Atfal Class Agenda

A reminder to please remember the following objectives before going into today’s lesson plan: 

Recitation of the Holy Qur’an and the Memorization of Salat.     

• Regarding the Recitation of the Holy Qur’an, please encourage the Atfal to recite daily.
• Regarding the Memorization of Salat, please ensure that each Tifl has a personalized weekly goal for how much to memorize. 
• It is important to help keep each Tifl on track to reach the goal of memorizing the full salat. 
  • For Atfal younger than 10 years old the emphasis should be on memorizing salat fully in Arabic. 
  • For Atfal older than 10 years, emphasis should be put on memorizing the full salat in Arabic with the English translation. Please ensure that each tifl is keeping up with their goals in this area. 
  • Those Atfal who have already memorized salat along with the translation should set goals to memorize some portions of the Holy Qur’an along with the translation.

Please use the beginning of the class to check in on the Atfal and how their progress towards their goals is going.

After checking on the progress of Atfal towards their goals, please divide the class into Mayar e Saghir and Mayar e Kabir.

Mayar-e-Saghir

For Mayar e Saghir, please go through the following portion of the summary of the Friday Sermon from November 3, 2023 and discuss what the Atfal learned from it. 

Spending Out of the Wealth You Love Leads to True Virtue

• His Holiness (aba) quoted the Promised Messiah (as) who said that true virtue (goodness), which leads to salvation, can be attained when one spends out of their most precious and beloved wealth. 
• Spending out of useless wealth is meaningless, rather, the wealth which is most dear to a person must be spent in order to become the most dear to God. 
• How can one attain heights in rank without going through difficulty? The Companions of the Holy Prophet (sa) did not just happen to attain their rank, rather they did so only after a great deal of struggle. Blessed are those who do not worry about enduring difficulties for the sake of Allah.
• His Holiness (aba) said that this was the spirit which the Promised Messiah (as) wished to inculcate in his Community. Now, there is a large number of people in this Community who put their own needs aside and instead make financial sacrifices for the sake of their faith. 
• These days, we are seeing increasing financial difficulties in the world, especially in developed countries. 
• Current wars in the world and the negligence of politicians have led to these circumstances. Yet, despite this, the financial sacrifices of Ahmadis have continued to increase. 
• This may be difficult for a worldly person to understand, but a person of faith knows that it is a result of such sacrifices that the blessings of Allah increase.

QUESTION TO ASK: 

As Atfal, how they can you participate in financial sacrifice? 

Mayar-e-Kabir

For Mayar e Kabir please have them read and discuss the following excerpt from Introduction to the Study of the Holy Quran (pg. 101 – 102)

Arabia at the Time of the Prophet’s Birth

• The Prophet was born in Mecca in August 570 A.D. He was given the name Muhammad which means, the Praised One. To understand his life and character we must have some idea of the conditions which were obtained in Arabia at the time of his birth. 
• When he was born the whole of Arabia, with exceptions here and there, believed in a polytheistic form of religion. The Arabs traced their descent to Abraham. 
• They knew that Abraham was a monotheistic Teacher. In spite of this, they entertained polytheistic beliefs and were given to polytheistic practices. In defense, they said that some human beings are outstanding in their contact with God. Their intercession on behalf of others is accepted by God. God is High and Exalted. To reach Him is difficult for ordinary human beings. Only perfect human beings can reach him. Ordinary human beings, therefore, must have others to intercede on their behalf before they can reach God and attain to His pleasure and His help.  
• With this attitude they were able to combine their reverence for Abraham, the monotheist, with their own polytheistic beliefs. Abraham, they said, was a holy man. He was able to reach God without intercession. 
  • But ordinary Meccans were not able to reach God without the intercession of other holy and righteous persons. 
  • To seek this intercession, the people of Mecca, therefore, had made idols of many holy and righteous persons, and these they worshiped and to these they made offerings in order to please God through them. 
  • This attitude was primitive (undeveloped), illogical. It was full of defects and gaps.  But the people of Mecca were not worried by these. 
  • They had not had a monotheistic teacher for a long time, and polytheism, once it takes root in any society, spreads and knows no bounds. The number of gods begins to increase. 
• At the time of the Prophet’s birth, it is said that in the Ka‘bah alone, the Sacred Mosque of all Islam and the house of worship built by Abraham and his son Ishmael, there were 360 idols. 
  • It seems that for every day of the lunar year the Meccans had an idol. 
  • In other places and in other big centres there were other idols, so that we can say that every part of Arabia was steeped in polytheistic belief.
• The Arabs were devoted to the culture of speech. They were very much interested in their spoken language and were very keen on its advance.
• Their intellectual ambitions, however, were little. Of History, Geography, Mathematics, etc., they knew nothing. But as they were a desert people and had to find their way about in the desert without the assistance of landmarks, they had developed a keen interest in Astronomy. 
• There was in the whole of Arabia not a single school. It is said that in Mecca only a few individuals could read and write.

QUESTION TO ASK: 

In these conditions of the Arab society, how did Prophet Muhammad (sa) become a prophet and lead a nation when he didn’t have much education?