There is a pressing need for us Surti Sunni Vohras to develop work with our young men and women to get them closer to their religion and become aware and familiar with their social, economic and political surroundings. Whilst Madaris, Dar-ul- Ulooms, Imams of masajid, and the Tabligh Jamaat do a lot of work towards educating our people and get them to practice their religion which must be appreciated by all Muslims their role remains confined to those they teach, those they serve as imams and those who participate in Tabligh work. Whilst the Madaris, Dar-ul-Ulooms, Imams of masajid and the Tabligh Jamaat provide their respective services to both young as well as old we feel there are those who are distanced from the educating and awareness raising processes going on in their surroundings. We feel, there is a great need to bring such persons, both males as well as females closer to the expectations of our religion, closer to expectations of our endogamous group, closer to the social, economic and political happenings around us and help our people become aware of the good as well as bad happening around all of us.

               We feel there is need to take steps to initiate learning opportunities for our young persons to help them differentiate as Muslims between what they ought to do and what they should avoid. The concerns we have are not new. Nearly everyone from our endogamous group have similar concerns about our young persons. Having concerns and lamenting about these concerns is good but our lamenting will not help our young persons nor allow us to get rid of our concerns. What is needed, we feel is an educating/training programme to allow our young persons to understand better their religion and the workings of the world. We feel most of our young persons, do not get opportunities or exposure to an environment where they can learn and try to understand the importance of their religion and the need to keep to it in the face of worldly attractions and the challenges brought about by the social and economic changes taking place around them.
We Surti Sunni Vohras have spent and continue to spend large sums of money on building and running madaris, dar-ul-ulooms, primary and secondary education providing schools and a technical education providing college and hostel stop rovide accommodation for our students. We feel as an endogamous group we have failed and continue to fail to reap the benefits of the money we as an endogamous group have spent and continue to spend to help educate our young persons. We all know our progress in acquiring secular education has been poor and continues to be poor. The same is true for our dar-ul-ulooms. The number of Vohras seeking religious education has over recent years decreased substantially.

               We hope, and our readers will agree that whilst we as an endogamous group must continue to spend money to help educate our young persons, we also need to think about taking positive steps towards getting our young persons to attendin formal education/awareness providing sessions. These sessions could if properly planned and run provide our young persons to learn to use both the religious as well as the secular they have acquired to live as practising Muslims. To help our young persons, there is need we feel to initiate some form of awareness raising/education providing work among our young people. We feel, and our readers will agree that whilst our dar-ul-ulooms try hard to educate our young men and women most of these only use their education when they teach others in dar-ul-ulooms or in village based madaris. Their work remains confined to those they are employed to teach. Dar-ululoom teachers concentrate their efforts on passing on their education to the students they teach and only deliver bayaans when invited to do so. The work of imams of masajid is to lead the daily prayers. Besides this they deliver a short bayan on Fridays. Once again, their contact remains confined to those who attend the daily and Jumua prayers at the masajid.

               We all know from our experiences as well from what we hear from others that many of our young men and women are engaged in activities which go against the expectations of our religious beliefs and many live their lives divorced from their endogamous group and from their social, economic and political surroundings. Many among our Vohras feel that more bayaans by our learned persons will help our people to move closer to our religion. We feel simply getting more young men and women to attend bayaans will not help them. They will, if encouraged to do so, attend bayaans but will not take away much from what they hear and use the information to try and correct themselves or put into practice what is brought to their notice. What is needed we feel, is more intensive work and more one-toone work with our young persons. This will, the ALMIGHTY ALLAH willing we feel will help our young people to understand better the expectations of our religion as well as learn about economic, social and political issues and learn to use these as Muslims.

               Our indifference towards making efforts to assist our people will simply make more of our young persons fall victims to corrupting ideas and practices. We feel there is no need for us to spell out in detail what our young persons are falling for as most of our readers will be aware of these. What is needed is help from the ALMIGHTY ALLAH and well thought out methods to approach our young persons and get them to move cl ose r to o u r reli gi on w ith bet ter understanding of all the outside forces which distract and influence them.

               We feel we Vohras need to make efforts to educate and train a group of our people to engage in doing the sort of work that will help our young persons to leave those un-Islamic and anti-social habits they have fallen for and/ or become victims of. We feel we need both young men as well as women with religious education but also with some levels of secular education attainments and with good general knowledge and very good communication skills with a sincere feeling and a lot of empathy towards helping our young men and women to move away from their anti religious and anti -social activities and move towards the expectations of our religion.

               We all know that among our Vohras there are no institutions or welfare/social work doing bodies that could help pilot this type of work with our young persons. In the absence of such bodies that could be identified for the proposed work we feel some of our dar-ul-ulooms could take it upon themselves to provide a base and help train staff who could go out to our Vohra villages, establish working relationships with both the older and younger villagers, try and identify the problems they have, and engage in work to help our young persons to move away from the anti-religious and anti-social behaviours and practices they may have fallen for and encourage those they work with to hold onto the expectations of our beautiful religion.

               We feel our Vohra Education Society could find the resources for employing the Outreach Workers as the proposed work is educational work and will help our young Vohras, both males as well as females to learn, use their learning and with the help of the ALMIGHTY ALLAH use their abilities as Muslims and as Muslim citizens of our
country. (10 August 2018 )