Leadership workshop for Muslim Women underway in Accra

The Ghana Muslim Mission Women’s Fellowship (GMMWF), is organizing a three-day leadership workshop to enhance the capacity of women leaders in the organization.

The workshop with "Enhancing the Leadership Qualities of the Muslim Woman," as its theme, aims at equipping the regional and district organizers of the Fellowship with the necessary skills to enhance the performance of their duties.

Hajia Mariama Obeng, National Chairman, GMMWF said the participants would be taken through skills training, including bead work which has become very lucrative in recent time, and soap making, to help create job opportunities to help reduce the high unemployment rate among members.

Hajia Obeng said although the GMMWF has come a long way by transforming the lives of its members through weekly preaching sections and conferences, it is still faced with a lot of challenges in areas of organization and job creation.

She noted that at the end of the workshop, participants would be provided with some materials and tools to enable them carry on the skills acquired to other members in their various regions and districts.

Hajia Fatima Suleiman, a lecturer at the University of Ghana, said a leader in Islam is someone who sees beyond assumed boundaries, and being a leader is a call from Allah which one must take very seriously, as it will be accounted for in the hereafter.

Hajia Suleiman pointed out that a leader in Islam must be righteous, just, knowledgeable, honest, trustworthy and competent, and it is important for every leader to possess one or more of such attributes to be able to perform to task.

Dr Mrs Rabiatu Armah Konney, Senior Lecturer of the University of Ghana, said the issue about leadership in Islam is something that has been neglected for a very long time, and added that that is why the workshop has been organized at the right time.

She said leadership is the ability for a person to have a vision and to carry the rest of the people along, saying leadership is a two-way affair.

Dr Konney said a Muslim leader is always governing a people of faith, and must be someone who is religiously upright and works on the basis of consultation and consensus-building.

She noted that a Muslim leader must always be ready to accept criticisms in good faith, by recognizing the fact that members will criticize when things do not go on well.

Dr Amin Bonsu, National Chairman of the Ghana Muslim Mission, advised the women to take education of their children both Islamic and secular very serious, in order to breed an upcoming generation of Muslims who would help lift up the Image of Islam.