Registration for The Dowra Summer Program 2018.
http://thedawrah.blogspot.com/2017/04/v-behaviorurldefaultvmlo_6.html
*Ignore the varying dates. Read carefully.
I moved to Tareem on my fifth trip here. On the fourth trip, I attended the Dowra – a forty day summer program organized by the same school I am attending now, Dar al-Mustafa.
For me (and many others) the Dowra was one of those life changing experience. As I once described, it was when I first tasted the sweetness of faith.
It has been going on for 23 years and is the only thing here that takes place not on the Islamic calendar. Typically it begins on 1st July every year. For 2018, it’s 26 June till 3 August.
Something you must keep in mind as a non-Arabic speaker. The Dowra is originally and mainly in Arabic, designed and catered for Arab speakers.
However some years ago some students here took the effort to provide translations in Malay and also organize classes in Malay language. Huge numbers from the Malay World come to attend annually.
A similar thing is also done for English, and other languages depending on who is here and able.
The part where The Dowra is catering to non-Arab speakers, is largely organized voluntarily by students here who have classes of their own to attend. Some of them as the same people your teachers would call a ‘Shaykh’ back home.
As you seek to learn, they seek to learn and serve.
Notes:
1. The only thing you really need to bring in my view, is a handphone that has a FM Radio feature and your earphones. I had a Sony Voice Recorder which is ideal.
2. Try to keep the majority of your clothes white and long sleeve. No shoes needed. Don’t lose sleep over this matter.
3. Focus on your intention coming here and why you’re here once you’re here. All else are truly a distraction, despite how harmless or normal it appears.
4. When you’re here, be here. Disconnect from the internet. Your time here is short. You’ll gain yes, but you’ll gain immensely more by totally immersing. To quote one advice I heard before, ‘just keep in touch with your parents. You’re not that important. The world will go on without you.’
5. Everything that you’re likely to see on your journey near here and here, will typically get someone to ask why would anyone want to come here. So the approach of thinking you have to apply is then not the typical one. For example, when the typical ignorant saw a poor orphan, others knew he is the Messenger of God.
You dig?
Pic via Mikael Pittam. Flood of March 2013.
