| The notes shown
below may seem so minimal as to be virtually unintelligible, and in
fact they are a lot smarter than the originals, which are one page
of a pretty rough scrawl. As such, I would normally have discarded
them rather than put them on the site, but there was something
special about the occasion on which I gave this talk which I think
is worth repeating, so the notes for the talk are really just there
to give me an excuse to write this longer than usual foreword. I had
been asked to visit a class of late teenagers in Bearsden Academy
and give an Islamic perspective on several topics, the morality of
which the pupils had been exploring in their Religious & Moral
Education classes. So the class had divided itself up into groups according to
their interests, and I was going from one to the other giving a
quick talk (perhaps 15 or 20 mins) about each subject. I can't
remember them all, but I know one was 'capital punishment', and I
think one was 'war', but the memorable one was this brief talk on
abortion. As far as I remember it was the first group that I spoke
to, and it was certainly the largest of the groups, probably a
couple of dozen, with a large preponderance of girls - I imagine for
the obvious reason that it was a very pertinent issue to girls of
that age, to which I am sure they had all given much previous
thought outside the class as well as in.
So they all seemed very interested to see what I had to say, and jostled around freely in a fairly relaxed manner in the informal atmosphere of the occasion. All except a handful of them that is, who were quite clearly not eager to hear what I had to say at all. At the back of the group, obviously doing their best to become invisible, were some girls with scarves covering their hair and long skirts and thick tights covering their legs, the 'muslim' version of the school uniform. Clearly they were horrified at the intrusion of this unknown 'molvi' into their previously sheltered school surroundings, and equally clearly they were terminally embarrassed in anticipation of the inevitable humiliation his insane rantings would bring down upon their heads, and the mockery from fellow pupils that would follow this appallingly unwelcome happening. OK, so in fact they didn't say any of this themselves, but I have taken considerable poetic license in my interpretation of what they were feeling, but I like to think that it is justified by the palpable fear and embarrassment that they exuded. And then a magical thing happened. My talk was really just a precis of the book 'Human Development - As Revealed in the Holy Quran and Hadith' by Dr. Mohammed Ali Albar (Saudi Publishing & Distributing House), which I had with me so as to be able to make points using the illustrations. Now the group in general seemed fascinated to hear the extraordinary precision of the language of the Qur'an and the uncanny accuracy of its descriptions of the stages of foetal development in terms of current knowledge. Not only that, but the traditional Islamic moral positions were exactly what most of them would have wanted to hear, reinforcing opinions that they might have formed for themselves on purely personal understandings and preferences. Not only that, but the Qur'anic perspective gave them information about stages of the development of the foetus (such as the fingerprint like whorl that appears on the forehead at about 3 months, the lanugo) that could not only surprise them with new information, but fill them with awe and wonder. But the magical thing was not
my talking, but the effect on those poor suffering muslim girls. For
as their friends began to show excitement and interest, the muslim
girls demeanor slowly changed, and over the course of the twenty
minutes, somehow they managed to discreetly move from the back of
the group to the front row. And from their eyes being downcast in
embarrassment they became bright and questioning, and from their
tongue tied silence they became the clear leaders of the group,
fielding questions and interrupting their friends and generally
controlling the conversation. And when I had finished my allotted
time, they immediately carried off the book I had been using to show
to their teacher and share their newly acquired knowledge and
explain how such an amazing light had been shone upon the subject
they were studying by THEIR Islam. Twenty minutes was all it took
for those girls. So if it is that easy, why does it seem to be so
hard for the muslims to do it for the rest of their children?
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