Why we need to learn Arabic
I have been in Saudi for over 3 years now but my Arabic knowledge has not much improved – my bad. I have heard many lectures , read many books about the importance of reading and understand Quran but it has never giving me the same impact that these lectures on myself. Mashaallah it was really clearly explained! Just listen to brother Nouman Ali Khan you’ll know why learning Arabic is important to learn and understand the miracle of Quran.
Nouman Ali Khan – Divine Speech Prologue – Part 1
Why and How to Learn Arabic for Comprehension of the Quran
You can visit his website Bayyinah.com where he teach (I wish I can visit him one day!) and don’t forgot to download his podcast of tafseer Juz Amma here
Read MoreCompetitive Strategy
The new semester had started for my Competitive Intelligence study at OUM - I have to take two subjects for this semester which are Competitive Strategy and Macroeconomics .
As an online student- not being able to attend to the seminar in MY, I had no choice but to find alternative ways to understand the course so I turned to podcast and alhamdulillah I found one.
It is based on a taught course by Professor Mark Juliano (I think he’s a telco veteran!) in the University of Carnegie Mellon University in the MISM masters program. Topics include idea generation, company formation, funding, writing a business plan, sales & marketing, IPOs and acquisitions, and giving an investor presentation
It is quite popular in the internet according Professor Juliano’s blog
The initial podcast episode was created in January 2007. Since then, the episodes have been downloaded/listened to over 40,000 times, and average about 1,500 downloaded episodes per week. I’m proud to say that I have now had many more students take the podcast course than in my total tenure of live teaching at Carnegie Mellon. My goal was always to reach as many people as possible. Isn’t podcasting great!
The links are as below:-
Read MoreThe Makkah and Madinah trip
This was the first time I drove with my new Trailblazer from Riyadh-Makkah-Madinah-Riyadh. It was enjoyable trip with additional passenger – Pah. She stayed with us for almost 6 month and only 2 weeks before leaving that we managed to bring her here. Apa nak buat I was busy with Hajj, project and also the OUM exam 
. Glad to hear that she was happy with the trip 
Trip Madinah
The time lapse video was taken in early January 2010 . I started taking the shot after maghrib and completed it around 9am the next day. This was only our second trip to Madinah — took Pah with us before she’s leaving Saudi Arabia back to Malaysia.
Read MoreThe Madrasah
I read some stuffs about homeschooling – and always admire Susan Wise Bauer idea of classical home education.
You can read the intro here
Classical education depends on a three-part process of training the mind. The early years of school are spent in absorbing facts, systematically laying the foundations for advanced study. In the middle grades, students learn to think through arguments. In the high school years, they learn to express themselves. This classical pattern is called the trivium.
Wow! How inspiring but reading was much easier than implementing it I knew that there is better method from the traditional Islamic education system – the madrasah! And recently I found a book which clearly explained the life in a madrasah.
Check this out – a book from Oxford Centre of Islamic Studies about the life in Nadwat Al-Ulama in India. A forgotten and misunderstood education system inherited from the glorious Islamic ages – a must read!
Madrasah Life
A student’s day at Nadwat Al-Ulama
By Mohammed Akram An-Nadwi – Oxford Centre of Islamic Studies
As quoted taken from a book written by MAJOR-GENERAL SIR W. H. SLEEMAN,1788-1856. Resident at the Court of Lucknow, India describing the education in a madrasah.
Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official by William Sleeman
Perhaps there are few communities in the world among whom education is more generally diffused than among Muhammadans in India. He who holds an office worth twenty rupees a month commonly gives his sons an education equal to that of a prime minister. They learn, through the medium of the Arabic and Persian languages, what young men in our colleges learn through those of the Greek and Latin–that is,grammar, rhetoric, and logic. After his seven years of study, the young Muhammadan binds his turban upon a head almost as well filled with the things which appertain to these branches of knowledge as the young man raw from Oxford–he will talk as fluently about Socrates and Aristotle, Plato, and Hippocrates, Galen and Avicenna: (_alias_Sokrat, Aristotalis, Aflatun, Bokrat, Jalinus, and Bu Ali Sena); and,what is much to his advantage in India, the languages in which he has learnt what he knows are those which he most requires through life.
And again I am inspired !
The more I know, the less I understand
All the things I thought I knew, I'm learning again..
