My Ramadan 2012 Plan

Assalamu alaikum,

I recommend looking for Ramadan specials, like lecture series.

Here is my personal Ramadan and islamic education plan for this month. What I don't finish is still worthwhile to complete afterward. I do not have a job at the moment, so I realize it's not possible for evvveryone to do the same plan. I will continue the job hunt insh'Allah. Perhaps my circumstances will change and this plan will have to be updated.

1. Wake up, suhoor, fajr prayer.

2. Short walk outside.

3. Heart Wheel Journal - you can find it with a quick google search and on youtube the author has short videos to go with each day. Each day has 3 pages. The first one gives you some things to think about, the second is a prayer planner, and the third is a planner for the next day and a reflection on the current day. What is the heart wheel? It's visual representation of you current islamic performance compared to how you believe you can do it. The areas are fasting, salah, dhikr chunks, chastity, night prayer, upright character, avoiding distractions, and daily sadaqa. There is also a chart to track your concentration in salat. Aim: stay on point and make this my best Ramadan EVER, sustainable improvement with salat.

4. Understandquran.com - they have a special offer for Ramadan. $10 for the short course. What is it? It's a program for learning the arabic through what is used in salat and daily recitations. After completing the course, I should be able to read the Qur'an and understand about half of the words in it. The idea is that you are already familiar with the short surah and common phrases and you just need to learn the meaning. In my case I am not familiar with all of these things, so there will be a fair amount of memorization involved. Do one chapter every 1-3 days, depending on how much is unfamiliar. Aim: learn arabic, understand Qur'an more directly, increase focus in salat.

5. Module 1 of the Quranic Studies on this website: http://www.mubashirnazir.org/Courses/Quran/QS001-00-Quranenglish.htm The textbook also is made up of passages from the Qur'an and a variety of exercises, including some for personality development. Do one chapter every day or two. Aim: understand Qur'an, implement more of it, I will be ready to register for Module 2.

6. Nap two sleep cycles. One sleep cycle is 90 minutes, so 3 hours total. This is not to avoid hunger, it is to keep myself fresh because most likely I will have less than 6 hours sleep in the night and after too many days on 6 hours sleep and in the past this resulted in starting to miss suhoor AND fajr prayer. Without enough sleep I don't remember why my alarm is set because my brain is not in control yet. If I wait until later for a nap it makes staying up later too easy (bad idea). Get up around noon to be fully awake for the next prayer.

7. Dhuhr prayer

8. Clean, organize, online job applications

9. Asr prayer

10. Review the morning's work, do any necessary tasks, take a short walk, and prepare iftar.

11. At iftar break fast with dates and water then maghrib prayer.

12. Have good dinner, take fluids, do something fun until isha.

13. Isha prayer.

14. Go to sleep before 10:45pm



I would like to fit in reading from Enjoy Your Life by Dr. Muhamman Abd al-Rahman Al-Arifi. It's about interacting with people, "as deduced by a study of the prophet's life."
I would also like to do some small islamic cross-stitching. I can use it as an exercise in dhikr and then use them as eid gifts.

Nora

my pre-ramadan classes update

Assalamu alaikum,

I could finish the New Muslim Academy classes today, but they have not finished the discussion board activities. I intend to follow through all the activities. There are supposed to be a couple more classes, insh'Allah they will offer those before I have to leave them behind for other educational things.


Understandquran.com is no longer free, so I haven't been doing the short course. They have a Ramadan special of $10 for access to the short course. They need the memberships in order to pay for the development of new courses. There is more about that on their website. Insha'Allah I fill follow through the short course during Ramadan.


I found another source of free lessons for new muslims. There are no videos and no discussions. Currently it is a series of articles at 4 levels (currently 106 lessons total), each with a quiz. Register to have your grades tracked. I'm going to wait a while before sharing it until I am more sure they are a good place to learn from. 


Nora

Ramadan, sleep habits, a smoothie, and a lecture

Assalamu alaikum!

Ramadan Mubarak!

Friday is the first day of Ramadan 2012, insh'Allah.

Fajr around 4:30 am.
Maghrib around 8:30.
That's 16 hours fasting at the beginning of the month and closer to 15 hours towards the end as dawn and dusk get closer together. I'm not worried about it.

Isha around 10 pm. In effect, that means less than 6.5 hours to sleep. Unless I do the extra night prayers, then it is less. I've had bad sleep habits and it has caught up with me. This makes it an especially tough time to have sleep periods broken up. 

There are blessings in suhoor and I don't want to miss any this year, so I'm concerned about waking up in time. It is a good month to practice being up in time for fajr prayers. It takes about a month to build a habit and this is a habit that needs to continue, not end when Ramadan does. I need to wake up for suhoor so I am fully awake for fajr.

I have trouble eating so early in the morning, so I'm trying to drink instead. Smoothies.

Here is my first one:
1 scoop casein powder, chocolate supreme flavor
1 tablespoon natural peanut butter
1 cup milk
1/2 bananna
1 tsp flax seed oil

Casein is a form of protein that is slow digesting and flax seed oil helps you feel full longer, too. We'll see.

Some people try to sleep all day and be up at night so they can eat and not feel hungry. They cheat themselves out of the full benefits of the month. Some people gorge at iftar, which does not fit the spirit of the month either. Then they gain weight and wonder why. For more on this topic, I recommend a lecture such as Eating Habits in Ramadan by Kamal El-Mekki. Try searching for it on youtube.


Nora

Don't make my old Ramadan errors!

Assalamu alaikum,

Learn from my mistakes:

1. I thought eating at sunset meant when the sun was totally down and no light in the sky!

Actually,  it means when the sun is below the horizon.  At that point there will still be light in the sky.

2. I thought that us women, during our periods, had the option of not fasting during those days and making it up later. But if one of us felt ok then then she can continue to fast and not have to make it up later. If my period was uncomfortable then I didn't fast, and when it didn't bother me I would fast.

Whatever it was I read was not clear. I think it was talking about the mercies on women during Ramadan. So actually we are not allowed to fast at that time and we have to make it up later. This is supposed to be for our health. The missed prayers do not need to be made up for later. That's a mercy. Fasting when no one else is sucks, and getting the fasting rhythm back does as well. Nothing to be done for it, though.

3. I was told that we fast from sunrise to sunset. On the prayer chart they often give the time of sunrise. So I ate until that time. I also read that thing about being able to distinguish between a white thread and a black thread as being the time to not eat any more. 

They say 'sunrise' to make it sound simpler. There is a difference between dawn and sunrise. Just as there is still light in the sky at sunset, there is light in the sky at sunrise.  Dawn is at the time for fajr salat, so that is when fasting begins. 

4. I thought you could pray before eating suhoor.

See number 3.

Islam is said to be simple. When you think of the details of anything, even simple things get complicated. Then when you understand them they become simple again.

My Pre-Ramadan Classes so far...

Salam,

I'm really liking the New Muslim Academy material so far. The Intro to Islam videos are nice. Each segment is about 13 minutes long and I find the speaker to be congenial. One of my favorite bits so far is that knowledge of God leads to love and closeness to him. That would help with improving frequency of practicing Islam more. And actually, knowledge itself isn't enough. If it's not used it there is no way for it to increase, indeed, if it is neglected then the knowledge is really of no practical benefit. When it is neglected it is easily forgotten. 

In the Understand Qur'an short course I am working on the second class. Once I get to the fourth class, my pace should speed up for a bit because I am more familiar with the surah covered in lesson 4-9.

I'm happy.

My 2012 Pre-Ramadan Studies

Ramadan should begin July 20th here in the USA. My practicing of Islam is still spotty. Alhamdulliah I improve each year. This year I am doing some daily studies during this 30 days preceding Ramadan. Last year I did more study and salat than the year before during Ramadan, so this year I'm starting before and plan to continue during. I have found special lecture series and webinars offered specially for that month, so this year I can keep my eyes open for them.

I have a bad sleep habit which is 5-6 hours off. It's supposed to take 21 days to create a habit, so working on it now will help me during Ramadan. Fasting is easy when you sleep through the hungry part of the day and eat as you like at night. That wasn't the intention for my staying up to late at night, however that's sort of how it works out. Insha'Allah I have 36 days or so to make a habit which will serve me better during Ramadan and the rest of my life.

Here is a website called New Muslim Academy. It was just launched a couple days ago. http://newmuslimacademy.org/ It offers some free online classes to people conversant in English who want to learn/review the basics. There will be some live sessions added soon. The teachers are Bilal Phillips, Yusef Estes, Jamaal Zarabozo, Yassir Fazaga, and Waleed Basyouni. I'm somewhat familiar with the first two. So far I don't see anything that seems excessively strict or relaxed.

http://understandquran.com/ has a good system to learn some simple surah and du'a, and other arabic used in salat. They have been around since at least 2007. I am working on the short course. At the end of it, I am supposed to be able to understand about 50% of the Qur'an. They are working on a part 2 of the short course, which would get me to understanding 70% of the Qur'an. If they don't finish before I am ready for it, I can start working on the Basic course. The basic course is supposed to be replaced by having a 2-part short course. There are aids for learning the rest of the Qur'an and things related to it, like tajweed (how to recite). There are 2 versions of the short course, one from 2007 and another from 2011. The 2007 is presented slightly different from the 2011 and has more interactive quizzes and games. This course is a good help in memorizing the short surah and other arabic used in salat, although I thinks it's more intended to help people understand what they already have memorized. It's supposed to take a total of 9 hours spread over 27 days, but I can't memorize all this with just watching a 20 minute video everyday, much less memorize the meanings. I'm not confident in memorizing 5 words in a day, 3-5 lines/day is just not feasible for me.

http://www.houseofquran.com has really nice memorization tools. I could achieve the same effect using a repetition system by myself, but this is much more efficient. It's hard to imagine anything closer to having a real tutor besides hiring or finding one. There are setting you can manipulate to your needs and you can select from a list of reciters.

That's plenty to start with.

Wudu: order of parts

Assalamu alaikum,

As I was learning how to make wudu, I noticed some descriptions added extra parts. It was confusing to me. Some of the details given commonly are sunnah, which means muhammad, pbuh, sometimes did them and it's good to copy. However they aren't required. For example, some people say you have to wash each part 3 times except for the hair. It's sunnah to do it 3 times, but just once does the job. That said, it's not much hardship to move over each part 3 times. In addition, I also have the impression that different schools of thought do things differently. I used to be confused by the order we wash-up before prayer. Here is the way I think of it. This isn't coming from a scholar, remember. It's more like a mnemonic device.

Prequel - use wudu as a time to prepare your mind, not just your body. That's part of why we should make our intention of what we are doing and why.

1. Hands - wrist to elbow starting with the right hand (just like with forearms and feet, and like at the end of prayer where we greet the angel on the right first). We start with hands because we use them to clean the rest of us. Of course we do them first.

2. Face - swish in mouth, then up the nose (so nose water won't drip to your mouth when you clean it), then face - middle to the outside then down (done last, so it also wipe away any moisture around nose or mouth and sweeps it away).

3. Forearm - wrist to elbow, starting with the right. We do the forearm now, so we were not dripping that water down our forearms and scattering it further with the extra movement that happens while washing the face.

4. Wipe hair and ears - our wet elbows point down, letting the water drip-dry down with minimal water scatter. We're almost done, we needed to finish up top before the last....step....ha-ha...

5. Feet  - ankle to toes, starting on the right foot.


There is also a rhythm to it. Starting down with the hands...

down (hands)
up      (face)
down (elbows)
up      (head)
down (feet)

Divide the parts like this and you have 5 steps, like there are 5 prayers each day.

Epilogue: Now that you are ritually clean (clean for the purposes of prayer), you should go pray as soon as you can instead of waiting. It's better that way, plus you're less likely to nullify your wudu by "passing wind" or some-such.