This is a little video I made recently. It is entitled “Letter” and was inspired by Brother Dawud Tauhidi. The Muslim Teachers Association held a teacher’s seminar talking about the Tarbiyah Project. Watch the video and read after to see why and how it inspired me.

“Letter”

A short film by Jawaad Ahmad Khan (JaKaTTaK Industries in association with Dawah Gear Productions)

Many of us have already received this letter, while others have yet to receive it.

**This video is meant to be metaphorically literal.

CONCEPT AND PRE-PRODUCTION

Brother Dawud Tauhidi talked in his speech about how our educational systems in the Islamic schools is not reaching its full potential with the current system of teaching. He spoke about how we have to wholistically teach everything together, including Islam as a main subject, not just an add-on elective. He spoke of his school up north and how successful they were with the implementation of having Salah as a privelage and other systems set up. A sister asked him if his school was “accredited” and he responded by saying that he “don’t [didn't] know what that means.” He said that we shouldn’t be worried about being accredited and worry about having our kids taught academic values as a primary feature. He said we shouldn’t have our main aim to have our kids go to Harvard and Yale, but rather Jannatul-Firdaus. That’s the part that hit me.

In this video, I wanted to create an element of surprise at the end where the viewer would wonder at how peculiar that is and afterward realize that it really shouldn’t be peculiar. A young man is agitated and highly nervous to receive his letter, comparable to which hand Allah will give us our book of deeds on the day of Judgement (right or left). You think that he’s wants to go to one of the best colleges, but he wants to go to the highest heaven, Jannatul-Firdaus. You see him in the past, looking like he’s studying from textbooks and such late at night. But if y0u look closesly, it is the Qur’an that he is reading, and when he gets up, he is holding a Salah mat, going to pray and practice the verses he’d just memorized.

The other reason I made this video was because for a very long time I’d been reading online and studying film-making and I wanted to finally produce something! On Facebook, I even made a note with a lot of people tagged, making them testify that they were acknowledged that I was going to make a video before the end of the year. If not, they could write a bunch of nasty things on my wall. But Alhamdulillah, thanks to my brother, I was able to finish it in a day. It was shot with one Sony HDR-UX10. If you want to see it in full HD, go to the original video on Vimeo, and make it full screen.

InshaAllah, I hope this video lets us (Muslims, especially in high school) see what success truly is. We should work as hard as we can to be the best in school and strive for Ihsaan (excellence to the best of your ability), but we keep our Deen of Islam as the highest priority.

So…what do you think about the video? (make a comment…go ahead, make my day)