Exactly one day after the retreat ended, on Tuesday, August 20th, 2013, I received this message from Anse Tamara Gray in a private group chat that I wanted to share with you: “The word joy is one of my favorite words. We can use it to say things like, “She cried tears of joy.” Or…
Always, Beginning in the Name of Allah, The Most Gracious, The Most Merciful This post is dedicated to my dear husband, Hassan, who missed virtually every class of the retreat in order to give others the gift of knowledge, including myself and other volunteers. Without his vision for the retreat and undying khidma, there would…
“Whittni”, she said. A voice was coming from within my room, but everyone was asleep. It’s Thursday morning in the wee hours of fajr. My body ceased. I felt squeezed. I didn’t know what to do. I just looked. Hesitated. Waited. Didn’t move. Just looked in the direction of the sound. There was no one…
On Friday, a lesson hit home for me in secrets, but on Wednesday, the teaching began. The secrets kept being repeated by the shuyukh in different classes, even when they weren’t in contact with one another. But my first teacher was my husband…my knight in shining armor that rescued me on Wednesday. But let’s allow…
This Sunday marked two weeks since I left my residence in Oxon Hill, Maryland to travel to a place I only visited once in order to work in complete servitude to 250+ guests. Hesitantly. And this Monday marked exactly one week since I left that week-long residence. Bittersweet and relieved, yet longing. I imagine that inshAllah…
I didn’t tell you that yesterday Noora danced in the middle of the dhikr circle. She stomped her feet to the beat of La ilaha il Allah, whirling dervish of nasheeds that she is. Today, the baby who has abducted my body for the past 4 months kicked and flipped for the first time (that…
If you were to ask me the things that struck me most from the first day of the Islamic Studies and Research Association (ISRA) Retreat that took place this Gregorian New Year’s weekend, it could be summed in these two oft-repeated sentences by the speakers: “The Qur’an is our constitution” (Syed Zain Al Abedin, the…
Today we are making our way to Columbia, South Carolina for a two-day retreat of an in-depth study of Nawawi’s 40 Hadith compilation, or al Arba’een. Led primarily by Shaykh Manzar-ul-Islam Azhari and Shaykh Muhammad Mendes, and sponsored by ISRA International, this is the 8th annual winter retreat of its kind. Called Jewels of Mercy,…
Okay, so, I knew this day would always come though I tried to prevent it from coming. I know, it’s the seventh of the month. And now I have to let you down. My brain and hands can’t keep up with the rest of the things my body’s doing, so…your Rihla notes will be coming…
Well, it’s the seventh of the month, and you know what that means…notes from the Rihla! I begin this post with a trip back down memory lane for those of you who are wondering about that yellow brick road over there. Anyone who knows me well knows I’m a musical aficionado. In fact, I view…
It’s late, but it’s still August 7th, and as promised, here are you notes from the Rihla. Since we last spoke, I was only able to watch one class, but inshAllah these notes are of benefit. The notes are from Imam Zaid Shakir’s class on Imam Al Ghazali’s text, Forty Foundations of the Religion. But…
So today was the first day that I officially tuned in for classes at the Rihla in Bursa. Sure, I’ve seen glimpses of lectures coming and going from my husband’s office, but I never sat down to fully focus and take notes. I have to thank Sister Maryam Mirza for that–she left a comment telling…
I don’t know when I first heard the term “shaykha”. I think my friend was joking with me about how maybe one day I’d become one given the zeal I had as a new Muslim. She and her older brothers had taken to affectionately calling me “shaykha” because of that zeal. We laughed and kidded…
Yesterday was a very bittersweet day. It was the day we left to go back to the “real” world–back to our homes to continue the journey on our own. In a way, I feel that we already were in the “real” world in Tennessee. We were doing things as they should have been done all…
Today has been a relaxing, but long day, so this message will be brief. But I’ve learned a lot about acceptance from all the teachers. For instance… We must accept the place that we are in life. We must accept the decree of Allah (swt) and His Wisdom in putting us in the particular situation…
Alhamdulillah, today I got to go to every class except for two. Today had a big block in the middle of the day for rest (like 6 hours!!) because truly, no one here is getting much sleep with the company of blessed knowledge. In the classes, the theme of the company we keep was echoed…
Today was such a spiritually uplifting day. I feel that I’m receiving so much benefit here–from the sisterhood and brotherhood to the information from the lectures. MashAllah. Today I want to share snippets from a lecture from Shaykh Mohammed Mendes, entitled “The Qur’an on the Journey to Allah.” In it, he extolled a shaykh that…
Today was the first day of classes, AND I went horseback riding and swimming. But we have to talk a little bit more about trees. There was a wonderful khatira from Dr. Umar Faruq AbdAllah today on the Moroccan scholar Muhammad ibn Ja’far ibn Idris al-Kattani al-Hasani al-Fasi’s Aqidat al-Najah (1857-1927). It’s a 19-line poem…
We have arrived…in the Appalachian mountains, in the heart of the Cherokee nation. We are exhausted. I’m not sure if this program should be called a retreat. The schedule is intensive with back-to-back classes that begin early in the morning before Fajr and end late at night after Isha. So the day basically runs from…
Are you crazy? You must have a good reason! And to your benefit, there are plenty of good reasons…especially if you are Muslim, Jewish, or Christian! It’s the Holy Land for crying out loud! We started off on our journey with the intent to make pilgrimmage. Here are several tips and hints we learned the…
It’s Sunday today. We haven’t even been home for 24 hours yet, but we must go shopping. We emptied our refrigerator clean before we left. And though family members cooked food for us to eat, we’ve had enough of eating the same meal three times a day and eating dinner food for breakfast. What we…
We rushed back to our little apartment in Nachlaot. We had an hour to finish packing and pray isha. Our landlord triple-booked us–we were moving out at 7:30, and the house cleaners and new residents were moving in. We have a lot of bags…for three people, each of us basically has two pieces of luggage…
Everyday for 20 days, I’ve awakened to the sights, smells, and sounds of Jerusalem. For twenty days, Jerusalem has been “home”. But today, we say “goodbye” to our home. We say goodbye to Jerusalem and all of the lovely people and places we’ve met. So we started off the day as we usually do, but…
We were greeted by a strange man today. You know the kind…the one that talks, sighs, and grunts to himself in the street and makes you want to walk the other way. The kind that will say anything to you without hesitation. The kind of crazy sage that speaks some truth amidst their chaos. He…
“You and Michelle are driving me nuts,” I keep saying as Hassan passes other cars on the one lane road from Eilat to Jerusalem. There is another car in front us with a like-minded driver, bobbing in and out of the opposite lane just to get around slow drivers. A sticker in the back window…
Eilat is truly a vacation within a vacation. Yesterday all I could tell you about was how beautiful it is here and the abundance of marine life. Today, we see the people and the city for what they are. It seems to be extremely HOT here everyday…so much so that if there was one day…
Hmmmm…Ramallah had me going there. Today we are on vacation. We are journeying….to Eilat!!! The hot spot in the south of Israel touching the Red Sea…beach town…coral reefs…blue skies smiling at me. We left at 6am to make the four hour drive to the south. Sorry, can’t tell you much of what happened during the…
THE SANDAL 