OFFSTONE | JUNE 2021 | FKP USIM

43 Impact of Intercultural Exchange Program Documented narratives of dynamic, eminent, and committed Japanese Muslim pioneers have suggested that direct exposure to Muslims and a change in environment can have a positive impact on youth. For instance, Umar Mita who died in 1983, the first ethnic Japanese Muslim revert who translated the Arabic Quran into Japanese, used to live with Chinese Muslims. Umar Mita was impressed by how they lived which eventually led to his embracing Islam. So did Akira Hamanaka, who stayed for brief periods with Muslim families in Indonesia and Singapore. Hamanaka later built the Niihama Mosque and remained active in da'wah before he died in 2019. These cases proved that an intercultural experience is an option that has a good chance to work among Japanese youth. An alternative daᶜwah initiative whereby the youth are removed from the majority non-Muslim Japanese culture to immerse in a multicultural Muslim majority environment, in which they observe and experience first-hand what it means to live as practising Muslims, is needed to help grow their confidence to adopt Islam as their way of life. This approach is unlike the usual approach of theoretical classroom learning, in which students sit and listen to the teacher during lessons. A recent cultural exchange study done by Jamilah Samian involving several Japanese students staying with practising Muslim host families supports the idea that the cultural exchange approach applying the concept of Al-taᶜāruf is a viable option. In this study, the Japanese youth learnt that Islam and being Muslim is an enriching, positive experience and quite different from what they have gathered from the media. The intercultural approach is hoped to complement the theoretical formal instruction that is usually applied by Islamic NGOs in educating youth about Islam, which usually takes place in a classroom or lecture hall. Besides, the cultural exchange approach requires physical travel, which Allah mentions: "Say: 'Travel through the earth and see how Allah did originate creation; so will Allah produce a later creation: for Allah has power over all things'" (Al-'Ankabūt: 29:20). Physical travel is particularly significant in an intercultural exchange programme as it exposed the participants to new horizons and new possibilities, resources of a culture they have not experienced previously. Conclusion There are many ways of reaching out to peoples of different nations, beliefs and backgrounds, for the purpose of daᶜwah , to spread the word of Islam, as well as to clarify misperceptions of Islam. The audience demography, in this case the second-generation Japanese Muslim youth, must be taken into serious consideration, their needs and preferences looked into, before an