Practicing Youth Development: Teaching Young People to Strive and 'Follow Their Bliss'

On the death of Ed Bradley...

"Born June 22, 1941, Bradley grew up in a tough section of Philadelphia, where he once recalled that his parents worked 20-hour days at two jobs apiece. "I was told, `You can be anything you want, kid,'" he once told an interviewer. "When you hear that often enough, you believe it."

The above quote serves as support for the importance of having high expectations for children and young people. Youth development research tells us that adults who have high expectations for their kids, and support them accordingly, play a major role in nurturing resiliency in young people, particularly those that grow up in at-risk environments. Resilient youth are those that are able to succeed where so many others fail; who can pick themselves up when they are knocked down and who are less likely to fall victim to the lures of vice and unhealthy lifestyles. Resilient youth do not denigrate themselves because they know their own self-worth; they believe in the words of the adults that nurtured them and taught them that they can be something. To teach someone that they can be something implies that they already are something. Thus, if we teach our children how honored they are to be in the human family, how special a gift their life is, that Allah himself created them as the pinnacle of His magnificent creation and His khalifah, and raise and support them according to this mindset, they will believe it and expect of themselves excellence in life.

Teaching young people to follow their bliss means encouraging them to pursue that inner drive and direction about which the Prophet (SAW) said: "Act, for each of you will find easy that for which he was created" (Muslim). Don't deny young people this divine gift by forcing them to be something that they are not inclined to. Surrender to the God-given fitra that lies within and nurture young people to actualize themselves according to their divinely-created nature. Then, support them and guide them along this path of theirs and help them to learn about themselves along the way. Education, in the end, is ultimately about knowing oneself and "He who knows himself, knows his Lord." So let's practice youth development by encouraging and supporting our young people along the path of self-discovery, self-realization and self-actualization.

Islam is the Medicine the World Needs

If we Muslims simply see ourselves as healers, not warriors, and see Islam as the medicine, not the weapon, and learn to apply it, like all medicines, with a judicious perspective on the nature of disease and disharmony, then we will be successful in our endeavors to have the world understand the benefits and healing nature of Islam.

- Ali Ansari

Comprehend Your Relationship with Allah

Behold the words of the Qur'an:
"We are closer to you than you are yourself."
Comprehend your relationship with God!
He is closer to us than our own selves.
Yet through ignorance we search for Him
Wandering from door to door.

- Anonymous

Understanding Allah and Opposites

God created suffering and heartache, so that joy might be known as their opposite. Hidden things become manifest through their opposites. But God has no opposite; so he remains hidden. Light is known as the opposite of darkness. But God's light has no opposite. Thus we cannot know him through our eyes.

-Rumi, "Mathnawi"

Reason and Knowledge

"Reason is that wherein man goes before all other earthly creatures and comes after God only.... For whereas God ... hath furnished other creatures, some with hoofs, others with other instruments, and weapons both defensive and offensive, man is left naked, and destitute of all these, but may comfort himself in that one endowment of reason...whereby he is able to govern them all."

- John Robinson


In Islam "...logic is an aspect of truth and Truth (Al-Haqq) is a name of God." (Nasr, Living Sufism). The use of logic is like the use of a rung in a ladder - properly used it can help man move upward along the vertical axis of his being. Reason is an innate ability within man which encompasses logic and which can propel him rapidly upwards along the vertical dimension. But in order to do this reason must be free of the taint of man's animal, material propensities. Otherwise reason can be subverted to provide spurious justification for man to attain his desires in whatever realm his desires may fall. Reason and correct knowledge must go hand in hand. "....one who has no reason secures no success. He who has no (correct) knowledge has no (correct) reasoning....A person devoid of reason cannot be conceived of except as a corpse." (Al-Kafi, The Book of Reason and Ignorance)

- Irshaad Hussein

Silence is Golden

Stop talking!
What a shame you have no familiarity
with inner silence!
Polish your heart for a day or two:
make that mirror your book of contemplation.

-Mathnawi [VI, 1286-1287]