Flowers for the Women Wearing Veils - Volume II — Page 46
46 complaints from the women of the Lahore Jama'at for a long time and I think it is a legitimate complaint, that there are no arrangements devised for the education of girls. They remain ignorant and illiterate due to lack of education or after attending other [ non - Ahmadi ] schools, they are influenced by the ideology of other people. Instead of safeguarding the religion of their brothers and helping them to overcome internal conflicts , they [ girls ] end up aiding the discord and leading the m [ their brothers ] astray from the right path. The N eed to E stablish both a Boys and G irls H igh S chool in Lahore For the past one year , I have been trying to focus the attention of the Jama'at as a whole t hat in regards to the Lahore Jama'at ’s circumstances, i t is important that we have our own high schools for girls and boys. It is unreasonable to presume that the Jama'at is unable to afford the expense. The Jama'at of Muba i’ een [those who have taken initiation at the hand of the Khalifa of the time ] in Lahore is much greater in numbers than the Paighami Jama'at [those who have not taken initiation at the hand of the Khalifa]. For each member of the Paighami Jama'at , we have eight to ten as many members. They do not even have as many attendees at their Jalsa as we do at our Jum u ‘ a h [ Friday ] p rayer. However, before the riots , they [ Paighami Jama‘a t] had one high schoo l , but now they have two. If a small Jama'at like theirs can run two high schools, then there is no reason why our Jama'at , which is many times larger than th eirs is unable to run two high schools : one for girls and one for boys. As of yet, building two high schools is not even up for question. It is only a question of building a girl’s middle school so that the girls of the Jama'at can complete a reading of the Holy Qur’an and so they can gain some religious training. The Jama'at numbers up to seven to eight hundred , not even including women and children. Some of those women and children work as well. Thus, the income of this Jama'at is not less than eighty to ninety thousand rupees a month (even the declared income is greater than fifty thousand rupees ). In fact, i f we make an exact estimation of the income, then it would reach a hundred thousand rupees. It should not be difficult for a Jama'at which has an income of a hundred thousand rupees to run one high school. Moreover, the boys will pay a fee. If the Jama'at members pay four to five rupees each as chanda ,