Library initiative to cover all mosques
New Delhi, Dec. 1: Every mosque in the country that has space to spare may soon have a library and a reading room.
Initiated by the Zakat Foundation of India, a Delhi based NGO, the library initiative has the support of all leading Muslim organisations, including the Jamiat Ulema, Jamaat Islami and the Milli Council.
The project has already been inaugurated in Kashmir and is scheduled to be launched in all states shortly. There are around 2 lakh mosques in the country.
Zakat foundation president Syed Zafar Mahmood said the plan was to sponsor a reading room, with a computer and books, in every mosque ready to provide space.
He said the idea of having a library in mosques was not new but simply a revival of tradition. “Mosques are supposed to be places of learning, as they were in the past. Of late, they have become synonymous with closed thinking. We want to change that perception,” he said.
The foundation has written to the heads of all mosques and to community leaders about the project. “All that the mosques will have to do is provide us some space. We will provide everything, right from providing books to Internet connection,” Mahmood said.
The library will have books for general reading as well those that are specifically religious, apart from Urdu, Hindi and English newspapers. “We want to inculcate the habit of reading among youngsters, which is lacking now,’’ he said.
Mahmood said the libraries could also double as information centres that provide data on welfare schemes for the Muslim community. If anybody was interested in having a library-cum-reading room in a mosque in his/her vicinity, all they needed to do was persuade its management and contact the foundation, he said.
The response to the library proposal had been quite encouraging, he said. “I am getting calls from as far away as Tripura and Tamil Nadu asking for details. Surely the community is changing for the better.”
The Imam Sangh, a national body of imams, sounded enthusiastic about the idea. “Mosques are usually open during the day and it would be great if the time and space can used for betterment of the community,’’ said Moulana Ilyasi of the Imam Sangh.
Source: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1101202/jsp/nation/story_13248182.jsp#
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