We believe Muslims have a great role to play in strengthening civic society. All our campaigns are within the remit of civic engagement or financial literacy, and all ultimately aim to benefit society.

Campaigns for all:

As well as ensuring scholarly backing and expertise in all our work, we also ensure our campaigns fulfil three further criteria:

a) Accessible for anyone to take up, whether it is a mosque, school, ISoc, professional body or individual volunteer.

b) Easy to implement via our step-by-step toolkits.

c) Support is provided via email and phone from our nationwide team of campaign co-ordinators.

Our current campaigns are:

1. Food Drive for the Homeless in partnership with the Salvation Army
2. Animal Welfare in partnership with the RSPCA
3. Money Matters (personal finance) in partnership with Al-Qalam Sharī‘ah Scholar Panel
4. Islamic Wills and Bequests in partnership with Islamic Relief, Muslim Hands, Muslim Aid and Ummah Welfare Trust
5. How to pay your Zakāh in partnership with Al-Qalam Sharī‘ah Scholar Panel

 

Campaigns on Employment, the Environment, Health, and Honouring our Elders will also be launched over 2012, insha’Allah (God Willing).

 

Each campaign consists of the following:

1. Islamic Guide – educating the reader on the Islamic perspective behind the campaign including fiqh, scriptural evidence and virtues.

2. Toolkit – a simple two page step-by-step toolkit outlining how exactly to carry out a campaign with links too all resources needed.

3. Resource Bundle -

a) Friday khutbah (sermon) on the campaign topic for Imams.

b) Key Stage 3 or 4 Curriculum Lesson/Assembly plan for Teachers.

c) Content for PowerPoint Presentation/Workshop/Talk/Seminar on the campaign topic. These are for Imams, ISocs and Professionals.

 

If you’d like to take part in our campaigns or find out more, please click here.

Training

We provide Imams with the following specialised training programmes:

1. Presenting Islam to non-Muslims
2. Contemporary Fiqh’l-Mu‘āmalāt Training Day
3. Effectively Engaging Your Mosque Audience
4. Advanced Training programme for Imams (Dār’l-‘Ulūm)

Education

1. For Teachers at Muslim Schools we provide a unique Key Stage 3 & 4 Curriculum.
2. For University ISocs, we provide a diverse Lecture Series.
3. We have also published our Islamic Finance textbook which is being used as a core text in economic and accounting departments in many leading universities worldwide.

If you would like to attend or organise any of our training or educational programmes in your area please email info@1stethical.com or call 01204 557918 for more details. We endeavour to reply to emails and voicemail messages within three working days.

We seek to raise awareness of important issues through various media outlets – including the principles behind our campaigns – such that readers are empowered to benefit society. These include:

1. Mainstream media: Our Goodwill Ambassador Imam Ibrahim Mogra and our Resident Scholar Imam Abu Eesa Niamatullah regularly appearing in various outlets from BBC Radio 5 Live to Channel 4 to discuss and inform the audience on various topical issues, often giving the Islamic perspective on these issues.
2. Our blog: You can read our daily articles here.
3. Ethnic Press: We write regular articles and columns in the six leading ethnic newspapers across the country. Follow our latest articles here.
4. Ethnic Radio: We give regular radio interviews and talk-show slots in leading ethnic radio stations across the country. Keep up-to-date with these on our calendar of events.

You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

We have liaised with government and other public sector bodies on certain specialist issues to facilitate the provision of Islamic legal and financial services for British Muslims. Some of our recent projects include:

1. Liaising with the HM Treasury on the 2006 White Paper on Trusts, to safeguard the retention of certain provisions required to put in place legally valid Islamic Wills.
   
2. Liaising with NEST in 2011 on the provision of a Sharī‘ah-compliant pension fund.
   
3. Supporting Positive Money in their representations to the 2011 Independent Commission on Banking.
4. Holding on-going discussions with the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, in partnership with FOSIS, the NUS and Al-Qalam, on alternative finance for university tuition fees.

To date, the 1st Ethical Charitable Trust has contributed over £1.5 million in humanitarian relief globally.

Our humanitarian efforts are targeted at the world’s poorest communities and have always been guided by a few simple yet crucial principles:

1. Identifying partner organizations that have a grassroots presence in the country concerned, and a long-standing reputation of competence and honesty, rather than attempting to organise projects ourselves.
   
2. Focusing on parts of the world that do not normally benefit from charitable donations from the UK Muslim community.
   
3. Providing our partners advice on strategy and collaboration thereby increasing the output achieved by any project.

We feel these principles have allowed our contributions to benefit the greatest number of people in areas where the humanitarian need is greatest.

We have focused on the following projects:

1. Providing clean water
2. Building or renovating mosques (mostly containing water wells and involving UK based mosques)
3. Economic development projects
4. Supporting orphans’ and widows’
5. Emergency relief to disaster appeals