Building a Network of Active Muslim Parents in Your Community

Nov 23, 2023

You know that feeling of hope, right?

That hope every Muslim parent wishes to witness in their kids before they pass on.

You want your child, one day, to become a God-conscious adult.

You are spending all you can on their education to ensure that they become morally upright and intellectually valuable to their community.

You pray to Allah to grant them knowledge and the wisdom to use whatever they know of Islam to benefit the Ummah.

How about memorizing the whole of the Qur’an? And lots of hadith?

That would be the greatest thing to happen to you in your lifetime, wouldn’t it?

One thing you might not be thinking about, though, is that your society is working as hard as you are to ensure that your children have the direct opposite of what you are planning for them.

Is that a curse?

Nope.

Sometimes, society works against your will unintentionally. That’s just how the world is. There are many conflicting ideological and religious agendas out there.

You have to be smart to ensure the success of your agenda. Or, don't you have an agenda for your children? If you do not, that's a shame. You are setting up your children for a massive "social shark attack".

If you don't have an agenda for your children, the social sharks will set one for them. And I bet you don't want that. That's the worst thing you can allow to happen to your kids.

In this letter, I will share with you one of the six smart ways you can achieve your parenting goals for your children in particular and the Ummah in general.

In the next 6 weeks, I will have fully treated all of them. So get your pen and paper ready. Take notes and jot down any new ideas that come to mind as you are reading this.

But first things first. This letter builds on the previous letter where we started the discussion on the first element of the Muslim Operating System: A 5-Step Framework to Succeed in Life and the Hereafter - Taking care of your life before your death.

In the letter, I mentioned that the skill you need to masterfully run and do well in leading your family is parenting. Go read it, if you've not yet, to get a fuller picture of how parenting is one of the ways you can add value to the life Allah gave you. So without further ado...

Let's get started.

Start a Muslim Community Parenting Network

You can’t take care of your children alone. If you could, you wouldn’t send them to school. Because you would be teaching them yourself.

You wouldn’t buy clothes for them. Because you would be sewing them all by yourself.

You wouldn’t buy movies for them. Because you would be producing them yourself.

The idea of a community parenting network is to bring Muslim parents in a neighborhood together for the sole purpose of raising their children together as Muslims. Doing this gets the kids to acquire rather than learn certain “Islamic” norms and etiquette effortlessly and naturally.

And by so doing, you are cementing in their collective consciousness, the bundle of messages that form the basis of the Islamic civilization.

When your child grows up among other kids who practice some Islamic etiquette, such as speaking with respect, he grows up seeing it as a standard. Not the “old school training” dad and mom are enforcing on “me”.

A Muslim community parenting network is a voluntary group of concerned Muslim parents. Their main goal is to help their children engage with their neighborhood without losing their Muslim identity.

The point is, as a Muslim parent, leveraging other parents’ time and experience is the wisest investment in time and effort for you to raise your kids.

A community parenting network gives you a great opportunity to meet with other parents for the sake of building the future of your children. It helps protect you and your children from the negative social influences of both the media and social media. And negative peer pressure, also.

This is true for some reasons...

• No matter how long you isolate your children from others for fear of being morally corrupt, one day they will grow up and live on their own. But when you raise them with other Muslim children using an empowering syllabus that goes beyond memorization and embraces strong character-building, you are raising a vanguard of a Muslim renaissance and a bastion of Muslim civilization. And that’s because you can influence their education collectively as parents in the neighborhood.

• Whatever your current parenting experience is, there’s a lot you can always learn from other parents. Creating an intentional safe place for perfecting your parenting skills allows you to become a role model for others. Nobody is perfect. True. But not learning to grow is a defect. A community parenting network is like your mastermind for raising and growing your lifelong business (your family). You learn as much as your children do.

• You can become a source of positive inspiration in the right direction for other parents. Never underestimate yourself. Everybody has that one thing they do that inspires other people. Your parenting life could serve as a life-changing experience for others who, tacitly or not, will be learning from you.

• You get to help your children select their friends by extension. A community parenting network allows parents to bring their children together. As parents make friends, their children also make new friends under the guidance of parents, a natural byproduct of community parenting.

• You get to create a shared culture and guided childhood experience for your children. Living in the same neighborhood, you know who your children are growing up with and the type of parental training—moral or otherwise—they have acquired. By guiding both their psychological and sociological environments toward a value-oriented attitude that is in line with Islamic mores, you have the opportunity to empower your children for a better future.

Community parenting is an advanced form of the extended family system. While the goal of an extended family might be to perpetuate the family line, community parenting helps shape the future of Muslim civilization by intentionally preparing and caring for the children of today.

The current structure of modern society is doing away with the possibility of the traditional extended family, which allows children to grow up in family settings where not only the parents are responsible for their upbringing.

Today, every member of the family has a nuclear family problem to take care of. Everybody has a job or is looking for a job to survive. So nobody remains in the house to take care of the younger ones. Kids are entrusted to babysitters, nannies, or worse, cartoons on TV.

And even in the nuclear family, everybody is busy with their job or education. Worse, everybody is busy with their mobile devices. And not that this is bad if used wisely, just that the priority given to devices over human relations is becoming a problem.

As a viceroy of Allah, parenting is not an accident for you. It is a responsibility you have to be consciously strategic about. So let’s talk about that.

The 4-Step Strategy for Building a Muslim Community Parenting Network

Personal connection among humans is reducing today thanks to the evolution of screens that are constantly glued to the palms of our hands.

Is this good or bad?

Well, it depends. It depends on the context and the subject that brings about the question. But what is more important in this age is a deliberate Muslim effort to protect our values and be truthful to the mission Allah handed over to us.

I mentioned in this letter how the family is the means through which you can protect, enhance, promote, and perpetuate the will of Allah on earth. I also mentioned that parenting is the skill you need to succeed at achieving those. This is where the game starts.

You need to scale that means—the family—to achieve monumental results. Part of your agenda for the future of your own children is to engineer that future. And you have to bring other parents on board. How do you do that?

Here's a 4-step framework you can borrow: CAOS. This stands for...

• Conceptualisation

• Audience

• Offer

• Sales

Conceptualization

Creating a robust parenting network begins with a clear conceptualization of your goals and values. What does your community need, and how can you provide it?

It's not just about parenting; it's about instilling values, traditions, and a sense of unity at the conscience level within the community. If you want to build a support system that resonates with your values, addresses your concerns, and ultimately leads to a stronger, more connected community that is so impressive that other parents will feel so stupid not to take part in, you need to come up with a strong Muslim Community Parenting Network concept.

Failing to define clear goals and values can lead to a parenting network that lacks direction and fails to resonate with the community.

You don't need money to start this. All you need is an attractive and meaningful concept to get people on board. You could hold focus groups or surveys to understand the specific needs and values of the kinds of parents you are targeting.

Start with Muslim parents in your neighborhood. Discuss with them and understand their challenges, fears, frustrations, and desires as Muslim parents. Use the data to refine your concept.

For example, if you are a Muslim mom, you can come up with the concept of a 'Muslim Moms Network' for your community. You can then organize a series of low-key 2-hour workshops for 5–10 other Muslim moms in your own house to identify key parenting challenges and co-create or co-ideate solutions to those problems with the workshop participants.

This is one way in which you can conceptualize your parenting network with a strong understanding of the unique values and needs of your Muslim community. You will have to package it into your theory of change, which includes the Need, the Work to be done, and the Results you are promising whoever embraces the idea.

You will eventually refine your concept over time. But your concept must always be tailored to the needs of your...

Audience

The workshops, surveys, or focus groups you conducted while developing your concept must have given you some insights about the people you are developing it for.

So you need to identify and understand the audience that will benefit from your concept.

Most modern communities are diverse, with varying cultural nuances and parenting styles. Tailoring your network to these unique needs fosters a sense of inclusivity and relevance.

Avoid the mistake of assuming a one-size-fits-all approach to addressing your Muslim community's parenting challenges. This can alienate segments of your community and limit the effectiveness of your mission.

To combat this, dwell heavily on the data you get from all workshops, focus groups, interviews, or surveys you conduct. This is how you will understand the diverse needs within your Muslim parenting community.

You can't solve all problems with your network; you can't roof the world. Decide which problems you want to address in order of priority.

Your parenting network should reflect and embrace the diversity within the Muslim community. I challenge you to get 100 households on board to adopt your social agenda for your children. Work together for 10 years. And see the children transform and the society prosper religiously.

But to achieve this, you need to turn your agenda into an irresistible...

The Offer

If you want other parents to join your community parenting network, you need to learn how to craft irresistible offers. I know this sounds like marketing. And, yes, it is.

The Qur'an says, "And whose words are better than someone who calls others to Allah, does good, and says, “I am truly one of those who submit (wholeheartedly to Allah).”?" Q: 41:33

Allah says again, "This is the natural Way of Allah. And who is better than Allah in ordaining a way? And we worship none but Him." Q: 2:138

He further says, "Say, “Would you dispute with us about Allah, while He is our Lord and your Lord? We are accountable for our deeds and you for yours. And we are devoted to Him alone." Q: 2:139

The reason I brought up these verses is: what else other than protecting, enhancing, promoting, and perpetuating the civilization Allah entrusted you with is better to market?

Crafting an irresistible offer is key to convincing other Muslim parents to be part of your Muslim parenting network, through which you want to perpetuate the Islamic value system. This is your agenda. If you can't get others to become Muslims, at least you should protect your own offspring from going astray.

So what is an offer?

It is what you promise that anyone who becomes part of your agenda will get when they embrace it.

The support system, the protection of their kids from funny sexual orientation ideas, and the provision of a sane, safe, and sound curriculum that will endear the love of Allah in them. The promise of material and spiritual success within your capacity and the rest of mind that their son will not come back one day looking like a girl or even coming close to thinking of becoming one, etc.

These could be what you offer anyone who becomes a part of the agenda—the agenda to perpetuate genuine Islam, not necessarily change others. That could be extra, though.

Note that offering generic resources or promises that don't address the unique needs of your audience can result in low acceptance of your agenda. Develop exclusive resources that directly address the identified needs of your community and may not easily be accessible anywhere.

Once you have created your offer, which only you are aware of, it's time to sell the idea to others.

Sales

As a Muslim, you are permanently in the sales department.

But, instead of selling clothes or whatnot, you are selling an idea. You are selling a way of life. So it behooves you to improve your sales skills.

Getting busy parents who barely have time for themselves or their children is a huge task. But you must do it. You must sell the notion of striving to perpetuate the Islamic civilization to other Muslim parents.

This requires a strategic approach. And if you have been following, that is exactly what the CAOS framework helps you with. To make this venture successful, you need to master sales. This is what will ensure continued growth, support, and impact in your community.

This is the skill that will help you maintain continued engagement. Neglecting the importance of ongoing engagement and communication will lead to a decline in support and participation. One sales technique you can use is to implement regular communication channels, such as newsletters or forums, to keep the community engaged and informed.

The key takeaway here is that building a sustainable Muslim parenting network involves continuous communication and engagement to convert community interest into active participation and support.

Building a Muslim community parenting network is not just about creating a space online; it's about cultivating a thriving community that uplifts and supports one another.

By conceptualizing your goals, understanding your audience, crafting a compelling offer, and strategically converting engagement into support, you're not just building a network; you're fostering a sense of unity and strength within the Muslim parenting community.

So, take the first step, understand your community, and watch as your parenting network becomes a powerful force for support and connection.

In the next letter, I'll explore the idea of parenting as a job.