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Women’s Retreat: Finding a Path to God | A Journey Through His Names

June 28 @ 5:00 pm 9:30 pm

“Indeed, Allah has Ninety-Nine particular Names – one hundred minus one – whoever encompasses them will enter the Garden.” (Bukhari)

For sisters Ages 12+! Join us with a special guest, Dr. Jinan Yousef (author of Reflecting on the Names of Allah), along with Dr. Rania AwaadUstadha Shamira Chothia Ahmed, and Ustadha Hosai Mojaddidi, to reflect on the beautiful names of Allah (swt).

Friday, June 28 | 5 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. (PST) | MCC Conference Room | Women & Girls Ages 12+ | In-person ($20) or Online ($10) | Register at staging.mcceastbay.org/path

Schedule:
5:00 – 5:15 pm:
 Intro
5:15 – 5:45 pm:
  The Art of Du’ah: When to Whisper, When to Weep | Ustadha Shamira Chothia Ahmed
5:45 – 6:15 pm:
  Acquiring Beautiful Character through the Divine Names | Ustadha Hosai Mojaddidi
Asr and dinner break

6:45 – 7:15 pm:
 ⁠Emotional Blocks & Learning to Let Your Guard Down with God through His Divine Names | Dr. Rania Awaad
7:15 – 8:00 pm:
  Having a Deeper Connection with ﷲ through His Divine Names | Ustadha Dr. Jinaan Yousef
Panel questions until Maghrib

9:00 – 9:30 pm:
 Special session—book signing/meet and greet

We will also have a limited of Dr. Jinan’s books, Reflecting on the Names of Allah, for sale. You can pre-purchase a copy on the checkout page.

This women-only event will not be publicly live-streamed. To cover event costs, all in-person ($20) and virtual attendees ($10) will receive an unlisted link via email at 4:30 p.m. PST this Friday to join via an unlisted link on MCC’s YouTube page. That unlisted link will be retained indefinitely for all paid viewers to watch on replay later.

The Rahmah FoundationTawasaw Institute, and MCC East Bay are sponsors for this event.

MCC has a standing policy that financial need should never prevent a person from attaining spiritual knowledge offered by MCC. For a financial-based scholarship discount code, please email scholarship@staging.mcceastbay.org

Questions? events@staging.mcceastbay.org

Dr. Jinan Yousef
Dr. Jinan Yousef has been an author for over a decade and most recently published “Reflecting on the Names of Allah” (Al-Buruj Press, 2020). She has been a student of Sheikh Akram Nadwi for many years and is currently studying tafsir and hadith at Al-Salam Institute. Jinan teaches classes on the names of Allah for SWISS online. She is passionate about helping Muslims connect to Allah through knowing Him by His names. Watch her recent talk on the Yaqeen podcast: https://youtu.be/_IyG-VK93DU?si=nnJLNxNrsFlCFFDw.

Ustadha Dr. Rania Awaad

Raised in the U.S., Ustadha Rania Awaad began her formal study of the traditional Islamic sciences when her parents permitted her to travel to Damascus, Syria, at 14. Her desire to continue studying the Deen resulted in multiple trips back to Damascus, interspersed between her high school, college, and medical studies. She was honored to receive Ijazah (authorization to teach) several branches of the Shari’ah sciences at the hands of many renowned scholars, including many female scholars. She has received Ijazah to teach Tajwid in the Hafs and Warsh recitations from the late eminent Syrian scholar Shaykh Abu Hassan al-Kurdi. In addition to completing several advanced texts of the Shafi’i madhhab, she is licensed to teach texts of Maliki fiqh, Adab, and Ihsan. Currently, Ustadha Rania teaches online and local classes for The Rahmah Foundation, Rabata. She is on the faculty of Zaytuna College, where she teaches courses in Shafi’i fiqh and women’s issues in fiqh and has helped develop and co-direct the Tajweed and Hifz program.

Ustadha Rania is also a medical doctor specializing in psychiatry. She completed her Psychiatric residency and fellowship training at Stanford University, where she is currently on the faculty as a Clinical Instructor in the Stanford Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences department. Her medical interests include addressing mental health care concerns in the Muslim community- particularly that of Muslim women and girls. She has been awarded grants from the NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health) to research this topic and has presented her findings at several medical conferences. Other ongoing endeavors include compiling manuscripts addressing female-related mental health and medical issues from a fiqh-oriented perspective. She currently serves as the Director of the Rahmah Foundation, a non-profit organization that teaches traditional Islamic knowledge to Muslim women and girls. In this capacity, she also heads the Murbbiyah Mentoring Program, which trains young women to teach and mentor Muslim girls and teens. Ustadha Rania is both a wife and a mother; she has been counseling and teaching women classes on Tajwid, Shafi’i Fiqh, Ihsan, marriage, and raising children since 1999.

– More from Dr. Rania: https://staging.mcceastbay.org/rania
– More Dr. Rania’s Friday Evening Halaqas: https://staging.mcceastbay.org/womens-halaqa

Ustadha Shamira Chothia Ahmed
Born and raised in California’s Central Valley, Shamira Chothia Ahmed is passionate about educating and empowering Muslim women to reach their highest spiritual potential through acquiring sacred knowledge.

Having graduated as valedictorian from a large public high school, her studies led her — following a brief soul-searching stint at Georgetown University — to seek sacred knowledge from scholars on three continents — Africa, Europe, and Asia.

Ustadha Shamira began her journey in seeking sacred knowledge at the women’s Dar-ul-Uloom Mu’eenal Islam seminary in South Africa and completed the five-year intensive ‘Alima programs at Ja’mia Al-Imam Muhammad Zakariyya, one of Britain’s first and most renowned Islamic universities for women. Thereafter, she continued her Arabic and Qur’anic studies in Damascus, Syria, where she obtained an ijāzah in Tajwīd of the Ḥafṣ recitation from the late eminent Syrian scholar Shaykh Ḥasan al-Kurdī.

In 2005, Ustadha Shamira taught Hanafi fiqh for women at the Zaytuna Institute in California and, since then, has taught various Islamic sciences in venues across North America. In 2008, she earned a Master’s Degree in Demographics and Social Analysis from the University of California at Irvine, focusing on the identity formation of the Muslim-American population.

In 2013, Ustadha Shamira specialized in the detailed rulings of menstruation, lochia, and abnormal discharge under the direction of Mufti Abdur Rahman Ibn Yusuf Mangera and assisted in compiling Imam Abu Hanifa’s Al-Fiqh al-Akbar Explained.

Shamira is a wife and mother of five children. She is passionate about empowering women in their childbearing years to gain closeness to their Lord through her spiritual birth consultations and virtual doula services.

Ustadha Shamira is a co-founder of the Rahmah Foundation and currently teaches for Nur al-Iman, a full-time girls’ shariah program with Ustadha Mona Elzankaly based in the Bay Area.

Ustadha Hosai Mojaddidi
Ustadha Hosai Mojaddidi co-founded MH4M (http://mentalhealth4muslims.com), established in 2010. For nearly 20 years, she has been actively involved in the Bay Area and Southern California Muslim community, working and volunteering for many notable organizations. Learn more about her at http://hosaimojaddidi.com

Ustadha Hosai Mojaddidi was born in Afghanistan and moved to the United States with her family at age two. She credits her Islamic journey to 1996, when she attended Islamic classes in Hayward, California. Her teacher and mentor, Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, has taught these classes since then.

One of her main areas of focus is to help create a strong sisterhood for women in the community by leading halaqas (spiritual study circles) and support groups whilst offering individual spiritual counseling and mentoring. She noted that many of the spiritual problems encountered were reflective of the deep and complicated mental health issues of the community and would be better served by focusing on mental health. Thus, along with her cousin Dr. Nafisa Sekandari, they co-founded a website called Mental Health 4 Muslims (www.mentalhealth4muslims.com).

Ustadha Hosai is a freelance writer and editor who lectures on various Islamic/spiritual topics.

– More Ustadha Hosai: https://staging.mcceastbay.org/hosai

$10 – $20 In person or virtual

(925) 485-1786

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5724 W Las Positas Blvd #300
Pleasanton, CA 94588 United States
(925) 485-1786
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