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Friday the 4th of July Jummah and Kickboxing At Taqwa

Khutbah was about if we see god and when

Talked to Farhad after the prayer, he had started working for the same people he was working for before again

He had to go back to work soon so we went to the Curry House (that’s the name of the restaurant), which is not far away

Some older Fijian Indian guy came with us at Farhad’s invitation, he took his own car

The old guys a regular and made reference at one point to an event that they both knew about in Canada (someone’s wedding or something)

On the way to the Curry House Farhad told me he had met someone from New Zealand’s version of the FBI, that the person had called him, and that he had gone to meet him

He showed me his card, **** *******, New Zealand government, is all it said

Farhad said that the agent told him on the phone that he had been given his details by customs, and in person he said that he was looked at due to being single and buying a ticket to a Muslim country at short notice (good, explains the interest in him )

Farhad was asked to contact them if he came to know about anyone “thinking about Jihad”, after relating this to me Farhad commented, “Yeah, I’m always thinking about Jihad”

Farhad told the old guy about it too

Ended up talking about NZ politics, the old guy said he always votes for labour, yet he was thinking of voting for the greens this time

I told Farhad he should google the agents name to see if anything comes up

Farhad dropped me near Abdullah’s dental surgery and I paid the remainder, Abdullah has damaged his shoulder mountain biking, it looks funny and he said he had to do girl pushups, and that he couldn’t do kickboxing again yet

He asked if we could pick Soheib up, he keeps asking Abdullah if he’s going every week

After Isha we started Kickboxing, Fauzan, Farhad, Tariq and Ali Abas were there, Ali left early though

Before we started Fauzan said that even though he likes exercising hard, when some weaker, smaller brothers come I should make it easier

Did some burpees, did some shadow boxing, did some kicking practice, did rounds on the pad (Ali left after one round so we almost all got to do three each), then I made them do this series of exercises (20 pushups, 20 squatting jumps, 20 situps, 20 jumping lunges, and so on), went through it three times, got them to jog a bit between rounds and let them decide when to start again, Fauzan kept wanting to start quickly so he could go, he looked shattered though, as did Farhad and Tariq

Tariq has been going to the gym and doing weights 5 days a week, he had been earlier that day

Tariq suggested we go to a BJJ tournament the next day at ASB stadium, and we ended up arranging to do that

Saturday the 5th of July BJJ tournament ASB stadium, monthly lecure At Taqwa

Farhad and Tariq picked me up about 12am and we went to the ASB stadium

Had a good time watching the fights, they didn’t know anything at all about it, couldn’t tell what had happened when someone won by some submission

When it came time for noon prayer we went over to the empty half of the stadium that was screened off from where the tournament was being held

I had my compass which was good

Tariq kept walking away from us and we’d be standing around waiting for him to turn up (he even called us once), he was making ablution or something, but funny behaviour

I led the prayer, Tariq, even though he says fuck almost in every sentence, prayed the voluntary prayer before and after the compulsory one we prayed together, whereas Farhad and I didn’t pray anything extra

Tariq also is paranoid about haram ingredients in food, he apparently won’t eat Sushi because he says they put something in it, I asked him but he said he didn’t know what it was

Sheikh Anwar called Farhad and they talked for quite a while, Farhad was explaining what we were up to

Sheikh Anwar invited us to watch Mangere play soccer over in Botany, they wanted to go and I didn’t object

When we arrived Sheikh Anwar was sitting in his SUV (it was raining) watching the match, Farhad went to sit with him, and I think Tariq did too for a while, apart from that we sat in the car or stood around outside our car

When leaving for prayer (little strange Sheikh Anwar must have delayed his prayer quite a lot to watch soccer), we noticed Sheikh Anwar’s license plate number contained the number 666, and we thought that that was funny

There’s lots of Fijian Indians in the Managere team, some of whom are Muslim, Farhad said it’s the team they support

After Magrib the Sheikh from Fiji, who is from UP state India, and is a part of Jamah Ahlel Hadith in Fiji, gave a lecture in Urdu

No idea what he talked about, Sheikh Anwar only translated a small amount of it, which seemed strange because he spoke for ages

Sheikh Anwar said that the Indian guy had talked about Paradise or something and it was a topic that he had covered well just recently

Sheikh Anwar had some questions he had not had time to answer while lecturing in Australia, they were a bit strange, like if I know this girl and I want her can she be with me in paradise

Sheikh Anwar extended his talk while waiting for food and ended up talking about a hadith that says basically that the kufar will one day attack and plunder the Muslims and that this would be normal, that it would be like a dinner invitation, he said what’s going on now is a demonstration of this

Dawood was the sponsor for the meal

Spoke to Talib quite a lot about Zimbabwe and the reent trouble in South Africa, he seems like a thoughtful person, the way he talked about the troubles there, he didn’t give anything a religious spin, in fact never heard anything religious from him, though I don’t mean to imply anything by that, he is a rather quiet person

He’s from a professional class family who are able to make ends meet in the current economic environment there

Sony dropped me home, his sons is at an Islamic camp in Sth Island

Expenses:

Mouthguard: $100

Vodafone: $119.89

Train: 4 x $5.70 = $22.80

Waiwera entrance: $20

Snack at Waiwera: $10

Lunch: $11

Donation At Taqwa: $4

Total: $287.69

Fauzan read quran at monthly lecture (forgot to mention that)

Monday the 14th of July Arabic lesson At Taqwa

Arabic: Farhad, Ishrar, Fauzan, Master, Riyad’s dad

Fauzan and Ishrar took me aside to talk to me

Fauzan said Adam has stopped giving lessons at Mt Eden, that he had some trouble with them or something and that he offered to give lessons at At Taqwa

Fauzan Wanted advice about Adam, especially his aqeeda (beliefs)

I said I didn’t really know, that everything seemed fine, that I had been to one of his lessons and took some people there (not in any report, just did it as favour to friend, not very interesting)

I said that there are not many people who have the right beliefs and that if they do find anything wrong don’t give up on him, try to correct him

Sheikh Anwar wasn’t there and the lesson wasn’t much of anything, they asked me some stuff and that was about it

Friday the 18th of July Jummah At Taqwa

8 rows, 14/15 to a row, Sheikh Anwar move forward so he would not take up a row and everyone could fit in.

Supposed to be part of a series on afterlife, didn’t talk about it much, seemed pretty convoluted to me, pretty much talking about the choice between this life and the hereafter etc, said that some give up a part of their deen (religion) for this world, gave shaving beard as example

Sat there hiding inside the hood of my jacket, ashamed of my bare face, started reading quran from mobile and hoping everyone would bugger off (I wanted to seem uncomfortable, glad a felt it). Saw Muhammed Tunisi, Abdullah Iraqi, Fauzan, called Farhad but he said he was in Takinini, works out there now. Sadeeq called out to me, didn’t notice at first. I told him I shaved to make pictures for immigration, he asked about Yuki and how I was, about Mt Eden (don’t know of cause), he mentioned Adam, and daral arqam, said that dara; arqam has a problem with its aqeeda, I later told this to Fauzan. He invited me to visit his place some time.

Told Fauzan why I shaved, said I felt funny without my beard, he said I looked funny too.

Lunch: Fauzan, Ishrar and little son, Dawood.

Went with Ishrar, he works as a distributer to dairies; he called the owners Indian Jews. Sells coke and stuff from Malaysia, Singapore etc

Fauzan said he would have taken the day of f work for hiking but he has a new job and already taking the weekend of the camp off.

They gave me a choice between going fundraising in Mt Roskil with them or being taken back to the mosque by Ishrar, I chose fundraising.

Car: Farhad said there have been lots of attacks recently, I agreed, we mentioned the storming of an American base in Afghanistan, Dawood said nine were reported killed.

Dawood said he needed to get some children’s cartoons off Fauzan, he had run out. Fauzan said he had some good jihad ones that would be good for his daughter, Dawood said they’d be good for him too.

Dawood talked about funny emails. He excitedly told us a joke that mocked women’s intellect. Fauzan laughed. He then talked about a Indian Idol contestant video that was funny. Fauzan was serious, said it’s haram, and not to send it to him. He also asked him not to send photos of women in short skirts (probably hadn’t been sent by Dawood).

Went to a $2 style store and bought some spoons for the mosque and Fauzan got some slippers. Fauzan looked at buying a toy AK47 that had a fake knife attachment and could fire bbs. However at $15 he didn’t want it, he practised shooting it and Dawood joked with the store lady about getting a real one.

Happened to drive past Dawood’s truck, which he pointed to as we went past, only to see a second identical one nearby and be confused, we were in a residential area.

Fauzan said something about his foot hurting and I pretty much told him in a long and complicated way not to be such a wimp. He said he might not come to kickboxing as he has prior engagements, he kept checking to make sure that there would be enough people there for me to train with.

Went to Amcal Mt Roskil Village Pharmacy. Dawood asked the lady for Mr Dawood without looking at her. They chatted to Mr Dawood for a couple of minutes, Dawood referred to Sheikh Anwar during the conversation, and we left. Mr Dawood was a dark skinned Indian looking guy. Think he was clean shaved.

Went to 63B Ernest something Lane. Some old Kashmiri guy with large white/grey beard, Pakistani clothes. He knew Prince Naseem (God I’m getting confused with this guy’s name, the Morrocan kickboxing guy, he’s good), had some of his kickboxing trophies, one of which is a big battle axe (both Fauzan and I tested it to see how sharp it was). The Kahmiri guy said you could sharpen it to use, and that the Prince had gone to get married in Morroco.

Dawood introduced us, the guy didn’t know Fauzan, Dawood gave Fauzan’s introduction some emphasis (his contribution to the mosque or something) and described his as a good brother, after mentioning me Fauzan said I am better than him. When Fauzan was told that he was from Kashmir he said that he is also a Jihadi. I asked him which part, he’s from Pakistani Kashmir, which I explained to Fauzan (I used the term Azad Kashmir, which come to think of it he probably understood). They told him I had been to Pakistan and he asked me where, I told him and he commented that Murree is in Kashmir, he can see it from his house. He gave us food and tea (we were already bloated from lunch, Dawood and Fauzan have collectively put on 20kg in two obscene weeks of engorgement, they even weighed themselves at the pharmacy). At one point they could have been talking about something political or related to Jihad but I was just catching a few familiar words from what they were saying. There were quite a few cars outside, and four cats waiting at the back door. The guy asked me to come and visit him again. He had no tv, saw a baby girl and small boy, no sign of adult female life.

Apparently over the last couple of weeks they had been all over Auckland, to heaps of the Volcanoes, and the Zoo, with Sheikh Anwar and a think some vistitor(s).

Got back for Magrib, afterwards Sheikh Anwar asked what happened (meaning about my beard), I told him and he said you have to be clever but you don’t have to worry about beards because they have them. He asked about my marriage, what she thought about Islam, he said I’d be held to account when she tells god I didn’t approach her in the right way.

After Isha Sheikh Anwar read a hadith that said that if we kill we are to do it perfectly. He said that this was not just for animals, but for when the time comes to execute a criminal according to god’s laws, and also in Jihad.

Kickboxing was Farhad, Ali Abas, and Nour

Did it like normal but at the end one guy would hold the pads and the other do 30sec jab, 30sec cross, 1min left/right, 1min hooks, 1min uppercuts, 1min double hooks (body/head), all without a break

Ali Abas left early but came back to give me a ride home

He said that he had seen a documentary on youtube called petrodollars or something and that it argued that the reason for the Iraq war was that Saddam threatened to trade oil in Euros, that this would have lead to the collapse of the dollar and the American economy, that it is a sort of rule that you must trade oil in USD

Sunday the 20th of July Waiwera

Were supposed to go hiking but everyone cancelled due (I guess) to dodgy weather

I showed up at the mosque at 8am as did Farhad and Nour

Fauzan was there sitting in the library doing something on the computer (he must have been there since Fajr).

During the trip to Waiwera Farhad said that it would have been great if the Emerates had invested in Auckland Airport but that when it became public racism against Arabs negated the deal going ahead

Friday the 25th of July Jumma At Taqwa

I can’t get to Manakau on time for Jumma because I have a class that finishes at 12 but luckily Ali Abas took me

He is moving to near the Mosque, his wife said that he often goes for Fajr (6am!!!) at Manakau and since he goes there so much, and to work less, they’re better off living out there

He said he picks his tutor up from Avondale so he should still be able to take me after he moves

Friday the 22nd of August Jummah at Mt Roskill, dinner with Ayub, kickboxing At Taqwa

Well Jummah at Mt Roskill was not what I expected, the talk was only a few minutes long

Whole place was packed

Had text Muhammed Tunisi to ask what time it started, and I was on time, I text him and told him the Khutbah ended pretty much as soon as I arrived and he said that it only lasts ten minutes

Khutbah was given by some Indian Tabliqi guy who I kind of know, was all in Arabic, didn’t contain anything from himself, just memorised stuff to say that is traditionally said

Afterwards I bought a couple of somosa and a lift energy drink for $5 and caught the bus back to Uni (I had something to do there and all I really could have done is hung around and bumped into people)

Ryad’s dad mentioned to me that later at At Taqwa that he saw me there

Got to At Taqwa for Magrib, Ayub was there and he took me to his place

He lives in a tidy little apartment, kept very clean

His baby son of a matter of months was lying in the middle of the floor on some blanket with a play frame over it, so I played with his baby quite a bit

Never saw his wife, she stayed away, hardly even heard her

The food was ready, he just had to bring it to the table and take stuff out of the oven when it was ready

Food was great! Kashmiri food is tasty!

Talked about Kashmir and he explained to me about the stupid hindus worshiping some ice crystals that form in some mountain cave in winter, and how the government was going to give the land to the Hindus for a shrine or something, there had been trouble over this

I mentioned some leader had been killed but he didn’t seem to know much about that

Definitely he’s keeping up with Kashmiri politics to some extent though

I mentioned Musharaf stepping down and that I was surprised that he seemed so powerless

He said that there would be some deal to get him to England or something

I asked if he thought Musharaf was corrupt and he mentioned how they had attacked that mosque in Islamabad and he said that they bulldozed the place afterwards without removing the bodies in order to hide what they had done

I didn’t know that or read it in the news articles that I read

Ayub didn’t know I was married, he said he could have gotten me a wife from Kashmir

Ayub said that his wife is a teacher, that she doesn’t wear hijab all the time, and not at work because of the others, that they are not children, you can only tell them what they should do can’t make them, he said Sheikh Anwar saw them in their car when his wife wasn’t wearing hijab, I asked if he said anything about it and Ayub said no

We went back to the mosque to pray Isha

After Isha Fauzan, Farhad and Ali Abas stayed for kickboxing

When I mentioned having dinner with Ayub Fauzan took me to the side and told me that when Ayub first came to the mosque that he didn’t trust him, that you should be careful about who you talk to about jihad, he didn’t realise that I had already had dinner with him, and I told him that I didn’t talk to him about Jihad (not sure if he got me)

Farhad came towards us and heard the end of our discussion and he kind of stopped what he was doing and looked a little surprised when he either saw us talking seriously or heard what we said

Not sure what he actually heard and Fauzan didn’t seem to care that he could hear us

Did kickboxing, Fauzan went with me, Ali Abas with Farhad, Farhad and Fauzan held the pads, did a long 8 min round, then did 50 jabs, 50 right straight, 100 left/right, 100 hooks, 100 uppercuts, 100 double (body/head) hooks, all without stopping (at least I didn’t stop, Ali did quite a bit, and after 50 doubles I changed to just hooks as Fauzan was having trouble holding the pads properly)

Fauzan and Ali then left (Fauzan had said he couldn’t stay long as he had to spend time with his family

When he left he said it was good spending time with you brothers

I held the pads for Farhad, he has a problem with his left shoulder since his skiing accidents and could only punch with his right, so I got him to do the same amount that I did with my both hands on his one, hard work, he tired to give up, but managed it

Farhad dropped me off, he told me about when he first came to New Zealand as part of some opportunity offered to Fiji to give scholarships to Fijian students, he said when he arrived he had girl neighbours, that he went a little nuts with the freedom he had here and did poorly so poorly in his studies that he gave up and went back to Fiji, there he realised what an opportunity he had missed and tried hard to get another go at coming back here, it was very difficult, some lady helped him, he still is grateful to her and regrets having not thanked her, he said when he got back here he studied very hard and did well, so was able to stay and complete his degree

I asked him about marriage and he said that he wanted to marry a young girl and that he had left it too late

I told him that I’d help him, that he could marry an Afghani easily in Pakistan, that you just had to pay the family, but said it is not such a good idea to get that stamp on his passport and that seemed to put him off though he had liked the idea

Monday the 25th of August Arabic At Taqwa

There was something on at Al Manar so we couldn’t go there (a walima, dinner coz there is a new baby)

Yusef picked me up from the station at Puhinui, then we prayed Magrib with everyone and exercised

Yusef is not bad, I made up a weights circuit and he did it quite well, he’s actually quite a big guy and has made a lot of improvement since that summer camp where he got injured straight away

After Isha we did the Arabic class (Fauzan has been leading the prayers, but have seen Ali Abas doing so when Fauzan wasn’t there)

Fauzan, Ishrar, and Farhad were there as well as Yusef and myself Fauzan, Ishrar and Farhad did their own thing from the book we’ve been using in the classes, while Yusef and I continued on chapter Yusef

Fauzan followed us for a while while we recited and translated the 10 verses we learnt last week and I read the tafsir (explanation) from Ibn Kathir (most famous one), then he joined in with the others to help them out, he said he was going back to his level, and when I had asked him to take his turn with us to read he had declined saying he was learning a lot from us

They all left before we had finished and Yusef dropped me home

He talked to me about how he had debts with IRD after not doing tax returns, that they had charged interest, that he had reached a settlement with them, he said he got four taxis on interest, but that he wouldn’t do it again even if it affected his business

He’s been having difficulty with his younger daughter, said she had had a fall on her head when she was younger and asked me if that could have caused it, I said you’d have to take her to a doctor about that but gave him some advice about her behaviour, he said she doesn’t seem to learn to do things like make her bed, takes things that she shouldn’t, stuff like that

Sunday the 31st of August Moon sighting and waiting for Ramadan, At Taqwa

Went to At Taqwa before Asr, no one was there, Fauzan called to see where I was

Sheikh Anwar was there for Asr, bunch of them turned up and all went off for moon sighting over on the west coast by a gannet colony

With Fauzan were Dawood, Ishrar, Faiaz, Ansar

We waited around for Farhad and one other guy who is around a lot, has a beard a bit like mine at the moment and whose name I don’t know

Yusef played an awlaqi cd from the hereafter series which talked a lot about jihad

I heard from the guy that they shoot the cows before they slaughter them when they go to the farm, I argued that shooting them in the brain is killing them, but no one (including Fauzan and Farhad later on) understood this, Fauzan even seemed to think that cutting the neck was a faster death, he argued that you couldn’t cut the cows throat because it is not domesticated, like they are in Fiji, he said that death is when the soul leaves the body

Didn’t see the moon, prayed there, Fauzan called out the call to prayer loudly,

Fauzan and them left while we stayed and ate some Nando’s we got from the others, some drunk biker couldn’t start his bike and we talked about that

On the way back listened to the cd with Farhad asking some questions (didn’t know that the animals will pay each other back for injustice amongst themselves before being turned to dust, Yusef always elaborates something when he explains it and said that when the kufar see that they will wish to be dust to)

Farhad didn’t want to do kickboxing (it was cancelled due to Saudi Sheikh lecture on Friday, then moved to Sunday, then cancelled for moon sighting, then I thought he said he wanted to do it after Isha or Tarawih, but he was talking about ringing UAE charity about marriage) and suggested dropping me at the city, I said no because after telling everyone that I’d be there and changing it so much I had to go

Went back, prayed isha, quite a few people were there to see if it was going to be Ramadan tomorrow and pray tarawih if it was

After Isha we sat around while Anwar waited for the news, it wasn’t going to be Ramadan

No moon sighted so no Ramadan

No one wanted to exercise, tried to make someone, talib said yes but didn’t really want to he was hungry

Farhad dropped me home and took talib for the drive

When I got home I took my bird down to show them, they liked it, and while I was getting it I called UAE and talked to the person who replaced Atallah at alihsan center, he said that Farhad should go there so that they could arrange something, but said no through the charity, I thought that meant he might have someone from his family in mind, just a guess though, Farhad had trouble calling him back to talk more, his name’s Abdullah, but then it is the start of Ramadan there too

Monday the 1st of August Exercise at Al Manar, Arabic class, Tarawih

Yusef picked me up from my place, had to drop some Qurans at the uni mosque, he prayed there, I said I had already prayed

He suggested going to at Taqwa, I said I preferred the equipment at al Manar, went there, exercised hard around all the kids, Abu Abdullah’s son was there, he does weights (just realised now it was his son I’m pretty sure)

Someone asked me if I was professional, someone else said it was athab (punishment), Yusef couldn’t keep up with me or do everything, but he did do better than I thought with the weight part of it

I threw up, think my body just hadn’t had the normal warning of what was going to happen to it, Yusef had a protein drink with lots of raw eggs and bananas

Went to the mosque to pray Magrib, I felt yuck and strange, had a shower afterwards while Yusef talked to his friends

Yusef had decided to stop using tobacco and to throw his supply away, someone tried to convince him to give it to him, saying he was poor (another taxi driver) Yusef and I ran to the car and he threw it just before the other guy got to us

Told Yusef my theory about why I reacted so badly to the exercise (heroin, environment elicits response from body to counter affects

Turns out he still smokes weed sometimes, spent a while talking about drugs

Didn’t have enough time to finish the Arabic lesson, was just us to, Fauzan came to the mosque, said he would join in, but there wasn’t enough time

Abu Abdullah is with the Afghan mafia (according to Yusef, jokingly), he’s doing tarawih at Pakuranga and tahajud at Mt Roskil (Yusef is going, apparently Abu Abdullah only eats meat he’s slaughtered and he does it at home in his back yard), Yusef wants to try to bring him there

There was a Somali guy who lead the tarawih, Sheikh Anwar did the last short couple of segments of prayer, then we left, after chatting for ages

Pretty much everyone you could think of who is a regular was there, including Sadeeq (who wants to meet me and to get my help with his business selling kids tents

Got dropped at the bus stop and got home about 11pm…

Farhad asked when I left when they’d be seeing me again, I said I’d come Monday, Friday, Sunday, he seemed surprised and pleased

Ansar talked about how he went snow boarding, hit heaps of people, but learnt fast and went all the way down the mountain falling over only once on his first trip, Fauzan didn’t believe him, he was supposed to come with us, but his mum said no, he;s saving to go to Malbourn at the end of the year, Faiaz is keen to go skiing on the next trip as is talib (confirmed I think)

I didn’t mean to give them impression from the first trip that I didn’t get along with them, I bonded well with everyone, I just wrote in my report about things which seemed to highlight peoples’ character, like Farhad trying to make me do stuff and getting upset

Expenses:

$50 for 27th Youth run dinner

Prior: On the day that I went to Yusef’s house there was a meeting for the youth (not really for the youth) and they were planning to organise the dinner for the 27th of Sept like they had done the year before. Farhad, Ali Abas, this dark sub continent guy who has long black beard, good English, and very bad prayer mark on forehead, Fauzan (ran meeting). Ali Abas offered to do a lot of the work. I went up to Fauzan after and said I’d donate $50, which I gave to Sadeeq when I was with him in town.

Some brothers were sitting around (can’t date this accurately) and talking about sept11 coming up again. Yusef said that his kid was supposed to be born then and his wife wanted to call it Osama. They were talking generally in a positive manner about sept11 attacks and Osama.

27-29 Sept Sat – Mon

Well I had to spend ages reading quran while everyone else was busy reading quran and rubbish

I arrived on Sat about Magrib time

When I arrived we got into the eating and I did a good job of stuffing myself even though I wasn’t really hungry

Farhad, Ali Saudi, Shamir, old Indian guy (was there last Ramadan, was a draughtsman), fat ugly short guy, another Indian with short beard, and a couple of others, were all staying in Itikaf, Fauzan wasn’t, spending time with family I guess

Everyone was asking me where I had been etc. Just said that studies had gotten too much

After eating we prayed Isha, after Isha I sat around reading quran for ages, then slept, everyone did their own thing pretty much, just reading quran, praying for ages and ages (couldn’t quite bring myself to do that, haha)

Farhad woke up and prayed in the middle of the night, he’s a dedicated one he is, he took his Itikaf very seriously

I woke up in time to eat again before fasting, there was some food from Sheikh Anwar’s place, no meat, but nice curry dishes

After fajr was sat around reading quran and sleeping etc

I ended up talking to Shamir for quite a while, but mainly about normal stuff, he said that they are going to build a massive hotel in Makka, and that competing in building tall buildings is a sign of the day of judgement

He’s got his own painting company but is finding it hard to build his clientele, so a+

Friday the 7th of November Jummah at Masjid At Taqwa

The lecture was all about mosques, and especially the renovations that were about to be started at Masjid At Taqwa

He made an argument for making the appearance of the mosque attractive so as to attract people who pass by (referring to non Muslims), and so that Muslims would like being there too

He said it was necessary for the place to meet the expectations of the people

He said that if the mosques in KSA weren’t as beautiful (and they are!) as they are then a lot of people wouldn’t go there much less keep going back

He mentioned some stuff about the first Mosques built in the time of Muhammed, and about the meeting place that they had in Makka when they chose to meet in the turf of a tribe who hated the Muslims coz that was unexpected

Interesting to note that the decoration of mosques is actually forbidden in Islam as you are supposed to be going there to worship Allah and not admire the building, which messes with your intention

He said that they had also purchased the property in the front and that there were plans to have an educational centre as well in the future

He encouraged people to give hundreds or thousands for the mosque

I really hope that there is some way to hinder their efforts to start an education centre, as they will be teaching a literal interpretation of Islam, which includes, necessarily, Jihad, and Fauzan would probably end up teaching there, he told me once that he thinks that people need to be taught about Jihad. Just teaching a literal interpretation leads to fanaticism and taking fighting seriously

After Jummah I went with Farhad to eat, Sadeeq, Imran came (Imran was in Itikaf and is staying in the mosque at the moment, upstairs next to the office)

Sadeeq mentioned that the council would be coming to see the building soon

Sadeeq talked about work in Aus, said he knew someone in Sydney and that there was a painting job or something like that

He said he’d go first and then take his family

I talked to him about the mining industry and he was interested, Farhad knew some stuff about it too, am supposed to send him the trade me like for the Kiwi who wrote a book about it

Sadeeq asked me about Arief and when I had seen him last, I said a couple of Jummas ago at Mt Eden

Farhad and I were talking a lot about travelling and Sadeeq asked me when I had been in KL, and then related it to when I first knew him

Imran told us about Sheikh rafat being at an awards ceremony, and Dawood was there too, and the men and women were all freely mixing, this was for a Uni Islamic club, Sadeeq disapproved

Later Farhad said he had heard bad things about Rafat

There is a camp starting on th 21st of Nov for the weekend in Motatapu, Farhad wanted to go, and wanted me to go too

Farhad dropped me back at the mosque, I waited around till the time when we were supposed to have kickboxing, but only Farhad came (first time since I stopped die to exams and assignments, also I sent the text just that day), so we went to a Sauna

Nothing much happened after that, I took the train home after maghrib

Friday the 14th of November Jummah at Masjid At Taqwa

The khtubah didn’t seem to follow any one theme, I sat with my calves under my thighs, tried to think of how I could remember this, but couldn’t, it was very erratic

He did say something about if you are poor and a rich man loves you then you would be happy, comparing this situation to God loving you, and said something about not telling him we wouldn’t love to be given millions of dollars and that if we were we’d pay the mosque off

Afterwards went to lunch with Fauzan, Farhad, Imran, and Ishrar and Dawood turned up late

Talked about studying in Medina, he’d leaving on Sunday the 23rd,

Apparently classes have already started so he’d late

There is an association of sorts of Oceanic students who have been getting in contact with him of their own initiative, telling him they’d help him out to catch up

He said two others went from NZ, and that Muhammed Tunisi, Asish and Ali Abas are interested in going in the future

He said there are seven (I think) from Aus

Farahad said something about him opening the flood gates for NZ students

He’ll be studying just Arabic and memorising quran for the first two years, he’s ambitious about learning a lot of Quran and said that some brother had learnt the whole thing in two or three years (forget which), I seriously doubt it thought coz he said he has been struggling to get through even the first 1/30 (which I never quite managed, bloody hard)

He sold his laptop, he said he probably won’t need one, that it might distract him, and that internet Is slow and expensive there anyway

He’ll be flying Malaysian then KSA airlines, he said that they are the only ones they deal with or something (!?!?), stopping in KL for 15 hours, but he’s worried about leaving the airport, Farhad teased him about that

He’s moved his family to new address, will show you on map

We were talking about a show called Man vs nature or something (haven’t seen it but they have), they really like it, especially when he opened up a camels tummy and squeezed the juices out of the grass in a desert, his family were watching too (Fauzan’s) and he had to turn it off

They get three months holidays but he talked about someone staying back for two extra months and learning quran, he sounded like he might want to do that

At 6.30, the time for kickboxing, Farhad and Abdullah Iraq

Abdullah Iraqi dropped me off at the city, had to pray at the city mosque, he was meeting friends (saw Bakr in the mosque) for soccer in the field next door (there was really loud music in the area when I was there)

Abdullah was really hyper at kickboxing, he punched hard using his body at the end of his three rounds using Bas Ritten’s thai boxing audio tape that calls out instructions at a rapid pace (did three each). He started telling Farhad that his calves were too skinny and praised my calves saying he told other people with little calves to look at them (wtf?)

Monday the 17th of November Jummah at Masjid At Taqwa

Ali Abas, myself and Arman in the higher group (Arman really had forgotten everything, he had not been for more than a year), then Farhad, Imran, Ishrar, in the lower group

Had to wait for Sheikh Anwar to finish talking to some arab guys, for which he apologised later and said that one of them had almost left Islam (funny thing to tell us really, seemed like a private thing)

We read out the stuff to him and translated, and then asked each other some questions as Sheikh talked to the over group

Talked to Ishrar, told him that Maybe Obama will be worse than Bush, he had been talking about the economy to me very knowledgably, had told Farhad the same stuff at the spa in front of some Polynesian guys, one of them said he thought Isreal had a lot of heart, I thought this sounded like sensitive topic so I left (was also hot as hell), farhad stayed and heard him saying that the Arab countries had all the support

Farhad dropped me off and brought Imran with him to keep him company

They have been playing a lot of sports, many days a week at the near by park, soccer and cricket, keep getting texts about it, intend to go some time

Talked mainly hajj as we drove back, actually that is all we talked about, we were discussing the way it was meant to be done

Farhad disagreed with what I was saying about the order of stuff to do, but Imran said that the description that Farhad was giving was from a certain school of thought, whereas mine was the preferred opinion, I hadn’t heard of what Farhad was saying and just told him that it was from the sayings of Mohammed, as the book I read them in was by Saudi scholars, has lots of Muhameds quotations and I could remember the hadith pretty well because I kept warning people over the issue, as many people go stone the SHaitan at the same time and that’s where people keep dying, but there is a hadith where he said you could do it in any order

Just before the Arabic lesson started Shiekh anwar said that if he had spoken in Chinese then we could have talked, isn’t that right Abdur Rahman, and I looked at Farhad like what the fuck is he talking about and Farhad told me to just laugh. Last week Sheikh Anwar asked me how I was in Urdu and I replied in Urdu, then he asked me how to say it in Japanese and I said I didn’t know, he asked if I knew Japanese, and I said I did a course but had forgotten it, weird.

Monday the 24th of November

Ali Abas, Arman Ali and myself in one group, no Farhad (this was the day after the camp he went on ended, Ishrar, Riyad Ali’s dad, and Amir were in the other group

Amran hadn’t been for more than a year, and probably should have been in the other group

Ali Abas had forgotten quite a lot of basic stuff

Nothing interesting happened really

Ishrar dropped me at the bus stop

There was a hadith on the board (there’s this white board that always has two hadith written on it and they get changed every week or so, usually Dawood does it but Amir (Pakistani guy who stays at thee mosque now and seems to do a lot around the place) now does

The hadith said that some act of worship during the 10 days of Hajj was better than Jihad, but when questioned further Mohammed (pbuh) said that it was so except for someone who had gone out for Jihad and lost everything

Friday the 26th of November

The khutbah was all about Hajj and how these ten days are the best days of the year

Sheikh Anwar said that we must make a sacrifice on Eid if we have the money, and we can’t cut our nails or hair until then once the 10 days starts, he said there’s a hadith or something that says that if you don’t make the sacrifice then you shouldn’t come to the Eid prayer

Went to lunch with Farhad

Farhad didn’t make it to kickboxing as he was at his work’s Xmas party, he stayed working on an “issue” while others got drunk, he was working for FAB consultancy

Monday the 1st of December

Yusef didn’t come again, Ali Abas was working, Arman, didn’t come, so did lesson with Sheikh Anwar by myself

There was a new guy from India at the mosque’

Amir and Farhad took me home and we stopped for Nando’s

Amir said that his dad or something had been the head of Ahl Hadith (the group that they are all from and is present in Fiji, India, Pakistan (from looking at Wikimapia quite heavily present in Pakistan, lot’s of Mosques ascribed to them)

Amir said that during the 2002 Gugarat riots that they had to go on Jihad against the Hindus

Apparently his dad had been head of the group there for 10 years, including 2002

The guy has a scar above his right eye, looks like he has been messed up in the past

He is rather tall, thin, short beard, came up and shook my hand in a friendly way in the mosque one day, seemed interested and impressed by kickboxing classes but didn’t come

Amir said that he is the kind of person who is expected to play a big role in the mosque, though when Farhad asked Amir said that the guy hadn’t said anything yet

I saw him wearing Shelwar Qameeses, a bright white one that kind of looked like a dishdash with sequins, and the other just plain black, which kind of reminds me of the Mujahidin in Pakistan, though it might not mean anything, but they liked good looking clothes like the white one and associated plain black clothes with jihad

Friday the 5th of December

Sadeeq was at the Jumma

Khutbah talked a lot about Abraham almost sacrificing his son

Sheikh Anwar said that none of us could be so patient and that the son, when Abraham told him of his dream, said for his father to do as his Lord commanded

Abraham was about to do it when Allah sent down a sheep instead…

Anyway, went to lunch with Farhad and several others

Farhad was the only one to come to kickboxing

After Magrib Sheikh Anwar read a hadith about keeping your trousers above your ancles, took it very seriously, your prayer isn’t accepted if you don’t do it, and even outside of prayer if you do it then your feet will be in hell fire, this is all because its apparently arrogant to let something drag

He dropped me at the station and I got the train home

Tuesday the 9th of December

Eid Prayer was at 7am, followed by a lecture

The lecture was mainly about only worshipping Allah and not ascribing partners with him , and avoiding worshipping other stuff

Think that when there is a good chance of strangers being around that he takes the opportunity to talk about this kind of stuff

Sheikh Anwar, at the end of his speech, made supplications which included one for the Mujahidin repeated three times (Allahuma monsur almujahidin, O Allah help the Mujahidin), and also added another dua for te Mujahidin

I got a ride to a farm with Farhad

Sadeeq (apl972) was there with another Arab guy from Algeria

Mohammed Tunisi (ui5640) was there along with some Somali friend of his

dcb164 was another licence plate number that was at the farm with us

At the farm I first went down to the paddock where they had a couple of cows

Abdullah Somali was there and I watched with him as the farmer carelessly shot the cow with a .22, wounding it but managing to miss its head, he managed to corner in after a couple of minutes and shot it directly in its head and it dropped immediately

The second cow was shot in the head, started bleeding from the nose, then jumped two fences and ran away, the barsteds didn’t even bother to go and finish it, and apparently it rejoined the herd perhaps four hours later and the farmer killed it. I would have lost my temper if I had known they didn’t go after it, but Abdullah and I were sick of watching that shit and I stupidly assumed that they would have gone after it

Sadeeq slaughtered a whole bunch of the sheep by himself

The knives weren’t sharp enough, some of the people who did the cutting weren’t good at it, the sheep were slaughtered and butchered in front of the others (which is against Islamic law)

I got them to slaughter the sheep round the corner a bit, find the sharpest knife and sharpen it, and asked Sadeeq to do the slaughtering rather than this guy who was dong some later slowly

Sadeeq said he’d talk to Sheikh Anwar about the cow situation, so did Farhad later

Before we saw Abdullah Somali Farhad had been saying that we haven’t seen him for a while

Abdullah said he had been doing a welding course when I spoke to him, he has finished apparently

He grew up in UAE, not Somalia, and he butchered one of the sheep after watching Mohammed a bit, and did an ok job for someone who said they hadn’t done it before

Mohammed was very good at butchering, he knew the names of all the internal organs and lots of tricks for getting things done (at one stage giving the carcass a “big hug” to break the spine while blood ran over him)

I helped with butchering the sheep as well, under Mohammed’s instruction

Mohammed asked me about my wife and if she was asking questions, I said not really, and that it was hard to take her to the mosque as I refused to go to her church when she asked me

I told him I always had wanted to marry a Muslim girl, whereupon he said he knew a kiwi convert girl who wanted someone at least 26 as she was 25 or something, he said that there was some problem with her prayers though, and that she had been Muslim a year or two after talking to some sister at Uni

Mohammed asked me if I was interested but before I could say no my character won through and I agreed, so Mohammed suggested inviting me to a Uni event and having a look at her

Later I text him and told him that I’d have to wait till I have a full time job as I wouldn’t be able to treat her equally as what money I have is tied up in this marriage

Mohammed’s sister is also getting married on the 27th and he invited me, I’m supposed to meet Abudullah at the Mt Roskill mosque after Asr that day

Mohammed is the same as ever, always finding a way to bring Islam into the conversation

Sadeeq said that he’d be in Aus before the Taqwa camp which is going to be in Feburary on Russell Is, Bay of Islands

Apparently he bought that book from trademe about working in the mines over there but is worried about finding the work and his English ability

Mohammed was keen on going hiking for a day or something, as is Farhad,up to me to organise it, Farhad is up for a weekend hike or something

Yusef was at the slaughter too, he said he would start our Monday routine again like before

Back at At Taqwa talked to Ali Abas who said he had submitted papers to a whole bunch of universities

He said that one in Yemen, Qualiat Iman or something, said he could go, but that the brothers told him not to as the place is on a watch list with the Kufar or something, he submitted papers to Medina, Umm Al Qura.

Mohammed (who I got a ride back with) suggested a University (something Iman like the Yemeni one) in Al Kaseem in KSA, which is like the most fanatical part of KSA and where the majority of their famous scholars come from

Friday the 12th of December

The Khutbah was so scattered about that by the second part of it I was having trouble remembering the first, he talked about:

How we’d all see our place in the hell fire, and that some sahaba said because of that (how we have to cross the bridge over the hell fire and some will go fast, others crawling, some fall etc.) that he wished his mother had never given birth to him

He talked about accumulating and saving up our good deeds for the hereafter

He talked about how on the day of judgement that a man will ask his wife and the rest of his family for just one good deed to add to his account, but that noone will give it to him

Had lunch with Farhad and Ishrar

Ishrar said that they called Fauzan from the mosque on Eid and that he didn’t say much, Ishrar said he sounded down, that studies were hard, and that he was sitting in the mosque after prayer when they called

Ishrar said that Fauzan is homesick, that he has a very close family, including not just his father and brother, but also his uncles

Farhad said that his brother Ridwan, after leaving NZ for Aus had to return after a month, Farhad attributed this to being away from family

Ishrar said that in the first couple of weeks after Fauzan left he was calling home twice a day

Got dropped off at the mosque

When time for kickboxing came only Farhad showed up

Amir said, when asked by Farhad if he’d come to the classes if they were easier and he said yes

We decided to play cricket instead

Ridwan (Fauzan’s brother) came, which was a surprise as he had just told me he would come to kickboxing next week and couldn’t this week because it was so busy (second time he told me that and it’s not like I ask him)

Ridwan put on a knee brace before playing, which reminded me of his brothers perpetual “injuries”

Kind of funny how he hadn’t been coming to Kickboxing when he keeps mentioning it, he even said that we have such a great mosque, we we even have kickboxing, and that so many much bigger mosques don’t have much in the way of activities

Amir came for cricket too, it was from me suggesting that we go to the pools in newmarket that he suggested cricket

Another Pakistani guy came as well, clean shaven guy, don’t know him

Afterwards we went back to the mosque for Magrib, prayed, and Sheikh Anwar read some hadith about not being allowed to make use of leopard skin, and said we can’t make use of any skin of an animal that we are not allowed to eat

Farhad, Amir, and myself had our heads shaven by Ishrar, who’s really good at it, and Ali Abas came to chat (was Farhad who origionally was borrowing Ishrar’s shaver and then asked him for a shave too)

Shiekh Anwar is going fund raising in the middle east for three/four weeks

Going to try and arrange to go with Yusef in the meanwhile

This was Farhad’s last day of work, his contract has finished but he seems to be planning on taking a holiday and starting looking for work after new years

Ridwan the brother of Fauzan, live at the same place (the new address I gave)

Ridwan is active in the mosque, has been coming to lunch with Farhad and I, is involved in organising the camps etc

Ridwan is one of the cooks for the camps and takes pride in the nice food they make

Ridwan’s wife is sister of Sheikh Anwar’s wife, and one day after prayer Anwar was talking to a young girl who was on the other side of the we-can’t-look-at-women-because-it’s-sinful screen and thought it necessary to explain the relationship

* No one seems to have seen Ali Almari for a while

Friday the 19th of December Jumma At Taqwa (Mohammed)

Mohammed Tunisi gave the Khutbah

He spoke in a very confident and clear manner without rushing at all

He did stuff that Mohammed was supposed to have done like holding up one finger while talking (ong god), and looking at the sky (sky god)

His khutbah wasn’t very long and was quite simple though with a radical message

He said basically that the reason that the Muslims were in the state that they are in today was that they were not following Mohammed

He said that was because the devil made the kufar’s cultural stuff appealing, like wearing your hair in a certain way etc

He said the solution was that we must follow Mohammed blindly

He talked about the Hadith where Ibrahim was told by god to sacrifice his son, and said that any of us would not be able to carry it out, it seems horrible and terribly wrong, yet when asked his opinion his son said to do as he had been ordered, and what happened, god sent a bloody sheep or something to be sacrifice instead

I used use this same hadith when trying to make people radical and encourage them to go to Jihad

Had lunch with Farhad, Ishrar, Dawood, talked mainly about the hiking

Ishrar said he couldn’t go because he had already planned to go on a trip with his family

Farhad and I were the only ones to do kickboxing, Farhad has got some hard punches but gets tired pretty quick

Friday the 26th of December Jumma At Taqwa ( Black guy)

Mum dropped me off at the mosque coz I went to the train station but the entire station was closed

We got lost and so I was late, but the khutbah must have been pretty short

The Somali guy who lead Tarawih in Ramadan gave the khutbah

After the prayer Farhad, Sadeeq and I were looking at the map I had brought

Sadeeq mentioned that he had been hiking before (in Indonesia I guess) but that they just had plastic bags and slept in caves

Later on in the trip he told Farhad that they had guns when they went hiking and that they shot monkeys that were attacking them(WTF!?!?)

Sadeeq got his tent out for us to look at and ended up leaving it as he had to go somewhere

Farhad and I decided it was fine

The rest of the day was spent getting stuff for the trip

Farhad is very tight with money, and will quibble over even a couple of dollars

He said he likes knives, and was looking at some cheap machetes they had in one of the many $2 style shops we visited in Otahuhu

He ended up getting one, though not then, and brought it along with a metal file to the trip, though I only saw him bring it out on the last day to make his bedding

We were looking for a camp stove or something and ended up in Kmart where we ran into Ishrar who told us there was one we could use in the Mosque

Farhad was upset with Ishrar because they had planned to take their families together to the Corromandal on Friday after we got back from the trip but Ishrar said he had to leave earlier or something

Farhad said that it was Ishrar’s idea but that he had had to push him to make a commitment but that now he had he was breaking it and Farhad had to think of another place to take his family

He ended up just going there on Saturday morning

Tuesday the 30th of December to Friday the 2nd of January (Hamyatullah)

Friday the 9th of January Jumma At Taqwa

Khutbah was pretty much about Gaza

Anwar said that Mohammed said that one day the Muslim nation would be like a free banquet for the Kufar and that as we could see today from Gaza that they can come and massacre us like it was just something normal that we had to accept

He said that this was because we weren’t following Islam properly

He said that some people were even afraid to raise their hands and supplicate against what was going on

He said that no one is asking them to go there

Nour was there at the khutbah and came up to me and talked to me afterwards and then stood by me

Farhad and Sadeeq were sitting and talking so I suggested we go talk to them

Sadeeq asked if we had kept up the exercise or something and joked a bit about the walk

Sadeeq said he will be going to Oz before the end of January, he said that he has a job lined up as a painter

Farhad seems to like Sadeeq a lot and beams at him when they talk

After the khutbah Dawood, Ishrar, Nour, and myself went for lunch

Farhad was fasting and so couldn’t come with us

At lunch Ishrar mentioned to Dawood something about having to do something with a donation that he received for Gaza

Nour lives near the place we eat, the Ethnic Food Court in Otahuhu and his dad owns a dairy near by, he also showed me an Islamic shop next door that mainly sold Muslim style clothes and stuff, though they had a poor collection of books that Nour said used to be better

After lunch Ishrar was going to drop me back at the mosque but first took me to the same freight company that the dates for At Taqwa had arrived at

Sheikh Anwar had sent $12,000 worth of honey to his friends in Saudi Arabia and Ishrar picked up the invoice

Ishrar had to go somewhere so he called Dawood who met us back at the food court and I went with him

Dawood had sent texts around inviting people to go to the Gaza protest the next day and someone who Dawood said came to the mosque sometimes replied saying that they supported Gaza but not Hamas who were extremists

Dawood told me that he had written a text saying that Hamas are Mujahideen and asked me what I thought he should do, I said I’d tell the person to their face rather than texting them, but Dawood text anyway saying that that if that guy had said it to him in person he would have probably punched him in the face

Dawood told me that he got married to a woman he met online, that she was very well educated in Islam and had a kid and was previously married to a guy who beat her

He said they always fight and that sometimes they don’t talk for months

He said she is very stubborn and that she will not call him when she is mad and that he pretty much begs her to talk to him

He said he sends her no less than $1000 a month

I told that that was a lot of money in India and that as a tourist I spent $600 per month, she doesn’t even have to pay rent

He said he wants to find someone else and that he can’t stay married to her just so that she can come to NZ and benefit the community (he mentioned her benefiting Ishrar’s wife) with her Islamic knowledge (she speaks Arabic to having lived in Arab countries)

We got to the mosque and he said he had time to kill and so we played table tennis

We got to talking about Palestine and he didn’t know pretty much anything about its history so I told him about it

He asked me something about Hamas and I said that the only thing I didn’t like about them was that when I was in Lebanon I visited one of their offices that was in a Hezbollah compound

I said I didn’t like their relationship with Hezbollah

I said that many Palestinians like Hezbollah because they are the only ones who ever really defeated Israel

He asked if Hamas was Shia and I said they are all Sonny

I said something about marrying in Pakistan but he already seemed to have such an idea

I mentioned that there you could marry from a Mujahideen family and he seemed interested in that

I said I would try to contact my friends in Pakistan

Abdullah Iraqi was the only one who came for kickboxing

Farhad said he had a soccer tournament the next day so couldn’t come

I took Abdullah to the park across the road and we did sprawls defending against the takedown and some submission wrestling along with a bit of kickboxing, didn’t take the pads though, just kicked and punched against each others gloves and arms

He really enjoyed it

He dropped me at the train station after Magrib prayer but once I had got there I read the timetable and there were no trains late of Fridays, though there were late trains on Saturdays (WTF?)

So I called Ishrar and asked him the way to walk to Papakura so I could catch the bus but he told me to stay there and he’d work something out

Dawood ended up coming to pick me up and with him was Ansar

We went to Nando’s at the Westfield shopping centre where Farhad and Ishrar were eating

They were talking about the protest that was supposed to be happening from Aotea square the next day

They also talked about movies, Ansar likes talking about movies

Ishrar dropped me home and asked me if I’d go to the protest, I said that I didn’t agree with the democratic form of protest, that I didn’t think it would achieve anything, that it would be better to support them in other ways including financial

Ishrar said that it was about brining it to peoples awareness and that some peace group had organised it, and that he thought that they had enough money but the problem was that nothing could get into Gaza

I pretty much repeated myself and added that terrible things have been happening in other places such as Somalia and noone seems to mention it at all

6am Tuesday the 30th of December to 4pm Friday the 2nd of January, camping at Kaitai-Mamaku Forest Park = 82 hrs = $? (at $25 = $2050 old rate)

Tuesday

Met at 7am at At Taqwar

Nour turned up totally unprepared, had shoes with no grip, a day pack instead of a full sized back pack, and some stuff in plastic bags

Farhad was talking about not letting him go at all, and wanted me to tell him

I thought about it and ended up getting him to pack a second bag to carry on his chest

Isham turned up little better off, and he also would have to carry a bag on his chest

Sadeeq had a good sized back pack, unfortunately for him though he didn’t follow my advice about a harness and so suffered for the entire trip

He said later he would have bought one with a harness if he had been staying on in NZ

Trip down there was pretty quick, only

We arrived at Te Aroha about 11am and started hiking about 12pm

Farhad didn’t want to leave his car at the park at the start of the track, it really was an isolated little spot though there was one house there

We got some directions from some locals as to where the track started and Farhad and Isham drove down the road after unloading the luggage and parked the car by the golf course on Tui Rd, where the hike started, and ran back, they were pretty quick

I showed Sadeeq my knife and instead of just having a look and giving it back he packed it in his bag! I had to ask for it back

For the whole trip I hung my knife off the front of my backpack straps so I could unsheath it from around the left side of my chest whenever I wanted

We started hiking and straight away Sadeeq was struggling, he had a good sized backpack that was full and no decent harness so the weight was on his shoulders, and as he was unfit and the road steep he kept stopping

We were actually on the slopes of a mountainous area

Sadeeq was going so slowly that I was worried about our pace, knowing we had 5 perhaps 6 hours ahead, and I wanted to at least get on the track and be making good time

From the road we went through tui mines, which were like a bunch of clay palisades

We were walking in the cloud and moisture was just dripping off the vegetation, very beautiful

We found the track, wasn’t very hard, and once we were on the route it was actually very well marked and easy to follow, I don’t get the DOC warnings, though it was a bit rough and we had to keep clambering up and down stuff, as well as crawling under and over impediments

Farhad stuck by Sadeeq the whole time and while Isham, Nour and myself would go ahead due to our faster pace, we would wait for them and they would catch up

They kept taking breaks when they caught up but it didn’t seem to be at Sadeeq’s insistance

Once they caught up and before waiting for Sadeeq to answer Farhad was already taking his bag off while “asking” Sadeeq if he wanted a break

After a while Nour and I ended up ahead while the others took a ridiculously long time to catch up

We waited for long periods perhaps 3 or 4 times until they caught up and when they did Isham was complaining that they were stopping every ten minutes and eating lots of food

Because we had stopped so much I really had no idea how far we had come and was a little worried about getting to our destination before dark, though I thought we were probably close

Isham, Nour and myself went ahead and got to the sign post indicating that the camp site was 20min away

I went back to tell the others, I thought it would be a relief for Sadeeq, but when I got to the camp site only Isham was there

Sadeeq and Farhad turned up with no Nour, and Farhad paniced and ran back into the bush with no torch or anything even though it was almost dark

Isham followed him wearing only thongs

I put my shoes on and followed, realising after a minute or so that I needed torches at least, but they had gone so fast I decided to catch up then go back

When I got to the junction I saw Farhad and told him that I would go back for torches and stuff and meet him ahead

I told Farhad to pray with his eyes because the Sahaba did even when they were fighting but he didn’t

Nour had been left at a sign post by Isham who had gone to pee, apparently there was a misunderstanding, and Nour could only have gone one other way

Farhad’s panic had affected me though and I told Sadeeq to call 111 or text someone to do so as Nour didn’t have even a proper rain jacket let alone shelter

They found Nour on that other track and I caught up to them with torches, though I set a fast pace back and we didn’t use them though it was almost impossible to see where we were going by the time we got back

They prayed on the way back just after I met them, I insisted the time was up, I told them I had prayed as I ran

Technically missing prayer intentionally makes one a kafir

We were tired, I had jogged that 20min track 5 times by then and so we just slept in the hut we hadn’t paid for

Farhad got a call from 111 about his car that he had parked back on Tui Rd, the peoples’ house he had parked it outside were worried that someone had got lost (he had left his number with the car)

Isham made a loud adthan

Sadeeq lead all our prayers

In the morning I told Farhad that their stops and pace was ridiculous, I told him that I had seen a teenage girl with asthma carry a heavier pack than they were and keep up

Farhad looked uncomfortable and looked around to see if Sadeeq could hear

When we started out I said we should put Sadeeq in front, have a 5min break every hour and stop for lunch

Farhad didn’t say anything

I also tried to explain, to both of them, that it is a lot harder to hike when you take lots of breaks because you get cold and stiff when you take breaks and it makes the hike seem a lot longer

We started walking with Sadeeq in front and Isham went to overtake him, I called him back

Soon we got to a beautiful river, a great place to swim and relax (didn’t have far to go that day anyway) so I suggested we just stop there

Farhad said we had a plan to follow and wanted to keep going, so we did even though us three wanted to stay

Round the next bend Farhad suggested stopping!

So we did, we made a big fire, and I cut heaps of wood up with my knife

We had a swim too, Farhad and Isham went down some little rapids without any protection

Water was cold but Sadeeq lay around in it like a bath

We started making tea and Farhad said he didn’t want any, that he wanted to go, so we said we were going to make tea anyway

Farhad left with Sadeeq saying that they were going to the camp, I said ok

We three had fun drinking tea and messing around, we stayed there a while before deciding to leave

After we had been walking a while we saw Farhad coming back angry!! He asked where we had been, I ignored him, Isham stuttered something about tea and Farhad took Nour’s bag and went stomping off ahead of us!!!

We got to the camp after crossing quite a few rivers, some of which the water came up to our waist, I didn’t really get to tell everyone the safe way of crossing due to the atmosphere Farhad had created

We got to the camp after seeing some amazing stuff along the way

At the camp site we went to see glow worms at night, it was just a couple of minutes walk from the camp site, Farhad and Sadeeq followed after us as they were eating

I wanted to stay behind in the dark for a while coz everyone had been taking photos and Nour stayed with me, to my surprise Farhad and Isham stayed a few meters off in the dark, flashing torches at us after a while, while Farhad was gone

I told Nour to go with them as they must be waiting for him!!!

That night Nour, Isham and myself talked about Jihad and stuff

Nour is really into Jihad, him and his brother too, they listen to Awlaqi, while we know Isham is

Isham doesn’t like Osama’s deputy though, calling him a takfiri,

I told them about my time in England and Isham said, when I said about being called a knife in the hand of Shaitan, that those people are infested with spies from both the kufar and muslim countries

I then told him about how AbU Hamza’s son talked about kiddnapping people and stealing money from their bank accounts,and that they had done it before

I added that Muhammed wasn’t a theif after explaining their justification

Isham was upset and he said he didn’t know how such people could be Muslims

Isham has a much longer beard than before and said it was due to Mohammed Tunisi, and that Mohammed had really wanted to come

We were talking about planning another trip, we talked about it a few times but never in front of Farhad

Farhad and Sadeeq slept in their tents while we stayed up so late we just slept inside

In he morning Isham took some time to get up and Nour and Isham were slow getting ready

Farhad said something about them needing their mothers (I was ready to leave)

I then told Farhad that we didn’t need our mothers and that he needed to relax and that he didn’t need to be in control of everything

I told him that yesterday when I made a plan for hiking he had said nothing, then when I suggested stopping he said we should follow the plan, then we stopped when he suggested it, then he said that they were going to the camp, and then he came back angry and took Nour off, and I asked him why he did that

Farhad didn’t even look at me and Sadeeq said that’s enough Abdur Rahman

That day I helped Sadeeq try to transfer the load of his pack to his hips with the almost useless straps he had and my towel and spent the day hiking behind him

I encouraged him with Islamic stuff, and mentioned the Sahaba and what they had been through

If he stopped I encouraged him to keep going and kept helping him up

We stopped every hour for about 5-10 min, longer for luch, we made good time, Sadeeq strtuggled but did very well

That day we ascended more than the first day to 750m and there was lots of up hill hiking, a lot more than the first day, it was also a 8 hour hike which we did in that time, instead of the more than 7 hours or more it took us the first day to do a 5-6 hour hike

During the trip Sadeeq said that this was Jihad

Sadeeq ended up going better than any of us and often kept going when others looked like they were wearing out

It was a beautiful hike, especially on top of that mountain which was quite flat on top, there was
all this jelly like sap, light pretty bush with smaller plants, and interesting rocky areas

Isham was a little strange, he hadn’t eaten anything for breakfast and only took the tea I gave him, but then on the hike he drank everyone’s water till it was finished and then wanted to go rushing ahead to look for more though there wasn’t going to be any for some time

Farhad was a lot better behaved on this day, though he was worried about Isham going ahead, though Isham just said he was anyway and did so, saying he’d leave his bag as a marker if he made a turn, which he did

When we got back to the mines there was a little horseshoe of an outcrop just down from the bush at the top of the big hill (not the mountain from before, just under 600m) with a path down one side to other levels of the mine and a river falling down the other, that’s where we slept, with the bush shearing away from the mines in a V shape before us and the plains bellow us over which the sunset

Sadeeq and Farhad slept in their tents while the rest of us slept in the open

The outcrop was so small that we just all fit and we were a little worried Nour, nearest the edge, might roll off the edge in the night

The next day we made our way back to town and went to a cafe

We all ate toasted sandwiches from there except Isham who insisted to Sadeeq in Arabic that we shouldn’t (not muslim)

We went to the pools which opened at 10 but Sadeeq refused to go in saying that there were women

The rest of us went in with Farhad coming last

Farhad announced that we were leaving in an hour which pissed me off, originally we were supposed to stay the whole day but Sadeeq informed me during the trip that Farhad had to be back for a meeting with his family

Then Isham wanted to be back for Jumma prayer, and I agreed to leave at 12

I told Farhad that Sadeeq was a grown man and could wait, when Farhad bluntly said we were leaving at 11 I said I’ll leave at 12,

I then told him to just leave my bags and I’d catch a bus if he was just going to leave me

Nour asked how much a bus would be

isham said he wanted to leave at 12

I asked for a compromise and said 11.30

When that didn’t work I told Farhad in an angry voice that he babied people, and something else along those lines and left the spa to go to another pool, after a few minutes Nour followed and the Isham who smiled and said he thought we could stay

Farhad, left by himself, left the pools altogether and took Sadeeq somewhere to entertain him I guess

Farhad had asked Isham what Sadeeq had said, and Sadeeq had said from the begining that he was happy to wait

I talked to Farhad a bit in the car then asked if I could turn on the quran, he said yes and we listened to that on the way back, sometimes both Farhad and I sung along

Hamayatullah gave the khutbah which was about loving and following Mohammed

During the trip Farhad had been asking Sadeeq all these questions about islam, like about if the other prophets were in the grave or heavens as Mohammed had seen some of them in the heavens when he went on that journey

Isham had also told me about people faking to be Mujahidin like the aljearan army pretending to be Mujahidin and massacring villages

——————————————————————————————

One night (can’t recall night) prior to 19th of May Exercise Mt Roskill

Suhaib

Tuesday the 19th of May Swimming and exercise Mt Roskill

Thursday the 21st of May exercise Al Manar

Boxing

Friday the 22nd of May Jummah At Taqwa

Before I got the mosque I saw Adam from Mt Eden

He said that he hadn’t come for the Jumma, just to pick up some money

He said he wouldn’t have come to this mosque otherwise

After the prayer he was standing with the guys who were collecting money while his book was on sale (he’s just finished the NZ version)

Arrived in the mosque after Anwar had started talking

He was talking about how in the media you see everyone talking about global warming and animal rights

He talked quite a bit about these things and thought that some of them were “beautiful” and others out of our hands as humans

He said that Islam was first with animal rights etc.

He said that there was no focus on Allah’s rights in the media

That was his point, that the media is ignoring Allah’s rights and focusing too much on the rights of Allah’s creation, that there needs to be more discussion about Allah’s rights

He talked about the rights that we have upon is for a while, listing them

He said we were going to be talking about some of these rights in later khutbahs

He asked us if we thought it was against the rights of women for them to wear hijab

He made a small dua for the mujahidin

After prayer I talked to Ishrar and apparently they were going to go visit Farhad after lunch as he had just had his operation

I was playing table tennis with Dawood when Anwar, Sadeeq and Sheikh Qaasem (think it was him) came down from upstairs (was quite a while since prayer by then)

Sadeeq asked said hello and asked how I was doing

Amir, Ishrar, Dawood and myself went to a Lebanese place

They actually had real burning coals with a fan blowing across them in a stainless steel trough (very authentic), but beef smelled/tasted bad, bread was cold and damp, rice filled vegetables weren’t seemed sad. Kebab Amir ordered was nice and so was the minced chicken kebab though

They were concerned about the meat being hallal and asked the lady working there where she gets it from

She mentioned someone who they didn’t know but they knew the people when she mentioned more names

They had a Jesus statue on one of their fridges

I asked when Fauzan’s coming back, I don’t know if Dawood heard me properly as he replied that he was in Australia

I said that I had to give him the second part of Awlaqi’s Medina series

Dawood said (in a loud voice) “is that the guy who talks about Jihad”

I said that he speaks his mind and complimented him for doing so regardless of the circumstances

I said he talks about the life of the Prophet, or whatever he is talking about, and while doing so applies what he is talking about to what is going on now

I said he treats it as relevant, as it should be

Farhad was at his mum’s place at 2 Shrar St Dannemora (can’t find on map, remembered Shrar because the spelling was like Israr’s name without I)

Quite a few guys from the mosque live around Dannemora, heard it mentioned a few times and Ishrar also lives there I’m sure

Farhad’s operation was ok apparently however his meniscus couldn’t be salvaged but he said that he still should be ok as long as the rehab went well

He has to exercise many times a day

The others were visiting him as a part of “Friend’s of the sick”, a mosque group which they had funds for and they gave him a book that Farhad was expecting

Farhad seemed happy to see us and in good spirits

Apparently there had been some consternation over female nurses and hospital underwear and we talked about that

I told him about the second part of Awlaqi’s Medina series coming out, and said I’d give him a copy (owe a few people copies now, really should get the CD’s and burn them all one)

Amir saw a book about important people in the past or something and he knew quite a few of them, he knows quite a bit of stuff that guy

Earlier he had been saying that there were so many things he wanted to read that he didn’t know where to start, I suggested he listen to Awlaqi first

Also, I never notice him paying for anything, people seem to pay for him

At the restaurant they were talking about what he would need to run a Kebab place at At Taqwa

I saw his room recently (was getting kickboxing pads for Yusef to keep in his car) and it is packed with stuff

He is quite active around the mosque, perhaps he plans on continuing on like this, perhaps learning more and playing a bigger part in the future (a guess)

We went and prayed Asr at At Taqwa***

Friday the 29th of May Jummah At Taqwa

Both this Friday and the last I felt like there were less people than normal attending, normally the carpet at the side is full, but it wasn’t last time and this time I remember one person on it and I was near him

Went to At Taqwa, I would have been a bit late but Yusef said he would pick me up from the station

I had called him about exercising on Friday night (I had a test and assignment due in the week and thought I’d be able to arrange something for Friday) but he said they had family commitments and we’d have to wait till Sunday (I’ll go then)

Yusef was at the mosque when I arrived but came to get me straight away

Sheikh Anwar started the Khutbah by talking about how in business people keep records of their bottom line and their sales and purchases and everything

He said we should do that with religion, he said that we should tick off all the things that we have done that we needed to.

He went through the daily prayers etc.

He detailed a day of someone who was lazy to pray Fajr, then shy to pray at work etc., he compared that to someone who could tick everything

He included lots of things in a category for what you had to do, and had other things as extras, saying that the things you had to do are your spiritual rights that you have to yourself

He said there were also physical rights, and went on about looking after your moustache and eating good food and exercising

He said that we’d be held to account if we didn’t look after our bodies and do right by them

He said that our body parts would testify against us

He made a longer dua then last time for the Mujahidin and mentioned Palestine and the Jews

Fauzan is back from Sydney, the first thing he said to me when he saw me was “Where’s my CD?”

I apologised for not brining it that day, he asked me if I had it and said yes and that I’d bring it inshallah

Fauzan was helping with collections

There was a new NZ guide book for Muslims

They were doing that collection for Pakistan

Ishrar asked if I wasn’t staying and I said that I had to go, but would go for lunch next week inshallah (I had to hand in assignment)

I got a lift with Yusef, the Afghani guy was with him and we met another guy from their area of the world
\

Friday the 23rd of January Jumma At Taqwa

Sheikh Anwar started off the lecture by saying that he was going to give the devils talk or something to that effect

What it ended up that he meant was that he was going to lecture about a talk given by the devil to the inhabitants of hell

Sounded strange the way he introduced it though he seems to like trying to shock people

The story goes that the devil will say to the people of the hell fire that they cannot blame him for their fate, that he only called them to polytheism and sin, he had no power over them, and that they followed him of their own free will

Anwar warned us that we do not want be of the people hearing this speech as it will only be for the people of hell

Anwar said that those brothers who say that they committed such and such sin because of the devil were liars, as is proved by this verse of the quran, all of which is true

He said you don’t have to be a scientist to understand this stuff

He said something about the water of the Zamzam well in Makka that is supposed to be holy, that it has been “scientifically proven” that it contains so much salt that if it were any other water you would die if you drank it

He said something about people who had oppressed others in some way (can’t remember how) being whipped with cow whips, then he said what about the Jews and the like who are oppressing the Palestinians, what would their fate be like?

He also said that Mohammed said there would be women who appear naked even thought they wear clothes, he mentioned short clothing, tight clothing

He said that women who wore their hair up would get some extra specially bad punishment (can’t remember if he specified it), and a reason for this is that they made themselves appear taller than they really were

He mentioned from the quran about people who fight in Jihad with their persons and their wealth would go to paradise

He exhorted us to give money for Gaza, and for the Fiji flood victims

He made a prayer asking god to give victory to the mujahideen, those who fought to make his word higher (enforce Islamic law), and some prayers for destroying the Jews, breaking apart the coalition of Kufar nations

Dawood, Ishrar, Amir, were collecting

I left for home to take Rainbow to the vet, Abdullah Iraqi gave me a lift to
the train station and we talked about the shoulder injury that I had got on Wednesday

Friday the 30th of January Jumma At Taqwa

This khutbah was a bit weird, he kept talking about how we know about baby cots, and he went on about it many times talking about the different types of fabrics and how soft they were, he kept coming back to this example, and giving lots of other examples about what we know a lot about taking care of babies (including Islamic crap you’re supposed to do)

Somehow he managed to fit in something about how people said that it was dangerous to sleep with the baby in your bed because you might crush them, but that the reason it is dangerous now, as it wasn’t in the past apparently, is that all the mothers are drunk

He said it was scientifically proven that the cot was better though, WTF?!?

He said that life had three stages, this world, the grave, and then the hereafter

He said that the hereafter was forever and emphasised its importance

He said that we don’t know how to get ready for the grave, that we expect others to arrange and know everything

He gave heaps of examples and really laboured the point

In the end he said that they had bought grave yards locally and that they wanted the congregation to pay for them, either buy their own grave or someone else’s

He said that if you do it Allah will forgive your sins 40 times

He said that it any profit would be used to buy more graves, that it isn’t a business venture

After the talk I chatted with Sadeeq and Ali Abas who were both leaving for Aus (as per days I text you)

Their are both staying in the same place, think they called something like Illum in Sydney

Sadeeq has work lined up as a painter and a place to stay that someone else has vacated

Ali said maybe he could rent a place with a separate unit outside (which I guess means Ali is taking his wife) and Sadeeq could stay there

Ali said he did factory work there, that there were places where they would give you work on a job by job basis, like packing plastic bags or something

Ali said he had done a lot of that

Sadeeq said he had done it, don’t think he had liked it

He asked about just doing it in the weekends, Ali said yes

I pretended I was a little upset that Ali was going too, and said they should both stay, and that there needs to be people supporting the mosque

Amir was there, he sat down later in the conversation and said he’d be there

Sheikh Anwar mentioned to people who were there that Sadeeq was leaving

I said goodbye, Fauzan’s brother talked to him for a while

I asked Sadeeq if there were good mosques in Sydney, he said there were two good ones, Salafi, one started with “rot” something I think

Farhad had already gone so I called him and he came back for lunch and to say goodbye to Sadeeq

Farhad suggested Amir so I went and got him

Sadeeq dropped his car at a friend’s garage to have second hand tires put on it (for free I think)

Then we went to Lazy Cactus, which is one of the sponsors of the At Taqwa calander

They have an old bearded Afghani guy there who makes the pizzas slowly, he made one for Sadeeq to take away

We talked about the war on Gaza

Sadeeq has listened to online lectures about it

Farhad said that we can’t blame the Kufar for what’s happening, it’s the Muslims who should be defending Gaza

Sadeeq agreed saying that it the Arabs need to do something

Farhad doesn’t buy coke products

Sadeeq asked if Anwar was the same, Farhad didn’t think so

Sadeeq said trade is allowed, I said that Islam spread a lot through trade

I said that the Sahaba suffered through boycotts against them and that Mohammed never used them

I said that I didn’t like democratic protests and boycotts, that we had Jihad and sending money and preaching about Jihad to deal with these things

I said it was good Farhad still drank coke though, as some people made the mistake of making it haram, Sadeeq agreed that it is not

We talked a bit about the hiking, Farhad said how much easier the last day was, Sadeeq said it was actually longer and steeper, I added to that, but Farhad talked over us and I didn’t bother to press the point, everyone including Farhad knew that the last day was different because of the way we hiked, compared to the first day when he kept stopping, it’s interesting that he seems, in this situation, to have such a fragile ego, perhaps he is not the type who can be a leader and take risks in putting his position forward if he is so worried about something as trivial as this

Monday the 9th of February Arabic At Taqwa

I arrived in the mosque and looked about me expressionlessly and casually, almost looked past Fauzan,then made big eyes at him and beamed, looked uncertain, went toward him

He looked a little satisfied by my reaction to seeing him but stayed where he was reading the quran before prayer

I went upstairs and came back

Went over to Fauzan to talk to him and asked if he was back, he said just for holiday and that he had three weeks left, I said all praise to god (arabic)

He said the studies are going well, the students are disciplined and know when to study and when to relax

They have freedom but they have curfews, they are sometimes checked on by the staff

He has lost quite a bit of weight, you can see it in his face, he attributed it to the spice less food, but said he put on some weight at the end

He went to Makka to make the minor pilgrimage
He seemed very impressed with everything, said it is a different world

He had two books with him that weren’t very big but he had completed both of them while over there

He came to the Arabic class that night after leaving for a while

Anwar gave a little talk after Magrib, it was about the hadith that says you can’t greet a Kafir

He said you can for dawa, and to be polite

He said sometimes rules are different for example if you are in NZ compared to a UAE that is “supposed to be a muslim country)

He said about the hadith that says you should walk in the middle of the road and make the kufar move aside that if you did that in South Auckland to a big Islander we know what would happen

He said that they hadn’t secured the graves yet so we shouldn’t do that (a joke)

Farhad dropped me home and took Ishrar for the ride

Ishrar dropped his car off at BP and I ended up telling Farhad about how Israeli politicians were openly announcing their intentions to commit war crimes

He said something about everyone waiting for Obama to do something, he looks down on such a view

I said Obama could be worse than Bush, that he was extremely pro Israel (mentioned his chief of staff & vice president choice, his statements on Israe, (I may have said some of this not at this time but earlier with Sadeeq there)), and said that while Bush had weakened America Obama could perhaps make the country stronger

With Ishrar in the car we mainly talked about economics and corporate crimes, I told them about Bohpal

Also

Farhad said he is thinking of going to Aussie too

Sadeeq said he’s coming back in three months to go with Anwar to Europe for the mosque

Expenses:

5 x train 5.7 = $28.5
Hamas terrorist contribution = $10
Lunch = $10
Woosh = $80
Vodafone x 3 = $360

1.$488.5[

27th March Friday At Taqwa Jumma

Sheikh Anwar’s lecture was a little different than normal, he stated the topic of the lecture clearly at the beginning and stuck to his theme

I was early and sat at the front reading quran before it started

Dawood gave the adthan even though Fauzan was there, he’s getting better and puts in lots of that wailing sounding stuff

I recorded the lecture so basically he said that the Sahaba used to make big sacrifices for the religion and for each other, he mentioned about how when the Muslims migrated to Medina that the Ansar gave them lots of property and help until they were taking care of themselves

He talked about Muhammed even though he had so many wives and houses that sometimes he didn’t have any food to give guests and how once a companion of his took some guests home and his when asked the wife said she only had enough food for the children so he said to put them to sleep, he turned off the light and the guest ate while thinking that his host was too but he just pretended

Muhammed came in the morning having had the affair related to him by god and said god was happy with what he did the night before

He mentioned some scholar who when insulted gave all this stuff to the person who insulted him and was nice to him

He said the way they react to their, for example, wives or whatever is very different now

He this story about a battle where all these dying people were offered water and refused in favour of someone else until the guy went back to the first and he was dead and they all died before drinking

He mentioned something else from a battle too I think

He said we have to be merciful and sacrifice

He asked if we were not concerned about all the kufar that are going to hell and said we should sacrifice some time for them

He said we shouldn’t be comfortable with Muslims who don’t practice and we should try to help them

He said that whenever someone has a problem they come to him but that hardly ever someone comes to him about converting someone or brings him a kafir

He said people shouldn’t give religious verdicts to anyone, but that they should take them to him

Amir, Dawood, Farhad and I went for lunch

At lunch I talked to them about stuff I had learnt in physics and said I thought it was proof of God because there is no way to explain why things have inertia or why some states of atoms should be stable and form the chemical basis for everything, I explained some stuff and kept asking them questions which I knew they would get wrong

Farhad was initially interested but started bowing his head and looking uncomfortable so I told him that at in class the lecturer always asked us questions which we almost always got wrong before explaining them

Farhad seemed to like hearing that and asked if I meant the lecturer was asking me personally, I said the whole class but I something answer but always think about my answer in my head

Dawood got sick of it really quickly and didn’t seem to like science, or the time that he had studied it as a child, he was interested at first though

He kept making jokes that things he was touching wanted to move

I told him them that you can make poisonous gas with bleach and chlorine, that it would tear you apart from the inside and that they should be careful about ever mixing chemicals at home

Farhad has been doing correspondence Islamic studies through some Ozzie school and apparently there is going to be a Saudi embassy and some Islamic education thing opening on queen st?

Farhad had stopped doing it for a while or something but was going to start again

Farhad talked about Zionism and said it was more of a political movement, I said he was absolutely right and he liked that.

He said that only 300,000 Jews had died in the Holocaust, he kind of paused after saying that, perhaps he realised that 300,000 is still an awfully large number of people

He said that if you looked at the Jewish population statistics from the countries at the time that there simply wasn’t the number of Jews there to kill

He said there was also no evidence of gas chambers

I thought about correcting him and saying that while it was a terrible thing it doesn’t really matter how many of them died, they have no right to what they are doing but then remembered how much he would probably dislike me saying that so didn’t

He said that the Zionists actively chose mainly healthy young people to populate Isreal, actively turning away even Jews from Germany

I said that Zionism wasn’t just about Palestine, but that they wanted a greater Israel which included parts of Lebanon, Syria, Jordon, and the Sanai. I said that’s why they attacked the Arabs so many times and why they tried to hold Lebanon, the Golan Heights and the Sinai

I said that the whole purpose of the Zionists is to capture the land and clear the Palestinians from it and that is the program they have been actively following from the beginning, the program has been explicitly stated and acted upon throughout their history, that they used to bomb trains, baby carriages, that they even bombed ships taking Jews to other places (though I didn’t interpret this in respect to what Farhad had said about them being selective to spare his feelings)

Farhad is said he’d go to a documentary screening of “Occupation 101” and Dawood seemed to know it

Dawood said something about learning a lot about Politics and Science, we had to leave because he had to do something (he really did)

In the car they were listening to the cricket and talking about that a lot

After the others had left the car I asked Farhad if he was going past the station and to drop me off.

I asked him who was organising seeing the film and he said that it was some org. called al Hikma

I said that I thought that was good because I didn’t like being involved with the kufar supporting us

He seemed a little interested in that and said “Really” or something

I said it was probably good but didn’t want to be involved

I asked him if he had seen any of the videos from Chechnya

He said no

I said I’d give him a copy of one

I also asked him to just not give it to anyone

He was a bit surprised and said really?

He asked who made it

I said it had been made by the Mujahideen

He asked if it was clips or something

I said it was from 2000 after the Russians invaded in 1999.

I said I had first watched it in Egypt and that it was one of the best videos I had seen

I said it was pretty much all pitched battles

I told him that there is one bit where you see the Russians commandos talking and joking around in the forest while gun fire was going off in the background and they were about to join the combat and the next shot is of their dead bodies, exactly the same people who were in the Russian video

He liked that and agreed that they must have got it off the Russians after killing them

I asked how the Arabic lessons were going, he said Sheikh Anwar doesn’t always come if he has something else to do and after I said that I had just been so busy but still wanted to come he said that he didn’t know if it was worth it for me to come all that way, I said that if I didn’t go that I didn’t do anything so I still wanted to go, he agreed and I asked him about the guy who was going to get us video files he had downloaded online from a site from Ozzie I think that had taught the classes and loaded them, he said he was still going to get them

Just remembered: Farhad was talking about this program to teach businesses involved with providing services to Muslims, he said they were inviting the police too, he said that the idea was to give dawa to them, try to convert them in other words, and that he was worried they’d send Muslims and that would not be as good, he thinks it is important that they can ask questions, he talked about it as if he were personally involved

Just a note on my method. I try to highlight both positive and negative interpersonal interactions. The negative events (e.g. with Farhad) are much rarer and so probably are overrepresented in my reports at times. I try to describe relevant behaviour and events so that you can make better use of the information in terms of interpreting it without having my personal opinion infer (as much as it’s possible to exclude the influence of my perspective). I try to report on my impression management by presenting my behaviour as I intended it to be interpreted or thought it was interpreted (of cause I could be wrong). I try to describe how people respond to me with observations I can see and hear, like someone hesitating, reporting what they say, trying to accurately describe their tone of voice etc. I try to make my interpretations brief, logical, distinct (so you can ignore it where desired) and to a minimum. I try not to make excuses for peoples’ apparent “weaknesses” as I don’t find it relevant and think that it helps to compare the harsh expectations that I would formally have had of a Muslim given a fighter’s lifestyle with their behaviour.

Friday the 10th of April Jummah At Taqwa, soccer Panmure

Audio file included in CD for Khutbah

After Khutbah was asked by Ishrar if I was going to game, went with Abdullah Iraqi

On the way to the soccer game Amir said that Farhad hadn’t been around the mosque so much, he was responding to me asking after Farhad and his job status, Amir seemed to think he had some work going

At the soccer game Fouzan said that one of the teams that was initially playing he wanted to lose and we should want them to lose as they had a problem with them before

Apparently they had played that team and lost and then complained about a Shia being on their team as Shia is not Muslim

They called in Sheikh Anwar and others who agreed and kicked this guy out of tournament and reversed outcome (second example of win via protest for At Taqwa)

The manager of that team then complained that At Taqwa (counties Manakau) weren’t alhlel sunnah wal kitab (rightly guided Muslims) as they were Salafi

Apparently it when on for a year and FIANZ became involved, Fauzan said that the soccer organisers knew it made no sense but had to go through procedures

I expressed disgust and hoped they’d lose

At Taqwa lost, apparently some old players not playing and Arabs and Indians don’t practice together and so don’t function well as team even though some individual talent

Abdullah Iraqi was annoyed he wasn’t used after making the effort to turn up and the game went so bad

I had talked to Fauzan quite a bit about arranging hike

Saturday the 25th of April

# There was a lot of topics brought up in the duration of this report and I cannot guarantee the chronology of the following, though should be able to confirm or shed light on a specific area if asked or even try to get it in better arrangement, just won’t bother unless useful

Had text Fauzan about location of hike, he replied with an indefinite description of the hike, he said it was 18kms, but two different tracks were 18kms and the final decision was discussed on the day

Fauzan picked me up from Quay St opposite the ferry terminal just before 7am

Riyad and the chubby young guy who he had brought to kickboxing were in the back seats

I sat in the front and chatted with Fauzan

He said there were more people supposed to come but that Dawood, for example, even though he was the one who initially suggested the hike, didn’t come

Dawood said he had work to do and said something about the weather

Fauzan was worried about getting stuck in bad weather

He said that people fell over last time when it was slippery at Goldie Bush, Fauzan was the only one who had a serious fall, and it wasn’t exactly life threatening

The weather however wasn’t so good this day either, potentially it was worse, yet he was still doing it

We spent almost the whole time talking about Jihad, not in front of the other two openly but we talked about it constantly

Fauzan said that Awlaqi had completed the second part of Mohammed’s history, and that someone would make it available online no doubt soon

I said that Yusef would be happy about that, that he brought the CDs to the camps and we always listened to them

Fauzan expressed moderate surprise to that but wouldn’t be surprised at all if he knew how much Yusef likes the CDs

I speculated about there being any difference with Awlaqi’s style or voice, he said he heard a sample (it is for sale) and that his tone is a little different, we commented on what he had perhaps been through

I told Fauzan about the Jaheem Arous video and about the Russian commandos that could be seen killed after the showing of the Russians’ own video

Fauzan liked this

Fauzan talked about videos he had seen

When we arrived Fauzan asked us about which way to go, throughout the hike he would get everyone’s opinion and hesitate before making a decision for us

I didn’t follow the map and when he kept asking me my opinion, I told him I wasn’t following the map, he defiantly did not have an offensive leadership style (I would say the same if he had not bothered to ask as he had arranged it all, simply better character than Farhad for example)

For a long time Fauzan asked me to go first and I set the pace and made it pretty quick so that Fauzan and the chubby guy had trouble keeping up, Riyad is a bit of a high school athlete and looks in good shape, he seemed undisturbed

Fauzan did mention getting sore and this being a hard workout

Fauzan said something to us all about me making it hard for us (positive way)

We were talking about Jihad and stuff and after Fauzan brought up something about videos of Iraqi mujahideen countering American IED detection technology and embarrassing them

I said that as per what Allah said we should prepare what we can of military capability

I said technology was important and mentioned the American’s jet fighter electrical systems information being stolen, and about the uses of science for making weapons, I said that black powder could be made out of sugar and charcoal instead of whatever is usually used instead of sugar, that you could make poisonous gases our of chlorine and ammonium, that some of the most reactive substances were available for five year olds to buy, he looked hesitant and I told him that the Iraqis not only had this kind of simple stuff but all sorts of munitions

Fauzan said that what we were doing was at least something towards what the mujahideen were doing

I also talked about Khatab from Chechnya

Fauzan knew the story, about how he had travelled overland from Afghanistan etc. but not that he was poisoned, or that he was part of a Chechnyan government before the 1999 Russian invasion

I told him about the Russian dissident that was poisoned in Europe with a minute amount of radioactive material of which a gram could kill 50,000 people or more if spread evenly (something like that at least), and that this guy had it put in his tea

Previously after Fauzan had said about getting ready for Jihad he had also said that he had an intention to do this for God, and that we would get many rewards for doing this

I said that I thought that the haidth where Mohammed said that Allah loves a strong believer more than a weak one did actually refer to physical (given equal Iman/faith) strength

Fauzan agreed with me

He later told the others that we would be rewarded for having done the hike if our intention was for Allah, to be strong to better worship him, he gave examples like praying more etc.

He also said that he and I had talked about something and told them about the hadith where Allah likes a strong believer and said that there was a tendency to assume that Muslims didn’t have the right to defend themselves

The other two didn’t say anything in response and neither did I (we were in car on way back) don’t think Fauzan really expected us to say anything though coz didn’t seem to worry him

Fauzan said that he wants to do a couple of more hikes and then do a bigger one at National Park in July or something

He asked the others about going too, he also asked them about starting kickboxing, he said they were supposed to start yesterday but didn’t because he didn’t think it was a good idea to be sore for the hike coz he hadn’t done any exercise (I had a test in class which is very close to Jummah time so couldn’t go)

They were keen about National Park, said “inshallah” about kickboxing

Isham should go to that and Fauzan suggested that Muhammed “and them” would come

Fauzan continually said prayers while hiking, once yelled our “Allah u Akbar” at the top of his voice at the top of a hill

He asked other people (Asian hikers) questions and greeted everybody with a very confident extroverted style

He said that in the first camp (which he thought I had attended, whereas I attended the second and third) they met a wedding party while they climbed a steep hill and they had been drinking or something and they asked them what they were doing in a smart arse way and Fauzan had replied that they were training and that they shut up after this

I said we saw this biker when we were at Waitakeries to view moon for Ramadan and he was drunk, had to push his bike up a steep hill to start it, then got stuck at the bottom of the hill because he did a burn out and stalled, he said he didn’t need help and later he went speeding past us at a ridiculous speed after pushing it up the hill again (no helmet, we were doing 100, he was at least twice as fast on winding road), I said this was a waste of a young man’s energy and Fauzan agreed

Fauzan said quite a few times that he was sore from the hiking, though he seemed to enjoy himself

The hike didn’t take so long due to the speed we went at (official estimates not for young men alone), and Fauzan set a good pace when he was in front too

I told Fauzan something about Obama (same stuff I kept telling people in old reports) and he sounded positive about Obama mentioning his freeing Guantanimo prisoners

I agreed that that was good however I said that I thought Bush was incompetent and that he weakened America, that he was a dividing force amongst the Kufar as many of them didn’t like him

I said that I thought that Obama might be a means by which Allah makes America powerful again because he is a lot more capable

It was Fauzan who asked me who I preferred (I answered Bush), he did consider my argument though and didn’t have anything to add once I explained my position

I said it was a decision between a weaker if worse ruler or a stronger and more capable ruler of America whose greater effectiveness may ultimately result in more Muslims in jail compared to the relatively small number imprisoned in Guantanimo

I also talked about the Jews, Zionism, the race conference, Isreali crimes, etc., so did Fauzan

Fauzan mentioned his cousin and how he wanted to join the NZ amry

Fauzan said he asked him what he would do if he was told to fight against his brothers in Afghanistan, his cousin said they were wrong and he would fight them

Fauzan said that he told his cousin that he was in danger in terms of his religion etc. and should come back to it, Fauzan explained that this guy grew up in a Western lifestyle (think he even told the others a version of
this story before talking about the assumption that Muslims can’t defend themselves)

I said something about spies (I think it was in regard to and following Fauzan telling me privately about his cousin), Fauzan didn’t comment to me mentioning spies

We talked about Pakistan and I said about how important what was happening there (this was when we were talking about being strong) was and how we were taking over the country, Sharia, mujahideen taking areas, Red mosque guy returning to Islamabad, and that Pakistan had the most powerful Muslim army, that they had nukes, and that we could potentially take over the government

We ended up talking about Sufis and about the Mujahideen being Salafi (though I always and consistently avoid using the word, preferring using the definition to define my beliefs to avoid specifying membership to a different group, he’ll have noticed this and I’m sure it doesn’t bother him)

Fauzan questioned what version of Sharia would be established

I said that Sharia may continue to be established regionally and we agreed that we thought that it was a problem

I suggested that perhaps it was good that it looked like it was going to be established regionally and we agreed that it was only possible to reach consensus if they referred to the Quran and Sunnah

Fauzan was saying that some people criticised the Taliban for things that weren’t true, he seemed to suggest that some of it may be true and he agreed with that judgement, he talked about beating women and education (kind of strange how he talked, very cautious), I agreed that the Taliban made some mistakes but said that they are so much closer to Islam than any other governments and that a lot of the Mujahideen follow the Quran and Sunnah, Fauzan agreed that of course they were overall very good

On the way home we saw a group of Navy guys (he calls people armies and navies, it was ANZAC day), he sounded the vehicle’s horn and we kind of exchanged waves with them, Fauzan said that we should have shouted “We’re coming!” out the window

I was a little surprised how he talked around the others but he seemed excited and I relaxed a little and remember talking about things in a way I wouldn’t usually (the others could probably hear some of what I said about some controversial issue)

Before the end of the hike we went to waterfall

Fauzan jumped in, spent ages in the freezing water, I didn’t go in even though I kind of said I would when the other two wanted the three of us to go (they both went, I apologised later and made an excuse about shorts even though Fauzan could let me use his wet ones after he finished and the others were still in the water, I don’t like cold water, and I’m always pushing everyone coz I am often instructing or something, so don’t mind them pushing me to do something, I think they’d reckon I’d go in if I really wanted to, Fauzan asked me if I’d rescue him if he had trouble and I said of course

Enjoyable day all things considered 

Also Fauzan said that 12,000 believers can beat any army (think that was the number, he quoted hadith or something) and that so many Mujahideen had been brought together in Iraq but story seemed to trail off, think he said something about Zakawi (maybe not)

Friday the 1st of May Jummah At Tawa and Dawa meeting

Was a bit late for Khutbah

Still got to hear quite a bit of it

Shiekh Anwar was going on about science

He said that science had proved heaps of stuff said by Islam

He said the Mohammed said that there is a cure for every disease

Mohammed said if a fly falls in your soup or something to dip it in again because the medicine is one the other wing or something

Anwar said that often this is the case that the disease carrier also carries the cure

He said some weird story about someone getting poisoned by some animal and being treated with a fluid from another part of the animal’s body

He said that some Sheikh who is involved in science has figured out the cure for aids

He said some other hard to follow story where this Sheikh wanted to give away the cure for everyone to use and someone stopping him because they didn’t want people to know that a Muslim found this out

By the way, I was talking to Arief and he said the Anwar called him saying that he got dizzy and faint especially after prayer and asked if Arief had anything for that

Arief told him to see his doctor urgently

We had been talking about Fauzan coming back and who was available if something happened to Anwar

Anwar talked about swine flu and it seemed he was suggesting that what was happening was a result of disobeying god and god’s greater knowledge of medicine etc.

After the prayer I got out a Quran and started reading

Farhad came over to do something and we started talking

We went to lunch, left early, he told the others we were going to Malaysian (he has to go back to work)

Farhad is working for the old place he used to have a contract with and seems happy if not ecstatic about it

He has trimmed his beard so now it is shorter than mine, nothing like before

I remember that he went to an office Christmas party, he said he stayed to fix computers and that they were getting drunk

Perhaps the atmosphere effects him

Farhad asked me why I hadn’t told him about the hike, I said that I didn’t organise anything, that I assumed he knew. Somehow I had to keep answering this question, I also added that I thought his knee was bust and he couldn’t go, and that I was too busy to help organise

We had food, he said that the Occupation 101 was good but badly organised, started late and only left 5min for panel discussion

The other’s eventually arrived when we had almost finished, there was Fauzan, Dawood, Amir, Ishrar

Farhad sat looking at them when they were ordering and then said he had to go and went and briefly said buy to the others

I said to Fauzan that Farhad wanted to go next time (he said that too when I told him plan)

Fauzan argued with Dawood, Fauzan said he decided not to announce it openly

Dawood said something about Farhad not being someone who’d be effected by that decision

Fauzan said he had asked Farhad or something (they were talking in a mix of Fijian Indian and English, I am sure of what they said but can’t be of the finer detail of meaning especially when coupled with the general doubtful nature of memories)

Fauzan then turned to me and asked me if Farhad had said he hadn’t been invited, he had but I didn’t hesitate much before insisting that Farhad and I had been talking about the next trip, not about whether he was invited to the last one (Farhad wants to go, he’s having a knee operation in three weeks) he wants to go on hike in two weeks (he’s going to aussie next weekend)

I’m not concluding that there is a serious strain in Farhad’s relationship with anyone, just interesting

The Malaysian food is pretty meagre and so I ate again with the others

Fauzan even asked a waitress if “this was it” in reference to a chicken curry

The manager was very eager to please and Dawood said to him that Fauzan was the one complaining

Dawood offered his help when the manager said he had some problem in contacting FIANZ but they seemed to end up telling him to keep calling FIANZ

I went with Dawood, Fauzan, Amir to Dawood’s place

He is paying interest on the property, and says he is going to sell it even though he likes it

He says that he has got a nice sick? Old lady tenant (in separate unit) though he doesn’t like her close line that stretches across the car park about a meter above the ground, Fauzan said to take it down

Dawood has been waiting for six months or something for an Islamic financing company to come through but they kept telling him to wait and now to wait till after the financial trouble

Dawood has his apartment that I have been to before and also a large shed in which he has a sitting area (four couches), a study, and room for plenty of storage and the spa pool that Amir and Fauzan drained (with containers for quite a while) we dried it and Fauzan tried to remove some gunge

Dawood was talking like he was their boss and they were working for him, Dawood didn’t help at all except when we moved it into the garage onto its platform

Dawood told me his friend had offered it to him after his marriage split up and Dawood rang his friend who had a truck and the guy was near by, from the way Dawood described it it sounded like he pretty much told this guy to go get the spa and take it to him

It was outside coz it had been fixed after leaking

Dawood wants to build a deck and put up curtains

Dawood invited me to use the spa anytime, Fauzan made some joke about him being scared about someone being left with Dawood alone as Dawood is single, and Fauzan said he was worried about him

Those two are very close and are very comfortable talking to each other

Farhad had seen a plastic box he liked and which Dawood was keeping a stack of curtains in

Farhad said he was taking in, they joked around, he ended up taking it and Dawood didn’t care, Dawood also gave him a “industrial” or something printer, which looked pretty old though bulky and for an office

I was with Dawood in his car while the other two were in Fauzan’s vehicle

Dawood really wants to get married, he is still having trouble with his “very religious” Indian wife

He has found an Indian girl who he likes the look of and who also has a child from a previous marriage

He wants her but also wants a Pakistani girl

His current wife apparently made it a condition of marriage that she would leave him if he married again and I told him even if he said yes to something like that that he can’t actually agree to something like that as Islam allows 4 wives (contradicts Islamic law)

He agreed and said the current girl would probably make such a condition but he’s sure she would give it up if he did marry again once she was in NZ

I waited around till the meeting after Isha about Dawa (Fauzan had called me and asked me to go)

I had a nap from Asr till Magrib and after that read Quran till Isha

Amir is very busy about the place doing stuff for the mosque

Muhammed Tunisi and his Somali friend were there

Farhad didn’t go

Fauzan (in audience), Shamir (note taker), Sadeeq, Hamayatullah, Mohammed Thompson, Amran Ali, Asish,

Sheikh Anwar started off by talking about how we focus too much on the Medinan period (after the Sahaba migrated to Medina)

He said that when the Muslims conquered Makka there was no bloodshed

He compared that victory to victories where terms were negotiated (there were none in that conquest as they took Makka by surprise)

Anwar said no to expect a Makkan style conquest here

Someone mentioned having programs for non muslims and Anwar said there had been such plans but they hadn’t materialised

He said he wanted people to preach to non Muslims who they know and bring them to him but doesn’t happen much

He said that we were doing above average on dawa to Muslims (i.e. the services they generally provide), but that we needed to do better in dawa to non Muslims

He said not to worry about results, even when you are about to die, that the results are with Allah

Mohammed Thompson was asked for his opinion and he said basically that bad Muslims were bad and that we need to give a good example though he thought that it was better when a bad Muslim pretended he wasn’t one so as to not defame Islam

Sheikh Anwar basically said that we are ok

Someone made a suggestion about the website (they’ve had problems with someone distant doing it and not being done well)

Now Ayub Kashmiri is doing it

I suggested advertising the website through the internet more and making youtube account

They talked about having a stand at different markets

Anwar seemed to decide about that, that they were going to target different markets (Otara, Papatoetoe, etc.)

Muhammed Tunisi said that we should stick around at the different markets and not keep changing so that people can follow up face to face

Anwar seemed like he wasn’t going to consider that too much but Muhammed Thompson backed him up

Anwar wanted Shamir to contact us in a month and find out when we wanted to do it, he said he wanted knowledgeable people with less knowledgeable to be able to deal with questions

Fauzan said we needed more than the suggested 2 at places like Otara, he said that there is Christian preaching there and they are pretty staunch with people carrying crosses about on their backs etc. Anwar seemed to agree

Hamyatullah also had some suggestions which I can’t remember but were probably to do with the community markets

Hamyatullah also finished off the meeting by encouraging us and making dua, some of which was for the Muhajideen

I noticed Sadeeq after, he didn’t work in Oz but said there was work there and he planned to go back with his family in July or something, that he as getting a licence as a security person but the school he was training with was shut down due to corruption or something and he isn’t sure what will happen to his registration

He went to Malta in 2007 and met his family for 10 days

He had seem Sheikh Issa, the UAE torturer, and told me about that

I spoke to him quite a bit about racism and stuff in the Gulf

He and Hamyatullah dropped me home (nearby), we talked a bit about the Gulf, I mentioned good news in the News being the implementation of Shaira in Pakistan but Sadeeq didn’t think that they would ever be left alone to do so
Hamyatullah said he hadn’t been into city before on weekend or something (he and Sadeeq made comments like this both times they dropped me off)

Sadeeq said he kept to the Muslim areas in Aussie and that they were much stronger than here (more Muslims etc.)

He said something about gangs and I smiled and said of course I thought gangs were good but I liked it how they protected the Muslim areas, he agreed and said that the same thing had happened to Italians in Oz but they had hid inside for days rather than coming out and defending themselves, the kufar know they can’t mess with the Muslim community and get away with it

I had been asking him about racism in Oz and he said he hadn’t noticed anything much, said there was a lot of racism here and you could tell by the way people treated you, he said that when he was a cleaner some people had a bad reaction to him

In the car we talked a bit about dawa to people in Otara etc and they were telling me that some pollenysians were ok to talk to but Togans were hard and that you had to be careful of what you said as they could be upset by hard words (like arguing against their religion)

Sunday the 3rd of May Exercise Al Manar

Yusef had text me wanting to meet up

He picked me up from near Al Manar and he got the Afghani guy (one of their group from camp) and we went round side of building in Afghani’s car to smoke (they always smoke)

Yuself called Mukhtar too but he didn’t answer

We waited till everyone left Al Manar (about 9.30pm, they started at 7), their meeting was about finding Muslim homes for “Muslim” children

Yusef had just had his 5th child, a girl, and said he was thinking about joining the program as as he said it caused problems for children who really were Muslim (non hallal food etc.) and problems in terms of children growing up as non Muslims

He said he had been having financial difficulties as he hadn’t been working much after baby

I told him them about Sheikh Issa and Awlakis Medina 2

The Afghani also told stories about injustice in UAE

I took along some supplements and stuff and Yusef appreciated that

The exercise was good, Afghani watched, then Suhaib turned up and they both watched (and left to smoke and came back), then Afghani left and Suhaib stayed

Yusef is in very good shape

We used 20kg bar and did bicep curls, reverse curls, bent over row, upright row, shoulder press, 50 squats, in succession, about 20 reps each exercise non stop

Then situps with 20kg weight and legs on bench (he couldn’t do a full one), then with 5kg plate above head on ground to on legs all with arms straight,

We did that a couple of times, then I taught him to kick (difficult for him), some punching (he already had good form from Mukhtar), then we had turns doing heaps of knees while the other held a cushin (he couldn’t do it very well but did a lot of reps, he found mine a little difficult to cope with, had the base of a seat cushin plus an extra tubeish one before it)

We then did the circuit again and finished off with some clinch wrestling (where you pummel for control)

He actually started to say how nice it was when we did our last circuit, he’s in very good shape

Suhaib didn’t join in but later told me he had just eaten, he has been doing the exercises too though, they have a bjj instructor who apparently just lets them hit him while he takes them down and submits them at will (as he has taught them nothing! Not even how to defend themselves! And they do it on carpet so Suhaib has the scars!, apparently Mukhtar doesn’t hit him though but did get his arm hurt by an arm bar

They wanted me to go every day but I said I’d come once a week at least

Suheib dropped me home

Apparently he uses Yusef’s taxi to work in the night (he had his own car when he dropped me off)

He has family high ranking in the Pak army and said they mostly support the Mujahideen, when I talked about pro mujahideen officers being fired and the fighting etc. he blamed it on corrupt politicians

He said that Pakistan had the biggest defeat ever due to a corrupt officer and political leadership when they lost Bangladesh

He is a real conspiracy theory freak

911 was Jews, etc. etc.

He talked about Pakistan army’s support of KSA, how KSA favoured Americans, Americans wanted Pakistan army to go in front of their troops against Iraqis, they refused and left, apparently he has connection with officer who left or something

He said Pakistan army and ISI were fighting in Afghanistan against Russia

He said Musharraf is from America (like America were responsible for him)

Expenses:

Lunch: $50 (soccer tournament lunch + 2x Friday lunch, would probably be more)

Internet/phone: $71.82 (less than the $80 agreed, my total bill in future will go over 100 but this is first bill)

Vodafone $119.89

Travel: 6×5.70 (one diff colour) + 3.20 bus (to Al Manar) = $37.40

Total: $279.11

One night (can’t recall night) prior to 19th of May Exercise Mt Roskill

Suhaib

Tuesday the 19th of May Swimming and exercise Mt Roskill

Thursday the 21st of May exercise Al Manar

Boxing

Friday the 22nd of May Jummah At Taqwa

Before I got the mosque I saw Adam from Mt Eden

He said that he hadn’t come for the Jumma, just to pick up some money

He said he wouldn’t have come to this mosque otherwise

After the prayer he was standing with the guys who were collecting money while his book was on sale (he’s just finished the NZ version)

Arrived in the mosque after Anwar had started talking

He was talking about how in the media you see everyone talking about global warming and animal rights

He talked quite a bit about these things and thought that some of them were “beautiful” and others out of our hands as humans

He said that Islam was first with animal rights etc.

He said that there was no focus on Allah’s rights in the media

That was his point, that the media is ignoring Allah’s rights and focusing too much on the rights of Allah’s creation, that there needs to be more discussion about Allah’s rights

He talked about the rights that we have upon is for a while, listing them

He said we were going to be talking about some of these rights in later khutbahs

He asked us if we thought it was against the rights of women for them to wear hijab

He made a small dua for the mujahidin

After prayer I talked to Ishrar and apparently they were going to go visit Farhad after lunch as he had just had his operation

I was playing table tennis with Dawood when Anwar, Sadeeq and Sheikh Qaasem (think it was him) came down from upstairs (was quite a while since prayer by then)

Sadeeq asked said hello and asked how I was doing

Amir, Ishrar, Dawood and myself went to a Lebanese place

They actually had real burning coals with a fan blowing across them in a stainless steel trough (very authentic), but beef smelled/tasted bad, bread was cold and damp, rice filled vegetables weren’t seemed sad. Kebab Amir ordered was nice and so was the minced chicken kebab though

They were concerned about the meat being hallal and asked the lady working there where she gets it from

She mentioned someone who they didn’t know but they knew the people when she mentioned more names

They had a Jesus statue on one of their fridges

I asked when Fauzan’s coming back, I don’t know if Dawood heard me properly as he replied that he was in Australia

I said that I had to give him the second part of Awlaqi’s Medina series

Dawood said (in a loud voice) “is that the guy who talks about Jihad”

I said that he speaks his mind and complimented him for doing so regardless of the circumstances

I said he talks about the life of the Prophet, or whatever he is talking about, and while doing so applies what he is talking about to what is going on now

I said he treats it as relevant, as it should be

Farhad was at his mum’s place at 2 Shrar St Dannemora (can’t find on map, remembered Shrar because the spelling was like Israr’s name without I)

Quite a few guys from the mosque live around Dannemora, heard it mentioned a few times and Ishrar also lives there I’m sure

Farhad’s operation was ok apparently however his meniscus couldn’t be salvaged but he said that he still should be ok as long as the rehab went well

He has to exercise many times a day

The others were visiting him as a part of “Friend’s of the sick”, a mosque group which they had funds for and they gave him a book that Farhad was expecting

Farhad seemed happy to see us and in good spirits

Apparently there had been some consternation over female nurses and hospital underwear and we talked about that

I told him about the second part of Awlaqi’s Medina series coming out, and said I’d give him a copy (owe a few people copies now, really should get the CD’s and burn them all one)

Amir saw a book about important people in the past or something and he knew quite a few of them, he knows quite a bit of stuff that guy

Earlier he had been saying that there were so many things he wanted to read that he didn’t know where to start, I suggested he listen to Awlaqi first

Also, I never notice him paying for anything, people seem to pay for him

At the restaurant they were talking about what he would need to run a Kebab place at At Taqwa

I saw his room recently (was getting kickboxing pads for Yusef to keep in his car) and it is packed with stuff

He is quite active around the mosque, perhaps he plans on continuing on like this, perhaps learning more and playing a bigger part in the future (a guess)

We went and prayed Asr at At Taqwa***

Friday the 29th of May Jummah At Taqwa

Both this Friday and the last I felt like there were less people than normal attending, normally the carpet at the side is full, but it wasn’t last time and this time I remember one person on it and I was near him

Went to At Taqwa, I would have been a bit late but Yusef said he would pick me up from the station

I had called him about exercising on Friday night (I had a test and assignment due in the week and thought I’d be able to arrange something for Friday) but he said they had family commitments and we’d have to wait till Sunday (I’ll go then)

Yusef was at the mosque when I arrived but came to get me straight away

Sheikh Anwar started the Khutbah by talking about how in business people keep records of their bottom line and their sales and purchases and everything

He said we should do that with religion, he said that we should tick off all the things that we have done that we needed to.

He went through the daily prayers etc.

He detailed a day of someone who was lazy to pray Fajr, then shy to pray at work etc., he compared that to someone who could tick everything

He included lots of things in a category for what you had to do, and had other things as extras, saying that the things you had to do are your spiritual rights that you have to yourself

He said there were also physical rights, and went on about looking after your moustache and eating good food and exercising

He said that we’d be held to account if we didn’t look after our bodies and do right by them

He said that our body parts would testify against us

He made a longer dua then last time for the Mujahidin and mentioned Palestine and the Jews

Fauzan is back from Sydney, the first thing he said to me when he saw me was “Where’s my CD?”

I apologised for not brining it that day, he asked me if I had it and said yes and that I’d bring it inshallah

Fauzan was helping with collections

There was a new NZ guide book for Muslims

They were doing that collection for Pakistan

Ishrar asked if I wasn’t staying and I said that I had to go, but would go for lunch next week inshallah (I had to hand in assignment)

I got a lift with Yusef, the Afghani guy was with him and we met another guy from their area of the world