What is this thing called IZWAYZ? Well, it's not anything yet, as it's still a work in progress, but I can say what it is intended to be and how it got this far. IZWAYZ is going to be a website for muslim kids and young muslims (though not exclusively) from pre-school to young adult (as well as adults prepared to think like kids) that will be about Islam, but should help them to understand it in a way that is relevant to the lives they are living in Scotland and the UK, a way that makes sense in the same way that things they learn in school make sense. Hopefully they will also find it fun, and be able to enjoy their lives as muslims in the same way that they enjoy other aspects of their lives.

It will certainly be a lot more Flash than all the stuff on the website so far. And I will be making it as complete and wide-ranging an understanding of Islam as I can manage. For an informational skeleton I am using a curriculum I prepared some years ago for Glasgow's Islamic Education Council, and I'm about a quarter of the way through turning that skeleton into something finished enough to publish, though I fully expect that the putting of flesh and fabric on that skeleton will be a process that will never end in my lifetime. The whole point about Islam as a way of life is that it reaches into every corner of life and never ends. Like life itself, no matter how much you learn you can never know everything about it, and everywhere you look there is more to see and understand.

So if that isn't written yet, what is it that we have here? Well, that depends on what you want it to be. The idea of IZWAYZ is that it can be used by all sorts of different people in different ways. Muslim kids will be able to use it in their schools, or in their madrassahs, or in their homes, alone or in groups, with other kids, or with adults who may be teachers or may be learners like themselves. Non-muslim kids will also be able to use it for whatever reasons they might have, perhaps to learn something about the world of Islam for a school project, or to find a way of understanding Islam that helps them find common ground with their muslim friends. This bit of the website is not for kids however.

Schoolteachers and other education professionals have different needs, and to a large extent that is the reason that this part of the IZWAYZ site has been published before the main body of the site has been completed. I would like to hope that some of the material provided here will prove useful to teachers, whether they are thinking of using it to provide a greater integration of Islamic understandings into the education of young muslims, or as a resource to add a multicultural element to the subjects they are teaching non-muslims, for co-ordinated staff development at whatever level, for pragmatic purposes, or just for personal satisfaction. Hopefully there is no need for me to explain how the material can be integrated into their own subjects, not just RME and PSD, but Maths, Art, English, Environmental Studies, History, Geography, Modern Studies and so on. 

Non-professional teachers, such as muslim parents, or those working in madrassahs or muslim weekend schools, will probably take a different approach to the material that is currently available here, and although they might well need a lot more advice on ways to implement the material available (for example, the diagram below suggests ways of converting a curriculum into educational projects) they will also be able to provide a much richer educational context of Islamic knowledge, and be able to broaden the scope of what is here by sharing their own understandings of Islam and teaching by direct example.

How does the website work? Well, it's set out in just about the most basic way possible, with each hyperlink opening up a new page on top of whatever you have open at the time. If you aren't interested in what you find, you can just close the page and you can still access the page from which you hyperlinked out. As you've just seen on the Welcome page, there are just three main lists of contents, Broadcast Pieces, Academic & Educational, and Other Talks, Writings, Projects Etc., and those lists can have a second level list for the work done for individual organisations. In fact, it's harder to describe than to use, as you are never more than a couple of clicks away from where you started. 

The present content is a bit of a hotchpotch for any number of reasons. It goes back nearly 25 years, and the material goes back through a range of hardware and software ( originally on tiny Sinclair cassettes, 5¼ inch really floppy floppies, cd's, and stuff on bits of paper only some of which I have managed to transcribe, and some notes are written out fully, and some are just outlines, and some are barely more than jottings. But they were useful to me, so they may be for someone else. Anyway, for some years now I have actually gone back to paper for lecture/talk notes, but using mind-maps that would take forever to transcribe (for example, below is a lecture I gave a while ago on Women in Islam - it starts with red and goes round through the rainbow). But this currently published section of the IZWAYZ website was never meant to be pretty, just accessible, and I've managed to get a fair amount on it.

Finally (almost), who is Michael Malik? Well, as they tend to reply to such a question around here, "Who wants to know?" There was a time when I was probably the best known muslim in Scotland, what with giving talks in mosques around the country, and universities, and hospitals, and visiting schools, and doing stuff with teachers, and being involved in all sorts of inter-faith dialogue, and having a regular spot on the radio, and in those days even appearing every now and again on the TV. Those days are long gone, however, and quite frankly I can do without the notoriety. But there's plenty of stuff here that dates back to those busier times, and if you really want to know more about me, I've written a page about it here.

But I think you would be better off using the time to browse around the website and see if you can find anything that interests you. I personally prefer the radio stuff, because it's fully scripted, mostly fairly short, not too information heavy, and I usually tried to keep it fairly light in tone. The lecture stuff can sometimes come across as really turgid, being as how it tends to be reference heavy, and just like Frank Carson "It's the way I tell 'em". Then there's all sorts of odds and ends around the site, in the rediscovery of which I have sometimes managed to seriously impress myself, while some bits bored the socks off me. But different horses for different courses, and all that. You pays your money and you takes your choice.

Except, of course, that you don't pay your money because it's all free. That's not to say that if you felt like contributing to my expenses I would turn down the offer (unless there are any kind of strings attached), as my wife does tend to give me a hard time about over-relying on God to pay the rent and the phone bill. So if you would like to feel that you have contributed to a worthwhile cause, get in touch with michael@izwayz.org and see if we can find a way to make it possible. At some stage I will also be putting out appeals for things like artwork done by muslim kids, and I will be hoping to get some kind of network with teachers across Scotland and the UK, as well as anyone else around the world who would like to keep in touch with what I'm doing.

So I doubt if I'll be changing this website for a while, but I might get an electronic newsletter together if anyone writes and shows an interest. I'll just play it by ear from now on, so remember the address, michael@izwayz.org, and if you get in touch, hopefully at some point I'll reply.

ENJOY