this blog died huh? lets try to revive it? or am i alone? :-P

Salaams Everyone, Ali here… Just wanted to see how everyone is doing, its been almost a year… and i feel horrble lol… im really bad at keeping in touch… i have talked to hani a couple of times through facebook (if that counts as legitimate conversation), i have seen Amr  and Ridwan once since Misr, and that was at CAM in chicago last weekend, and Musa… where u at man? i got a new phone so i don’t have ur number anymore… but ya… i just wanted to give my salaams to everyone.. hope all is doing well insha’Allah… hope that Misr has changed us for the better and we are upholding that change that we were trying to put into place… and ya, my number is 201-562-5257… someone, anyone… hit me up lol…

Ur brother from SAP 07

Ali

Back in Jersey

~Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem~

 

Salaamz whats goin on everyone? i think most of you are actually still on ur planes back lol, i actually just got a little while ago… Hamdulillah… Im sitting right now infront of my computer writing this and i feel so weird… im not in the apartment using dial up.. or im not in an internet cafe with a bunch of five years olds playing games and smoking.. lol.. im in my room… and Musa’s not here telling some crazy story about his brothers or his friends, and hani’s not here making some random yet really deep comment about egypt or the people of egypt or life in general, and ridwan isnt here trying to convice everyone that something is wrong or something is right, amr isnt here playin nasheed in the background and giving us the brotherly advice that we need… my brother is on his way back right now, but hes not gona be on the phone with his fiance as much because he’ll probably be at their house or something lol…

i miss the fact that everything is no longer in walking distance… school(being a 40 minute drive away), masjid(10 minutes away), barber(35 minutes), supermarket(10 minutes)… etc… i miss the fact that i am not gona be able to hear the adhan in the streets as i am walking through them, especially during fajr… gona miss walking the streets right after fajr and smelling that certain sweetness in the air thats hard to describe, im gona miss my Jersey brothers that ended up goin to egypt!! like Erad, and Osama and Yassir… also the people we met their, like Amu Hani, who didnt even know me and my brother before this trip, like he never knew we existed, and he accepted us as like a part of his family, MashAllah, and im gona miss Jamaal, for his advice, his jokes, smacking me a few times lol, and getting whooped and the basketball court im gona miss all the group trips that we went on, and i think Jabla Tur, even though it was painful lol, and i get really sick right after it, was a perfect way to end the trip, and maybe the best of all the trips… O YA AND HOW CAN I FORGET THE MANGO JUICE!! well it was more like mango pulp… but still that was amazing lol, and the Sugarcane juice…

its funny, while in egypt i could only miss home, and now that im home i miss egypt… like the song says, you dont know what you got til its gone… Hamdulillah i cant thank everyone enough for putting this thing together, i know it took a lot of work, and inshAllah i think there is not one person on this trip that didnt walk out a little more spiritual and a little bit of a better Muslim, and inshAllah all the people that put this together will get the reward for that… Ameen.

Inshallah you all return home safely… and we gotta keep in touch man.. dont forget we gota a MAS conference coming up soon that we all gotta go to lol… Inshallah i will see you all soon, and if not, then inshallah i ask Allah that we can all meet each other in Jannah…if i had done anything good to help anyone then it was from Allah, and if i had done anything or said anything that offended anybody then it was from myself, and i ask for your sincere forgiveness…

 

Your Brother for life,

~Ali

p.s. you ever need me, im only a phone call away, and anywhere from a 1 and half hour drive for Amr in Connecticut to a six hour flight for Ridwan in Cali, and everywhere in between..

Last day in the mother of the world

Salams

My last day in egypt leaves me with many mixed emotions: Happiness that i can return to my home and country, sadness that i leave such great people behind, hope that we can start change and raise the banner of Allah, fear that i may return to my old habits, excitement about the beginning of med school and my married life, and so much more… I think we can say as a group, that we have learned things here that we will keep with us for the rest of our lives… And for the rest of the people in SAP, if one day… really early in the morning, as you sleep in your american beds… in nj, or CA, or michigan or ohio… and the streets are silent… but you are awoken by a man on the street… who yells:  BATHEEEEEEEEEEEEKHHH!… just know that that guy, is your brother yousaf, reminding you of the amana that you recieved the second you stepped foot of that plane in egypt….
I will always keep you all in my dua…
SALAMS
YOUSAF!!!!!!!! 

leaving the land of Musa (AS)

asalamu alaikum wa rahmatu Allah wa barakatu

It is our final day here in Egypt. As I type our apartment is being cleaned inside – out to be handed over to the owner.

I apologize to the readers for a lack of recent posts. The past week was filled with exams, adventures, emotions, tasks, and reflections. I have seen tears, smiles, frowns, moans, sighs, disagreements, hugs, kisses, and farewells. After we took our final exams we took a trip to Mount Sinai (Jabal Al-toor / Jabal Musa). This trip deserves a blog post by itself, I hope other sapers will share there experience on this trip even after returning home. We climbed up-hill 7 kilometers followed by about 3000 stairs to reach the top of the Mountain were Musa 3alahi Alsalam spoke to Allah on a few occasions. You can just imagine the struggle, trial and eventually triumph involved in the physical climbing of the mountain. I just hope I was sincere in climbing the mountain, otherwise that was a lot of wasted energy! May Allah send peace and blessings on Musa (AS) for his patience and sacrifice. He must have loved and cared for bani Israel ALOT especially because of how frustratingly they responded to him. Maybe bani Israel didn’t appreciate Musa (AS) but I do, May Allah join us with him in Jannah.

We had a graduation ceremony and got certificates with official masri stamps and signatures. May Allah help us benefit ourselves and others from what we learned.

There is so much more to share from experiences and reflections.

Here are some pictures, but they will only transfer so much from the experience. You really had to be there. Don’t worry…its ok….just sign up for next years MY SAP

Amr

Reflecting on Jabal Altur

We raised the mountain above them like an umbrella, and they thought it was going to fall on them

Final gathering

globalization… starbucks on jabal Musa!

just some thoughts

 ~Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem~

i just have a lot on my mind at the moment so here goes….

its hard to look around egypt and not be completely humbled at the opportunities we were given… the way some people live.. they arent waking up and thinkin about what restaurant they are eating at today… or how they hate work.. or they hate school.. theres people here who wake up and wonder how they are gonna survive this day.. how are they gonna get the food they need to live.. and for most people school isnt even an option… they either never had the financial ability or just never had the chance to begin with… so who are we to complain about this kind of stuff? and granted i may just be feeling this way right now, and when i go back to the US i mite feel like this for a lil while and then it will pass.. but for now.. at this moment.. it hurts me to think i could be so spoiled that i could feel like a blessing is not enough… its funny today i was listening to Imam Anwar Awlaki’s Lives of the Prophets.. the story of Musa (A) (u know with the whole Jubla Tur trip coming up and stuff) and he talks about a certain instance that happens where after they crossed the red sea into Sinai they were given by Allah a Rizq of this specific type of food which no one was given before them.. and they went to Prophet Musa and asked him if he could make dua’a to Allah to give them more of a variety… SubhanAllah, after just witnessing the miracles of Allah, after being given this amazing rizq, and after being freed from slavery… The Prophet Muhammed (S) said when we learn about the stories of bani Israel (the descendants of Yaqub, now better known as the jews) that we should relate them to ourselves because our Ummah will fall into a lot of the same mistakes that they fell into… so i couldnt help but relate this story to myself atleast in America.. Given this amazing rizq of being born into a country where i can practice my religion almost completely without hassle, go to what ever school i want to, not have to worry bout starvation or begging to live… and then to complain that i dont want this or that…

another way i started to look at it is that everyone in this life is tested… no one is tested more than anyone else, and the test of this life is not more than we can bare… but the test that we face may be different than another persons… some may deal with poverty, others with family issues.. so on and so forth… so when we are tested its easy to say that no way this is too much for me.. no one knows how i feel… but i swear there are people that feel the same way… just because they arent going through the same exact situation as u are.. doesnt mean they wont understand… and something that we feel like isnt that big a deal, others to themselves may see it as something huge in their life… life is funny like that.. i remember we were at hajj.. and we were with this one brother who, MashAllah was amazing… i mean like we were confused about a certain ayat and what surah it was in, so we asked him, and he knew exactly what ayat, where it was, on what page, what part of the page.. and so on and so forth.. and i remember we were all talking this one time, and he asked the sheikh that was with us this question.. and he was asking how to better oneself.. and then he started to cry.. and he said that he felt like he was such a bad muslim sometimes… and i couldnt help but take a step back.. and just be like wow… this person is someone that literally everytime i went to the masjid i saw him there… and he feels like he is a bad muslim.. how should i feel?

InshAllah we will all be able to pass our lifes test with the help of Allah… lol i kinda lost my train of thought.. in the internet cafe.. mad stuff going on… lol… but hamdulillah this post was getting a little long and probably annoying anyway.. if i remember any of the other stuff, i’ll try and post it..

Salaam,

~Ali

We have made some of you as a trial for others

There is wisdom in constantly reading the Quran and contemplating over Allah’s words; your new exeperiences in life force you to understand particular ayat in a way you had never understood them before.  I must have read aya 20 in surat al -furqan many times in the past, but in all honestly, I don’t  remember contemplating over this one particular aya until now, while in Egypt.  The aya reads: “And the Messengers whom We sent before you were all (men) who ate food and walked through the streets. We have made some of you as a trial for others. Will you have patience? For Allah is One Who sees (all things). ” When I read this aya it dawned on me that it is very relevent to our stay in Egypt. 19 people came together with the same goal: to learn Arabic. I believe we have gotten much more out of this trip than Arabic.  We have learned a lot about ourselves.  We are who we are today, at this very moment in our lives, because of the complex interplay between our own gentic makeup, temperment, environment etc. We are not only different in physical appereance but also in the way we think and behave.  Having to live and deal with someone you did not grow up with or choose to be with can be a test. How do you deal with someone whose personality is very much different than your own? What happens when you are put in an apartment with 6 people who don’t understand you. You make a choice. You choose to know them. Better yet, you choose to understand them. And for no other reason but to please Allah (swt). Why does my sister tend to leave the group after a little bit of socializing? Why can’t he take anything seriously? Does she ever stop talking? To me that aya addresses this very point, Allah (swt) could have created us all the same but he didn’t.  Dealing with difference is a challenge and requires patience. It requires a committment to understand your brother and sister and then patience as you interact with someone who may be very different from you.  In an attempt to understand each other we have learned a lot about our own selves.

I feel blessed to have spent this summer with this group of  brothers and sisters. I ask everyone to forgive me if I have said or done anything to hurt them.

Hiat

Adilah’s first post

okay soo this is my first post, SALAM to you all!! i finally figured out how to sign on to this thing….

being here in egypt is soo exciting for me! i love it! even though i get honked at all the time, always feel lk my toes are going 2 get run over, getting ripped off sometimes with shopping, smelling lk smoke and cigs from the coffee shop, and get made fun of bc of my arabic…. ITS ALL GOOD!!!!!!! i love the fact that im back 2 hanging my clothes out to dry, and that im in a apt with 6 great gals who make me laugh no matter what! and that i can find mango juice ANYWHERE!!

i have many sad, and happy, and GM (girls things ) moments on this trip and i will never forget the memmories!

MAS deff picked a great group of people for this trip, bc it nv could have been better!

-adilah, aka anfy, aka add, aka nicole… lol

unlocking the secret behind the egyptian accent

Life is full of hard to answer questions like why did the dajaj cross the tareeq?

A few days ago i learned part of the answer to why Egyptians (and arabs in general) have an accent when they speak in English.

If you ask the closest Egyptian 3amu or 3amty near you to say “street” in English they will likely pronounce it like “estreet” (putting a hamza before the “s”).

The reason behind this is that in Arabic, the first letter always has a tashkeel (fat7a, kasra, or damma), so Arabs have a very hard time pronouncing an English word with two consonants in the beginning of the word. So they need to give the “s” in “street” an extra sound to pronounce it, hence they will say “estudy” , “estop” , “cerazy” or “berotherhood”.

Im sure that are linguistic explanations for other parts of the accent. If you know, blease share

yousaf…my country… and a poem

AssalamuAlaikum 

Now that I have been in Egypt for 4 weeks I can honestly say that I have learned where I belong… in my country. Recently the brothers discussed the seerah of the Prophet (s) and we came to the realization that regardless of whether or not the Quraysh became Muslims, the Prophet Muhammad (s) always considered them ‘his people,’ meaning his responsibilty.  The Quraysh persecuted the Muslims, tortured them and even slaughtered them but the Prophet (s) never gave up on them.  Comparitively I am starting to see that instead of cussing out America or calling it the devil, I should instead accept it as my own. America is my country, plain and simple… And after seeing what I have seen here, and hearing what I have heard, my hope for Islam’s ‘Renaissance’ lies in the U.S. of A.  The oppurtunities we have to build a strong and balanced community are not found here in Egypt, or any other ‘muslim country’ for that matter.  I once sat in a khatira given by Sheikh Shakir Elsayed, where he told us to imagine an America where you can hear the athan on the streets of every major city.  At the time, I saw this as an unnattainable ideal, but now I see it as our burden and honor to make it a reality… My teacher at Diwan recently reminded us that victory for Islam is inevitable… After hearing this all I could really think about was making sure that I am part of this change for the better…I do not want to face Allah (swt) on that Day and have nothing to show for my life… ‘I sat back and watched as others struggled to raise the banner of your deen…’

So, at the end of the day, I am actually proud to be an American..and more importantly a Muslim American… Let’s make it our country… This is the country I want my children to grow up in and this is the country from which I pray the spark of Islam comes from.  I made a dua yesterday that I had never thought of before this trip:

‘Ya Allah, Make me the type of slave You deserve to have!’

 May Allah make us of the Musliheen…May Allah grant us the determination and patince required to sacrifice for Him.

I wrote this poem today from the perspective of our deen Al-Islam (personified): 

MY RENAISANCE

O Ummah of Muhammaad (s), Why do you hide?

O Ummah of Al-Sadiq, In whose hearts do I still reside?

O Ummah of Al-Faruq, Why do you run scared, why do you flee?

O my Ummah, Why do you lose hope when your victory has already been decreed?

 

I’m sick of living a life without purpose

Where any man with money and power can hurt us

I’m sick of an Ummah of cowards

Decomposing and fronting like flowers

I’m sick of hearing about orphaned children and widowed mothers

And ‘Islamic governments’ who incarcerate Muslim brothers

I’m sick of Kashmir and Sheeshan

Of death in Muslim Kosovo and the Sudan

I’m sick of an Ummah of big talkers and little doers

Of words just as good as the ‘stuff’ we find in the sewers

I’m sick of a people who can’t find the middle path

Of people who fall astray or fall into Allah’s wrath

I’m sick of hearing about Palestine

AND IT- NOT- BEING-MINE!

I’m sick of a community of mediocrity

Doctors and engineers trying to live in secular harmony

I’m sick of a media that is allowed to disgrace me

Of news tickers, Fox news and sean hannity

I’m sick of faithless muslimoon

Of hopeless mutawakiloon

I’m sick of hearing about victory

And tasting it only in books of Islamic history

I’m sick of brothers who’d rather play ball than pray

Of men who’d rather run than find another way

I’m sick of fifty year old boys and fifty year old girls

Who have done nothing in their lives except lived 50 yrs in their own little worlds

I’m sick of the Hijab being spliced with tight jeans

Of scarves as a statement for Muslim fashion queens

I’m sick of beards without heart

Of Muslim men who fold the second life gets hard

I’m sick of Muhajabas who expose everything except for a few hairs

Who walk like they’re on the catwalk, demanding lustful stares

I’m sick of leaders who oppress the people they are supposed to defend

Of Muslim men with Muslimah girlfriends

I’m sick of Muslim con-artists and righteous imitators

And of religious tyrants and blameless dictators

I’m sick of husbands who leave their wives beaten and bruised

Of a pathetic people whose only way out is to blame their shortcomings on the Jews

I’m sick of shaytan having his way with Allah’s slaves

Of cemeteries in Muslim lands full of infant sized graves

I’m sick of my Ummah’s tears soaking sacred grounds

Of my Ummah’s blood being spilled without protest or sound

I’m sick of empty masajid and dusty Quran pages

AND I AM SICK OF LIVING IN THE MUSLIM DARK AGES

     

more than words

~Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem~

Salaam, hope this post finds everyone in the best of health inshallah. i sprained my ankle a little bit, lol, but its no biggy, it was worth it to play some ball

MashAllah, from what i can see, which mite be a limited perspective because i never really knew anyone here before this trip with the exception of my brother, i’ve seen everyone here change and want to change so much… i dont think i really have to say this, its kinda known.. Some of the discussions we have had, SubhanAllah, amazing man.. in the beginning we all wrote down some of the things we wanted to change in ourselves, and some of the things we wanted to accomplish before we left here..  the reason im righting this post is basically to say that, i think we all know what we have to do to change ourselves, and now in our last two weeks here, its time for more than words(maybe i have been listening to too much 80s music lol)… its time to start implementing the changes… we gotsta wake up and realize that we were given this chance that not many people have either because they couldnt afford it financially or maybe because they didnt have the time to come all this way to egypt to study arabic and better our deen… so now since we were given this chance by Allah, what are we gona do with it?  in full honesty, one of my biggest fears of going back is that i will fall right back into it my old habits and stuff… its easy to say we will change when we go back, but to actually make those changes is going to be hard, but if we cant implement those changes, what was this whole trip for? we have to remember that the shaytaan will try his hardest to get to us right when we get back, to try and make us fall right back into our old habits and so on and so forth, and its up to us to take control of our own nafs… InshAllah we will all be able to accomplish our goals that we set for ourselves on this trip, and keep those changes goin when we get back…

goin on these trips that probably most of us wouldnt go on if we werent here.. like the trip to the orphanage, in full honesty its the first time i have ever gone to anything like that, not because i havent had the opportunity, just because it never crossed my mind to do it… that trip was life changing man its hard to describe in words… if we didnt feel something after that trip, then we gotta check our selves (stealing my brothers line:-P) , inshAllah i ask Allah to soften our hearts, and allow us to recognize all of the benefits we can possibly get from trips like this one, and the trip like the one to the graves,  crazy… and the trips to come in the future… I dont know about everyone else but im excited about the trip to Mount Tur inshAllah… stepping on the same ground as Musa (A)… mmmmm.. amazing.. lol

on a side note, this trip is becoming a love hate relationship for me.. i love all the things we are doing here and the people are awesome and everything, but i just miss home, a lot more than i expected man.. lol my family, friends, everything… and i came a week late!! so i cant imagine what everyone else is going thru lol, i ask Allah to keep us all strong inshAllah, and to help us keep our focus on the remainder of the trip… lol its getting harder and harder to follow some of the posts up, lol, their getting deeper and deeper, inshAllah keep them coming, cuz they are awesome to read, i hope mine can live up to some of the other ones… lol