Alsafh is going from here…

Salam everyone,

Alsafh has finally been merged into its destination site http://www.zaynabacademy.org as the official blogging platform of Zaynab Academy. Everything else remains the same –  authors, readers, content, and aims have all been exported.

Hope to see you there inshaAllah.

was-salam.

Parched

[Contribution by Anon., Karachi]

I cried to you today,
For that one drop
That weighs more than all the oceans,
pulled together.

The pens have been lifted, the ink
has dried, he said,
But still I seek,
The drop that can undo

Unworthy, I am,
of your Glance
Of the drop that will,
undo, unmake, unbreak.

But parched hearts, and dirty
Sooted souls,
Need it more,
than sparkling, supple hearts

And I would cry more
if I could, but I am dry,
and stained, and Waiting
so helplessly, for You

Aaliyah

[Contribution by Sameen Nasir, Karachi]

It was beginning of a beautiful session, strengthening of most cherished relations and a deeper search for pearls in the ocean of knowledge.
Looking back-we never can understand how time passed so quickly and how those beautiful moments are just stored in our minds and the flashbacks are played and replayed in our moments of solidarity.
I still remember the first day when we studied Hidaya-the green cover and the golden text on it, when I opened it-it was just Arabic text and just more Arabic text and I thought to myself-“this is going to be something difficult” and it would have been-had we not been blessed with most awesome teacher ever. In the start-you think it’s too much for your brain and you cannot retain so many ikhtalafaat and the dalail but, honestly it’s just the start and if even then you don’t get the hint so we would just recommend you khameera ghauzaban (brain herb tonic sort) as we have often suggested to some of our dear friends. Later you become used to it-and start enjoying it. For aaliya students I think hidaya is their most favorite subject, and while just reading the book-you are just amazed at how people even think that the religious scholars did not or do not have proper knowledge-their deep understanding of each and every aspect just leaves you stunned. I think the most enjoyable part is in reading the Arabic hashiya-even if you do not know how to read it, the teacher will ask trick questions and the answer will be in the hashiya -so one should be prepared for that. One of the other cool point is that your urdu improves a lot-especially when you study from a mufti sahib, we learnt many interesting words-one of our favorites is “tishna talab”. Our teachers made this book really easy for us-our mufti sahib was so good-he actually takes you that level when you start guessing what’s coming up next in the book and so does the other ustaadha-what we loved the most was her trick questions-she would actually make us think. And if you study hidaya properly (as in be a good student-which we never did) then you will have the ikhtalafaat on your fingertips that’s how mufti sahib prepares the students.

Siraaji-book on inheritance law and 5th grade maths. Well I was never good at it and I still feel dumb about it. The whole class would understand the situation and I would be the only one raising my hand as the one who did not get it and no matter how many times I would ask my teacher-she would always help me out, Alhumdulillah. We often had some funny siraji moments…thanks to a person i will not mention here.
Muqamaat-hmm…I think at the end of the year, Mufti sahib will explain better the purpose of the book.
Balagah-for all who love Arabic poetry get happy.
Mishkaat -Like all hadees books-this book is unique as well. Every hadees even though we have read it before or maybe heard it somewhere-still when you read it again with your teacher-it has its own barkaat and the understanding of the muhadiseen refreshes your iman and ilm as well, sometimes the ahadees would touch our hearts so much that we would just close our eyes and would often wish for the time to stop and just enjoy re-reading those beautiful words. Sometimes your problems are solved in the hadees that comes up next and sometimes you would read a hadees and just wish to go back in that beautiful time and that’s the beauty of ilm-e-hadees, it reminds us that we are not a spiritually orphaned ummah-we have someone who cried for each and every one of us in the darkness of the nights, someone who loved us knowing that one day we would betray his sunnah, someone who will intercede for us on that day when all worldly relations would be of no use. May Allah Swt make us follow His Blessed Sunnah-the most precious treasure that we as ummatis have.
I have not been to Medina till now but MashaAllah we know some lucky people who often go there and whenever they leave we think of this shair that our elders recite
“Aye Taeba kay jaaney waley, tujhey deyta hun duaein…
Dar-e-Mustafa (saws) pe pauhanch kay tu dunya ko bhool jaye…”
So summing up the experience-aliya is a year of lots of course, lots of good hard work and most importantly lots of ikhlaas and lots of tawakkul. For the spiritual progress just like every year of our life-in this year as well we have to work on ourselves and make lots of dua for the qubooliyah. In the beginning of Aliya-after seeing the course we were like “we can’t do it, we can’t do it…” and at the ending of the year-we were like “Allah swt will InshaAllah make us do it…” and He did.

Testimonials from Footsteps 2012: Johar Town,Lahore

Yumna Shafique, 20

Very good experience here. I learnt lots of good things here and now I always try to follow the hukam of the Quran and Sunnah. I want to do the four years’ course from Zaynab Academy.
JazakAllah.

 

Ammal Shafique, 17

My time during Footsteps was fabulous. I learnt so many things which I was not aware of. May Allah give us taufeeq to follow the Sunnah. I got beautiful understanding of my Deen. My experience was a perfectly awesome one. MASHALLAH

 

Khadija Fatima, 24

“Women of Wisdom, Women of Action” was an eye-opening experience or me. It was a comprehensive course which made me understand Islam in a much better way and also question my preferences and direction in life. It was thought provoking and tried to instill in us ‘wisdom’ and ‘action’ in the truest sense. We need such re-enforcement to reflect and bring a change in ourselves and our society. Hopefully these ‘footsteps’ can lead us to the path of Allah/Jannah.

Footsteps Karachi – A Short Course for Young Women

Duration: 3rd to 16th July 2012

Venue 1: House 8-B, Central Avenue, Phase 2, DHA || Time: 10:30 AM to 1:30 PM

Venue 2: 28-A, Adamjee Nagar, Near Muhammad Ali Society || Time: 03:00 PM to 06:00 PM

*Please Note: The Timings for Venue2 have been revised to 3:00-6:00 PM on popular demand

For More details and Registration contact us at : 0345-2269695, 0321-2734258, 0345-2160916

Or visit our facebook link: https://www.facebook.com/events/312878958788199/?ref=nf

Footsteps Islamabad – A Short Course for Young Women

Duration: 2nd-12th July

Timing: 3:00 – 6:00 PM

For more details and registration refer to the following link and contact numbers

http://www.facebook.com/groups/zaynabacademyislamabad/391199234272177/

Contact: 0322-4501409 / 0321-4065303

Return

We sat in class. Deliberating over our Hidayah Volume One. The beautiful, green, hard cover Maktab-e-Bushra edition that we have. We scribbled notes till we got to Baab-e-Janaaiz. And our pens kept up as we heard and read about the masnoon things to do when someone is dying in front of you. When it is time for a soul to leave a body.

You don’t ask a dying person to recite the kalima, Mufti Sahab told us; you respect the condition and pain, and you recite it yourself, and if Allah wills he will recite it before his soul departs the world.

And it made us think of our own death, and whether we will have the amaal and the toufeeq to have the kalimah on our tongues when the time comes for us to leave. And we moved on to the masnoon tareeqa of ghusal and burial, more silent and reflective than usual. And amidst our reflection came the announcement of the plane crash with no survivors. Not one. And we were reminded of those 127 souls who departed, just like that. Because Allah (swt) willed it. We were reminded of their inevitable return. And ours.

Inna lillahi wa inna alai raji’oon we thought. And we tried to feel it too.

And it’s easy to think it and say it, and type it out, but harder to remember it and retain it and make it a living reality. To Him we belong and to Him we will return. It’s the most undeniable fact of life. But we forget. We forget that our soul, like our body was not created from the most fundamental tura’ab of this dunya. That unlike the body, it cannot be sustained by world, and what it has to offer. That it can never be nourished by what springs from this mitti. Nor will it, like the body, be returned to dust. That its source of origin is the same as its source of nourishment. And so is its point of return.

So we wondered, that when it is time for our soul to rush back to its point of origin, how much our hearts will resist? And how much our bodies will struggle; satiated by the dunya and all it contains. Invested; emotionally, materially, thoroughly. How will we ever want to return? We shuddered.

And as our goosebumps subsided some of us lingered in our thoughts as Mufti Sahab called it a day with ‘waqtafi bi hazal qadri’. We fear our time, but more than that we wear the halat of our emaan when it comes. Who knows what the condition of our hearts will be; our zaahir and batin? So we turn to our beloved Mishkaat and the words of our beloved Prophet (saw) who said just three days before it was his time to go ‘Let none amongst you die except hoping for the best from Allah’ And we were told, that for a true momin it would mean spending his life in fear of displeasing his Lord but when death drew near, he would be overpowered with a sense of hope from Allah (swt). And we could not but pray, to be able spend our lives in this khauf. And hope to be brimming with khashiat when the time comes for our inevitable return.