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.