NewsletterWinter Report 2018-19

September 2018February 2019

Masjid Al FalaahKMAB2018/19

32 Trinity Road, Aston, Birmingham, B6 6AL. 0121 241 2556 | info@kmab.org.uk | kmab.org.uk

50 YEARSS E R V I N G T H E C O M M U N I T Y F O R

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We welcome all our readers to the latest edition of our regular newsletter, highlighting the recent activities and outlining the planned future events.

As we enter the 50th year of the existence of our association, I thought it would be prudent for us to look back as a community and reflect on our journey till date and as to where we aim to head towards in the future.

From the initial days of Fentham Road; with a few families getting together for basic essentials of Madrasah, marriages and burials to today’s ever-expanding Birmingham Kokni Community - the one underlying common thread/gel or bond has been our KMAB jamaat.

As someone who has come late to this Birmingham party, I can’t explain how impressed I am to see the way our community has been united for 50 long years under one umbrella of KMAB, with over 350 families on our membership list - Masha’Allah.

An important little aspect to think about... whilst other Kokni sister organisations in other major cities could not bear the idea of either growing organically, or being united under one single jamaat, why is it that our Birmingham jamaat has been under one banner for such a long time and grown exponentially to such heights of success? The answer lies within ourselves: • It is the passion to be united under any circumstances • The eagerness to showcase the strength in our unity, • The ability to understand that divisions would only cause

pain in the community and • The fear of splitting a seamless united front.

This is the perfect thought-process to hand over a united organisation to our future generations. All of this is due to the hard work and sheer tenacity of our elders who worked tremendously hard and have instilled these qualities in all of us - Alhamdulillah

We might have different views on various aspects to a member next to us! We can disagree on which day we start

Ramadan or Eid, or the start and finish times of Salaah, (15 degrees versus 18 degrees). Mawlid or no Mawlid, combined dua after salaah versus individual dua, Ratnagiri versus Raigadh, women space in masjid or not, you might not even like the people leading the jamaat!! …But one thing is for sure - we are all united under the realms of our jamaat. Be it a burial or a wedding, good times or bad, AGM fights to small niggles - our underlying DNA is to ensure we remain united.

Alhamdullilah we have come a long way from then to now in our quest from being a small house to a purpose built masjid, delivering hundreds of events, visits from international scholars, thousands of pounds of aid collected and distributed. Various activities for children, sisters and family get-togethers throughout the year including Eid Mela, Seerat events, and countless pioneering initiatives - Alhamdulillah, we are now with the grace of Allah (SWT) amongst the top Masjids in the UK. The work has just begun and may it continue - Aameen. Join us in Duas of Magfirah for all those who passed away, and Duas of health for those who are still amongst us.

Adil ParkarGeneral Secretary

A MILESTONE YEAR FOR KMAB

In the Name of Allah, the Most Merciful and the Creator of the Heavens and Earth.

Eid Mela & 50 Years of KMAB event poster

Over the last five months, since our last communications, we have been fortunate to host an amazing line of scholars and have organised activities that have been very beneficial for the community.

EVENTS & ACTIVITIES

Alhamdulillah, we hosted Shaykh Hasan Ali (Safar Academy ) along with Shaykh Abu Abdisalaam in December - both scholars were very interactive and ensured the audience took away action points in practical understanding of how best we can try and avoid sinning and ensure we are taking the right steps towards going to Jannah.

We were also enlightened with an insightful talk by Mufti Javed from Habib Trust on the very important topic of Sahaba and the Ahlul Bayt, giving us guidelines of how to follow their footsteps.

We ended the year with our monthly youth event in conjunction with Zaytoon Academy when we heard first hand experiences from those who have visited the blessed land of Baytul Maqdis. Mufti Adam conducted the entire event where we heard from various aspects of the visits to Baytul Maqdis.

Mufti Wasim Khan delivered one of the most heart-warming lectures about the last 100 days of our beloved Prophet (PBUH)

Dr Ahsan Hanif who was hosted by the Camel Foundation at our Masjid in December gave us some key insights in the practical methodology of Tarbiyat in Muslim Households and how to deal with children.

On 23rd December, we had arranged a very popular and well attended Hijama Session for brothers. The feedback was extremely positive and more sessions are planned for the upcoming year.

We began the new year with a huge event in partnership with Ummah Welfare Trust on the very pertinent topic of ‘The coming of the Dajjal’. The event was the best attended in our Masjid by both brothers and sisters, Alhamdulillah.

We were visited by two fantastic American Scholars who spoke to us about two very diverse topics in December. Shaykh Mohammed El Shinawy addressed the congregation over Jumuah Bayaan and spoke extensively about important elements of Dawah by example within Islam.

We were privileged to once again host Qari Bashir Siddiq along with Dr Yaqoub Al Madani on the 2nd February. Qari Bashir has been a teacher in Madinah for over 51 years to many of the Imams of the two Holy Mosques and has students like Shaykh Ali Jabir, Shaykh Muhammed Ayub and Shaykh Abdul Muhsin.

Mufti Abdul Rahman Mangera from Leicester enlightened us in an interactive session on some very controversial topics in Islam and their answers. The event held in February was targeted towards Scholars and Ulema but it was able to attract attendance from across the board.

On the 10th February, Shaykh Abdul Jobbar (Madinah) and Shaykh Jalal helped us discover what loving Allahland our beloved Prophet ` truly means. An inspiring and thought-provoking topic with matters discussed of how our love for the world can at times overtake our love of our Deen.

As with all events, every event we have organised has been open to entire families and especially for our sisters and children so that we can engage with our youth in best practices too.

Also, to add to the family engagement in our masjid and to ensure we are constantly fully utilising the masjid for the benefit of further educating and enhancing knowledge in our community, we have also arranged many Sisters' only events.

Also following on from the Fiqh of Salaah, a special course was delivered on understanding Missed/Qadah Salahs, and a workshop on the fiqh of Taharah.

We had Sisters’ only events including regular weekend classes on Tafsir of Quran, A course on ‘The Islamic Law of Inheritance and How To Make An Islamic Will’ and a half day course on the Fiqh of Salaah.

In the coming months, much more is lined up for our sisters, such as the importance of Alhamdulilah, today’s youth, death and our annual Ramadan programme. These events are becoming more subscribed and some of these events had nearly a hundred attendees.

Our annual Seerat-Un-Nabi Event was held on the 24th November at Broadway school. The event witnessed an unprecendented number of attendees reminiscing the times of our previous generation. The event was the most successful, with the highest number of attendees, most number of children participants, a vast variety of food and snacks, and some amazing gifts for the participating children.

We would like to thank you all for your kind contributions that helped us make days like this a success. We would also like to thank Jadore Kandy and the Dhansey family for the very generous offers for the children sweets. This year, the Seerat event management team not only organised the entire event, they even cooked the food for the event. Photographs from the Seerat-Un-Nabi Event

SEERAT-UN-NABI `P R O G R A M M E 2 0 1 8

MEETING ALISTAIR BURT, MPTeam members from MAF attended a meeting with Minister of State for the Middle East at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Minister of State at the Department for International Development – Alistair Burt, MP. The MAF team pressed for streamlining the process for attaining a community sponsorship license for a Syrian Refugee family under the government scheme. Our application is now with the Home Office and we hope to hear back with a positive reply soon.

BIRMINGHAM MUSLIMBURIAL COUNCIL (BMBC)Team MAF were also very involved in a meeting held by the Birmingham Muslim Burial Council (BMBC), which means Team MAF is now involved in shaping the services at a new cemetery in Sutton Coldfield, as the Handsworth cemetery is 18-20 months away from being inaccessible for us to use.

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COMMUNITY SURGERYWe hosted the Indian Council General Community Liaison lead - Happy Guptan at our Masjid on 21st October for a Visa/OCI/Land issues surgery. Ms Guptan gave the audience some extremely good insights while approaching the Indian Consulate for any matters of importance. We have agreed to have periodic surgeries to help the local community. The team from KMAB were also invited at the felicitation of the new incoming India High Commissioner to United Kingdom.

A cancer awareness day has been planned for 24th February and where we have invited specialist across the field in developing awareness of this illness amongst patients, carers and families

ONGOING HUMANITARIAN INITIATIVESKMAB continues to ensure that we are fulfilling our commitment towards the needs of people who are affected by natural disasters or vulnerable situations.To this extent we raised more than £6,000 towards those effected by the Earthquake and Tsunami in Indonesia. Working with a local delivery partner we were able to reach out and help a lot of families with essential immediate aid of food and hygiene products. We heard the heart-warming video of the distribution of this. We would like to thank you all for your contributions.

We have also undertaken a very worthy project of saving a Muslim school in a remote village in India. The work was undertaken by our team at MAF and the deliverables made a huge difference to the school and the 300 odd students that are working towards completing their education which would have been a struggle without your support.

We further helped raise more than £25k combined money for

the forgotten people of Albania and Rohingya. Both these sets of people, who may be separated by many miles, but were linked with the unfortunate tag of being amongst the most persecuted Muslims around the world. Both these events were an eye opener for us and we hope that the organisations we worked with for Albania (Ar Rahma) and Rohingya (Al Hasanat) are able to help as many Muslims as possible, Ameen. We would like to thank you all for all the kind contributions made by you towards every cause that we have undertaken. It is this support that allows us to go over and beyond.

We have recently began a project to help the Syrian refugee families living in Birmingham. We have collected and distributed important essentials for the families to counter the cold winter of UK. We have now pledged that we will be supporting these families for this year Insha’Allah. Can we please encourage all to come forward to help with this cause. The money needed for this is no more than £300 per month, as this will cater for the most basic and essential needs (eg. hygiene products, food and clothing etc).

Online

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y Record breaking ? Not quite, but Alhamdulillah, following the launch of our re-designed and modern website, we are now seeing significant increase in website traffic. This means that our Facebook and Youtube subscribers have both recently crossed more than 1000, Instagram has also passed 500 and Twitter also continues to grow. We have also seen good amount of interest in our Podcast channel, with nearly 3000 plays, despite the limited content we have been able to put online in the past couple of months. There has been renewed interest in our Android app, with now nearly 120 users. Please do visit the Google Play Store and install our app if you haven’t already and mention it to your friends and family. We have continued our

online presence with our continuous focus on the Hadith of the Week and Sahaba of the Month that is shared via various online platforms.All the activity now is disseminated via promotional Mad Mimi Email, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and on our website.

The KMAB IT team, intend to make more content available on our website, on the Podcast channel, and will soon Insha’Allah start investigating a new KMAB Masjid Al-Falaah app for Apple iOS, to complement the one we have already created for Android.

The KMAB Masjid Al-Falaah calendar for 2019, was extremely well received and sold out very quickly. Indeed, Masha’Allah this year’s calendar was the most beautiful to date, with some wonderful pictures of Baytul Maqdis.

A key focus for this year is to ensure we are able to create an environment for learning for all our stakeholders and hence we have placed efforts towards this cause.Weekday Madrasah – We have revamped the structure of our Madrasah so that we can meet the shared vision of our student, parents and our teachers. We have formulated all our policies stipulated by educational authorities which enables us to operate within a set structure.

Our volunteer team that looks after the Madrasah now boasts of two of our very talented and hardworking youngsters, Altaf Petkar and Osman Malvankar. Both of them, under the guidance of Iqbal Dalvi, are inputting an amazing level of energy and enthusiasm within the Madrasah set up. One of the key elements they are focusing on this is year is to use electronic initiatives to streamline and measure the outcomes of students and teachers with clear visibility for all the stakeholders.

Keeping in mind the need for a weekend place for students to gain an Islamic education, we have partnered with Al Rawdah to introduce a weekend Madrasah for children up to 7 years old.

The idea is to grow the school organically keeping the quality in mind rather than chasing more numbers to fill the school up with students from all around.

Our partnership with Excel Arabic continues and we have now put in place new courses from Pre Basic to Level 3 for adults (Male and Female) and for children (11+). In April, we will also be extending this service to weekday mornings for sisters only.

Shaykh Essa is continuing to conduct a Quranic Talqeen session every Friday evening for all those who would like to correct their Quranic Tajweed. He has also continued to help brothers that want to correct their Azaan giving abilities.

Maulana Junnaid has undertaken workshops on the fiqh of Salaah, Tahara, Janazah and Fasting. He will continue to do these regularly every month Insha’Allah to educate us all.

We have arranged a career workshop session for 11-18 year olds who need advice for choosing their future careers.

The workshop is planned with Dr Andleeb Zafar who is an ophthalmologist by profession and has extensive expertise in advising youngsters in planning their next career moves.

Educational Input

ARABIC CLASSES

Quranic Talqeen & Azaan Workshops

Essential Workshops

Changing face of the Madrasah team - Altaf Petkar and Osmal Malvankar with Iqbal Dalvi

Adults Arabic Courses Poster

Careers Workshop

Designed by: irfandesign.co.uk

Alhamdulillah, in the last six months since the AGM, the KMAB Site Management team has been proactive in promoting and ensuring health and safety at our premises. To achieve this, we have enacted on the following:

A. All madrasah building class windows are now fitted with window restrictors limiting the opening of each window. Thus, preventing both children and adults overhanging and falling out.

B. All gas appliances in both the masjid and the madrasah buildings have been safety checked and serviced. Faulty items identified during the safety check which needed action, have been addressed and we now have a new Gas Safety Certificate for a public building for the current year. A new boiler has also been installed on the top floor of the madrasah building to replace the old one which was on its last leg.

C. All electrical items on our premises have been Portable Appliance Testing certified for another year.

D. The Emergency Exit Lightings, Signs and Fire Alarm have been serviced and certified for the current year.

E. All fire extinguishers in both buildings have undergone their yearly service and have been issued with a maintenance certificate.

F. New extra CCTV cameras have been installed in the common areas on all floors of the madrasah building and the

blind spots identified in the masjid building.

In addition, the team has recently been involved in a much-deserved uplift to our upstairs masjid hall and the surrounding area by giving it a new coat of paint. This area was last painted at the time of our masjid’s opening ceremony ten years ago. All air conditioning units in the masjid have now been serviced and we now have also installed new ‘smart heating’ thermostats on both floors of the masjid building. This will allow only responsible personnel to monitor and activate heating on site and remotely, as well as contributing towards lowering our heating bill. The old masjid transmitter has now been repaired and we are continually improving the transmission. The site management team has overseen all the above works with utmost precision and ensured minimum impact to our finances.

The team will soon be embarking on a major project to ensure our Event Hall facilities are pleasant, adequate and comfortable. We will soon announce when this work will commence and make a fund appeal for this worthwhile project.

A humble appeal to all to help us, by keeping our premises tidy and safe and report any misuse.

A special thanks to the family of Abdul Ghafoor Dhansey who have donated a fully functional Hearse that we can now use for transporting our deceased for their final journey.

Faruq MhateyHead of KMAB Site Management Team

Visit my Mosque 2019We would like to welcome you all to our 3rd Annual Open Day, as part of the UK-wide Visit My Mosque initiative, to be held on 3rd March. Please invite as many people as you can, and come forward to help out for this very important event.

SITE MANAGEMENT UPDATE

0121 359 2346 | sales@alltradeprinters.co.uk | alltradeprinters.co.uk | 2 Richard Street, Birmingham, B7 4AA

As we end this note till next time, please join us in doing dua Magfirah for Marhuma Khadija Dawood Hawa, Marhuma Fatima Malvankar and Marhum Roghey Chacha (Shabuddin Roghey) who all passed away in Birmingham in past six months.

May Allah give them all the highest place in Jannah - Aameen!

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