2019 Sep Class of 9/16/19 notes by 16 yr old female

Week of 9/6/19 By: HH, age 16

(actual note(s) from student(s)) submitted within one week of class –

(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)

This week, I didn’t come to class prepared, I was supposed to learn the English for surah Maun, and I didn’t. For next week, I need to have that done as well as read part of the speech by Imran Khan at the UN this year.

At the beginning of class, we talked about a newspaper article on a Tera Bloomer’s first day of school outfit. She was wearing Jordan’s with leggings, a crop top, and a jacket over it. The article described that after she left her room, her mom proceeded to call her a whore and a prostitute and her father said that she needed to change, and upon getting into a friends car and leaving, her dad calls her and says that her outfit was not appropriate for school.

She called him a misogynist and hung up. In my opinion, I think that her parents were being rash; I understand the need for wanting to protect their child, but the comments that were made will only make her more upset with them and she will more likely continue to wear clothing like the one described just to rebel more.

This situation is common among many teens and their parents and often they aren’t handled right. It is of no fault of the parents or the teens, its due to the disconnect between teens of this modern age and their parents, weather they were born and raised here or immigrants. The best way to mend that disconnect is through better communication, without parents and teens in any situation can’t hope for a better outcome.

This situation also brought up the discussion of moderation. Many people, especially Muslim parents who are fearful of more Western influences such as the outfit described would proceed to wear nikab (Islamic clothes that cover everything except their eyes). While there is nothing wrong with this, it demonstrates the two extremes, and in today’s modern America, a nikab is something that many people stop to stare at. This brings about one of my favorite point of Islam: the teaching of moderation.

While I personally have nothing against girls who wear clothes to express themselves, like Tera, I personally try to wear clothes that are moderate, because it’s what I’m most comfortable in.

During the next part of class, we discussed the teaching that the way we interact with and treat out fellow human beings is a function of our understanding of God and his message. This means that the more we learn about and understand the layers of God’s message, much like the layers of a rose, which is also one of the concepts we are tasked with memorizing (metaphors of everyday things and Islamic topic that help us better understand them) we better learn how we should treat our fellow human beings, and that the purpose of rituals, like prayer, was to strengthen our relationship with God.