AN Arabic institute in Lagos State, RightPath Arabic School, has graduated 15 Qur’an memorisers.
The graduation ceremony for the fourth and fifth adult sets comprising professionals like chartered accountants, educationists, pharmacists, engineers and lawyers was held on Sunday at the new Lagos State Secretariat central mosque multipurpose hall in Ikeja.
The director of the institute, Ustadh Yunus Al-Imam, disclosed that the journey towards achieving the feat was full of challenges, including dearth of Arabic and Qur’an teachers.
Al-Imam, therefore, advised the graduands to bridge the gap by taking up Qur’an teaching job.
He said: “As you are graduating today, I want you to consider taking up teaching of the Qur’an. I want you to see teaching the glorious Qur’an as one of your responsibilities. Apart from the scarcity of this class of professionals, the amount that is expended on the payment of salary for Arabic and Islamic teachers is huge and this is affecting other developmental projects of the institution.
“For instance, we pay over 20 teachers monthly at RightPath Arabic School whereas our monthly income is limited because some of the students don’t pay tuition fee.
“Many students are unable to cope with school fees because of the poor financial status of their parents. They owe backlog of tuition fees, yet we cannot send them home.
“I am saying this for the graduands to appreciate the teachers that sacrifice their time and resources for them to be able to acquire the knowledge we are celebrating today.
“So, I am tasking you all to ponder what you can do to assist those coming behind you. We train professionals at RightPath Arabic School. Many of today’s graduates are thoroughbred professionals. They are not ordinary students and this is why our focus is on how our students will be useful to the larger society.
“We are more concerned about how they will be useful for the propagation of Al-Islam and daw’ah.”
Al-Imam added: “The school, having observed the challenges of the society in general and the Muslim Ummah in particular, is trying to provide solutions to some of the unidentified challenges.
“One of the challenges is ignorance. We have trained and tutored our students on how to be peaceful and pious Muslims in the society and serve Allah with knowledge and proofs.
“We have also established RightPath Academy to serve the purpose of complete memorisation of Qur’an, proper grooming and training about Islam, attainment of Ihdaadiy and Thanaawiy certificates in two years.
“We also observed the challenges of educating, training and bringing up pious and obedient children, especially in this kind of society with mixed culture, [low] level of Islamic understanding and the deception of enemies of Islam.
“And more importantly to balance the education received by the children from home and our modrasah, we initiated a programme tagged a ter’biyah class where topics relating to parenting skills, children upbringing and Islamic education according to the way of the Prophet, his companions and past pious predecessors were able to train theirs are taught.”
The convocation lecture entitled ‘Importance of Knowledge and Means and of Attaining Allah’s Blessings’ was delivered by a popular scholar, Sheikh Abdul-Majeed Imran Eleha.
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