Our Lajna Meetings

Fateha Khawaja, Tilford

Living in such a fast-paced, material world, it can feel difficult at times to actively enhance our spiritual knowledge. Sometimes we get so caught up in things like school-work, or extracurricular activities, we struggle to leave some time in our days for reading a religious book or an interesting article that discusses the history of Islam. Having regular Lajna meetings allows us to have scheduled time where we can purely focus on enriching our religious and spiritual knowledge. It is something that I have become increasingly grateful for as I have got older and my schedule gets busier as these meetings feel like a breather away from the rest of the world where I can sit, learn, and enjoy spending time with my local faith community.

Attending our weekly local Lajna meetings quickly became one of my favourite weekend activities as a child. I used to love getting ready to go to my Nasirat classes (religious education classes held for girls from the ages of 7 to 15) knowing I would always go and learn something new or revise something important in the company of my friends. We used to test each other after memorising verses of the Qur’an, Quranic prayers or Ahadiths (sayings of the Holy Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) to see who had learned the most over the week. My favourite part of these weekly meetings would be when our local branch president would call all the young girls back into the main meeting and include us in whatever activity the Lajna were doing, whether it be a quiz or a presentation. Not only would it enhance our spiritual knowledge, but it also instilled a sense of belonging and sisterhood in my heart and it is these seeds that are planted when we are young that grow into the love we have for Lajna as we get older. Reciting the Lajna pledge all together standing shoulder by shoulder and promising to ‘sacrifice my life, property, time and children for the cause of faith and nation’ as part of our pledge at the start of every meeting just emphasises the main focus of why we are here and how important being part of our Community and being part Lajna Ima’illah is.

When becoming part of Lajna myself after I turned 15, I found myself getting more and more involved in the meetings and taking a more active role, whether it was opening the meeting with the recitation of the Holy Qur’an or doing a presentation about something within our syllabus. Not only did I find myself learning more and gaining more religious and general knowledge by researching for different presentations, I gained so many skills by involving myself within the meetings, skills which I did not feel I was able to develop in school. I felt myself become increasingly confident with public speaking, learning how to make presentations and using  different software. All of these are skills I can transfer to my daily life to help make me a better and more rounded person.

However, the most valuable thing I gained was feeling so ingrained within a tight knit community and I made some of my closest friends through these local Nasirat and Lajna meetings and they are people who I am still friends with. The more I got involved within my local Lajna community, the more I felt part of something bigger that spanned over the whole world with a century of of rich and bright history.