Islamic Summer Reading Program for Children

A valuable online resource for muslim parents is American Muslim Mom.  The site is sponsoring its first summer reading program for Muslim children reading Islamic fiction. The program runs from July 1, 2009 to August 15, 2009.  Children register with adult permission and fill out a book review form for each book read.  Participants will recieve prizes.

Three sites for finding Islamic fiction for all ages are the Islamic Writers Alliance Bookstore, the Islamic Bookstore, and the Online Islamic Bookstore

Sex Education for Muslim Students

Sexuality is taught in a moral vacuum 

Parents have the right to remove their children from sex education classes without affecting the rest of the academic program.  Parents have to remember to opt-out every school year, because sex education classes are taught every year in most places, from elementary school all the way through high school.  If more Muslim parents knew what is in the sex-education curriculum being taught at their child’s school, they would insist that their child be exempted from the classes.  Why should Muslim parents do this? Because public schools teach human sexuality in a moral vacuum without regard for the laws of Islam or any other religion.   The classes go far beyond the basic biological facts and present the haram and the halal without distinction. 

Coping With Behavioral or Mental Health Issues in Muslim Children

Recognizing that there is a problem

 

 

One of the hardest things parents have to do is come to the point where they are able to say, “There is something wrong with our child”. Often, and particularly with adolescents, behavioral issues can seem to occur overnight. With younger children, it is easy to pass problems off as a “phase” or something the child will “outgrow” later on. It is sometimes hard for parents to tell what is “normal” and what signifies a deeper issue. But Allah gives us signs that something is not right. Sometimes the parents can see that if certain trends in behavior go unchecked, the child may become a danger to himself or to others. Sometimes the parents begin to hear repeated complaints or concerns from relatives, teachers, neighbors or other Muslims. Sometimes the parents themselves stumble upon an activity that is frighteningly outside of the norm. Eventually, the parents are forced to come to terms with the fact that something is wrong. Eventually, the parents are forced to act.

WHEN ALLAH CHOOSES OUR CHILDREN

Bismillah ir Rahman ir Raheem

By Ummumar copyright 2007

Or do you think that you will enter the Garden of bliss without such trials as came to those who passed away before you? They encountered suffering and adversity, and were so shaken in Spirit that even the Messenger and those of faith who were with him cried: “When will come the help of Allah.” Ah! Verily, the help of Allah is always near!
(Quran 2:214)

When Allah chooses us to serve Him, we can be called to a certain profession, like a Muslimah  never wanting to be anything but a doctor; or He can divert us from one profession to another, like a Muslimah starting out to be an accountant and ending up as a teacher; or He can let us go through some difficult period in life that will prepare us to later help others go through similar experiences as many addiction counselors and rape counselors are persons who have undergone their own personal sagas before coming  to help others faced with such situations.

CARING FOR AN ELDERLY PARENT

Bismillah ir Rahman ir Raheem 

Caring for an Elderly Parent
By Ummumar © 2007

My mother’s health is failing.

Whenever I tell people that my mother is the strongest person I know, they always smile and think I’m just a loving daughter.  But I have seen my mother’s resolve in face of the decline in her health as it has deteriorated slowly, excruciatingly slowing, over the last twenty-five years. In the face of surgeries and setbacks due to complications from those surgeries.  In the face of twenty-five years of progressively worsening pain.

Equal to her resolve to live is her resolve to live on her own terms. Despite the cost to her health, she is a woman who would only do so much to take care of herself.  She refused to give up what she considered were her essential pleasures in life.  As a result, she made a few, minor adjustments in her diet when a complete change was called for.  And then there were the cigarettes—a pack a day for decades. 

Predictably, there has been an ongoing, accelerating decline in her health.  Now, I am helpless as one by one her body’s systems falter and teeter on complete failure.  She is in chronic, unremitting pain.  Yet she still insists, at times, on eating things that are bad for her; she still smokes whenever she can get someone to smuggle cigarettes into the house.

And for more than thirty years, she has been unbending in her dislike of Islam.

As a Muslim, what is my response to this?