Unfair Advantage At MIST? What?
February 17, 2010 by Abir Sheikh · 15 Comments
Can this even be possible? Is it just an unfair ambush on hardworking students or is it really a legit issue? If private schools do have advantages, what kind of advantages and how have these perks been allowed? To gain a better perceptive and to shed some light on this controversy, I decided to interview competitors from Islamic private schools, public schools, and the MIST director herself for this year, Safiya Ravat.
I talked with 17 year old Hiba Ali from Klein Forest High School. Before I could finish the first question regarding Islamic private school advantages at MIST, Ali said, “Of course they have advantages. It’s an Islamic competition and those kids are from Islamic private schools.”
Ali use to be a student at Darul Arqam, another Houston Islamic private school, but now as a student of Klein Forest, she says she can see the difference.
Darul Arqam wins the MIST Overall School cup (with gold wings).
“They have entire class periods about Islamic studies and Quran, we don’t, and on top of that they have more Muslim people, which means a giant MSA.”
A giant MSA? Islamic studies and Quran periods? As I concluded my interview session with Ali, I walked away with an enhanced understanding about the specific type of advantages competitors may think private Islamic schools have.
But to fourth year competitor from Darul Arqam, Fatima Iqbal says it’s the support from their community that drives many of them to success.
“If we have any advantage, it’s the fact that our community is praying constantly for us, our power is dua itself,” Iqbal said.
Darul Arqam North Zone is a private Islamic school that has won the MIST Overall Champion award for four consecutive years. So why is it that this Islamic school dominates? I decided to talk to the girl who led the entire Darul Arqam MSA to victory last year, Muqaddas Sarwar, a three year MIST competitor and high school senior, who is also bothered by the circulating assumptions.
“People assume that just because we are an Islamic school, we don’t do anything else, we don’t take AP classes, we don’t take honors classes or do everything else that other people do and that’s wrong,” Sarwar said. “We do the exact same amount of work as public schools do if not more because of our extra classes and so the fact that they think we do MIST stuff in school is kind of absurd.”
Like any other Houston public school, Darul Arqam is required by law to offer the same core classes, but also offers its students additional focus classes like, Quran and Islamic Studies, and that doesn’t include a class or a specific time allocated for MIST.
But even focus classes don’t play as an advantage.
“I can understand where that is coming from because we take classes like Islamic studies people think it is related to MIST, but when it comes down to the actual class it’s a class just like any other class,” Sarwar said. “I treat Islamic studies the way I treat math or physics the material that we are covering is not related to mist at all, I could tell you that.”
Despite all, some say numbers of competitors from each school serve as the largest contributor in placing private Islamic schools on the advantage scale.
“Our MSA is fairly large and I guess, maybe that is an advantage for us, but there are other large public schools like Kempner High school,” Sarwar said.
Although Islamic schools may have a large number of competitors representing their team, they aren’t alone. According to last year’s MIST registration database, 7 competing schools had over 30 students, 5 of which were public schools.
MIST Director Safiya Ravat says when it comes down to it overall school recognition is just there for the sake of being there.
“Schools do put a lot of hype on who is the overall school, but in the end it really is about individual students,” Ravat said. “The individual students who do the best at MIST, they’re the ones who get honors, prizes, and go on to nationals. The overall school doesn’t get national recognition it is just something that has been happening for the past few years.”
The issue of Islamic private schools having an advantage over public school students seems to be just a myth. A falsehood that may have accumulated from rumors, poor communication or a lack of information.
Looks like all is fair and square from private to public.
Very nice article mashaAllah. And so the myth is finally revealed as such! Finally.
Well written. It’s important to remember that even though we have so much competition, we’re all doing it FTSOA (for the sake of Allah).
All said and done, Austin High School earned the worst reputation in MIST. Constantly complaining and whining. I hope they don’t keep it up.
It always was a myth. People should recognize it has nothing to do with the school, but with the individual Muslims. Most people come to MIST to flirt and mess around. It’s not a serious environment.. more like a giant social gathering. But, for the serious students, there is a lot of competition and it has nothing to do with the MSA’s.
LOL! Pleaaaase we all know that private schools have an advantage. They’re more focused, more mature, and get to learn more about ‘islam’ than the public kids do.
So who’s going to dethrone DA? Mayde Creek… represent.
I think private schools do have an advantage. MIST is a big thing at their school vs. public schools it’s everything else except MIST (or not so much MIST).
Higher morale = higher performance
WHOAAA….islamic schools do NOT have an advantage at all, why do i say this, because i went to islamic school and yes it was DUA. And no im not saying this because i went to that school. i went to public school before and the environments are completely different. public school has so much more advantages then islamic schools do. Public schools have a debate team, math club etc, while islamics schools dont because on their funding. i was the MSA president during my junior year which was 07-08, and that year was the craziest year for me personally, the MSA lacked so many things and we were behind by months due to certain circumstances, when we only had a month left to prepare, we all worked together, and for those who say that DUA starts months before thats just wrong
and we all should be more mature, what your’re basically saying is public schools arent mature, when we go to MIST, we’re not only presenting our schools, but our religion
WOW! that was just…wow
ur an amazing writer…i never thought an article would change my mind but this one did
wow…thats one heck of an article
As a student attending Darul Arqam, I am really glad this has been cleared up. We don’t have advantages, we have goals and we are motivated to do the best we can every year. We are blessed with a supportive community, as stated above, and we don’t take what we have for granted. Of course, we cannot fully eliminate the presumption that we do have an advantage, but we can continue doing the best we can each year and not let people’s assumptions distract us.
I totally agree – before DUA had its winning streak it was all about Klein and Clearlake
We have goals and we follow them. We’re determined. We make du’aa. We pray. And we cant achieve anything without Allah (swt). Its all about Him.
If He wants us to win, then thats exactly whats gonna happen.
Ya’ll seriously need to GROW UP. The only reason people here are saying that DUA has an ‘unfair advantage’ is because we actually work hard for the prize, and end up getting it. Now, I’m not trying to brag here or anything, but think about it, if students from a public school REALLY want the prize, and REALLY want to win, they can do it. However, DUA being a private school, we CARE about things like this. We actually go to MIST to win, not to just go and play around. They are just going around accusing Darul Arqam of having an advantage when the reality is that public school kids don’t care about the real competition, only about mingling and flirting around with other kids.
Remember, if there’s a will, there’s a way.
I’m the Klein Forest MSA president and we don’t have anybody named hiba ali in our msa.
but great article