03/07/08 Jummah in Review

Oftentimes, I’m sitting at the masjid for jummah or some other event, and I’ll go “dang, I should blog about this.”  But, I have the attention span of a knat and a memory to go along with, so by the time I get to the computer, I’ll have forgotten what had inspired me. 

Not today.  Today, I took notes on my little hello kitty notepad.  Here are the highlights:

• Met Multicultural Muslimah.  Turns out we’re both converts, both married to egyptians, and live and work 2 miles from each other.  Spooky.  inshaAllah we’ll be hanging out in the future, and perhaps even encouraging each other to exercise.  Talks are also in the works for a Twin Cities muslim blogger meetup, and the formation of a Wives of Egyptians Twin Cities chapter.
• Keith!  Some girls are musician groupies.  Others swoon over acters.  Me?  I go gaga for islamic scholars and muslim politicans.  And, since there’s really only one national level muslim politican, and he happens to attend the same masjid as me, well, I freak whenever I see Keith Ellison. 
• Little kids (especially girls) praying with their daddies.  MashaAllah.  There was one little african american girl who was praying with her dad at the beginning of jummah, and I was all awwwww…and then halfway through, another dad came in with his daughter and son, and they all offered 2 rakats together.  I just about melted.
• The khutbah.  It was good, but it just didn’t seem complete.  The point was that we have our 5 pillars.  The shahada is the foundation, and salat, zakat, sawm and hajj are the pillars.  We build our islamic houses, but we don’t live in it.  We don’t flesh it out.  The khatib said we should build walls and a roof, but then didn’t say what those should be built of.  inshaAllah I’ll create a seperate entry and perhaps my readers (I know you’re out there!) can give suggetions on ways to flesh out your deen house.
• The khatib.  He was a guest from Virginia Tech, and was good.  His english was clear, just a light trace of an accent, and he spoke with decent grammar.  He was a middle age arab brother with an excellent white sunnah beard, and he was so cute when he used slang.  My favorite that I wrote down was “24 hour 7.”

Jummah Mubarak!

 

 Happy baby in kufi!  Does it get any better than this?  inshaAllah my kids are going to be rocking the kufis and little hijabs at the masjid.  Now if only I can convince the husband to wear one (a kufi that is), life would be good.

Jummah jummah jummah!

I’m doing my happy jummah dance, which is kind of like a conga line - jummah, jummah, jummah (kick), jummah, jummah, jummah (kick). It’s all in my head off course, since I think the folks at the office might think I’ve finally lost it if I did a conga line of one around my cubical.

Whilst browsing through flickr looking for jummah appropriate pictures, I happened upon this baby. Now tell me, isn’t this just the happiest lookin baby you’ve ever seen? MashAllah. Babies smiling must be a sign of Allah (swt).

Other jummah pics (click for their sources)

After Jummah in Cairo

Jummah in Maldives

Jummah in Hyderabad

Jummah at the Islamic Cultures Expo

Friday Prayer at the Hussein Mosque, Cairo

Jummah in Turkey