Sheikh Nuh notes

Salaam,

17/2/06 - from Iqad ul-Himma by Imam Ata’ullah Sikandari:

The basis of Allah's all conquering power is He himself. Nothing can withstand Allah as He is maintaining us and the and the whole universe. He is all encompassing and Everlasting - these ensure that everything has to exist "through" him.

Everything is from Allah - even ones own closeness to Allah is through the blessing of Allah, not because we "deserve" it through our own efforts.

The all encompassing power exists with Allah alone otherwise why don't we choose not to die? or not to fall ill?

Spiritual experience happens to people, even if these people don't want it as this experience is coming from Him, the All conquering, from whom which nothing can be resisted. With a divine experiencee things which cannot be seen, heard etc to others are opened up. One who is close to Allah can see his "hand" at work.

Nafs are like children - if you let them get away with something, they'll come back wanting the same thing if not more. With nafs, if you let them have their way, they'll push you further and further beyond what ispermissiblee before you've lost track of where you actually are



20/2/06 - from "Mutual Reminding & Good Manners" by Imam Al-haddad:


Always believe in the best of your lord - you get what youexpect from him. You turn completely to Allah, He will turn completely to you

He who claims to be a servant of Him but has even One desire apart from Him is a liar. The true slave is one who has eliminated all desires except than those which are to do with Him

Imam Shadili: 9/10 of the spiritual path is to gaze at the tremendous generosity ofAllahh

Having and not having is like the night and the day - they come and go. Everything perishes except the being of Allah. The sufi is the one who sticks with Allah, the one who will Never perish. Why try and do things on your own or be sycophantic towards people who have limited ownership of things in this world when you can be with Allah who owns everything.

If you have the following four, you enter the circle of having the possibility of being accepted by Allah:
1) Grateful for the blessing of Allah when you have
2) Be content when youdon'tt have
3) Spend excess wealth on the poor
4) For all actions, ask what's in this for Allah?" All actions should haveIslamic benefit to it.

Being unscurpulous is like a disease, worsened by the fact that this person ignores it as he thinks there are others worse than him so its OK.

One who is on the path to Allah should always give the "benefit of doubt" to Allah - even if on the face of things look bad, trust in Allah should remain, Allah's mercy opens to these people.

Hadith Qudsi: Allah will be to the servant how the servant is to Allah

Tawakkul means both sides have responsibility; servant does action and Allah responds to this. Therefore never start thinking "its not working" even if things are going bad, Allah is in control, He will not forget you and He knows better whats good for you than yourself. Allah even provides for those who don't believe so don't you think he will provide for the believers...? for those who are grateful...?

Nothing wrong with wanting a good job, good grades etc but the heart should stay quiet i.e. not stress too much over these things as this shows that the heart has gone astray from Allah and being concerned about ones deen onto these other things. Sign of a wrecked heart is stressing about things in the future with respect to rizq and also thinking if x runs out what am i going to do, if y happenss what will i do..? Mark of yakeen is one who doesn't stress about the things which aren't in his hands. The more one who relies on Allah even though it seems things are happening as a result of his own hard work, the more Allah is pleased.

Salaam

Khalid Bin Walid

Salaam,

I have written some comments for most of the photos from Syria and iA will put them up, but thought would/should dedicate one entry to Khalid Bin Walid (RA) aka The Sword of Allah". The link attached is an excellent resource for learning about one of the greatest Islamic figures we've been blessed with. Below are some snippets and quotes:

"Khalid bin Al-Waleed was one of the greatest generals in history, and one of the greatest heroes of Islam. Besides him, Genghis Khan was the only other general to remain undefeated in his entire military life. A measure of Khalid's genius is that he was the only person to inflict a (temporary) defeat on the Prophet Muhammad, (may Allah bless him and grant him peace)"

Khalid began the conquest of Iraq from the Persian Empire and led the Muslim armies in Syria against the Byzantine Empire. Under his leadership, Damascus was captured by the Muslim armies and at the Battle of Yarmuk, all of Syria was taken from the Byzantines. Following this battle, Khālid was extremely popular which worried the caliph Umar who did not want the popularity of his general to interfere with people's beliefs in Allah, so he recalled Khālid and removed him of his commander status. Despite Khālid's desire to continue leading his armies, he obliged. Rather than stay in Medina though, he returned to the field of battle as a regular soldier and fought admirably"


Khālid bin Walid (RA) died in 642 in Homms, Syria. He had wanted to die in the field of battle, and was disappointed when he knew that he would die in bed. And appropriately the last words attributed to Khalid bin Walid (RA): "I die even as a camel dies. I die in bed, in shame. May the eyes of cowards never find rest in sleep!"

Narrated Khalid bin Al-Walid (RA): "On the day of the Battle of Mu'tah, nine swords were broken in my hand, and nothing was left in my hand except a Yemenite sword of mine." [Bukhari]

Narrated Anas (RA): The Prophet had informed the people of the martyrdom of Zaid bin Haritha, Jafar bin Abi Talib and Abdullah bin Rawaha before the news of their death reached. The Prophet said, "Zaid took the flag (as the commander of the army) and was martyred, then Jafar took it and was martyred, and then Ibn Rawaha took it and was martyred." At that time the Prophet's eyes were shedding tears. He added, "Then the flag was taken by a Sword amongst the Swords of Allah (Khalid bin Al-Waleed) and Allah made them (i.e. the Muslims) victorious." [Bukhari]


Salaam

Sheikh Nuh, Sheikh Rabbani and Egypt...?

Salaam,

Well quite a few things have been happening in the past few days and looking into the next few days i think it looks even busier..!

Wrt to the shuyukh i've started to regularly attend Sheikh Nuh's lectures on tasawuff three times a week now. I was a bit wary of attending intially as some of the stuff in sufism would be classed as "dodgy" by the hardcore hanafi's plus i was pretty busy trying to catch up with everyone else in my class. But im thinking that im pretty lucky to have the opportunity to attend his lessons and i should grab this with both hands. Iv said before i think that i know of people who travelled from Manchester to London for a 30 min talk by him and one guy here travelled EIGHTEEN HOURS!!! across the states to attend a weekend course by him. And here i am, five mins away from his centre and i cant be bothered...? Anyway im taking down notes so everyweek inshaAllah i'll try and summarise some of the stuff he's going through and put it up here. I think on Monday he's going through a book by Imam al-Haddad called "Two Treatises: Mutual Reminding & Good Manners", on Wednesday he's doing the famous "Ihya ulum ud-din" by Imam Ghazzali and on Fridays he's going through a quite famous book on sufism (will get the title iA)

So whilst i was going through this period of high motivation and thinking that i really need to make the most of time here, coincidentally Sheikh Rabbani started a hanafi fiqh class using Imam Sharunbali's text so i've also started attending that, 4 hours per week, which Alh is proving to be really beneficial.

So basically, last week i was struggling to be bothered to attend my core classes at Qasid and now i've ended up taking on another 7 hours worth of classes...! I hope this "phase" of being keen to learn isn't just a phase and i can last the whole term on this course...Its getting a bit full on now though as with these additional classes im doing nearlly a 40 hr week of core lessons...aarrrrggghhhhh!! but then again once i start working i'll regularly be doing 60hrs+ so i guess i shouldn't be complaining..

Yesterday was quite exciting though as it was the first time in Amman that i ventured out on my Own and using the local buses too! (believe me this is a big thing). One bad thing so far is apart from the trip to Syria, i hardly ever get out of the area im living in due to lack of time/not being bothered. But iv promised to put an end to this so yesterday i took the bus to Abdali Station (the main bus station in Amman) and basically wondered around for a few hours. I went to the the Masjid Abdullah (named after the king) and ended up visiting the National Museum of Contemporary Fine Arts of all places!

The mosque was a bit weird as although its beautiful from outside, the inside is bizzarre. Its one large Octagonal hall, but when you enter it your just overwhelmed by the BRIGHT red carpet which has star shapes all over it, the BRIGHT gold, red and blue innder dome and the HUGE chandelier. Worse though, is that you can't tell which way the Qibla is !!! Its absolutely bizarre. there's no rows on the carpet and as there's lots of angled walls you cant tell which way you need to pray. Right at the front is a very small mihrab, so when i entered i saw people praying in all manner f distractions...I think this is a case of where the King went for an aesthetically pleasing mosque rather than one which is functional which is pretty bad

The museum was pretty cool and was even more suprised to see a painting by a bengali guy. It was pretty awkward though as i had asked for directions fom this guy who seemed religious (well he had a beard...) and so he took me into the museum to be faced with all these picasso style paintings of people etc and the guy just kept shaking his head sayin "hatha laysa munasib!" (this is not appropriate!!) so i felt pretty bad that i'd brought this guy into this dungeon of sin (well as he saw it..)

Anyway after that i ended up visiting some travel agents which were on the main road going to the bus station trying to get quotes for flights to Turkey and Egypt. I want to try and go to Turkey at the and of this term inshaallah (March 21st onwards) for about a week and then maybe i will go to Egypt. The dilemma im facing is do i stay in Amman for another term or do i go to Egypt to sudy there for 2 months? The main difference between Cairo and Amman is that its sooo much cheaper to study, live and just generally get along in Cairo. But alhamdulillah the teaching here (especially grammar) has been really good so im not sure what i should do, and day by day im running out of time to make my decision. Whatever happens i need to go to Egypt as i have some "stuff" to do and my return flight to th UK is from Cairo on June 14th...so i could stay here until around june 5th and then spend 9 days in Egypt and fly back. But then again i wanted to go to Tunisia and Morrocco too....arrrgggghhhh! Im Very confused as to what to do and how i can manage to get everything done in the time im here...so the next few days look quite hectic in trying to sort out flights possibly to Turkey/Egypt/Tunisia/Morrocco and accomodation in all these places...plus finding somewhere to study in Egypt...just thinking about trying to sort all these things out makes me wanna just stay and fly back from Amman!

Will let u all know how things pan out.

Salaam.

Random pics...

Former Mayors Palace



Inside Masjid Ummayad



Tomb of Prophet Yahya


Masjid Khalid bin Waleed

Views from Crusader Castle (Comment coming soon iA)

Ps...(this one dont count)

Theres been a hailstorm on for the last 20 mins and its expected to snow tonight...!!

From killing Muslims...to being a Muslim..!! (crude, i know) and Doogy...

Salaam,

So the story of the American soldier who converted;

So my good friend Mr S was walking back from his hadith class (i didn't go as i was sick) when a large van pulls up next to him and the guy inside grunts "are you American..?" in Arabic "errrmmm...what do i do....?" thinks Mr S , but alas Mr S is a honest fellow so responds "yes, im American and Proud " (the proud bit i just made up). The man in the van responds "are there many Americans in this area...?" "oh no, this doesn't look good" thinks Mr S but responds "yes many, and we're all proud to be from the land of the free " (the last bit aint true again). "oh, OK", responds the driver "its just that i have this American soldier here with me and he wants to convert..." "what??!!" (...is Probably what Mr S thought but i don't want to comment on the exact nature of his response as i wasn't present)

So to summarise; an American soldier who is serving in Baghdad had come to amman to convert to Islam, and to get married to his Iraqi fiance (who was with him). The full nature of the story isn't clear and theres many things which don't make sensenbut anyway the driver of the van was a relation of the soldiers fiance and they were looking for an English speaking sheikh through whom the soldier could convert and hence ended up in our part of town. So as they came across my friend, who'd just had a lesson with an English speaking sheikh, he took the soldier to this sheikhs house.

The sheikh, being quite strict, wanted to make sure the soldier wasn't just converting for the girl (what guys will do...) so goes into a 1 hour "aqueeda for dummies" lesson where he sums up the basics in Islam and at the end asks the soldier 'do you believe in all this" at which the soldier, with watery eyes (this is how Mr S described it) says "yes" and testifies his faith in One Allah and that Muhammad (pbuh) is the last messenger. Then the sheikh takes him down to the local bookshop and buys him some key books on Islam and sends him off on his way

The End.

Oh, your all wandering about the girl and did he get married? Well the sheikh phones his friend who's an "Islamic judge" and certifies marriages and tells him about this American soldier who has just converted and wants to get married, what does the judge reply...? That he's got Another American guy with him who wants to convert, so the judge will send over this guy to the sheikh so he can convert and can the sheikh send over the just converted guy to to he judge so he can get him married to his fiance...! SubhanAllah

Ps, the soldier who converted was telling Mr S in the midst of all this about the war on Iraq, the morale in the US army etc and also happened to mention that Many (including his sergeant) had converted to Islam whilst in Iraq...SubhanAllah

Salaam.

Ps, someone complained about me referring to Sheikh Nuh as "The Big Man" in my previous entry...*sigh*...i apologise for any offence caused to all the mureeds of Sheikh Nuh, the person who emailed me, to Sheikh Nuh himself (i don't think he'd be offended to be honest - i've heard he has a good sense of humour) and...everyone basically. May Allah forgive me for this heinous crime.

Pps, im sure i would have been able to refer to Abdul Hakim Murad in Cambridge as "the big man" and no one would have got offended...

Ppps, please don't send me a link about adab as i'll just reply back with "chill out"

Pppps, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD !-ppl, please, instead of emailing me saying stuff about the blog, use the comments feature available...im just saying for your benefit as i dont spend much time with email so will take aaages responding...but if you send emails bigging up the blog and saying that its the best thing since sliced bread and is the reason you wake up in the morning.. (like Doogy - see, you got your mention! - again the last part aint Exactly true) then its Ok, i guess...

Ppppps (last one), Fugly, i aint happy...

Hujjaj Flu and Exams

Salaam,

There's freshers flu and now to my detriment I've realised there's the hujjaj flu. Usually at the beginning of every yr at uni, most people fall ill due all the students coming from all the various parts of the world, bringing with them their local germs, and as they're all suddenly together in confined spaces, illnesses spread and spread havoc. Or there's the other reason for freshers flu which we wont go into. I've now found out that a similar thing is present with the hujjaj- one of the downsides of all the hujjaj coming back is that they've brought sooo many diseases and random stuff back with them and everyone is falling ill, including the big man (sheikh Nuh) who's been out of action for a week or so.

Alhamdulilla i think i got off pretty lightly apart from Saturday when i was confined to my bedroom. All bar one of my flatmates has been ill now with one of them out of it for a good week so our flat has been resembling something of a warzone the past week or so with ill people wandering around like zombies knocking into walls ands such like.

Anyway i was readin the other day about how an Iranian newspaper has offered a gold coin each to the top 12 artists who can come up with sartirical cartoons about the holocaust...should be interesting to the wests reaction to that....one thing which annoys me, as with most Muslims i think, is how the "West" has double standards for Everything it says, and now with this "freedom of speech" issue we'll see how they deal with what this Iranian newspaper are doing..

Wrt to studies, as they say, doesn't time fly when ur having *fun*...I've just had my mid term exams which alh went pretty well..But rather than being worried about the exams themselves i was more surprised to know that potentially half my time in Jordan had whisked by already.. subhanallah its gone by really quickly. But then i see in front of me the 4 1/2 months left and i realise how long the journey is. So a quarter of my total time is up and what have i done...? How far along am i on achieving my goals that i so recently set myself...?

Well wrt the Arabic I'll soon find out with the result of my exams...in terms of grammar i think iv learnt a huuuuuge amount. They say that a term here (3 months) is probably equivalent to a years worth of studying Arabic at university and i can see why. in terms of speaking iv realised that at the crux of it is plain, borig memorisation of words . And ecause i was enrolling onto level 2 i had to learn the 1300 words (give or take a few) taught in level 1 and all the new words i was learning i level 2...so a lot of words per day. But Alh its gone pretty well and i think iv covered a good 60-70% of the words from level 1 as well my new words for this level. On top of that iv been using another book to learn vocab specific to the quran and have learnt 100 or so words from that...phew! a lot of words! But just learning the words aint the main task, its putting them into use because otherwise All the hard work in memorising them vanishes. But to be honest im learning some pretty useless words - for example the current topic im doing is about medicine so the new words to be memorised included Attahoon - plague, Judhariyy - smallpox and Shullali athifl - infant paralysis...! I mean how often am i going to be using these words...??! So I've started to be selective in what I'm memorising as i feel im wasting a "space" in my my head learning not very useful words which should be "saved" for something else...

Anyway, on another topic - yesterday i heard a pretty amazing story about an American soldier who came to Amman from Baghdad yesterday to convert...will give more info later today or tomorrow inshaAllah.

Salaam
Ps, Happy Valentine's day...! (Fugly...)
Pps, For my Wahhabi, Salafi extremist readership out there - I'm joking...(some interesting topics at the bottom of the page too...)

Snow...!!! (With Pictures)

Salaam,

I didn't really believe the stories i had been told before coming to Jordan; that heavy snowfalls occur during winter - i mean this is the middle east right? Deserts, sweltering heat and camels?

Well when i woke up this morning, all the above was gone. Snow, snow, snow. Everywhere! Subhanallah it was a bizarre thought-that it was snowing, and snowing heavily, in the middle-east, in Jordan and in Amman, but it was happening.

The first thought that came to my mind was that Qasid would be closed and so a day of from school. Yes! (I'm a keen student as you can see...) I'm not sure if i've mentioned this before, but basically Amman is built on a series of hills so all the roads are Very steep (much like Blackburn if anyone's been...). So in the snow it would be very difficult to get anywhere so everything shuts down. Alhamdulilla.

So anyway, as soon as i realised it was snowing, me and another flatmate known widely as Abu Hafla (The father of parties...Inshaallah i'll do a post on the ppl i live with) went up to the roof of our apartment to check out the views. Unfortunately the immediate area we live in isn't very scenic; just one block of apartments after another, but anyway it was pretty cool to see everything covered in a blanket of snow and observing some people and cars who had braved it outside struggle with the steep roads.

Anyway since the snow was still coming down fast, we retreated to our warm flat pretty quickly. So back in our flat, i sat down and just dazed out the window looking at the snow covered view, blissfully lost in this show of nature. Then the enemy came. The Sun. Noooooooooooooooooo...!

Alas this middle-east snow experience was to be cut short by the sun. By this time it had been snowing for a good four hours, and there was a few inches of snow on the ground, but then The Sun barged in and with all its power and might eliminated in a mere hour all that the snow had achieved...and Amman, was back to Amman.

Views from the roof of our apartment block:

Before...

After...

There's gale force winds outside, a sandy-muddy mixture falling from the sky and it's supposed to snow tonight...and i thought the UK was bad

Cartoons and Duas

Yes two entries today..you lucky people...

Im pretty sure all of u have been aware of the cartoon fiasco that's been going on, and im sure ( i hope...) that most of you agree that whats been going on in terms of the Muslim response has, unfortunately again, fallen short of what was required. much like what happened with the Salman rushdie affair, a potential event which could have been used to show the True manner in which Muslims deal with contentious issues and potentially be used as a source of da'wah has been sabotaged by hotheaded Muslims around the world calling for danes to be killed and going round burning embassies. Initially i think our protest started off well as we were hitting the west where they hurt the most - their pocket. I read that the danish company Arla was losing 1m pounds per day - its this sort of almost passive objection which requires little effort on the part of the Muslims which creates the biggest reaction from the purportrators - we all know that in many countries large companies hold a lot of power over their respective governments/people, so if we can get to them like this, then our objection will be effective.

But what good will burning down their embassy do? Ok, it'll create jobs for a few Syrian and Lebanese builders in the following months when these embassies are rebuilt, and what though? again it seems the Muslim community worldwide has missed a chance to use a much publicised event to their advantage and instead again further reiterated the stereotypical view of Muslims - that we resort to violence and carnage as soon as we're forced out of our comfort zones and challenged. Its sad.

To end this rather gloomy entry on a higher note, two dua's (prayers), the first being from the book "Desire for the Aa-khirah" by Maulana Ashraf 'Ali Thanvi and the second being an invocation of Uwais al-Qarni:


اَللَّهُمَّ اجْعَلْ حُبَّكَ أَحَبَّ الْأَشْيَاءِ إِلَيَّ ، وَاجْعَلْ خَشْيَتَكَ أَخْوَفَ الْأَشْيَاءِ عِنْدِيْ ، وَقْطَعْ عَنِّيْ حَاجَاتِ الدُّنْيَا بِشَّوْقِ إِلَي لِقَا ئِكَ ، وَإِذَا أَقْرَرْتَ أَعْيُنَ اَهْلِ الدُّنْيَا مِنْ دُنْيَاهُمْ ، فَقْرِرْ عَيْنِيْ مِنْ عِبَادَتِكَ

"O Allaah, make my love for You the most beloved thing to me, and my fear for You the most fearful thing to me, and remove from me all worldly needs and wants by instilling a passion for meeting You, and when You have given the people of the world the pleasures of their world, make the coolness of my eyes (pleasure) in worshipping You"



اللهم خلقتني ولم أك شيئا مذكورا، ورزقتني ولم أملك شيئا،وظلمت نفسي وارتكبت المعاصي وأنا مقرّ بذنبي، إن غفرت لي فلا ينقص من ملكك،وإن تعذبني فلا يزيد في سلطانك، وإنك تجد من تعذبه غيري وأنا لا أجد من يغفر لي إلا أنت،إنك أنت أرحم الراحمين.

"O Allah, You created me when I was not worthy of mention;And You provided for me when I had nothing;And I wronged my soul and sinned, and I confess my guilt.If You forgive me, that will in no way diminish Your sovereignty;And if You punish me, that will in no way augment Your authority.You can find others to punish besides me,But I can find no one to forgive me but You.Truly, You are the most merciful of those who show mercy."

Salaam

A bit late...but Aims

Salaam,

Something i should have maybe done a lot earlier, but i think i need to clarify; my aims for the trip out to the middle east. I think this is important so i know how im progressing and so that i have goals to try aim for. Im finding that my work is a bit all over the place due to a lack of structure so inshaAllah this will help me out.

1) Learn Arabic - might seem obvious but thats the main thing im out here for. But "learn" is quite a broad term and i only have 6 months. At Qasid they have 5 levels and they say that by the time you finish level 5, you should be able to study Arabic like a born Arab at uni level i.e. how a person born and brought up in the UK would study English at university. If i stay at Qasid for the remainder of my time here, i will finish level 3...so not quite there but enough to hold a decent conversation iA

2) Islamic Needs - Im here out in the middle east with lots of scholars around me so might as well take advantage of this right...? I've already enrolled onto a aqueeda class and am also taking a class on the famous 40 hadith by Imam Nawawi with this guy called Sheikh Imad, who has ijaza's from the Mufti of Egypt and Jordan to name a few and has taught at Harvard University. And Alh they're going well so far. I also want to do further tajweed so iA will do this next term.

3) Quran. Im trying to read a juz a day and alhamdulilla have been pretty consistent on it and want to continue this for the remainder of my time here. Also another Big aim is try try and make the 3 juz iv known by heart on and off for a while solid by the end of the 6 months iA.
There's quite a big difference (i think) between being able to read/write speak qur'anic Arabic and then be able to understand the qur'an when hearing it or reading it. So they have a class here specifically on particulars wrt Arabic of the qur'an so might take this next term. But i also want to emphasize more of my study on quranic passages.

4) To have fun. Again, i don't know if or when il be back out here, so another aim (which hopefully wont distract me from the aims above...) is to visit as many countries in this region as possible, see as much as i can and sample Arab culture, or whats left of it, in these countries...


We'll see how many of these i can tick off by the end of my 6 months here...

Salaam.

Catch Up

Salaam,

Hope everyone is well inshaAllah,

Well, its been a while since iv written something..have been spending time on the blog though, but been severely slowed by the medieval nature of the machines im using here...been taking me aaages to upload the pics, and often the net connection would break so would have to start all over again...so please appreciate them...! I've re-jigged the pictures around a bit so they are grouped in terms of subject. Also i've reset the settings so comments can be put on, so please do so..! but be nice...( you know who you are...)

But dealing with these photos makes me realise how we take literally everything for granted and don't appreciate things. I mean just a camera, taking photos. If you really think about it, the ability to capture one moment in time for ever is an amazing thing in itself. Whatever we do, whoever we are we can never recreate exactly that moment in time, yet the camera captures it. Just thinking, or trying to think about how a camera works, then how a video camera works, is mind boggling. Sheikh Nuh said something similar in one of his classes about how even when we're sitting still in the middle of a field with seemingly nothing around, even there, every single moment in time is unique as for example due to the rotation of the earth on its axis and round the sun the air, particles, atoms in front of this seemingly still scene are all in a state of flux and thus every moment in time is unique. And if you think about this, that every thing you do, every situation your in, all this can never be done again, I think it makes you appreciate how valuable time is.

Wrt to pictures, i remember telling someone how i was once reading a newspaper and the article was about a block of flats in chechnya which had been blown up by terrorists, and the picture to the article showed a man holding a folded up rug in his arms in front of him, and inside was the body of his dead child with the remnants of the devastated block of flats behind him. And i was saying how i had quickly read the article and turned the page over to move onto the next story, but then turned back to the picture. Why? because in some way that picture did not seem "real"; for me it was just an image devoid of any emotion. But when i looked at it the second time i realised although for me its just a "picture" and i would just get on with my life; go to lectures, go to supervisions etc the picture Is that mans life. His house Did get get blown up. His child Did die. Via the picture we saw one second, less than one second of that mans life, but his life will continue. He will have to bury his child. He will have to cope with his loss. He will have to find a new home etc etc...so subhanallah, they say a picture is worth a thousand words and whoever "they" are, they've got it bang on.

Anyway, with that little ramble over...subhanallah, im finding that the things im writing about all have a lag of about a week from when they happened as i don't get time to write it all.

Two other things iv done in the past week or so which i enjoyed:

1) Burdah session
2) Gasht ! (Jawla)

1) As i said before, the area i live in has strong links to the sufi section of islam as sheikh Nuh resides here (he's a sheikh of the chisti tariqa (one of the groups within sufism)). So a lot of the bros do things usually linked with sufis eg congregational dhikr and singing of the burda. so last week i thought id go along to their burdah singing session and see what its like. To be honest i know very little about the burdah apart from it being a famous poem written about the prophet(SAW) so i didnt really know what to expect, but alhamdulilla it was very enjoyable. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qasida_Burda).

Basically its an informal things all the brothers do every sunday after e'sha. every week a different bro is the host, they sit round in a circle sing the burdah, have tea biscuits and end up just socialising, When i went there was a guy called sheikh Yunus there. alhamdulilla he's only around 25 but a very knowledgeable bro with an Amazing voice. And an interesting background (as are ALL the people here - will tell u about my ex marine/med school drop out teacher later on iA). Sheikh Yunus is originally from Palestine, but lived his childhood yrs in Sri Lanka and from the age of 13-20 lived in Pakistan so is fluent in Arabic, English and Urdu..!

Anyway as there were people from different nationalities present, the different portions of the burdah are sang in different tones or ways which are all very distinct for eg the first portion was sung how they sing it in Morocco, a very fast paced lively kind of way, then the next portion was in the Syrian way; very somber and slow..(don't know if this reflects the people of the country...). So alhamdulilla the whole thing sounded amazing even though I couldn't contribute...(I claimed I had a sore throat) but I did promise them i'll find out how the bengalis sing it (I don't think we do though...)

2) This is becoming a long entry...I'll write again about the tablighi scene here in Jordan, but to summarise, basically iv been to the tablighi markaz (which had amazing atmosphere) and took part in the local gasht (jawla) where they go round meeting local Muslims, reminding them about the importance of Islam and inviting them to come to a talk which will take place in the mosque. More on this next time iA

Salaam.

Masjid Ummayyad - Outside

Sayyidda Ruqqaya "Shrine"