subhaanallaah!

pic courtesy: Baptist Health South/Getty

Read the *amazing* story of the most premature baby to have survived...subhaanallaah, this baby was born at 21 weeks and six days after conception. She weighed less than 10oz at birth and she was just 9½ inches long...yet incredibly, when she was born she was breathing without assistance and even made several attempts to cry when she emerged...subhaanallaah!

purification of the soul, for kids

If you ask a Muslim: Are you a bigot?

Most people will deny it, even seem a little shamefaced if they sometimes secretly are, which is actually a good thing imho ...because virtue, and the pursuit of virtue ceases to be that, if it is not accompanied by a constant inner longing for improvement and humility (rough paraphrase from M. Asad).

But what about people who are unabashed and unrepentant about their bigotry...believing it the only way to be and aggressively foster the same attitudes in their children?

There are several times each school year whenI seriously evaluate the pros and cons of sending my children to school with the natives...there are always little incidents of verbal abuse/intimidation that go beyond childish pranks (alhamdulillaah, nothing physical yet) .

These kids don't even have the saving grace of being children from the don't-know-any-better hoi polloi, these are children in tahfeeth school, presumably with parents who are knowledgeable about the deen and care enough to invest their time and resources on having their children memorise the Qur'aan.

Funnily enough, this isn't about Arab v/s Ajam...*all* foreigners -- be they from Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Palestine, Pakistan, India or Sudan or treated the same way. It's come to a stage where people calling long-distance ask: So, how's the bigotry these days...like others enquire about the weather.

alhamdulillaah, the majority of people we've met and experiences we've had have been pleasant, it's just that the nasty bits add up, little by little, and sometimes outweigh the good.

Honestly, I feel for the children harassing my kids almost as much as I feel for my children, who go out to school to learn the deen as if they were going out to battle...may Allaah increase their steadfastness and reward them with knowledge that will benefit them and many others..(Aameen)

Like the hadeeth says, children are born upon the fitrah, it is the parents who make them one thing or the other...have you ever seen a new-born animal born mutilated, before you mutilate them ?

I feel sorry for the mutilation of so many children's minds and psyches...may Allaah always guide us all to that which pleases him, especially if we are inclined to something contrary from our own desires.

sad...

...news from back home

via Tariq Nelson

Poor education of Muslims linked to poverty

A national commission has laid bare the plight of India's 150-million Muslim minority: Compared to other segments in the 1.3 billion population, Muslims are poorer, less educated, less employed, less employable, clustered in urban ghettoes and hobbled by official and social discrimination.

Justice Rajindar Sachar, who headed the seven-person commission, has also exposed some myths, especially in the area of education.
"The popular perception that religious conservatism among Muslims is a major factor for not accessing education is incorrect," he writes.
"As with many Indians, the main reason for educational backwardness of Muslims is abject poverty due to which children are forced to drop out. This is particularly true for girls ...

"Poverty and financial constraints are the major causes" holding Muslim girls back, not their religion, says Sachar. He also punctures several assumptions about India's madrassas (religious schools).

Contrary to popular belief "that Muslim parents have a preference for religious education," only 4 per cent of Muslim children are enrolled in such schools. And many are there because that's their "only education option" in the absence of public schools in their areas.

In such cases, madrassas are, in fact, "rendering a useful service" imparting literacy.
Yet such schools are often "looked upon with suspicion. Even though there has been no evidence to suggest that madrassas are producing terrorists, they are constantly under scrutiny. This has a detrimental and traumatic impact on the children studying in them."
Many madrassas do want to move beyond religious teaching, using state subsidies. But those that do teach sciences, mathematics and other subjects have found teacher salaries not forthcoming, and their students' credentials not recognized for post-secondary education.
But given the small number of children enrolled in them, even modernized madrassas "cannot be a substitute for mainstream education."

"There are few good schools in Muslim neighbourhoods." Schools there have a high teacher-pupil ratio, low quality of teaching and high teacher absenteeism.
Girls' schools are even fewer.
Muslims are hobbled by discrimination in other ways.
Public school curriculums are anti-Muslim: "The 'communal' content of textbooks as well as the school ethos ... are disconcerting for the Muslim child who finds a complete absence of any representation of her in community in the school text.
"Moreover, many schools are culturally hostile" to Muslim students, especially because of the "growing communal mindset among a large number of school teachers."

Muslims have tried to set up their own quality educational institutions. But such institutions are often denied accreditation or are approved only on a year-to-year basis.
This contravenes the Indian constitution, which guarantees all minorities the right to their own educational institutions.
The overall effect is that fewer Muslims matriculate -- 17 per cent vs. 26 per cent for all Indians. While 7 per cent of Indians graduate or hold diplomas, only 4 per cent of Muslims do. While 6 per cent of women graduate, only 3.6 per cent of Muslim women do.
"The participation of Muslims in engineering and medical courses is particularly low."

In post-graduate schools, Muslims rank below even the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes -- those on the lowest totem pole of Hindu hierarchy.
At the elite Indian Institutes of Management, Muslims constitute only 1.3 per cent of the student body.
"The share of Muslims is poorest in streams having the brightest employment prospects."
All this, and discrimination in the job market, has meant that Muslims no longer "see education as necessarily translating into formal employment."

where'd we go?

our collective time has been consumed by work, studies, preparing for exams, taking exams...ad infinitum (or at least until May, 2007, pray for us in shaa Allaah)

oh..and I accidentally spilled a tumbler of water onto the keyboard of our laptop rendering the house extremely clean for a while *scroll down to see the joke* while performing an intricate balancing act that involved several sets of loose papers, multiple open windows, an excruciating toothache, two capsules of antibiotics and a number of serious deadlines...

still, it was such a bizarre excuse for not turning in the multiple writing assignments I was supposed to have submitted, that I didn't give it in the end...the excuse I mean.

in shaa Allaah, planning on being around more often...we still check our inbox though..

the super-mummy race...(and why I'm not in the running)

I like the *name* of India Knight's blog for children with special needs: "Isn't she talking yet?"

It evokes all the paranoia and persecution that most new mothers suffer ...when the entire world and its aunt takes it upon themselves to dispense conflicting parenting advice.

This is one reason why I never as in N.E.V.E.R tell people what to do with their babies.
Allaah knows best, and then the parents themselves do.

Another reason why I never tell other people what to do with their babies is: I honestly don't know.
I know that sounds strange coming from someone who's a mum several times over, but if there's one thing I've discovered in the process of having and raising so many children (alhamdulillaah), it's that every child is one-of-a-kind.

I've had kids who sprouted teeth, walked, talked, were toilet trained, acquired a vocabulary of a 1000 words in record time, learnt small soorahs of the Qur'aan faster than any of their peers...and I've had dawdlers, thinkers (who carefully coonsidered for a good year and a half what their first word ought to be and chose potato), picky eaters, no-milk drinkers...I've had to re-learn the rules (or draft new ones) each time, and so, I really hesitate to dispense parenting 'tips' even when I'm asked to.

Plus, I'm nonplussed by the burgeoning breed of supermums who've virtually turned parenting into a competitive event...I mean, whatever happened to good old-fashioned laidback mums?

PS: Apparently, I'm not the only one who's mourning their extinction, India Knight has taken it upon herself to debunk The Myth of the Yummy Mummy

I'm nodding my head in agreement with:

"Yummy mummies didn’t exist when I had my first child 14 years ago. Some mummies were slightly less knackered-looking than others, but that was about it. Some mummies — one or two — had maternity nurses, nannies and armies of staff and looked well rested, but they didn’t count since they didn’t, as far as anyone could work out, do any mummying. And yet it is this last category — unimpressive on the parenting front, if financially fortunate — that we are all now supposed to want to emulate.

I have some difficulty understanding this, because to me the advantages of being a parent are not visual: you don’t become one because it’s going to make you look hot. Besides, you can be as hot as you want but that isn’t by a long stretch what parenting is about, at any level."

[...]

"It seems a shame to refuse to embrace the thing you so craved and to go out of your way to pretend it hasn’t happened — toned stomach, bird-like appetite, obsessive yoga: in a new mother none of these things scream chilled-out contentment..."

and finally:

"... I wish everyone would relax a bit. It’s not a competition. And you can love your children while still loving yourself."

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Aameen.
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PS: There's one bit of parenting advice (that was ironically given to me several years ago by someone who was not a parent) that is very precious to me.

Our Arabic Ustaadh told me: "Sister, teach your children to be in touch with reality..."

I agree...it's very important not to lose perspective ...to keep the long run in mind when trying to get over everyday hurdles.