Muslim mum here, looking for views of of other Muslim mums xx

[fsl409]

Before the summer holidays started, my sister started sending her son (my little nephew, recently turned 5) to madrassa (mosque school) for 1.5 hours every weekday evening after school, leaving no time of energy for him to pursue any other extra curricular interests, clubs or activites that most of his (non-Muslim) friends attend.
My sons are a little older than their cousin but mine have schedules of things like football, swimming and martial arts. They asked me to let them do these things as they really are passionate about them. At first I thought it might be too much for them after a whole day at school, but they really enjoy so I can't complain.
With my nephew, he's become withdrawn, quiet and looks permanantly exhausted. He doesn't seem to have much zest for life and talks with envy about his school friends who are allowed to spend their evenings after school playing sports, going to the park or just doing relaxing things at home or with their families.
Of course I believe it's important to learn about our religion, but I teach my sons about it in a way that fits around their school life, not in a way that takes over every spare minute outside of school hours.
I know my sister loves her son and wants him to grow up as a good and pious Muslim, but I'm concerned that she might be putting her wish for him to attend madrassa every single night for 1.5 before his right to have other interests and do the kind of "fun" activities that his friends do.
Just to be clear, I'm not suggesting there's anything wrong with attending madrassa or studying our religion, I'm just concerned about the amount of time each week my nephew is expected to attend and how this impacts on his opportunities to have other interests or activities.
I even offered to take him to play football with his cousins one evening per week for an hour but my sister was like... 'no, he has madrassa..". AIBU?

I used to take ds1 before covid to madrassa for the same amount of time. 7.5 hours a week is not bad to learn new things and make new friends.

It depends on which madrassa you take your child to. Some are better than others. The one ds1 used to attend, never did the full 1.5hr of learning. The teacher listened to the children's recitations, gave out further homework if they passed. Then it's story time, followed by quite playtime until parents come to pick up the children. If mosque prayer time happened during lesson time, then the children where expected to join in with the movements of the prayer if they didn't know what to say. It is up to the parents to teach prayer and for the youngsters either the teacher or his aid didn't pray with the congregation but instead kept an eye on them.

Dh used to take ds1 and ds2 to their weekly Sunday swimming lessons and I used to drop ds1 to my brothers house on Saturday, where he joined his cousin for football lessons.

Yes, our schedule was packed. I remember, ds1 asked me to join an after school club that was running for only a set period of weeks. I signed him up for it and then told his madrassa teacher that ds1 won't come for a set number of Wednesday.

You sound similar to my dm who wasn't to happy with how busy ds1 schedule was. I thanked her for her concern and said would 1.5 hr of tv be better? I was taking ds1 to activity he enjoyed. He loved his madrassa and he still miss it.

It is still closed because of covid. I'm currently, trying out a different weekend only one. So far I'm finding this one more isolating. Possibly because of covid protection, they have the children sit apart and no clear play time.

Why can't you take your nephew during the weekend? Or suggest clubs that run during the weekend.

I mean, YABU to interfere with your sister's parenting choices if it's not actually harmful to the child. After that, whether or not he enjoys madrassa and how long is too long is really down to the individual child and how good the madrassa is.

I'm not Muslim (I'm Christian), but I live in a majority Muslim area. A lot of the local kids go to madrassa before school at around 6am, then come home and get changed for school. My dc would find that much more tiring than after school. Some of them only go on a Friday or at weekends, there's a lot of variety out there, in quality as well as quantity (of time). Maybe your sister will tone it down over time, particularly as your nephew gets old enough to voice his own opinion more forcefully, but surely that's up to her (and her husband).