Knowing Our Four Righteous Caliphs

I thought I was going to stop all my classes to rest before I leave for the US this fall, but apparently some organisations are not allowing me to do so. Therefore, apparently (again), I am conducting the course on Knowing Our Four Righteous Caliphs as there was demand for it and advertisements had been put up at the mosque's website and a few times in the local newspapers. I am left with no choice but to take on this responsibility.

I began conducting this course a few years ago, and have made so many repeated re-runs as I believe this period of our Islamic history to be very important for our current development. Most Muslims I know learnt about the seerah (history) of our beloved Prophet for years on end, and practically stopped there or re-learning it over and over again. It is good to do so, but there are so much more to learn of the four caliphs that replaced him. In terms of relevance, the manner in which they coped in running their religious and worldly life without the Prophet being around for reference is important, and is more relevant for us in the context of our lives now. Having a legal background, I can appreciate this much more as many of the application of our Syariah are actually derived from this period - hence the importance.

Obviously, this course/module will not be able to cover the whole aspect of this period in great detail, but I try to give a framework for students to follow-up on their own from this guideline. I hope it will be of benefit to all, and instil our sense of relevance in this world that we live in - enabling us to be positive, to contribute to our communities and the world, to make things better for human beings and to live our Muslim lives more comfortably in the context of the world which we live in.

This will therefore be my super-last class before I leave. Any other, one will have to join me in the US :) If you are interested, this course will commence next Friday 29 May 2008 at al-Falah Mosque. If you are, do try to register online prior to attending the class, so we will have an accurate estimation of what to expect. The last few times this course was conducted, it was full-house.