Objective 2: Expand the Five Qualities – Tarbiya MindMap

May 21, 2010 at 12:50 am Wael Hamza Leave a comment

The sharing of MAS Tarbiya objectives for the year continues with this post. Below is our second objective:

Objective 1: To increase the contribution of MAS members to the tarbiya effort and resources – Contribute over Consume

Objective 2: To further describe the five major tarbiya qualities

What is this objective?

When we started the term, our team came up with five major tarbiya qualities that we would like to achieve in MAS members individually and in MAS as a society to be able to carry out MAS mission. The qualities can actually be used to describe any American Muslim who wants to engage in a mission like ours. The five overarching qualities are:

• God-conscious: the personal characteristics of a righteous individual, whether this individual is active or not
• Movement oriented: the set of qualities that an individual must embrace to be active, work for the sake of Allah, and expand righteousness beyond oneself
• Team players: the qualities of people who work in a team and the dynamics of the team environment
• Exemplary citizens: the characteristics that specifically are directed towards serving our country
• Bearers of a message: comprises the set of qualities needed to accomplish the second half of our mission statement, “… and to convey Islam with utmost clarity.”

We introduced the five qualities with some examples of the sub-qualities each would entail. However, we believe that there needs to be some effort in expressing these five qualities in more detailed, unambiguous fashion, hence this objective of ours in 2010 and beyond.

Why this objective?

There are many reasons for taking on this objective. Some of those reasons are:

• MAS members need to know some of the detailed qualities they should aspire to achieve in their personal development.
• When developing tarbiya curricula for small groups and large groups, it is important that this curricula has clear, foundational, and detailed objectives.
• All tarbiya projects, such as camps and programs, will be aiming at one or more of these detailed qualities.
• This project can serve as an organizational schema for the many resources MAS members collect and develop. In addition to tagging and categorizing those resources based on areas of knowledge such as fiqh, foundation of fiqh, or seerah, we will be able to tag them using the five tarbiya qualities, which will be extremely helpful in leveraging resources for personal and team development.

How is it related to the MAS leadership’s strategy?

Early in the term, the MAS BoT came up with a list of strategic goals. One of these strategic goals was to “reshape tarbiya in the American context.” This second objective of expanding the five qualities is an attempt to describe MAS members and MAS in general as a society of American Muslims working to achieve MAS’ mission.

How is the national team working toward this objective?

The national team is working on this objective through a very unique, strategic project called the Tarbiya MindMap. We will be running a series of focused meetings on this project  in the next few months. If you are interested in participating, please contact us. We will share much more about this project later and we will request everyone’s participation in it.

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