You have just received a Nudge!

There's a feature on MSN Messenger called a 'Nudge'.

If you see someone online and want to talk to them and they don't respond to the normal messages in the window, you send them a virtual 'nudge' and it violently shakes up the window they are working in ..and ultimately, attracts their attention.

When I read of the latest quake in Indonesia, I sent up a silent prayer for the victims -- living and dead -- may Allaah have mercy upon them; and thought of the 'Nudge'.

We are so wrapped up in the dunya and its pursuit, so heedless of Allaah's message that short of shaking up our world, there's no way our attention will be directed to Him.

Yesterday R-R and I were talking about how many innocent children are suffering all over the world, and how we can never be truly grateful for Allaah's favours upon us, when there was the inevitable question: Why does Allaah, the Most-Merciful, allow bad things to happen?

In a khutbah, Shaykh Muhammad Saalih Al-Munajjid says:

Not every affliction is necessarily a punishment; rather it may be a test for the victim of calamity, by which Allaah will expiate their bad deeds or raise their status in Paradise if they bear this trial with patience. When a child with affliction grows up, the test will also include him, and if he bears it with patience and faith, then Allaah has prepared for the patient one a reward that cannot be measured.
Allaah says: “Only those who are patient shall receive their reward in full, without reckoning.” (Az-Zumar 39: 10)

For us Muslims, life does not end when we die; rather, we believe that beyond death there is Paradise and Hell, where we encounter true life. Those who did good deeds find the reward for their good deeds waiting for them with Allaah, and those who did evil will find the punishment for their evil deeds waiting for them. Good and evil cannot be equal, and the patience of the one who was tested and bore it with patience will not be wasted with Allaah.

Allaah says: “And certainly, We shall test you with something of fear, hunger, loss of wealth, lives and fruits, but give glad tidings to the patient.” (Al-Baqarah, 2: 155)

The Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: “How wonderful is the affair of the believer, for all of it is good, and that applies to no one except the believer. If something good happens to him he gives thanks, and that is good for him, and if something bad befalls him he bears it with patience and that is good for him.” (Reported by Muslim)

From this, it should be clear to you that the calamities that befall those who seem to us to be innocent— and indeed befall all people —are not necessarily a punishment. Rather they may be a mercy from Allaah, but our minds and reason are imperfect and are often unable to understand the wisdom of Allah in such matters.

Either we believe that Allaah is more Just than us, and Wiser, and more Merciful towards His creation, so we submit to Him and accept His will while also acknowledging our inability to understand the true nature of our own selves. Or we boast of our imperfect reason and feel proud of our weak selves and insist on calling Allaah to account and objecting to His Decree.

Allah draws attention to this when He says: “He cannot be questioned as to what He does, while they will be questioned.” (Al-Anbiya, 21:23)

Sabr and Shukr.The circle of a Muslim's life.

A 10-year-old remembers

The Marines and a 'massacre' in Iraq
From Ali Hamdani in al-Haditha, Ned Parker and Nick Meo in Baghdad, and Tom Baldwin in Washington

Girl tells how soldiers shot 24 civilians after road bomb
US troops to face homicide charges amid cover-up claims
Source: Times Investigation

WITH remarkable self-assurance for a ten-year-old girl, Iman Hassan recounted how her family was killed by American troops as she cowered in terror in a corner of her living room.

It happened soon after 7am on November 19 last year, she claimed in an interview with The Times. She was still in her pyjamas and preparing for school when a US military convoy rumbled down the road near her home in al-Haditha, a town on the Euphrates surrounded by date farms that has become a hotbed of insurgents. Three months earlier 20 American soldiers had been killed there.

At that moment a Humvee was blown up by a roadside bomb, killing Miguel Terrazas, its 20-year-old driver from El Paso, Texas. Iman’s father was praying in the next room of her house, a basic two-storey building made of breezeblocks. Her grandparents were still in bed. The family heard shots but knew to stay indoors.

What happened next is the subject of a massive inquiry by the US Naval Criminal Investigative Service. The results are expected to deal another devastating blow to America’s standing in Iraq and across the world.
US Congressmen briefed on the investigation expect it to conclude that Corporal Terrazas’s fellow marines ran amok, killing as many as 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians, including women and children, in cold blood. A dozen marines face courts martial or even charges of homicide. A separate inquiry is determining whether there was a cover-up.

Pentagon and military officials who have seen the findings of the investigation have said that it may be the worst case of misconduct by American ground forces in Iraq, and that includes the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse. Critics will draw comparisons with the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War, when US soldiers killed more than 500 unarmed villagers.

(...)

As Iman tells it, US marines burst into her house 15 minutes after the bomb destroyed the Humvee, apparently looking for insurgents. They shouted at her father. Then a grenade was thrown into her grandparents’ room. She saw her mother hit by shrapnel. Her aunt grabbed a baby and ran from the house.

Soldiers opened fire inside the living room, where most of the family were gathered. Her uncle Rashid came downstairs, saw what was happening, then fled outside, where he was pursued by Marines and shot.

“Everybody who was in the house was killed by the Americans except my brother Abdul-Rahman and me,” Iman said. “We were too scared to move and tried to hide under a pillow. I was hit by shrapnel in my leg. For two hours we didn’t dare to move. My family didn’t die immediately. We could hear them groaning.”

Iman’s grandfather Abdul al-Hamid Hassan, her grandmother Khamisa, her father Walid, uncle Mujahid, her mother, uncle Rashid and cousin Abdullah, 4, had all been fatally wounded.

Innaa lillaahi wa innaa ilayhi raaji'oon.

reminiscence/things I never thought I'd miss

These days there has been a rush of people going to desiland and we are expecting guests next week, in shaa Allaah..in preparation, Rasha-Rida are soon to be the proud owners of a set of custom-made shalwaar-qamees (pink and lavender, respectively)..

For the most part, I have been very very glad to get away from the (sometimes) functioning anarchy and chaos, alhamdulillaah, but there are some things that I realised I really really miss ...and I never thought I would..

Rain

Although we live in a place where it rains a lot alhamdulillaah, (accompanied by power outages and thunderstorms et al), the rains here are a polite pitter-patter, like someone smiling with their mouth closed.

In desiland, blinding curtains of water pour from the sky from low, purple monsoon clouds, pounding the cracked earth into pliant brown mush that squishes between one's toes, like an early morning splash on the face, that takes away the torpor of sleep and rouses the Earth to dress in green and gold...
...for a while, everyone is happy...the kids on the street in their ragged knickers and beat-up chests whoop and run down slopes, splashing in the slush; smoke from piping hot pakoras curls out of kitchens and office-goers wait under tea-stalls waiting for the rain to stop over a cup of hot chai, even the mangy, flea-bitten dogs seem to smile..

Earth


Nearly everything has its roots in the unpredictable earth...houses, pots and pans, colour, food, fibre, herbs, medicine ..everything tastes real, feels alive

Books
BCL, with its cool, rubber scented airconditioned quietness and the impossible to manoeuvre copies of The Times and Daily Telegraph (delivered a week later) and How-to-get-Around-in-London guides; the junior section where Rasha-Rida borrowed their first books; Teksons , the complete works of PG Wodehouse and Shakespeare and O Henry and Saki and all major newspapers and magazines available at public libraries (membership 50 Rupees a year)...

relocate/refocus/resolution

I have been shifting the BlogRoll and some other links to Muslims-R-Us .. and made a brand new blogroll for this blog...
subhaanallaah..I'm completely in awe of the incredible inspiration and intelligence, time and effort that has gone into making some of these sites...and I'm completely bowled over by the fact that there are SO many resources online for Muslim kids...subhaanallaah, can't wait for vacations to start this year!

advice, like youth, is wasted on the young :)

This post is for the lights in my life, all the Rs, may Allaah raise you all to righteousness. Aameen.

Notwithstanding the fact that there's a whole genre of advice-literature (like the one posted below, which R-R and I were discussing in relation to an English project) , and a hadeeth says: ad deenu an-naseeha ...the deen is sincere advice, offering advice (no matter how well-intentioned) isn't exactly the best way to make friends and influence people nowadays...which is why I recently deflected a request to write a parenting article.

I find it daunting beyond daunting to tell other parents what to do/not do with their own children so that they 'turn out right' by magic recipe.

Myself, I take each day as it comes, hoping at the end to go to bed with the realisation that one day I will stand before Allaah and be answerable for what I did this day, praying that I did all that I could to raise my kids on the guidance of Allaah and His Messenger, sallallaahu 'alayhi wa sallam, just for today. Admittedly, that's too vague an aim to be put into words and put out as advice.

For many years now, I have been having realisation flashes of my own mortality. There are no guarantees that I will live long enough to see my children grown up...there are no guarantees that I will be there for them if they ever need advice... and considering they're the only people on the planet whom it's completely kosher and acceptable for me to dispense advice, no matter how simplistic and cliched, here goes:

The best guidance is that of Allaah and His Messenger, sallallaahu 'alayhi wa sallam: Don't even bother with agony aunts or masjid uncles ...go straight to the Qur'aan...there's something in it for everyone and every situation. Read it every day, absorb it, live it, reflect it. Hold fast to the Sunnah of Allaah's Messenger, sallallaahu 'alayhi wa sallam, with your front teeth, as if it were the last lifeline.

Be grateful: There's sssssssoooooooooooooooooooooo much to be grateful for, alhamdulillaah, Allaah's favours upon us are endless, beyond measure. Whenever you feel life is 'unfair' or things aren't going right...take a pen and paper and write down all that you have to be grateful for...you'll be surprised...and hopefully, grateful.

Love for your brother/sister what you love for yourself: Don't go looking for external cures for the Ummah's ills until you look within first. Heal yourself and the rest will follow eventually...if it has been willed, in shaa Allaah. Remember, Allaah Watches everything, and He is All-Aware of what is in your hearts...if you don't like to be treated in a certain way, don't treat others like that...

Every little thing counts: On the Day our scales will weigh our good and bad deeds, you will be glad for every little good deed that you did, that will take you closer to His Presence, your heart will sink at every bad deed that will take you further from Him...don't belittle your bad deeds, don't look down upon small acts of goodness ...

Don't be afraid to be sincere: If you care about your Deen, don't be afraid to let it show in your choices, your words, the way you live your life ...for fear of being thought of as smarmy or self righteous ...it's *your* life and you will be answerable for it.

Value yourself: Your parents have invested a lot of effort into raising you...Take care of yourself, physically, mentally, spiritually...don't depend on others to do it for you... Eat right, sleep on time and make your connection with Allaah -- Salaah -- the high point of your day, not just something that has to be gotten out of the way between other important work ...

Don't sell yourself short: Don't be fooled twice, learn from those around you, sit with elders and seek their counsel before taking decisions and don't repeat their mistakes ...pray to Allaah for guidance and baseerah...

Meet people for the sake of Allaah alone: Your time together will be blessed...you won't ever be disappointed, in shaa Allaah ...

Think long and hard before you join a group: As a Muslim, you are already part of a larger whole, a community, an Ummah...don't try to join a group or belong just because you feel lonely...strive to be part of the best companionship...the people who will follow the example of the Prophet, sallallaahu 'alayhi wa sallam, and the best generation....who will meet the Prophet, sallallaahu 'alayhi wa sallam, at al-Kawthar and drink from it...and never be thirsty ever again...

Always choose Allaah: If there is a choice between pleasing yourself/people and pleasing Allaah, *always* choose Allaah.

Be generous: Spend of yourself -- your time and resources -- generously for the sake of Allaah. Remember the time someone brought you a treat when you were least expecting it, when someone went out of the way for you, and how nice you felt? *Be* that person for others...every little thing you spend in Allaah's way will be increased manifold and returned to you...in this world and the next, that is Allaah's promise...and it is the truth.

Check your tongue: Don't say anything if you have nothing positive/beneficial to say; pay attention to the way you choose your words, keep them soft and sweet, you might have to eat them :)
NEVER argue..even if you feel you are in the right, it eats away your adab and corrodes your soul...if you have reached a dead-end in a conversation, don't try to score points, say salaam and move on.

Pray for hikmah: The one who has been granted Hikmah has been granted Mercy and a Treasure beyond compare from Allaah...pray to Allaah for guidance, for you and your family, and all the Muslims, and pray:

اللهم أرنا الحق حقاً وارزقنا اتباعه

وأرنا الباطل باطلاً وارزقنا اجتنابه

O Allaah, let us see the Truth as Truth

And grant that we follow it

And let us see Faleshood/Misguidance as Falsehood/Misguidance

And grant that we avoid it.

If...

IF by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

11 Things You Can't Learn in School/Bill Gates

Words of Advice from Bill Gates

:Life is wonderful, but it is also challenging at times. The following advice comes from one of the most successful businessman in history, Bill Gates. He recently told a group of high schoolers about 11 things they did not learn in school.

He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a full generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world. I want all of you to be very successful, so consider some of his words:

Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it.
Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
Rule 3: You will NOT make 40 thousand dollars a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone, until you earn both.
Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss. He doesn't have tenure.
Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping; they called it opportunity.
Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you are. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parents' generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers but life has not. In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself. Do that on your own time.
Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.--
There may be virtual reality, but there is no such thing as virtual happiness :)

more funny ESL stories: here

cooking up a fun mix

so I was making UmmAli (from a ready-to-make mix) and it was the funnest thing I've done all week b/z of the instructions on the back of the packet:

...
4. Place bowl in oven and bake for 5-7 minutes at 175 C until it gets golden brown shape.

5. Represent hot with excellent appetite

It reminded me of the written work that the cute bunch of kids in the ESL classes I taught last year, turned in...they were from all over the world ..Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Sudan, Yemen, Lebanon, The Phillippines, Jordan, India, Pakistan, Korea...and the mixed up b's and ps; p's and f's; s and sh's ; their propensity to write words entirely without vowels, had me chuckling last year more than I have for years...
in sharp contrast to my editing days when i'd go berserk with the red ink and get high blood pressure from (now that i think back what were) perfectly acceptable articles that grown ups turned in...and think it was sacrilege to write stuff that was meant for public consumption in lower case and incomprehensible abbreviations and in one breathless punctuation-less rush, a la e. e. cummings, like the paragraph i just did...

needless to say, the kids are totally to blame for the new, improved mellow me, what with their own brand of arablish: "I was zakkiring this last evening..", "I was trying to shaghghil it when it stopped.." et al...

half and half

Children to be taught 'traditional values'
Matthew Taylor, education correspondent
Monday May 15, 2006
The Guardian

Schoolchildren should be taught "traditional British values" as part of an attempt to challenge extremism and promote a more cohesive society, the higher education minister, Bill Rammell, will say today.

Under the proposals, all 11 to 16-year-olds will learn about free speech and democracy in the UK, as well as the contribution made by different communities. Mr Rammell will announce a six-month review of the school curriculum by a leading headteacher to see how best "core British values" can be incorporated into the school timetable.

Speaking at South Bank University, Mr Rammell will say the UK is a strong multicultural and multifaith society, but to prosper it must focus on shared "core values". These include the tradition of free speech; the contested view that Britain was founded on freedom, democracy and liberty; and the contribution of different communities to building a modern, successful country.

"I very strongly believe that we are a multicultural, diverse society and I think that gives us incredible strength and richness," he told the Guardian. "But I think it is crucial that we recognise that there are some core British values that are central and common to us all."

Speaking at the end of a 10-month consultation with Muslim students and academics, Mr Rammell will also warn there needs to be a public debate about what different religious groups can reasonably expect in a historically Christian society. "Some of the demands that are being put forward are unrealistic and I think we have to have a public debate and be clear about what counts as reasonable and what does not," said.

Ed: seems like the 'merge-with-mob or be lynched by it' mentality is spreading all over..notice the insistence on all-American/proudPakistani/IndiaisGreat values/in their respective countries ...in essence, what are they saying? that kids must up their BritishnessQuotient or they might set off the terror alert by being too Muslim?

reminds me of Edward Said's childhood memoir, Out of Place:
"It was as an American businessman's son who hadn't the slightest feeling of being American that I entered the Cairo School for American Children CSAC, in the fall of 1946, ..."Edward Sigheed" did pass muster,and I was soon able in some way to belong, but every morning when I stepped on the bus I felt a seething panic when I saw the colored T-shirts, striped socks, and loafers they all wore, while I was in my primly correct gray shorts, dress white shirt, and conventionally European lace-ups. For the class I'd settle my inner consternation into an efficient, albeit professional, identity, tthat of a bright, yet often wayward pupil.

Then at lunch, as they unwrapped the same neatly cut white-bread sandwiches of peanut butter and jelly -- neither of which I had ever tasted -- and I my more interesting cheese and prosciutto in Shaami bread, I fell back into doubt and shame, that I, an American child, ate a different food, which no one ever asked to taste, nor asked me to explain..."

"...the overriding sensation I had was always being out of place...it took me about 50 years to become accustomed to, or, more exactly, to feel less uncomfortable with, "Edward" a foolishly English name yoked to the unmistakably Arabic family name "Said."...
For years, depending on the exact circumstances I would rush past "Edward" and emphasise "Said"; at other times I would do the reverse, or connect these two to each other so quickly that neither would be clear. The one thing I could not tolerate , but very often would have to endure, was the disbelieving, and hence, undermining reaction: Edward? Said?

He ends the book with:

"I occasionally experience myself as a cluster of flowing currents. I prefer this to the idea of a solid self, the identity to which so many attach significance...A form of freedom, I'd like to think, even if I am far from being totally convinced that it is...With so many dissonances in my life, I have actually learned to prefer not being quite right, and out of place."

scariest news I've read this week

Girl, 12, to be Britain’s youngest mother: report
(AFP)
12 May 2006
LONDON - A schoolgirl who became pregnant at the age of 11 is to become Britain’s youngest mother, The Sun newspaper said on Friday.

read the rest here

awesome tajweed fact@Rida

الفرق بين التجويدالعملي والتجويد النظري
The difference between Tajweed al ‘Amalee and Tajweed an-Nazaree
التجويد العملي وهو تلاوة القرآن الكريم كماأنزله الله على رسول
الله محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم
Tajweed al ‘Amalee is the recitation of the Qur’aan in the manner it was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad, sallallaahu 'alayhi wa sallam
ومما يدل على أهمية التجويد لقوله تعالى :
( والذين ءاتيناهم الكتاب يتلونه حق تلاوته)
وقوله تعالى : (ورتل القران ترتيلا)
And the evidence of the importance of this knowledge is the saying of Allaah...which means: "And the ones whom We have granted the Book, read it as it ought to be read (doing justice to the Book" and "And read the Qur'aan in Tarteel (pleasant, measured recitation)"

وهو معرفة قواعد التجويد واحكامه

Tajweed an Nazaree is to be aware of/learn the rules and regulations of Tajweed (with a view to teach it to others)

==============

the bottomline: One doesn't have to know all the Tajweed rules to read the Qur'aan correctly, one can simply follow a teacher word for word (alhamdulillaah, these days there are cassettes in the recitation of Sh. Muhammad Siddeeq alMinshaawi, may Allaah have mercy upon him, where one only has to read after him to get the correct pronunciation)

Yesterday I heard a teacher, Shaykh Isaam Qadhaah, say something that really made me think. He said the hadeeth says: the best among you are the ones who *learn* the Qur'aan and teach it..the word *learn* implies to put personal effort in the recitation to make it as correct as possible, as close to the words that proceeded from the mouth of the Prophet, صلىالله عليه وسلم, as possible...

it just made me think of how much effort we put into acquiring the right accent, the right pronunciation where the language benefits us materially...we take such pains to introduce our kids to nursery rhymes, sung in the right tune, with appropriate gestures...yet, when it comes to learning correct tajweed to read the Book that Allaah has chosen to give us over all the other nations, we go...oh..that's wayyyy too difficult..

PS: if this post sounds patronising, it wasn't meant to be..Allaah knows what is in our hearts..and I'm the weakest link in our house when it comes to reading correctly...the only point I'm trying to get across is that it's worth taking the trouble to teach our kids correct tajweed, because

(a) they learn faster, and retain longer than grownups

(b) they can be the voicelinks from the past to the future, they can carry this knowledge forward.

that's it. end of story.

copyright@rasha

ستبدا الحكاية

من اول البداية
من حيث ما تعيش

الزهرة الصغيرة
لطيفة جميلة

معبرة ...حكيمة

صديقتها ارنوبة

دائماً ودودة
لها صديقات اكثر

تعيش وسط الكرنب
لها اسنان مطلوعة

لها اذنان رقيقة

والبسة بسبوسة

دائماً محبوبة
تاكل اللحومَ

وتقلي بالشحومَ

تغريد العصفورة

عصفورة مغردة
تعيش في الاغصانِ

في الليل والنهارِ

واختنا سعادُ

لا تخلف الميعادُ
تطيعُ والديها

ولا تكونُ سيئه

والساحرة ُ خنفسة

تعيش كالقنفذة
قلبها كالشوكِ

وصوتها كالبوقِ

وهكذا النهاية

لهذه الحكاية

new book on the block

okay, so there's this new book that going by this review, I *must-read*...anyone out there take a hint?

background: Caitlin Flanagan, has been a staff writer for two of the nation's most prestigious magazines, The Atlantic Monthly and now The New Yorker. Flanagan's singular claim to fame: her relentless advocacy of the idea that a "good" woman sets aside her needs to serve those of others, a task best achieved by remaining within the confines of the home.

I'm always intrigued by stories of non-Muslim women who choose to give up successful careers to be stay at home mums. Muslim women may opt to stay at home out of religious convictions (there is a hadeeth that says women who take care of their families with ikhlaas and strive towards this cause will be given the same rewards as men who strive in Allaah's cause outside the home), or cultural considerations and personal beliefs; but non-Muslim women say they stay at home b/z of their overwhelming, innate conviction that it's the right thing to do.

subhaanallaah...does this mean that caring for the family is ingrained in a woman's fitrah? Is there really a nurturing gene?

Children in the Qur'aan

لِلَّهِ مُلْكُ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضِ
يَخْلُقُ مَا يَشَاءُ
يَهَبُ لِمَنْ يَشَاءُ إِنَاثاً
وَيَهَبُ لِمَن يَشَاءُ الذُّكُورَ
أَوْ يُزَوِّجُهُمْ ذُكْرَاناً وَإِنَاثاً
وَيَجْعَلُ مَن يَشَاءُ عَقِيماً إِنَّهُ عَلِيمٌ قَدِيرٌ

[سورة الشورى ]

To Allaah belongs the kingdom of the heavens and the earth
He creates what He wills

He bestows female (offspring) upon whom He wills,
and bestows male (offspring) upon whom He wills.

Or He bestows both males and females,
and He renders childless whom He wills.

Verily, He is the All-Knower
and the Determiner all things.

[Ash-Shoora, 42: 49:50]
=====================

“Boy or Girl?”

Not taking her eyes off the blue-purple blob cavorting on the USG monitor’s screen, the doctor said: “I’m sorry, I’m not supposed to tell you…”

“Listen, this is our baby…we have a right to know, why else are we paying you so much?” the man barked.

“You’re paying me to know if the baby is okay, which it is. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have other patients waiting.”

The doctor’s face was inscrutable, scrubbed clean of emotion, just like her hospital whites.

The woman lingered in the room after the man stalked out, shifting her body off the examination table slowly and carefully, unhelped.

Her eyes were ringed with black-blue, as if all the nights she had lain awake, wondering if it would be another girl, wondering if her marriage would survive the birth of another daughter, wondering if he would really force her to abandon the baby or give it away just like he had threatened, wondering if he would take another wife to provide him with the all-important male heir, had cast their shadows on her face permanently. As if all the gibes of neighbours and friends and relatives and strangers and servants about her unexplained inability to conceive a son, had made permanent bruises on her skin.

She looked at the woman in the white coat, a question forming in her eyes.

The doctor looked up from the report she was writing and said: “It’s a girl.”
===================

The birth of a boy is a big deal in the Indian subcontinent, and I suspect in many other places around the world that have had an agriculture based/feudal/tribal social system, where the concept of the number of boys in a family as being directly proportional to the number of helping hands, and by extension, the family’s potential wealth, prosperity, influence and power in the community, has been inbred for centuries.

The result?

Newly wed brides are greeted in their new homes with the blessing: “May you bathe in milk and give birth to a hundred sons.” Through the long days of their pregnancy, matriarchs and maids alike cast shrewd experienced eyes over the shape of women's bodies and analyse their food cravings and pronounce with a confidence that would be a USG scanner’s envy: It’s going to be a …. (*insert gender here*)

First born sons (and their mothers) are pampered beyond imagination…first born daughters are greeted with somewhat lesser enthusiasm (and their mothers are barely out of their post-partum confinement, when they are constantly barraged with: So, when will you ‘complete your family’…a coy euphemism for ‘give birth to a son.’

The birth of subsequent girls is greeted with progressively lesser enthusiasm, sometimes outright disappointment and hostility…or death.

In India the demographic profile is already askew in several ‘prosperous’ states, where girls have not been born in some families for several generations. Saved from the ‘liability’ of rearing and caring for a girl by the judicious use of 'Science', parents choose to have female foetuses neatly vacuumed or carved out of their mother’s wombs, by surgeons who assure: “It won’t hurt a bit…you can go home two hours after the operation.”

These are the *well-off* people I’m talking about.

The poor simply snuff out female babies by covering them with the dust they are born of, goods returned to Sender: this is not what we had ordered, please replace ASAP. Female foeticide and infanticide is even described as "mercy killing"… what life can a poor girl expect to have ..certainly not one worth living.

Advertisements for quacks who promise to help couples conceive sons by "scientifically proven methods" and medicine-men with their dubious potions litter the walls and pages of women's magazines alike..

I often think about the people who will stop at nothing to have a male child to 'carry on the family name.'

What is the legacy they have to bequeath ?

(more later, in shaa Allaah)

It's official: girls are *cooler*

More likely to have a mobile, use the net, listen to radio and read papers: it's the girl

Owen Gibson,
media correspondent, The Guardian

They mature more quickly, are said to be more responsible and do better at school. Now media-savvy girls are putting another one over the boys by leading the digital communications revolution.

After one of the most comprehensive studies of the effect on children of the explosion in media choices of the past 15 years, the regulator Ofcom said girls aged 12 to 15 are more likely than boys to have a mobile phone, use the internet, listen to the radio and read newspapers or magazines. Only when it comes to playing computer and console games do boys overtake girls.

Given the historic domination of the home telephone by teenage girls, perhaps it is not surprising they are using the internet to communicate with friends for hours on end. Almost all children between 12 and 15 with the internet at home said they were "confident" surfing the web and did so on average for eight hours a week. But girls are more likely than boys to use the web as a communication tool.

The study, focusing on children aged between eight and 15, also showed the extent to which mobile phones and the internet are taken for granted by primary school children. Their 11th birthday appears to be the tipping point, with eight of out of 10 children having their own handset by that age.

The picture of a generation used to juggling a range of electronic devices will be heavily drawn upon by ageing media executives grappling with the rapidly changing landscape.

more here

subhaanallaah!

The Gifted Disabled
2006-05-06
pix and complete text of the article at: The Saudi Gazette

MAKKAH
TWELVE-year-old Abdullah Husein Al-Attas eats his food with his toes. The primary school student is very skilled with his feet. He can take a spoon between his toes and eat the way you and I would normally eat with our hands. He combs his hair with a brush he holds in between his toes. He can open soda cans with his toes, and can even write - in Arabic and English - with his toes. He puts on his clothes with his feet and toes.
He has to. Al-Attas was born without arms.

Despite what should be such a crippling disability, Al-Attas leads a fairly normal life. He goes to school, plays sports, and has even done better than most of his peers at his studies.
It hasn’t been easy. Al-Attas found school difficult at first, and was afraid that he would not be able to do many of the things other students do. But somewhere, he found the courage to continue and the hope to overcome his disability.

the road to makkah

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:

Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,

And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight:

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.

But if the while I think on Thee,
dear friend,
All losses are restored
and sorrows end

2005-2006, the year that was

If 2004-2005 was the year we found our voice on the blogosphere, then 2005-2006 was definitely, The Year of the Bitten Lip…

in other words, as the readership of this blog grew beyond the close friends who helped us set up and get this place started, we began carefully weighing what to say and the words to say it with; graciously assisted by our very own inhouse censor who was horrified when we carried this post..and another time insisted that I remove my single line contribution to this post, which was the fact that I had found it funny and laughed… for fear that people might misunderstand it to be a tacit encouragement/acceptance of v-day..

This was also the year we were eclipsed by a satellite, inundated with sickening spam that eventually led to the removal of the guestbook…severing all contact with the strangers from the Great Wide Somewhere who used to surf in by chance and leave us kind words to remember them by, giving us the motivation to post..

After we took off the guestbook, we started receiving more mail…some of it was very encouraging and gratifying (jazaakumullaahu khayran to all the people who wrote)…and some of it was not so complimentary …it was unnerving and took me a while to get used to people commenting on posts that were basically outpourings of my thoughts…

There were people who questioned us when we carried links to articles on the need to tell Muslim kids the facts of life before they heard it from the nudge-wink-snicker network or non-Muslim sources or the media (someone officially and publicly exchanged this blog’s U rating to Parental Guidance…which is just as well..)

Recently someone took umbrage when I called a daai’yah ‘charismatic’, asking me to seriously consider re-wording it, and then there were the FAQs…so many FAQs…

How many kids do we have? (alhamdulillaah, enough to enable this blog to go on in the same format for many years)

What happens to the blog in the future? (allaahu a’alam)

Would we become muslim-teenz when R-R eventually became teenagers? (probably)

Why do we use double vowels? (it makes for more correct transliteration)

And the most FAQ Faq of all: Why Blog?

This is the hardest question of all to answer, b/z it’s hard to explain to someone who’s never scribbled feverishly at the back of used envelopes and doctor’s prescriptions and even currency notes what a compulsion it is for some people to write…

My guess is that the people who ask us why we have a blog are actually trying to ask us why do we want to be heard, why do we feel the need to have a voice?

This blog is our means of bringing some meaning into our life, combat the boredom that comes from staying in a place where sometimes it’s several weeks before we go out and have an intelligent, stimulating exchange with other people, and if a random reader can find something in the process that would benefit them in some little way, or even make them smile…that means this blog has more than served its purpose..

This blog is also about nixing assumptions (which is my favourite pastime btw)…for example, I am a very quiet person, a listener and observer to the point of being thought of as taciturn and snobbish or part of the scenery :P…by revealing this, I hope to make you understand that if a person is not talking much that doesn’t mean that they have nothing worthwhile to say…it could also mean that they have too much :P…

Hypothetically, a person walking down a street who could see me walking my kids on their stroller (some crying, some playing hooky, some skipping out of reach just in time to avoid a whack) and think: poor beleaguered oppressed soul, I bet she’s never heard of Nietzsche, or the Third Law of Thermodynamics or Thich Nhat Han…

appearances, even in real life, are only a part of one’s personality..they are never the sum total..they can never be, because there are so many facets to the human soul, so much uncharted territory that could never surface even in a lifetime of cursory conversations and meaningless encounters… if I could convince even one person of this, this blog has served its purpose..

This blog is also an expression of my love for the internet…it is an incredible medium…almost like a 4th dimension in a 3-D world…

I’m a bit like the character in Francoise Sagan’s Un Certain Sourire (A Certain Smile), who would rather talk about people’s lives, their dreams and emotions, their ambitions and childhood memories when we meet, rather than mouth plastic platitudes (in fact, I think small talk is a new-world conspiracy to end all human contact among humans and make aliens of us all …literally)

Until I discovered the intenet, I thought I was the human equivalent of a platypus, a creature so fantastically strange that its existence was considered a hoax by scientists, with so few characteristics in common with other animals, that it has to be classified in a class of its own..alhamdulillaah..I have seen and spoken to and known of many people on the net with the same concerns and thoughts, the same feelings and hopes that I have, it’s been such a reassuring connection with the world… this feeling of not being alone..

Someone also asked me why is this blog called muslim-kidz when I monopolise it all the time, why not name it muslim-mumz :P?

Without my kids (especially Rasha-Rida) I would never have become the person I am..being with children is a constantly transforming process, where one is constantly learning and re-learning lessons in life…this blog is about sharing our lives and the lessons we learn …please spare us a prayer…may the learning never end.

PS: I would have posted this on May 24 th (the day we started our blog 2 years ago), but we don’t do ‘days’ :P…

sew what's new?

Category: awww maa shaa Allaah (proud mum post)

these are pix of samplers that R-R made for their iqtisaad al manzilee (home education) class all by themselves (not that I could help even if I wanted to)...laa quwwata illaa billaah