Sooner Or Later, The Truth Comes Out

My brother showed me this. Ya Rubb, this video hurts to watch. As much as the media tries to cover up things like this the truth ends up coming out-guilt is very strong and no matter how hard the press or the government tries to hide what is really happening, eventually the truth it will come out. This video hurts to watch,  it brought tears to my ears and hurt my heart. The fact that unarmed and innocent people are being murdered, the fact that masaajids are being fired at for no reason… ya Rubb what a cruel world we are living in. Watch the video and spread it to all you know. Watch the video, it is certainly worth the time, and see how it makes you feel.

-radf

Ya Rubb, Ya Rahman, Ya Raheem, protect the innocents of the world.

Source: MujahideenRyder

Ah The Elderly

Unfortunately I don’t have many elderly around me. My grandparents on my fathers side passed away quite some time ago-my grandmother on my fathers side passed away when my father was young and my grandfather on my fathers side passed away when I was a little girl. My grandparents on my mothers side are alive, hamdulillah, but they live all the way in California and I can barely see them. I always wish that my grandparents were here, so that I could help them out or even juss listen to their stories. It sounds a little strange but I always love listening to the elderly talk about “back in the day,” stories about when they were kids. We should respect the elderly, and realize what an honor it really is to be able to take care of them. To have the elderly present in your home shouldn’t be thought of as a burden, rather it should be thought of as a blessing from Allah. It is written in the Qur’an, “Your Lord has commanded that you worship none but Him, and that you be kind to your parents. If one or both of them reach old age with you, do not say to them a word of disrespect, or scold them, but say a generous word to them. And act humbly to them in mercy, and say, ‘My Lord, have mercy on them, since they cared for me when I was small.” (17: 23-24) It makes me so sad when I see nursing homes, how kids, or adults rather, today simply send their parents off to nursing homes and see them about once or twice a year. Our beloved Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) advised us to be kind towards the elderly. Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) said, “Any young person who is kind to an elderly because of his age, Allah will send him someone who will be kind to him when he becomes old [Tarmazi].” You know how when we were little we were always told “Treat others as you would like to be treated,” well we should be in this mindset all the time. Something we tend to forget to do is to put ourselves in others shoes. Imagine being old, like really old, would you want your child or children to say “Ok thanks for everything, take care and go have fun with all the other elderly in your new nursing home.”

Any way… the reason I thought of this is because today I was outside cleaning my car and my parents cars and I saw my neighbor come outside. Next door to us lives this elderly couple, Victor and Barbra, they’re so sweet and ever since I was little I would go say hi to them and talk to them. When I’m outside and when I see them I go up to them say hi and talk to them for a bit. I really do love talking to them, it’s so interesting to listen to them and their inputs, they’re such nice people. Today when I saw them Victor, or Uncle Victor as my father has taught us to call him, he said “You are like my grand daughter and you still look like a little girl to me.” I realized that hamdulillah, my family has done a good job, we treat our neighbors like family and they treat us like family too, in fact they treat me better than some of my family members. I remember last year when I graduated from high school they sent me a card and a gift congratulating me on graduating high school. When I talk to the lady she always gives me amazing advice that really helps me out- she is a retired teacher, and I would like to be a teacher inshaAllah, so it’s very helpful to hear her input. It’s really nice to have them as neighbors and there were also other elderly people that lived in our neighborhood who were also very nice. The thing I love the most about this lady is that she is so open minded and she was telling  me how she is so proud that I dress the way that I do (hijaab and jilbaab) even though it may be hard to do it in the town that we live in-a pretty white town, or as she said “plain mayo and white bread is all you see around here.” I always enjoy talking to her and in the end she always advises me to read a book, this time she advised me to read, “Lies My Teacher Told Me,” I’ve read a part of it, I’m gunna have to go hit up the library pretty soon.

I really like my neghborhood, hamdulillah I have such great neighbors- they’re always there if we need help or anything and hamdulillah my parents have such a great relationship with them. Our beloved Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said, “The rights of the neighbor is that, when he is sick you visit him; when he dies, you go to his funeral; when he is poor you lend him (money); when he is in need you protect him; when he is in happiness you congratulate him; when he is struck with a calamity, you condole him; don’t raise your building above his to cut off the wind from him; don’t harm him with the good smell of your food unless you let him have part of it” [Tabarani]. SubhanAllah that hadith pretty much outlines how we should be interacting with our neighbors. My parents always check up on our neighbors and because of that they do the same, it’s a good feeling that there are still people that care for one another. We live in a society where tempers can’t be controlled, where family can’t tolerate each other and where compassion and sympathy for one another is at an all time low. Knowing that the people next to you, behind you, in front and even across from you are there for you when you may need help is a very good feeling. The family that lives across the street from my house came up with this neat idea last summer, they came up with something called movie night. Each weekend or so that family sets up this huge screen and plays a movie, and all of the neighbors get together and bring food and chat amongst each other catching up and talking about whats going on. When I first heard about it I juss thought, subhanAllah, and when you see how much work the family puts in for these nights its really a cool thing. They go through the trouble with putting up the big screen, setting up an extra tent for all of the food, setting up the back yard, making sure everyone’s comfortable-its juss amazing to see how great these people are. I’m so thankful for the neighborhood that I live in, and that my parents follow the Sunnah especially in their interaction with our neighbors. So if you have neighbors try to check up on them every so often, take a plate of food introduce yourself to them-but don’t scare them and constantly show up that might be a little scary. It’ll make the Ummah look a little better and what an amazing dawah opportunity. You’ll have friends who can defend Islam, they’ll see the way you act and you can break some misconceptions. There is such a big gap between people who are different. We the Muslims are the “different people” and we make up the majority of the gap; and the only way we can fix it is if we put ourselves out there and educate people. Who knows maybe inshaAllah we can end this Islamaphobia

Take care inshaAllah.

-radf

Allahumma sali ala sayyidina muhammadin an-Nabbiyil ummiyi Wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa salim.

Technology Kinda Stinks

The other night my brother and I were sitting around and reminiscing about our childhoods. Things were so different when we were little, we were thinking about all the differences there are between us and our younger siblings. It made me think about what I used to do when I was little. I remember being a kid- I used to play those hand games and cats cradle. I would always have fun dressing up my Barbie dolls-mostly juss fixing their hair and trying to figure out why some of them had such small clothing. I also loved bead work and making bracelets and such, actually I still do make bracelets (it’s very relaxing and fun ). I realized that little girls, or juss kids in general, don’t really do things like this anymore. Hamdulillah my youngest brother doesn’t play video games, and we try to keep him away from them, but when I go outside I see how addicted kids are to games and stuff.

When I was little I used to carry around with me my string and stuff and I would work on my bracelets, now when I look around kids are all wired up- their i-pod in their ears and their DS in their hands. And don’t blame the kids. For example in my own personal experience I text message a little too much and when I go out sometimes I can be completely oblivious to what is going on and juss stand somewhere and continue to text-it’s pretty sad. My parents always ask me why I can’t simply pick up the phone and call my friends and call them, I really don’t know why, I guess texting is juss more convenient.

Technology is taking so much away from us, people would rather sit on their couches play the Wii and pretend that they are fishing instead of getting up and going outside and really go fishing. Technology is so advanced, I mean remember when the i-pod came out and we were juss like “WOW,” and then more and more versions came out and it juss got ridiculous. The other day I went to a Macy’s and there was an i-pod vending machine! Who thought of that?!? Today I don’t even use my i-pod anymore, all I do is put everything I want to listen to on a memory chip, put that in my phone, plug in the adapter to my phone and I can listen to it in my car or plug in my head phones.

I think that it’s so sad that girls don’t play with dolls, or make jewelry or any of the other things that I used to do, maybe technology is a little too much-or maybe I juss don’t like feeling old, who knows maybe both. But technology is making us a lot more isolated. I mean there are certain people that I only e-mail, or some people that I only IM, it’s a little sad how there are people that we talk to online but never make time to see them in person. Recently I’ve been looking for a job, and a couple of the places that I went to they gave me a website and told me to apply online and wait for an e-mail response, they said that they don’t even have interviews because there is a section online that takes cares of that!

But there are some benefits to technology, I mean SunniPath Q&A’s help us out, having newspapers online is convenient and free so there are also some bright sides to it.

Khayr I ramble too much.

Take care inshaAllah.

-radf

Allahumma sali ala sayyidina muhammadin an-Nabbiyil ummiyi Wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa salim.

Trust in Allah

SubhanAllah this is such an amazing video. It is such a beautiful story, watch/listen to the story told by Shaykh Muhammad Bin Yahya Al-Husayni Al-Ninowy.

Updated: Here is the whole lecture thanks to Br. Sufyan Yunus.

Updated 5/31/08.

Blink Of An Eye

It’s crazy how time flies. This time last year I was a senior in high school and I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with my life and I had no idea where I would be going to college. If you were to tell me this time last year that I will be attending SUNY Old Westbury for my first year in college and that I will like the school, make some good friends and know what I would like to do with my life I would have probably laughed in your face. SubhanAllah time is crazy. On Tuesday (5/13) I completed my first year in college. I remember walking out of my last final thinking “I’m done…I’m done?!?” So much has happened in one year, and I learned many lessons. I remember this time last year I would be with some friends and we would say that we will come back and still be friends, but since high school ended I’ve “re-united” with about 2 friends and talked to some other friends through facebook-which really doesn’t mean anything. It goes to show that you can never know what the future holds for you. My parents always told me that I should be very careful with who I chose to be my friends, and who I chose to hang out or associate with. People come and go in your life, but the one’s that are there for you, that call or write to you no matter how far they are, the ones that check up on you, those are the ones that are your true friends. In high school we associate ourselves with groups, I think it’s in college when we learn that it’s better to have a couple of close friends that are there for you, care for you, change you in a positive way, and who understand you than to have a huge group of people who you call “friends.”

It seems that each year of my life goes by faster and faster. I can remember my freshmen year of high school, and I thought to myself wow I’m done with my first year of high school-and now I’m done with my first year of college. Time goes by so quickly, its a pretty scary concept. This year went by so fast I can’t imagine how fast next year and the year after that will go by. It shows that we need to make the best of each moment, never waste any time because time is something that we can’t control, and once its gone, its gone forever and we can never get it back. Khayr summer is here and well I avoided taking summer classes so now I might get a second job, but at least I can catch up on my deen, review the books that I have and try to go to as many lectures and stuff as possible over the summer-which reminds me, I need to go sign up for ICNA!

For those of you who are still taking finals, good luck and inshaAllah you’ll get A’s! For those of you who are done for the year, congratulations! Go take a break, relax, reflect on your accomplishments and give thanks to Allah for everything that you have.

Take care inshaAllah.

-radf

Quite Upsetting

SunniPath Says Farewell to Shaykh Faraz

Posted by Ashraf Muneeb, Dean of the Academy on May 14th, 2008

Assalamu Alaikum,

I am saddened to announce Shaykh Faraz is leaving SunniPath to pursue other initiatives in service of our Ummah. While we will miss him greatly, I pray that Allah blesses all his future endeavors and grants him tawfeeq.

He has been a key member of SunniPath since the beginning. The entire SunniPath family would like to thank Shaykh Faraz for his immense contribution, dedication, and hard work — may Allah reward him in this world and the next.

Please join me in thanking Shaykh Faraz and bidding him farewell.

Source: SunniPath Blog

Relax

I put up pictures of sunsets/sunrises a lot so over the weekend I decided to go to out to the harbor and watch the sunset. It’s very convenient living near a harbor because you can go see a sunrise or sunset whenever you want. I can’t believe I haven’t done this before but I think I will go more often. It’s so amazing watching the sun set, everything juss looks so beautiful and you juss feel so relaxed. It really is a beautiful thing if you get the chance go out, especially now that summers coming in. Juss imagine praying Fajr and Maghrib by the harbor-or at the beach-yeah pretty amazing inshaAllah I’ll be able to do it more over the summer

But for now I have to get back to studying, my last two finals are tomorrow please keep me in your du’as.

Take care inshaAllah and below is a picture from when I went to go see the sunset over the weekend, SubhanAllah:

-radf

Baba Ali In The New York Times

If you have time read it:

Young Video Makers Try to Alter Islam’s Face

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

Published: May 8, 2008

LOS ANGELES — When Ali Ardekani started fishing around on the Internet a couple of years ago for video blogs about Muslims, he did not like what he found: either the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims were depicted as bloodthirsty zealots, or they were offering defensive explanations as to why they were not.“Arabic sounds foreign and scary — you don’t know what is going on,” Mr. Ardekani said in an interview at his small Sherman Oaks apartment, its walls decorated with Koranic verses. “Or they show a woman with the veil, who doesn’t speak, and it is assumed if she did speak she would say, ‘Help me!’ ”

So Mr. Ardekani, a 33-year-old Web designer, cast himself on his video blogs as Baba Ali, an outsize character with a serious religious message who both dissects and lampoons the lives of American Muslims.

Mr. Ardekani is among the most visible of a new wave of young American Muslim performers and filmmakers trying to change the public face of their religion. His most popular video posting — “Who Hijacked Islam?” — has garnered more than 350,000 hits on YouTube since July 2006. Of course the uphill battle such efforts face is reflected in the comments section. One viewer remarked darkly, “It’s Muslims that do the hijacking.”

These video pioneers’ arena of choice is mostly YouTube and similar Web sites, which young Muslims extol as a new way to take their arguments public. The role model is Bill Cosby, who young Muslim filmmakers believe changed the perception of African-Americans by depicting them as ordinary.

For the moment, the filmmakers suspect, most of the hits they attract are generated by other young Muslims.

“They are deprived of any type of representation in the media which isn’t a terrorist or an extremely pious Muslim,” said Lena Khan, 23. So whenever an image to the contrary is seen “on YouTube or the Internet or on a TV show, it just spreads across the Muslim community like wildfire, because everyone wants to support it.”

Ms. Khan has placed several short videos on YouTube, among them “A Land Called Paradise,” which shows a variety of Muslims holding up signs. The sign held by a young boy says, “Broccoli is my personal jihad” — jihad meaning a personal, spiritual struggle rather than its more notorious translation as holy war.

“A Land Called Paradise” has attracted almost 250,000 hits. It has also won a $20,000 grand prize in a multisponsored contest to produce videos that challenge stereotypes of Muslims. Mr. Ardekani won the $5,000 first prize in the comedy category for “Muslim While Flying,” a spoof of the way Muslims are treated at American airports.

Murad Amayreh, a 27-year-old filmmaker who works for the outreach department of the Muslim American Society, helped produce a video, “I Am a Muslim,” that has shot to the top of searches for “Muslim” on YouTube, having attracted more than two million hits since it was posted on Sept. 28.

(By way of perspective, the most popular video ever on YouTube, “Evolution of Dance,” has attracted more than 84 million hits, but traffic in that stratospheric range is usually garnered by music videos. Ms. Khan said student filmmakers rated 10,000 hits as a sign that a film had moved beyond friends and family.)

The “I Am a Muslim” video tries to contradict stereotypes with a man named Muhammad who presents himself as an ordinary American. It has drawn more than 131,000 comments, along with more than 50 video responses. Some are crude, like “I Am a Redneck.”

One of the more sober video responses, from a young, skinny, unidentified man, has garnered more than 132,000 hits of its own. Echoing the sentiment of other viewers, this man says that Muslims wrongly depict all criticism of their religion as racism and that given the tiny fraction of the world’s Muslims who live in the United States, any enlightened outlook among American Muslims may not be representative.

“Muslims need to come to grips with the fact that it is not always the extremism that we object to, it is simply your religion,” the man says, going on to argue that people are troubled by what he calls Islam’s opposition to homosexuality, free speech and women’s rights. “Only in Islam can one be labeled not an extremist simply because he has no immediate desire to blow you up.”

Mr. Ardekani said he developed his alter ego, Baba Ali, to try to move the discussion away from such broadsides or apologies by Muslims.

“I think that when they do the defensive approach, they never get to talk about anything except for the stuff that people hate,” he said.

Although born into a Muslim family in Iran, Mr. Ardekani says, he was reared in a secular Los Angeles household and “converted” to Islam at age 20. His studio is the second bedroom of the apartment he shares with his wife and two small children.

His roughly 30 video blogs focus on the clash between Muslim and American traditions. In one video, he ridicules the expense of Muslim weddings. “Christians get married in churches, Jews get married in synagogues, Muslims get married at the Hilton,” he said in an interview. “I am talking about stuff that Muslims can relate to.”

In a less spoofing vein, he answered viewers’ questions for a time, a kind of Dear Abby to young Muslims with queries like whether it is O.K. for adolescents to have close relationships with the opposite sex. (The answer: Of course not.)

Some Muslims have questioned his credentials to offer advice, noting that among other things he is not a trained religious scholar. But his main goal, Mr. Ardekani says, is to try to make a difference in the lives of young Muslims facing problems that their parents or local imam never faced.

Certainly he has succeeded in transforming at least one life. His video blogs have blossomed into a second career for him, as a stand-up comedian playing clubs nationwide.

Source: The New York Times

Here We Go!

Yes that dreaded time called “Finals Week” has arrived! You know that time when you take a look around your campus and you see the libraries full, people constantly talking about classes and walking around with their notes and textbooks in their hands, students shaking crazily because they’ve been living off of caffeine, and… well I’m sure you get the picture. This is the time when stress and pressure is at an all time high. You stressing to make sure that you pass your final and then your parents pressuring you that the only passing grade is an A…. yeah we’ve all been there. Khayr, whatever is meant to be will happen juss study, don’t stress, don’t skip Fajr cuz you were up all night ‘studying’ and makes lots of du’a and inshaAllah you’ll be fine

Juss in case here are the du’as:

Du’a before you study:

اَللَّهُمَّ انْفَعْنِي ِبمَا عَلَّمْتَنيِ وَ عَلِّمْنِي مَا يَنْفَعُنِي

Allahumma infa’nee bimaa ‘allamtanee wa’allimnee maa yanfa’unee.

Oh Allah! Make useful for me what You taught me and teach me knowledge that will be useful to me.

Du’a after you study:

إنَّكَ عَلَى مَا تَشَاءُ قَدِيراً وَّ أَنْتَ حَسْبِيَ وَ نِعْمَ الْوَكِيل

Innaka ‘ala maa tashaa`u qadeeraa wa anta hasbeeya wa na’mal wakeel.

Oh Allah! You do whatever You wish, and You are my Availer and Protector and the best of aid.

Keep me in your du’as and I’ll keep you in mine.

Take care inshaAllah.

-radf

“Tomorrow May Never Come…”

I found this video on HAhmed.com If you have time watch it: