2021 October 10 — FH — female age 14 — Week 5
This week’s class was kinda chill, as we didn’t test out, but we did something that is even worse. Standing on the chairs, I honestly did not miss this part of class. We first went to the Musallah to meditate. This time I was able to not get distracted for 2 minutes, but hopefully I will keep improving through time. At 10:00 AM exactly we headed to class the teacher asked a couple of the students to lead the class I was glad it wasn’t me, he made it so hard for them but it was really funny, after the pledges the teacher asked us about the 5’s, this where things started to get messy, we had to stand on the chairs as most of us didn’t know the answer or LG was purposely picking the ones who did not know the answers (does it all the time), it was some exercise as we had to go up and down 5 times if someone got the answer wrong. After this part of class I thought that we would test out but we actually got started on the lecture.
First thing LG mentioned was the 1,2,3,4,5,6. Number 1: is Allah as we believe in one God, Number 2: is the amount of rakat in Fajr prayer, Number 3: is the amount of rakat in Maghrib prayer, Number 4: is the amount of rakat in Zuhr, Asr, and Isha prayers, Number 5: is the five pillars, or the 5 prayers (Fajr,Zuhr,Asr,Maghrib,Isha), Number 6: The six beliefs of Islam (God, Angles, Books, Prophets, Day of judgment, Allah’s laws).
Then we learned about an obituary which is something that you do and you are remembered for when you die and it is something nice that you did. For example the story of Alfford Noble, he read the obituary of his brother thinking it was his and he realized that his brother’s obituary wasn’t good and people only remember how bad of a person he was, he then decided that to something that he will always be remembered for and that when he invented the nobel peace prize.
We also learned the endowment, which didn’t really make any sense to me, but the teacher was saying when you give an endowment you’re saying that you don’t want them to use your money but yet they still ask for it. Another word we learned was erudite which means having or showing great knowledge or learning. Another word was Waqf. The teacher didn’t really explain this one but he said that it was important.
The teacher then talked about a colonized society which is the maintenance of political, social, economic, and cultural domination over people by a foreign power for an extended period. I also learned that the teacher is from South Africa, he asked who ever researched about which I thought was interesting because he told us that if you had an important interview with someone who is famous you would research them to find out their interest. First thing I did when I got home was search up his name and I learned more about him.
We then talked about learning from history and how we don’t really read the Quran to learn from the history in it. He also mentioned the prophet who was stuck in a whale’s stomach and said the duaa ( Lailaha Ila Anta Suhnaka Ini kuntu Mina Dalimin). LG said to not make the same mistakes twice, which in my opinion we get told all the time, but I think what he meant was to learn from the mistakes that were made throughout history (Quran). He also told us that when reading the Quran we need to reflect.
LG then reminded us of the three types of people , cruisers, slackers, and hackers.
Cruisers just go with the flow, slackers, slack or fool around, and hackers take things above and beyond. LG explained to us how we should always be hackers during our lifetime, he gave us an example of when his lawn mower broke and he fixed it on his own, and his phone has something wrong with it so he bought the tools to fix it, and he said that all of these things are hacker traits. Another example he gave us was a 9 year old professor. I think that the takeaway was to be curious and always ask why things happen and to challenge our brains to things, as our brains have potential and we just need to maximize it, and that we CAN be better than we are, but most of the time we tend to be cruisers and just go with the flow.
After that we heard some essays. I read some of my peers’ essays from last week and I thought they were interesting as even though I take notes during class I still miss some concepts that LG talks about and by reading others essays I can remind myself about those concepts.
LG then talked us about in the programm we should always be goats not sheeps, I heard him talk about this many many times but I never really understood the meaning of it till today, he said that sheeps flow the goat and then they get slaughtered, and keeping in mind the fact that it takes some time to train the goat to do that so they hold to the goat for longer.
We then talked about how Allah runs the show and knows about things we have no clue about, for example when something bad happens we get really mad and don’t realize that something bad could have happened. LG gave us an example of when he went to his country to visit his family but he couldn’t come to America and was stuck there for 3 months and his 3 year old daughter, and 6 week old son were here and his wife had a job, and so did he. He was really mad. After he came back to the U.S 6 months later he got a call from his family saying that his Favorite Uncle died, he then realized that God only did him good as he got to spend time with his uncle before he died.
Another Topic we talked about was Amana, and Accountability. LG could not stress these two topics enough, he said that if we forget everything that he has taught us we should always remember these two. For example how Ronaldo Donates so much to charity that some rich Muslims should be embarrassed. And Accountability is being held Accountable for your actions. We also talked about the first black tennis player to be successful, he had a very successful life until he found out he had cancer, he was asked if he was mad, and his answer what the he regrets the fact that he didn’t thank the lord enough as he kept opportunity, and that he can’t be upset when god did all of these things for him.
LG then reminded us that we are not promised tomorrow and that we need to do a good deed while we can, and say I love you to people we love while we can because we don’t know if they will be there the next or if we will be there the next day. We then talked about UV which stands for Universal values an example would be killing your parents, its a universal value because you don’t have to be a muslim to understand that you are not suposed to this.
For next week inshallah I will have a short story about Hilma Saadia, and the Arabic of Surah Yasin (as I didn’t test out this week)