Hijab 101---October 20th, 2010

Alhamdulelah Alhamdulelah it was a very successful event mashAllah :) I am sooo proud of everyone and of everyone's efforts. It definitely paid off with great results mashAllah! Let me start with a quick brief of the event, just in case anyone was not listening for the past few weeks ;)

Hijab 101 is an all day event answering as many questions about the Muslim woman's head covering as possible! Speakers attended to talk about topics such as culture vs. religion, modesty in behavior, hijab in other faiths, and the big question of the "double-standard"!

The afternoon portion was awesome! It was a bit slow at first, but alhamdulelah after a while we started rolling! The boards were all so interesting and beautifully done too. I really feel like people benefited a lot from them. A lot of them came with really nice questions and I feel like they were really satisfied with the answers they heard. Some of them were surprised to learn about things that to us may seem like "what you didn't know this", such as a woman can take off her hijab at home; a woman can still be successful even though she wears the hijab; a woman pretty much do anything with her hijab, maybe just a bit differently, but it's never a barrier between things we want to do. A lot of students working for the school newspaper or journalism majors came and covered a story through our event. I was so proud! Also, some other people asked to record us for projects and such. So cool!! Made me feel important ;)

The evening portion was soo awesome as well!! I thought all four speakers were amazing mashAllah! I really enjoyed and learned so many things myself as well. The best part was the fact that some of the girls took on the challenge of wearing the hijab all day and experimenting what it feels like to wear it for a day. I really thought they were very brave to do that and was so proud of them. I loved hearing how their day went and about reactions they got. The best part is when you hear someone say "Oh I feel like I learned so much today and I really appreciate and admire you girls now". Alhamdulelah, it really makes it seem as if we met our goal of trying to stop misconceptions and stereotypes as well as send out a message to everyone about how beautiful and peaceful Islam is.

Coolness!! SUMA is mentioned in the Tampa Tribune and tbo.com. Check it out!!

http://www2.tbo.com/content/2010/oct/21/usf-muslim-students-teach-quothijab-101quot/

Check out this other article written by a USF student about her experience wearing the hijab:

http://hercampus.com/staff-blog/day-muslim-woman

I thank Allah (SWT) for making this event successful and looking forward to many more successful ones inshAllah :)

What is Ramadan? Spin it and win it ;)

So today marks the first event SUMA held this year. Alhamdulelah it was very successful! It was called “What’s Ramadan”? It was mainly made to educate Non-Muslims about Ramadan and Eid. Basically, we had a spinning wheel with three different colors: Red, blue, and green. Each person spun the wheel and whatever color it landed on, determined how hard the question that he/she was going to be asked. Before they spun, though, they had to read and study a bit about Ramadan/Eid from a poster made by SUMA E-board that had all the info they needed to know. If they got the question correct, they were rewarded pizza. If they were wrong, they were given the choice of taking candy or playing again (they had three tries). Alhamdulelah, I think it was definitely a success. By the time I went, the game was going on for two hours already and mashAllah it looked like many people went. We actually had many people who seemed sincere about learning and gaining info, not so much just about getting pizza or candy. Everyone was really nice too, I was soo happy :-D

One weird incident was when a guy came and tried to preach to us about his religion and claiming that we are on the wrong path and that “he will pray for us”. He also wanted to discuss many other controversial issues. I don’t usually like to participate in debates like these, cuz sometimes I feel like I am not qualified enough to speak, but alhamdulelah I was kinda sorta able to defend our beliefs. Of course, Ala G. was there to back me up, you’re awesome =) Another weird thing was when a random guy came up to Jahaan and asked her if she likes his hair. Lol. Poor Jahaan she didn’t know what to say. He had a mohawk, haha.

Other than that, and other than the reallyyyyyyy hot weather, I think everything was awesome!! It was definitely a great idea to have this event. I really pray that it was of benefit to everyone who participated. I am totally looking forward to the rest of the SUMA events this year inshAllah !! Thanks for reading everyone ;-D

Oh man, what an awesome day mashAllah. Well ignoring the hot weather, it was an awesome picnic alhamdulelah. We were all a bit worried about the turnout since we had a few date changes for the picnic, but alhamdulelah considering that I think we did great!!

Ala Gebarin, the awesome president was the first one there, and I (Rana) was the second one there. Ala had already set up a romantic area for us under the shade and right in front of the fountain. So I joined her for a while until the other girls started showing up.

Alhamdulelah, the girls all came quickly one right after the other. Ala Gebarin and Bayinah went on a little adventure to find a grill since we didn’t have one where we were sitting. After about an hour, we realized that one of the girls had a grill right in her car (I know how cool is that). So I called the girls and they came back and we grilled. Meanwhile, Ala Elayaman wanted to feed the ducks so I only went to take pics, cuz I am scared of animals, lol. Ala grabbed a barbeque bag of chips and we grabbed a few kids and we started going to the ducks. I stood far and took pics, and stood reallyyyyyyy far when the seagulls saw the food and started flying our way. I wish I wasn’t such a chicken sometimes, I really wanted to feed them too. Oh well! At the end the kids went out of nowhere and scared the seagulls while they were eating. It’s like hello you’re doing them a favor by feeding them, and then you go scare them. Nice going :)

While some of the girls were grilling, I really wanted to play kickball. I haven’t played it since like 6^th grade. (More than 10 years ago) A lot of the girls thought it was too hot, but I totally insisted and won at the end. We picked two team captains, and I actually got picked by a team captain unlike 6^th grade when no one wanted me on the team cuz I am not good at sports :) so I was pretty happy about that. Oh and I got hit in the side of my face while I was running to first base by the other team. Meanies! But don’t worry it’s payback time during the water balloon fights ;) After a while both teams got tired so we rested a bit. Everyone was exhausted, cuz it was soooooooooo hot. Hmm maybe playing kickball was not the best idea I ever came up with. Oh well, it still brought back many nice memories.

After eating, we wanted to play with the water balloons. So Bayinah, Nourhan, and I went to find a place to fill up the balloons with water. Filling them up was definitely the biggest challenge of the day. It took us forever till we got the hang of it. The balloons were extremely tiny and the water faucet thing was really big, so yea it was challenging. We tore atleast 20 of them before we finally got the hang of it. It was worth it though!! After praying Duhr, we played with the water balloons and had a water balloon fight at the end. It was quiet interesting. I think that was the best part of the day.

Finally, some of the girls wanted to go watch the World Cup game at the Marshall Center. It was USA vs. Ghana. Ghana scored a goal and USA got a penalty kick to tie the game and we went to overtime. Too bad USA lost in over time :( Oh well! We had so much fun cheering. We were pretty loud, hope we didn’t distract anyone studying. Oooppss

Over all it was an awesome event. I hope everyone enjoyed it and inshAllah looking forward to even better events in the future.

MashAllah I can’t believe I wrote that much in less than 10 minutes. If only I was that articulate in school assignments :) Thanks for reading!