Punjabi Wise Sayings 7: one plus one is....

Bhukhey noon aakhyaaa ik te ik
os aakhyaa do Rotayaan

A hungry man was asked " What is one plus one"
He replied "two rotees"

The above is a simple saying with a lot of depth. When one is in need of something that is what all one thinks about. Actually it is interesting that one of the intentions that scholars say one can have in feeding oneself ( or working so one can feed oneself) is that one does it so that one can focus on Allah and not think of the need one has for food.

Another way to look at this is how things vary from different people's perspectives. So that means even a simple question like "one plus one" can have multiple answers depending on who you ask . So when one seeks an answer to a question, one should take the means to ask the right person. Also one lays down the question so that the person asked can move away form his/her box and think of it in the "terms" you are thinking about it.

May Allah grant us tawfiq in our communciations!

Book Review: The Omnivore's Dilemma

Alhamdaulillah, I am glad that I was pointed towards "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan about a year ago. My trips to the grocery store have not been the same since I had started reading this book. I just finished it last week.

Pollan looks at how the "industrialization" of food sources has led to a decline in the quality of food we are getting. In order to simplify the food chain ( and to make profit) , we are losing out on a lot of the benefits of the food and in the process we are being inhumane towards nature ( i.e. animals, land, soil, plants, etc). Pollen also talks about the economics of food processing and how that helps companies profit. He then shows a link between between obesity and profit making! There are a few chapters about the history of the Organic food market and how it has also been comercialized ( i.e. compromised).

A must read book which will change your outlook on food ( or give you "food" for thought anyways)...

Shaykh Ramzy: the mountain and valley

During one of the sessions at Qurba, Shaykh Ramzy gave an analogy on how we should be. He said we should be like the valley not like the mountain.

i.e. We should be humble and low so that we can collect all the rain water . The valley is the place which is fertile, where the water flows and where the vegetations grows. The mountain ( is high) yet their tops are bare.....

Qurba Quotes...Shayh Faraz and Shaykh Zahir

This weekened I am at Razi's Qurba event. I am unable to attend many of the sessions but have gotten glimpses of the brilliance of our tradition....in what I have been able to attend..

Two great quotes from the sessions

Shaykh Faraz said " The lover knows The Beloved"

Shaykh Zahir quoted a scholar " Act on what you know and Allah will bestow upon you what you do not know"

Hatim Al-Assam Quote

Shaykh Abdul Hakim Murad mentions a quote from Hatim Al Assam in his CD set Al-Ghazali : Remembrance of Death & Afterlife Audio CD Boxed Set by Abdul Hakim Murad (Dr. T. J. Winter)

Work for this world in proportion to the time your going to spend in it
Work for the next world in proportion to the time your going to spend in it
Work for the fire for the fire in proportion to how much patience you would have in it
Work for Allah in proportion to your need of him

Cool Blog: 40 days and 40 nights in Yemen

A really cool blog which details the life of a student at Dowra 2008 in Tarim.

"Tarim feels like a different world; it makes you want to be a better person. You're better not because you feel everyone is better so you imitate them blindly, but because Tarim somhow inexplicably gives you an extra drive—almost as if the very air is embodied with little spiritual 'infusions.' It sounds silly when I read it, and I know I'm being repetitive, but it's true."


"There must be bad people in Tarim, it's not paradise and I'm not naive enough to think there aren't any. But here, you feel that the inherent goodness in people, the fitra (priomordial nature), is truly present, and not buried like it is with so many of us in this day and age. And it's a goodness that I'm sure needs no religion—an atheist could come here and still be moved by these people, who truly embody the spirit of al-Ethar so much more than I could ever dream of being: They give away what they have to others, even if they need it, and are happy about it."

Scholarly quotes from the blog:

"The secret of knowledge is acting upon it. The secret of dhikr is copious amounts of it. The secret of prayer is presence in it." Habib Kathim.

"Don't sin and say: 'God will forgive me, He is Merciful and Forgiving.' Yes, he His, but don't be like the fisherman who sits on the shore and waits for a jewel to land in his lap. Yes, the sea is full of jewels but you have to go seek it. So if you sin you need to seek forgiveness for your actions. You need to shamar [roll up your sleeves] and be diligent. " Habib Kathim.

"Just like you die if you stay three days without water, your heart will die if it stays three days without listening to anything that reminds you of Allah, whether it is Qur'an recitations, lectures etc. So what if you're not only not listening to things that remind you of Allah, but listening to things that make you forget Him? " Habib Umar

Go check it out!

A must-listen lecture on extremism

A must listen Radical Middle Way lecture by Dr. Umer Farooq titled "Islamic Extremism in the context of Globalism". We have rarely heard a lecture dissecting the issue of extremism better then how Dr. Umer does it in this lecture...I would even go as far as recommending it to my non Muslim colleagues who are curious about Islamic extremism.

Expectations..

It really becomes disappointing when we set high expectations of "someone or something "and then that "someone or something" fails to meet our lofty expectations. At that point, one has to question oneself: if the fault was with that "someone or something" or was it with our own expectations?

The expectations can be faulty because they were unrealistic. Many times we meet new people or get into new projects thinking everything with those will be perfect. The reality of this world is that people are not perfect and neither are projects. In fact we have heard this can be a huge problem in marriages too where spouses set high expectations based on what they expect their spouse to be ( or not to be ) , which can be unrealistic at some level. When meeting these expectations become exposed as unfeasible, we may want to walk away and "give up"

One problem is that these expectations can be implicit and the other party may be totally unaware of these expectations. So one step would be to make these expectations explicit so the other party knows whats expected and perhaps they can alert you on the lack of pragmatism in your expectations. Now, when these expectations are not met we should be forgiving and merciful and help the person or project in getting to our expectations i.e. not being arm-chair critics saying this is wrong and that is wrong and so on.

Last but not least, ( this should be first), the best attitude is to try to (know and) meet Allah's expectations of us in each situation and to expect the minimum from others.