The Egyptian world renowned Qari Muhammad Jebril led the isha and taraweeh prayers at Dar us Salaam on Thursday evening. Even with the heavy rain yesterday, the place was so packed, they had to set up several overflow prayer areas inside.
The parking lot was reserved like HOV-3. A local church allowed us to use their parking lot for overflow parking and the masjid had shuttle transportation available back and forth.
Muhammad Jebril (may Allah protect him) has an amazing voice. He is really good at his craft although I can’t complain because we are spoiled for choice at Dar us Salaam by being blessed with many good reciters of the Quran from Haroon Baqai to Safi Khan to some of the Hifz school graduates.
I’ve lost count but since the Hifz School began five years ago, I think about 20 brothers and sisters have completed the memorization of the Quran. And now, alhamdulillah, there has been a reduction in the need to import qaris from overseas as three or four of the graduates are leading the taraweeh prayers in several local area masajid.
By the way, if you missed him last night, the shaykh will be at Dar ul Hijrah tonight and ICM on Oct. 3rd. Much love to the graphic designers at Dar us Salaam and ICM for their event posters. Both are in PDF, so be careful. ICM’s is here and Dar us Salaam’s is here.
Ify Okoye 
MashaAllah, we are lucky to have a great Qari reciter of the Qur’aan. I also think that we must make a strong contrast between a Qari visiting and turning it into an event. People will begin to come to taraweeh with the wrong INTENT and lose out on the rewards of the prayer. May Allah purify our intentions inshaAllah.
Ameen to your dua.
When a popular qari comes to lead the taraweeh, the numbers of people attending increase and this allows us to reach out to people who do not ordinarily come to the masjid to highlight our services and to fundraise. But I agree, we are always in need of purifying our intentions.
Okay, I’m dense. Why should they be careful of PDFs? I must be missing something, again.
The thoughts about the combination of religion and fundraising, and the need both for the fundraising and keeping it separate from the ‘main event’, have been with us for a long time, your religion and mine. No easy answers there.
I suggested people should be careful when opening pdf files becuase they higher than average tendency to crash your internet browser but that depends on your operating system, internet browser, and default pdf viewer.