This makes a perfect e-mail for any lib you know.
Posted on 02/19/2006 8:33:03 PM PST by quantim
Celebrations follow reading, memorization of holy book.
NISKAYUNA, N.Y. – Taha Ahmed was all of 5 years old when he stood in front of a Muslim congregation and read from the Quran in Arabic.
It wasn’t so hard, he whispers now, curled up between his parents on the living room couch at their home near Albany. After all, he was there to celebrate the fact that he’d read the entire holy book.
Now, having just turned 7, he’s busy memorizing it.
In the world of religion, there are certain milestones. Young Roman Catholics have confirmation and, along with some young Protestants, first Communions. Now a growing Muslim population in America is importing a rite of passage called Ameen.
The cultural practice is a mostly South, Southeast and Central Asian one, familiar to perhaps a third of Muslims in the United States.
It has two parts. The first Ameen, or “Amen,” is held when a child finishes reading the Quran, roughly the length of the New Testament, for the first time in Arabic. The child reads the holy book aloud, sounding it out without necessarily understanding it.
The second, and more rare, Ameen comes when someone finishes memorizing it, a task that can take a full-time student as long as three years.
“It’s like a bar mitzvah for Jewish children,” says Eide Alawam, interfaith outreach coordinator for the Michigan-based Islamic Center of America.
America is home to as many as 6 million Muslims, though they remain a small faith group in this country relative to Christians. U.S.-born blacks and South Asian immigrants each make up about one-third of the community, with the rest from the Mideast, Africa, parts of Europe and elsewhere, according to the Mosque in America study released in 2001 by the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Muslims in the United States say it’s important to hold on to tradition. Depending on what part of the world they come from, they might celebrate when a child begins reading the Quran, or when a girl decides to start wearing a head scarf or hijab.
“In America, the ceremony is highlighted even more,” says Faizan Haq, who teaches Islamic cultural history at the State University of New York at Buffalo and is on the board of directors of the Washington-based National Council of Pakistani Americans.
America has many cultural distractions, which is why Muslim parents here have to take a more active role involving their children in the faith, says Fareez Ahmed, a 21-year-old graduate of George Washington University. Ahmed finished school early to spend his fourth year memorizing the Quran, and now he’s in Bangladesh to perfect his recitation with other students.
Islam experts say reciting the Quran from memory in one sitting would take about 15 hours.
In America, Ahmed would memorize the Quran three hours a day and review for another five or six hours.
“The practice is definitely increasing,” he says. He has five students to teach when he returns to the United States. “Especially with the current international situation, it’s really important to know what the Quran really says about certain issues,” he adds.
At Taha’s Ameen at the local mosque, he got presents including binoculars and puzzles and was given a feast with friends and family. Some American kids now insist on pizza as well.
Taha’s 5-year-old sister, Iman, is almost halfway through her first reading of the book, and she’s started memorizing it as well. Bolder than Taha, she stands and recites a short passage while holding her mother’s hand. But she can’t explain what she’s saying.
Classes about the meaning of the passages will come as the children get older. But for now, it’s a snowy day outside the family’s upstate New York home, and Taha and Iman plan to go sledding.
“The practice is definitely increasing,” [Fareez Ahmed, a 21-year-old graduate of George Washington University] says. He has five students to teach when he returns to the United States. “Especially with the current international situation, it’s really important to know what the Quran really says about certain issues,” he adds.
I am wondering much the same thing.
Not a very helpful story. Had the reporter explained how the student came to understand what the Quran really says, or even why Ahmed is studying in Bangladesh rather than Pakistan, that might be helpful.
And how and what will Ahmed teach his five students on his return? What has he already learned about what the Quaran really says about those certain issues. Will that understanding be changed by his stay in Bangladesh? Answers would make a much better story, I think.
My backyard.
Mine, too. I coach soccer and baseball to these kids.
My boys attend a Christian school, so they too have their memorizations and reading.
But, I can't help but be troubled...I grew up Christian, being taught to respect others' religions, but somehow feel that respect is the last word these kids may be taught...
Great, another generation of adherents that must be de-programmed or neutralized. How sad.
My little Mo can build a IED in five parsic's
OK, so where the heck is NISKAYUNA? I'm pretty familar with western and CNY and never heard of it.
Need we say more? There is a line (not so fine) between teaching and indoctrination.
Another baby Boomer is bred for destruction.
So did I. And then I learned what Islam really is.
Welcome to FR, btw.
near Albany
I'm sure he will grow up to be a nice young terrorist.
Guess memorizing "Green Eggs and Ham" doesn't compare, huh?
ROTFLMFAO!
Glad you liked it. So funny, so true...
They are coming to get you and you know it. Sooner or later these little soldiers in training will use what they learn in the koran and pull the trigger on us. Just wait.
"They are coming to get you and you know it. Sooner or later these little soldiers in training will use what they learn in the koran and pull the trigger on us. Just wait."
You are getting to the place where the Serbian army and government leaders were in the last decade when Yugoslavia was breaking up into Croatia, Bosnia-Herzigovina, and Serbia/Montenegro, and where they are now in the struggle over the disposition of Kosovo. Having the cultural experience of ancestors who lived for several centuries as "dhimmis" in the Muslim Ottoman empire, they were fully aware of the military obligations Islam imposes on all Muslim males, the Islamic view of infidels as deserving to continue breathing only on the sufferance of Muslims as long as they "stay in their place" and cough up whatever taxes the Muslims decide to levy on them, and thus saw every one of the males, regardless of age, as potential jihadists. Result: the massacre at Srbenica, and other places.
Yep. And it's important to know what God says about Israel and His covenant with the Jewish people giving them the land of Israel because he really, really, really means what He says about the land of Israel belonging to the Jews and then there's that "I will bless them that bless thee and curse them that curse thee" thing thrown in too.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/999894/posts
Check out this post, especially posting #51. The disasters in the Balkans are perhaps a good place to start in thinking through what is likely to happen as the "Battle of Khartoons" progresses through the Muslim world and through our still largely clueless MSM. Think "Balkans, globalized"; not a pretty picture.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.