Fazl-e-Umar — Page 296
Fazle Umar 296 time in presenting an extraordinary plan of learning to the ladies section that would strengthen the foundations of the Community. The wisdom behind presenting this scheme to the ladies was to foster in them a love and thirst for knowledge and learning. This would encourage them to step forward in matters of education as well as creating a desire for seeking knowledge in succeeding generations. He stated: “In my opinion, the time has come for us to focus particularly on expanding our minds. Up till now all the books published by our Community have been pub- lished without following any system apart from the Tafsire Kabir, the extended commentary of the Holy Qur’an. However, the time has now come for every member of the Community to work through a programme of learning that takes the needs of the time into consideration and thereby improve his standard. For this reason I thought that after the completion of the new headquarters I would establish an organisation to train the members of the Community so that everyone could easily become fully conversant with ethics, beliefs, religion and secular knowledge. The best way to achieve this is to publish books on every subject written in simple Urdu that even a simple farmer can understand …Such a nation can never prosper in which only a few of its individuals are scholars. If we are to prosper then we must increase the standard of education. The best way to achieve this is to create a series of books, which contain all the main points from every branch of knowledge. And they ought to be written for children, the middle-aged and experienced people. There will be three categories. The first category will be for children under the age of sixteen. The second category will cover children between the ages of sixteen and seventeen. The final category will consist of anyone above this age.