How can we then speak of absolute justice when there are so many innocents oppressed, murdered, and their rights confiscated at the hands of tyrants? “Is God just” Dr. Horkuc asks in this issue when He creates people in their respective particular places and under particular conditions and expect the same scores from both? Horkuc writes in this issue that the cup analogy of Bediuzzaman offers a solution to this dilemma.

Occupied with extreme work load, a great majority of us in modern times are bent double and exhausted in most cases to the point of total collapse. Is it only the amount of unnecessary work load or that we do not know how to deal with the present conditions that underlies this exhaustion? Ihsan Kose argues for a “minimum work principle” in the universe. From gravity to routes ants pursue on their tracks, to electrical circuit boards, the path light moves and all phenomena in the universe apparently manifest themselves with one common thing: lowest energy consumption. The article is prescriptive in the sense that whatever we may be busy with, we can and we should find the most efficient formula for best outcome in return for minimum amount of energy, so that we can make best of our stamina reserves.

Computer games are approached with suspicion, yet the number of people engaging with games and the amount of hours and even days we spend for them are increasing. “Gamification,” however, Ahmet Tugra argues, has become a trendy word. “It aims at transforming real life context in a manner that adopts game thinking in online platforms. From this perspective, it proposes to increase motivation, engagement, sense of enjoyment, and the positive attitudes of people towards work.” Games enhance cognitive development in children, and a balanced adaptation of games into real life contexts may help us generate more convenient work and family environment for adults.

The ruler’s time was fading away. He needed to train soldiers and workers and find more resources. He also had to make some donations to the neighboring villages, as he knew that the more they all helped one another, the more likely they would be to defend their territory. Jack was still happy because they had at least put up walls around the village, built barracks for people, and two camps for soldiers. He was spending four or five hours checking the village every day, because he knew the ruler had to take care of his home. Suddenly, he heard the voice coming from the old and loyal tower. It was telling news of the war. Jack gathered all his soldiers because he was the only one to command them. Strategy was so important, because bad planning would mean the end of all the villages. After a brave speech, they started to march. All the soldiers’ attention was directed to Jack, waiting for his commands.

But suddenly, Jack lost all his soldiers. He was mad and ran away from his room to check the router and saw that there was no internet connection. What was he going to do now? Jack sighed. He supposed he would do homework instead. Exams were getting closer; all his enthusiasm faded away.

It does not matter what age you are, most people find it difficult to concentrate on the task they are required to do. There are books, seminars and many activities to motivate people to finish their work. These all show that we face an important problem with handling our responsibilities.

This is also one of the key issues in education. Much research has focused on how to improve the engagement and motivation of young people towards their school work. As you have probably heard, it’s almost a cliché that most parents complain about young people’s irresponsibility regarding school work and work around the home. While this has been a problem standing in front of us for a while now, we must ask: what makes these kinds of distracting video games so appealing?

The story told above is happening every day. That video game has been downloaded more than 50 million times and is being played every day by millions of people of various ages. The first time I had heard of this game was when I conducted interviews with children using a tablet PC in school. Although my focus of the research was not about mobile games, this was brought up when I wanted to make informal conversation before initiating the interview. One boy was so enthusiastic when we started to talk about this game, that he mentioned he would stop playing the game, go to sleep, but set his alarm for five hours later – his worker would have finished the task he’d been assigned, and the boy would wake up to assign a new task Not finishing such a task would mean lagging behind his peers, for his village would not develop.

I asked him, “what is so nice about this game? You are just building and upgrading buildings and fighting against others.”

The answer was, “I don’t know; it is just fun.”

I also installed the game. I had played it for two months until I woke up at 3 a.m. with a notification. One of my workers had finished his work and I assigned him another task. Then I tried to sleep. I opened my eyes again after a couple of seconds and saw my wife’s shocked eyes. She could not believe I woke up just for this. It was the last time I played the game. But the question was still in my mind: how could we trigger our sense of responsibility by exemplifying the methods of the game in real life?

We – people in education, parents – spend a considerable amount of time and resources to nurture children in a manner so that they become aware of their responsibilities. However, schools, teachers, homework, etc. are seen as boring and something to be escaped by most children.

Gamification is a trendy jargon nowadays. It aims at transforming real life context in a manner that adopts game thinking in online platforms. From this perspective, it proposes to increase motivation, engagement, sense of enjoyment, and the positive attitudes of people towards work (Huanng and Soman, 2013). While there is much research in the sector of business, gamification is also widely recognized in education. The educational purpose of gamification is that instead of blunting the way children best learn, the way they enjoy to learn should be adapted in an educational context. This is not a new idea, as this was also expressed in other contexts. For example, Said Nursi touches on a crucial point:

One reason why preachers’ advice is ineffective nowadays is that they invite people to change their nature. They advise: “Do not be envious or ambitious, do not feel enmity or be obstinate, do not love the world,” and so on. Such advice is useless, for it is against human nature. Instead, these energies can and should be channeled into good deeds and directed toward positive aims. (The Ninth Letter, p. 53)

If we want to apply this method in education, the first thing we should consider is what children like and enjoy most. Obviously, many of them enjoy playing games and any advice like, “Don’t play games! Don’t laugh during the lesson! Don’t spend time in front of the computer! Be quiet in class!” will be counter-productive. As in Said Nursi’s statement, this is asking the impossible from a child who is created to learn in an environment that offers play, social interaction, and competition.

Jean Piaget is a well-known theorist about play and the cognitive development of children. He emphasizes the importance of play and its contribution to healthy development of children (Sutton-Smith, 1983). Vygotsky (1967) also underlines social play and peer interaction in child development. However, while Vygotsky gives the example of a child who rides an imaginary horse with a stick, today’s children’s perception of play has changed and continues to change dramatically. Therefore, it should be understood how Jack’s and my sense of responsibility were piqued. While we both cognitively focused and spent a considerable amount of time on this game, we also enjoyed doing so.

From the perspectives above, the stimulating dynamics used in games could be transformed in a suitable manner into curriculum and the classroom environment could be redesigned. This can also be adapted into work environments, as in Google whose office buildings are colorful rather than plain, and there is even a slide for their workers to use instead of stairs. Their aim is to make the environment flexible so people in the firm do not perceive what they are doing as a work.

There is also educational technology that pays attention to gamification. ClassDojo is one of them. It is a simple but effective idea to attract student’s attention and change their behavior. Each student chooses an avatar that looks like a small monster and the teacher assesses various things on behalf of the students’ avatars. Teachers can give immediate feedback to students. For example, when a student shows a negative behavior in class or solves a question, students will see the changes in his/her ClassDojo app on their mobile device. The children I interviewed showed great enthusiasm about this application and interestingly, they perceive this application as a game, although the only differences between this application and normal assessment sheets were the avatars and the template. Kahoot and Socrative are two other mobile applications that these students have experience with. These mobile applications are also perceived as joyful, competitive, and rich learning platforms.

While considering how to transfer the strategies of the game into the real life context, it should not be forgotten that there are parents and teachers who have serious reservations about games, as some of their children are addicted to these kinds of games. They are right to have these doubts and I do not think games are absolutely innocent. In fact, most strategy games, including the one that me and Jack became addicted to, have many negative messages, from stealing to killing people. But when it is impossible to avoid them completely, it is best to focus on the positive themes and actualize them for productive outcomes in schools and family life.

All in all, I am still thinking about the situation of my village and neighborhoods. The rulers of neighboring villages were sad and angry when I said that I was leaving: “Winter” was getting closer and they needed my donations and the soldiers I trained. I am now consoling myself as my wife, who is a child psychologist, assigned me to do cleaning and made me think of all the bacteria as my enemies and a big threat to our lovely village (home). As parents and educators, it is our duty to discover the way your children and students learn and produce your own real games.

Ahmet Tugra is a PhD candidate in the department of Learning, Technology and Education in the UK.

Such sceneries are very common now in many houses and internet cafes. Children and youth are spending most of their times playing computer games. While parents favor computers as necessities of modern age and as assistants for their children’s homework, children mostly consider them as toy boxes. They initially start with innocent intentions, but in time they lose their original purpose. “Uncontrolled use of computers,” the common problem of many parents, is also a matter very difficult to solve for the experts.

How do computer games affect the children’s subconscious and their future lives? Do games with positive effects have an appealing presentation?

Computer games can be grouped under two categories. First are the games that help developing talents, understanding the life experiments and ethical values by using an entertaining method; Second are the games that do not contribute anything to the child’s imagination and thinking abilities and inciting violent and immoral behavior. For the game to positively affect the child’s intellectual, physical and spiritual development depends upon both the content and the duration of the game. This period of playing time should neither be too short, nor too long. To be able to obtain a proper balance in this matter, we should first equip the child with an education of using the time wisely. Children wasting their time for useless activities, can also be insensitive to effective use of time when they grow up. Concisely, children must acquire the consciousness of valuing time. Wasted time in front of computers cause children and youth to get passive. This increases the stress experienced by the children. Especially in active boys, this inactiveness causes an energy accumulation which negatively affects the child’s behaviors. The use of excessive energy by ways of different sports is very useful for the physical and mental development and raising of a social conscious. Moreover, spending time in front of computers, deprives children and youth from cultural activities like playing group games, studying together and engaging with a sports activity.

Many of us complain that our children cannot express themselves properly and are not clear at communicating with their environment. When we ask a question to our child, either we get a very brief or a routine answer. Times elapsed aimlessly in front of computers have a significant effect on this.

We see that violence increase in each level of any new computer game. The game producers consider every type of method as permissible just to be able to attract children to the screen. Scenes which are not suitable for the age form the subconscious of a child. Children who have been exposed to several violent scenes are mostly inclined to aggression, anxiety and panic and they are generally furious and quick-tempered and consider violence as an ordinary matter. Reactions of children who watch violent films and play fierce and crimson computer games change in time and start applying more and more force to people and children around them. They tend to hit and kick others even after a slight disagreement. Being affected from destructive violent scenes, children reveal problems like over anxiety, sleep disturbances and behavioral disorders. Since the causes and effects of behaviors affected by the five senses are not questioned so much in pre-school children, abnormalities mentioned earlier can be seen more on them. We can give these as example: “A three year old child who watched violent films, applied what he watched on TV and stabbed and killed his little brother with a knife. Another child who thought himself to be a pokemon (a cartoon character), threw himself from the seventh floor with the intention of flying. And another child in France who could not win any computer games became epileptic because of having too frequent and excessive anger fits due to the unsuccessful playing sessions.” Unfortunately we often hear such news. In order to illuminate the subconscious of our children with beauties, favors, affection, and altruism, we should offer them alternative useful and educational games.

Harmful games also prevent children to learn their own culture, thus cause a cultural corrosion. Such games take our children to a world of weird clothes and hairstyles, weapons being the accessories. In this virtual world, no values exist except for “might is right.” Furthermore, in most of these games Islam is shown as a boogeyman and Muslims are shown as terrorists deserved to be killed. Children who are seized by the computer games become alienated to their environment. Having difficulty to make friends around them, children become enslaved by the computer and isolate themselves from the society. The only friend of the child is the computer, and in spite of elapsing the time, child still feels great loneliness inside. Hence, parents should provide suitable activities for their children and reasonably arrange the time spent for computer games.

Many bad characters shown on computer games also have perverse effects upon the child’s personal development. It is definite that messages given by these games like being strong and unchallengeable, inconsideration of other people’s lives, killing for the sake of living, disdaining ethical values, despising other people’s feelings, disrespecting the person addressed, categorizing the people, negatively affect the child’s personal development. Such games also impose unfavorable impacts upon learning abilities and awareness of the child. Scenes that are rapidly changing on computer screen distract the child greatly, make him confused and disturb his mind. This triggers a difficulty in concentrating when learning. Besides, excessive light changes may cause epileptic fits for some children.

Conclusively, computer games inspire children that the life is only a game and lead children to think too much about the characters in the game and mentally and physically to be with them all the time. Children playing too much computer games, carry the same concepts in the game to their relations with their family and friends, cause the child to confuse between the reality and imagination and eventually, the time spent together decreases and unsocial behaviors settle in the child’s personality.

Surely, we cannot underestimate the beneficial sides of the computer which is a must in modern age. But the ideal is to benefit from the positive services of the computer and to ensure a protection against its harmful usage. The playing time which is essential for the child’s healthy growth, should be distributed fairly between virtual games and real group games. For this, we must prefer games;

• in which they can play an active role,

• that are suggested by specialists and other experts,

• which can provide national awareness and cultural identity,

• which support comprehension and intelligence of the child,

• which contribute to virtues like sharing, team spirit, caring for others, honesty, and diligence,

• which instigate curiosity and make learning fun,

• which include parents into the game,

• which infuse consciousness of performing duties and responsibility,

• which help developing imagination, thinking ability, exploring and inventing capability.

If eyes, ears and other organs that are bestowed upon us by the All-Compassionate Creator are engaged with only entertaining computer games, then they are being used out of their innate purposes. Therefore, the vital responsibility of parents is to be very careful for guiding their children to use their sight, hearing, feeling, judging faculties in the right direction and to prepare an environment that provides the child a rich learning background and to bloom his mental abilities.

In this issue, we address the effect of rapid technological development on our society. One of the most recent and unexpected examples is the phenomenal spread of the Internet. We are becoming even more of a global village than we were in the 1960s, when Marshall McLuhan first coined the term. From the comfort of our living room or office, we can click a button and read foreign newspapers and magazines, study languages, and learn about other cultures.

But such access has its disadvantages: sexually explicit Web sites, chat rooms where people are not what they seen, and violent and ultra-violent video games that can be downloaded. Thus, a still hotly debated issue concerning the entertainment industry now includes the Internet.

With all the talk in Washington about censoring or somehow controlling the Internet’s content, one wonders if one day we will have an equivalent of Breen’s Code, one of the few successful attempts to force Hollywood to produce ‘socially acceptable’ entertainment. Demands for such codes are growing, as more people become fed up with rap and gangsta rap music, ultra-violent video games, the use of sex to sell everything, and programs ridiculing traditional social and moral values.

As our world becomes smaller, we must deal with people who are not like us. To do this to everyone’s benefit, we need to understand other people’s worldviews, religions, histories, cultures, role models, and so on. As Islam is the fastest growing religion in America today, we offer an Islamic perspective on several core Christian beliefs.

Such technological progress has given us increased opportunities for arm-chair travelling. No longer do we have to spend years travelling, as did Ibn Battuta and Marco Polo. We can simply turn on the Travel Channel or the Internet and find whatever we want. But many people are actually travelling, whether as migrants or refugees, with the intention of settling somewhere else. As pointed out in our book review, such a phenomenon simultaneously represents a cultural homogenization and a cultural heterogenization.

Technological developments also have proliferated in science. Humanity has landed on the moon, sent unmanned probes to study other planets and asteroids, and continues to add to our knowledge of our own planet and its inhabitants. This has all been accomplished in the name of objective and value-free science.

But, as one of our authors reminds us, science is as not as ‘objective’ as it seems, for scientists are human. For example, when asked to explain why he had not considered the possibility that God could use evolution to create diverse life forms, Darwin replied that he had problems reconciling suffering with a merciful God. And so we learned that the scientists are subject to human weaknesses, just like the rest of us. This article explains what the scientific process is, how it works, and how it can be applied to religious beliefs.

Also included are three articles for the spiritual edification of our readers.

The winner of our writing contest will be announced in the next issue.

We hope that you enjoy this issue and, as always, look forward to your comments.

Electronic and video games are one of the most important branches of technology entertainment. During the last several decades, interactive video games have emerged as one of the most popular forms of entertainment, particularly among adolescents. Video game content is extremely varied. In addition to their entertainment value, reflected in their enormous popularity, video game proponents point to their constructive uses in education, medicine, and other fields.

However, some observers find certain game-playing trends disturbing. For example, newer generations of video games often feature graphic depictions of violence. This has intensified public concern of potential harmful effects.

Video Game Violence

Video games first appeared during the 1970s. In the last 3 decades, they have gone from bouncing a little white ball from side to side on a screen to virtual reality games in which one is a character in the game itself. Newly emerging on-line games enable a person to play and compete with many others in cyberspace. The majority of games developed with this evolving technology are entertaining, engaging, and appropriate for children.

One segment of the market, however, features violence as a theme. Its depiction of violence has evolved from early shooting games blasting mostly spaceships out of the sky to gory violence, where characters literally tear each other apart with all the realistic details accompanying the act. Many of these games often require the use of increasing levels and intensities of violence to advance through the levels. Thus, violence is used as a problem-solving technique.

Toys and Children

Toys are commonly associated with children. Technology has produced many electronic toys, more specifically, computer and video games. Since there is no extensive body of research on the effects of video game violence, some people state that it does not harm children. The same argument was used to defend television violence for more than 3 decades.

Others assert, theoretically, that video violence actually may benefit children, because it gives them an outlet for aggression. This “catharsis” hypothesis was advanced in the earliest days of the television violence debate, and even compared to the violent elements in literature and art. After many years of research, however, it was abandoned. In Shakespeare the violence is offstage; we see the effects and learn the evil of violence without seeing the act. Classic mystery dramas focus on crime solving, not crime commission; the chief weapon against the villain is intellect, not brute force; and a hero is selected for his or her strength of character, not his or her physical power to dominate. Today’s video game “heroes” often show a violent response as the only effective-and frequently first-response to any conflict.

Is There Any Impact?

There are a few reasons why the games are violent. One is economics: violent games really bring in the quarters for an arcade. Many modern games are designed to let a player fight for a certain amount of time, then compulsively buy more coins to continue. Another reason is that they let you do something that, in real life, is impossible, which is the whole idea of virtual reality and simulation anyway. If you want to unwind after a tough day at work, you cannot take your AK-47 and destroy McDonald’s. However, you can go to an arcade, sit down at an X-Men console, fight a few hundred bad guys and then leave thinking about your game instead of your worries.

Games are just that-games. But when applying these concepts to children, the picture changes, for young children are in immediate danger of copying antisocial behavior. Values are formed very early, and antisocial programming negatively impacts one’s respect for authority, for others, and for self. Given this, parents are asking what effect video violence has on their most frequent players: children 8 to 14 years old and younger.

Research is beginning to give us a picture of what these effects might be. Due to the recent arrival of ultra-violent video games, few studies are available. Research done by the Mediascope Nonprofit Organization shows that heavy exposure to entertainment violence negatively affects children.

Research done by the Media Analysis Laboratory in Simon Fraser University shows that 95 percent of teens surveyed had access to either a video game machine or a home computer, and a similar proportion (90 percent) said they owned at least some video games. The majority said that playing computer games produced a pleasant, exciting, challenging, and interesting experience. Many also felt gaming to be involving (77 percent) and sometimes frustrating (63 percent). Boys and girls experienced games differently, with boys more likely to associate positive emotions with play (e.g., pleasing, exciting, and involving) and girls more likely to associate negative emotions with play (e.g., frustrating, boring, and stressful).

Jeanne B. Funk and her colleagues surveyed the video game habits of more than 900 teenagers, primarily fourth through eighth graders. They found that almost half of the favorite games chosen were of the fantasy violence or human violence type. Girls more often chose games with fantasy violence; boys preferred games with human violence.

A 1998 study examined thirty-three popular video games, and found that almost in 80 percent of them, kids preferred to have violence or aggression as part of the play. Almost half of this violence was directed toward other characters. Twenty-one percent of the games had violence toward women.

There seems to be an imitative effect of playing and observing video game violence, especially among young children. For example, researchers found that in a group of 5 to 7 year olds, children imitated during free play what they had just been exposed to on video games. Children playing active but nonviolent games reflected that in their play, while children playing games with violent themes showed more aggression. The followings facts are taken from Screen Smarts:A Family Guide to Media Literacy by Gloria DeGaetano and Kathleen Bander:

Violent video games send the following messages:

• Problems can be resolved quickly and with little personal investment.

• The best way to solve a problem is to eliminate its source.

• Problems are basically black or white, right or wrong.

• It is acceptable to immerse oneself in the video game’s rule-driven reality without questioning the rules.

• It is better to use instinctual, rather than thoughtful, responsible behaviors to react to problems.

• Personal imagination is not an important problem-solving skill.

In contrast, playing maze games, puzzles, and simulation or treasure hunt video games teaches children that:

• Problems are solved through patience, personal initiative, perseverance, tolerance, and flexibility.

• Gathering information requires work, and information must be analyzed carefully so that informed decisions can be made.

• Problem definition and solving require the use of complex skills.

• A solution in one instance might not be suitable in another one.

• It is important to use such critical and creative mental skills as planning actions, organizing information, predicting outcomes, experimenting with trial solutions, evaluating ideas, and analyzing solutions and their consequences.

• Use imagination and thinking abilities to cocreate, with the game’s writer, inventive situations.

• Use personally-generated, thoughtful responses to solve problems.

In Time magazine’s cyberguide, video games were classified according to their educational value and violence. The authors write that the most child-appropriate hardware is that which encourages them to think and formulate ideas. Games like Carmen San Diego and Where in the USA? make learning fun. Even though the battles are bloody, children learn fast with strategy games like Age of Empires and Warcraft, because looking ahead, plotting strategy, and husbanding resources are the only ways to win.

In any computer hardware store, you also will find a lot of so-called splatter games. Unfortunately, there is a huge diversity in choice for such games. Games like Doom and Quake put guns in the hands of players and reward them for blasting everything that moves. Residential Evil is nothing less than blowing off a zombie’s head and hacking off its limbs. Home computer games can be even more disturbing: I once saw a 14-year-old kid playing a game in which the winning creature actually urinates over its victim’s body.

Rating Systems and Other Alternatives

With the progress of technology and consequently video games, society began to express concern about growing violence. Funk et al’s report stated that in late 1993, video game and software manufacturers began discussing a rating system. Two eventually emerged: the video game system sponsored by the Interactive Digital Software Association (including Nintendo and Sega) and a set of age-based categories developed by Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) (formerly the Interactive Digital Software Ratings Board). They developed joint content-based guidelines for video games through the Recreational Software Advisory Council (RSAC).

The ESRB initially proposed four rating categories: Universal (appropriate for all ages), Teen (13 and older), Mature (17 and older), and Adults Only. The board then responded to the concerns of professionals, including the first author, that the categories were too broad at the lower age levels by adding an Early Childhood (ages 3 and older) category. The ESRB also changed Universal to K-A (Kids to Adult, suitable for 6 and older), and added content descriptors that give a general indication of the level of violence, sexual themes, and crude language.

Although such ranking and debating appears to be designed to stop producing violent games, their main purpose should be to let parents know exactly what they are buying. Parents usually purchase the software and decide what games their children will play. Many video games are toxic and inappropriate for children. The best antidote is to teach children to find such games repugnant.

It also is crucial to teach them nonaggressive problem solving techniques through discussions with adults about the consequences of using violence to solve problems. While living in Japan, I noticed that Japan has almost as much entertainment violence as the United States. However, Japanese society is far less violent. The key may be that Japanese films, television programs, and society as a whole tend to show the consequences of violent acts, whereas their American counterparts do not. Finally, trying to keep children from seeing violence in the home, community, and media is the most effective method of ensuring that they grow up mentally normal.

Conclusion

This article points out how much our lives revolve around computerization. Computers dominate the lives of adults, children, and adolescents. At the same time, American youth have become increasingly involved in extremely violent crime, both as victims and offenders. Every aspect of our society, starting with parents, schools, and organizations to the mass media, the entertainment and software industries, and the federal government should be involved in controlling, rating and, if necessary, prohibiting interactive violent video and computer games. Not to sound too cliché, but it is our children who will have to adapt, live, and survive in this automated world. The “game medium” may be an obstacle in achieving their survival.

References

• DeGaetano, Gloria and Kathleen Bander. Screen Smarts: A Family Guide to Media Literacy. Boston: Honghton, 1996. (Taken from: Media Awareness Network. March 1999 ).
• Funk, Jeanne B., et. al. “Rating Electronic Games” Youth & Society (March 1999). (Taken from: Masterfile Premier. 24 May 1999 <http://gw11.epnet. com/st.asp?key=ehbeuwg&site= ehost>).
• Qnittner, Joshua. “Are Video Games Really So Bad?” Time (10 May 1999): 50-59.
• “The Social Effects of Electronic Interactive Games: An Annotated
• Bibliography.” Oct. 1998. (Taken from: Medioscope Network 25 May 1999 <http://www.mediaecope.org/vidbib.htm#Excerpts>.
• “Video Game Culture: Leisure and Play Preferences of B.C. Teens.” (Oct. 1998). Simon Fraser University. (Taken from: Media Awareness Network. 25 May 1999. http://www. media-awareness.ca/eng/issues/violence/resource/reports vgames.htm).

First of all, games and toys must help children to broaden their minds and become familiar with present and emerging technology. Thus, with some reservations, we would commend model and toy trains, planes, ships, robots and the like.

Secondly, in order to develop an aesthetic sense and a taste for art, children may be encouraged to play at decorating walls, doors and windows, designing book covers, arranging flowers and laying out gardens, etc.

Thirdly, children should be encouraged to use toys and play games that develop their design and constructive capabilities. Blocks of diverse sizes, shapes and colours, as well as other building toys’ for making houses, garages, bridges and the like, can be strongly recommended.

In later childhood and early youth, children will begin to ask for toys and amusements of different kinds. It is important for a responsible guardian to develop a taste in the young for games appropriate to their age. The games we have in mind can be roughly divided into two groups:

1 Those aiming at developing the aesthetic sense and constructive powers (For examples, see above); and

2 Those that train physical abilities and promote development of the body. Examples of the latter are sports such as running, swimming, riding, wrestling, archery, fencing and the so-called ‘martial arts’ (judo and karate are the best known).

Each of these sports (and other similar ones, according to the needs of the time and place) should be encouraged as they come within the circle of the permitted (halal) and are very effective in developing discipline and strength, balance and grace. Their value as entertainment and pastime is, as it were, an additional bonus. In adolescents, sports involving physical exertion and concentration help their bodily development and channel their energies. Older people can also benefit from such exercise which can prevent many of the ailments that arise from prolonged physical inactivity.

Among games and sports, archery, riding, swimming, and running merit special emphasis. They teach poise and confidence on land, water and air, qualities vital to the leaders and enterprising spirits every nation needs for its survival and prosperity.

Although in our tradition the ‘martial arts’ (judo, karate, etc.) receive little mention, they can certainly be recommended insofar as they do not contradict our moral principles and do not entail unacceptable risk of injury

Other games and sports might also be commended so long as they do not lead children to waste time or open ways to them way to commit sins. Games that involve gambling or betting are of course forbidden and can on no account be advised either for children or adults. However, we may note in passing, following the opinion of Imam Shafi’i, that chess is permissible unless played for money. Children who have a bent for that kind of mental activity could therefore be directed towards chess, until they reach adolescence.

Any kind of play or entertainment which counters or debases our ethics is unacceptable for both children and adults. Also, sounds and images, instruments and melodies, which arouse evil and lustful sentiments and so corrupt the soul are absolutely forbidden. It is unreasonable, and an unkindness to the young, to open the doors for them to forbidden entertainments while those within the circle of the permitted are quite satisfactory. The principal concern of education generally and, therefore, the principal concern of games and sports also, is to provide children with noble feelings and to keep them healthy spiritually as well as physically. It hardly needs saying that forbidden games and entertainments are not intended to raise children to humanity or to ennoble their feelings; rather, it is often the case that they have a negative, corrupting effect on their minds and spirits,

In sum, there is a need for moral awareness and guidance in the choice of entertainment, sports, games, and toys, just as in other elements of the education of the young. Failure to seek and provide such guidance will mean – instead of the healthy, balanced, morally sound and contented adults we desire to make of the young – exposing them to emotional and spiritual damage, with all the evil consequences for social life that follow therefrom.