2018/9 Class notes by SL age 17 – (actual note(s) from student(s)) updated weekly

(actual note(s) from student(s)) submitted within one week of class – Start date Sep 2018

(These notes are mostly unedited and represent a GISLA students understanding of the previous class the attended.) Student attend class on Sunday and submit their essay of what they learnt before the next class. Interestingly, as can be seen below the same class yields different lessons for each student even though the content of the class they hear was the same.)
Students graduate level 1 IF and WHEN they pass the Level one exam (some do it in 6 weeks and some take 3 years and counting…) and students from anywhere in the world can test out to pass and earn the GISLA Level one trophy)

SL 12th grade – late submit I learned in class this past week that the green stair academy is like broccoli. When you are younger and your parents make you eat broccoli you usually don’t like and do not understand why you need to consume it. Once you get older you understand what is valuable in broccoli and why it is good for you to be eating it. We also learned tree trunks and branches.
TeecherJi taught us that tree trunks represent our belief in god because it is deeply rooted inside of each person just like a tree trunk is deeply rooted inside the ground. Each different branch represents each major religion and the branches off of those major religions represents the other parts of each religion. He also taught us some main beliefs of other religions to help us get a better understanding of what they believe in and how it differs from Islam. He taught us that Christians believe that they are supposed to live their life like jesus. Jews differ from Islam because they do not believe in the afterlife.
TeecherJi also taught us that we have to be able to learn from history of other people’s action to prevent ourselves from making the same mistakes. While you learn from history to prevent make mistakes you have to be able to learn from your own experiences.
I was also taught that you have to be accountable for your own actions and you eventually have to answer for them. It does not matter that someone suggested that you commit to performing an action, it is your choice to commit towards the action and you have to be accountable to the actions that you take.

Week 4 9/30/18 Last week I learned about the Angel Postal Service and how the it was not possible for a human to just bring down the different chapters of the Quran down to earth. They had to be brought down by angels.
I also learned a concept of through an example of socks; TeecherJi posed the questions why would you buy a few pairs of expensive socks, when you could buy regular socks and have more of them and they serve the same purpose. With this example I learned that you should get the items in life that get the job done because the extra money that you spent could be used towards benefitting another purpose or helping someone in need.
We also learned he 6 cardinal beliefs God, Angels, Prophets, Books, Day of Judgement, and Divine Laws.We also learned about the prayer Fajr. We learned about how a man slept through Fajr one day and felt wanted to seek forgiveness from god for his mistake so he prayed all day and kept Allah in his prayers all day.
Although Shaitan’s purpose of making this man sleep through prayer was to make the man not think of Allah, his plan failed and the man thought of Allah all day. Shaitan then woke him up for Fajr because the man thought of Allah all day. We also learned about a new concept the karate chop.
TeecherJi wants us to think about trying to have absolute focus on your prayer. Like a person who using a karate chop to chop through wood if he doesn’t have absolute focus on the technique then the chop will not be as effective compared to if he focused.

Week 5 – Last week we learned about not doing good deeds that will hurt other people for example going to the masjid and then there is no parking and you decide to park in the fire lane. If a person dies from you blocking the fire lane even though you were performing a good deed you hurt someone else and it is harder to get a person’s forgiveness then getting god’s forgiveness.

We also learned about not being a sheep as in just following what you see other people do. Sheep if they see a goat or sheep get their head chopped if they will continue on. But goat if they see a sheep or goat get their head chopped off they will try and run away. When I usually refer to the term goat it is the acronym G.O.A.T and it means greatest of all time. The greatest never follow other people and look to them to show them they way they always strive to be leaders and be better than the person next to them. Also we learned about physical laws and how you can just pray for yourself to get an A on the test or play a good game without studying or practicing.

That leads to another point of feeding your soul once you do the physical laws to help you achieve a goal you can feed your soul and get benefits from god that allow for you to do even better at what you are attempting. Also when it comes to praying you are praying to get help from god with the things out of your control. So you still need to be doing the things that you can control so that you can get the benefits of the prayer.

Notes of Last week’s class (Nov 11/18) This past week in class I learned about PPP: Power, Poverty, and Passion. People will always chase power like someone always wants to be a CEO or the president. People will use power to abuse poverty. Intellectual and material poverty is what people will take advantage of.

IF you are to learn one thing about this class is that is that you should learn from history and that this program is more about your brain and how you carry yourself more than it is about Islam. You should se common sense to evaluate what people of power are trying to get out doing so you don’t do something stupid.

Misusing your mouth and your private parts will always get you in trouble. Bill Gates made a waterless toiled that turns poop into fertilizer right away. He is already a billionaire but he is still striving to solve other people’s problems and make the world a better place.

Today there is nothing with having a picture of in your house. It was back in the day that people used to worship idols that it was bad to have pictures of people in your house.

If something doesn’t consist with the Quran it has to pass the P.A.P.A test. You should check with what the prophet and Allah said twice and sees if there is something wrong with what you want to do. It also takes time for you to learn how to solve a problem if you haven’t already experienced it.

Do not expect someone to be able to solve your problem right away even if they are a professional because they may have not experienced it yet to be able to give you a good solution.

Yu should always strive to become a professor so that you are versed in your area of study

Class notes for class of 11/18/18 submitted 11/18/18  (296 words)
Today during class the first thing we learned about was the sanctity of the Quran. I learned that the Arabic version the only version. That still doesn’t mea the English version isn’t important.

We also talked about how some people have belief in god and that is why they do the rituals such as praying and fasting. On the other hand people do rituals just because they have to and hope to eventually find why they believe in god. We are trying to learn in this class why we should understand the rituals we perform.

We then shifted our discussion towards how there is 99 names to refer god by. We have talked about how we should take one page of the Quran a day to see what we can learn and apply to your life. We also discussed about if someone kills a family member that in a certain country you can decide to receive a sum of money or have him put on death row. I feel that it is morally wrong to sentence someone to death or to take a person’s life unless it is in self-defense. Branching off that a man committed a sin so bad that the earth refused to keep him buried. Every single time he was re buried the Earth threw him out of the grave.

We then discussed how the Christianity differs from Islam. Christians associate with Jesus as his son. Even though we disagree with this belief it does not drive us to dislike Christians, Jews, or any other religion. As a Caron Armstrong explained her view of Islam while being a Christian; she said that she did not see a reason to convert to Islam because she evaluated it as a way of life.

Homework 12/4/18 During class this past week we talked about recent news that has happened around the world. We also learned about George Bush dying at 94. We also talked about how the ability of an elephant to pee about half a tub in 20 seconds is being studied. It is being studied to see how the hydraulic functions work so that the fighting of forest fires can improve. So that situation in like California can be contained and not be as bad.

We also talked about the creator computer code and how people can be three things in life. They can be an operator which is a person who only knows how to use stuff like driving a car and is limited to that. A person can also be a hacker and know how to modify a car and tune it like a mechanic. Or you could be a professor a person who knows how to build a car and now how it works.

We also learned about how 1/3 slaves in America during slavery were Muslims. We also learned about the cycle of business. How people can be hackers and invent new ways to do something better and make a business out of it. For example Chipotle a man figured out a way to make Mexican restaurants cool and appealing to customers and engaging by letting you see the food being made. Throughout the business cycle though there will be a person that works under the leader or owner and finds a way to make a better business and that is the cycle of history.

We also learned about George Bush dying at 94. We also learned about wudu and how it prepares you spiritually to pray and how all the steps cleanse your body of all the bad things that have happened throughout the day. We also learned about how in the past people children would get killed if they knew how to do wudu because certain people didn’t like Islam. Eventually they figured it out and decided to teach their children to do wudu with their eyes. This taught me that everything you do is based on intention and if you have situation that prevents you from doing a ritual that you can do something that will accommodate it if you have the right intention.

Last weekend (12/16/18) we started class with thigger but didn’t do it for as long as last time so my muscles didn’t get tired. Laherji dressed like an elf to start a conversation on why Christmas should or shouldn’t be celebrated by anyone. Laherji explained that Christmas is a pagane holiday that was celebrated before jesus. Apparently it was associated with bad things like hurting women and other things of the sort. I still don’t have a full understanding of why Rubil hates it so much that he would effuse anything associated with Christmas. Im not sure if all the Christians that celebrate Christmas know of the past that was supposedly bad and how it wasn’t even the day that jesus was born. We talked about how recently at the Arlington cemetery groups of people went to go lay wreathes on fallen soldiers. We also brought up how Japan wante to be homogenous meaning they only wanted Japanese people living there. This meant they tried to stop immigration of different races. As a result the population has turned into mostly older people who are dependent causing some problems in the economy. In the middle of the class I started to get confused and got even more lost as we went deeper into a topic. We then moved onto how in South Africa Jew and muslims will work during Christmas so that the Christians can enjoy their holiday. And during the Jewish and Islmaic holidays Christians will work so they can have the holiday off. This has become a tradition between these people. We then brought up the discussion of how if you refuse to be tolerant that you will always find something wrong with every religion. Whether it is their past or what they are doing in the present. Making the world a better place is the goal of a muslim and the Paris agreement helped us do that by taking steps to stop global warming. People in DC every single year count the birds to see the decline or fluctuation of a type of bird. Miners use a Canary to give them an early bird warning if there is too much CO2 in the air. The bird is able to smell the CO2 faster and it starts making a unique sound and alerts people to get out so that they wont die.

Class notes from 12/23 Movie Homework
During this movie I didn’t learn any concepts that I haven’t already witnessed or experienced. This boy retaliated towards the belief that he was forced to grow with and once hew was beaten by the Islamic teacher he lost love for islam.

The dad was in a stubborn mentality and wanted to live through his son and see him become a halfist for some reason and ignored suttle but noticeable signs that the boy was dealing with emotional issues.

Class notes from 1//19 Homework by 17 yr old

Today I walked into class and we started off with getting donuts and fruits waiting for us at the front door. We started with meditating for about five minutes and also siting in a position to become more relaxed and flexible. I think if I do yoga and stretch regularly the position for the meditation will be more comfortable and it will always help me become better at football and less injury prone in terms of muscles. After meditating we starting doing our memorization work. In class I learned the meaning of atayat in English and also memorized another surah.  I worked with rubil to memorize atayat and he helped me memorize it a lot faster.

We moved on to our debate, current news conversation, and lesson on concepts. We started talking about how recently a man was caught it H&M video girls while in dress rooms. What was disturbing was that he was streaming the security footage to his phone so he was even in the stores and could still see them. Once he was caught they found out that he has multiple stores camera streaming into his phone. In the thought of forgiveness it would have been easy to forgive the action if it had only been one store as in like he made a mistake and only did it once. But he has done it multiple times and it is hard to forgive someone that it that type of person who makes that big of mistake once and keeps going on with it. We then started talking about how people felt about the rulers of islam after the prophet was dead. They did not like it and fel that the lineage should of stayed In the family.  We also talked about Zam Zam water and how it has spiritual significance. People who take this water when they have an illness within them it helps heal them faster or in some cases cure diseases that look to the point of untreatable in the eyes of science. This water also presents people with the placebo effect. This is when someone is given a pill or something that they believe is going to treat them and because they believe it actually works. Whether or not the item is the real deal their brain is tricked into going into healing mode and becoming heathier.

Class of 1/19/19 by male 16 years

Chuck Feeney has gathered his estimated $8 billion fortune from his business idea of duty free shopping. His idea was offering high-end concessions to travelers without import taxes. Eventually they started selling cars and tobacco. After he had gained his wealth his philosophy was that the purpose of wealth is to improve the human condition. He loves companies that are not only there to make a profit but do what is in the best interest of the customers, employees, and their communities. He would often travel around the world to donate virtually all his entire self-made fortune to causes like education, health, human rights, and healthy aging. This related to me because my purpose on Earth is to make the world a better place and I am always working to be the best at what I dream of becoming and what I believe will lead to me living a comfortable life. This man is the example of making the world a better place. He would search for problems by traveling all over the world looking for high value causes. Once he found them he would go all in donated his usual 100 million plus. This relates to me because with the amount of money he had he did his amount of amana required because he had more ability to help people he does more exotic and financially dependent things.