Al-Isharah and the First Umrah for Deaf Muslims

I came across Al-Isharah through their leaflet for a fund-raising event and was positively inspired by the work they are doing. Al-Isharah works with the Muslim Deaf community to make resources accessible and cultivate independent thinking. The organisation aims to break down complex Islamic concepts and Quranic Arabic into a format that engages and works with Deaf educational needs.

Thier work has successfully engaged deaf children often isolated due to cultural taboos around deafness and disability. They state that their aims are to:

• To make Islamic education accessible and possible for the Deaf community.
• To make previously inaccessible Islamic texts (Quran and Hadiths) catered to the language structures used by the Deaf community Teaching basic life skills through the use of Islamic topics to encourage the building of confidence and self-esteem.
• To actively raise Deaf awareness amongst families and the wider community and ultimately the emotional and Islamic responsibilities they have towards Deaf Muslims.

The charity provides Islamic classes for deaf children and adults, Islamic British Sign Language vocabulary workshops, recitation classes for hard of hearing children and British Sign Language (BSL) interpreters for Friday khutbahs (sermons) at the London Muslim Centre with the aim that the model used will be easily replicable in other Mosques who also wish to set up such a service up for their local Deaf community.

One of their current projects is to raise funds for the first ever Umrah (pilgrimage) for deaf Muslims with the intention of raising enough money to take 32 deaf Muslim men and women in March 2010. You can support their wonderful work by going here