Short poem

This is the very end of a poem written by our brother and Shaikh Ali al-Timimi...

Days gone by, too many to count
     My soul ever restless, but without doubt
That soon I am to be free once again
     To enjoy Allah's blessings in the company of my brethren.

Same salafis, same problem

I used to be a member of a yahoo group moderated by a salafi. I joined the group with high hopes that the group-exclusiveness and arrogance which has been an unfortunate hallmark of the salafi movement over the past two decades would have diminished if not totally disappeared. Alas, no.

In recent days there has been a discussion regarding the reported imprisonment of Imam Anwar al-Awlaqi. Now you might have thought that given the popularity of the speaker and how effective his method of teaching is, and what he has done to bring Muslim youth back to Islam... AND that he is right now possibly being tortured might move these salafis. Again, no. They found it more worthy of their time to discuss his manhaj errors, and why he shouldn't be referred to as "Imam", and the fact that he quotes Sayyid Qutb here and there.

Which planet are these claimants to the name of salafi on? They're wickedly caught up in some fantasy world where they see themselves as guardians of the religion and they have lost all sense of priority. Since when did it become more important to point out errors in secondary matters of the religion and ignore the fact that he is our brother and worthy of our full support and du'as?

Update: Found an excellent post here which touches on some of what i was trying to say above.
Another good post here by Abu Eesa here.

Praying becomes a "radical activity" in France

http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,,1937630,00.html

Ali al-Timimi online donations

You'll notice that I've added a button on the left which if you click will take you through to a Paypal page on which you can securely donate money to the "Free Ali" fund. Please, donate something - even if a little - as $600k needs to be raised by Spring, and Sh. Ali isn't being treated well in the prison system including being locked up with violent offenders (who have attacked him).

I'd encourage my fellow bloggers and bloggerettes to host this button on your blogs and sites to aid our brother and teacher. If you're tech-savvy i'm sure you'll know how to extract the button and stick it on your own site. Otherwise, just drop an email to donateuk AT freeali.org and they'll send you instructions on how to do so.

Back to punishments

I completely forgot to mention the thing that triggered my post on punishments being too soft. I sit in on a meeting with local residents and the police where we find out what the police are doing to tackle problems in our locality and also suggest where they should focus their efforts.

The cops are doing some fine work and taking note of what us, the residents, tell them. But what prompted me to write the earlier post is one officer's admission that the best they can do in trying to get rid of out-of-control youth and drunken yobs causing mayhem is to basically push them out of our locality into the next one. Now that sounds great for the residents of my area, but it doesn't sound right that we should push these people into someone else's yard so that they become a nuisance to others. Now what if anti-social behaviour had a stricter punishment.....

Update: Somalis learn to follow the law