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Sunday, July 30, 2006

Mudassar Ali on CTS

A good friend of my good friend takes part in an interesting discourse with Tarek Fateh on CTS.

Watch part 1

Watch part 2
Watch part 3
Watch part 4
Watch part 5

Friday, July 28, 2006

Medidation of the Prophet

Found though my favourite online forum Deenport. This article is truly amazing:

When becoming humiliated, remember the Prophet in Ta’if.

When being starved, remember the Prophet tying two stones to his stomach in the battle of Khandaq.

When becoming angry, remember the Prophet’s control of anger on the martyrdom of his beloved Uncle Hamza.

When losing a tooth, remember the Prophet’s tooth in the battle of Uhud.


When bleeding from any part of the body, remember the Prophet’s body covered in blood on his return from Ta’if.


When feeling lonely, remember the Prophet’s seclusion in Mount Hira.


When feeling tired in Salaat, remember the Prophet’s blessed feet in Tahajjud.

When being prickled with thorns, remember the Prophet’s pain from Abu Lahab’s wife.


When being troubled by neighbours, remember the old woman who would empty rubbish on the Prophet.


When losing a child, remember the Prophet’s son, Ibrahim.


When beginning a long journey, remember the Prophet’s long journey to Madinah.
When going against a Sunnah, remember the Prophet’s intercession, (Ummati, Ummati, Ummati) (My Ummah).

When sacrificing an animal, remember the Prophet’s sacrifice of 63 animals for his Ummah.

Before shaving your beard, remember the Prophet’s face rejecting the two beardless Iranians.

When falling into an argument with your wife, remember the Prophet’s encounter with Aisha and Hafsa.


When experiencing less food in the house, remember the Prophet’s days of poverty.
When experiencing poverty,remember the Prophet’s advice to Ashaab-e-Suffa (People of Suffa).

When losing a family member, remember the Prophet’s departure from this
world.


When becoming an orphan, remember the Prophet’s age at six.

When sponsoring an orphan, remember the Prophet’s sponsor for Zaid ibn
Haritha.


When fearing an enemy, remember the Prophet’s saying to Abu Bakr in
Mount Thour .

Whatever situation you may find yourself in, remember your role model, the best of creation: Prophet Muhammad.


Whatever you may do, remember that your deeds are presented before our Prophet. Are we pleasing him or displeasing him?

Sunday, July 23, 2006

Robert Fisk Interview

ROBERT FISK: What's happening is obviously the mass punishment of a whole people, the Lebanese, in response to the capture of two Israeli soldiers and the killing of three others on Wednesday of last week. The death toll now has just topped 240 in the last few minutes. We've -- almost all of the Lebanese dead are civilians, of course, as usual. The Americans, in the usual pusillanimous way of Mr. Bush, are doing nothing to prevent this from taking place. Read On

..............And Marwaheen is a particular -- this is a village in Southern Lebanon, where Mossad, the Israelis, ordered the villagers out. I should add that this is a village closest to the scene of the killing and capture of the Israeli soldiers on Wednesday. They were ordered to leave the village. They did so in a convoy of cars, 20 of them. They went to the United Nations, who ordered them away -- Ghanaian Battalion, shamefully -- and set off to Tyre. And an F-16 came down and burned them all alive with bombs. Outrageous massacre. The Israelis keep boasting that they are picture-perfect, punctilious, surgical strike operations. Well, if that's true, then that was mass murder and a war crime; if it's not true, then we can't believe in the riffraff of the Israeli Air Force anymore -- it's as simple as that -- or the riffraff of the Hezbollah, if you listen to some of their roaring, by the way. But one has to be as cynical and as critical as one wants in a war, because no one else will be, usually.................

................But, you know, there is an awful lot of propaganda roaring on and on. I get very tired of watching Nasrallah saying it will be all-out war, we have more surprises, etc. And then Ehud Olmert says we may have a full-scale land invasion of Lebanon, which is absolute tosh. He has no intention of doing that. He'd lose hundreds of men if he did such a thing. And there are all these sort -- I call them the roarers, you know. Nasrallah and Ehud Olmert are now trying to outdo each other in all kinds of terror language.

I’m constantly reminded of that wonderful line in King Lear, where he says, “I shall do such things I know not, but they shall be the terrors of the earth.” I’m contemplating a piece on the roarers of the Middle East. Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran, is another roarer. And, of course, the worst thing is that they say this, so that the Western press will pick it up. And heaven spare us all, the Western journalists do pick it up and use it. You know, they're looking for a good line, as if this is a football match or football game or a hockey match, instead of a tragic war which is taking the lives of people like that little girl in the field. ...Read On


Global Issues: Water and Development

Much of the world lives without access to clean water. Privatization of water resources, promoted as a means to bring business efficiency into water service management, has instead led to reduced access for the poor around the world as prices for these essential services have risen. This article looks into this issue in further detail below. [Read On]

Thursday, July 20, 2006

Bank Card Theft?

Today I learnt that there had been an attempt to withdraw a large amount of cash from my bank card by a random unkown person which was caught by my bank causing them to put a hold on my card.

Good thing they caught it. Otherwise I would have been a poorer man ( still rich at heart) if they hadn't caught him/her doing this.

My advice is to be careful where you use your card. In fact credit cards are safer because the money that you pay from your credit card is not your money and can be investigated. However if it goes from your own bank account then getting it back is much harder. Cash is also much better than using your interact everywhere. Moreover you should check your balance regularly to check for any weird activities.

I learnt my lesson today, good thing I did not have to pay for it. Some advice from my bank CIBC. And some advice from RCMP.

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Do you like Gorillas?

First time someone asked me that question ( the subject of this post), I was shocked. However now I also find gorillas a tad interesting as well. Maybe I am working too hard at work or is it something else?. But anyways:

Here is a cool slide show from CSM on Rawanda's Mountain Gorillas. My favourite picture is the one with the baby gorillas.

The Art of conversion

About Muhammad Yuosuf ( formarly Yuosuf Yohuna, the Pakistani Cricketerer who converted to Islam):

He was once held up as a symbol of Pakistan's unexpectedly inclusive society - a humble Christian footsoldier and son of a railway platform sweeper, who had overcome his inauspicious origins to cement a berth in his national team's middle order.

Now, however, he sports a beard that rivals Saeed Anwar's as the most fulsome in the game, punctuates his sentences with "Bismillah" and "Insh'allah", and performs the sadja instead of the sign of the cross whenever he reaches a significant landmark. Oh, and he's become quite some batsman as well. Read on

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Body Language

I loved these pictures on the BBC and the accompanying comments from the G8 summit. Last summer I read a book on body language as well and how much it can tell you about a person's thoughts among other things.

Body language can tell lots of things like for exampe if a person wants to talk to your or not or how confident a person is at a particular moment or if/she likes you, etc.

It can also be important in sports where you show your opponent your confidence though your positive body motions. Muhammad Ali was a master at this.

Monday, July 17, 2006

Roots

I just finished watching a mini TV series based on Alex Haily's book "Roots". As always reading/watching about the slave trade left me emotionally affected.

I definitely recommend the TV series and I am sure the book is even better. I believe a lot of lessons can be learnt from reading about Black history in North America. The key lessons from Roots for me were:

  • Never blame or collectively punish the entire community for the action of a section of that community.
  • Its good to know where you came from or your ancestors came from. It can make you ponder, reflect and compare your current state with theirs or know why you are where you are.
  • Never think that you are better then someone else or are superior to another based on race or anything else.
  • Do not label people based on rumors or based on what you have heard from other people ( i.e. All Chinese are dirty, All Arabs are hot headed, All South Asians have bad tajweed, All auntees want you married, etc)
I will add more as I reflect furthur this week. But for sure a lot of lessons learnt from the book/movie can be applied to our current situation from International Politics to internal Canadian discourse.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

With Allah on their side

I have had 2 previous posts on the same topic. WIth Pakistan cricket team touring England this summer Religon'a role in the Pakistan cricket team is explored at depth in this article:

Faith does seem to have strengthened a traditionally fractious side. Bob Woolmer, the current coach, is of course no Muslim but he is supportive of the religion's adhesive power: he should know, having overseen the rise, in the 1990s, of a South African team with a devoutly Christian core.

Even the maverick Shoaib has spoken openly of the togetherness, the culture of forgiving, that Islam has bred within the dressing-room. Some cynics maintain that Yousuf's conversion was implicitly forced, a roundabout result of his desire to become captain. This ignores the fact that he was vice-captain, and sometimes captain, while still a Christian, and the publicrelations potential for the country in having a Christian captain.

But if Islam is looking for a public-relations coup to offset the constant criticism it receives in the West, it need look no further surely than the joyous, bounding progress of the Pakistan team over the last year, with the genial but earnestly Muslim Inzamam-ul-Haq at its helm. Refreshingly, Islam has united them. The only fear, as Pakistanis know painfully well, is that religion has often also been at the very heart of the country's troubles. Read on

Monday, July 10, 2006

Obesity: An Alternative Perspective

The same problem: Obesity. However till recently this was what was preferred in Mauratania:

Big has long been considered beautiful in Mauritania. But now, a generation of women are abandoning an ancient practice to fatten up - and some are even redefining beauty to put their health first.

It's not a lifetime spent scoffing junk food and slurping fizzy drinks that's to blame for obesity here; rather, a tradition as old as the desert: gavage.


n the tree-lined boulevards of Paris, the French word describes the process of fattening up geese to produce foie gras. On the sand-blanketed streets of Mauritania's capital, Nouakchott, it describes the process of forcibly funneling sweetened milk and millet porridge down the throats of young girls. In this vast nomadic nation, thin women are an admission of poverty. Voluptuous wives and daughters, by contrast, are displays of a man's wealth, and that's where force-feeding comes in. Read on

Zidane, the media, and more

So the World cup came to an end. One of the teams I was supporting won the World Cup ( i.e. Italy and the other being Germany who also made me proud :)).

While I am happy about Italy's win I am sad about the Zidane incident. Here are a few key observations:

  • No matter what was said leading upto the headbutt I think Zidane's action was wrong.
  • Zidane has a history of losing his temper. But thats okay because some of us do have less patience than others and perhaps Zidane was provoked. But to make that incident the focus of so much media attention is wrong
  • As usual we have two extremes in the media. Ironically both are trying to find out 's why Zidane did what he did. One saying that Zidane's action was provoked hence he was not at fault and the other saying that he ruined France's World Cup chances ( of course this side forgets that Zidane was the one who brought France so far in the first place).
  • The fact is that whats done is done no point in making this red card a mountain. A lot of other red cards have been results of provacations too. No one made them big issues. Whats even more pathetic is that this is being made a race issue in some media reports . For example read this quote from an American news media website which comments on Zidane:
  • But lashing out is nothing new to Zidane, who grew up playing on concrete in an impoverished immigrant neighborhood of Marseille, where fouls and insults are met with instant retribution.Perhaps he could never shake off that you-or-me mentality."You can take the man out of the rough neighborhood, but you can't take the rough neighborhood out of the man," striker Thierry Henry said Sunday.
  • On a more positive note, Sh Faraz has some good advice on his blog:
  • Umm Umar’s wise words about Zidane’s head-butt:
    “I’m surprised they wouldn’t consider being provoked on issuing this ‘red card’ or whatever it is.”

    (Her comment on my mentioning how sad I was at Zidane’s career apparently ending with a head-butt.)

    On a side note: we need to:

    (1) Take heed on the importance of restaining one’s anger. The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) frequently repeated, “Don’t get angry.”

    (2) Refrain from speaking ill of Zidane (or for that matter anyone, Muslim or non-Muslim). It is one thing to mention public errors. It is another to backbite and slander. The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) defined backbiting for us: “It is to mention something about another that they would dislike.” It is not a condition that it be something private or even that it be behind the person’s back. Both backbiting and slander are major sins and enormities (kaba’ir). So beware.

    Beware of knocking out your soul with a backbite (or a head-butt).

  • Zidane did win the Golden Ball ( best player in World Cup this year). He was an amazing player for France and a joy to watch no matter who you supported.
  • I hope sanity prevails. Moreover I hope Italy ( or Germany) win the World Cup next time as well :)