Crafting 'Green' Projects With Huddersfield Eco-Mosque's Awesome Students

I'd like to introduce you to my little eco-Muslim students. For our last eco-Islam lesson we upcycled loads of crafty materials with the help of a local business and bound our own workbooks. This is what they did. 

Teaching runs in my family, it's genetic. My parents are teachers, my sister is a mosque teacher, my grandparents like their parents only attended mosque school but we're all in the line of educational war. It's a battle you see. You can't just go into a madrassah shooting out ideas and do things 'your way'. You have to follow protocol, have the ability, skills, resources, social support. And above all patience. Without patience, well, nothing grows. I'm like Yoda now. 'Use the furqan, Luke-um, Layla....'

I'm telling you, only with this apparel of 'zuhd' and 'sabr' was I able to lead my lovely class into their first 'upcycling' craft project. Here's what went on.

UNITE IN COLOUR: They're an eccentric bunch of girls. The youngest just hit 12 and our older students are in the final year of GCSE's (high school). I forgot what it was like to be a teen; when life's problems are the end of the universe and your parents don't 'get' you and your hijab is the wrong colour and so on with the mental dramas. Ma-sha-Allah, amidst the counselling and curiosity, we all unite in our love for making things beautiful (ehsaan).

ASK LOCAL BUSINESSES: A local business and the office where I work at was scrapping their old invoice books and letterheads. I asked if they'd donate them for the mosque eco-Islam lessons and they agreed. We cut these papers into the same size and decorated the front as the cover.

I brought in some of my crafting tools for the girls: papers, stickers, ribbons, leaf shaped hole punches, ribbons - and ma-sha-Allah, they made some really sparkly books that looked new. Look, she's well happy with hers.

It got messy midway but organisation is my middle-name so we recruited cleaner-upper-helpers and handed out waste baskets to keep things visible.

MOSQUE TIPS: Towards the end of the class one of the older students remarked, 'This was the best mosque lesson'. I asked why. She said, 'we like doing things, we should make something every day'. I totally agree. I don't recall ever thinking that going to the mosque was 'the best', granted, it was special, I loved the spirituality  But if I told you we scrabbooked in a holy madrassah lesson you might think I was joking. More mosques should definitely start implementing student-led ideas LIKE this recycling project.

Ta-da! The students were really pleased with their finished workbooks. They're so colourful, alhamdulillah. I can't wait to help them fill these up with dried leaves, more projects, drawings, sketches and Allah knows what else.

Peace + eco-jihad.
Zaufishan, The Eco Muslim