by Marlene Zahran
(WISCONS IN MUSLIM JOURNAL) Yousef is one of 60 Muslim children participating in the Islamic Society of Milwaukee-Brookfield’s new soccer clinic for 4- to 10-year-olds at the Muslim-owned Insight Life Learning Institute, 13780 Hope Street, Brookfield. The five-week program, operated in collaboration with the Pewaukee-Sussex United Soccer Club, is designed to teach Muslim children much more than how to play the game, organizers say. It aims to help them know they are part of a Muslim community and to teach them prophetic character skills.
How it all started
Coach Sherijat Lati Ziba, 35, of Oak Creek, the director of coaching at Pewaukee-Sussex United, approached ISM Brookfield’s imam, Qari Noman Hussain, 32, in the spring with the idea to create a soccer program for Muslim youth. He knew from his own life experience that soccer is a unifier. Through it people of diverse backgrounds can come together and create community, he said.
Ziba grew up in an Albanian family in Macedonia. When he was 6 years old, his parents moved to the United States, taking their two oldest children and planning to send for Ziba and his sister. Throughout his childhood, Ziba lived in his grandparents’ and uncles’ homes, changing communities and schools every few months. Through it all, soccer helped him build new connections and find his community everywhere he went.
“That is why I wanted to bring a soccer program to my Muslim community, so they can have these connections with people no matter where they are in the world,” Ziba said.
When Imam Hussain listened to Ziba’s proposal, he thought it was just what the children needed to reconnect with the Muslim community after the pandemic and with summer right around the corner.
