2020 October 11 – HW – female age 12 – Class Notes
Today for class I had brought my notebook where is take my notes from the class, the sheet with english translation to the basic 6 surahs and every sigle part of prayer and its english translation, the homework guidelines, the salah the muslim prayer book and my trusty pencil. In class today I mastered all of my surahs and through the week I will then master what I say in prayer and its meaning, then get tested on that then in two weeks be tested on it all, maybe.
We started class with 2 rakat of prayer, we then started zakir by reciting in our minds “thank you my lord, forgive me my lord, bless us my lord ” We do this to relax and simply get ready for the day since it was meditation. We do this as everyone arrives.
Once everyone is here we say the pledge of allegiance, The pledge of allegiance is just as it sounds like we are pledging our allegiance to america, it is simply a oath that you take everyday at public school stating our “unity” We face the flag when we do that, then we turn around to the direction of the kaaba and say the pledge of faith. “I bear witness that there is no god but the one god, and I bear witness that Prophet Mohamad peace be upon him was his slave and messenger. Just as Jesus, Moses, Abraham and Adam before him.” Level 1(me) didn’t really have it memorized so we practiced it. One student said it, then I did, then the next student did. We continued doing things like that like one person starts, then the other carries on and so on. This also fit perfectly since we were 3 students and there were 3 lines. After some practicing and some pushups we learned it. The way we did it (one person says it, then next and next was supposed to teach us focus/ listening because someone says it then you would say it or you are 3rd whatever the order was supposed to show you listening and focus. While we were doing this level 2 set of the chairs in a semi circle around the teacher.
We started with the news of a new medical device. This device will replace the stethoscope. It is essentially a mini x- ray machine, it also has many other things it can be used for as well. The interesting thing about this instrument is that the general public can use it. Meaning that you don’t need a whole at home nurses office to use this, although it is 2000 dollars therefore most people wouldn’t buy it to use in their home but it will replace lots of different medical instruments.
Next we talked about contentness. To find a word to describe it is a bit challenging so i’ll just tell you that we were talking about when you go to sleep, you want to be happy or mellow. You never want to go to sleep feeling mad at someone or annoyed aor whatever it is, you simply just shouldn’t sleep like that. Reason being what makes you think that you will even wake up? Sleep is essentially a coma, you don’t know if you ever will wake up. Going along with this there is a story. A story of a man who every single night going to bed was in a good mood, he didn’t have anything he regretted because if he did he would have fixed it. He was on good terms with everyone. Didn’t have grudges, wasn’t in an argument etc. Every night he was content, he would have been fine if when he slept he didn’t wake up, every night he was ready to maybe not wake up.
From this I learned that you should try to be content with yourself and the things that you did throughout the day. Try to not put something off for another day because that too makes you stressed out, then when you go to sleep you are restless thinking about that one assignment or project you had to do. This doesn’t have to connect to school work or anything like that either. It could be playing with you sibling or talking with them, giving your parents a hug. Essentially anything that you would regret not doing if you were to not be around tomorrow to do.
Then we talked about a story of 2 brothers, the general breakdown of what happens one day is that one day he is reading the newspaper as usual and what?!? What is this saying, the newspaper says that he is dead, that can’t be possible here he is reading a newspaper, the newspaper doesn’t fall through his hands so he’s certainly not a ghost, this must be a mistake he thinks. But then as he looks closely and notices what everyone is saying. What? How can this be? People are now talking bad about him,saying he’s a mean person, bad, what? But I thought that I was a good person? Well the general public did not agree too much. This person then went on to say he will clear his name, he won’t stand to have anyone say he was a bad person, he simply won’t have it. Guess what he went on to create? Yeah I thought you wouldn’t guess, that’s fine though it was quite broad. Albert went on to then create the nobel peace prize, a very highly esteemed prize. The peace prize is a prize that is given to the person who in the year before did the best work to further science or math is given 935,366 dollars. Low and behold what had happened was that the newspapers put his name instead of his brothers.
From this I learnt that even if you mess up in the past although you can’t erase it you can at least try to then do something really really good or beneficial which outweighs the bads even if the bad things you’ve done cant be erased.
Then we talked about the story of 5 hour energy. The creator of 5 hour energy made billions of dollars with its net worth at 4 billion and decided to give money to charity. The way he did this was that whenever he sold a bottle he would give back that money to charity. For example, say he sold 100 dollars worth of bottles he would then donate 100 dollars.
From this i reflected that he gave back to the community and made the world a better place than he left it, that is also our jobs as khalifas to leave the world a better place whether it be through simply cleaning up litter for a couple minutes everyday or volunteering to making a invention that will be used for thousands of years to come and generally help through something.
We then revisited formative years.Everyone is in their formative years since formative years are your years where you are developing. It could be anything from learning how to read or write or doing a sport and you need to figure out how to balance it with school or even learning it. It also makes it 10x easier if you figure out what specific formative years you are in, when you know the “problem” it’s easier to deal with it or in the sports example to balance it.
From this I learned that you are always in your formative years and that formative years is when you are developing.
Now this part is a bit hard. You need to find the median of somethings, in this case doing things. As I’m sure you’ve heard, “don’t put off tomorrow what you could do today” but at the same time you can’t jump to the next thing if you haven’t even done the thing you are on properly. For example say you have lots of school work to do, one assignment from science, english and history and you rush your science thinking “but i have to do my other assignments” you need to space your time well and although it may be hard you can’t just run from one thing to another
From this i learnt that you can’t get ahead of yourself but you also can’t underestimate yourself
Going along with this you can’t be scared to do new things or to do something out of this world “unthinkable’ don’t be scared to invent something or if you have something really really good to say and you have the opportunity to do a public speaking but you don’t do it because you are scared. At the same time you cant get ahead of yourself just as last time and do something that down right doesn’t make sense or is dumb. For example say you are taking out a pie out of an oven, obviously the oven is hot therefore you need oven mitts but you then think, oh but no ones ever done this, lets try. There is a reason people don’t do that.
From this i learnt that you need to take risks but dont take it to far as in doing something dumb.
After this we talked about someone who supposedly committed “takfeer’ someone was asked if they thought that (someone who did lots in the christan religion and is important in that) if they had a better chance of going to heaven or if imans would, the ones who simply preach and well that’s about it. He said that the person from the cristan religion would because he actually went and did things while imans were doing good with their preaching that the christian person did better. Thats when everyone erupted ‘OH HOW COULD YOU SAY THAT, YOU ARE OFFICALLY NOT MUSLIM, HOW COULD YOU SAY THAT ABOUT YOUR OWN REALIGIN” you know the usual.
What I learnt from this is that most people think doing is better than just talking while some would argue that the talking was doing something, it was telling people things / guiding them. I also found a new way of looking at things
We then went on to talk about the black lives matter movement happening in the United states. We were asked if we did anything, helped in anyway, or anything like that. Example going to a protest (90 percent of them are peaceful) While everyone’s cheeks were flushed and the silence spoke for itself Laher J said this “will you stand for justice or will you simply enjoy the fruits of justice” meaning will you help make things right (anything) or will you simply stand by and watch people stand for justice, then when justice is found simply enjoy when you did nothing to help stand for justice
From this i learnt that you need to actually speak up about things, you can’t simply act like whatever the problem is, is not real or you can act like its not happening or its not real then ‘fake it til you make it’ You can’t waddle in pity or gloom you need to at least try to make a difference.
We then talked about if we will be sponge or if we will bea brick. By that I mean if you will be a sponge and absorb the knowledge given and apply it and truly understand it or if you want to be a brick and simply not be absorbent, at least not easily absorbent
From this i learned that you need to at least try to understand something and eventually after you are genuinely tryin, then try a different way buyt you need to try to be a sponge because if you think you are a sponge you are already one step closer to being a sponge and vice versa
Next and finally we talked about how we are a change agent (agent for change) We are all agents for change and we were handed a not perfect world knowing and it wasn’t perfect and tasked with the good to make it better and yes you guessed it “better than when we joined it” This is you test as a agent for change.
From this I learned that we need to take things into our own hands and get things done and make the world a better place both environmentally and the foundations/ moral.