Paper presented at AFMI International Conference

By S.A. Mansoor Ali, Student Counselor

 Introduction: It is a big challenge nowadays for a child to lead a balanced academic and personal life. The child definitely needs somebody to guide, interact freely and share his feelings and problems like anxiety, insecurity and frustrations. Just like you need a doctor to check your physical health and well being, a child needs a counselor for his emotional and mental well being.

 Prophet Muhammad (SAW) has said: "People are like mines". Every child has been provided with a lot of potentials and talents, which are hidden. Cognition and intelligence, feelings and emotions, conscience and will power, technical and intellectual skills, imagination and vision, values and traits etc., are some of the precious "treasures" present in every human being. Identification, purification and development of these hidden "treasures" in our students – in short human resource development - is a missing priority in schools and colleges. So it is our prime duty to make students aware of their potentials and develop them. By this process they develop self-confidence, build a strong self-esteem and become excellent and successful human beings in their individual life as well as in their career. Only qualified and committed Muslim counselors can do this well.

 Muslim parents mostly are not aware of what counseling means. Fathers are busy with their businesses and mothers are busy with their own preoccupations. They are not in a position to spend time with their children. The well to do people put their children in residential schools and thinks that their job is over! A mother of two children says: "I am a working mother of two children; the oldest, my daughter, is at university and doing well. My son, who is 17, is giving me a very hard time. My husband works abroad but he comes home for about 5 month per year. I have a few problems with my son."  

 Some parents are overprotective. A girl writes thus: "I am a young girl, 18 years of age. I say my prayers regularly and read Islamic books. My parents are over protective and they do not let me go out with my friends, who are all girls. I am also not allowed to talk to them over the phone. They feel that if I speak with them or go out with them I will become bad, but I feel that life is like a prison in this house where I am only supposed to work and get a scolding. Nobody takes me out, not even my brothers, nor am I allowed to invite my friends to my house. In such a situation I feel I am going crazy…". One girl says: "I have very strict parents who try to bring me up the way they have been brought up and I don't appreciate it at all."

Are these unique cases? Is overprotection of our Muslim teens advisable? How to keep the balance between engaging in social activities and preserving our children's Islamic identity?

Some parents are harsh upon their children. An average student in a residential school performed poorly in the examinations. He was referred for counseling as his father wrote a letter to the Principal requesting him to be very strict with his son. The student says: "I hate my father sir. He is so harsh! He is like a wild animal sir. He behaves with my mother harshly. Even in his work place he behaves in the same manner. Please don’t send me to him sir. I will try to study well sir. If a father behaves like this, how will one able to study well sir?"

 And what about teachers? They teach only subjects. They don’t have time. They are almost preoccupied with their subjects, preparing lesson plans, setting question papers and correcting the answer scripts and meeting the deadlines of finishing the portions. They too are accountable for their students’ performance and they are under stress when they face their superiors. If they are warned of their poor performance, they in turn show their anger upon the students and they turn to corporal punishments. This aggravates the students’ problems. Inexperienced teachers mishandle situations. Most of them don’t know how to deal with adolescent students.

 Psychological counseling - the need of the hour: When the students face a lot of problems like - stress, depression, fear, confusion about career, impulsive behavior, influence by modern ways of life, poor concentration in studies, emotional turbulence, mood swings, low self esteem, lack of goal in life; when parents and teachers are not competent enough to solve these problems – it is high time that we should seriously embark upon bringing in an effective counseling system in every Muslim school and colleges. That is why we say that psychological counseling is the need of the hour!

 Academic Counseling: Nearly 75% of Muslim students are below average students. As they are not aware of the importance of education, as they do not know what to do after education, these students lack motivation. Only a competent counselor can motivate such students in a better way. Parents and teachers do a simple but really a grave mistake of comparing these poor students with other bright students and humiliate them. The teachers discourage them. They are not taught how to face failures. Students become emotional and this reduces their self esteem. During such situations some run away from families, some even go to the extreme step of committing suicide. And there are of course bright students. They lack competitive spirit. They are satisfied with 70 – 80%. They are capable of becoming toppers in their subjects. But they are lazy. They do not want to work hard. They waste their valuable time in useless things like watching movies, cricket etc., and TV is the worst distraction. They chat with their friends a lot. They do not know how to manage their time effectively. They are not aware of how to organize their memory. Again here comes the need for counseling these students too.

 Need for Islamic counseling: Professional counselors who do not know our culture and ways of life cannot solve our students’ problems. Adolescent problems like having relations with the opposite sex and sex related problems like masturbation, homo tendencies etc., can be addressed only by a Muslim counselor. "I am an 18 year old boy in love with five girls from my class. I have to meet them everyday. Now I am bored with juggling my time with all five" writes one Omar Farooq! Another one Imran writes " I am a 17 year old boy in love with a girl who is studying in the ninth standard. I’ve been in love with her for the past three years. Though she parties and dances with me……." Do you think a non-Muslim counselor will be able to guide such misguided youth of our community?

Our students face identity crisis. Our students are looked upon with doubts, with contempt, with humiliation etc., They have not acquired proper knowledge about Islam and Islamic way of life. They do not know our history and our contribution to humanity in the fields of knowledge and civilization. Islam is not presented to the younger generation as the way it would have been. Rather Islam is presented to them as a bundle of strict rules and regulations. The excellent faith system, the beautiful worshipping model, sterling values, magnanimous approach to human relations, admirable discipline, the importance given to thinking and knowledge etc., are not exposed to our youth in a proper manner. And they lack contemporary role models for them to follow! Who can do this extra-ordinary job of convincing the younger generation about Islam and its relevance today? Only committed Muslim Counselors who have a thorough knowledge about both Islam and psychology can do this well.

 Counseling in colleges: We find college students fall under two categories. One group of students comes from the rural sides and the other from the urban. Mostly students coming from rural areas do not possess necessary knowledge about what career they can choose for themselves according to their interests and innate talents. Only parents choose for their children. The performance of such students is very low and later they blame their parents and parents regret. Identifying individual talents and developing self confidence in them will make them choose what is best for them.

And students from the urban areas have lot of tension and pressure due to which they are not able to regulate their feelings and emotions during their college studies. They make a lot of mistakes in their personal life that hinder their success. Students turn violent very quickly and they want freedom without responsibility. They do not have proper role models. Emotional competencies like awareness of one’s feelings, self-management, empathy and social skills have to be nurtured in the students. Only effective counselors who have a thorough understanding in psychology can do this. Also human values like honesty, kindness, preference, generosity, gentleness, justice, etc., have to be imbibed in them.

Major Areas of Counseling :

1. Self Esteem Development: Students are endowed with a lot of hidden talents and potentials. Identification and development of these human resources is very much essential for students so that they effectively lead their life. Awareness about – the physical, psychological and intellectual resources – is to be made. Individual attention should be paid by the counselor. We find many students having very low self-esteem and this lowers their performance. They lack motivation and self-confidence. Inferiority complex makes them introverts. A self-esteem development is a must for them for their academic as well as other achievements. This is very useful for the students of 10th and 12th who face the public examinations.

2. Emotional Intelligence: Students have lot of tension and pressure due to which they are not able to regulate their feelings and emotions during their studies. They make a lot of mistakes in their personal life, which hinder their success. They are taught the importance of understanding the feelings of others, register their feelings whenever necessary and regulate their emotions in an intelligent way.

3. Career choice according to inner potentials: The counselor will sit and discuss with the students on an individual basis. He would collect the relevant data from others like class teachers, subject teachers, parents and even his friends. Then he will be in a better position to identify the individual’s potentials, interests and aptitude and with the help of available data he will guide the student to the best educational career possible for that particular student.

Major areas of Islamic Counseling:

1.Conviction in Faith: Blind faith leads to fanaticism. Self-conviction leads to politeness and confidence. With the help of rational thinking, logical analysis and scientific inquiry – the participants will be led to self-conviction. Be it the concept of God, the concept of Prophethood or the concept of life after death – each article of faith is analyzed logically so that the participants are led to self-conviction.

 2. Consistent practice of our Ibadah system: Salah is not a ritual to be performed daily without any awareness. Salah connects man with Allah and that is to be realized through Salah. Salah changes a person altogether. The effect of Salah is to be reflected in all walks of the life of a believer. Humbleness, politeness, calmness, God consciousness, dignity, self respect, brotherhood, unity, better human relations, leadership, time management and a lot more can be developed through Salah if prayed with awareness.

 3. Awareness about the major sins of Islam: The students will be made to be aware of the major sins such as drinking habits, smoking, drug abuse, killing, illegal sex relations etc., and the evil effects of such bad habits will be brought in to focus for the counselees.

 4. Modeling Islamic Values: Islamic values are universal values. Value excellence is the spirit of Islam. But this is a missing priority in our community. Islamic values like - truthfulness, trustworthy, promise keeping, justice, balanced, consistency, chaste and pure, preferring others over one’s self, generosity, courage, contentment, magnanimity, kindness, etc, will be focused while counseled.

 5. Better human relations: Respect for parents and elders, pleasant relation with the relatives, beautiful behaviour with the neighbors, poor, orphans and servants, cordial relation with other community members et., are to be imbibed in them.

 6. Discipline to develop a healthy personality: Importance of cleanliness of body, clothing, living place maintenance, health, regular physical exercises, eating habits, toilet manners, punctuality, beautiful conversation methods, communication skills etc., will be focused in individual counseling.

 7. Tazkia: Islamic mental attitudes like God fearing, putting the trust on God, steadfastness, purity of intention, humility, self-respect etc., will be brought into focus. Means of developing such attitudes like – Quran reading with contemplation, nafil prayers like tahajjud and nafil fasting as excellent ways to subjugate one’s passions, remembrance of God to have peace of mind, to reduce stress and to be free from depression, making beautiful supplication to imbibe optimism - will all be emphasized.

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