London Islamic School

2 days ago I went to the London Islamic School.

An Islamic school. In London. What about that.

It was part of this outreach programme that the University of London Islamic Society (ULUIsoc) was planning. You know, where you go out to schools, tell them how great university life is, and let them figure out for themselves how stressful it is later.

It was more or less like my 'sekolah agama' back home. downstairs there's a mosque, and upstairs was the school. Except my school was the other way round. I think that its more sensible to build the mosque downstairs. How do they expect the old uncles to climb stairs for each prayer time??

So my friend told me a bit about British schools.

1)There were private schools for jolly rich chaps
2)State schools funded by the jolly government
3)Islamic schools for jolly Muslims

But then Islamic schools were usually paid for by the students themselves, because there's this problem of shortage of government funds. Come to think of it, if i were Gordon Brown i wouldn't want to be funding schools harboring future 'terrorists', would i? that's a whole load of bull.

On another note, there's this professor in the LSE who wrote in Psychology Today that 'half of Muslims are terrorists or are active supporters of terrorism'. Even bigger bull.

But on the whole, the school looked like it was in good shape. There was a computer lab complete with projectors and everything. Even my school wasn't that up-to-date, and we call ourselves an Islamic country -.- The kids wore 'kopiah' and white robes and one of the teachers looked like Haji Zul, an uncle in Kota Damansara. Ahhhh, how i miss home :'(

So then we were supposed to do a presentation. Before i said anything i asked them 'Can you guess where im from'? Cause i was the only, how shall i say it, 'stranger' in the outreach group.

Then they said

"China"
"Taiwan"
"India"

-.-

Okay, the first two are acceptable. India? Not that im degrading Indians, they are an honourable, warm people, but that's so far away from where i come from.

Then an African-descent boy raised his hand and said 'you come from Malaysia'. Good boy. You'll do well in the future, and you look a bit like Obama, which is currently a good thing. :)

Then we went on to do a workshop, like asking them what they want to do etc. Most of them had no idea, much like me when i was their age. Oh wait, when i was in secondary school i changed ambitions every few weeks. Brain surgeon this week. Pediatrician next week. Lawyer next next week. Thankfully it didn't get any worse than Lawyer.

At the end me and Zaid (he's doing Econs at UCL, and he's from South Africa. He went to Egypt last year and said that he spent more time with Malaysians than Arabs. Malaysia Boleh!!) gave a peptalk which sounded like this:

"In the end yeah, you're not innit for the money. You've got to do something fulfilling and in the end, you need to know that you're doing this to please Allah. What would you think of an engineer who memorises the Quran?"

Boy: "That's sick"

"exactly. And that's the type of person you're aiming to be. Safe" :)