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[ Tuesday, February 03, 2004 ]

 

It's raining it's pouring!

I went to Imam Suhaib Webb's weekly lecture series on campus again last night. Last week, he had started talking about Tarbiyyah, and this week he expanded on it. Masha Allah it was powerful stuff! He had really deep references from Qur'an and Hadith. I took a lot of notes. He also answered questions at the end on male-female interactions, homosexuality, praying for nonMuslims, selling haraam, smoking cigarettes (which by common consensus is haraam).

The male-female interaction bit got a lot of attention because everyone had so many questions. He talked about the proper way of going about marrying someone if you know someone who you may want to marry (nazr, praying istikhara/asking shura, getting parents involved at an early stage, going through other people, etc. etc). He says that if you're attracted to someone, you shouldn't look that person in the face, and you should keep your distance. He didn't seem to agree with the idea of brothers and sisters being friends because of the fact that it could lead to temptation. Nor did he think that talking on the phone or instant messaging with them is appropriate. He said that brothers and sisters can talk to one another if they're working together on something, but it should be about business. He did say, however (and of course I'm paraphrasing all this), that one shouldn't be so uptight that if a brother or sister asks you how you're doing, you refuse to even answer them because it's not the set business. But he gave an example of another extreme, that of a MSA board that meets at Starbucks (of all places!) over drinks to chit chat…We could all tell how he felt about that. He said that sin is what you don't want others to know about you. His frank discussion on the issue made me feel somewhat ashamed of my friendship with W, even though we don't do anything wrong. Shoot, most of the time, we're talking about Islam, and I learn a lot from him. Masha Allah he's led a lot of people to Islam, using their own texts to refute them.

During the lecture, it made me wonder if W was going to act weird with me later because of what Imam Suhaib had said. I wondered if he was going to even walk me to my car as he usually does when it's late and dark (Berkeley is a weird enough of a place during the day…At night, it's pretty creepy and there are reported robberies in the area). After the lecture was over and we had said our separate salaams to our friends inside the classroom, I followed W into the hallway. He said my name and something else that I didn't catch…I saw some friends in the hallway that I wanted to say goodbye to, so I ran to give them all quick hugs. When I went back to the main hallway, W was gone…I couldn't find him anywhere. I figured he had probably felt weird or something and had left. Still, when I went outside, I glanced around to see if he was waiting or walking down the street. I didn't see him. I have to admit, I felt pretty sad. I felt pretty alone. But I told myself that I didn’t need anyone, even though it scared me to walk to the parking lot (3-4 blocks away) alone in the dark. I figured things wouldn't be the same between us.

W called me as I was almost to the main street. I answered the phone but everything was breaking up and I couldn’t understand him. I told him so, and then I hung up and kept walking. It was funny because I just happened to look back at that moment… I saw W running really fast to catch up with me. I walked back toward him to save him the trouble, but the weirdo kept running until he was out of breath. I smiled and told him that I thought he had just gone ahead. He laughed and said that he had just gone to the restroom. It was all just miscommunication. Hehe. He had been in such a hurry that he forgot his umbrella, so he went back to get it.

We talked about the lecture on the walk to my car. When we got closer to the lot, I decided to ask him the question I had been wondering about the whole way. I asked him if he feels uncomfortable walking me to my car. He said no, and I sighed a breath of relief. He asked me if it makes me feel uncomfortable, and I told him that in fact it makes me feel better not walking alone in the dark because of all the weirdos around. He said that Muslim men should walk sisters to their cars because it's the right thing to do. I asked him why, if he feels so weird about the two of us being in an elevator, he doesn’t mind walking with me around campus. He replied that people might make assumptions based on the fact that we were walking out of an elevator together alone. I said that people always assume things, and they would probably still assume the same thing seeing us talking or walking around on campus. His reply was that it's a public place, with lots of people around, so it's different. It was good to get that off my chest. I'd rather have things in the open like that.

He stopped about twenty feet away from my car. I told him the sad story of how I had brought his b'day present with me (and to not take it the wrong way because I do the same for all my friends), but the rain had soaked through my backpack, drenching a part of it. He laughed and reiterated his advice to invest in a bigger umbrella. He walked back to the edge of the lot but waited until I was seated in my car to really leave. Masha Allah for caring brothers like that.

I called my parents to tell them that I was leaving campus. Despite the fact that it was already 9:30 pm and that was the time I had told my mom I'd be reaching home, my dad was really chill about it and just told me to drive safely. I have a feeling he thought I was in a chem study session...I realize it's wrong to let my parents believe that, but Imam Suhaib is only going to be here for another few weeks, he won't be back until summer, and I really want to take advantage of the time he has left. I've found that I really need to stick to halaqas, lectures, and Islamic classes in order to feel like I'm in a good state Islamically. And I need to keep up these sort of things, despite the fact that my parents think I'm too involved in them, because how else am I going to learn about Islam? Books on their own don't cut it. Parents are responsible for teaching their children about Islam, on their own and by other means (halaqas, classes, lectures, etc.) if they themselves lack the knowledge. How many of our parents know everything about fiqh? These things are Fard to know, so we have to learn them somehow. And it's sad if my parents are ok with academic studying but not with expanding my knowledge of Islam...

As soon as I got home, I grabbed my blowdryer, pulled off my wet socks, and alternately blow-dried my feet and all the soaked pages of W's birthday present.

For a day that had started out pretty rotten, it ended on a good note.

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