Join ARCD's Chicago Family Workshop on September 19, 2026

Families today are not falling apart on purpose. They are drifting, one skipped call and one missed visit at a time, until the distance feels normal. Africa Relief and Community Development is hosting a Chicago family workshop on Saturday, September 19, 2026, at Universal School in Bridgeview, Illinois, to look honestly at what is pulling families apart and what Islam asks of us to hold them together. The session brings an Islamic lens to a problem every community recognizes, whether it shows up as a quiet group chat, a grandparent who feels forgotten, or siblings who only speak at weddings and funerals.
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What This Chicago Family Workshop Is About

The working title for the session is Family: One of Shariah's Five Essentials, with the tagline An Islamic Perspective on What Holds a Family Together. The talk centers on Silat ar-Rahm, the Islamic principle of maintaining ties of kinship, and argues that this is something you do rather than something you simply feel. Visiting, calling, giving, and forgiving are treated as the actual mechanics of family closeness, not optional gestures reserved for special occasions.

The core argument of the workshop is simple and a little uncomfortable. Modern life, with its distance, long work hours, and constant screens, makes drift the default setting for families rather than the exception. Islam does not treat family closeness as a nice preference for those who have time for it. It treats maintaining those ties as an obligation, which is exactly the reframe this Chicago family workshop is built around.

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Event Details at a Glance

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• Workshop: Family: One of Shariah's Five Essentials
• Speaker: Sheikh Dr. Mohamed Moussa, President and Co-Founder of Africa Relief and Community Development
• Date: Saturday, September 19, 2026
• Location: Universal School, Bridgeview, Chicago, Illinois
• Audience: Open to families, parents, and community members in the Chicago area
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Meet the Speaker Behind the Chicago Family Workshop

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Sheikh Dr. Mohamed Moussa leads this session in his role as President and Co-Founder of ARCD, an organization that has spent years working directly with families across Africa on issues of poverty, health, and stability. That background matters here because the talk is not abstract theology delivered from a distance. It comes from someone who has watched what happens to communities when support systems, including family ones, break down under pressure.

His approach to this Chicago family workshop draws a direct line between ARCD's humanitarian work abroad and the quieter crisis of disconnection many Muslim families face at home in the United States. The argument is that the same principle protecting a family in a rural village, namely staying present for one another, is the principle a busy family in Chicago has simply stopped practicing.
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Why Ties of Kinship Are Central to Islamic Family Values

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Silat ar-Rahm is often translated loosely as maintaining family ties, but the concept carries more weight than that phrase suggests. It is framed in Islamic teaching as an active, ongoing responsibility rather than a feeling that either exists or does not. Visiting relatives, calling to check in, giving support when it is needed, and forgiving when there has been friction are treated as the practical, repeatable actions that keep those ties alive year after year.

This is a useful distinction for a Chicago family workshop built around Islamic family values, because it turns a vague goal like being closer to your family into something concrete. You cannot schedule a feeling, but you can schedule a phone call to an aunt you have not spoken to in months. Framing kinship as action rather than sentiment is exactly what makes the concept workable for families that already feel stretched thin.
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Why Family Drift Has Become the Default

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The workshop's premise is backed up by broader social trends, not just anecdote. Research from the Survey Center on American Life found that the share of American adults reporting no close friends at all climbed from 3 percent in 1990 to 12 percent by 2021, a shift researchers link to shrinking social circles across the board, family included. Separately, an Annenberg Center for the Digital Future study reported by NBC News found that the share of Americans saying they spend less time with household members had nearly tripled compared to a few years earlier, tracking closely with the rise of constant internet and social media use.

Neither study is about Muslim families specifically, and that is exactly the point the Chicago family workshop makes. Distance, screens, and overloaded schedules pull at every family regardless of background. What Islam offers is not immunity from those pressures but a clear standard that treats staying connected as a duty serious enough to resist them, which is why the workshop leans on Silat ar-Rahm rather than generic advice about work-life balance.
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The Cost of Letting Ties Quietly Lapse

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Nobody decides one morning to stop being close to their family. It happens through a slow accumulation of missed calls, skipped visits, and unresolved disagreements that never get addressed. By the time the distance is noticeable, it can feel too large to close, which is precisely why the workshop frames small, consistent actions like a weekly call or a monthly visit as protective habits rather than afterthoughts.

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