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..)
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.
posted by Me at
11:31 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home