The American Islamic Montessori Association®

~Championing sustainable peace through Islamic Montessori Education~

AIMA is a 501(c)(3) non-profit educational & research organization

AIMA® IS A MOVEMENT TO CHAMPION SUSTAINABLE PEACE IN THE WORLD THROUGH
ISLAMIC MONTESSORI EDUCATION

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Why Montessori

Montessori Education enjoys broad acceptance as a superior model for early learning and it holds a unique capacity for influence across the U.S. and around the world. The foundations of Montessori Education happen to be remarkably compatible with Islam and they share values that are exquisitely harmonious. As a result, Islam and Montessori are exceptionally amenable to synthesis; when combined, they produce an educational model of extraordinary depth and potency for cultivating spiritual and intellectual development during the earliest and most impressionable years of life.
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The Challenge

The challenges our youth face today are far greater – by orders of magnitude – than they were short years ago, when AIMA was first conceived. Our purpose at the outset, was to support our youth who sought to live, participate, and build a life as Americans in the United States, without forsaking their beliefs, their values, and the imperatives of their deen. This was challenge enough to catalyze the launch of AIMA.

The world we knew, however, has evolved. The concerns that once propelled AIMA into being have since been dwarfed by even greater challenges, as so much of what we thought we knew about our world has changed.  And as truth becomes increasingly difficult to discern, humankind appears to be shedding the very characteristics that once distinguished us from among all other of God’s creations.

The challenges we face today, and the challenges our youth face today, are far greater than ever before. For this reason, AIMA is imperative today – more than ever before.

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Why AIMA

The principal objective of AIMA is to serve as a leading exponent for the development and expansion of Islamic Montessori Education (IME) theory and philosophy. Our goal is to achieve broad-based acceptance of IME as a legitimate methodology for second order change in Early Childhood Education. Our purpose is to provide IME educators and schools

  • a template for capitalizing on the sensitive periods for intellectual and spiritual development;
  • a strategy for expanding recognition and awareness of the spiritual self (fitrah) that is implicit at birth; and
  • a proven methodology to support fitrah by quickening an awareness of, and a reverence for, the spiritual core that is the “essential self”.

We achieve our purpose – not by helping the young child to acclimate or assimilate to the dunya (material world), but by intervening in that process. We achieve it by holding space during the sensitive period for spiritual development. In this way, spiritual identity is affirmed as a defining feature of the self; and this has extensive implications for how one experiences life and how one chooses to interact with the world.

The benefits of IME last a lifetime and they will change our world for the better, one child at a time.

THE PEACEMAKING WORK OF AIMA® IS IMPERATIVE
– NOW, MORE THAN EVER BEFORE.

“The connection between Islam and Montessori philosophy is uniquely potent in its capacity for the preservation, engagement and acceptance of Islam throughout the United States.”

Dr. Jaime M. Dodd, Founder & Trustee

Wrongs Against the Child

The child is delivered to this world, a wondrous and magnificent being, infused with a capacity and potential that we scarcely comprehend – despite our advances in science and technology, and despite all our research on DNA, the human genome and in the study of...

Tarbiyya & Montessori

In his book entitled Riyādatul Sibyān, Imam Muhammad bin Ahmed al-Ramli mentioned two Arabic key terms in relation to the nurturing and education of children. The first is riyāda, which can be defined as training or spiritual exercise and originally refers to...

Montessori School – Preface for the Informed Parent

Despite legions of international adherents to the Montessori Method and despite its renown as a progressive and indeed, preferred method for educating children, neither the term “Montessori” nor the educational approach itself, bear any patent, trademark or copyright...

Islam, Montessori, and the Education of Children – Fundamental Tenets

An educational model anchored in Islam that engages a widely embraced, secular infrastructure for the transmission of religion, distinguishes the work of the American Islamic Montessori Association (AIMA®) and it categorically differentiates our work from any other...

The Power in a Name

A great deal of focus in writing and research through the years, has been directed toward an examination of our proclivity for naming people, places, things, ideas, etc. and the implications, or repercussions, as the case may be, attendant to the practice. Discussion...

Why Montessori – The Synergy

Abstract: This Paper articulates fundamental connections between the Montessori Method of Education and the philosophical underpinnings of Islam, which is widely acknowledged as the most prevalent and fastest growing religion in the world. Despite the patent disparity...

Emergence of the AIMA: Background and Rationale

The Background and Rationale for the Emergence of the AIMA®Abstract: This Paper articulates the principal concerns and conditions that inspired the conceptualization of the AIMA® and from which it emerged, to include the sociopolitical circumstances and the...