Prophetic Pearls Retreat Packet

7/31/2019 Prophetic Pearls Retreat Packet

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IntroductionIn the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

All praise is to Allah, Lord of the Worlds

May the peace and blessing of Allah be upon His Beloved Messenger Muhammad

Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu,

The CMC and MEC Special Events Committee welcome you to the Prophetic Pearls seminar with

Shaykh Samer al-Nass, one of the foremost scholars of the Middle East in our time. Rarely do

Muslims in the West have an opportunity to pursue serious study with the great scholars of the

Muslim world. Even more rare is to have an esteemed scholar who is fluent in the English

language and has a wealth of experience teaching Westerners both in his home country and

abroad. And finally, to pursue the study of fundamental, critically important texts, such as the

Arbain al-Nawawiyya, the Forty Hadith of Imam al-Nawawi, with such a scholar makes the

Prophetic Pearls seminar a truly unique opportunity indeed. We are thankful to the Almighty for

choosing us to spend time and learn with a scholar of the highest esteem and caliber. We arefurther graced by your willingness to participate and your presence with us.


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VenueThe Prophetic Pearls seminar will be held at

Muslim Educational Center (MEC) Mosque

8601 N. Menard Ave

Morton Grove, IL 60053

More information about this Mosque is available athttp://www.mccchicago.org/

Accommodation and TransportationPlease note:the venue does NOT have any overnight accommodations.As such, for out-of-town

students, we have listed nearby hotels below:

Skokie Comfort Inn

9333 Skokie Boulevard

Skokie, IL 60077

(847) 679-4200

Morton Grove BestWestern Inn

9424 Waukegan Rd.

Morton Grove, IL 60053

(847) 965-6400

Alternatively, Masjidul Mustafa has graciously allowed for the itikafof attending brothers who

need overnight accommodations. Please contact us if you are interested in staying at Masjidul

Mustafa, which is approximately 25 miles from MEC Mosque, during the seminar. If you are

planning to utilize Masjidul Mustafa we need to know this ahead of time. Please email us at

[email protected].

The address is:

Masjidul Mustafa

300 E. 55th Street

Westmont, IL

All students are responsible for arranging transportation to and from the MEC Mosque.

For registrants with toddlers: We have arranged for a baby room where parents can sit with

their toddlers and have a live feed from the seminar room into the baby room, whereby they can

listen to the lectures while taking care of their children. Note there will not be a baby sitter on

site; parents are responsible for their childrens care and well-being. The CMC and MEC cannot

be responsible for your childrens safety and care.
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MealsMeals will not be provided at the retreat, though there will be sufficient time to purchase meals

from nearby restaurants. The following restaurants are zabiha choices available at within a 10

min. drive from the mosque:

Krispy Krunchy Chicken

5128 Dempster Street, Skokie, IL 60077

Kabul House

4949 Oakton Street, Skokie, IL 60077

Point Plaza Grill

5740 West Touhy Avenue, Niles, IL 60714

Gourmet Pita & Pizza5549 West Touhy Avenue, Skokie, IL 60077

Point Plaza Grill

5740 West Touhy Avenue, Niles, IL 60714

Pakwaan

7947 Golf Road, Morton Grove, IL 60053

Basha


Pita Inn


Detroit Kabob House

9021 N. Milwaukee Avenue, Niles, IL 60714

Registration and PaymentRegistration will take place in the mornings 30 minutes before the sessions begin. A brother andsister will be sitting at desks in front of the room waiting for you. Simply present your first and last

name at the registration desk to receive your nametag(s). Payment in full is due upon arrival and

registration if you have not paid online. Onsite registration fee is $50. Please wear the nametags

in a visible location for the duration of the seminar, so you may be identified as already having

registered for the class.

If you arrive after the registration time, please enter the lecture hall quietly and attend the lecture.

You will be asked to register during the following schedule break.

All students must have a copy of the Forty Hadith of Imam Nawawi with themfor use during the

seminar. For those of you who purchased the text through our website, we will provide you the

appropriate number of copies upon registration. Although we plan on having some copies of the

text available for purchase, we cannot guarantee their availability for every student who desires

one, so we urge students who have not purchased a copy through us to bring their own. The text

is available readily at many online and local Islamic bookstores. It can also be found online,

although we cannot vouch for the veracity and authenticity of the online versions.


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BiographiesImam Yahya bin Sharaf al-NawawiWe should know something about the great scholar who compiled these brilliant hadiths. The

following biographical sketch is an excerpt fromAl-Maqasid: Nawawi's Manual of Islam, translated

by Shaykh Nuh Keller:

Imam Nawawi is Yahya ibn Sharaf ibn Murri ibn Hassan, Abu Zakariyya Muhyi al-Din al-Nawawi,

born in the village of Nawa on the Horan Plain of Southern Syria in 631/1233. He was the Imam of

the Late Shafi'i school, the scholar of his time in knowledge, piety, and abstinence, a hadith master

(hafidh), biographer, lexicologist, and a saintly mystic who is generally considered to have been a

friend of Allah (wali).

When he first came to Damascus in A.H. 649, he memorized the text of Abu Ishaq al-Shirazi's al-

Tanbih [The apprisal] in four and a half months, then the first quarter ofShirazi's al-

Muhadhdhab [The rarefaction], after which he accompanied his father on hajj, then visitedMedina, and then returned to Damascus, where he assiduously devoted himself to mastering the

Islamic sciences. He learned Shafi'i jurisprudence, hadith, tenets of faith, fundamentals of Islamic

law, Arabic, and other subjects from more than twenty-two scholars of the time, including Abu

Ibrahim Ishaq al-Maghribi, 'Abd al-Rahman ibn Qudama al-Maqdisi, and others, at a period of life

in which, as his biographer Imam Dhahabi was to note, "his dedication to learning, night and day,

became proverbial." Spending all his time either worshiping or gaining Sacred Knowledge, he took

some twelve lessons a day, only dozed off at night in moments when sleep overcame him, and

drilled himself in the lessons he learned by heart even while walking along the street.

Fastidious in detail and deep in understanding of the subjects he thus mastered, he authored

many famous works in Islamic jurisprudence, hadith, history, and legal opinion, among the best

known of which are his Minhaj al-talibin [The seeker's rode], which has become a main reference

for the Shafi'i school, Riyad al-salihin [The gardens of the righteous] and Kitab al-adhkar[The book

of the remembrances of Allah] in hadith, as well as his eighteen-volume Sharh Sahih

Muslim [Commentary on Muslim's Sahih], which he was the first to divide into chapters and give

headings describing their content.

He lived the life of those dedicated to the hereafter, ate simply, and it is related that his entirewardrobe consisted of a turban and an ankle-length shirt (thawb) with a single button at the collar.

After a residence in Damascus of twenty-seven years spent in devotion to Allah, learning, teaching,

and authoring his famous and enduring works, he returned the books he had borrowed from

charitable endowments, bade his friends farewell, visited the graves of the his sheikhs who had

died, and departed, going first to Jerusalem and then to his native Nawa, were he became ill at his
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father's home and died at the age of forty-four in 676/1277, young in years but great in benefit to

the Islamic Community.

Perhaps it was because of his tremendous sincerity that Allah gave him such success in his written

works, for it is difficult to name an Islamic figure of the last seven centuries whose works have

enjoyed a wider popularity or been more treasured and frequently used by Muslims in all parts of

the Islamic world than this pure-hearted scholar.

Shaykh Samer al-NassShaykh Samer al-Nass was born in Damascus, Syria, where he studied at the College of Medicine of

the University of Damascus. He went on to study in the United States where he qualified in

internal medicine.

The Shaykh has studied under some of the great ulama of the Levant (Shaam) and the Arabian

peninsula. He has a traditional licenses to teach (ijazah) in the ten styles of recitation of the

narration of the Shatibiyyah and the Durra from Shaykh Muhammad Sukkar. He received an ijazah

in the ten styles of recitation of the narration of Tayyibah from the Egyptian Shaykh Ahmad

Mustafa in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, himself a student of Shaykh Abd al-Aziz al-Zayyat of Egypt.

Shaykh Samir has a traditional license to teach (ijazah) in Islamic law (fiqh) and theology and creed

(aqida) from the previous Mufti of Syria, Shaykh Abu Yusr Ibn Àbidin, Shaykh Lutfi al-Fayumi, and

the late Hanafi Mufti, Shaykh Adib al-Kallas. Shaykh Samir was honoured to study hadith in Mecca

with the great Indonesian-Meccan Shaykh Yasin al-Fadani, and with Shaykh Nur ud-din Itr of

Syria. He also has an ijazah in Prophetic traditions (hadith) from the late Shaykh Àbd Allah Siraj al-

Din of Aleppo, Syria.

Shaykh Samer is presently a teacher in the al-Fatih al-Islami University in Damascus, teaching the

Hanafi fiqh manual Al-Hidayah in the department of Islamic Law (Shariah), and lecturer on the ten

recitations of the Qur'an in the MA program. The Shaykh teaches Qur'anic recitation (tajwid) after

fajr prayers daily in the blessed mosque of Shaykh Ibn Àrabi, a post given to him by his Shaykh and

father-in-law, one of the illustrious Shaykhs of Quran in the Levant (Sham), the late Shaykh

Muhammad Sukkar. Shaykh Samer has been teaching at various Islamic studies intensive courses

in England and North America since 2000.

Sidi Muaz al-NassHafiz, Munshid Artist, and Drum Specialist also named the Nightingale of the munshids, son of

the renowned Syrian scholar Shaykh Samir al-Nass and grandson of the most distinguished Quran

reciters in Damascus, Shaykh Muhammad Sukkar. Sidi Muaz was raised in a home of prophetic

love, which is integrated into his singing and performances. He sings traditional songs that praise

and honor the Prophet (PBUH) and is well-trained on the recitation of the Burdah.


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The IjazaShaykh Samer has graciously agreed to offer an ijaza traditional license for students of the

Prophetic Pearls seminar who attend all the sessions.

The ijaza (authorization, linguistically: permission) is one of the backbones of traditional Islamic

knowledge, used in virtually every field including Quran, Hadith, Arabic Language, and History to

verify that a student has received the knowledge from an instructor and is, in turn, qualified to

transmit that knowledge to others. Intimately related to this concept is the sanad(chain of

transmission) and the matn (text or, more broadly, subject), which needs to be adequately

described before understanding the ijaza. The matn is passed from teacher to student through

oral transmission of the scholars, with each transmission being recorded in the sanad such that for

every text we have an established, unbroken, route by which we received it.

A widely known example of concept is in Hadith, wherein each hadith, the matn, is preceded by

the sanad, I heard such and such say, I heard such and such say, I heard the Prophet

Muhammad, peace be upon him, say:. Though the idea, started by the Tabieen (Successors of

the Companions) seems relatively simple at first, the benefits this science brings to our religion are

innumerable. The meticulous application of the sanad by our scholars brings a powerful strength

to our Islamic sciences not found in any other religion. Abdullah bin Mubarak, a muhaddith and

early scholar of Islam, said:

Sanad is part of deen. If it were not for the sanad, then anyone would be able to say whatever

they wished.

The sanad allows for scholars to designate the strength of the hadith by analyzing the Muslims in

the chain. Scholars of hadith, like Imam al-Bukhari, would often distinguish between two sahih

narrations by the number of individuals in the chain, favoring the one with fewer links back to the

Prophet, peace be upon him.

This system is also applied in Quran, where the sanad, like in Hadith, goes back to the Prophet,

peace be upon him, and the matn is the Quran itself. In this case, the Quran is taught to the

student until the student becomes proficient in his tajweed and stable in his memorization. Once

the Shaykh is satisfied and confident that the student will be able to transmit the Quran as the

Shaykh will authorize the student by giving him or her an ijaza. The ijaza is a certificate of

completion, which can be viewed as a degree, that contains the Shaykhs sanad and appends the

students name to the chain. In doing so, the student has now become attached, through an

unbroken chain of Qurra through the Followers, then the Companions, then the Prophet, peace be

upon him, who received the Words of Allah through Gibreel from Allah, exalted is He! What an

amazing religion and merciful Lord that allows us to be connected to Him and His Messenger is

such a strong way!

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Prophetic Pearls Retreat Packet