A Muslim organization has vowed to continue promoting education among youth in the lakeshore district of Salima district.
The organization, Salima Islamic Information Centre, works with various stakeholders to achieve their objectives of seeing educated youths in the district.
In an exclusive interview with Malawi24, the organization’s Deputy Coordinator Jaffar Feza said they work with various key players like chiefs and teachers to be sensitizing the youth on the importance of education.
According to Feza, they organize youth programs aimed at reminding them on how to become responsible citizens in their communities through education empowerment.
He said the organisation targets both Muslim and Non-Muslim youth on how to refrain from bad behaviour that can ruin their future and encourages them to focus on education that can benefit themselves in the future.
“On Muslim girls, we encourage them to refrain from bad dressing like putting miniskirts, see through clothes and that they have to be wearing scarf (hijab) so that they should not expose their bodies. We also tell girls to say no to early marriages and early pregnancies.”
“Boys are encouraged to refrain from emulating unruly behaviours and they are told to be devoted believers to strengthen their relationship with God,” Feza added.
Commenting on the relationship of wearing hijab and education, Feza told this publication that hijabs minimizes the attractiveness of girls and if they are passionate of going further with education it is possible.
He said that for such activities to be made, possible they engage teachers and chiefs among others so that the information disseminated to the youth from them have substance and have great impact on the youth because they stay with them in their communities.
According to Feza, the organization also targets women by telling them how to be responsible in their families through locally initiated initiatives.
“We encourage women to be doing banki m’khonde but we urge them to be doing in Islamic way by not adding interests when borrowing the money. Interests on something in Islam is unacceptable and we urge them to refrain from it in their respective groupings,” He told Malawi24.
The organization also has some programs that only focus on Muslims men and women aimed at teaching them on how to perform prayers and how they can contribute to development of the country and Islam in particular.
