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