Survey Says...Top 10 Challenges Facing Muslim Youth: Hamzah Moin

#10 Leadership is corrupted/lacking

-Not always the right people taking leadership in mosques and Islamic centre's who represent the youth well.
-Micro Level: in muslim country
-Micro Level: in our mosques
-Lack of Leadership
-People have forgotten how to follow & lead

#9 Extermism

-Either extremely on the conservative side or extremely on the liberal side.
-Extremely conservative side. Neglects tradition to conform with "bedouin" society
-Extremely libearl side. Neglects tradition to conform with modern society
-The spotlight is on the 2 extremes of Islam.

#8 Alienation of Muslim Youth

-The elders in the community aren't in touch with the needs of the Muslim Youth and their mentality and many times they find themselves alienated and not understood.
-At the same time, a community that doesn't listen to the elders is destined to failure.

#7 Lack of Faith

-Questions to ask regarding the upbringing of the youth:
-Were they brought up by good parents with proper Islamic teaching?
-How was the community they lived in?

#6 Gender Relations

-2 categories:
- General day to day interaction such as people you might have to work with at school, the workplace etc
-and the other category where you simply cross the line. Ex: msn.

#5 Westernization

-How far do you go with acting as a "Canadian"?

#4 Too Cultural...and Racism

-The division among the Muslims due to culture such as the arab mosque or the desi mosque.
-Internal clashing

#3 Bad Image

-Islam has a bad Public Relations campaign. Whenever visiting places on the internet such as the forums you find avatars of a Quran with an AK-47 beside it. What image of Islam does this give a non-muslim who might visit that specific forum?

-The Danish cartoons: The actions of the 100,000 or so muslims out of the 1.2 billion who reacted with burning flags and embassies reflected negatively on the muslims especially when we speak about Muslims not being violent. One community turned the lemons into lemonade by using it as a chance to clear up misconceptions about Rasuallah (saw). They created an outdoor bazaar like structure and each section showed and explained an aspect of Rasuallah's life.

#2 Lack of Knowledge

-If this problem is worked on thene verything else falls into place. -Act upon it so people see that this knowledge truly DOES work.

#1 Unity

-Muslims need to differentiate unity and uniformity (being the same)
-Imagine Islam as a tree. The Quran and Sunnah are the roots. The branches grow in different direction, they're never the same (symbolizing difference of opinion) If people keep cutting out the branches, in the end we'll all have only a dying stump. We need to be able to foster differences of opinion.