By
Shadiah Abdullah I Arab News
BIG ACHIEVEMENT: Mostapha Sarion at the Dubai Qur’an contest. DUBAI: When Mostapha Sarion and his five friends wanted to memorize the Qur’an they could not find a place to study the Holy Book in their home country Liberia. So a kind-hearted patron sponsored them to study in neighboring Gambia.
This generous act motivated Sarion and his friends to do something good, and after returning home they started the first Qur’an boarding school in their country. Though their resources were scant, their will was formidable and Allah Almighty showed them the way.
“Al Hamdulillah, because of our good intentions Allah sent people who helped us in starting the school,” said Sarion. “The man who paid for our Islamic education donated the money to rent a premises for the school.”
Sarion, 21, is in Dubai representing his country at the Dubai International Holy Qur’an Award. Con-sidered one of the richest Qur’an awards in the world, the event attracted 85 contestants from all over the globe for this year’s session.
Sarion’s quest to memorize the Qur’an started when he was 13 years old. Sarion, who hails from the Liberian city Monrovia, used to go to a mosque near his home.
“A Lebanese businessman used to come to the mosque to preach Islam,” he said. “Later on, he brought an imam from Lebanon to teach Qur’an to the neighborhood kids.
“When the imam saw that I and my five friends were keen to learn more, he asked the Lebanese brother to sponsor us to go and study in Gambia.” Sarion says that his parents were very happy at the opportunity and encouraged him to go. Even though Sarion was enthusiastic, he was not sure he had the ability to memorize the whole Qur’an. Those doubts were dispelled when he arrived at the school and saw boys as young as seven memorizing long chapters.
“I was amazed and ashamed of myself when I saw those boys,” he said. “That is when I vowed that I too would memorize the whole Qur’an.”
Two and a half years later, Sarion fulfilled his vow and graduated with an Ijaza certificate in memorizing the Qur’an. He and his five friends returned home as hafizs, however, they still had longing for more knowledge.
“When our patron learned about our wish, he paid for us to travel to Ghana,” he said. “There we enrolled in a religious seminary where we studied Arabic, Fiqh, Tafseer and Hadith for two years.” After returning from Ghana, Sarion and his friends wanted to educate the Muslims in his country about their religion.
Sarion pointed out that the number of converts to Islam has grown despite the fact that there is no organized attempt by the Muslims to preach their religion. With the increasing number of Muslims, Sarion and his friends felt that the need for Qur’an schools was imperative.
“We realized that we would never have hafizs in Liberia if we do not have specialized schools for Qur’an memorization. The halaqas (religious meetings) taking place in different mosques were not enough to produce hafizs,” he said. To solve that problem, Sarion and his five friends, all of them not 20 by then, took it upon themselves to start a Qur’an memorization boarding school. They wrote to different Islamic organizations in Liberia for financial assistance but came back empty-handed, as funds were scarce.
However, the same Lebanese patron came to the rescue and provided them with funds to rent a small three-bedroom house. Today after only nine months of dedicated effort their Qur’an school has 20 students. They named the school, Madrassat Ubay bin Kaab, in honor of their school in Gambia. “The students do not pay for lodging but only pay for their food and we have a cook who makes it for them. We start our day after Fajr prayers and finish after Isha. The students memorize the Qur'an in addition to a comprehensive Islamic curriculum. They learn tajweed, Hadith and the basics of fiqh and aqeedah.
Al Hamdulillah, one of our students has already memorized 18 chapters of the Qur’an. May Allah bless our benefactor because all of these would not have been possible without his assistance.”
Sarion has urged wealthy Muslims to offer scholarships to the youth saying that the future of the
Ummah rests on these educated young people.
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