Arts and Culture

Allocating Our Resources Effectively

Shadaab Rahemtulla , Canada, Thursday 31 January 2008

It has become quite common to hear about the building of a new mosque in BC. Today, if you look at the ‘Mosque Listings’ section of any Muslim newspaper, you can clearly see that we have almost twenty-five mosques and musallahs (prayer halls) in BC alone. Moreover, there are even more mosques under construction. It is very important that mosques be established throughout our province so as to better serve the Muslim community. Not only are they a place of religious worship and learning, but also form the backbone of any healthy Muslim society. We have to realize, however, that our resources – specifically, our financial resources – are scarce. Hence, we must allocate our resources as effectively and efficiently as possible in order for the community to maximize its benefit. In other words, I am proposing the following question: Is building more mosques allocating our resources in an effective manner, or should we be redirecting our financial resources towards other venues?

This is a compelling question; it should not be dismissed.

Instead of directing money to new mosques, we should be funneling our resources into other activities. For example, we should be working on renovating our current mosques, a significant number of which are falling apart and are in horrible conditions. Funds should be used to ensure that our mosques remain as clean and sanitary as possible, especially the washrooms and wudhu (ablution) areas. Cleanliness is essential not only because the mosque is a place of worship, but also because it is a place where non-Muslims can learn more about Islam. What type of impression does a non-Muslim get when they walk into a mosque that is full of dust and stinks of food? Mosques are also centers of learning. Hence, resources need to be allocated towards library-expansion projects and creating video/DVD libraries. Moreover, the vast majority of mosques are in desperate need of interactive audio-visual equipment that would allow sisters to feel included in programs by enabling them to actually hear and see the Imam clearly, as well as to ask questions and take a leading role in discussions.

Most importantly, our financial resources should be directed towards the future of our Muslim community, not just the present. In other words, we need to funnel more of our collective wealth into improving our current Muslim schools, as well as providing external funding for youth organizations. Currently, our Muslim schools – although staffed by a dedicated and hard-working cadre of brothers and sisters – are in a deplorable state. These schools need larger and more well-equipped gyms to allow more interschool-related recreational programs, more extensive libraries that are staffed by a trained librarian (not a volunteer), larger and more up-to-date computer labs, and more extensive bus services that would allow regional athletic teams to form that could actually visit other schools (private and public) on a regular basis to engage in seasonal competition. $1.5 million – the same amount of money that it would cost to build a new mosque – would be enough to upgrade our Muslim schools and put them on par with the average BC public school.
We should also be reallocating our resources towards youth organizations, such through providing external funding for Muslim Students’ Associations (MSA’s), youth centers, and mosque-based youth organizations. It is the younger Muslims in these organizations that will become the future leaders of the greater community. Hence, this is where we need to be investing a significant amount of our attention and effort. MSA’s – even if they are large enough to meet the requirements for a university-funded student club – receive inadequate funding from the university. A community-funded resource pool of only $25,000 would be enough for MSA’s at SFU and UBC to engage in more large-scale da’wah (outreach) programs, regional youth conferences, and community-building events for the next five years.

I am not saying that building mosques are not important. Rather, my argument is that instead of increasing the quantity of our religious institutions, we should be allocating our financial resources so as to ensure maximum quality. Moreover, the point here is that we do not need more money to achieve these objectives. Rather, we simply need to engage in more long-term and strategic central planning, and in doing so, to allocate and re-allocate our financial resources in a more effective and efficient manner.


* Shadaab H. Rahemtulla is a graduate student in history at Simon Fraser University (Burnaby, British Columbia). Email Shadaab with your thoughts and comments at srahemtu@sfu.ca