Home Schooling... is there really any other choice in the West?

Assalaamu Alaykum brothers and sisters,

There was one thing I thought I could bring up with the readers as most of us are living in the West, which is Home Schooling, and as believers do we have any other choice whilst we are still in the West?

Anyone who is a realist will also know that the school system in the Muslim lands are perhaps not as good as we would like them to be for when we get over there and it comes to the time we need to enroll our little precious sprouts in the local school.

These schools are often just poor imitations of the West in the way of educating the young, instilling secular mindsets and ideas along with a few lessons a week on the Quran and what the government there considers to be Islam.

Many countries will not even allow 'foreign' children into school anyway, so it might not even be possible to send your kids to a good school even if you can find a good one.

The alternatives are therefore prohibitively expensive private schools or home schooling once we have made hijrah.

So home schooling is something good to get into now, not to wait until we make the move.

But to get back to the UK and the West, we all know families where the kids are messed up, I mean seriously messed up and far from the deen of Allah. Maybe you even come from such a family and started practicing later.

But it is a sobering experience when you are sat in a lecture in a local state school, as they've hired the room for the evening and all over the desk is graffiti such as who Maryam is ****ing this weekend or whom Abdullah wants to ****.

Most Muslims know this stuff goes off, and is getting worse as they went to such schools themselves, but when it comes to sending the ones they should want to protect most they suffer collective amnesia and send them into this den of fitnah and shirk.

I mean really, if you wanted to design a system that was most likely to tempt muslim children towards hardcore pornography, bf /gf relationships, smoking, alcohol and drugs, as well as being subjected to daily brainwashing in secular thinking and ideas than I think it would be possible to come up with a system that did this better than schooling in the West.

I mean, lets be honest here, the ulema are clear it is not even halal to mix with the opposite gender for the purposes of dunya education, but the very people who are often strictest in not allowing their wives and daughters to come to talks and lectures to learn about the deen are almost always sending their daughters to mixed education. So they forbid the halal and enjoin the haram which is a trait of the munafiq.

The hopeless optimism of people amazes me, that they believe they can send their children into a process that is aimed at instilling the ideas and thoughts of the secular kufr west into young impressionable minds, leave them there for 8 hours of their waking day and hope that they can undo that damage with an hour or two of Quran lessons and maybe an hour with the parents in the evening before bed is just strange.

Muslims in the West have however swallowed the very concept of doing this, they don't even think of it as something strange, it is something normal to them and the one who chooses not to is seen as the strange one.

Alhamdulillah I am happy to be the stranger in this matter, this is something to be pleased about but in case those reading this don't yet know it there is another alternative to the secular system other than the so called islamic schools which lets face it are either poor in the teachings, misguided in the aqeedah or manhaj or prohibitively expensive.

I will inshallah return to the subject of home education again the future but feel this is a good introduction for you all, but to get you going here is a link to IHSAN, the Islamic home schooling network.

http://www.islamichomeeducation.co.uk/

Assalaamu alaykum,
Abu Abdillah

All quiet on the home front...

Assalaamu alaykum all,

As the title suggests, all things are quiet at the moment.

So I am still keeping an eye out for jobs overseas, still looking for that way out and in the mean time keeping up the Arabic as best I can in the hope that one day I will get out of here Inshallah.

Some news is we have blitzed the house, well when I say we I mean the Mrs with me deputising and making myself useful watching the kids whilst she turns the family home upside down for a few days.

So we have got rid of bags and bags of clothes, books, pictures, everything that was not used, not needed has gone to Islamic relief or other charity shops.

Sometimes the house seems quite bare, but in reality it puts us one step closer to Hijrah, one more preparation done, and helps us live a simple life closer to that of Rasoolullah (saws).

So those wishing to make hijrah could perhaps make this step themselves as a start, go through all your clothes, if you've not worn it in the past few months then out it goes, if you don't really need it then out it goes.

Same with books, those ones you have read once or twice and are likely never to read again, get rid of them. If they are dodgy then bin them, if any good then give to an Islamic charity to sell on again so someone else can benefit.

Also, do you really need all of those Quran ayats, pictures of medina hanging around the house? You might feel these make the house feel more Islamic but in reality what makes a house islamic is living simply as best we can according to the Sunnah.

Finally jazakallah khairan for those who have posted comments, sometimes it is difficult to keep going with something like this and comments really help keep us in touch with the readers and lets us know what you think and what you feel.

Assalaamu Alaykum,
Abu Abdillah