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ISNA Concludes Community Development Conference
by Dina Rashed
CHICAGO, April16 (IslamOnline) - For two and a half days Muslims from all over North America gathered to attend the second annual Community Development Conference (CDC) organized by the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) that initiated Friday night in the Chicago suburb of Arlington Heights.
In conjunction with discussing issues pertaining to Islamic organizations and community growth, ISNA also held its second annual Islamic Education Forum attracting teachers, principals and activists involved in Muslim education at large.
"There is no road map to follow in Islamic education, that's why it is important to attend such forums on Islamic education," said Necua Ozgur, principal of New Horizon School in Southern California, who came all the way to attend the education forum.
Parallel sessions discussed strategic planning issues, as well as details of operating Islamic schools.
The conference's flexible schedule provided a second round of sessions on two days, enabling attendees to select and attend several topic sessions of interest to them.
One such session, The Tarbiyah Project presented by Dawud Tauhidi, a veteran educator and activist in Islamic education, was a major attraction. The project, initiated more than five years ago, hopes to renew the vision of Islamic education through focusing on building spirit within Muslim children.
"The heart must be the core of Islamic education," he told the audience, and added, "we are over a billion people but we don't have a single leader because of education."
Tauhidi advocates concentrating more on children's personalities and training them in how to identify problems and finding the best approaches to solve them.
"We need to shift from informational cognitive education to character building and leadership training education, and this would be the best way of Islamic Da'wah," he said in an interview with IslamOnline.
Other activists involved in the building of Islamic congregations and Islamic centers found sessions that focused on legal issues, board development and human resource management, building endowment and fundraising techniques, highly informative.
Imams and community leaders were informed of the important role they play regarding family affairs, and were told that their leadership roles can help in marriage, youth and family counseling.
In a session dedicated to conflict resolution, Najeeba Syeed-Miller, an expert on the matter, spoke on the importance of using alternative methods in resolving community members' disputes through mediation and arbitration.
In many cases, expert Muslim mediators and arbitrators would be more effective than the U.S. legal system, given their knowledge of the background and customs of the disputing parties, Syeed-Miller said.
Over 700 attended the event, a number exceeding ISNA organizer's anticipations.
The conference concluded by allowing the audience a chance to meet with the Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA) Sunday morning. Five members of FCNA made their knowledge of Fiqh and fatwas accessible to all attendees in the three-hour long question and answer session.
In concluding remarks, Muzammil Siddiqui, ISNA president, and Sayyed Saeed, ISNA secretary general, explained the organization's position on moon sightings in relation to determining the beginning of the Islamic holy periods of Ramadan and Eid.
They explained that decisions by North American Muslims had to be in conformity with long established FCNA standards that rule that the sighting of the crescent (Hillal) should be according to astrological calculations of the region in which they reside (i.e. North America), and not the decision of authorities in other Muslim countries.
Both Siddiqui and Saeed said they did not object with Saudi authorities as to determining the day of Hajj, and that those who travel to pilgrimage, even from North America, should follow the Saudi decision, but added that ISNA's research and FCNA fatwas found no religious proof within the Qur'an and Sunnah that obligates Muslims all over the world to follow the same day of Eid as determined by Saudi officials.
Some Muslims opposed ISNA's decision to separate the two issues of Eid and Hajj moon sighting determinations, but observers stated their opposition was mainly based on cultural tradition and not religious knowledge.
Those opposed to ISNA and FCNA's conclusions argued that the celebrations as a source of unity between Muslims all over the world and should be celebrated simultaneously and in agreement with one another.
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