I didn't post this last month because our classes had a lot of revising of our past classes. But for story time during one of the classes, I narrated the story of when Prophet Muhammad (sallalahu alaihi wa sallam) first got the message of prophet hood while he was meditating in the cave Hira. The week after that I had a mini quiz on the story to see how much they remembered. Off the top of my head, here are some of them:
1. How old was the beloved Prophet (sallalahu alaihi wa sallam) at the time of this incident?
Answer: 40 years old
2. What was his first wife's name? (Also, the first woman to accept Islam)
Answer: Khadijah (RA)
3. In which month of the Islamic calender did the incident take place?
Answer: The holy month of Ramadan
4. What was the name of the mountain mentioned in the story?
Answer: Jabal Noor
5. What was the name of the cave in that mountain, which the Prophet (sallalahu alaihi wa sallam) would frequently visit?
Answer: Hira
6. What would he do there? And why?
Answer: Meditate, pray and fast. He was disturbed by the ignorance and cruel behaviour of the Meccans during that time. The women, slaves, poor, orphans and widows were treated badly. It was a dark period of society and this upset the Prophet (sallalahu alaihi wa sallam) greatly.
7. What was the name of the angel who appeared before him in the cave?
Answer: Angel Jibril (Alaihis-salam)
8. What did the angel say to the Prophet (sallalahu alaihi wa sallam)?
Answer: IQRA! (Read!)
9. What did the Prophet (sallalahu alaihi wa sallam) reply?
Answer: I do not know how to read.
I think these questions about covered it.
This Sunday we did something fun, in connection to the story. I found this amazingly well made animated movie on the net - Muhammad - The Last Prophet.
Since we have the class in our living room, we put some blankets over the curtains to darken the room, we played the movie on our TV screen with speakers and served popcorn as well! I wish I had time to make pretend movie tickets too. It was good fun and we learnt a lot too! We only played half the film because, given the age of our class kids, we had to keep pausing the video and explaining the scene and dialogues. InshaaAllah next week, we plan to do a quick recap of what we saw and then continue from where we stopped.
I must mention here that this whole pause and explain process was an eye-opener. As we did this, we (my husband and I) were reminding ourselves of long forgotten facts of Islamic history, relearning teachings of the holy Prophet (sallalahu alaihi wa sallam) of Islam, unconsciously and consciously connecting our lives and day to day situations to what happened over 1400 years ago and judging whether we really take react according to the teachings of Islam.
During the course of watching the film by ourselves, before we showed the kids, my husband pointed out the fact that our beloved Prophet (sallalahu alaihi wa sallam) preached in secret for three years before openly preaching Islam. This teaches us the importance of strategy and approaching a task with a well thought-out plan. When he did start openly preaching, the Muslims were boycotted by the disbelievers of Mecca for another three years. The patience of the Muslims, who suffered greatly during this period, is a lesson for all of us. How do we react on one of our 'bad days'? How do we respond to a critic? Are we truly patient during the tough times?
InshaaAllah may we all be among those who constantly strive to learn and act upon the teaching of the Sunnah.
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