The Etihad Challenge: Helping Young Muslims Understand The Armed Forces

A programme to help engage youngsters from the Muslim community with the work done by the armed forces has been taking place.

The Etihad Challenge gives teenagers the chance to experience some aspects of military life to give them a better understanding of the forces and help with their personal development.

The programme allows the youngsters to get a taste of life in the army, engaging with all three branches of the Armed Forces, at the same time as helping to help bring the Islamic community and the armed forces closer together.

Student Hamza said the project was already helping him to develop his confidence:

“My confidence isn’t high because I have this speech issue…it isn’t bad but it gets me down. But this is good for my confidence, and for teamwork and stuff - meeting new people, making friends.”

Twenty-four teenagers from Glasgow took on the formidable assault course at Dreghorn Barracks.

The latest Ministry of Defence figures show only around 500 Muslims serving in the British military out of a total of 147,000 personnel.

Etihad Challenge mentor Waseem Iqbal told Forces News about what the project is aiming to achieve:

“The whole purpose of it is to get the youths of the Asian community understanding more about what the British Army is about, and to get them to have more respect for the British Army.

“The whole point of this is to get them to see some of the positive work that they’re doing.”

The course is designed to give the youngsters a better understanding of the role carried out by the armed forces.

Brigadier Robin Lindsay told us about the importance of developing a dialogue with Asian communities:

“It allows us to have a dialogue with a community that our normal work might not allow us to reach.

“It’s about expanding that dialogue, it’s about having an opportunity to explain why we as the Army are part of the community in Scotland, and what that means”.