Prayer contemplatioGn etc

Assalamu Alaikum,

Today started out well and ended regrettably. I'm glad I remembrered to blog about it. Yay- 3 days in a row for NaBloPoMo! Let's see how far I go.


Here's my reminder that came of the more stressful things in my day:

1. Males as well as females need to be educated on pregnancy and the choices that lead to and through it. I cannot say more but um just REALLY take that one heavily, okay?

2. Everybody go write a will right now. This is sunnah. Many of the companions of the Prophet, may Allah grant them peace, would go and deliberately take care of their affairs before they went into battle, as the Prophet (saws) directed. In his last days, the Prophet himself went to the masjid and asked if anyone still had a debt upon him.

Write a will and tell SEVERAL people you'd trust with your life about where it is adn the provisions in it. This goes DOUBLY if you have descendants, I don't care if they are of age or not. You need to tell someone how you want your remains disposed, you need to say what should happen to any inheritance you should leave behind, you need to designate your charity portions, you need to HAVE YOUR DEBTS PAID OFF. My friends, when I heard the lesson about how one is not supposed to be buried until his debts are paid, and how if he is then he feels the torture of the grave and the person who has the debt will still have that right over him on the day of judgment, please believe I was chilled.

I don't want to go into the conversation that led to this statement, but know that I have bugged and will continue to bother my halqa leaders until they give us an Islamic will-writing conference; meanwhile I have drawn up papers detailing who and how my remains and any funds (ha!) I leave will be distributed. I'm living for tomorrow, but in cas eI don't live THROUGH tomorrow I'm straight... inshaALlah.

3. Friends who don't let friends unwillingly stay single ROCK.

heh heh- on that note I'm publishing before the day is over!

peace
TwennyTwo

Qur'an help! Okay Internets- your turn!

Assalamu Alaikum,

Where can I find a 'large-print'(NOT just large Size) Uthmanic Arabic-only Qur'an? I saw one at the masjid the other day that made me drool. Let me explain:

One of the hardest things for me this past summer at Fawakih was struggling to read the Qur'an, both aloud and to myself, consistently. Our tajweed class literally drove me to tears.

It did help when we sisters were allowed to take the course from a sister who has ijaza instead of in front of the whole world. But I figured out that my real problem had more to do with the whole struggle itself to SEE and capture what I was reading.

See, Arabic script in nearly every Qur'an I've seen has been MUCH smaller than comparable typeface. SO not only do I have to remember the sounds that go with the letters and how to string them together properly, and THEN read with the proper hukm/rules (ha ha, sorry, just remembered the way our Algerian sheikh would ask us, 'Wha' tha hukm?'), I also have to fight just to SEE what I'm reading with every dot and haraka correct. In Arabic, the dots make a difference. It's not like leaving the dot off a lower-case letter I in English. Beyond the ordinary frustration, reading and missing dots and having to concentrate intensely on every. single. word-it's extraordinarily tiring.

And the ordinary frustration is great- I'm one of those people who read whole lines at a time in Latin script (English, Spanish, Portuguese- doesn't matter). Arabic flipped the script for me because I can't 'capture' and understand the words, because I don't know vocab. I don't understand what I'm reading. So it flies right out of my head until I get it explained. I find it a lot easier to memorize Qur'an while driving and repeating back what a passenger recites to me, for example, than reading it or sitting in front of a computer listening to it.

So I end up asking a ton of questions. My teacher would ask me to 'just memorize it, it doesn't matter if you understand it'. Huh? That's a poor and last-ditch way to retain knowledge if you ask me. Sure, if all you're trying to do is preserve the way the sounds go through the generations, that's what you do. Anyway.

Since it's rare that I actually have someone in the car to recite the Qur'an to me and then explain what it's about (Thanks, Emad and Waheed), I've been trying to take time out of my day to read it to myself. I have Qur'an translations as well as a transliteration (which I don't like to use), so I'm okay with meaning. My problem is reading the actual arabic.

So then, the other day at the masjid I saw a musHaf that made me drool. I COULD READ THE SCRIPT. The words were relatively large (I'd say about a 14 pt font?) and uncrowded on the page. It had colored tajweed script (not the highlight blocks that drive me nuts). The top and sides were color-notched and labeled according to Surah AND Juz. And it was hardback. It was one of those moments when you can almost see the beam of light shining down from the heavens- THIS! This was exactly what I needed! It was so easy to read! And to find the surahs I already knew in English! MashaAllah! I spent an hour in the masjid just reciting with that mushaf.
Of course, it belongs to the masjid.

So. Does anyone know where I can get my hands on a Qur'an of this sort? I'm willing to forego the (awesomely excellent) juz and surah notching, and even the tajweed rules. But a Qur'an of this type, for someone whose eyes aren't that good/a beginner in reading Arabic is something I'm willing to pay for. I've searched a lot of web sites, and what I've found are large SIZED mushafs, with script the same as everywhere else, not helpful. Please lend me your expertise!

Also, I'll be at ISNA, so if you know for a fact that there's a certain vendor there who'll have these or know of them, let me know.

Thanks!

peace,
TwennyTwo