Ooh, A good Khutbah!
Mmm caramel! For those of you who read my "A Khutbah is like a box of chocolates" article I posted a while back, Alhamdulilah this past week I was treated to an ooey gooey khutbah with melt-in-your-mouth goodness! Brother Atif Mahmud, a Houston-area teacher and khateeb gave a phenomenal khutbah about the wonders of reading.
He spoke at length about how we are becoming a society that hates to read, a lot of it due to the technology of all those gadgets with a lower "i" in front of it. He threw out statistics he obtained that stated that last year, 90% (I think) of people neither read or picked up a book in the last year! Atif even alluded to the Ray Bradbury novel Farenheit 451, which is a story set in the future where Americans outlaw and burn books by the thousands to eradicate learning and literacy, and said in a way things are becoming just like the story as people are reading less and less.
In the end he presented to the congregation, notably the parents, to teach their child to love to read good books. He urges those non-readers to get back into reading books that stimulate the senses and exercise the mind. In conclusion, he said that if folks don't have a desire to read and appreciate good books, then how will they have a desire to read and appreciate the Qur'an?
It was a very thought-provoking Khutbah and I just hope that the audio will be posted up sometime soon on the interwebs for more people to listen to that great reminder. It especially touched a guy like me with a liberal-arts degree in Communications and a creative writer at that to further go back to my passions of storytelling which I will now be giving people glimpses of on PhilAsify 101.
I will be posting up short stories and other bits of literature I have created and also make book recommendations. So stay tuned and take care, class!
He spoke at length about how we are becoming a society that hates to read, a lot of it due to the technology of all those gadgets with a lower "i" in front of it. He threw out statistics he obtained that stated that last year, 90% (I think) of people neither read or picked up a book in the last year! Atif even alluded to the Ray Bradbury novel Farenheit 451, which is a story set in the future where Americans outlaw and burn books by the thousands to eradicate learning and literacy, and said in a way things are becoming just like the story as people are reading less and less.
In the end he presented to the congregation, notably the parents, to teach their child to love to read good books. He urges those non-readers to get back into reading books that stimulate the senses and exercise the mind. In conclusion, he said that if folks don't have a desire to read and appreciate good books, then how will they have a desire to read and appreciate the Qur'an?
It was a very thought-provoking Khutbah and I just hope that the audio will be posted up sometime soon on the interwebs for more people to listen to that great reminder. It especially touched a guy like me with a liberal-arts degree in Communications and a creative writer at that to further go back to my passions of storytelling which I will now be giving people glimpses of on PhilAsify 101.
I will be posting up short stories and other bits of literature I have created and also make book recommendations. So stay tuned and take care, class!
the khutbah is available at FridaysMatter.com. Wasalam
ReplyDeleteNice! Thanks for sharing! Wasalam
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