Time has shown over and over again that the communities who are more advanced in education are more powerful and advanced in other fields of life like health and socioeconomic status. Our community has come to United States recently. Like all other communities we are struggling to make a place in the society at large.

 

Value Based Institution

Statement of need:

The need for this university is that there is a moral degradation within the society of United States, and we need to establish a university that fosters a moral environment for higher learning.

The main issue seen in other universities and colleges is that there is complete lack of any training in moral values and spiritual ideas. There is no university of this kind in America or Europe which can foster moral values and spirituality along with modern education. Another issue which needs to be pointed out is that universities in USA have allowed extreme groups that profess teach and practice extremist ideas and some of our students have also adopted the same. Our cultural indoctrinations need to be balanced, and reason-based to avoid conflict and confusion in the student’s mind.

 

Ever since the migration of our community to western hemisphere we have been concerned about teaching our children our values in an open atmosphere. Several primary schools have been established all over the country and have been useful to the community. . It has been seen time and again that the children who are born here and are trained in public schools without any Islamic education are different than those who attend Sunday schools. When they go to college they change their attitudes and values  below expectations. Due to lack of accomplishments, lack of recognition and lack of cohesive value-based goals, they appear depressed or alienated and finally break their connection with community and move away to other values and goals. When asked it was found that these children go through a lot of peer pressure. As a result some of them have emotional breakdown. The parents may not be able to answer some of the basic questions about the reason behind our values.

 

Realizing the current education trends necessitate a value-based education institution at college level to cater the needs of our children. A place where higher learning should take place without much peer pressure and to do things which our children would like to do. This kind of college environment will be good not only for our community but for all other communities as well. This institution when established will be open to all without any discrimination.

 

 

Inherent Benefits

One of the side issues for our young students born here is to find soul mates to their liking. Since many of our centers keep a strict separation of sexes in their functions, there is hardly any place for the students to meet each other except in college. The atmosphere in college is quite open, interactive and pragmatic, the moral values taught at our community discourses get washed away very easily. As a result there have been many undesirable and failed marriages in our community. The parents have no choice but to go with the wishes of the children. The younger generation will be even more confused.

There have been several cases of alcohol abuse, drug abuse, suicide attempts in college and many cases of severe depression in our small community.

Increasing large incidences of divorce in our community is another issue. While divorce has become a norm in western society, in our culture, it is a stigma. The parents suffer the consequences of such inter-racial/intercultural marriages and divorces. There is an urgent need to have some training in pre-marriage counseling to prevent such dysfunctional trends.  Nothing can change unless we ourselves change our own lot. (God does not change the condition of any community unless the community changes itself). With these ideas in mind an establishment of an institution in USA is being done. Fatima University is a registered nonprofit corporation in state of New Jersey
Sunday Schools

Considering the need for educating our culture and traditions to our younger generation, several communities have established Sunday schools. These schools have proven a success and those students who were educated in Sunday schools were easily adjusted in college and had less problems in family life.

 

Aligarh University

On similar ideas an institution was established in Aligarh, India. The aim was to give modern education to the community with the help of some well-wishers in the British government. Sir Syed established this great Anglo-oriental college which later on became a university. The services provided by this University  are widely known.

Establishment of a university is not a simple task, and cannot be accomplished by any single individual. In the United States the rules and regulations are strict, the financial burden is enormous and prohibitive, however, without a champion to initiate no progress can be made in this direction.

 

Vision

We have a vision to establish a university with several colleges on the campus, to address diversified disciplines. A full independent residential campus to support approximately 15,000 to 20,000 student community is needed.  For the full fledged institution we envision the following colleges to be established in an incremental manner.

• An institution for comparative study of all religions.

• A college of physician assistants and a college of nursing and a medical college.

• A liberal arts college for 4 years, with pre-engineering, pre-law and pre-medical courses, with majors in mass communication, journalism, computer sciences, etc.

• A college of law

• A business college

• An engineering college

• A college of mass communication

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sincerely

Madad Ali, M.D

President Board of Trustees