بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
In the Name of Allah, Most Merciful, Most Compassionate
Assalaamu alaykum
Dear Friends
I pray that you are well.
Like most people, I attended my son's high school graduation held yesterday. But my reasons for attending was not to celebrate my son's graduation (it was not in my tradition and my son didn't feel it was much of an accomplishment for him at this level anyway) but to observe and I also wanted him and his brothers to observe and learn how people conduct their ceremonies that make people love to flock to these sort of ceremonies, even pay hundreds of dollars for it--for graduation book, gowns, mementos, graduation pictures, etc.
It was a very colorful event with about 800 graduates in their red and white gowns. Everything was orderly from the time people entered the big stadium to the time people exited the stadium and people were very attentive throughout the ceremony. There were at least 6000 crowded the stadium. Everything seemed perfect--the timing, the sound system, the ceremony, the speech, the band, the security, the traffic, the parking, and so on. The only thing that was not--there was only one Muslim name called to receive the diploma out of the 800 names of graduates and we were the only Muslims in the crowd. My sons and I had a discussion about these and we prayed that more Muslims will send their children to public schools so we Muslims can have a good presence and perhaps one day dominate the crowd like this and able to change the theme of these sort of ceremonies inshaAllah.
Indeed, Muslims are not well represented in the public schools. We should take a conscious effort to change this. Each one of us counts. We simply cannot ignore the place where people are getting their basic and early education if we want Islam to stay in the US of A and for our children to be the leaders.
May Allah grant us tawfiq. Ameen. Please keep us in your night prayers. Jazakallahu khairan.
And Allah knows best.
Wassalaam
