iOS shortcuts for Islamic expressions

بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمنِ الرَّحِيمِ

Here's how you can set these up. 

On iPhone and/or iPad, go into Settings, then General, then Keyboard, then Shortcuts. Click the + button on the top right. 

You will see this screen:

For Phrase, put in the arabic phrase. For example: ﷺ

For shortcut, put in the string you would like to have replaced, for example: pbuh (which stands for "Peace be upon him"). 

Hit save, and you will be back to your list of shortcuts. Here is my list of shortcuts: 






So that you could copy/paste into your own list, here they are in text:

salaam
السلام عليكم و رحمة الله و بركاته

ws
وَعَلَيْكُمْا لسَّلاَمُ وَرَحْمَةُ اللهِ وَبَرَكَاتُهُ

pbuh
ﷺ

jzk
جزاك الله خير

sa
سبحان الله

ma
ما شاء الله

ah
الحمدلالله 

and, of course, everybody's favorite phrase that they use for procrastination: 
ia
ان شاء الله 

Please don't abuse that last one. When you say it, you have to have 100% intention to actually do the thing you are promising, and when you say it, you really are saying "I will absolutely do this, and nothing will stop me, if Allah is willing". It's an aqeedah thing, not a back out strategy for the insincere. 

As for ﷺ , it is worth noting that it is a special case in that it is actually a unicode character built into the arabic character set. More info on that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_Unicode 

Now remember me and my family in your duas when you use this :-)

Teaching children Hadith

I have a lot of relatives in Dallas, and more than half are children or teenagers. I've been to dallas before, and each time, it's just like going to pakistan. You kind of take it easy, eat at davats, gup shup, etc.

This time i decided we'll make use of some of the time spent there, so I thought I'd teach the kids some hadiths. It went very well AH. My mom and little sister made excellent hand outs, snipping out the chosen hadiths, translations, and commentaries from the English text book and the Urdu one (for the non-English speaking elders). Turns out that to motivate the boys, all you have to do is get them to compete with the girls. They start collaborating, teaching one another, and the whole deal, it's awesome. Throughout the week I was there, I'd even have 5 year olds coming up to me randomly saying "Ad-deenu naseeHah", over and over again and getting super happy. It was awesome. I wrote the hadith down on a white board in arabic and the translation, explained it, then we'd all say it together out loud 30 times. We went through like 10 hadiths like that, and each kid memorized on average 3-7 hadiths, it was awesome. Here are some of them, I thought i'd post them up:

(The arabic text renders better on certain browsers, and not so well on others)


اَلدِّينُ اَلنصِيحَ

The Religion (Islam) is to act with sincerity (Muslim).

The Arabic word al-nasiha, used in the hadith above, is a comprehensive and unique term and is difficult to translate precisely into English. Even in Arabic, it does not have a synonym. Therefore, the expression "to act with sincerity" has been adopted here as a broad explanation for the Arabic word. Other meanings could be-- giving good advice, directing toward good, acting sincerely or honestly, or being benevolent and desiring good (see Lane, Arabic English Lexicon).

The remainder of the hadith, as narrated by Imam Muslim on the authority of Tamim al-Dari, is "we inquired from the Messenger of Allah, 'Toward whom?' He replied, 'For Allah, His Book, His Messenger, the leaders of the Muslims, and the common people" (Muslim). The hadith makes clearn that one of the most important aspects of true faith is to give good counsel, to wish well, and to act toward everything with honesty and sincerity.

This is further explained as follows: In relation to Allah, "sincerity" means to have faith in His essence and attributes, to obey His each and every command, to express gratitude for His blessings, and to fulfill His rights of Lordship in every possible way. In terms of the Book of Allah, it means to fulfill its rights by accepting it as the word of Allah, honoring it and reciting it correctly, and practicing its injunctions. For the Messenger of Allah, it means to fulfill his rights, confirm that he is the Messenger of Allah, practice the Sunna, honor him and his family, and hold everything that he has said to be true. For the leaders of the Muslims, it means to assist them in virtue, obey them and exhort others to do the same, remind them of their responsibilities and correct them in a polite, reformative, and wise manner. The same applies for the scholars of Islam. For the masses, it is to guide them aright and prevent them from wrong, assist them in their needs and support them, protect them from harm, and deal with them in the best possible manner. Similarly, as regards every other aspect of life, the religious obligation of nasiha is fulfilled by performing everything in the most beneficial and correct manner possible. (Jami' al-'ulum wa 'l-hikam, Mirqat al-mafatih)



اَلدُّعَاءُ مُجُّ الْعِبَادَةِ

Supplication (du'a') is the essence of worship

Supplication (du'a') has been called the essence of worship for two main reasons. First, by supplicating to Allah, a person fulfills his obligation of calling on Allah, which is understood from the verse "And your Lord says, 'Call on Me, I will answer you (your prayer)'" (Qur'an 40:60). This is worship in its purest form. Second, by invoking Allah, one realizes that only He can fulfill one's needs. The servant who calls upon his Lord abandons hope in everything else and turns his full attention to Allah, humbling himself in front of Him. This is the essence of worship. Another desired result of worship is to attain reward from Allah, Because there is such great reward in supplication, it has been called the essence of worship. (Mazad al-ragibin 7)

اَلـْمَرْءُ مَعَ مَنْ اَحَبَّ

A person will be with whom he loves (on the day of judgement)

This statement of the Messenger of Allah was in response to someone who came and inquired, "O Messenger of Allah, what do you say about someone who loves a group of people, but is unable to join them?" What is meant by "a group of people" is the learned or righteous people, and what is meant by, "was unable to join them," is a person who was unable to gain their company or achieve the same status as them in knowledge and action. To this the Messenger of Allah replied, "a person will be with whom he loves," i.e., he will be gathered with them on the Day of Judgment. Allah Most High says, "Whosoever obeys Allah and the Messenger, they will be with those unto whom Allah has shown favor, of the {prophets and the saints and the martyrs and the righteous. The best of company are they" (Quran 4:69-70).

This hadith could also be applied more generally to those who aspire to be with evil people and sinners and secretly admire their actions even though they may not have perpetrated those evil actions themselves. They will be gathered with the sinners on the Day of Judgement (Mirqat al-mafatih 8:740).

اَلْأناة مِنَ اللهِ وَ الْعَجَلَةُ مِنَ الشَّيْطَان

Calmness and patient deliberation is from Allah and haste is from Satan (Tirmidhi)

This hadith refers to everyday activities and not to acts of worship. A person is encouraged to conduct his daily activities with calmness and patience, as acting in haste often leads to spoiling one's actions. However, when it comes to worship, a person is encouraged to hasten toward god, i.e. embark upon good acts with determination and eagerness, and then complete them with calmness, concentration, and devotion (Mirqat al mafatih 8:786). [A] for example, it is disliked for one to run to join the prayer, but it is commendable to perform ablution (wudu') at home and set out for the prayer early.

اَلـْمَجَالِسُ بِالْأَمَانَةِ

Gatherings are to be kept in confidence

What a person hears or sees in a meeting must be kept confidential and should not be disclosed to others. However, as the remainder of the narration states, three things are exempted from this: These are plans to murder, plans to rape a woman, or plans to usurp someone's wealth (Mazad al-raghibin 8). See also hadith 17.

الْاِقْتِصَادُ فِي النَّفَقَةِ نِصْفُ الْـمَعِيشَةِ

وَ التَّوَدُدُ اِلَى النَّاسِ نِصْفُ الْعِقْلِ

وَ حُسْنُ السُّؤَالِ نِصْفُ الْعِلْمِ

(Didn't teach the the last two parts of this hadith to the kids, they were getting tired :-)

Moderation in spending is half of [one's] sustenance, friendliness toward people is half of [one's] intelligence, and asking good questions is half of [one's] knowledge (Bayhaqi, Shu'ab al-Iman).


Here, "Moderation in spending..." is best understood by the verse of the Qur'an: "Those who, when they spend, are not extravagant and not miserly, but hold a just balance between the two" (Qur'an 25:67). [The income a person receives is mostly not in one's control, as opposed to the spending of what one possesses, which is nearly always in his control. Hence, regulating what one sepends of his wealth can provide half the answer to stability in one's livlihood.] Friendliness toward people..." means that a person's intelligence is perfected through interatction with others, in that the collaboration of two minds better than one. And "Asking good questions ish alf of one's knowledge becasuse knowledge of a particular issue only becomes complete by asking the appropriate questions (Mirqat al-mafatih 8:795). [A] Also, fully thinking through a question before seeking an answer provides half the answer to the questioner, as opposed to random questioning.


Thanks to Aneeser for typing up the english parts above. There are a few more that I didn't type up. They are all from Mufti AbdulRahman's "Provisions for the Seekers"...

http://www.al-rashad.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=0&products_id=568

... an EXCELLENT EXCELLENT book, i highly recommend it to everybody. You can pick up the book on occassion, read small amounts of it, and still benefit tremendously. Shaykh Hussain Abdul Sattar is giving detailed commentaries on it here:

http://sacredlearning.org/classrooms/hadith/zad_talibin/index.htm

Amir's Contentions 1

1. The subject of Design Patterns is religion for software engineering.

2. My father in law giving advice to his sons about careers: "Beta, always find the kind of business where you have to do the least amount of work, that makes the most amount of money"

... hahahaah... that's the memon way, my father in law is super cool. FYI, he isn't saying "be lazy" but rather "build or use a business foundation such that making profit from it is easy", because of course in business once you find something that is easy and brings a lot of money, you could multiply that easy thing by your available time/resources and yield a lot more money. The amount of work you put in in pracatice is actually independent of this "hikam" (wisdom, advice, etc).

And this really comes back to the ahadith of the prophet pbuh where he would talk about making things easy. It fits into the SaaS business model in the tech world, etc. So imagine if you opened up a desi restaurant, and invented a device that lets you mass produce high-quality naans on the fly... it would put you leaps and bounds against your competitor. You made naan-producing easy, and can now double up efforts on that platform and make loads of money on that.... and similarly you could buy an off-the-shelf naan producer if it already exists and do the same... they both work.

3. The word "Denigrate" means "To deny the importance or validity of" or to "put down" or "defame"; Etymologically it derives from de+nigrare which means to make black, the word dates back to the 1500s, when slavery was alive and kicking in the US.

... The prophet muhammad pbuh said that racism is a form of jahiliyya (a system / ecosystem of ignorace)... i'm going to stop using that word... not that i used it too often anyway. I'll use defame, or "de-hype" (copyright omar q)

4. Knowledge and Sadaqah (charity for the sake of Allah) are unique in that they are the only things in the world that increase or cause increase by giving it away.
... ie, teaching and sharing actually makes you smarter. Ever since i was a kid, i used to love teaching my peers what i learned, but at the times when i felt a type of "protectiveness" for my knowledge, and tried to hide it from others to have the competitive edge, my grades would drop lower than normal. But yeah, this is what my dad always taught me, and i hear it from ulema all the time. This concept defies logic many times. And we see it in the open source world as well... all these java libraries like struts, hibernate, jdom, jdbc connectors, etc, etc, etc, have all come from a knowledge-sharing model. This is what Google has realized that makes them so much money -- that software is knowledge, which should not be closed off and banked on, because it only increases the more you share it. It is beauty and it attracts the smartest people, and they in turn make more beauty... so what they bank on are the ads which they attach to the fruits of the knowledge that they grow. Genius.

... and the same can be said about sadaqah, and we actually have wahih for that, Allah actually promises us increase in wealth when we spend in His way. I've met plenty of very rich people who will testify to this concept... they invested in the "sadaqah bank" a while ago (as shaykh abdal Hakim calls it), and they got phenomenal returns. All you need is iman.


5. An atheist philosopher said, "Religion is the opium of the masses", Shaykh Nuh said in response to this, "Opium is the religion of the masses"
... Shaykh Nuh said this in Coherence of Islam. Shaykh hamza also said this in 17 benefits of tribulation, but he said shaykh abdal hakim murad said this. Either way, it was one of the three genius ulema of our time.
... In another words the athiest philosopher is saying that in order to escape the reality of a godless world, people engage in the intoxication of spiritual ecstasy that religion brings to get them to stop thinking about it. The athiest philosopher like a person who is blind and was born blind trying to explain the beauty of a rain forest.
Whereas, the ulema are saying that in order for the gnawing feeling of the soul to go away when it is not worshipping Allah, people intoxicate themselves in drugs (and other things) in order to numb the soul. The idea comes from the ayah in surah al-rad 13:28:

أَلَا بِذِڪۡرِ ٱللَّهِ تَطۡمَٮِٕنُّ ٱلۡقُلُوبُ

Verily in the remembrance of Allah do hearts find rest!

6. (Removed)

7. Technology and Shariah: Determining when Virtuality is a euphemism for falsehood.

8. Riba (interest/usury) is even forbidden in computers: try moving a folder into to itself. "The destination folder is a subfolder of the source folder."

9. Mainstream media in the US to the minds of unsuspecting Americans: typedef terrorists muslims;
... that's just one of the biggest lies, there are so many more false typedefs that allow them to get away with this typedef... the way Muslims will win the perception war is to bring definitions from Allah (through Quran and sunnah), and the false typedefs will get completely eradicated because truth squashes falsehood. Lawyers are taught "he who frames the argument, wins the case", this is true in the short term, but in order to make it true for the long run, the actual "frame" or foundation of the argument needs to be inherently true, otherwise that which is built on it will ultimately collapse. Our definitions are from Allah and His Messengers pbut

وَعَلَّمَ ءَادَمَ ٱلۡأَسۡمَآءَ كُلَّهَا ثُمَّ عَرَضَہُمۡ عَلَى ٱلۡمَلَـٰٓٮِٕكَةِ فَقَالَ أَنۢبِـُٔونِى بِأَسۡمَآءِ هَـٰٓؤُلَآءِ إِن كُنتُمۡ صَـٰدِقِينَ
قَالُواْ سُبۡحَـٰنَكَ لَا عِلۡمَ لَنَآ إِلَّا مَا عَلَّمۡتَنَآ‌ۖ إِنَّكَ أَنتَ ٱلۡعَلِيمُ ٱلۡحَكِيمُ 

And He taught Adam all the names (of things), then showed them to the angels, saying: Inform Me of the names of these, if ye are truthful. (31)
They said: Glory belongs to Thou! We have no knowledge except that which Thou have taught us. Lo! Thou, only Thou, art the Knower, the Wise. (32)
(surah baqarah (2))

(I editted the translation a little from Quran Explorer... if you have a problem w/ that, you should look it up urself and/or learn arabic.)

10. Adab is an Art.
... Adab in the common context means manners, etiquette, etc. In the context of Arabic grammar it means to put words in their correct place, a master of Arabic grammar is called an Adeeb. Shaykh Hamza said it means to "put things in the right place." When we show manners and respect to elders, teachers, etc, we are acknowledging their rank in the community, culture, etc. Adab with Allah means to obey His commands (there's probably a formal definition that i don't know), and acknowledging His place above His creation through our beliefs, actions, worship, vision, and state of being. The Prophet Muhammad pbuh's last words were that his objective was just to teach us Adab.

Software architecture is like a type of adab as well... using the right technologies for the right parts of a solution, using the applicable design patterns, etc.

The thing about Art is that it's hard to teach through books alone, you need to see examples, and learning Adab is the same way -- it needs to be learned by example... the living examples being our righteous true ulema of course.

11. Gold is organic money.

12. The human being follows MVC: Model - the heart; View - The limbs which include the tongue; Controller - The brain.
... in MVC, the model preserves state, and the view merely expresses what the model contains. When the view changes due to its interactions from the outside world, it dispatches events into the controller, which then updates the model.

13. The study of compilers is Human Computer Interaction for uber-nerds.
... nothing to do with deening, except of course that it makes us appreciate language even more, which is a sign of Allah.

14. Kufr is Cognitive Dissonance, while submission to the will of Allah causes Cognitive Resonance
... a play on the term "cognitive dissonance" : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance ... ie, things all make sense, the believer sees things clearly, knowledge is a light, and light allows us to perceive.

انَّ الصِدقَ يُهدى الى الِبرِّ
و انَّ البِرَّ يُهدَى الى الجَنَّةِ

"Surely honesty leads to righteousness, and
righteousness leads to paradise." -- The Prophet pbuh

15.
HADITH 4 of the 40 hadith of an-nawawi

"Verily the creation of each one of you is brought together in his mother's belly for forty days in the form of seed, then he is a clot of blood for a like period, then a morsel of flesh for a like period, then there is sent to him the angel who blows the breath of life into him and who is commanded about four matters: to write down his means of livelihood, his life span, his actions, and whether happy or unhappy. By Allah, other than Whom there is no god, verily one of you behaves like the people of Paradise until there is but an arm's length between him and it, and that which has been written over takes him and so he behaves like the people of Hell-fire and thus he enters it; and one of you behaves like the people of Hell-fire until there is but an arm's length between him and it, and that which has been written over takes him and so he behaves like the people of Paradise and thus he enters it."


I don't know whether to be fearful of me being in the first case or hopeful of me being in the second case.

If i'm fearful of being in the first case, that is probably an indicator of arrogance.

So i guess that leaves being hopeful of the second, and I better start deenin'





(Inspired by Shaykh Doctor Abdal-Hakim Murad's Contentions)

Zad al Talibin keeps me Smiling

"Anyone who reads them (the hadiths) and memorizes them is illuminated, and anyone who listens to them and studies them is delighted." -- Shaykh Ashiq Ilahi al Bulandsherhri in the intro to Zad al-Talibin.

After listening to several explanations by shaykh hussain of ahadith in this book, "Zad al-Talibin" (Provisions for the Seekers), i figured I should buy it and started reading it. Man it has been a blast. I've gotten through like 6 ahadith in memorization (they're very very short, but PACKED with meaning), and have read many more. That statement above is absolutely correct -- the one who memorizes it is illuminated. I actually feel a spiritual lift. They're having lay-offs at work, and everybody is depressed (AH my job is ok), but i'm walking around with a huge smile on my face because of the noor in these ahadith, while everybody else is looking quite gloomy (with good reason). What a rush.

Here's the book (in my friend's bookstore ;-):
http://albalagh.net/bookstore/?action=view&item=1016

Each hadith has a short explanation in the book, but shaykh hussain abdul sattar has an approx 1 hour explanation on each one. Here's shaykh hussain's explanations:
http://sacredlearning.org/classrooms/hadith/zad_talibin/index.htm

I wish i could freely type in arabic, I'd LOVE to quote what i've memorized so far, seriously, what an "eman rush"! (Ustadh Muhammad AlShareef)... here's a translation of one of them that are on my mind right now:

4. "Calmness and patient deliberation is from Allah and haste is from Satan."

And here's shaykh hussain's commentary on it:
http://sacredlearning.org/audio/hadith/zad_talibin/hadith_4.mp3

Where this book came from:
So there are 6 popular books of sahih hadith -- sahih bukhari, muslim, tirmidhi, abu dawood, etc. For various reasons, a scholar later wrote a book with a collection of ahadith that is a subset of what was contained in there of around 4000 ahadith. This was called "Masabih al-sunnah", then another scholar wrote "Mishkat al masaabih" and also added like 1500 ahadith -- this is a VERY popular book especially in indo-pak madrassas. Then like 140 years ago Shaykh Ashiq Ilahi wrote this book from Mishkat -- and he especially made it so intro madrassa students can benefit, and also organized it so taht it would help them learn arabic -- starting with the ahadith with the easiest grammatical constructs. Now Mufti AbdulRahman ibn Yusuf translated it -- and man it's an AWESOME translation.

Alhamdulillah, knowledge is TRUELY a light.

I love the etymological root "gnosticus"

I love the etymological root "gnosticus"... from etymonline.com:

gnosticus, from Late Gk. gnostikos, noun use of adj. gnostikos "knowing, able to discern," from gnostos "knowable," from gignoskein "to learn, to come to know"

When you recognize the blessings of Allah, you are a believer, if you are fully cognizant of Allah and all his attributes, you are also a gnostic, if you fail to do both, you are agnostic.

It's very similar to the arabic root: 'Aa Ra Fa / Ya' ri fu ... which also means "to know".... and whoever it was that translated the word / name / title / spiritual state 'Aarif into "Gnostic" really knew what s/he was doing... it's a perfect translation.

And I really like the word "agnostic"... it's the perfect word to describe that somnambulant state people are in nowadays. They have all the blessings in the world, and are completely agnostic of The Provider of the blessings.... like how on thanksgiving, people say "I'm thankful for ____"... they never say "i'm thankful to God for ___". If you're thankful, you have to be thankful TO someone, or it doesn't make sense, instead you should say "i'm glad that ____"... but it isn't thanks. "To Thank" is a transitive verb.

If you look at the etymology for the word "know" or "knowledge"... it says that even that comes from "gno" which sounds similar to "gnosticus" and it makes me wonder if there is a connection.

On a related note, if you look at the ayah in the Quran in surah baqara (2:31)

وَعَلَّمَ ءَادَمَ ٱلۡأَسۡمَآءَ كُلَّهَا ثُمَّ عَرَضَہُمۡ عَلَى ٱلۡمَلَـٰٓٮِٕكَةِ فَقَالَ أَنۢبِـُٔونِى بِأَسۡمَآءِ هَـٰٓؤُلَآءِ إِن كُنتُمۡ صَـٰدِقِينَ
And He taught Adam all the names [of things], then showed them to the angels, saying: Inform Me of the names of these, if ye are truthful. (31)

(That ayah (and the ones that follow) has been on my mind nagging me for the longest time to figure out its meaning, it's a very deep ayah)

If you look at the definition of gnosticus, it says "able to discern"... well able to discern what? the names of things? ie, the ability to identify one thing from another? This is what light allows us to do. In darkness, nothing is distinguishable, but with light, things are differentiable, and in Islam we are taught that knowledge IS a light. So, is this what knowledge is at the most basic level, the ability to identify?

If you look at the two approaches at education: Traditional islamic education, and the western way, one striking difference is how for the former memorization is so heavily stressed, and in the latter it is more about learning how to process stuff.

At the end of several years of western education, one realizes that they really don't KNOW too many things, but have a very strong ability to process stuff. After a traditional islamic education, people actually know a lot of things, but often (nowadays) can't really process as much -- which, of course, wasn't always the case, eg. the formulation of usul al fiqh over a thousand years ago, and the generations that have developed it.

It's like nouns versus verbs: In arabic ALL words are nouns, verbs, or particles.

- Nouns are independent of time.
- Verbs are dependent of time.
- particles have no meaning in and of themselves (like at, in, with, of, etc).

So is knowledge primarily a matter of learning nouns -- learning how to differentiate one thing from another, or how to process things.... or is it both? They are of course both creations of Allah -- Allah has created us and all that we do.... but what is knowledge?

And the idea that "Knowledge is a Light," is very interesting, because light is dual-natured: It behaves both as a wave, and as a particle. My physics book in high school described it as a "wavicle". Maybe knowledge is the same way: it is the ability to identify things, and the ability to process things. Allahu 'Alam.

I dunno why I'm sointrigued by this root. Studying the underpinnings of knowledge itself is really enjoyable..."metaknowledge" ... i probably sound kind of insane right now, haha.

Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad's Contensions 11

Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad is such a genius. He's been rolling out his "Contentions" for years now, and they're as thought provoking as ever.

1. Augustine: man’s deformity. Ishmael: his deiformity. (Defy, don’t deify.)

2. Peace without justice is not peace at all.

7. Your greatest liability is your lie-ability.

9. Modernity: an accelerating attempt to shovel matter into the growing hole where religion used to be.
... ouch, i love it.

19. Redefine religion, but do not derefine it.
... ie, correct ijtihad not bida.

21. Anthropomorphism is gender-biased.
... ie, gender only exists because there are two of something, but there is only One God. Once somebody commits the major deadly sin of anthropomorphism, they need to choose to refer to Him as male or female (they usually choose male for whatever reason)... but this distinction was only necessary if they tried to anthropomorphize. The whole gender problem doesn't exist when we realize He is one without comparison.

22. Theology is the quest for the least silly definition of God.
... oh if only cynical orientalists understood this today.

36. Third World Christianity: worship a white man, and be saved from your past!
... ouch, he himself is white so he could get away w/ saying that.

39. Being heretics to the Monoculture requires both courage and style. But we should have room for those who have neither courage nor style.

43. Use words in your preaching only if absolutely necessary.
... dawah is mostly given through actions, there are many many examples from the Quran, Sunnah, and even stories of ulema from the past that prove this.... and now researchers say that like 90% of communication is done through body language.

50. The road to God is paved with laughter at the self. The road to Hell is paved with laughter at others.

53. The world without hell is the word.
... ie, "the word on the street"... ie, a false rumor. If I don't believe in you, you still exist, if you don't believe in hell, it also still exists.

54. A heretic never claims to be a heretic, he claims to transcend orthodoxy.
... kya baat ki yaar! And the funny thing is Muslims in the world where they are minorities, are themselves heritics.... y'know, the beard, hijab, praying in public, etc. The prophet pbuh said "islam came as a strange thing, and it will again come as a strange thing. Glad tidings to the strange ones." The difference is that we have daleel for our herecy.

59. Do not think that anything has any purpose other than to point to God.
... Ayah means a sign.

64. Mockery is for pouring upon kufr, not upon people.
... in another contention he said "If you seek amusement, seek it in the absurdities of kufr."

66. God’s mercy is not limited; but He is not limited by His mercy.
... which is why Islam doesn't have "the problem of evil"

71. Islamism: untie your camel, and trust in God.
... (reference to the famous hadith about predestination)

76. The God of Jesus was not the Jesus-God.

78. If you put the Sunna before mercy, you have lost both.
... some cultural muslims need to be reminded of this

85. Man is the proof of God. The man of God is the proof of religion.
... like imam ghazzali

86. Do not fear any extremist; fear the consequences of his acts.

87. Do not be complacent. Most people judge religions by their followers, not by their doctrines.

90. Scripture defines mercy, but is not an alternative to it.
... related to #78

98. In the fight against the Monoculture, the main sign is the hijab, and the main act is the Prayer.
... related to #54


http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/ahm/contentions11.htm

Surely sticking to truth and justice guides one to good deeds, and surely good deeds guide one to Heaven

انَّ الصِدقَ يُهدى الى الِبرِّ

و انَّ البِرَّ يُهدَى الى الجَنَّةِ

"Surely sticking to truth and justice guides one to good deeds, and surely good deeds guide one to Heaven"

It's a hadith (saying of the prophet pbuh)... and i wrote it with http://www.arabic-keyboard.org/

Man, what a hadith! it's been on my mind for a long time ever since i went to imam zaid's session in "agenda to change our marriages"

quite gangster indeed. If you know arabic, you'll appreciate it a lot more... it flows so well.


... also here's ustadh muhammad alshareef's translation of the same (or possibly similar) hadith:
Allah's Messenger, sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam, said, "Be
honest, for verily honesty leads to righteousness, and
righteousness leads to paradise."

The fadhaa'il of seeking knowledge

This post is from my old blog... certain things just don't leave the mind, alhamdulillah, and this is one of them:

----------------- begin quote from old blog ---------------------

"Abu Dharr relates that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said: 'Attending a session of knowledge
is better than praying a thousand raka's prayer,*
visiting a thousand sick people,
attending a thousand funeral prayers.'
Someone said: 'O messenger of Allah,
Is it better than reading the Qur'an?'
He (Allah bless him and give him peace) said:
'Does reading the Qur'an benefit without knowledge?'"

Very nice... I heard Hafiz Aslam tell me this, then a couple days later or so I heard it on sunnipath.com, in Shaykh Nuh's commentary on Imam Ghazzali's (rahimahullah) iHya uloom ud-din. I don't have riwayah on this, if anybody else does, send me an email: sonyplaystation AT excite dot com

But even if that's not a hadith, the fact that Imam Ghazzali (rahimahullah) mentions it in his iHya, shows the significance of knowledge.

* Hafiz Aslam Patel also told me that those 1000 rakats are from the nafl prayers. Obviously you can't just sit down w/ some scholars for a session of knowledge then have the license to skip the next 1000 rakats' worth of fardh (obligatory) prayers... needless to say, but hey, we live in ignorant times.

----------------- end quote from old blog ---------------------

I truely feel sorry for the people who fill their mind-real-estate with music. Sure our minds have a lot of capacity, but your focus is limited AFAICT, and filling that buffer with music is such a horrible waste.

They say "a mind is a horrible thing to waste" about drugs, i say it about music as well.

Joel Spolsky giving career advice to young CS ppl

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CollegeAdvice.html

I read his book, it's actually one of my favorite books. If you're a programmer, you should read this... especially if you're in college or a recent graduate... man i wish i read this 6 years ago. Here's a sumary:

1. Learn how to write before graduating.
2. Learn C before graduating.
3. Learn microeconomics before graduating.
4. Don't blow off non-CS classes just because they're boring.
5. Take programming-intensive courses.
6. Stop worrying about all the jobs going to India.
7. No matter what you do, get a good summer internship.

... his article just explains each point.

He's like a Shaykh Nuh Keller for software.

Why is Gold so valuable?

http://www.theqandatimes.com/artman/publish/article_954.shtm

This answers the question. Gold was money, is money, and always will be money. The price of gold doesn’t go up or down, it stays consant, but the value of paper money is what really fluctuates. I heard this from shaykh hamza, then was reminded of it by my buddy Nizam. We have wahih to prove the value of Gold.

republican texans becoming muslim

Part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbDPt_UZnEc

Part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pX7lQatQfew

Part 3:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41rgEJ-GU3M

I can't wait until more blue collar country Americans become Muslim... Most of them are very good decent pure hearted people, and they have a lot of potential inshAllah.

Contentions 9

Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad is such a genius mashAllah. It's been a while since i've read his contentions, so i'm reading them again.

2. Feminism has one virtue: it shows that the West is still capable of certainty.

... ouch. But yeah, from athiesm comes relativism, and from relativism comes uncertainty.

9. If you seek amusement, seek it in the absurdities of kufr .

12. Be a good Muslim and you won't want to lie. Be a very good Muslim and you won't need to lie.

13. His name in our age is al-Sabur .

15. Tolerance is no substitute for holiness.

19. We have not grown out of the Shari‘a, we have shrunk out of it.

23. Religion desires to change the age. The age desires to change religion .

24. Politics is one cell within the body of Islam. If it grows unduly, it is a cancer.

27. The asbab are merely the user-interface.

40. The only safe bank is the Sadaqa Bank.

74. Praying through someone is not praying to someone. Praying because someone is praying is praying to someone.
.... that's gangster

77. Your property belongs to you if you belong to God. If you belong to Satan you belong to your property.

96. Which is the bigger prison: Islam in the eyes of modernity, or modernity in the eyes of Islam?

57. Religion, like a garden, is more resilient than a fortress.



... that's it for now
http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/ahm/contentions9.htm

Zuhd

SubHanAllah, we’re such an extravagant ummah in the west. Listen to what mufti mudassir says about weddings, living in our day to day lives versus that of the prophet pbuh and the sahabas ra

http://www.bayaans.org/Ramadan2007/mashrat_sadgi_ihsan.mp3

it’s sad how much of a forgotten practice zuhud (abstinence from extravagance) has become. There are even modern day schools of thought nowadays that deny zuhud altogether.

Just came back from a Mufti Mudassir tafsir

He was covering a part of surah tawbah.

Some things just got stuck in my head (alhamdulillah)...

he said that imam ghazzali wrote, when referring to religious arrogance (kibr) that...

if it is recognition and fame that you seek, then why bother with attaining through religion, why don't you just become an actor or entertainer?

ouch, nafs-cruncher.


He was also talking about how another scholar (possibly a tabi'een or sahaba) said, what if Allah asked you, do you want a home in this world made of Gold or a home in the hereafter made of dirt, what would you choose?

Unfortunately, because of our short sightedness, we'd choose, the home made of Gold in this world. But in reality, this life is temporary and very short, so the smart thing would be to choose the home made of dirt in the next world, because it will last forever.

But the funny thing is that the situation is flipped around: we get a home made of dirt here (or wood in cali), and Gold in the hereafter. But yet we still don't work sufficiently hard enough for the Golden home of the hereafter, but we tire ourselves out for the home made of dirt in this temporary world.

He also said that laziness is a horribly bad disease of the heart. Procrastination comes from laziness. The prophet pbuh used to seek refuge in Allah from laziness.

Monzy's Kill -9

Here's the vid: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Fow7iUaKrq4

Man this is soooo genius. It's performed by, what seems to be a phd CS major at Stanford. Watch that youtube vid, it does have bad words tho, so you've been warned.

"You're like a synchronous sock that don't know when to block"

"You're running csh, my shell is bash. You're the tertiary storage, I'm the L1 Cache. I'm a web crawling spider, you're an internet mosquito. You thought the 7-Layer model referred to a Burrito"

"I was coding ish in MIPS while you were playing space invaders"

"I wrote my ___ with zig zag, while I zag zig splay. I throw a bounds check before i write to an array."

"Coming straight out of stanford, ain't nobody tougher. Ctrl x, ctrl c, I'll discard ur freakin buffer"

"Dump your core, trace your stack, where ur grass is going, there won't be no call back"

http://www.monzy.com/intro/killdashnine_lyrics.html... you won't get it unless you are or have been a CS major.

Absolute genius.

Lesson from surah yusuf about the Evil Eye

Whenever you have a culture, especially one that has not received a prophet (in pre islamic times) or has not received dawah or a revival from Muslims in a while, you see all these superstitions coming up. Like for paki and indian muslims, we unfortunately see people in villages believing things like leaving "shoes upside down causes a fight in the home" or in the US how some people believe that if a black cat crosses your path that's bad luck.... or in both, the belief that broken class or mirrors is bad luck.

All of that stuff is complete balogne, and should be thrown out the window. It basically will fall into the category of bida or shirk -- both of which are more than deadly

However, some may think that the "Evil Eye" or "Nazr" in urdu is just another superstition -- but in this case it is not. Every culture on the face of this planet has a term for "the evil eye." Usually when this is the case about something, it is valid. The same is the case for Allah, every language has a name for Him, whether they believe in him or not. The same goes for Angels and Demons (Jinn). The prophet muhammad pbuh confirmed that the "Evil Eye" true. It basically occurs when person A is jealous of person B, and they look at them, and something happens in the spiritual realm that causes person B to be harmed. Mufti Mudassir says that (a or the) symptom is that person B gets a fever.

The root diseases of person A are:
- a love for the material world, because if it were not for that material advantage of person B, the jealousy wouldn't have been there.
- arrogance, because person A believes that s/he DESERVES the material good of B more than himself.
- the discontentment with the divine decree (Qadr). This is really the biggest arrogance, to believe that Allah's decree in what Allah has given somebody is flawed, and that your own decree is superior.

This is the disease of shaytan (specifically Iblis), he was jealous of our father Adam pbuh. Shaytan said he was better than Adam, and then ended up blaming Allah for shaytan's own screw-up.

The cure to this disease (jealousy) is very bitter, if you are person A, you should do this:
- first of all, always say mashAllah
- pray to God that he increase person B in whatever you are jealous of them about
- give a gift to person B.

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf once said, "Jealousy is a very underestimated disease in the world today".

Secretary of state, Henry Kissinger said, "what's our oil doing under their soil" ... hahahaha, thought i'd throw that in.

Well anyway, the prevention of being affected by the evil eye is simple:
- for person B to always hide his blessings. Mufti Mudassir said that it is natural for a human to tell others about something good that happened to him/her. But to protect against jealousy and the evil eye, one should hide these blessings, this is out of wisdom.
- for person A to say ma sha Allah (which literally means "what Allah willed"), and it is acknowledging that the decree of Allah is superior to what anybody else may wish.


Here's the ayah that i've been pondering in surah yusuf, where yusuf pbuh's father tells him to not tell his brothers about the great dream he received, because then shaytan can push them to could get jealous and try to get them to harm him:

إِذْ قَالَ يُوسُفُ لِأَبِيهِ يَا أَبتِ إِنِّي رَأَيْتُ أَحَدَ عَشَرَ كَوْكَبًا وَالشَّمْسَ وَالْقَمَرَ رَأَيْتُهُمْ لِي سَاجِدِينَ


قَالَ يَا بُنَيَّ لاَ تَقْصُصْ رُؤْيَاكَ عَلَى إِخْوَتِكَ فَيَكِيدُواْ لَكَ كَيْدًا إِنَّ الشَّيْطَانَ لِلإِنسَانِ عَدُوٌّ مُّبِينٌ

012.004 Behold! Joseph said to his father: "O my father! I did see eleven stars and the sun and the moon: I saw them prostrate themselves to me!"

012.005 Said (the father): "My (dear) little son! relate not thy vision to thy brothers, lest they concoct a plot against thee: for Satan is to man an avowed enemy!

SubHanAllah, what a book! Listen to it.

Article on Obama by Firas Ahmad called "Our Obama Problem"

“With presidential candidate Barack Obama's surge ahead of Hillary Clinton in the nomination process, American Muslims are now asking how you root for a candidate who doesn't want you to root for him?”

“Attacking Obama for his pseudo-association with Islam is a far safer and more acceptable strategy for right-wing zealots than attacking him for being black.”

Those are excerpts from this article. It's quite interesting:

http://www.altmuslim.com/a/a/a/2676/

He made a lot of really good points, probably the biggest thing that we, as 1st and 2nd generation Muslims have slipped up on is not hooking up with Afro American Muslims as tightly as we should. There is definitely love, respect, and brother/sisterhood, but it's not as close as it should be. InshAllah this will change as my generation and future generations get older and become community leaders. There is a whole lot of potential here inshAllah.


وَاعْتَصِمُواْ بِحَبْلِ اللّهِ جَمِيعًا وَلاَ تَفَرَّقُواْ وَاذْكُرُواْ نِعْمَةَ اللّهِ عَلَيْكُمْ إِذْ كُنتُمْ أَعْدَاء فَأَلَّفَ بَيْنَ قُلُوبِكُمْ فَأَصْبَحْتُم بِنِعْمَتِهِ إِخْوَانًا وَكُنتُمْ عَلَىَ شَفَا حُفْرَةٍ مِّنَ النَّارِ فَأَنقَذَكُم مِّنْهَا كَذَلِكَ يُبَيِّنُ اللّهُ لَكُمْ آيَاتِهِ لَعَلَّكُمْ تَهْتَدُونَ

003.103 And hold fast, all together, by the rope which Allah (stretches out for you), and be not divided among yourselves; and remember with gratitude Allah’s favour on you; for ye were enemies and He joined your hearts in love, so that by His Grace, ye became brethren; and ye were on the brink of the pit of Fire, and He saved you from it. Thus doth Allah make His Signs clear to you: That ye may be guided.

I miss Sidi Yahya Rhodus

He went back to Yemen to further his studies in the deen, but surfing halaltube.com i found some lecs by him:

http://www.halaltube.com/category/yahya-rhodus

I remember him giving commentary on a collection of hadith about the description of the prophet compibled by shaykh yusuf an-nabahani... his way of teaching was like, filled with Lutf... it was just harmonious, the way he'd move his hands and stuff... it was like out of this world. It's hard to describe.... he taught like the jedi knights in star wars fight.

Sidi Yahya is amazing, people call him "the next shaykh hamza"

Halaltube.com

Dude, this website has a lot of lectures, it's basically an aggregation of islamic web based media.

I don't know where they got these shaykh nuh lectures from, but i'm glad they are there:
http://www.halaltube.com/category/nuh-ha-meem-keller

I'm listening to this one now:
http://www.halaltube.com/nuh-ha-meem-keller/audio/music-fiqh-and-islam

They've got a good amount of shaykh hamza yusuf stuff too:
http://www.halaltube.com/category/hamza-yusuf

I listened to this one on secularism yesterday (I had heard it a long time ago on mp3):
http://www.halaltube.com/hamza-yusuf/video/secularism-the-greatest-challenge-facing-islam

Shaykh Nuh referred to somebody he knows/heard of that's getting a masters in communications at UCLA, so he asked her

"What's the news in communications?" and he continues with her answer, "The news in communications is that nobody on the campus of UCLA is communicating with anybody. They're all plugged into their iPods, the wonder of wonders... Another theft of reality by virtual reality."
(See the second mp3 on the last URL above at around 13 minutes).


aint nothin like codin' and darsin' at the same time.

Looking back at Ron Paul

Over the last couple of months i've been watching a good number of youtube vids, etc, by ron paul. And I've been realizing more and more why it was a mistake to want to vote for him.

Well there's the obvious argument of "why waste your vote", but that doesn't cut it for me... that's not what i'm talking about here... i mean more votes, even for a losing candidate allows him to speak up more.

Basically the main good thing about him is his foreign policy, he's right on the ball with that. As for the Economy, its great that he wants to lean out the government. It's great that he wants to get rid of the dept of homeland security, possibly repeal the patriot acts, etc. It was also great that he's home schooling friendly, and wants to turn gold into basically a form of currency (no taxes or capital gain on it). I also like his proposed approach to health care.

But the main things that really bother me about him are:
- his stance on immigration. He's too strict on mexico, and he wants to stop giving student visas to people from "terrorist countries"
- his stance on gun control is kinda scary. He basically wants to make it easier for people to buy guns and carry them around.
- He's too nice to corporations. I think he'd make outsourcing even worse than it is now, which is bound to happen to most industries sooner or later because of globalization, but he'd expedite the process significantly.
- It seems like he wants to have almost no regulation of corporations, this could be very problematic, especially for the environment.

but yeah... i'm not all that crazy about Ron Paul anymore. I'd love it if he would keep speaking about foreign policy though. I think he's also running for congress, maybe that's a better place for him.

So yeah, it's basically turned into what i thought it would, just another election season where we are given basically no real choices. If Clinton will be running for 2008, she'll do fine i think, but she'll probably work too slow. I think she'll beat mccain and become the first female president, and we'll have a total of 24 to 28 years of nothing but Bushes and Clintons running the country. If Obama wins (and he seems to have a pretty good chance at it right now), I think he'll basically do what Clinton would have, but faster. He's young, quick, and probably more approachable by leaders of foreign countries, I see more promise in him. The main thing that scares me about him is that he has said that he wants to go after PK and AFG, but I have a feeling that he was just bluffing to prevent losing certain votes.

Looking back on it now, my prefs would probably be:
1. Edwards
2. Kucinich
3. Ron Paul
4. Obama
5. Clinton

Halal Mix Tape Vol. 1

HAHAHAAHAHAH... this is hilarious!!!



These bros really put a lot of work into this video... they took old school american songs, changed the wording to be islamic messages, and swapped out the haram instruments with vocal immitations.

You could jump to like 1:20, or even better, 1:50 , or 5:05

Btw, based on the comments, looks like they're from maryland.

Prep for ALIM program, read up on tasawwuf / sufism

InshAllah My wife and I are going to the ALIM program this weekend. The Theme will be " Is Islamic Thought Dying ". I suggest people read the following articles before going on tasawwuf or "sufism" (The science of Ihsan). Muslims tend to be pretty clueless on what it actually is, and since it seems like it will be covered fairly intensively, i thought it would be a really good idea to read up on it beforehand.

On the legitimacy of tasawwuf in Islamic law:
http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/nuh/sufitlk.htm

http://tasawwuf.org/basics/what_tasawwuf.htm
Tasawwuf.org is associated with shaykh hussain abdul sattar (see the list of representatives of that site).

A taste of what tasawwuf is:
http://www.zaytuna.org/seasons/seasons1/Foundation%20Spirirual%20Path.pdf

Bida and Sunnah in Shariah:
http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/nuh/bida.htm
If you don't want to read this entire arti, at least read the ending part where it starts "We are now able to return to the hadith with which I began". I asked a very reliable indo-pak scholar (won't say which one, i'll just say he's not in the US) whether the idea that bida itself takes on the usuli rulings of shariah (wajib, mustahab, mubah, makruh, haraam) is a ligit idea, and he said yes... and he said that the only disagreement with that part of the article is that he said that mawlid / milad is bida makruhah, but i guess that could be debated and could vary from culture to culture.

Bayah isn't necessarily part of tasawwuf, but it's related, so read this:
http://www.alinaam.org.za/tasawwuf/bayat.htm



But to make it all very simple, see The Hadith of Jibreel (#2 here: http://www.40hadith.com/40hadith_en.htm ).
This hadith is like a summary of Islam, see how it talks about three concepts in our deen:

Iman (belief)
Islam (outward practice)
Ihsan (spiritual excellence)

Well each of these concepts have associated "sciences", here's how they map out:
Iman :: Aqeedah
Islam :: Fiqh / Shariah
Ihsan :: Tasawwuf / Tazkiyat-un-nafs

Another way to think of it are these associations:
Iman/Aqeedah :: the mind
Islam/Fiqh :: The limbs, and 5 senses
Ihsan/Tasawwuf :: the heart

And yet another way to think of it, as shaykh hamza explained it are the 3 geometric dimensions:
The forward and backward dimension would be like islam,
The left and right dimension would be like iman,
The upward direction (towards Allah) would be ihsan.
The fourth dimension, time, would be that we are all doing the above for the hereafter, to present ourselves to Allah on the day of judgement.

... all that is really just an explanation of the hadith of jibril.

get it?

Surah Yusuf recited by old school Efasi

So you know how when you go to Quran recitation DL sites like islamway or aswatalislam.net they have two or more listings for Efasi, 1424H and one that plainly says "efasi", well this is the plain one, and i'm pretty sure it's an older recitation. IMO he puts more emotion in his older ones, and his newer recitation seems to be more refined (and has higher sound quality as well). Well, i'm listening to the old school one right now, here's the Odeo player, beautiful:



And here's the translation:
http://www.islamicity.com/mosque/quran/12.htm#1

And the Arabic script:
http://www.islamicity.com/mosque/arabicscript/10_19/12_1-4.htm

Tired of nasty internet Ads?

Are you a facebook addict? myspacer? mail.com user? general web surfer?

Well If you're a Muslim, or a person with some old-fashioned moral values, you're sick of the nasty ads they keep throwing at you. Y'know, the ads with women dressed like prostitutes trying to sell you all kinds of things you don't even need.

Well, in case you haven't figured it out, there's a way to surf the net without all that nastiness.

Download and install Mozilla Firefox -- this is a free browser, that CNET Reviews ranks even higher than Internet Explorer. You can get Firefox here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

Install that, and then go to this website using Firefox to download Adblock Plus:
http://adblockplus.org/en/installation
Then click on Install.

It will ask you which filter to use, I'm using EasyList, and it works great.

Then that's it, you're in business, you can now surf the web without all the nastiness in Ads.

You'll actually find a lot of other awesome things about Firefox, including its countless available add-ons.

You could now surf your facebook, and have those horrible nasty ads blocked.

Another few interesting things to know about Firefox:

• Mozilla Firefox is basically an unofficial Google company -- again, UNOFFICIAL. Mozilla gets a large amount of its funding from Google because of that baked in google search box (you'll see what i mean once you install it).
  
• Mozilla is working hard on using Tamarin (the Flash Player code engine) for its javascript execution
• They are also spearheading the effort to comply with the latest ecmascript standards, meaning having Javascript 2, which will look A WHOLE LOT like AS3 (so it behooves you to learn AS3 now). If you've done any javascript / AJAX development, you'll realize how HORRIBLE the coding experience is
• My favorite add-on, maybe even more than ad block plus, is FireBug , a heavy duty JS debugger, great stuff.
  

Ron Paul at Google

Ron Paul speaks for over an hour.

Ron Paul on Israel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4Jn2xCF92Y

Good stuff.

Ron Paul 2008, YEAH!!!

I never thought I'd vote republican for the 2008 election, but now I understand that republican != neo-con.

I've watched a lot of his videos on ronpaul2008.com and they all seem to be very consistent with my views.

Gold is money

One thing that surprised me about him is his allowance for investing in Gold without being taxed on it, this is HUGE for muslims, because I think that's the only way to legitimately avoid interest living in the US. He said that Gold is supposed to be a type of currency according to the constitution, who woulda known.

Pro home schooling

Another thing that surprised me was his pro-home-schooling stance, he understands the benefits, and has seen the positive results home-schooling has brought. So, on top of that he wants to give some tax money back to home schoolers, this would be very significant.

Health care: a hybrid approach

Yet another thing is his stance on health care. Yes i watched Sicko. So there are 2 extremes:
1. keep it the way it is, where health care is run by the corporate monster
2. completely socialize it.

The problem with the first option is obvious. W/ the second one the problem is that gov't has a tendency to crapify everything it runs. When we think of the DMV, the place u go for vaccines (forgot what it was called), etc we get an immediate feeling that its going to be a huge hassle. The workers tend to be very slow and seem to not care about the people they serve, etc. Another problem is that in the US we have some of the best doctors in the world, we have the best medical instruments, etc, and it's all I think because of the extra money that's sent in that direction, so it makes me wonder if that trend can still continue if health care were totally gov't-ified. Also if it were free, people would abuse it, and go to the doctor for the most minor things, and i've seen this in pakistan where healthcare is super cheap, it only screws up the system. Well Ron Paul's model seems to be a hybrid approach, which is where you start giving people an allowance of how much you can spend, then after that amount is reached then you start dealing with health insurance. This would push people to go to the doctor only when they REALLY needed to, and would also provide the extra money for the extra quality we see in doctors, medical instruments, pharmaceutical research, etc.

... that's kind of how Adobe's (my) health plan works. We get an allowance per year which accumulates year to year (roll over style), and once we exceed the allowance they pay 90% up to a certain max-out-of-pocket for me, then they pay 100%. No co-pay at all, period. It works very well.

Foreign Policy

Maybe the biggest thing that I like about him is his stance on foreign policy. He actually listens to "the other side." He wants to pull the troops out of other countries fully. That means not just out of Iraq, but also out of saudi arabia, afghanistan, etc. Instead as for his defensive strategy, he wants to rely strongly on the navy. This makes a lot of sense. He also realizes that NOBODY, including iraq, iran, etc is even close to being able to invade the US. This is very true, it's just an image we're given by the media to keep us scared which will cause Americans to allow the gov't to spend tremendous amounts of money on our war machine, and allow us to steal oil more effectively.

I'd really like to know his stance on the israeli/palestinean issue. I haven't seen anything yet, but i'm assuming that he doesn't want to talk about it, cause the Media is fully zionist controlled, and would completely focus all its efforts on taking him out of the competition if he spoke out against zionism.

Conclusion

Other than that, yeah, i love that he's such a straight shooter. The guy is a soft-hearted doctor that wants to make a difference, that's all. I truely don't believe that he is in it for fame or the money.

The only thing is, that he just seems too good to be true. Whenever there's an environment bent on doing the wrong thing (because of whatever material benefits they have at stake), and there is one person that wants to stand up to do the right thing. The environment just crashes down on that one good person. The neo-cons just control way too much, and on the democrat side, they'd want a piece of him just cause he's the competition.

Hafiz Kamran Riaz visits Cali

Sidi Hafiz Kamran Riaz from Chicago, IL visited nor-cal last week, and alhamdulillah we loved having him here. He was first in my arabic class at Zaytuna, he gave us some advice and said some really inspiring things about the Arabic language. It was very motivating, and gave us quite a rush. He later gave a talk at masjid muhajireen , and again motivated especially the youth to excel in all that they do, both in matters of the deen and the dunya.

One of the things he did was recite the poem by Al-Asma'ee. He told us the story of how the Ummayad Khalifah Abu Jafar (ra) tried to play the local poets to try to score some free entertaining poetry out of them, and how a great muhadith and scholar Al-Asmaee set things straight.

Here is the entire story (you really need to hear it all to appreciate the actual poem):


and here's the poem itself:


... and of course listening to it on the internet isn't nearly as powerful as experiencing it live. But FWIW, there it is.

"I am a Muslim" FEATURED youtube video

featured on youtube:



... it was pretty good, good job MAS. 1.14M views, excellent.

And here is the bay area version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoQbMlcK3Pk


haaaaaaaay

and to that we could add "I am an engineer at ____" ... and fill in the blank with Apple, Google, Microsoft, Adobe, Yahoo, Ebay, Boeing, NASA, JPL, KLA, Intel, Oracle, IBM, Motorola, Nokia, PeopleSoft, and so on... yes i know AT LEAST one muslim at each of those companies.

Muslims write the software you run, create the products you use, and yes, even build the airplanes you fly in.

Here comes another bubble video

That's good stuff, good observations. I take it as a vid theorizing what i've been pondering myself. It seems like in the tech industry there are waves of ups and downs in terms of money. So when there's a "boom" there are all these companies addressing human needs which equate to money. Out of a gazillion such companies, one or two are extremely good and sweep the floor with the others (such as google, ebay, etc), all of the business gets pushed into them, they get filthy rich and the "startups" all die out, and in the death the smart ones cash out, others are unfortunate.

Then there's a period of death in the tech industry, where the only ones left innovating are the fat cats that survived, they further develop the tech infrastructure, and make more things possible. Then all the sudden it becomes possible to be able to fill new human needs, like with facebook there's the need for socialization and at the least a fancy online phone book -- RIA technology and overall advances in hardware (allowing AJAX to get crunched faster than before) make this possible. With youtube, there's video and widespread broadband capability.

Now this video claims that there's another bubble about to pop -- however i disagree. I think there will be bubbles that pop, such as the social networking bubble, it's just too hard to compete with facebook and myspace... so other social networking start ups might die out. But then there are many other endeavors, such as the race for high-def internet video, and this endeavor will be on a cycle as well, but since it will be on a different phase from the social networking "bubble," the entire tech industry won't really feel the loss because the unemployed from the social networking bubble will move to video which might be in its peak at that time.

Now if you mix in all the other technology endeavors, such as the IDE, virtualization, RIA-ifying "Office" apps and creative apps, the future looks fairly bright for the tech industry... when one endeavor dies out, another one is still full in boom. The only thing that might happen, and i think it will, is that it will just stop growing at the rate it has been.

I guess overall you can call it "maturity".

Wanna know a secret?

Well I guess it’s not going to be a secret anymore, now that I am posting on my highly trafficked blog ;-)

You know that ayah in the Quran where Allah says that ~= “Surely if you thank me, then surely I will increase you (in that)”

And then there’s the principle (which I’m pretty sure is derived from the Quran): When you get something good, thank Allah, and if you are afflicted with something “bad” blame only yourself.

Well Shaykh Muhammad explained that when you perform a good action, maybe tahajjud, or some extra dhikr or avoid a haram action, that you should do a sajdah of shukr that Allah allowed you to do that good deed... then the devine Law that Allah has told us about him increasing us in that will kick in, and He will enable you to do even more.

You get it? so like, lets say you prayed tahajjud right, well that’s a good thing, and you don’t give yourself credit, you know that it was Allah that gave you the tawfiq to pray tahajjud and gave you the means to do so (allowing you to stay awake, etc), so you should thank him for that by doing a sajdah-e-shukr.

Now the clincher is that because you thanked Him for being able to worship Him, He will increase you in worshipping him more. Then you thank him more, and he increases you more. And this seems to me like a path to wilayah.

It’s pretty amazing.

Here's an excerpt from it, again, it's Shaykh Muhammad Al-Ya'qubi in the "Invocations of the Heart" lecture series, CD2, Track 5, starting at around 8:54

Shaykh Yassir Fazaga on KROQ (rock radio station)

"Ask a Muslim" on the "Kevin and Bean Show" on KROQ

Click here


Shaykh Yassir is breakin' it down. He is the Imam of the Mission Viejo masjid in "The OC" ... my community in so-cal before I moved to the bay area.

Hafiz Aslam told us this story too

I'm at the second mufti mudassir lecture in the Ramadan 2007 series:

 

"Zindagi Ki Buniyad - Allah Ka Khauf Aur Allah Se Ummeed"

 

http://www.bayaans.org/Ramadan2007/allah_ka_khauf_aur_ummeed.mp3 

 

which I get from:

http://www.bayaans.org/ramadan2007.html 

 

I'm referring to the story about the woman who built some water pipelines or something to alleviate the difficulties of hajj for the hujjaj. She passed away later on. So she and others figured that she must be going to Jannah for that. One person saw her in a dream (yes this is possible, we believe in the karamah of a awliya according to aqeedah tahawiyya, i'll let you read up on the details of it)... well anyway, in that dream this woman told the dreamer that when she presented this deed to Allah, it wasn't accepted cuz the money used was from government money anyway. But she entered Jannah anyway because one day she was eating, and the adhan started from a local Masjid, and she fell in a deep state of awe at the greatness of Allah, and she stopped eating and fixed her scarf to cover all of her hair (it was slipping off). .... and that was the action, although small, but packed with sincerity by which Allah entered her into Jannah.

 

And for the record, Hafiz Aslam heard this story from Shaykh Zulfiqaar Ahmed Naqshbandi at an ijtima in Sacramento around 2.5-3.5 years or so ago. And also for the record, I don't know where Mufti Mudassir heard/read it.

 

But its def worth listening to Mufti Mudassir tell the story directly.

Mufti Mudassir Owais is amazing

http://www.bayaans.org/Ramadan2007/akhirat_qayamat_tazkirah.mp3 

 

Just listen to it.

 

I was listening to Ustadh Muhammad Alshareef's Usul al Fiqh series that i got from ISNA, done with that, now moving on to Mufti Mudassir's Ramadan 2007 lectures. It's all in urdu:

 

http://www.bayaans.org/ramadan2007.html 

 

 

Tafsir on Surah Fatihah by Imam Suhaib Webb

in MP3 format

http://www.savefile.com/files/1131838

http://www.savefile.com/files/1131833

http://www.savefile.com/files/1131846

... I had gotten this from UC Berkeley's MSA's (Cal MSA) website a few years ago, its no longer there AFAIK.