under|progress

Our Way of Life

Yakoub Islam: "If you want to know England, just look at the way many of us treat our most vulnerable groups – the elderly, adults with learning disabilities, runaways and children who are under local authority guardianship. The care of the two former groups have been subjected to a systematic de-professionalisation – today, most of those who care for these groups have no more than a national vocational qualification, although many have no qualifications whatsoever. As for children in care, most are likely to leave school with little or no education, and as adults, they go on to make up an astonishingly high proportion of England’s homeless. Charities such as Kids Company have to take Local Authority’s to court in order to force them to give vulnerable children somewhere to live."

I wonder how much difference a welfare structure makes to the idea of a 'social ethic'? Does the existence of such a pervasive welfare structure diminish the feeling we, as individuals, ought to do something about the vulnerable?

Muslims For Social Work

Eteraz is trying to launch Muslims For Social Work (MFSW), a voluntary organisation with a very simple objective: to do social work.

"The goal of the org[anisation] is to do social work. Too many Muslim orgs get caught up in “Muslims For Social Justice” - “Muslims for Social Change” - “Muslims For This and That Kind Of Thing We Wish Was Different Even Though We Are Whining Chumps and Whining is Better and Easier Than Doing Actions So Let Me Sit in My Suburban Home and Talk About Foreign Policy All Day.” In other words, there are not any Muslim orgs that let you get your hands down and dirty. Usually its all about ‘accomplishing’ a certain ‘policy’ or ‘agenda’ which further required a nine step ‘preparatory phase.’ So this organization will do actual work. People will get together, build houses (in conjunction with Habitat for Humanity), teach immigrant kids how to read, do puppet shows for senior citizens, pick up trash along highways, and after doing all this, eat good food."

See if you can help out.