Kernings & Chrome

IlmFest 2012

IlmFest is an annual all-day conference that has samplings of Al-Maghrib institute speakers. I believe it takes place in a couple of cities (Ottawa for one). I attended the one in Toronto. I was late, so I only took notes starting from Sh. Navaid Aziz.

Each speaker had a topic they were speaking to. Listed as Speaker: Topic

Sh. Navaid Aziz: My Creator, My Sustainer

• He told us about a guy on a plane whom he saw crying. When he asked him why, it was because he’d just watched the movie “The Vow” and he was moved by the amount of love Channing Tatum’s character has for Rachel McAdam’s character. Sh. Navaid tied this together with the topic by saying that the vow we have made to Allah is greater than any other we will ever make with any other human being.
• In Surah Hashr, Allah talks about those who forgot Allah, and thus forgot themselves. We must strive to not become one of those people.
• In order to discover yourself, you must first discover your Creator.
• We can’t expect another person/companion to fill the void in our person. Knowing/loving our Creator fills this void i.e., knowing yourself
• The Ummah will be forgiven except for those who expose their own sins.
• المجيب  - The One Who Answers
• In the early days of Islam, Muslim men were avoiding marrying orphan girls because they weren’t wealthy.
• الرزاق - The One Who Provides
• Put your trust in Allah, He will provide you wealth.
• Information doesn’t turn into knowledge until you act upon it.
• You never know which deed you do will earn you one extra second of face time with Allah.
• الشكور - The One Who Appreciates

Sh. Kamal El Mekki: My Heroes

• You may know him from a video called “Brownie Surprise”. Or not. I didn’t. But it’s interesting and you can watch it here. He’s hilarious.
• He started it off with a joke because he thought Canadians were too serious. He talked about an interview that three guys went to. The first guy went in, the interviewer asked his name, he told them, “Yasin”. So they asked him to recite Surah Yasin from the Quran. He said he didn’t know it. So they turned him away. The second guy walks in, they ask him his name. He says it’s “Mohammed’. So they ask him to recite Surah Mohammed. And well, he doesn’t know it. So he fails the interview too. The third guy asks the other two why they’re exiting the interview so early, so they tell him that if your name coincides with the name of a Surah, they ask you to recite it. And if you can’t, you fail. So this guy goes in and says, “My name is Ibrahim, but my mother calls me Al-Kawthar. (for those of you unfamiliar with the Quran, “Al-Kawthar” is one of the shortest Surahs in the Quran).
• Sh. Kemal talked about how your relationship with the book of Allah determines the level of your faith.
• Some people have a physical relationship with the Quran. They only bring it down from the topmost bookshelf during Ramadan, then put it back up there at the end of the month.
• Some people also put microscopic copies of the Quran in their child’s pillow for “protection”. Sh. Kemal joked that one way to refute this claim was to go smack a baby whose pillow had a tiny Quran in it and prove to their parents that physical objects don’t protect a person.
• It’s good practice to pause and contemplate on the meaning of the Quran instead of rushing through it and making sure you’re “finishing” the Quran “fast enough”.
• There are people who recite the Quran once every day. This may seem unbelievable to some.
• In truth, the further you are from something, the more unbelievable it seems.
• If you’ve never swam, and you look at the accomplishments of an Olympic swimmer, it’s a wow factor for you. Because you don’t even know what it’s like! Let alone be the best at it.
• When you rush, the prayer becomes heavy/more difficult for you. But when you focus on it and enjoy it, it’s short and sweet.
• It’s not that it’s prohibited to read the Quran in less than 3 days, it’s to make sure that we’re comprehending it while reading it.

Sh. Said Rageah: My Dear Sister

• One of the traits of the Quran is taking us from restlessness to being content with our life and sacrificing most of it in the way of Allah.
• The younger you are, the longer you think you’ll live (present hedonistic view of life. This RSA Animate video of a talk by Philip Zimbardo illustrates this really well).
• It’s a matter of perspective - if you only ever look at people who have fewer problems than you, you’re going to feel like you live the hardest life of all. But if you read the Quran and read about stories of the first Muslims and the tortures they went through, you’ll see how easy your hardships are in comparison.
• Look at the world through the lens of the Quran and everything will come into focus.
• Some people that Allah chose to make examples for the entire nation of Muslims are women: Aasiyah (Pharoah’s wife), and Maryam (or Mary, Isa’s mother).

Sh. Abdullah Idris Ali: My Own Madinah

• Sh. Abdullah has been around Toronto since the 70’s when the entire city had a grand total of two mosques or something. He talked about how he’d take the last streetcar to the only Masjid after school and sleep in the mosque in order to make it in time for Fajr. He’s one of the pioneers of the religion in the area and he was recognized for his effort by Al-Maghrib Institute at IlmFest this year.
• He talked about creating a community for Muslims in your city and the importance of it.
• We always get ourselves in trouble and then think about how Islam can make it better, instead of thinking about it the other way around. Before we do something, we should question if Islam says anything about it.
• Jami Mosque in Toronto is often recognized as the oldest mosque, but Canadian convert to Islam Katherine Bullock discovered an Albanian mosque that existed before Jami Mosque.
• عبد means “slave-servant”, whereas خادم means “servant”.
• Allah always makes use of the term عبد when referring to the Prophets. It’s an endearing term, and it’s a great place to be in relation to Allah SWT.
• Whenever you are about to perform an action, think to yourself, “Where am I headed to from here”, and your decisions in life will become easier.

Sh. Mohammed Al Shareef: My Li’l One

• If you know a person from childhood, you will very likely call them a friend at every point in your life. Because we form special emotional bonds with everything when we’re younger.
• It’s the same thing with the Quran. Your child needs to spend time with the Quran in his/her early years in order to develop a love for it in their hearts.
• The community sets a low “roof” for children by celebrating a) reading the Quran once in a child’s life time b) memorizing the 30th Juz. We should raise the bar higher.
• He gave the example of the London Olympics 2012 ad about how Moms prepare their kids to be world class athletes. Then he asked us to imagine substituting “athletes” with “citizens of the world”. If our moms woke us up for Fajr, taught us how to pray and taught us how to read and love the Quran. If all mothers of the Ummah did that, all our children would be world class citizens and Muslims.
• When parents have internal/marital issues, it has an effect on the child’s education.
• Some tips for parents for their kids:

1. It takes 3-5 years to memorize the Quran
2. Start teaching them the Quran right after Fajr, that’s when your mind is most awake
3. Dimiss distractions. Whether it’s the extra apps on the iPad you use to read the Quran, or TV or Internet
4. Pray Qiyam-ul-Layl, Huffaz have special parents who pray Qiyam-ul-Layl
5. Teach kids about the rewards they can get from reading the Quran
6. Set milestones for them e.g., memorize Surah Yusuf, finish reading Juz 29 etc.
7. Discipline the children. Don’t make them bratty by giving them every silly little thing they ask for. Make them tough.

• If you’re older and you didn’t have parents who prayed Qiyam-ul-Layl etc., there’s still hope! You can pray for yourself, and then enroll in a structured education system that gives you and your instructor milestones to help you memorize the Quran.
• We should raise the bar to memorizing at least 5 Juz for our kids.

Sh. Reda Bedair: My Pay Day

• Sh. Reda talked about the Day of Judgment being the Pay Day of the Ummah.
• When we’re faced with hardships, we say, “Why me?”, but when we’re bestowed with blessings, we withhold gratitude.
• At a fundraiser for the army during the Prophet’s time, Uthman bin Affan kept giving away his wealth in charity to the point when the Prophet raised his hands in supplication and asked that Allah forgive Uthman’s past and future sins and grant him Paradise.
• That’s how you get rich on the Day of Judgment - by giving away your wealth in charity.
• Your money is the one you give away for the sake of Allah, the money you leave behind is just money for your inheritors.
• Humbleness after hard work is what makes a good Muslim, not boasting about how much you gave away in charity.
• If donating to charity in public motivates others to do so, then do it. But it’s better if you hide it and give it to the poor.
• Giving Sadaqah is the strongest thing you can do in life.
• Whatever you feed your wife and your offspring is Sadaqah.

Sh. Mohammed Faqih: The Spring in my Heart

• A large percentage of people in North America suffer from anxiety disorders.
• A lot of Muslims suffer from depression in our communities.
• Many people don’t realize they’re stressed when they are and it affects them and their relationships.
• “…make the Quran a spring to my heart, a light in my chest, that it removes my sadness, and erase my anguish” — from the Invocations of Worry and Grief by the Prophet Muhammad. [I haven’t found a source I trust online, so I won’t be citing it, but I have a number of books with this Du’a in it]
• The anxiety and depression we face is because the Quran is not the spring in our hearts. There is a lot of grief in the world that affects our hearts, there’s a solution for it if we read the Quran with understanding.

Sh. Abu-Eesa Niamatullah: Raising the Game

• Also known as “The Big Easy” Sh. Abu Eesa is hands down the funniest speaker to date. He talked about stepping our spiritual game up and not being complacent with fulfilling the obligatory.
• If you’re not held accountable for what you do, you just do whatever in this world. There’s no purpose to your life. You’re like the cow that grazes a patch of grass, nibbles another patch, randomly walks around, and one day ends up as a steak on someone’s plate. It leads a life of subjugation to human beings.
• Shaytan’s daily occupation is hooking people up with bad deeds. He wants to target practicing Muslims, not the ones who are already astray. He wants to take leaders of the community, the upstanding Muslims down, because that in turn, takes the whole community down.
• The community are “a bunch of haters”, and they love it when someone righteous “goes down”, like the girl with the hijab, or the brother with the beard and thowb.
• Make your aspiration Jannat-ul-Firdous. Do not be content with just Jannah (even though that’s a pretty big deal), but aim for the best that Jannah has to offer. The highest level - Jannat-ul-Firdous.
• There are 100 levels in Jannah. And the distance between each level is the distance between the heavens and the earth.
• “Ya Allah, you blessed me with Islam and I didn’t ask for it. Bless me with Jannat-ul-Firdous, and I am asking for it” —Imam Ash-Shafa’i
• A Muslim is one who does everything to the very best of his ability. He takes everything up one level. Life is a game, and we’re all players in it.
• Don’t be scared to step it up. To do more than the bare minimum. When you do, Allah will help you through it.
• Our nation is suffering from poor ambition.
• If you do something good, something for charity, do it for the sake of Allah. Not to make people happy, and not to boast about it. Don’t keep reminding people that you did a favor for them.
• Don’t belittle those that are struggling to make a difference. At least they’re trying. You belittling them just shows how small your ambition is. Aim high.
• Abdullah ibn Abbas didn’t assume, he treated everyone, even the Bedouin simpleton who came up to him and asked him to tell him about Islam with the utmost respect. This is because we’re not ones to judge who’s more knowledgable than the other.

Favorite quotes by Sh. Abu Eesa:

“This guy, he’s super basic. Like he’s not sure what hajj is kinda basic. Basic like the guys that walk around in Mississauga.”

“If you’re happy doing something to make people happy, then congratulations, you’re a fool”

“The amount of information we get in short bursts all the time is insane. The only way to absorb good quality information now is to cut yourself off from technology and go in a corner somewhere. Of course then you’ll suffer a mental breakdown and come right back where you started”.

“My claim to fame is that I’m followed by Boonnaa Mohammed. On Twitter. Now I can die happy”

“I’m going to do to Sh. Waleed what he did to me in Ottawa. Talked through all my time and left me 10 mins of 50 mins worth of talk time. That’ll teach him not to mess with The Big Easy”

Please Note: These are my personal notes from the conference. I didn’t attend all the lectures, and I didn’t take notes for all the ones I did attend. I am only human and likely made mistakes. My intention is only to share what I learned. If there is a mistake in these notes, it’s likely my fault and not that of the speakers. Please let me know if you have questions/concerns/suggestions/corrections. Jazak’Allah Khayr.

Weather: the savior of awkward silences

Growing up, I never understood why in the movies, whenever two people had nothing to talk about, they talked about the weather.

A little bit of background: I grew up in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (a country which is mostly desert). Saudi only has two seasons: summer and scorching-heat-season. So really, I couldn’t relate to it. Nobody in Saudi talked about the weather. After all, how often can you possibly say, “I wonder if this is what Hell feels like”?

When I moved to Canada, it all made sense. We talk about weather all the time. And given that I’m now somewhat of a Torontonian, I have a license to incessantly complain about it too.

Perspectives. Our media needs diversification. This is along the same line as useless icons. Kids shouldn’t only see versions of houses in cartoons they can’t relate to, like this one:

In Saudi, all the houses look like something like this:

So I drew the house with the roof on the hill, but heck, I’d never seen a darned thing like that in my life.

Jokes aside, I love Saudi. I can’t wait to be back. Despite its no-seasonness.

So, silent treatment > throwing a hissy fit. I knew it.

partytilfajr:

The absence of action is indeed many times more powerful than any action could ever hope to be.