Movie and Popcorn on a Sunday Morning

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.

Prophet Muhammad Sallalahu alaihi wa sallam

I couldn't post last week since we had a busy Sunday. We had a family picnic with R's family and boy! did we have fun! I thought I would put up the post any day during the week but have been swamped with work, alhamdulillah. One blessed and wonderful addition to my days is a Tajweed class I have begun at my home for women, every Tuesday evening. Unlike the kid's Sunday class, Tajweed is not something that I imagined I would teach. The first reason being that I am no expert. But I have learnt Tajweed from my mother. And when I spoke to a mom of one of the kids in my class, I learnt that there were a few people interested in learning. My first thought was to find a proper learned instructor who would teach us. But this looked unlikely. So I settled for Plan B. I began relearning and revising the rules of Tajweed in order to teach 'basic' Tajweed to these women. And alhamdulillah, in the process, teach myself and my kids proper Qur'an recitation. All of you reading this, please please make dua' for me and pray that I will be able to do a decent job of this new responsibility. InshaaAllah!

Now coming to our Sunday class, last week we had a surprise quiz. I quizzed them on the things we had already learnt. The questions were very basic but things that need to be engraved in the heart of every little Muslim.

1. Who is Allah?
2. Who is your Lord?
3. Who made everything that exists?
4. What is the name of the last Prophet of Allah?
5. What is the name of our Holy Book?
6. Which language is the Qur'an in?
7. How many pillars of Islam are there?
8. What are the pillars of Islam?
9. What is the Shahadah?
10. What does it mean?
11. What is meant by Salaat?
12. How many Salaat in a day?

It was very rewarding to hear the little ones stand up, as their name was called out, and then answer the question.

The children have often heard the name of our beloved Prophet Muhammad (saw) and I have taught them to say Sallalahu alaihi wa sallam. But learning about the Prophet's (saw) life and listening to stories about him is an important way of instilling love for him and true iman into our hearts.

So I told them the story of Prophet Muhammad's (saw) birth. We talked about the desert's of Arabia in the old times, about the people, the clothes they wore, their livelihood, the animals, the scarcity of water, the heat, the customs and traditions of the time and the ignorance of the people. Then we spoke of his birth and how the desert sky lit up that night, as nature celebrated the arrival of this special little baby boy, who was named Muhammad - The Praised One.

As an activity related to the story, we had a camel colouring sheet. We spoke about the camel - the ship of the desert and how it could go many days without food and water because of its humps.