2023 Oct week 2 Female15
Week 2 10/22/23 TB 15 F
Today I went to class, and arrived at 10:00 am. Next class I’m supposed to know the meaning of the prayers in English for testing out. We learned about multiple topics including, eight seconds, papa papa, belief, LGA & ILY, greenstair, soap and water, 156, benefits to pray, virtual bucks, and BR.
We talked about the principle of coming on time as it is the first step in leadership, coming late to places will objectify you as a person that doesn’t take something serious. Later on we jumped into the topic of the “8 second rule”. Most of us have learned that praying is important and so we pray but most of the time what we don’t know is if our prayers have been accepted or not. We need to know how to connect with Allah and how to call up to him and have our prayers be answered, and for that to happen we need to give all of our attention to him. Our teacher used a phone call as an example, saying that when we pray, we’re like making a call to Allah. But it’s important to remember that the strength of our connection depends on us. As the teacher said, if our connection is weak, our call to Allah may not go through effectively, this also brings us to our other topic of BR, which stands for belief and ritual. They shared an example of how most of the time our parents tell us to go pray as a ritual because they think that the belief will just come to us naturally. There’s always a debate on whether belief or ritual is better, but neither are better than each other. Instead they both add on to each other and help us become a good Muslim and strengthen our connection with Allah.
LGA and ILY, this phrase was brought up as a lesson. It stands for L-ove G-od A-lways. The teacher shared about a girl who dreamt of going to the moon. She always made dua for it to come true, but she soon realized that it wasn’t happening and her dua’s were getting accepted, she was confused on why they weren’t getting answered. As we know our life has already been written for us, every single detail. No matter how many dua you make, if it’s not written for you then it’s not going to happen, and this isn’t just to make us upset, Allah does this from his good heart, he knows what’s best for us and what’s not, so that’s why we have to remember to say a part of the dua that most of us forget, “if it is not good for me, then give me something better.” We should always end our dua with these words.
Soap vs water, defining this would be that it’s always better to clean ourselves with soap and water, then just water. For an example we were given, prophet Muhammad pbuh. He used meswak to brush his teeth, in order to keep his teeth clean, he must’ve used his fingers, but it didn’t do the job so he found something better to use, many argue that we should use meswak instead of a toothbrush as it’s sunnah, but we have to remember in those days they didn’t have toothbrushes, so they used their resources to finish the job, another example being used was, that there was a person who had just finished performing wudu when a friend asked them to meet a woman. The person declined, explaining that they had a duty to pray and didn’t want to compromise the purity of their intentions. This example shows how important it is to stay true to our intentions, even if it’s getting distracted by stuff around us.
We also played this cool game about 1, 5, and 6 in Islam. We had to stand up and share Islam-related answers based on our assigned numbers. It was a bit tough for us as the numbers got higher, but we get to refresh our memory on the four books, Khalifas, angels, rakats, and imams. We also talked about the six beliefs in Islam: Allah, prophets, books, angels, day of judgment, and accountability. It was a fun way to learn and remember, not for the standing part but luckily no one needed to do the punishment.
The teacher told this really interesting story that stuck to me that could relate to the examples that were given for soap and water. It was about these two young girls who got stuck in a classroom during a crazy storm. Both of them had wet shoes and no food or water, so they had to leave the classroom to find help. But here’s the thing, one of the girls was wearing these super expensive socks, and she was really worried about ruining them, and hesitated to leave. The other girl, on the other hand, had normal priced socks and decided to go through the storm to get help. Unfortunately, she did end up losing a toe to frostbite while trying to find help, but the other girl who hesitated passed away due to her action. It’s such a tragic story, but the teacher’s message was really important. They wanted to remind us that it’s more important to focus on solutions that help us and have more caution for health and safety over possessions like fancy clothes, belongings.