Letters to the Editor.
Sir,
On behalf of the youth Sub Committee of the Islamic Shia Ithnasheri Union of Toronto, I shall be pleased if you will print this letter of invitation in your forthcoming Al-Huda magazine.
Dear Brothers in Islam,
Assalamun Alaykum.
By the time this letter is printed, I am sure that most of you will have heard of the YOUTH SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE ISLAMIC SHIA ITHNASHERI UNION OF TORONTO and may already be participating in the activities organised by the subcommittee. For those who have not as yet participated in our activities, this letter is an invitation to do so.
In order to acquaint you, the youth who has not as yet participated in our organisation, I would briefly like to go over the rather short history of our Subcommittee. We are a new organisation having received our “TERMS OF REFERENCE” from the Union in April 1979. We had however been planning since October last year.
The full credit for the existence of the YOUTH SUBCOMMITTEE rightly belongs to our President, Mr. Gulam Sajan. He suggested the idea of the Subcommittee to our Chairman, Mr. Hasnain Panju. In October 1978, Hasnain and myself met to discuss the feasibility of this Subcommittee. Subsequent to this meeting, I drafted out the rather modest ‘AIMS AND OBJECTIVES’ for this Subcommittee. We then invited Hasnain Moledina and Salim Nasser to join the Subcommittee, and met the President in November to submit our proposal.
The President approved all our proposals with one exception. The rejected proposition was “that females should be allowed to participate fully in the Subcommittee”. We have at present compromised on this issue. We hope that the President will do his utmost as he promised us earlier to seek expert advice from a Resident Alim, when we have one, and resolve our only disagreement. We are sure that a knowledgeable and intelligent aalim will not see anything wrong with allowing females to have full participation in this Subcommittee.
It would probably be fruitful for me to state the TERMS OF REFERENCE provided to us by the Union:-
- All Youth activities will be within the Bounds of Shariat.
- Carry out Youth activities for male members for ages between 15 & 25 years.
- Create interest amongst the youths in the Union activities.
- Provide volunteers at Union activities. The volunteers shall work under the direction of the Chairman of the Congregation Committee or his appointee.
- All activities to be carried out in close co-operation with the Co-ordinator.
- Any deviation from the above will require the Executive Committee’s approval.
I would also like to reveal to you the specific ‘AIMS AND OBJECTIVES’ that we feel we would like the YOUTH SUBCOMMITTEE to achieve.
AIMS AND OBJECTIVES:
- Aims and Objectives:
- To promote the interest and welfare of the youths of our community.
- To arrange for educational, cultural, sports and other youth related activities.
- To arrange and provide premises for “get-together” purposes.
- To cooperate with other Muslim and Ithnasheri organizations in order to provide such functions as Islamic Camps and Youth Exchanges with families in Canada and other countries.
- To welcome and assist in every way possible Ithnasheri Youths who wish to pursue their studies in Canada.
- To instil a spirit of belonging to the larger Ithnasheri community:
- To encourage the members to participate in the activities of the Union and its affiliated organisations.
- To provide an environment that will produce excellent future leaders for the community.
Upto now I have only stated what we are all about in a rather general fashion. In what follows, I intend to point out to you what we have already achieved, and what we specifically intend to do in the near future.
The first thing that we can be proud of is the very existence of this subcommittee. Having floated this Subcommittee, we, have begun the first stage in fulfilling a need that has been growing within our community. The need for Youths to have a voice in the affairs of our community. We the members of the Subcommittee realize that we were not elected by the youths of the community to represent them. However, as a ‘steering subcommittee’, until the general election, we intend to do the best possible job of representing and promoting the interest and welfare of the youths of our community.
We feel that we can also be proud of the fact that we have already at this early stage come through on some of our ‘AIMS AND OBJECTIVES’. The Youth Subcommittee is renting a gymnasium at the York Mills Collegiate Institute every Friday between 7.00-11.00pm during the weeks preceding Ramadhan, 7.00-9.00pm during Ramadhan, and 8.00-10.00pm after Ramadhan.
We have also organized a few “get togathers” at Sunnybrook Park on Sundays and a BBQ Picnic at the Heart Lake on the last Sunday preceding Ramadhan.
The Youth Subcommittee is also going to be undertaking the task of revising the community directory in the near future. We are also considering the possibility of publishing a monthly newsletter for our participants in the near future.
Having stated all this, I hope that I have conveyed to you our earnest desire to be a dynamic force within our community. If you have not as yet participated in our activities, I again extend the YOUTH SUBCOMMITTEE’S invitation to you to be part of this dynamic process. It is with your participation that we can have a stronger voice within the community and with your support and co-operation that we can alter the very things that bother you about our community.
I would like to take the opportunity here to extend an invitation to all concerned organizations within our community who wish to co-operate with us in order that we may mutually benefit ourselves.
Below is a list of the ‘Office Bearers’ of the YOUTH SUBCOMMITTEE. Please feel free to contact anyone for further information about the YOUTH SUBCOMMITTEE.
Hasnain Panju (Chairman) 449-6072
Riyaz Dattu (Secretary) 663-1838
Salim Nasser (Treasurer) 292-0762
Hasnain Moledina (Committee-member) 284-3036
Murtaza Tarbhai (Committee-member) 789-1661
Kazim Habib (Committee-member) 469-0382
From:
Riyaz Dattu, Secretary.
