"Caring for the Environment Like Prophet Muhammad (p)" Khutbah by Amira Al-Sarraf (4/20/18)

Khateebah Amira Al-Sarraf delivers the 40th khutbah for The Women's Mosque of America on April 20th, 2018. In honor of Earth Day, Amira discusses the importance of being environmental stewards, as Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) taught us.

Amira Al-Sarraf is the Head of School at New Horizon School, an Islamic school in Pasadena awarded the National Blue Ribbon by the U.S. Department of Education. She has a B.A. in Middle Eastern Studies from UC Berkeley and an M.S. Ed. in Educational Leadership from Walden University. With over 25 years of experience in the field of education, she is passionate about serving the academic, social, emotional, spiritual, and creative needs of students as well as building a culture of collaboration and coherent pedagogy among faculty.

Believing in the critical need for interfaith work, she has been actively involved in interfaith projects with the Skirball Cultural Center, Weizmann Jewish Day School, the Interfaith Peace Academy, and the Alice and Nahum Lainer School. Currently, she is a member of the Los Angeles Department of Mental Health Interfaith Clergy Roundtable Project in Arcadia, and she serves on the Board of Trustees of the Western Justice Center as well as the Council on Spiritual and Ethical Education. She also served on the Board of Trustees of Alverno Heights Academy, an all-girls’ Catholic school.

In the area of curriculum development, she is a co-author of Transitions, a health and human development program that teaches young Muslims about the important physiological and emotional changes they face during adolescence within the context of Islamic values. She has also been actively involved in the development of the Islamic Studies program at New Horizon and recently designed a new Islamic Studies curriculum for the Bureau of Islamic and Arabic Education that takes a dynamic approach to teaching Islam, incorporates comparative religion, integrates California social studies and science standards, and emphasizes the application of universal moral values and critical thinking skills.

With a love for nature and the outdoors, she sought to give students at New Horizon a sense of the importance of environmental stewardship through a recent project at the school: the building of the New Horizon Peace Garden. She initiated this project in 2011 and worked with the NHS Garden Committee to fulfill the vision for the garden as a place of community-building and garden-based learning. She has attended conferences and workshops including American Horticultural Society and Living Schoolyards and seeks ways for this extraordinary outdoor classroom to touch all the learning at the school.

Born and raised Los Angeles, she grew up in an interfaith household with a Palestinian-American father and a European-American mother. Amira is the mother of four adult children who are working or studying in the fields of law or elementary education.