Building a Library

"In the name of God, most Gracious, most Compassionate"

Today I went for the forum entitled 'Dilemmas of the Knowledge seeker' at Sultan Mosque. It was really great and being the geek that I am, I took down notes worthy of an essay. I will write about what I learnt in another entry.

As knowledge goes, books are perhaps one of the oldest medium for the distribution and personalization of knowledge. In the past, in Prophet Muhammad s.a.w's time, knowledge was taught and gained in khalaqahs or small group teachings. Even the Quran was not compiled into a book until Saidina Uthman's time.

One of the speakers today shared a little about respect for books as an extension of our respect for the knowledge within that book as well as for the authors who have spent time gathering those knowledge.

As such, I am very proud to share the first two books that are gracing my bookshelves that will be the future building block for my Islamic Library. Of course, it is meant for personal use but family and friends are allowed to borrow any book they like because that knowledge is not mine to begin with.

On the left, the Medicine of the Prophet was actually bought because it reminded me of Hubtobe. He had once shared with me some of the herbs and healing strategies that our Prophet s.a.w used.

And so I bought the book; initially intending to give it to him but I know he is not one to read such lengthy books, so I decided to read it first then summarize it to him and lend it to him should he want to read it for himself.

The book on the right was actually bought for one of my dear sisters for her birthday. However, I wanted to read the book too and I wanted to have it in my library thus I bought another copy for myself. =)

I hope to fill the cupboard with more books in the future, insyaallah. Hopefully they'll be ready by the time my children can start to read and start to be curious to seek knowledge form around them.