2023 Sep Week 5 F 17
Al-16(week 5)Sunday, September 17,2023
Today, my family and I came in class earlier than we usually do. When we entered the class, the only one we saw was Teacher C which was very surprising because nor Teacher S or Teacher I weren’t there. He gave us a very warm welcoming with the song that we usually listen to when meditating which is part of our weekly routine but today was a little different; then we will talk about the concepts that were on the board and our weekly news, finally we will go on to the lessons and testing.
The first thing we did after the greetings was to put the prayer mats on the floor since Teacher C had already put the chairs and tables out. While listening to the song that said” la Ilaha Ila Allah Mohammadu Rasulullah ” we sat down on the prayer mats and started meditation. Meditating is the first step of our weekly routine, which consist of something we do before every class to clear our mind, put a side all of our thoughts to only think and connect with God. Meditation was very difficult for me to do in the first week but now I am feeling some progress in the way I stay in the same position focusing on the song. We even did it longer then we usually do. When we finished our meditation, we saw that Teacher R was also in the class. After the meditation, came the 3 pledges like always. This time was a little bit different since we usually explain and do the pledges at the same time but this time we started by talking about why we do the 3 pledges first. We do the first pledge, which is the pledge of allegiance because we want to show gratefulness to the country that provide freedom of religion for all which is something that many countries do. The pledge of faith is said to bear witness that there is no other God, but one God; and Mohammad is his slave and messenger like Jesus, Adam, and the others were before him. The third one is the pledge of Knowledge in which we show to the person or the thing that teaches knowledge and we hope that they will teach us right. After talking about them we put them in practice, first by turning to the flag of the United States and acknowledge the pledge of allegiance, next we turn to the hibla to do the pledge of faith and last we turned to the teacher and said Surat Fatiha in English and we try to do all of this together at the same time which is something we are still practicing.
The concepts that were on the whiteboard is something that we try to do all by ourselves and some resources last week. So today we revised them, Teacher R asked us to choose from one of them and talk about it. F choose intention: every action is based on the sincerity of our intention. "Actions are judged according to their intentions." This means that the true worth of any action is based on the intention behind it. We all gave our opinion about intention, and we came up with how the angel that is on our right shoulder registers our intention of doing something good before we even do it. Contrary of the angel who is on the left who only register it after it is done. Teacher R also said that she knew someone who used to tell her how they should always intend to do something good, he used to say “ always intend to go to hadj “. After that I choose to talk about tree trunk, and I explained how I taught that tree trunk mean that everything starts at the bottom ich the bottom of a three. After some research I found out that it represents The Tree Trunk with Branches – ONE GOD – many Faiths/Approaches with the same message so we can understand our role on Earth. The next concept was about Go(O)d: GO(o)D: In this class, Belief in GOD is all about doing GOOD, if we do Anything in GOD’s name it MUST be GO(O)D. Bad or evil acts cannot be done as worship to GOD or I God’s name as GOOD IS ALL ABOUT GOOD. The last concept we reviewed with O was Greenstairs which a program in which our responsibilities as khalifah of Allah is to make our selves good, help other become good, make the physical world good, Toward a fully and truly Islamic word.
The news is the third step of our weekly routine. It is very important to know your surroundings and what is happening in the world. I used to watch CNN-10 to know what is happening in the world but after school closed, I stopped watching the news. I am glad that I joined the program because it motivates me to know more about my surroundings. I feel like we talked a lot about what is happening in the world and surprisingly everybody contributed by giving their opinion or what they know about it. The news that was given today were: Texas attorney charge with corruption, iPhone 12 banned, 5 girls killed by An Italian military jet that crashed, El Chapo’s wife released, Nigeria power outage, Floods in Libya, escaped man captured, Poutine and king Jon Hong’s meeting and the Pitbull banned in England. After we talked about the news; C asked us if we knew what was happening in Mexico, he was very excited to talk about that, but we said that we didn’t know. He talked about the Mexican government that discovered dead alien mummies a long time ago but only talked about it now, which is weird. After researches I find out that a journalist by the name of Jamie Mousen who has speculated a lot about aliens, presented the aliens remains in Mexico’s congress. They were in little coffins, supposedly they were found in 2017 in Peru with three fingered hand and what appeared to be shrunken or desiccated heads. Teacher R told us to ask question can lead to networking, it can help you obtain valuable information and opportunities. Teacher R told us her life story of how she came from a 6th grader who didn’t know any English to one of the assets of the government. We also heard about Teacher C’s life story ; both are really very emotional, and because they have Islam in their heart, they are here today teaching us and doing their best to make us good Muslims. Teacher M entered the class just after we finished talking about Islam, so we had to summarize what we did since we came. Teacher R asked us to tell him one of the concepts that was on the board, which was eyes: our eye in this context means soul. We have to feed our soul with anything good that is a way of worshipping Allah; for example: Bismillah, La Ilaha Ila Allah and Zikr and else. One thing that is very important is that when we are dead, and the two angels comes to ask us questions, it is our soul that will answer nothing else. When talking about eyes, Teacher C told us something that I never knew, he told us that on the Dollar bill there is s figure of thee third eye. He told us that it is called the eye of providence which is a symbol of an eye in a triangle. The third eye in this case represent providence (God's wise government over creation) . The eye watches over the workers of mankind. We asked Teacher M if he had any news for us, but he said he doesn’t have but he told us that he wanted to focus on his family and him first before worrying about what is happening in the world. He said “the heart give itself blood before giving blood to the body” ;which is very interesting. Teacher M taught us a very interesting lesson which was about Aayat-Kursi. He asked us if we knew what it means; and we all said that it was for protection which didn’t answer the question. He started by making us all say Surat Aayat-Kursi in front of everybody. After we all recited, he gave us the whole meaning of it, he even explained it but what I most retained was that God never gets tired of holding the heaven and the earth. He told us that he is Arab from Yemen, but he didn’t know the meaning of it until he saw Nouman Ali Khan talked about it, he learnt the meaning after that. Nouman Ali Khan is an Islamic speaker and Arabic instructor. I learnt that Ayat Kursi also introduce who God is.
Today’s class has been very instructive as always. I especially learned that Islam is not only a religion it is also a way of life. Since teacher I is coming next week Inchallah, we had to test out on our salat sheet hopping that when he comes back, he will be proud of our efforts and progress.