Day 5 (Cont'd): Schedule

I feel as if I've been here for so long, though in reality it's been less than a week. Subhan Allah.

As promised, here is our schedule:

Saturday—Wednesday:
3:15-4:50am: Tahajud & Fajr
5-5:45: Qur'an recitation on Saturday, Sunday, Monday
Class on Tuesday and Wednesday
6-10: Breakfast & qayloola (morning nap)
10:30-11:45: Class
12-3pm: Lunch & Zuhr & rest
3:15-5: Asr & Al-Rawha
5:15-6:15: Review & Maghrib
6:30-7:30: Class
7:30-8: 'Isha
8-9: Class
9:30: Dinner

On Thursday we don't have classes. Instead, we have the khatam (du'ua for finishing reading the Qur'an), a pool gathering (!), local ziyaras (visits) and a mawlid, which I'm really looking forward to. On Friday we only have two classes, the rest of the day we have ziyaras. Classes are held in Habib Umar's house, and only the rawha and seera (Prophetic history) classes are held at Dar al-Zahra.

These are the main topics we are studying and our teachers:

Lives of Men (Habib Umar)
Seerah (Habib Umar)
Dawa (Habib Ali)
Dawa in the West (Habib Ali)
Beginning of Guidance (Habib Kathim)
Shafi/ Hanafi Fiqh (Shaykh Omar Al Khatib/ Shaykh Amir Jameel)
Tawheed (Habib Zayd)
40 hadith Nawawi (Sheikh Imaad)

The official Dowra blog gives more information about the classes and texts.

There are also a couple of other classes that are held once a week: a Monday night class (no idea what that is yet), Ihya, and the three maqasid of Dar al-Mustafa.

And by the way, this year's Dowra is two classes shorter than last year's, so we really shouldn't be complaining about the workload.

This video is of a student in Dar al-Mustafa, who explains the day a lot better than I did, mash'Allah:

So the day today began just like yesterday. I wish I could be able to discuss the content of the classes, but unfortunately I don't have the time or the skill necessary to do so.

Now that I've described what a typical day looks like, I won't be going into the minute details of the day; I'll only talk about things I didn't talk about before and any reflections/ thoughts I have as they hit me. I'll try and include some interesting quotes/ thoughts, and will provide translations for Arabic terms as much as I can.

Today I saw a little blue eyed, blonde three year old girl in the mosque dressed in prayer clothes and holding her sebha (rosary). You know those email forwards you always get showing you cute American Muslim babies? Well, in reality it's so much cuter. It got me thinking about how much environment plays a role in how you turn out to be, and what it would have been like to be raised in a place like Tarim.

As we have every day, we had the Rawha with Habib Umar, which is one of the strongest classes we've hadso far. The rawha begins with the nasheed of Imam Hadad If you want to live a successful life, and here's a short segment of it that I recorded:

[AUDIO]