How to Attract Youth to Islamic Centers

[muminah]

Attracting the youth to masajids and local muslim centre can't be achieved if people model the centre based on indo pak centre. In the west as well as elswhere, people need to think outside the box. You are always going to find some unyeilding individual reliving his village life by putting various restriction. Centre has to run youth club by youth worker and approacble local Alims. There has to be a place where youth can gather where the alims can liase informally. Jamath Khana is not the place as often some elders sits there and pass judgement about the youth and back bite others. Also introduce scouts and camping trips etc. All this are simply avenue to facilitate in reaching the main objective - tarbiyah. Youth will visit a place knowing they are made to feel wellcome and their underlying problems are be listend to and solution is provided with wisdom. Same should be provided seperately for sisters unless one only believes that only the boys are susseptable to bad influence and girls are not... Each age group's need to be addressed. Once the link is established, they will always refer back to the imams and the centre.

. They will definetly keep the link and come back. I have really seen the benefits. And good point about sisters too. I think there is a much greater difficulty in trying to run this kind of a set-up in areas where there are alot of indo-paks, where you have the older traditional folk completely opposed to anything that their seniors didn't do, which is really a shame.

[daywalk3r]

Mashallah good Ramdhan Itikaaf/Retreat taking place at Upton Lane Masjid. I only could spare time to go for a brief moment but seemed engaging/interactive i.e not your mundane type of event.

[AbdullahbinAbdullah]

I have a honest question:

Is there anything in Islamic history/heritage where the scholars and leaders of Islam "adapted" themselves to the people in order to fill the masajid?

If one simply takes the scholars to represent Islam (scholars=Islam), then how can somebody claim that the scholars (i.e. Islam) has to be adapted in order to fill the masajid?

Isn't this problem with the "lost youth" a specific problem in areas where kufr and batil is wide-spread? So what about the thought that adapting the scholars to the whims of the youth just means to adapt Islam to the kufr and batil ideologies who are implanted in the youth and cause their disinteresst in religious topics, lectures etc.???

Furthermore what does "adapt" really imply?
Does it mean we play soccer with youth (with awrah exposed as everyone is in shorts above knees) and nobody even the so called "scholars" do NOT speak up against it?
Does it mean we shave the beard in order not to look as "terrorist" and frighten them?
Does it mean we hide away certain Islamic topics who might not please the audience? (e.g. Ruling about music, hudud for stealing/apostacy etc.)
Does it mean we even lie to the audience? (e.g. saying music with instruments is halal)

I'm honestly waiting for serious answers insha Allah.

Assalam-u-Alaikum,

As long as they are not going against Islam, why not? Actually it might be recommended, specially: using language that is common with the youth, using sports e.t.c. to bring them in, being light hearted ( many examples of this from the Salaf) and bring their hearts close to the deen.

Also, how was the youth 'lost'? it was the parents responsibility, and in general the Muslim society's responsibility, which includes the Scholars. If the scholars are not the leaders who give us vision and practical steps to solve our problems, then who will? Also, I think this is not a specific problem to the lands "kufr" and "Batil".

Isn't the general/base ruling of everything (except Ibadat; where the scholars of Usul differ) Mubah? (A scholar can confirm this: I learned that a Mubah with the right intention the raise it to Mustahab, so a lot of the youth activities could actually be Mustahab (recommended)?)