Valentine's Day

We have Halloween and we have a season of giving, so it's no surprise that we have a Valentine's Day celebration, complete with a coin drive, flower delivery service, and a Valentine's Day dance. It's also no surprise that we're celebrating Valentines Day through out the entire week after Valentine's Day. For some reason we just can't celebrate holidays on their actual date: we celebrated Halloween a week early (parents weekend) and we had our season of giving in November (December break). S'anyways, we had a coin drive for Gaza but I don't think that went really well because we already had a major coin drive for Gaza in January. Then the student government and student live office ran a flower delivery service that let students by friendship flowers and romance flowers for the friends and valentines. Of course, students could send flowers anonymously if they wanted. I'm happy to say that I even got an anonymously sent flower, though it was a friendship flower. It made my day, but I have to admit that I felt a little disconcerted when I saw a sophomore girl with a bouquet medley of friendship and romance flowers. Then two nights ago the school had its Valentine's Day Dance. It was actually because of this dance that we celebrated Valentine's Day a week late. They didn't start planning and promoting the dance until two days for Thursday, the 12th; and so the day students and weekday boarders didn't have enough time to plan. Overall, though, our Valentine's Day celebration was just as successful as those for Halloween and the season of giving.

Guest Artist

Last Monday, the school hosted its first guest speaker since Jane Taylor visited in November. The speaker was a poet named Suhair Hammad, a Jordanian born poet who grew up in Brooklyn. She recited a few of her poems but she mostly related her personal philosophy on poetry to the audience. She said that, for her, poetry is a means of expressing frustration in a non-violent, constructive, and creative way. She said that that poetry is about how one feels and taking everyday feelings and observations and creating from them………….So, I guess she doesn't sound that inspirational. But our students absolutely loved her. She was an expert in what I've heard referred to as "Slam Poetry". She had energy, attitude, and way of captivating the audience. Our students absolutely loved her, but I don't think anyone in the audience knew what to do with her. Whenever she tried getting a response or discussion or rise from the students, they mainly just gave simple, short answers or said that they didn't know. She asked one of our students what it feels like to be a student here and she asked everyone how they felt about not being able to help the victims of the recent Gaza attacks. But I know that she felt that she connected with the audience on some level because two of our students were brave enough to get on stage with her and read their own, original work. And the "performance" lasted longer than it was supposed to so I guess that means we were doing something right.

Jesus in Islam

So, although I cannot claim to be an expert on any matters of Islamic Doctrine simply because I meet with a university certified instructor once a week for a one-hour discussion, I still think I should write about my understandings and interpretations. I'll start off by writing, ironically enough, about the place of Jesus in Islam. So then, Jesus is a major prophet in Islam and should therefore be respected. Last week I read that, when Jerusalem was first conquered by the expanding Islamic Ummayad Empire, that the Muslim conquerors refrained from destroying the tomb of the Sepulchre because of Jesus' special status as a prophet in Islam. All prophets in Islam-including Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah, Jesus, and of course Mohammad- have the special status of being chosen to spread God's message on earth. Some prophets may have emphasized certain aspects of God's message over others, such as the pragmatic aspects preached by Moses (Musa) or the spiritual aspects preached by Jesus (Isa); but they all preached the same message. But Mohammad is considered the final prophet because he delivered God's message to the world in a pure, unaltered form. Back to the Jesus though, an undisputed belief in Islam is that Jesus was not crucified by the Romans but instead was physically taken up into heaven right before the Romans were going to arrest him. Muslims believe that one signal of Judgment day will be Jesus' return to earth, when he will live out the rest of his life as a mortal and die.

Haram and Halal

Moving on, I'll relate my understanding of the dietary restrictions in Islam. In Islam, God states that consuming anything that is good for the body is halal (allowed) and that consuming anything that is bad for the body haram (not allowed). Our instructor says that many people focus too much on few harams in Islam and too little on the many halals. Although the Quran does forbid the consumption of alcohol, our instructor says that a Muslim's decision to drink or not drink alcohol is not as important as his/her faith and observance of the fundamental beliefs of Islam-those of living with God, living with the poor, and bettering one's self and the world. As for the dietary restrictions on the consumption of pork, I believe that there is pragmatic reasoning behind this haram. The main reasoning being that, during the prophet's time, it was completely impractical to raise pigs in the Hijaz region, where Mohammad lived, because pigs required large amounts of food and water and yielded relatively little meat in return. In other words, pigs were seen as useless and expensive animals.

Prayer

Next I'll write about the pillar of Islam that addresses prayer. One of the pillars of Islam asks that Muslims pray five times a day. Our instructor says that God asks Muslims to pray five times a day because he wants them to live in close relationship with him and to remind them not commit Haram. The five prayers occur at these times of day: first light, noon, afternoon, sunset, and evening.

Part of this pillar mentions the weekly occasion for congregational prayer. Muslims congregate for prayer on Friday during the noon prayer time, usually in mosques. The pillar requires all men to attend Friday congregations but only welcomes woman to attend. Our instructor says that women can go but usually don't.

Jinn and Eve

Not only does Islam have humans made from earth and angels made from light, but also jinn made from fire. Unlike angels, God created jinn and humans to have free will. I believe that there are good jinn as well as bad jinn but that they are both invisible to humans. However they do influence human behavior, just in unseen ways. A well-known jinn in Islam is Iblise. The story that our instructor told us is that God created Iblise before Adam but that God asked Iblise to bow to Adam (I think because God chose Adam to inherit the earth and chose to test him in this role). When Iblise refused to bow to Adam God banished him to hell. Shortly afterwards, however, Iblise got his revenge on Adam by tricking him and Eve (Howwa) into eating the forbidden fruit. I should note here that our instructor told us explicitly that Iblise tricked Adam and Eve in unseen ways and that it was ABSOLUTELY not "Eve's Fault".

Jihad

Now I'm tired and don't feel like writing much more, which is a shame seeing as how I'm about to write about on one of the most popular western misconceptions of Islam: the meaning of the word, Jihad. Our instructor tells us that the world Jihad comes from the Arabic word, ja-ha-da, which she translated as meaning to do one's best/ to strive to do better. However, by the end of the lesson I understood Jihad to mean to be faced with a difficult decision but to make the right choice. People can jihad (I think she used it as a verb) by choosing to do one's homework, to clean one's room, to donate to charity, by choosing to many other small, but good things. We did discuss why Jihad is associated with war and violence today, and I now have my own understanding that I feel correctly reconciles the true meaning of Jihad and the exaggerated meaning. I think one can jihad by choosing to defend one's homeland from an outside aggressor. This makes sense to me because many people have to struggle to make the decision to go to war and defend one's land/country. I also think my understanding of the word makes sense because it explains why many people believe Jihad to mean holy war. People can believe they are taking on a Jihad by killing innocent people if they believe their homeland is being attacked or if they have no other means of fighting. Anyway, I'm done.