Khaled will give answers to family-related questions

By Tasnim El-Badri, IOL Correspondent

CAIRO , July 26 (IslamOnline.net) – Muslims in the west are to have the privilege of reading an all-inclusive "family guide" and using online contact for consultancy to solve their problems.

The project, supervised by a panel of leading Muslim figures, including preacher Amr Khaled, is to see daylight in 2005.

"Given the quick technological progress and the spread of internet and satellite channels, we'd come up with an attempt to guide families to their genuinely didactic role in the face of wide scenes of perversion," said Mohamed Mohei, one of the supervisors.

Mohei said the guidebook would act as a reference for all Muslim families anywhere, as it would "address problems on a scientific bases and be available either in paperwork or online versions".

The website will have a consultation panel of psychologists and sociologists, as well as education and media experts to answer family-related questions.

Second Generation

"Polls and researches will be carried out to gauge trends among Muslim, a move which would help solve the social problems facing second generation Muslims in the west," said Mohei.

He underlined that the various kinds of problems facing the youth, whose culture could be still different from the society in which they live, would be taken into consideration.

Problems sent through e-mails to the website would be referred to Khaled, whose TV religious programs have attracted millions of youths across the world.

Khaled received from the World Health Organization (WHO) a prestigious award in recognition of his anti-smoking televised campaign, which hit a chord among his viewers.

Mohamed El-Sharqawi, the deputy director of the project, said it had taken one whole year for defining the problems posing a challenge to Muslims in the west, especially youths. The problems would be thoroughly addressed in the family guidebook.

The project has chosen Muslim British youths as a model for surveys and researches to take as a study case.

Social problems facing Muslims in Arab countries, whose resultant social transformation led religious scholars, Islamic sociology and psychology experts to join forces for laying down a "youth Fiqh (jurisprudence)".

Earlier projects had attempted to handle problems facing Muslims in the west, such as interest, Islamic finance, careers, women working, and the cultural issues of music, films, TV, youth behavior.

Frank

These problems would be conveyed and addressed through frank and effective mechanisms, with the main goal being a treatment to already exposed ills, the project officials said.

They noted the project is financed by the Kuwaiti Ministry of waqfs (endowments), Saudi charities and other organizations interested in social issues of Muslim community in the United States and Europe .

The website will add to efforts by other similar projects to solve family-related problems. IslamOnline.net has launched "problems and solutions" service in March 2000.

"Since that time, we have received 6,000 problems, 3184 of which were published online and answers were sent to the senders privately upon their request," said Samar Duweidar, IOL social department section editor.

Duweidar said scholars from Saudi Arabia , Jordan , Morocco , Britain , Egypt , Syria take up giving answers to questions related to family.

"Questions could be on secret marriage, tying the knot for second time, electronic sex, as well as on problems facing the first generation of Muslims living in the west, are all received," she said.

Al-Azhar had announced plans to launch a satellite channel, with on-air programs to answer questions beamed by Muslims across the world would be answered by scholars from Islam’s highest Sunni authority.

A TV program tackling the real issues of living a Muslim lifestyle in Britain proved a must-see success among many community households.

The Shari’ah TV series on Channel 4 features British Muslims seeking answers from a team of leading Islamic scholars and experts for the first time on British terrestrial television.

Presented by journalist Sue Rahman, a Muslim, the program looks at subjects including the family, citizenship, consumerism and the relationship between Islam and other faiths.