Why community involvement matters in Hong Kong’s Muslim community
We — as Muslims — should not be dormant in society ,rather, we should actively participate in community care, education, and activism in our own personal capacities, so that we leave a lasting footprint in this city and its people.
A week before I was going to write this article, I was discussing community involvement on Zoom with the volunteers for UMAH and a lot of things were brought up from discovering new talent and empowering new blood to enter community service for Muslims. A flow of ideas and options sprung from the meeting that I envisioned a robust community in my city By the time the meeting ended, I was assigned to write this article for the UMAH’s newsletter and prep for its relaunch.
I was told to write an article about community involvement with the theme of legacy in mind, that when preparing, I stumbled across a video on YouTube by a British Pakistani historian named Adnan Rashid. The title of the video was “The Muslim Civilisation: Problems and Solutions” and in that video, he explained four main reasons that made the Muslim civilisation succeed. These were education, political stability and activity, media, and activism. These four main reasons need to be revived in order for success to spring forth again.
If we were to use these four reasons as a parameter for Hong Kong’s Muslim community, we have a pretty long way to go. In terms of education, most of the Indians and Pakistanis who came as immigrants to the city prefer to have jobs in the service or manufacturing industry and they hold on to this job for decades. Many of whom who came to the city were not well-educated except a few. The problem arises when these communities want the same for their children due to the belief that this is a means to have a stable life.
The next generation of Muslims, therefore, should be willing to pursue all fields of education which are permissible under Islam while keeping in mind the foundations of Islam which is the Quran and the Sunnah. Young Muslims should not fear failure and entrust their worries and expectations to Allah (SWT). We once had great personalities that redefined the fields of science, history, sociology as well as political science. We can repeat this if we work towards education to spread and change the perspective of Islam both in this city and in the world.
Young Muslims should not fear failure and entrust their worries and expectations to Allah (SWT).
If we achieve even a little bit of this, we would have a diverse group of young Muslims in various faculties of education contributing both to Hong Kong’s society and the Muslim community as a whole. This would drastically change our perspective of our ourselves, our identity as a Muslim, and change the perspective of us among the local population.
In terms of media and activism, it is high time that Muslims in Hong Kong have their voices heard. I remember, around 4 years ago, when I told my relatives that I wanted to be a journalist, many of them had misconceptions and fears while some actively supported my vision. In this day and age, it is time we engage with not just with a local Hong Kong audience, but with a global audience on what we actually believe in and show Islam’s innumerable and valuable contributions to the world. Prospective Muslims should engage in this — create blogs, YouTube Channels, media houses, and TV channels to spread Islam and counter misconceptions that is being spread among the community.
Most importantly, we should be active in community service. We should help and assist people on-the-ground and have initiatives and programmes to aid both the Muslim and local communities. Be it helping the elderly, the homeless, creating awareness on various issues, helping students with university, and much more. The bridges that we build through interacting and working with the local Chinese population is bound to have a profound effect on our fellow Chinese counterparts.
If we can have influence over education, media and activism, it will be possible for the Muslim community here to have political representation as well. This does not have to be through political parties or elections as some may be skeptical of Muslims entering politics in a secular landscape. We can, however, create think-tanks on the situation of Muslims in the city and work together with the government. It is through this we can be heard in the government and improve relations between the government and the community.
We — as Muslims — should not be dormant in society, because it is this very dormancy that will lead us towards decline. Rather, we should actively participate in community care, education, and activism in our own personal capacities, so that we leave a lasting footprint in this city and its people.
Muslims came to this city as traders and army officers, and for the most part, have been confined to their own communities. It has been more than a century since Muslims came to this city. In contrast, the next generation of Muslims should have a vision for the next century, to make sure that we leave a robust, diverse and established community behind to continue the legacy of Muslims of Hong Kong.
Written for the UMAH Newsletter 2020 by Shameel Ibrahim.
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