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.