Madinah al-Ilm - Boys

And so we have completed a week in the Holy city of Qum! Before I proceed to relate the deep spiritual enlightenment we received today, allow me to narrate an amusing incident, which occurred at lunch:
As had become habit, we went to buy bottled water before we retired to our rooms for our afternoon rest. Some of the group decided they were ready to try the renowned Iranian yeast drink. My friends, being the extravagant big shots they are, only carry notes of 20,000 Rials (which really is far less than it sounds when compared to pounds, dollars, and rather surprisingly, Kenyan shillings), which was too much for the vendor, who had no change. Out of nowhere, a Maulana appeared, and paid the vendor, thus solving our dilemma of either putting a temporary halt to our endeavors, or going to seek out cash of a smaller magnitude.

Bab al-Ilm - Girls
Today was our 7th day in the holy city of Qum, and naturally by now we are beginning to get used to the different way in which time passes here during the day. Understandable of course considering the mammoth number of things we do in just one day. If we were this productive at home, we would probably achieve so much more.

At our twilight session we learned how all of our actions in life are either goal orientated or pleasure orientated, and how the main goal in life is to make all of our actions goal orientated and for the pleasure of Allah. For most of us this was a new concept and was interesting to learn about. And of course we cannot have any spiritual exercise without our daily dose of physical activity. Exhausting but enjoyable - we are still wondering where Zahra Aunty gets all her energy from!

Madinah al-Ilm - Boys
Adhan is loud and clear, calling to draw us closer to Allah and telling us that  its time for salaat.
We are fortunate enough to be in the shrine of Bibi Fatima Masuma here in Qum. It is amazing how many thousands of people gather here to pray. What an honour to be one of them and to be e part of the jamaat namaaz. The feeling was wonderful, a grateful feeling that no words could describe.

Our third day in Qum was quite relaxing compared to the first two, thought not, by any means, less exciting! We discovered that the Jamiah has a gymnasium, where we did our daily exercise. The complex routines woke us up quite nicely for our classes.

My favourite lesson today was from our Quranic Principles scholar, who is a student from New Zealand, and who translated and contributed additions to ‘The illumination,’ our Quranic-Arabic course book.