Khutbah

Scheduling Process

Because Houston is so vast geographically, and because ISGH's Islamic Centers are spread throughout the city, there is a need for a scheduling system that matches Khateebs to the preferred Islamic Centers. This is not an easy process due to the sheer quantity of Islamic Centers and Khateebs within the ISGH system.

To overcome this challenge, ISGH has automated the scheduling process to ensure and takes into account the preferences of the Khateebs as well as the Islamic Centers.

Nomination of new Khateebs

The vast majority of all the Khateebs currently in rotation to give Khutbahs at ISGH Islamic Centers are volunteers. ISGH and the Muslim community are thankful for volunteering their time and efforts in preparing and delivering the Khutbahs. Often times our Khateebs become busy, travel, or just simply are burnt out, and thus ISGH is in constant need of new Khateebs.

Moreover, it is estimated that the Houston Muslim community is comprised of virtually every ethnicity, language and color. ISGH realizes the diversity of our community and embraces and welcomes it. To that end, ISGH is making extending efforts to diversify the Khutbah rotation to include speakers from a variety of backgrounds who are qualified to give the Friday Khutbah.

But we cannot do it alone.

ISGH believes that a nomination process is needed to achieve the aforementioned goals of inclusivity and diversity as well as quality assurance. For more details about this, please visit the nomination page here.

Feedback and Standardization of Expectations

None of the aforementioned goals will be fully achieved unless our audience participated in the process.

ISGH has created what it believes is the minimum threshold that a Khateeb is held accountable by, which is "Standardization of Expectations of ISGH Khateebs". You can read more about it here.

Moreover, ISGH decided to create this (short and to the point) survey to collect the feedback of the audience and share it with the Khateebs. Collective information (e.g. the overall average rating of the Khateebs as a whole) will be shared publicly for transparency and for the community as a whole to monitor and evaluate our progress.

You can take the survey for last Friday's Khutbah by clicking here.

New Khateebs Academy

ISGH is also excited to launch it's very first "New Khateeb Academy" where new Khateebs are introduced to basic entry-level public speaking skills, the ISGH standards for effective Khutbahs as well as the Islamic rules surrounding the Friday Khutbahs.

If you believe that you can contribute to this project, please feel free to contact us at khutba@isgh.org

Thank you, and may Allah reward you all. We ask Allah to guide us to that which pleases Him and make us service of our community in the best way possible. Ameen