call Business Committee.
The function of the committee from the initial plan was to evolve from just making souvenirs into not just NASMALT but also tours and travels.
From the tours and travels we will later go into mainstream tourism.
It is going to move from just Hajj and Ummra. By the grace of God we have already interviewed some people for the position of General Manager.
Even the business committee is soon going to be transformed into what we call Tarsan Holdings. So it is going to go beyond what it is doing now.
Under the holdings we are going to have so many arms that will be doing so many things that we plan to do.
But the bottom line is that we don’t want to be stereotypical by doing things the old fashioned way.
We don’t want to go cap in hand as we did before for alms.
The alms we are collecting could be invested and with the profit we make from it we can do certain other things.
That is why we took the option of going into business.
We have a strictly business committee and within the committee itself, we have so many other committees. For instance, we have the finance committee that looks into our investments and also looks over the shoulder of this tours and travels.
The finance committee also ensures that whatever the other subcommittees do is Islamic-compliant.
Q: What is the relationship between NASFAT and othe religious groups?
A: I would say that we are in touch and in brotherhood with other Nigerians.
When you say with other religions, the only reason we partner with them is because of the fact that we are all on the expressway.
Any time we want to do anything–you can ask them–NASFAT goes to them and says: Gentlemen, on so and so day we want to do something.
Do you have any programme that clashes with it? If not, fine, leave that day for us so that we don’t make a mess of that road.
If there is, how do we strike an agreement so that we don’t do the programmes on the same day? I think we are the only organisation that does that at the moment.
No organisation has ever come to us to say they want to do something in order to make sure that we don’t cluster the road. None. As far as relationship with others is concerned, we are always considerate.
Q: How would you describe your relationship with other Islamic groups within and outside Nigeria?
A: Fantastic. If you look at the dos and don’ts of NASFAT, and even our shared values, the third rule says promotion of brotherhood.
Another one says, equality of all Muslims.
So, that promotion of Islamic brotherhood says it all. We are always in touch with them, and there is something that was formed recently in the South-West – the Muslim Umma of South-Western Nigeria.
It is just an organisation made up of all the Islamic groups in South Western Nigeria to bridge the gap between them and the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs so that things will run smoothly and there will be no issues with the people of Northern Nigeria.
Apart from that, anything any Islamic organisation wants to do, NASFAT will be there in so far as we are invited. We know and they also know that as far as the South-West is concerned, if not Nigeria, today you cannot just say you are talking about Islam without NASFAT.
Insha Allah, in the next few years, we want to see the possibility of positioning NASFAT on the international map.
We’ve started something in a subtle way now.
Right now we are in discussion with the Islamic Development Bank. We are also discussing with the Islamic University of Malaysia and with some groups in Bahrain and the rest.
Our relationship with them for now is to have a joint agreement in relation to our university, the Fountain University.
But Insha Allah, we want to explore the possibility of relating, through our branches in the USA and UK, to Islamic organisations that normally have annual conferences so that we can be attending their conferences and letting them know how Islam is in Nigeria.
By that we will also try to reach out to other Islamic organisations that we think will be of use and will add value to Nigeria at the international level, because it is not just a matter of taking somebody there who does not make any contribution. What are you doing to be recognised on the global level? That is what we want to do. Basically, we are planning the repositioning of NASFAT.
Q: What challenges do you face in bringing NASFAT this far?
A: The challenges are so many, but I will put them in three perspectives. One, the challenge of trying to balance the different views of the different groups. You cannot have a society like NASFAT without people having one opinion or the other.
You are bound to have the rightists and leftists.
So all I try to do is to profile the people I meet and know how I can handle them separately.
Secondly, we have the challenge of generating funds.
It is not easy running a group like NASFAT. I think weekly, we spend nothing less than N500,000.
We are not even talking here about what we spend on the university.
We don’t have any assistance from anywhere.
Some people, even among Muslims, believe that we receive assistance from outside.
It is solely through this 50 kobo, N100 that people contribute that we finance all our projects for now.
We don’t have any international backing.
The third one is the issue of empowerment.
We have so many groups–the youth, women, widows, indigent students etc.
Empowering them has been very difficult. Currently, with the assistance of the Lagos State government, we are empowering about 500 women.
We also sponsor students who are qualified from the little money we have.
Apart from that we also sponsor those who have Masters and Doctorate degrees.
We sponsor them if they meet certain criteria.
Outside that we try to empower some of the widows by making them sell NASMALT.
The NASMALT group also goes to the extent of granting credit to wives of alfas who don’t have means of livelihood.
Those are some of the challenges we face.
Q: What is the philosophy behind the setting up of NASFAT?
A: NASFAT started in March 1995 in Lagos as a prayer group with about seven people.
But as time went on, what began as an in-house thing began to increase in number.
At a point they decided to have branches and the first branch of NASFAT was established in Offa, Kwara State.
The reason is very simple – some of the members had appointments when the Polytechnic in Offa started and they had to commute from that place every week. And because of the need to avoid risks, a branch had to be established in Offa for them.
From what was one branch in 1995, I can assure you that today, we have more than 180 branches all over the world. It has gone beyond what we expected.
Initially, as I said earlier, it was purely a prayer group.
That was the objective.
But as time moved on, we never expected that it would blossom like this. But even with the number of branches we had, we still found out that it was still more elitist in nature.
We had to put some processes and procedures, have a constitution and some shared values to avoid ambiguities.
From there, so many other things came up.
You know, it is very easy to put a procedure in place but as you move further on, you will discover that there are so many other things you have to put in place for things to work out well. For instance, you can see NASFAT branching into universities.
Some people thought it was probably because some Christian groups have established their universities and so we had to do the same thing.
That is not true.
It is because in one of our shared values, pursuit of knowledge is a cardinal objective and because we are in pursuit of knowledge, we have to explore all avenues to achieve that goal.
That is why the focus on universities.
But for emphasis, let me tell you, that objective did not just start today.
Before now, NASFAT had established a number of nursery, primary and secondary schools all over the place.
Even though we have not had so many secondary schools as our brother groups like Ansar-Ud-Deen, Anwar-Ul-Islam, etc, we have secondary schools in places like Ibadan, Akure, New Bussa, just as we are trying to establish one in Ilorin.
At a point we decided to have an education policy, which has it that we leave the formation of nursery and primary schools to the branches.
But we have another stratum of NASFAT which is called the zone.
Before now, it was from branch to headquarters. That has been eliminated because the task was so enormous.
So, we now have decided to establish the zones, which are given the responsibility of establishing secondary schools while the headquarters will take responsibility for establishing and running the university education policy.
That is what is happening.
Q: You said something about NASFAT being an elitist group.
How do you mean?
A: That was the way people, especially within the Islamic fold, saw NASFAT.
I can say that 80 per cent of the group, people working in the banks, oil companies, schools, professors, doctors, etc, which you cannot readily find in any of the other groups, constitute the bulk of those in NASFAT.
So by that we were seen as more of an elitist group.
In so many states, you have a lot of DGs, members of the House of Representatives, even some governors are part of the group.
Q: With the coming of NASFAT, muslim prayer took a more appealing form, with mostly young people readily identifying with it. Was there a deliberate attempt to make it more attractive to them?
A: The truth is that, when you put a lot of processes in place, a lot of things will readily manifest. When you look at some best practices even in the other religions, like when you see people go to church, you see them with souvenirs when they are having anniversary or the like.
Before now, many people viewed such things as a sign of not being serious.
But on a second look, nothing is actually wrong with that.
More than anything else, it goes a long way to creating awareness.
And then we asked ourselves, why can’t we do the same thing? Before now, too, most of us attached ourselves to our fathers.
At a point, we realised that it is not always easy for young people to comfortably be with older people with their peculiar ideas.
I for one, cannot be in the same group with somebody who is 60, 70 or even 80 years old and you want me to be saying no to certain things he wants to do.
He is used to the old fashion.
The best thing for me is to come out of those societies and form my own with people who share the same values as me so that I will not be disrespectful to the elders.
I will have more affinity with people of like minds and without condemning what the elders are doing we can carry on with our own ways.
It is more of a way of conforming to modernity without losing trend with the dictates of Islam.
Q: Along the way, NASFAT also introduced business into it curriculum.
What informed that?
A: NASFAT as I said operates with processes and procedures.
This culminated into what we call the constitution. If you look at the Constitution of NASFAT, we have what we call Business Committee.
The function of the committee from the initial plan was to evolve from just making souvenirs into not just NASMALT but also tours and travels.
From the tours and travels we will later go into mainstream tourism.
It is going to move from just Hajj and Ummra. By the grace of God we have already interviewed some people for the position of General Manager.
Even the business committee is soon going to be transformed into what we call Tarsan Holdings. So it is going to go beyond what it is doing now.
Under the holdings we are going to have so many arms that will be doing so many things that we plan to do.
But the bottom line is that we don’t want to be stereotypical by doing things the old fashioned way.
We don’t want to go cap in hand as we did before for alms.
The alms we are collecting could be invested and with the profit we make from it we can do certain other things.
That is why we took the option of going into business.
We have a strictly business committee and within the committee itself, we have so many other committees. For instance, we have the finance committee that looks into our investments and also looks over the shoulder of this tours and travels.
The finance committee also ensures that whatever the other subcommittees do is Islamic-compliant.
Q: What is the relationship between NASFAT and othe religious groups?
A: I would say that we are in touch and in brotherhood with other Nigerians.
When you say with other religions, the only reason we partner with them is because of the fact that we are all on the expressway.
Any time we want to do anything–you can ask them–NASFAT goes to them and says: Gentlemen, on so and so day we want to do something.
Do you have any programme that clashes with it? If not, fine, leave that day for us so that we don’t make a mess of that road.
If there is, how do we strike an agreement so that we don’t do the programmes on the same day? I think we are the only organisation that does that at the moment.
No organisation has ever come to us to say they want to do something in order to make sure that we don’t cluster the road. None. As far as relationship with others is concerned, we are always considerate.
Q: How would you describe your relationship with other Islamic groups within and outside Nigeria?
A: Fantastic. If you look at the dos and don’ts of NASFAT, and even our shared values, the third rule says promotion of brotherhood.
Another one says, equality of all Muslims.
So, that promotion of Islamic brotherhood says it all. We are always in touch with them, and there is something that was formed recently in the South-West – the Muslim Umma of South-Western Nigeria.
It is just an organisation made up of all the Islamic groups in South Western Nigeria to bridge the gap between them and the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs so that things will run smoothly and there will be no issues with the people of Northern Nigeria.
Apart from that, anything any Islamic organisation wants to do, NASFAT will be there in so far as we are invited. We know and they also know that as far as the South-West is concerned, if not Nigeria, today you cannot just say you are talking about Islam without NASFAT.
Insha Allah, in the next few years, we want to see the possibility of positioning NASFAT on the international map.
We’ve started something in a subtle way now.
Right now we are in discussion with the Islamic Development Bank. We are also discussing with the Islamic University of Malaysia and with some groups in Bahrain and the rest.
Our relationship with them for now is to have a joint agreement in relation to our university, the Fountain University.
But Insha Allah, we want to explore the possibility of relating, through our branches in the USA and UK, to Islamic organisations that normally have annual conferences so that we can be attending their conferences and letting them know how Islam is in Nigeria.
By that we will also try to reach out to other Islamic organisations that we think will be of use and will add value to Nigeria at the international level, because it is not just a matter of taking somebody there who does not make any contribution. What are you doing to be recognised on the global level? That is what we want to do. Basically, we are planning the repositioning of NASFAT.
Q: What challenges do you face in bringing NASFAT this far?
A: The challenges are so many, but I will put them in three perspectives. One, the challenge of trying to balance the different views of the different groups. You cannot have a society like NASFAT without people having one opinion or the other.
You are bound to have the rightists and leftists.
So all I try to do is to profile the people I meet and know how I can handle them separately.
Secondly, we have the challenge of generating funds.
It is not easy running a group like NASFAT. I think weekly, we spend nothing less than N500,000.
We are not even talking here about what we spend on the university.
We don’t have any assistance from anywhere.
Some people, even among Muslims, believe that we receive assistance from outside.
It is solely through this 50 kobo, N100 that people contribute that we finance all our projects for now.
We don’t have any international backing.
The third one is the issue of empowerment.
We have so many groups–the youth, women, widows, indigent students etc.
Empowering them has been very difficult. Currently, with the assistance of the Lagos State government, we are empowering about 500 women.
We also sponsor students who are qualified from the little money we have.
Apart from that we also sponsor those who have Masters and Doctorate degrees.
We sponsor them if they meet certain criteria.
Outside that we try to empower some of the widows by making them sell NASMALT.
The NASMALT group also goes to the extent of granting credit to wives of alfas who don’t have means of livelihood.
Those are some of the challenges we face.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Assalam 'Alaykum
I say Assalam 'Alaykum, to my muslim brothers and sister visiting this blog site, I am using the site as my own way of propagating al’islam.
In an age where the pressure to succeed on every level is overwhelming one can often priorities one’s practical needs before one’s spiritual well-being.
Do you ever find yourself thinking – I will focus more religion when: I am older and have more leisure; I have more tolerant work colleagues; I am fasting in the month of Ramadan; My family commitment are reduced; My examinations are over…?
We must start appreciating that Islam is not a set of rules that may be picked up when time or inclination permits; rather, it is a complete and coherent way of life in itself. Working, studying parenting, socializing… is all part of our Islam. Our conduct during each day will be assessed in respect of whatever it is that we do because Islam embrace life in it totality. We should not compartmentalize our lives so as to follow Islam in one respect but then relinquish it in another.
My specific aim is to assist the reader in achieving its aspiration of “Living Islam” in a wholesome sense. It is intended to be an inspiration for the reader as well as a practical guide and diary. It is intended to help in reflecting on one’s daily routing and aims to help one focus on “Balancing the Day in Every Way” by providing: Clear and concise chapter as to how to deal with issues that we confront on a regular basis, namely; self analysis, conviction, health,
Do you ever find yourself thinking – I will focus more religion when: I am older and have more leisure; I have more tolerant work colleagues; I am fasting in the month of Ramadan; My family commitment are reduced; My examinations are over…?
We must start appreciating that Islam is not a set of rules that may be picked up when time or inclination permits; rather, it is a complete and coherent way of life in itself. Working, studying parenting, socializing… is all part of our Islam. Our conduct during each day will be assessed in respect of whatever it is that we do because Islam embrace life in it totality. We should not compartmentalize our lives so as to follow Islam in one respect but then relinquish it in another.
My specific aim is to assist the reader in achieving its aspiration of “Living Islam” in a wholesome sense. It is intended to be an inspiration for the reader as well as a practical guide and diary. It is intended to help in reflecting on one’s daily routing and aims to help one focus on “Balancing the Day in Every Way” by providing: Clear and concise chapter as to how to deal with issues that we confront on a regular basis, namely; self analysis, conviction, health,
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