Disconnecting

I've been considering disconnecting the net from home for a while. I end up sitting here in front of the computer wasting hours in mindless surfing, and i'm not happy with that. There are so many things i could achieve, but they all get pushed onto the backburner because by the time i'm off the computer there isn't time for much else.

It wouldn't mean that i'm completely disconnecting because i have the net at work. I'm going to have to think really hard about this one. But i can only see good coming out of the decision to disconnect... except that i won't be able to download episodes of Dr. Who anymore. (Oops was i supposed to say that?)

Actually, while i'm here let me tie up a few loose ends.

• An anonymous poster asked a while back if i could find out whether good deeds can be erased. Well, i asked my teacher and he said that as far as he knew, they couldn't. The Qur'an is explicit in saying that the bad deeds can be removed by doing good deeds, but it doesn't say anything about it being true the other way round. There is a really beautiful hadith about a dhikr that you make after wudoo; if you read it, it is written in vellum and not to be opened till the D/Judgment. So that doesn't sound like its going to be lost either.
  
• I never did get hold of Imam Atiyyah's recitation. The brother who i was pointed to didn't have any tapes of his, and neither did the the muadhin of Regents Park Mosque when i asked him.

btw. did you hear? they seem to have banned the niqab in Italy.

Caption beneath the picture :)

http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/review/article_full_story.asp?service_ID=9268

Reactions

There is a good article and comments section on the BBC site here discussing the effect of the bombings on tube users. Has anyone reading this been on the receiving end of any stick on the underground or otherwise?

I read in yesterday's Metro that some English girl was travelling through London with a huge rucksack on her back. She stuck a paper on the back with "I'M GOING CAMPING" written on it so that people wouldn't be suspicious of her. :)

More mayhem

There is a feeling of surrealness working in the city of London these past few days. All sorts of things are happening around the city, but at the same time you just sit at your desk following the news on one monitor and doing your work on the other (yep, i have two monitors for my computer).

I have definitely noticed the long probing stares that i get from people in the street and on the trains now. After the first bombs went off on 7/7 i didn't feel a major difference in people's reactions to me. Now, its completely different. People look at you continuously. One passerby after the other is checking you out.

When i got on the train on the way home i saw people look at my face, and then immediately look at the carrier bag i was holding.

But you can't blame them.

One of the themes being pushed hard in the media is that a potential bomber could be any brown looking person - beard or no beard, British born or foreign. As a result non-practising Muslims are starting to feel the heat too. I wonder what the effect of this will be? If they receive a harsh backlash from the widerpublic, will the non-practising Muslims turn back and strengthen their ties with the Muslim community?

Anyway, whatever happens is written. And Allah prevails in His purpose. :)

Dealing

Soooo.... i had a training session with the Boss today. Yep, thats Boss with a capital 'B' - the boss boss. You see i work for a company that processes market data and we were given a training session on how investors use our site and what kind of data they look at when deciding where to invest. (Actually, most of the time, its quite shallow investigation, and people are quite careless where they put their money- according to the Boss).

It was really interesting and its really put me in the mood now to create a portfolio of shares for myself. For a while i've been tempted to start trading, but have never taken the plunge. There are a couple of brothers i know who have some money and have been wondering where to invest their money and i'm going to suggest that we join up to form an investment club. The idea behind setting up one of these is that since you have to pay a fee to the broker everytime you trade, it makes sense to invest larger sums of money because the returns will be larger, thus making the broker fee less significant.

Enter, my mates. :)

There is one thing that i have to check before i do take the plunge and that is the shari'a rulings on trading. I'm quite fortunate in two ways: i'm studying the 'book of financial transactions' in my lessons at the moment, and two my work gives me exposure to the different tradable products on the markets. Thus, i can use what i learn in my Fiqh lessons to determine what type of trading is allowed and what isn't.

Dodgy experts and good fathers

I was listening to the radio the other night and they had "experts" talking about the recent bombings in London. One of the speakers was the lesbian Irshad Manji who is the author of a book named "The trouble with Islam."

She came across as very ignorant about Islam, and it left me wondering why these shows invite people like her if they are serious in trying to work out what drives certain Muslims to do the things they do.

Her point this time was that the fundamental problem with Islam is that Muslims believe that the Qur'an is the literal and *immutable* Word of God, and Islam needs to modernise, and that we need to engage in "ijti-haaard" alot more. Otherwise all us poor Muslims are going to remain backwards with our women wearing the "hee-jaab" amongst other medieval customs.

Otherwise, the weekend was quite pleasant. On Saturday we attended the first day of Dr. Hesham al-Awadi's seminar on "Children around the Prophet" and it was quite good. He isn't my favourite speaker but he does make you think about hadith and seerah in a way which other speakers don't.

One interesting and quite funny point he made was about the importance of the family fulfilling the emotional needs of a daughter. He was saying that if a woman has a warm and loving relationship with her family (father in particular) it makes her less susceptible to falling for the local hoodie when he says "you look so pretty darlin'." If the father makes her feel appreciated, when said hoodie comes prowling along and expresses an interest in her, instead of reacting how a girl might first time she's told she's pretty, the comment passes like water over a duck's back.

On Sunday we went to the AlNoor school funday. The weather was nice and there were thousands of Muslims there. I wish there were more events like that.

Worm attack

I usually have my computer switched off when no one is using it, but i left it running by mistake Thursday evening connected to the net. When i started working on it on Friday - all sorts of weird stuff was happening. I couldn't access the net properly, half my applications weren't working. ..

Complete disaster - i had been hit by some kind of internet worm. But serves me right - the only protection i had running was crappy XP Firewall.

The clever bugger would eat over my real executables and then make a copy of itself and rename it to the executable it had just munched.

Anyhow, i was able to backup most of my stuff before formatting the HD and have now re-installed XP pro on my computer.

I've downloaded Firefox 1.0.5 - is anyone else experiencing problems with smooth-scrolling on it?

Funeral prayer

We prayed Jumu'ah at LMC today after which there was the funeral prayer for sister Shahara Islam who was one of the victims of the train bombings, and whose picture has been in the papers.

May Allah have mercy on her.

On a completely different note, i'd encourage all London bloggers and bloggerettes to visit the Al-Noor school fun day which is this weekend on Sunday, insha'Allah. They rent out part of a huge park in Ilford, East London and there are lots of activities organised for everyone. All the proceeds go back into making the school bigger and better.

http://www.al-noor.co.uk/annual_funday.html

Invading press

I'm quite annoyed with some of the British press. They've taken the liberty to plaster their pages with photos of not just the suspected bombers but also their families; the Daily Mirror had a picture of one of the guys with his wife at their wedding ceremony.

Whats the point in pulling the family into all of this? They're just as shocked as everyone else.

Anyhow, after being able to identify the four guys the British police must be saying "alhumdulillah". I mean, fancy that the bombs ripped open train carriages, tore the roof off of a double-decker bus, annihilated 50 people, but for some reason weren't able to burn through the Id papers of the four bombers.

Those ID papers must sure be made out of some tough paper. I wonder if its as tough as the passports of the 9-11 hijackers which survived incineration when the planes impacted against the towers and then remained unharmed when the twin towers collapsed.

Quite convenient.

Nice op-ed

from Amir Butler here.

Its nearly time...

On behalf of the Dr. Ali Al-Timimi Support Committee we are asking all concerned Muslims to increase in their prayers for their brother Ali.

On July 13, 2005 - if everything remains as scheduled - Ali will appear at 10 am before Judge Brinkema for sentencing.

At that time, one of four matters can happen:

1. She can accept the Defense motion and declare Ali innocent on all ten counts based on his Constitutional rights of freedom of speech and religion.

2. She can accept the Defense motion for a new trial based on prosecutorial misconduct.

3. She can accept the jury's verdict and sentence Ali to life in prison.

4. She can pick and choose which counts to sentence Ali on and sentence Ali as follows:

- Count 1 Inducing others to conspire to use weapons - Up to twenty years - court's recommendation is 151-188 months (twelve years, seven months to fifteen years, eight months)

- Count 2 Soliciting others to levy war against America - Up to twenty years - court's recommendation is 151-188 months (twelve years, seven months to fifteen years, eight months)

- Count 3 Inducing others to conspire to levy war against America - Up to twenty years - court's recommendation is 151-188 months (twelve years, seven months to fifteen years, eight months)

- Count 4 Attempting to aid the Taliban - Up to ten years - court's recommendation is 120 months (ten years)

- Count 5 Inducing others to conspire to aid the Taliban - Up to ten years - court's recommendation is 120 months (ten years)

- Count 6 Conspiring to levy war against Israel, Russia and India - Up to five years - court's recommendation is 60 months (five years)

- Count 7 inducing others to use firearms - mandatory 30 years with no parole

- Count 8 Inducing others to use firearms - mandatory life with no parole

- Count 9 Inducing others to carry explosives - mandatory 10 years with no parole

- Count 10 Inducing others to carry explosives - mandatory 20 years with no parole

In addition the court has recommended a fine of a quarter million dollars.

The government has objected that these punishments are too light and have asked the Judge to sentence Ali to six consecutive life sentences plus an additonal 1,110 (that's one thousand one hundred and ten) years plus a fine of three million dollars as they consider him the most dangerous man in America this is based on the government's belief which was said to Ali once, "You might not be Malcom X, but you will bring the next Malcom X to America."

Ali and his defence team have done all that they can do at this time from worldly means. What is needed is Allah to be merciful with Ali and allow to be saved
from this test unscathed. Please pray and seek those times when prayers are answered (the last third of the night, jumua, after the adhan, when it is raining).

Please pass this message on and ask as many Muslims you know to make du'aa.

The hearing will be at 10 am on Wednesday July 13, 2005. Updates will be posted on
http://www.altimimi.org

Jazakumullahu khairan,

The Support Committee

Differences of opinion

There has been quite alot of discussion on the web amongst Muslims about the correct response to these attacks and i do believe that there is a legitimate difference of opinion amongst brothers. There is the "sorry-brigade" (no disrespect intended), and others who believe that we need to voice the fact that these attacks aren't coming out of nowhere: that there are underlying issues that need to be addressed.

I just pray that the UK Muslim Orgs don't become like some of the Uncle Tom type of orgs in the US.

Anyhow, a hadith in Sahih Muslim describes 5 qualities of ar-Room (the Europeans & those of European descent):

• They have the patience to undergo a trial and
  
• immediately restore themselves to sanity after trouble and
• attack again after flight.
  
• They (have the quality) of being good to the destitute and the orphans, to the weak and,
• fifthly, the good quality in them is that they put resistance against the oppression of kings."

The way the British services responded to the attacks was nothing short of remarkable and you have to give credit for the level of organisation in place to deal with such scenarios.

In other news, I bought Imam Anwar's set on the Makkan seerah today. I've heard it before and its great - i definitely recommend it. I've heard from a friend that the Madinan Seerah should be available around Ramadan time, insha'Allah.

A sense of belonging

When you're staying in rented accommodation you tend not to take as much care of the place as you would if it was your own. After all, one day you're going to pack your bags and leave, and the landlord, or the next tenant can deal with any neglect.

Even if you're a careful person, if you were to drop a cup of tea on the carpet it wouldn't affect you as much as if it was your own carpet in your own home.

I wonder if we Muslims have the same attitude regarding our residency in Britain.* Do we regard Britain as not our own country, but the country of the "whites"? And as a result of that we don't get involved in community issues and trying to make our societies a better place to live. When an incident occurs like that of yesterday, it doesn't impact us as if it would if we were in our "own" country?

*The irony is that most of us don't have any realistic plans to leave Britain.

Today

jazakallahu khair for your concern q8i and sr. Hawa, alhumdulillah, i am fine :)

I tend to get in for work at around 8am everyday so i was already in the office when the mayhem started.

I usually get off at Whitechapel and then walk 20 minutes to my office (so that i don't have to pay for a zone 1 travelcard) and on that route i walk past Aldgate & Aldgate East stations to the office.

Today i actually went in via Liverpool Street. So either way it could have been ka-blamow for me. But alhumdulillah, Allah spared me and my family from any grief, and we have nothing bad to report.

I did try to visit the scene during my lunch break but the police had cordoned off the area around Aldgate station and i couldn't get there.

It is a bad day for London, but i couldn't help but laugh when my brother told me that he was watching the afternoon news when the news presenter asked an expert "but could this have been the IRA?" and the expert replied, "oh no. This is too clever for the Irish." hahahaha

Recitors

I'm so excited - a fellow blogger has provided me with a possible link to finding a recording of the recitation of a former Imam at Regents Park Masjid- Imam Atiyyah. An Egyptian brother, his recitation was slow, deep and with the help of acoustics of the masjid, absolutely beautiful.

I used to always prefer the Saudi Imams over all other recitors a few years back, but now i find myself liking the Egyptians more and more. Perhaps part of that is down to my short stay in Cairo. In fact, what i miss alot from my time there was the long prayers. When you went to the masjid, you didn't pray a quick 5 minute salah. We used to have Fajr last around 15-20 minutes some times.

A friend of mine said to me once that you tend to associate different passages of the Qur'an with different recitors, and with Imam Atiyyah it would be the two last pages of Surah al-Furqan that i'll forever associate with him.

Shortcuts to Paradise

I remember a discussion i had once with Dr. Mamdouh Mohamed from the States. He was mentioning a talk he did called "Shortcut to Paradise." He said that it was a bit of a sneaky title, because in the hadith in which the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam drew lines in the sand, there was only one way to Paradise, and that was the road of obedience to Allah & His Messenger.

However, i think that there is in one sense a shortcut to Paradise, and its what is referred to in the following hadith: "Whoever guides to something good is like the one who does it," and also, "Whoever invites to guidance will receive the reward like the rewards of those who follow him and that will not diminish anything from their rewards." [Both reported in Sahih Muslim]

Thus, if you guide someone to a good action, everytime that person does a good deed a copy of the reward that person gets is deposited in your account of hasanat. Alhumdulillah.

Now imagine if you had taught someone how to recite Qur'an how much reward you could get? And what about if you guided someone to Islam how much MORE reward would be deposited in your account.

And then yesterday i thought, imagine if you had guided 24 people to Islam, each one of them living in each of the world's 24 time zones ... you would have hasanat building up in your account throughout the day, everyday, even if you were lying in bed sleeping, or lazing around watching "Match of the Day". Alhumdulillah.

Now think of Abu Bakr. If i remember correctly, 6 of the 10 who were promised Paradise were guided at his hands! Subhanallah.

And then think of the Messenger of Allah who is at the top of this hasanat pyramid whose ajr account is boosted everytime one of the billion plus people of this ummah follow his sunnah. Wow!

May Allah unite us with Rasulullah in the Hereafter.

Err.. whats the link?

If this advert on Aljazeera's new English service is anything to go by, it looks like exploitation of women in advertising is spreading to the Middle East.

In Middle Eastern style obviously ;)



Any ideas on the link between girl in blue niqab and the foreign exchanges market?