The occupation of Palestine continues and the brutality and land theft keeps increasing since the British gave land, which they did not own in the first place, to the Zionist movement to create the State of Israel.
Sadly most people, many Muslims included, don’t know much about the religious and political history of Palestine. This is part of the reason that the occupation and brutality continues unabated because there is little emotional attachment nor moral indignation and therefore no global public outrage against the Israelis, as there was against apartheid, which allows them to act with impunity.
With the aim of increasing awareness and knowledge about Palestine and its history, the South African Muslim Network (SAMNET) will be holding an art and essay competition for students at schools across South Africa. We want to inspire the youth to learn while providing them with an invaluable opportunity to unleash their creativity and research skills and be rewarded with generous prizes.
The categories will be as follows:
Junior Primary: Children between the ages of 6 to 10 years old
Senior Primary: Children between the ages of 11 to 13 years old
High School: Youth between the ages of 14 to 16 years old
Prizes will be awarded to the first and second place winners from each of the three categories. There will be separate prizes for the essay and art segments.
The rules for the competition are yet to be finalised and the judging of the artwork and essays will be done by qualified artists and experienced teachers volunteering their time for the initiative. The Trustees decision will be final and no correspondence will be entered into.
The competition will be launched on the 1st October 2017 and the closing date for entries will be is 31st December 2017. We hope to partner with all the Muslim television, radio, print and online media. We hope to get Muslim schools as partners as well. We will be marketing it through our own online marketing channels.
We are inviting members of the public to donate towards prizes and the business community in particular to become corporate sponsors. Their logos will feature on all material, if they so wish, which goes out.
To ensure that the competition entries are assessed and adjudicated fairly by judges with the necessary subject knowledge and expertise, we invite tertiary education academics, teachers and members of the Arts faculties nationally to assist us.
This competition has enormous potential to inspire research, creativity, hunger for knowledge and interest in the subject matter within our schools and madressas. We hope that parents too will be inspired to encourage their children to enter and make this competition a family affair where everybody learns.
We hope that schools and madressas will encourage their learners to take us this challenge and be the winning school or madressa too.
We believe we can make this a very successful annual event, Insha Allah.
However the quality of the work and interest in the competition will be influenced by the value of the prizes and we want to encourage donors and sponsors to help us make the prizes substantial.
We pray Allah guides us and blesses all of us to make this initiative successful.
SAMNET BOARD