Dear Parent,
Assalamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabaratu
As you know the Masjid buildings were seized in December by a group of now ex-trustees who claimed personal ownership of them and who decided that Chingford Islamic Society (through which the properties were purchased using people’s lillah donations) no longer had any right to it. As I’m sure you will agree this is wrong legally, morally, and Islamically.
Since December the trustees of CIS purposefully decided not to:
- act in any way which will bring negative publicity to the Masjid,
- involve musallees, madrassah teachers, and madrassah pupils in the dispute, and
- stop any of the usual services that operate in the masjid in the mean time
Our proposal to them is that, since both sides do not want the other to be part of the management committee of the Masjid, the fairest way to resolve this is for a completely new committee be appointed. This was unfortunately rejected by the other party and we are now looking at other means to regain control of the properties.
Up until now we feel that we have been successful in meeting the above three points. However, over the past few days, Maulana Mizan, who left us in December, has contacted some parents and told them that he will be starting face-to-face madrassah in the Masjid from next month. We have received resignations from Hafiz Altaf and Maulana Rashid as well.
The Trustees of CIS and Aapa Ruquyya met to discuss what this means for our madrassah and after deliberating all the various scenarios we have come to the very difficult decision that it would be best for the children to close our madrassah as it wouldn’t be fair to them to continue to operate without the teachers who they are familiar with. It also wouldn’t be fair to bring in temporary teachers just to try and keep the madrassah running when we know that many parents will want to continue their Islamic education in the Masjid with their usual teachers when that is a possibility. As the madrassah operates on a not-for-profit basis losing a large number of pupils means a significant reduction in our income. This is on top of the multiple occasions over the past year where we have merged classes to save costs.
As such our online madrassah will officially stop for all pupils and classes next Friday 4th June 2021. All parents will need to visit the Masjid to find out about enrolment at the new madrassah.
On behalf of the Trustees and Aapa Ruquyya, I would like to thank you all for your support since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and we hope that the online madrassah has continued to provide your children with deeni education in the best way possible under these difficult times. We also hope that you understand that, while we have tried to keep your children out of the dispute, we have been forced into this decision.
Finally, we have been collecting the backlog of madrassah fees on a fortnightly basis for the past few months. In light of the above, we will be making one last collection next week which will be for the final 2 remaining months of April and May to settle the balance. This will, as usual, be used to pay for the teacher salaries for this month and to clear the current deficit.
We ask you to make dua that this dispute is resolved quickly.
Wassalam
Ismail Dadabhai
Chairman
Chingford Islamic Society