The Young Scholars of Inland Empire Qur'an Contest

On Saturday morning, April 30, 2011, the Inland Empire Mosque hold the contest called The Young Scholars of Inland Empire Qur'an Contest. Basicly it was a contest for all young ages from 7-18 which are devided in four levels. The First level is from 7-9 years old, the second is 10-11, the third is 12-14 and the fourth is from 14-18. The registration was online, and we could download study guide easily.

before contest began

The event began at 10.00 am, starting by do'a that was led by one of the sisters who teaches sunday school at mosque.
For the first, second and third levels have two sessions, Qur'an recitation and written test. Just for the fourth level, they have a khutbah session for the boys and a khatiraa for the girls, which basicly the same, a speech.
About a hundred of kids joined this contest, but unfortunately just one boy and five girl contestantsan in the fourth level. The fourth level began with Qur'an recitation. The procedure was each contestant would be called to the certain room and recite surah An-naba, that they already memorized before, in front of one judge.
Then the girls came to up stair for giving a speech while the boys went down stair doing the same. There was one judge for the girls, and four judges for the boys. Eah contestant presented their speech differntly. By reading the text they bought, half memorized, or even power point presentation. There were three topics for the khatiraa: How women are supposed to be threated according to sunnah Muhammad S.A.W, why women supposed to wear hijab and what its impact for the personality itself, and how the mother of islam educates the women this generation. This session went really nice.
The next session was written test. For the fourth level, it was 38 multiple choice questions whic basicly asked about the pillars of islam, fiqh, relationship to the fellows, history of our prophet Muhammad S.A.W,and also the tafsir of An-Naba.
After all of them done, time for pray dhuhur, and obviously jama'ah. Right after do'a, we got ready to eat lunch.
The next session which so exciting and had been waited, was announcement who would be the winners. So for the fourth level, all the participants got the certificate, the third place got an iPod, the second got a computer, then the first place got an iPad. It was really big deal. And for the lower levels there were two bicycles and more iPods.

Three winners of the fourth level

The event closed by 1.00 pm. And it was a wonderful day. Beside we got to socialize and know another muslims from another masjids, we also got the merit for being in masjid,recite Qur'an,speech and review about the basic of Islam, also compete for the good thing.