All Praise is to Allah (S.W.T.) the Lord of the worlds and Peace and Salutations be upon our beloved Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W.) .

We thank Allah (S.W.T.) for giving us the opportunity to conduct our first Qur’an Braille Workshop in Nigeria.

Our hosts were the Muslim Association for the Visually Impaired in Nigeria (MAVIN) and the Joint National Association of Persons with Disabilities (JONAPWD).

During our exhibition in Accra, at the 5th Africa Blind Forum that was held in July 2011, Hajjah Sariat Adelakun, a Nigerian sister who is currently pursuing her PhD at the University of Birmingham, UK, expressed her desire for Madrassa An-Noor for the Blind to come to Nigeria and teach the Blind there the Holy Qur’an.

She mentioned to us that there are no facilities whatsoever for the blind in her country who wish to learn about Islam and that many Muslim blind people were leaving the fold of Islam due to the scarcity of Islamic literature and the lack of support for people with disabilities.Our Jamaat of five (Ml Hassan Murchie, Ml Zaahid Suleman, Ml Sulaiman Desai, Sheikh Husain Hashi and Br Shiraaz Asmal) departed for Lagos, Nigeria on Friday, 23 December 2011.The workshop was conducted between the 24th and the 29th of December 2011 at the Salamat Olaniyan Memorial Model College, which is situated in Oyo.

Over 57 sighted participants and 27 blind students from various areas of Nigeria, like Lagos, Ibadan, Oyo, Kaduna, and Sokoto attended. Participants from the neighboring countries of Togo and Senegal also attended the Workshop.

On the final day of the workshop, Brothers Abdul Qadar and Sulaiman Hamzah beautifully recited a few verses from the Holy Qur’an in Braille. Their recitation, after just 5 days of training ,brought new hope to all participants and rekindled the spark of Iman in every person’s heart. It also reaffirmed Allah’s miraculous promise that He has made the Qur’an easy to learn.

During our interaction with the participants, an elderly Blind brother Malamu Sulaiman Badmosi from Jos, emphasized to us the desperate need of Braille Qur’ans. He showed us a copy of five chapters of the Holy Qur’an that he had written by hand.

The process of writing the Qur’an by hand involved a sighted reader dictating every letter of the Qur'an to him, while he used the basic old slate and a pin (Stylus) to poke and emboss the Braille dots. In this way, he finished writing his hand copy of the Holy Qur’an over a period of five years.

Tears of happiness rolled down his cheeks when we presented him with a gift of a Braille typewriter (Perkins) that we had brought from South Africa to distribute.

At our meeting with Mr Danlami Basharu (Director) ,at the Anglo-Nigerian Welfare Association for the Blind’s offices in Lagos, we presented them with a soft copy of the Holy Qur’an in Braille. We also confirmed an inter Library agreement between our organizations.

We take this opportunity to thank our Ulema and the sponsors of our Institute. May Allah accept our efforts and reward everyone for their assistance in organizing this workshop. Ameen.