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For all the attention placed on the problems and challenges facing Britain\u2019s Muslim youth, problems addressed with particularly dark undertones of potential extremism and terrorism, practical advice from Muslims and non-Muslims alike has been scarce. Governments, Muslim organisations, and mosques have shifted both blame and responsibility between each other, while young people are left to fend for themselves. Even within the terminology of the debate \u2013 moderation, integration, unity \u2013 there are vague definitions and a lack of consensus, leaving a path to those goals harder to forge.<\/p>\n
But many of the issues raised with British Muslim youth \u2013 alienation, discrimination, drugs, gang violence, and poor employment prospects \u2013 are also common to other non-Muslim ethnic minorities and the disenfranchised from all backgrounds. For those youth, trained social workers have been engaged by the government to address their needs on an individual basis. While Muslim youth can benefit from this as well, there are cultural and religious aspects for them that may make such an approach less effective than it could be.<\/p>\n
Sadek Hamid, an educator and doctoral student at the University of Chester<\/a>, noticed this discrepancy a few years ago and, with the help of the University and some (non-Muslim) colleagues created an accredited BA degree programme<\/a> in Muslim youth work \u2013 a first for Britain and, in terms of rigour, probably the world. His programme saw the entry of its first students this September and a favourable response from Muslim community organisations and other universities could mean many more in the future. In this interview, we speak to Sadek about how the programme developed and he tells us about the stigma against social work, the goodwill of his colleagues, and whether his students \u201ccan get a job at the end of it.\u201d<\/p>\n Basically the idea for the course arose just over three years ago with my colleagues at the religious studies department at the University of Chester. They also have a Christian youth work programme running there for the last four or five years. As you know, Christian youth work is quite an established field in the UK. One of the professors on Islam was talking one day with the lecturer in Christian youth work, Richard Turner. Richard said, \u201cLook, when I drive through Muslim communities, I see a lot of young people hanging about on corners and not getting up to much. Who\u2019s working with these Muslim young people?\u201d That was the origin of the course. A thought and observation turned into an intention to develop something parallel to Christian youth work. <\/p>\n I started at the university as a doctoral student in 2004 and my own professional background is in youth work. It was great timing, alhamdulillah, in that sense. It has taken us to where we are today, in terms of having a fully accredited BA undergraduate programme which is the first and the only one of its kind in the UK. As far as we\u2019re aware, it\u2019s the only one in the world. <\/p>\n The rationale is that in the UK \u2013 You\u2019ve been in the UK now yourself for how long?<\/p>\n So you must have a sense of some of the issues facing our community. A lot of the challenges are in the second and third generation. As you probably know, in the UK Muslim community, over 50% are under the age of 25. And with that, there\u2019s a whole lot of statistics which aren\u2019t so positive, really, when it comes to education and achievement. You\u2019ve got, in particular, Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities are 45-50% underperforming, especially boys. You\u2019ve got nearly 10% of the prison population [consisting of] Muslim young men. And you\u2019ve got huge issues around drugs, criminality, and social problems \u2013 aside from the obvious ones around religious identity and the challenges and dilemmas around that, both positive and negative.<\/p>\n The bottom line is that there are very few qualified, professional, Muslim youth workers in the UK, particularly in the urban centres where Muslim populations are located. As an observation, I\u2019ve been working professionally for the last 12 years and, alhamdulillah, have been involved in Islamic youth work for 20 years now. So I always knew there wasn\u2019t enough of these workers and that\u2019s why I myself went into it. <\/p>\n But youth work as a profession has yet to be really understood, recognised, and appreciated amongst our communities for various reasons, really. The obvious ones are around parents whose children are able to go to university tend to get encouraged to go the more prestigious, secure careers such as medicine. We are kind of overrepresented in those fields and where we don\u2019t seem to be at the moment. We are not so interested in the social sciences, the caring professions if you like \u2013 teaching, social work, probation, youth work, etc. Those are the professions where we need to be encouraging more of our young people [to go] because that\u2019s where the problems are, really. That\u2019s where people will be equipped with the skills to make a difference. <\/p>\n Alhamdullilah<\/i>, it\u2019s changing but there\u2019s still a lot of ignorance. A lot of people don\u2019t actually know what youth work is. It\u2019s not just the Muslim community, it\u2019s wider society. Those people who do know, they have a stereotypical understanding \u2013 that youth workers just play with kids, play sports, pool, and table tennis. <\/p>\n That\u2019s right. Youth work, when it\u2019s done properly, is a lot more than that. It has a recreation element, but a lot of it\u2019s about informal education, it\u2019s about inspiring young people, being a role model, providing support and guidance. The way I explain it to people, the easiest way to understand it is perhaps having an elder brother or sister to give you some guidance. And that\u2019s really where it started and why we\u2019re doing this.<\/p>\n We were conscious of just cutting and pasting from the Christian youth work programmes. But at the same time, just to give you a little bit of background, youth work courses in the UK have a core generic element which all youth work courses have to have to fulfill a national youth work agency criteria and the professional standards associated with that. There are elements we must have which are universal. <\/p>\n The difference between our course and Christian youth work courses is it introduces a faith element, a faith perspective. For example, the first year is spread into five modules. The first module is key issues working with Muslim young people. Then the key skills required for working with young people. Then you have a module on Muslim studies, the academic skills required to work with Muslim communities. The fourth module is on professional practice and the fifth module is the practical, vocational aspects, which is the work placement.<\/p>\n What we\u2019re doing is we\u2019re trying to integrate rather than cut and paste. We\u2019re trying to integrate a Muslim perspective. How does this relate, what are the key issues? We should know what the key issues are facing non-Muslim young people, facing Christian young people. What are the issues facing Muslim young people? How can we make the outcomes of this course relevant for people who have experience working with Muslim youth? We\u2019re drawing a broad inspiration from Islamic teaching rather than promoting a specific madhab<\/i> or aqeedah<\/i>. We\u2019re not touching on any sectarian or legal differences, we\u2019re just using a broad, normative understanding of Islam. We\u2019re drawing the values from there and relating it to the experiences of Muslims in the UK, basically. <\/p>\n For example, key issues in Muslim youth work will obviously begin with the experience on the ground for British Muslim young people. What are the issues? What is the profile? What are they doing? Where are they located? What is the whole life experience? The demographics of it. Then we\u2019ll talk about the social issues. The economic issues, the political issues, and so on and so forth. Everything in those modules has to relate to an Islamic frame of reference in terms of where people are coming from but also connecting that to \u2013 Islam is our theory but the experience of British Muslims is the practice, is the reality. And then we synthesise that and connect that with the purposes and values of youth work. <\/p>\n This is quite cutting edge and not so easy to do in a sense because you\u2019re creating a new understanding and certainly there isn\u2019t just one understanding. Muslim youth work is still a work in progress. You are starting to see an emergence of different schools within Muslim youth work and it\u2019s interesting, you know, and that\u2019s the way it is with any kind of professional field, you do have different positions and different approaches. Our approach is to have Islam as our guiding ethos and values but it will manifest itself in different ways. <\/p>\n I think the biggest challenge is that not so much a resistance to youth work as having a religious perspective, it\u2019s actually an understanding of youth work itself and what it can do for a community\u2019s young people. I think apathy is probably the biggest challenge we face in that people \u2013 not only parents but young people themselves. At the moment, our community is in the state of \u2013 it\u2019s a mixed bag, isn\u2019t it? I mean we do have, no doubt, the second or third generation, we have an element that\u2019s very successful, that\u2019s integrated, that\u2019s confident, vibrant \u2013 it\u2019s moving on and making a contribution to society. <\/p>\n I would argue that the majority of our communities are struggling with various sorts of economic and social disadvantage, discrimination and so on. So therefore, that informs the attitudes and perceptions of people, particularly in the north of Britain. There is a bit of a north-south divide, really. <\/p>\n But going back to your question, I don\u2019t see that as a problem, really. The challenge is engagement and how you engage young people who are disillusioned, disaffected, who will use various real and imagined excuses for not doing the right thing and not improving their own condition. One of the main values of youth work is about personal empowerment. You help young people to discover the potential they have in themselves. You help them develop the skills and talents, and you nudge them in the right direction. You help them do it for themselves, otherwise you\u2019re not a youth worker, you\u2019re more like a babysitter.<\/p>\n Alhamdulillah<\/i>, the response has been interesting. Everywhere we\u2019ve been, it\u2019s been very positive. Parents, Islamic organisations, masajid, etc. We have about 20 students enrolled, though we had about 70+ people interested.<\/p>\n Yeah, we expected there not to be an avalanche. Again, youth work isn\u2019t really understood. One of the first questions people ask is \u201cWell, I\u2019m going to do this course. Can I get a job at the end of it?\u201d<\/p>\n This is one of the things we had to give a lot of thought to at the beginning. We wouldn\u2019t have put this programme together if we didn\u2019t feel there was a demand. Certainly, if you\u2019re talking about mainstream youth services, there\u2019s always a demand for youth workers. Given our communities are growing so fast, there is no doubt there will always be a demand for Muslim youth workers. That\u2019s a given. <\/p>\n But also, we have found that, increasingly so, Muslim organisations and masajid, the ones who are well informed and progressive, they realise that they do need to have youth workers working within their institutions. There are very few, I must say, in the UK at the moment that employ full time youth workers. But that\u2019s the ideal, in that people feel that they are getting into this profession because they want to work within their own community and make a difference. But at the moment, the opportunities within the Muslim sector are limited. <\/p>\n However, we are working strategically with the largest Muslim organisations, nationally and regionally, the masajid where there are affiliate organisations like the Lancashire Council of Mosques, the Bolton Council of Mosques, the MCB, the BMF and so on. They\u2019re all interested in working with us and helping us, where necessary, to build capacity within masajid and that will really yield, in the next 2-3 years, the change that we need to employ [youth workers]. We\u2019re working with the networks to help those masajid that want to employ youth workers to get from where they are now to the position where they have the skills to understand how to get financed and to do the things they need to do. The people who graduate, inshallah<\/i>, by then they\u2019ll have the local authority centres, they\u2019ll have the voluntary sector where there is a lot of employment opportunities but, inshallah, they\u2019ll have more Muslim organisations and masajid that will be able to offer them employment.<\/p>\n Inshallah<\/i>. The MCB recently launched an ambitious programme to build this capacity among masjids. I think there\u2019s a sort of consensus growing within those communities to understand what\u2019s going on and what needs to be done. Certainly our project will help accelerate some of those things that are already happening or going to happen. I think we have to be strategic in that sense.<\/p>\n I was very happy when I came across my colleagues the department because, you know, they\u2019re not Muslim. For non-Muslims to be thinking about this, it\u2019s quite a bold step for a mainstream institution, a British university to take. This is unheard of, really. It reflects a goodwill there. They really gave me a free hand to do this. We consulted widely and we\u2019re open to anybody giving us advice. We\u2019ve got some scholarly input as well from people like Tariq Ramadan, local Muslim organisations, imams. <\/p>\n I\u2019m sure there\u2019ll be lots of room for improvement, but we feel that this is a big breakthrough and we\u2019d like to be, inshallah<\/i>, an example of good practice to inspire people elsewhere. In the next two or three years, a limited number of universities will also be offering courses. We\u2019re thinking ahead in the next few years to encourage people in other Muslim countries to come here and study. We\u2019ve already had interest from some places to maybe go and train youth workers in Muslim countries. That would be great if we could make that happen. Aside from Malaysia, I\u2019m not aware of any other Muslim countries that have Muslim youth workers employed as a field. We\u2019re quite ambitious, inshallah<\/i>. <\/p>\n Zahed Amanullah is associate editor of altmuslim. He is based in London, England.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Doctoral student Sadek Hamid has created Britain’s first university degree programme in Muslim youth social work. We speak to him to find out how programmes like his can make a difference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":531,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newsmakers","category-zahed-amanullah"],"yoast_head":"\n![](\"https:\/\/www.altmuslim.com\/images\/altmuslim_icon.gif\"){kind=icon}
Tell us a little bit about the degree programme.<\/b><\/p>\nFour years now.<\/b><\/p>\n They think it\u2019s about keeping young people busy rather than something more substantive.<\/b><\/p>\n I\u2019m curious about how you\u2019ve structured this course. You mentioned that you\u2019ve looked at parallels in Christian youth work. How has the course curriculum been developed to address the needs of Muslim youth? Is it simply adding a religious component onto it or is it more than that?<\/b><\/p>\nHow comfortable are Muslim communities with this sort of outreach work? Religion can be a very touchy subject and when you deal with a community\u2019s kids, they may say \u201cWell, this is Islam as we know it and maybe you should mind your own business.\u201d Are you thinking of ways to overcome that cultural resistance to social work as something that\u2019s needed?<\/b><\/p>\nWhat\u2019s been the response to the programme? How many students do you have enrolled?<\/b><\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to be the first ones in a programme, isn\u2019t it?<\/b><\/p>\n Which leads to my other question. Would the graduates go into conventional organisations or are there other organisations you had in mind?<\/b><\/p>\n It sounds then like this is the spark that makes other parts of the system more mature.<\/b><\/p>\n