This summer, Zaytuna Institute presents an 8 week long intensive program to teach the Arabic language.

 Zaytuna Summer Arabic Intensive : A Complete Immersion Experience

Zaytuna has gathered some of the best Arabic language teachers in the West to teach this program:

• Abdullah Ali
• Dawood Yasin
• Usama Canon
• Khalil Moore
• Nethal Abdul-Mu’min
• Qari Amar Bellaha

Read their bios here:  http://arabicintensive.org/faculty.html

There will be some enrichment lectures conducted by:

• Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, “Secrets of Arabic Vocabulary Acquisition”
• Imam Zaid Shakir, “The Role of Arabic in the Islamic Sciences”
• Dr. Hatem Bazian, “The Arabic Roots of Al-Quds (Jerusalem)”
• Ustadha Intisar Rabb, “Authenticating Qur’anic Texts and Variant Readings”
• Dr. Sulayman Nyang, “The Impact of Arabic in Africa”
• Dr. Khalid Blankinship
• Dr. Kenneth Honerkamp

Bios here: http://arabicintensive.org/lectures.html

Basing their program on the “Complete Immersion Experience”, students will be living in the Westminster House in Berkeley, where they have the option of completely immersing themselves in a Arabic-only environment or a partial Arabic environment (Elementary Arabic level).

We are pleased to announce that our parent company, MQu.be, designed and developed the site. We are honored to have Zaytuna as one of our esteemed clients.

The San Francisco Bay Area Muslim community is one of the most diverse and most blessed communities in the USA. We are also not shy of controversy….

Open Forum: Should Muslims use the N word? Finding balance between being Muslim and being cool

The Lighthouse Mosque is pleased to announce its first community forum. This program is designed to elicit a frank and open discussion of a pertinent issue vexing the Muslim community. This first discussion will discuss the limits of cultural assimilation for a Muslim. Imam Zaid Shakir, Shaykh Abdullah Ali and Brother Adisa Banjoko amongst others will be in attendance. All are invited.

For background reading we suggest:
Randall Kennedy’s concise book, Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word and A.A. Akom’s article, The House that Race Built: Some Observations on the Use of the Word Nigga, Popular Culture, and Urban Adolescent Behavior.

Date: Sunday, February 10, 2008

Time: 12:00pm – 3:00pm

Location: Lighthouse Mosque, 4606 Martin Luther King Blvd, Oakland, CA

Facebook event page: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=10178390406

The obvious: The month of February is honored to be known a Black History Month in North America (October in the UK). February 2008 has 29 days. One extra day to commemorate an important sector of our population.

The hidden: Where is the daily celebration of the role African-Americans played in the development of the US? Why is Black History Month regulated to one month?

The very hidden: The importance of African Muslims in the early history of the USA.

What you can do: Read the autobiography of Brother Malcolm X (a must read for all Muslims).Listen to  Imam Zaid’s phenomenal African Muslims double CD set. If you have not done so already, reach out to Imam Warith Deen Mohammed‘s community. If Preacher Moss is speaking in your community, run to grab front row seats. Last and definitely not least… Imam Siraj Wahhaj, embrace him.

For US readers: Catch the premiere of Prince Among Slaves on PBS on February 4 at 10PM.

Prince Among Slaves, a one-hour documentary film on the inspiring story of an African prince who survived 40 years of enslavement in America before finally regaining his freedom and becoming one of the most famous men of his day.

Winner of the Best Documentary at the 2007 American Black Film Festival, this true story is told through feature-film styled reenactments directed by Andrea Kalin* and Emmy® Award-winner, Bill Duke, through contemporary artworks, archival letters and diaries, as well as through on-camera interviews with distinguished scholars and experts. Artfully narrated by actor and hip-hop Mos Def, Prince Among Slaves is based on Dr. Terry Alford’s biography of the same name.

Prince Among Slaves tells the compelling true story of Abdul-Rahman, an African Muslim Prince who was captured in 1788 and sold into slavery in the American South. He endured the horrific Middle Passage, and ended up the “property” of a poor and nearly illiterate planter named Thomas Foster from Natchez Mississippi. He remained enslaved for 40 years before finally regaining his freedom under dramatic circumstances, becoming one of the most famous men of his day, and returning back to Africa with his royal status acknowledged. The film ends with a family reunion between Abdul-Rahman’s African and American descendents in Natchez, Mississippi.

Click here for more info. Watch the trailer below:

Black History Month should be of interest to every Muslim, especially in America.

As Muslims, our story in this country did not begin with the coming of Syrians, Lebanese, Albanians, or Yemenis at the turn of the 20th Century and later. It began with the lives of those courageous African Muslim slaves whose blood, sweat, and tears were instrumental in building this country. Their struggle is our struggle, and our struggle should be viewed as a continuation of theirs.

- Imam Zaid Shakir

Source: Reflections of Black History Month

* Andrea Kalin is also involved with the upcoming Allah Made Me Funny movie featuring Preacher Moss.

That was the title for Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah’s last session at the recent ALIM Winter Program. This was going to happen in the Muslim Community Association of the San Francisco Bay Area (MCA). Historically, this lecture had many ramifications. It is well-known that the MCA has had issues with tasawwuf being talked about, practiced or even mentioned in the halls of the mighty MCA.

With the graciousness of the ALIM staff, we were invited to listen to Dr. Umar and Dr. Abdul Hakim Jackson’s lectures on the 3rd day of their weekend program. With ultimate Grace of Allah, we were treated to a different topic then what we expected. Dr. Umar continued his topic from the day before, Modernity.

Here are some notes:

• Dr. Umar’s definition of modernity: based on 3 elements – an economic system, a political/legal system and a culture system.
• Solo problem solving vs. Group problem solving = Groups are always more successful
• Working with others, listening to them, learning from them allows us to establish an improved idea/system
• Muslims have to be future-oriented
• Most people cannot deal with being future-oriented: have to ‘move’, have to innovate, have to change to be future-oriented
• As Muslims, we should not have this problem as we have a sophisticated economic, political/legal sytem
• A religion cannot flourish without: Identity, Community, Continuity
• Spirituality is VERY IMPORTANT, it is EVERYTHING, however, it is very difficult to achieve. If you can achieve spirituality, then you have a connection with the vertical, then you are ‘home safe’ (Baseball fans can ponder on this)
• Spirituality: you have to drink it, eat it and imbibe it.
• Dr. Umar’s prediction about the 21st century: a century about rivalries and religious battles
• Knowledge cannot just be ‘horizontal’, then it becomes metaphorical. Knowledge needs to have vertical connection.
• Infinite infinite multiplicities – each moment in time is infinitely different than the moment before it or after it. This is the creative magnificence of our Creator.
• The world around us is beautiful but it is fading. To put the color back into the world we need to put more color into ourselves.
• Secret cure: when nothing can cure you, go home.

So what is the lesson from this? Sufism is real and necessary. It is so real, a wonderful scholar like Dr. Umar does not need to discuss sufism to discuss sufism. As for the hidden men (and women)… they will continue to remain hidden.

The winter season not only hosts The Reviving The Islamic Spirit convention in Toronto but also the ALIM Winter Program. This year, the weekend program is hosted in the Silicon Valley area at the site of our former workplace, the Muslim Community Association.

This year’s theme is titled “Is Islamic Thought Dying?”

This years Winter Program will critique the future of Islamic learning and educational institutions. The conference will discuss, among other things, William Chittick’s recent book entitled, “Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul: The Pertinence of Islamic Cosmology in the Modern World.” The book will serve as a springboard for discussion on the broader issues and intersections of Islamic and Western approaches to learning and knowledge.

Chittick and others have argued that Islamic thought is dying, failing prey to the more short term oriented perspectives of Western educational systems. The ALIM scholars will provide meaningful critique on understanding classical Islamic texts within modern educational systems.

Topics like impediments to Islamic learning, the role of ‘progress’ and ‘ideology’ in Western and Islamic thought, the centrality of tawhid to knowledge, and changes in the Muslim view of knowledge through history, among others, will be addressed through a critical lens.

The following scholars will be leading the sessions:

Dr. Muneer Fareed
Dr. Abdul-Hakim Jackson
Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah
IImam Zaid Shakir

For more info, please visit: AlimProgram.com

Registration: Click Here to Register Online!!

Tuition: $125 Student, $150 Professional, $250 Couple (includes all meals, not lodging)

Here are some videos with Dr. Muneer Fareed and Dr. Abdul-Hakim Jackson (who we just met again at RIS 2007).