2020 October 18 – HH – female age 17 – Class Notes
This week, I had to come with Ayat al Kursi memorized in English line by line and in Arabic as well as the English for Fil and Quraish. I didn’t do any of it.
When I got to class today, I prayed my two cycles of prayer when entering the mosque and moved on to meditation. Today was shorter than most weeks so I couldn’t focus as much as I’m used to, but it was still nice to have a chance to relax. After prayer and meditation, we moved on to reviewing the numbers from last class. A lot of people forgot. For review: 1 is for one God, 3 is for the sunnah that the Prophet tells us to do things in increments of three, 4 is for the four books: (in order of revelation) The Psalms, the Torah, the Bible, and the Quran and for the four angels: Jibril, who was responsible for giving the Prophets the holy books, Mikael, who is responsible for the weather and natural disasters, Israfeil, who blows the horn that signals the day of Judgement, and Israel who plucks souls from Earth for heaven and hell. The number 5 represents the 5 pillars of Islam and the 5 prayers with the corresponding times. The pillars are declaration of belief, prayer, charity, fasting, and the Day of Judgement and the prayers with the times are: Fajir at sunrise, Duhr at noon, Asr in the afternoon, Majrib at sunset, and Isha before midnight. Finally, the 6 refers to the 6 pillar of Iman which are told by the story: There’s a God who had a bunch of angels who sent down books to the Prophets that talked about the divine laws and warned people of the Day of Judgement. I like learning about eh numbers because it incorporates a lot of information very easily and most of us have learned this information at one point or another in out time at other Sunday schools.
Next, our teacher gave us a little bit of background discussion on the movie we were going to watch. He asked us, “Why are each of you special?” I laughed a little in my head because the term special is usually used by our parents as terms of endearment when were little. As we get older, we get a little less special and a little plainer like everyone else in the world, in the eyes of everyone. But my teacher had a different take. He said,” You are all special because God created you all different. There is no other you. Everyone has their own individual fingerprints, no two people, even twins have the same ones.” Unrelated, but I learned the reason for having fingerprints in my anatomy class. He also touched on the new DNA kits that let people know their heritage and ethnicity. He confirmed what my sister had warned me about using them. She said that the companies allow your information to be sold and you never know what people could want with your DNA and my teacher said that a lot of people his age were getting caught for crimes that they committed when they were younger as a result of using one of those DNA kits.
On the topic of all of us being created unique by God, he touched on God’s mercy and his compassion. When we mess up or make a mistake or do something were clearly not supposed to do, God protects us. He doesn’t embarrass us in front of everyone until we are ready to face it. Now, we may not feel like we’re ready, but we really might be. That’s why its so important to pray and ask God to protect us and help us. God dos this anyway but with prayer and dua it’ll only strengthen it. Why wouldn’t we want that? If God just exposed everything, we did wrong when we did them, we would be destroyed. It’s hard to face out mistakes when we we’ve had time to process it, imagine if we didn’t have that time. My teacher connected this point to how in class, he’ll poke fun at us. You know use us as examples of topics he’s trying to help the other students understand. Sometimes the examples are embarrassing or maybe a little mean, but his reasoning behind it is so that we can build a thicker skin. If for anything we were just constantly being teared down, we’d lose all motivation to even try. But on the other hand, if were never given criticism, we’d simply think we were the absolute best at everything. In class, he finds the balance between the two extremes. I think his teaching and the way he teaches are part of the reason that I’ve grown more confident in myself and when talking to others.
The last topic he talked about before the movie was educating our full brain. He talked about how he would give his kids books for all their birthday because it a very good way to grow multiple parts of your brain at the same time. He told us the story of how his son loved video games and how he built his own monitor and got a coding certification through video games. My brother also really liked playing video games and watching other Youtubers play games. I want to try to encourage him to do something more with the games. I think it’s a great hobby for him to have and he’d be happy to play games probably for his job and forever.
The movie we watched we directed by Aamir Khan. It was a story about a dyslexic boy who had a lot of trouble in school before he met a teacher that had the ability to tech him the right way. The story was based on him. As we watched the movie, I got emotional several times. The story as quite sad and it really made me think. There are so many kids out there with the same problem as him and they get treated like him as well because teachers don’t know how to approach them. The movie was also a very good example of the difference between the love of a mother and of a father. One of the scenes was him getting in trouble for destroying some pot after this boy who was much older than him beat him up. Hi father got very upset and hit him and didn’t even give him the chance to explain himself. His mother on the other hand, was gentle and sweet with him. This movie exemplifies that a mother will always love their child, not matter what, but a father, there love is more often conditional, and children aren’t seen through their eyes the same way a mother sees their child.
We only watched about 30 minutes of the movie before we moved onto a documentary. The documentary followed a little girl in India that had hydrocephalus. Hydro means water and Cephalus refers to the head. She, Ronna, her parents named her, had a very extreme case of hydrocephalus. The story of how she got treatment for it. Before watching it, my teacher told us that often, when children are born sick it’s a test to their parents and the community for how they will react and help the child. We also only watched about 20 minutes, but it was still very eye opening. You see all the time parents wanting their child to be a girl or boy o this or that. We always take health as a secondary and as a given. It is never. That is why often when a child is born, and they appear healthy the parents say Subhan Allah. It made me realize that even with all the problem we have here, most of us could get treatment and help for Ronna’s problem much easier than she ever could. People as a whole need to be more grateful because nothing we have is guaranteed to last.
Next week I’m excited to finish the movie and the documentary. I will also bring all the surahs I need to memorize to class with me.