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Blokes

These blokes know they're good.

This bloke is a bit shy in front of the camera ...

... though he doesn't mind showing his mates a few of his awesome moves.

A pair of non-blokes.

A bloke with his head down pretending to sleep while actually admiring the close leg-shave achieved by the other bloke.

A bloke showing off what would have to be the worst shave in world history.

Silly snaps

Olympic standard tennis court.

A young enthusiastic participant.

True. So maybe you should start being good at something else, you dingili bozuk!!!

A true dingili bozuk.

This man is busy organising the camp.

Being a camp imam has its minor perks.

World Championship Wrestling. The little guy won.

gone ...

Three copies of my book were taken from the green Woolies shopping bag where they were kept. I sure hope they were not stolen.

It's quite sad really.

An article and responses ...

An article of mine was published on The Drum website while we were on camp. To read it, click here. Don't be put off by the feral comments. It's all standard.

Some of the guys read it. Here are their responses. 

Lessons at the River ...

After a refreshing swim down at a nearby river, a group of guys performed the asr (late afternoon) prayer. Ahmed Abdo addressed us shortly afterwards. I didn’t take notes. Then again, neither did he. It was all off the cuff. Here’s what I remember.

Allah has brought us together to a place where everything is in harmony. Look around you. You don’t see the trees fighting the grass or the rocks objecting to the river’s flow. Everything in God’s nature is on harmony. Everything knows it has a purpose and it fulfils that purpose.

[Irfy’s note: including those wretched mosquitoes!!]

If only we could recognise our purpose in this world. Purpose in times and places like this, we can ponder over why we are here.

 This bloke certainly understands his purpose - to look cool.

Check out these funky mullahs

Advice from Sh Ahmed Abdo ...

One shaykh from Yemen remarked that there are people who treat paradise like their father’s shop. They can invite and disinvite to it anyone they wish. Similarly there are people who think they can declare who is Muslim and who isn’t, who is worthy of paradise and who isn’t.

If you advise people to refrain from certain actions which you yourself don’t refrain from , you benefit others while eventually burning yourself out. In this respect, you are like a candle which gives light to others but burns itself out.

Wisdom from the sufi poet Ansari

The late Shaykh Muhannad Zahid al-Bursawi

The more we love, the more we open or hearts. Action without love and without sincere intention of the heart has little or no meaning.

Personal reflection ...

Remember at every camp there was an oldish largish dude who couldn’t quite sit still after prayer and had problems standing up and who would look like he was falling asleep during the education programs? We all used to wonder what his problem was and why he was sitting among us kids.

This year, that dude is me. I haven’t been to a YMA camp since Myrtleford '97. Mahmud says he was looking at a camp booklet from that time. I was apparently a team leader. I was also in my mid-20’s and yearning to get married.

Now I’m 41, with a few near misses at finding a missus. Mahmud has more kids than I can remember. The eldest is in final year and is studying at uni. In a few years she will have graduated and be helping mums have kids. He once had a little baby girl I used to seat on my head. Mahmud now describes her as “a young lady”. His youngest wasn’t around when I was at the last camp. She is a 7 year old with an attitude and plenty of spunk.

Other kids who went to the camp at my time now have their kids as team leaders at the camp. That makes me too old to even be a camp elder. Some nerdy kid I used to do a radio program with is now “Shaykh Ahmed Abdo”. And yes, he really is a shaykh.

Well, sort of. He says that where he studies in Tarim in Yemem, they don’t call you a shaykh until you have become a master of at least one school of law. That’s a bit like me mastering the contents of Halbury’s Laws of England and Laws of Australia multiplied by 10. He believes he is years off achieving that feat. But he’s started. Ahmed has kids too. He introduced me to his daughter named Fatimatuz-Zahra. She was a little scared to come to the camp. She associates the bush with wild animals such as bears. God knows what she must have thought when she saw me.

VIDEO: Educating Kiwis

Excerpts from the post-Fajr advice of Mahmud Kurkcu

Let's pretend we are entering a time machine and go back to the time of the Prophet (s.a.w.) to find out what he and his Companions were like in their personal qualities.

Muslims today are like bottles with labels on them. The labels are clear, but the contents are not. Some bottles are empty while others are filled with dangerous concoctions. This is because the contents bear little resemblance to what Rasul and sahaba made of. If that is their condition 2 generations after the Prophet (s.a.w.), what of us?

Umar bin Abdul Aziz was a caliph who ruled only 2 years. During his reign most ahadith (reports of the sayings, actions and responses of the Prophet (s.a.w.))were collected. He lived 2 or 3 generations after the Prophet (s.a.w.). His contemporaries were impressed by his piety and devotion and often commented that he reminded them of the time of the Companions. Once they did this and he started to cry. He addressed them: “If you saw the Companions and how they showed devotion to the Prophet (s.a.w.), you’d think they were cuckoo. If they saw you in your lax condition know, they would not recognise you as Muslims. I am not comparable even to the dust that emits from the donkey of the least of the Companion (Wahshi - the assassin of Hamza) as he walks it through the streets of town”

PROFILE: Lady Maha (Part 1)

It was a tough assignment, perhaps the hardest any editor has handed to me. I was to interview international woman of mystery, Ms Maha Abdo.

Ms Abdo being held by one of her thousands of adoring fans. Photo by I Yusuf.

After numerous attempts, I was finally able to track her down in a small campsite in Victoria. Dressed in a pink outfit, she spoke through a baby interpreter.

"I don't do too many interviews these days," she said. "I'm in such great demand. Being a baby is not easy."

How so?

"Look, I was handed a job description as soon as I emerged from mummy's tummy that simply said 'Look Cute'. I imagined that's all I;d need to do, and I thought I had excelled at it. But now I'm expected to move from lap to lap, person to person, receiving kisses and silly smiles. Seriously, it's tiring stuff."

Does she ever tire of all this attention.

"Yes, it has its perks. I mean, it beats studying. It's not a terribly grueling schedule. Best of all, I get to do shut-eye without asking anyone's permission."

to be continued ...