Negativity Sucks

What makes a super man?

2011-01-24T10:38:00.004+03:00

The term Manhood is a pretty loaded word. Mainly because of it's long existence I suppose. For as long as there was man, there was the word man.

On a most basic level it is a noun for our species. But I intended in this post to talk about the term as opposed to woman.

So do I mean Man as in Male?.. again on a most basic level, yes, but surely there's much more to it than that right? the term is "loaded". It means much more than just the anatomical aspect of it.

If I attempt to delve a little deeper and spell out some of the those "unspoken" meanings of Manhood, we can start with:

- Honor

- Providence

- Responsibility

- Strength

- Security

- Vigilance

Ok, these are only the positive sides of Manhood. Or we can say "being a Man" is supposed to be a positive thing. Sure there's a negative side to each of these qualities, like:

- Strength misused for Brutality

- Providence into Selfish stinginess

- Vigilance into Oppression

and so on..

So let's cut to the chase.. being "Male", on a most basic level gives strength and power. It can be financial power, muscular power, political power, you name it. It is mainly "out-doorsy" power. Feminists can kiss my ass but when it comes down to it, women in this world only have power which men have provided to them. Women are only safe because men are protecting them. AS THEY SHOULD! don't get me wrong.

Hmmm.. I don't like the way this post is heading.. I intended it to talk about what's a proper measure of a man. And I veered off into defining what a man's role compared to a woman's is. I suppose it's inevitable. How about I just summarize where I come from and let it be:

خطبة الوداع للرسول صلى الله عليه و سلم يوم عرفة السنة 10 هجرية:

أما بعد أيها الناس إن لنسائكم عليكم حقاً ولكم عليهن حق. لكم أن لا يواطئن فرشهم غيركم، ولا يدخلن أحداً تكرهونه بيوتكم إلا بإذنكم ولا يأتين بفاحشة، فإن فعلن فإن الله قد أذن لكم أن تعضلوهن وتهجروهن في المضاجع وتضربوهن ضرباً غير مبرح، فإن انتهين وأطعنكم فعليكم رزقهن وكسوتهن بالمعروف، واستوصوا بالنساء خيراً، فإنهن عندكم عوان لا يملكن لأنفسهن شيئاً، وإنكم إنما أخذتموهن بأمانة الله واستحللتم فروجهن بكلمة الله فاتقوا الله في النساء واستوصوا بهن خيراً

So this shows what a muslim man's attitude to women should be. "Fear Allah with regard to women, and take good care of them." And he started with women's rights before men's rights. Which I think is so appropriate and elegant because it is men who are more likely to abuse these rights, not women. Why? simply because they are able to.

So what makes a good man, and a better man? and what makes a superman?

I'll put it in as few words as I can:"The best man is a man who takes care of the most number of people, well."

A son taking care of his parents, is better then one who doesn't.

A husband taking care of his wife (well) is better than a bachelor.

A good father with lots of kids and a wife (all well taken care of) is better than a good husband who chooses not to have kids.

A good manager in a company taking care of a dept. is better than a good employee who only worries about his own work. The bigger the company, the more employees, the better.

A president of a whole country (well taken care of) is better than a good company manager/CEO..

you surely get the picture. The more "dependents", the better.

Assuming the quality of the "care" is constant and uniform. Then the more people the better you are. and the more of a Man you are.

المؤمن القوى خير وأحب الى الله من المؤمن الضعيف، وفى كل خير

Having said that, it seems in this day and age, the roles are shifting. Dependency is not so obvious and glaring like it was 50 years ago. Some women single-handedly take care of many people, so this argument I'm making isn't exclusive to men only. Equally, the more people a woman takes care of, the better "woman" she is.

I wonder if there's a list somewhere of the top 100 People in terms of "how many people being taken care of by this person".

Thoughts anyone?

Most/Least Valuable Thing?

2010-11-04T07:37:00.004+03:00

I think the most valuable thing in the WORLD.... is humility.

and the most worthless thing in the world is...? you guessed it. arrogance and self-worth.

I see or hear in the news about a country president who is attempting to change his country's constitution in order to be eligible for re-election for an indefinite number of terms. And I cringe at that person's arrogance and self-worth. I hear someone screaming down at a worker or a maid just because they gave them a task which they didn't do to perfection (a perfection that only exists vaguely in that person's mind, and is not consistent, and can change after a day or two).

I literally cringe with disgust when I see such belittlement of others. and the scary part is, if I had done it, I probably wouldn't have noticed anything wrong. I would probably feel I am worthy of being superior than those around me, and I'm showing them what's right for their own good. Even though my real motive would be to show them how superior I am to them, and that they should know it in their cores never to challenge me.

Self-worth is purely a lie. that is the main source of it's evil. It is simply misleading and drives you to do some things that are out of your capabilities, yet you'll think they are within them. We think we know all the ins and outs of a problem, it's limits, it's variables, we think we have total control over something. Therefor we know what's best.

But we don't know everything, and the more we believe that we do, the more we think that what seems risky behavior in the eyes of others, is totally safe. So we do risky behavior and lead others towards destructive outcomes.

On the other hand...

I haven't seen anything in this world more beautiful than humility.

And what sort of humility do we mean really? how many kinds of it are there? A person can never show real and genuine humility to another except when they feel that they are truly and unquestionably inferior to them.

If I walk to my office and pass by the teaboy, and he accidentally stumbles and spills coffee over my clean white dishdasha first thing in the morning. What would stop me from cursing him for his clumsiness and low education. Clearly thinking that it was his fault and his parents' fault for not educating him enough to get a better job than this one. For not knowing exactly how many cups of coffee he can carry safely without spilling them. For not judging properly how many cups his tray can carry.

In my arrogance I could go on for hours listing all the flaws in this poor man's life that led him to this simple unfortunate event of spilt coffee.

And also in my arrogance I would forget to list all the necessities and forces that made it impossible for his life to have taken any other course. Choosing to skip college in india and work as a tea boy right in his early teen years wasn't much of a real choice for him. Choosing not to start a small farm with modern high-yield farming practices, in order to increase his family's prosperity and freedom wasn't much of a real choice since he didn't know how to do all that, and without someone teaching him how to do it, it would have been very unwise for him to risk what little assets his family had with such a project that could fail.

In reality... if I had infinite knowledge about all the factors that controlled this teaboy's life up to this point... if I had known how he had no REAL control over his life in order to land this lowly job, and no control over the genes he was born with to have such muscles which would falter at this particular moment and cause him to spill coffee all over me..

If I had all that knowledge, I would understand FULLY that it wasn't really his fault. so I would do my utmost to calm his fears about my wrath or backlash.

But do we really have to be SOooo full of knowledge and foresight in order to be compassionate? for one thing we're NOT full of knowledge. Our information about things around us chronically limited and incomplete. But what we CAN be sure of is that we don't know everything. And that IF we knew then we might have lots of reasons to forgive and to understand.

That's why humility is the most valuable thing in the world. It's because it's the most truthful. it puts us in exactly our rightful place. and from there we can act accordingly, and properly.

Nag Hammadi Library, Apocalypse of Peter and Surat al-Nisa'

2010-05-09T13:02:00.002+03:00

I've been doing alot of reading trying to understand the New Testament..

I mean, ok, we as muslims we say teh Qur'an is completely the word of Allah. given to Gabriel, given to irrasool Mohammad (pbuh).

Old Testament is mainly the Torah, given to Moses, which til today the Jews hold dear.

New Testament however, turns out its more like narrations by the disciples of Jesus (pbuh), rather than an actual inherited book. One according to each of the disciples. Book of Mathew, Book of Marc, and so on.. so it's just the narration of things that happened to/around Jesus (pbuh) told from the point of view of that disciple.

I came across this piece in the Nag Hammadi Library from Apocalypse of Peter:

When he had said those things, I saw him seemingly being seized by them. And I said "What do I see, O Lord? That it is you yourself whom they take, and that you are grasping me? Or who is this one, glad and laughing on the tree? And is it another one whose feet and hands they are striking?"

The Savior said to me, "He whom you saw on the tree, glad and laughing, this is the living Jesus. But this one into whose hands and feet they drive the nails is his fleshly part, which is the substitute being put to shame, the one who came into being in his likeness. But look at him and me."

But I, when I had looked, said "Lord, no one is looking at you. Let us flee this place."

But he said to me, "I have told you, 'Leave the blind alone!'. And you, see how they do not know what they are saying. For the son of their glory instead of my servant, they have put to shame."

So this is basically Peter, the closest companion of Jesus (pbuh) being confused as to why he's seeing two Jesuses, one being nailed on the cross, and the other standing on a tree watching. And Jesus telling him that the one on the tree is truly himself, while the one being crucified is a substitute!

And then you look at the Qur'anic verse in surat al-Nisa' 157

و قولهم انا قتلنا المسيح ابن مريم رسول الله وَمَا قَتَلُوهُ وَمَا صَلَبُوهُ وَلَـكِن شُبِّهَ لَهُمْ وَإِنَّ الَّذِينَ اخْتَلَفُواْ فِيهِ لَفِي شَكٍّ مِّنْهُ مَا لَهُم بِهِ مِنْ عِلْمٍ إِلاَّ اتِّبَاعَ الظَّنِّ وَمَا قَتَلُوهُ يَقِينًا {157}بَل,رَّفَعَهُ اللّهُ إِلَيْهِ وَكَانَ اللّهُ عَزِيزًا حَكِيمًا {158}النساء
And [for] their saying, "Indeed, we have killed the Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary, the messenger of Allah ." And they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him; but [another] was made to resemble him to them. And indeed, those who differ over it are in doubt about it. They have no knowledge of it except the following of assumption. And they did not kill him, for certain. {157}
Rather, Allah raised him to Himself. And ever is Allah Exalted in Might and Wise. {158}
------------------------
Now, the Nag Hammadi scrolls are all authentic and dated to the 1st-2nd century A.D. yet they're all called "non-canonical", meaning they're not recognized as "official" parts to the New Testament. It is even theorized that the scrolls themselves were buried in fear of heretical persecution.
I feel thankful that such a document exists to show some of my christian friends.

Mokaani Mokaani, Ya Zamaani

2010-03-06T22:37:00.003+03:00

My eldest daughter Taiba when she was 3 years old, had this conversation with her maid:

Taiba: "laish ma 3indech xxxx?" (forgot what the xxxx was)
maid: "ma 3indi foloos" *chuckle*
Taiba pauses thinking.. then: "eshtere foloos!" *expression clearly stating problem is solved*

So now that's her iconic line which we remember of her childhood.

Then my boy Abdalla also when he was 3 years old, after being fed his last lunch lugma, and seeing me walk past the table carrying a plate with a big slice of chocolate fudge cake on it. He puts the back of his hand on his forehead and says:

"ana ta3baan, abe cake..." *and he lets out a fake tired sigh*

and that's his iconic line.

So I'm thinking of making Tshirts with these lines.. and thought since Zaina is almost 3 years now.. she's due for her own iconic line.. and a couple weeks ago she didn't disappoint :P

My wife: "Zaina goleeli qessa"
Zaina: "inzain.."
My wife: "yalla"
Zaina: "Mokaani Mokaani, ya zamaani.."
me and my wife looking at each other puzzled..
Zaina: "kaan fee elephant"
me and my wife break out laughing

Who do You Subscribe to on Youtube?

2010-02-12T19:51:00.003+03:00

Here are a few of my favorite Youtube channels:

By far the coolest guy on Youtube these days for me is Joe Penna (AKA Mystery Guitar Man, MGM for short) famous for this one:

The 6ag erguba he does at 1:26 is smile-enducing. going strong approaching 6 million views.

And last one he did here is also creative and amazing:

The amount of patience this dude has in his editing makes me just scratch my head.

He also directed this movie for RhettandLink:

just.. so.. good.. I'm thinking of buying one of those t-shirts to be part of the whole experience.

And other channels I follow are the witty and funny Natalie (AKA communitychannel)

Also Brandon Hardesty (AKA ArtieTSMITW) some pretty funny and good movie re-enactments:

This guy Tobuscus is also funny, spoofing Farmville!

The Bitter Sweet Humility of It

2010-01-30T09:22:00.003+03:00

Three days ago our whole house got hit by a quick virus. It started with my little one Zaina, then her 10yo sister Taiba, then my wife, then me, my son Abood, the maid, you name it. In the period of 24 hours the household turned into a sort of refugee camp.

It took me personally completely by surprise, as I'm rarely sick, I stay in the company of sick people with an almost smug expression like I have some sort of silly immunity or something. Astaahil.

Wed. afternoon I was fine and teasing my grumpy sick Zaina, and by the same evening I was in Zaina's bed clutching my stomach while she was infront of me singing and waving her hands as if conducting the opera playing in her head. Ahh the irony eh? thankfully it was lost on little Zaina or I wouldn't hear the end of it.

But here's what made me make this post..

At one point in that evening as I started getting stronger and stronger gagging urges, I went to the bathroom sink, waiting and anticipating each heaving sensation.. then my stomach got squeezed so painfully and in a sustained upward surge of agony, it felt like a large hand has gotten a firm hold on my intestines and was trying to wrench them out of me. it wasn't like the usual stomach aches you get, it was much more severe and different, on a scale I couldn't have imagined only seconds before. My knees buckled and I had to suddenly rely on my hands on the sink to keep from falling to the floor. That near fall was another nastily sobering surprise, after you have taken standing tall for granted your whole life.

During those 10-15 seconds of being barely in control of my own body and mind, I felt one singular thought crystalize shining and clear in my head. I felt like those people in the Aya

حَتَّىٰٓ إِذَا جَآءَ أَحَدَهُمُ ٱلۡمَوۡتُ قَالَ رَبِّ ٱرۡجِعُونِ ( المؤمنون٩٩)

and

{ولو ترى إذ المجرمون ناكسوا رؤوسهم عند ربهم ربنا أبصرنا وسمعنا فارجعنا نعمل صالحا إنا موقنون}السجدة 12

I felt suddenly very sorry and repentant for every and any bad thing I did in my life, whatever it was, remembered or not. I felt utterly weak and powerless over anything. not even the train of thought in my own head. And when you lose the illusion of the power you think you have, you quickly know who to turn to, the One WITH all the power. The decision and choice becomes utterly simple, as if it was even ridiculous to even call it a choice. There is really no choice, there's just Him sib7anah.

I spent the night in fever and weak sweating but it was so blissful and much better situation than the pain I was in earlier, and I felt immense gratitude for this respite. Sej sej we take soooo many blessings we have for granted, unthanked.

And now only 2 days after I am much better and walking around confidently, eating whatever I like (no more mash5ool o low-fat robah)..... and that feeling of humility starting to slip away again. as if nothing bad has ever happened. How quickly we forget.

Imogen Heap - Wait it Out

2010-01-13T17:34:00.002+03:00

Finally, finally, finally Imogen Heap made a new album after her amazing 2005 Speak for Yourself.

She does all the instrument tracks herself then compiles them on her own computer. is she cool or what?

The new album Ellipse is wonderful, and at times even cleverly funny. But this track by far steals the whole show.

Please enjoy,

Where do we go from here?
How do we carry on?
I can't get beyond the questions.
Clambering for the scraps
In the shatter of us collapsed.
That cuts me with every could-have-been.

Pain on pain on play, repeating
With the backup makeshift life in waiting.

Everybody says: "Time heals everything."
But what of the wretched hollow?
The endless in-between?
Are we just going to wait it out?

There's nothing to see here now,
Turning the sign around;
We're closed to the Earth 'til further notice.
Stumbling cliché case -
Crumpled and puffy-faced -
Dead in the stare of a thousand miles.

All I want: only one street-level miracle.
I'll be a an out-and-out, born again from none more cynical.

Everybody says that time heals everything all in the end.
But what of the wretched hollow?
The endless in-between?
Are we just going to wait it out?

And sit here cold?
We'll be long gone by then.
And lackluster in dust we lay
'round old magazines.
Fluorescent lighting sets the scene
For all we could and should be being
In the one life that we've got.

(Musical interlude)
In the one life that we've got.

Everybody says that time heals everything.
But what of the wretched hollow?
The endless in-between?

Are we just going to wait it out?
Sit here. Just going to wait it out?
Sit here cold. Just going to sweat it out?

Wait it out.

Keep Right

2010-01-05T17:57:00.005+03:00

As I stood on the escalator going down to the Bond St. subway station, I got a tap on my shoulder and heard a voice behind me "move please?". I instinctively moved from the side I was on to the other side, which was the right side of the escalator steps. And the man who tapped me swiftly descended down the steps, passing a few people until he stopped behind an asian lady who stood in the same way I was standing, which is on the left side of the steps, while her friend was on her right. He repeated the same mumble to her and she also walked down one step to stand infront of her friend as the man continued his hurried descent.

As he went down I looked back and saw that the man had cut a clear path on the left side of the escalator from the top all the way down to the bottom. And a few people were using this path to walk down the escalator swiftly and efficiently, saving a few moments of time on the hopes of catching the train right before its doors shut, or maybe feeling that atleast this way they get SOME exercise. After all by looking at the other escalator going up, it was much clearer how the number of people walking up was much less than the people walking down. People going up preferred to stand still instead.

And then I noticed the sign in the middle between the two escalators repeating every few feet.

Stand on the Right
No Smoking

And that made sense how it was mostly new tourists like me and that asian lady who were ignorant about this directive to stand always on the right hand side of the escalator steps.

This was interesting to me for two main reasons:
1- it was an individual instruction. aimed at one person. the reader.
2- it achieved a system where people in a hurry could walk up/down the stairs unimpeded, while lazier folk like me could stand comfortably without acting like a road block.

It didn't say "Clear the way for walkers" for example. If you say something like that to a 100 people riding an escalator they would all appreciate what you're trying to achieve, but would be confused on how to do it.

So the solution was to give each individual a simple thing to do.. and also, the key was to have the SAME instruction given to ALL the people involved.

This is pure Conformity.

The sign "Keep Right" is basically the LAW from above. And if "most" people follow it then a "good" thing happens.

If however most people prefer to be individualistic and choose to disobey and stand however the HELL they like, on the right, on the left, spread their legs wide and raise their arms in a big human X shape (to show rebellion against the corrupt bankers no doubt), then for sure the 1 minute which they spend on the escalator trip will be a more satisfying and free experience for them.

But the healthy person wanting to walk up or down the escalator and not just stand there will have to tap alot more shoulders than just mine and the asian lady's.

Conformity is generally viewed in a negative way in the post WW2 era of revolutions and libertarian movements.

Yet, sometimes it has its value to make our lives easier. If we all wear the same clothes then clothes will become alot cheaper, and we could maybe make more of them. If we drive the same cars we'll have cheaper cars. And so on.

On the flip side Conformity kills Diversity. And we need to have diverse options when we don't yet know which specific Amino acid secreted by which deep sea bacteria is going to be the next super anti-biotic as the life-span of Penicillin draws to an end. Or which will kill Cancer cells.

So we need both at different times. Which LAWs to conform to however?

Keeping Right can be evidently beneficial in a very short time. But other Laws take longer for their effects to be felt for good or bad.

It was generally accepted that taking interest on loans is not only ok.. but an economic necessity. If you don't allow it then stagnation of the economy is assured.

Yet now they are so scared of the economic meltdown of mountains upon mountains of global debt, BBC economists predict the worst is yet to come. And that no real change of the LAWs has been effected. They say that all that has been done was similar to giving a heroin addict who was having a cardiac arrest, a dose of more heroin to let the emergency pass.

The US can't keep buying Chinese stuff on loan anymore. And all that happened was that the addiction was allowed to continue a little longer using federal money. It is nothing more than borrowed time.

The only good sign of recovery is ordinary people getting profoundly scared and starting to be thrifty and saving more.

But the practices which get us in this mess every 20 years haven't changed. And the lesson learned will be only temporary in our recent memory. Until the next generation takes over and repeats the mistakes.

In this case, we think the current LAW is ok, and good, and it works. but we can't see its consequences coming 20 years later.

Where did we get this LAW from? from people who are able to predict no more than 5 years into their own futures. at best.

What if I say that Allah, our almighty God and creator gave us a different LAW. saying that we should NOT take interest on loans.

It's an individual instruction like "Keeping Right". And we are not far-sighted enough to see what good it will do to us.

I for one take it on faith that its a good practice.

We'll see inshalla

Look up and fear Allah

2009-12-31T22:29:00.002+03:00

I couldn't help but quiver in fear when I looked up at the moon 30 mins. ago as I walked out of my grandmother's house heading home.

I drove around looking for a mosque that was praying the eclipse prayer and could find none. I went through Faiha, Roudha and finally Bayan, all the mosque's had their lights off.

My cousin headed prayers during tarawee7 sometimes, and he said they didn't get any notice from the ministry to prepare for Eclipse prayers tonight.

I wonder why?

Not to rain on New Year's partying? I hope I'm wrong.

Please, look up and fear your God. and do as his messenger asked us to do and pray until it is lifted.

Please Watch Food Inc.

2009-11-27T17:58:00.005+03:00

3eedkom Mbarak everyone.

Please watch this movie. It will open your eyes wide to some pretty horrific facts that affect you directly 3 times a day. (here's the u torrent client if you don't have one, install it first before you click on the movie link).

Sure at some times it is a bit too heavy on american sentimentality towards animal treatment, but most of the time it is very straight forward, logical and smart in its pacing and simplicity of presentation so we can understand the enormity of its implications.

Wonderful Insight Into How Our Brains Work

2009-08-04T19:09:00.002+03:00

My brother sent me this the other day, please please please watch it:

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

What do you think this means? aside from being astonishing.

Litany Against Fear + Death by Stoning

2009-07-21T09:38:00.006+03:00

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

This is the Litany of Fear, any reader of Frank Herbert's DUNE books will recognize. They're probably the most memorable lines in the book. It described desert dwelling arab-looking bedwins wearing "still-suits" which recycle and distill the body's own liquids, of perspiration and urine. Men who's sign of respecting one another is to spit infront of them, because the liquid is their most sacred possession. Men who are awed when someone sheds "tears" for a dead loved one. "Giving water to the dead". The dead who have no use for the water which you give in tears. To them the act is so wasteful and irrational, it can only be explained as a mystical religious act.

---------------------------------------

Another story caught my eye yesterday on BBC & the Indepedent:

Saudi princess 'given UK asylum'

Princess facing Saudi death penalty given secret UK asylum

It's curious that the 2nd story in the Independent wrongly states that the child also would face death. As I understand it, Shari3a law ac states that the pregnant woman awaiting stoning or flogging is made to wait until birth, and in some cases even allowed to nurse the child for sometime if needed, until the baby can survive without her, and THEN she would be flogged if she wasn't married, or stoned to death if she was.

This is a classic case of the conflict in moral values between us muslims and those of the west.

What do you people think?

Intolerance? No, it's more like Love

2009-06-28T14:27:00.003+03:00

Sorry for the long absence. Was too busy with many different things, not least of all my MBA thesis is due in October and I still haven't chosen a topic... I don't know what I want to write about, I'm not particularly passionate about business in itself I guess. Sure I find the whole crashing of the financial markets interesting, mainly because I'm all "Allah told you so!". but that's preaching, it's not an academic question.

But anyhow I came across this Aya in surat al-Ma'eda:

لَقَدْ كَفَرَ الَّذِينَ قَالُوا إِنَّ اللَّهَ هُوَ الْمَسِيحُ ابْنُ مَرْيَمَ وَقَالَ الْمَسِيحُ يَا بَنِي إِسْرَائِيلَ اعْبُدُوا اللَّهَ رَبِّي وَرَبَّكُمْ إِنَّهُ مَنْ يُشْرِكْ بِاللَّهِ فَقَدْ حَرَّمَ اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ الْجَنَّةَ وَمَأْوَاهُ النَّارُ وَمَا لِلظَّالِمِينَ مِنْ أَنصَارٍ
لَقَدْ كَفَرَ الَّذِينَ قَالُوا إِنَّ اللَّهَ ثَالِثُ ثَلاثَةٍ وَمَا مِنْ إِلَهٍ إِلَّا إِلَهٌ وَاحِدٌ وَإِنْ لَمْ يَنتَهُوا عَمَّا يَقُولُونَ لَيَمَسَّنَّ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا مِنْهُمْ عَذَابٌ أَلِيمٌ

"They do blaspheme who say: "Allah is Christ the son of Mary." But said Christ: "O Children of Israel! worship Allah, my Lord and your Lord." Whoever joins other gods with Allah,- Allah will forbid him the garden, and the Fire will be his abode. There will for the wrong-doers be no one to help." (72) "They do blaspheme who say: Allah is one of three in a Trinity: for there is no god except One Allah. If they desist not from their word (of blasphemy), verily a grievous penalty will befall the blasphemers among them." (73)

Now, the above clearly and unequivocally declares those who say Jesus is God, or say Jesus is the Son of God, both to be kufaar. It doesn't matter if they were kindhearted people. Because Allah declares Shirk (Idolatry) to be the greatest of all sins

إِنَّ اللَّهَ لَا يَغْفِرُ أَنْ يُشْرَكَ بِهِ وَيَغْفِرُ مَا دُونَ ذَلِكَ لِمَنْ يَشَاءُ وَمَنْ يُشْرِكْ بِاللَّهِ فَقَدِ افْتَرَى إِثْمًا عَظِيمًا

Which translates that God does not forgive Idolatry, and all other sins are lesser and are forgivable.

Why am I writing this?

Well, some find the above pretty obvious, and in no need of explanation, but I found people who question even these basics. Some of my relatives were even angry with me when I said that Christians go to hell no matter how nice they are.

But also, the real reason is that I have Christian friends who are close to me. I like them and think they are swell guys. I also do not lie to them that they are perfectly alright with their beliefs. What kind of a friend I'd be if I did that? to know from the Qur'an that my friend is going to hell and stay silent and not attempt to talk to him about it would be one of two things:

1- I don't believe in the Qur'an's every word. or..
2- I betray my friend for the sake of staying in his good graces so I can enjoy jokes and laughs with him during Dinya.

I don't personally like either of these two. So I find it compulsory to warn those nice Christians I meet all over.

Ofcourse here I don't exclude Jews either :P so I suppose I should at some stage talk to my buddy Israel about it, but that would be a trickier discussion. Because as far as I know, modern day Jews ARE monotheist. But they reject Mohammad's prophethood pbuh, and hence reject the word of Allah the Qur'an.

Anyhow, in the end, I'm saying that this isn't a message of Intolerance, it's a message of Love. because it's very "inconvenient" to tell it in the first place, and there can't be multiple rights. there's only one right. As Allah says just after the above ayat in il-Ma'eda:

أَفَلَا يَتُوبُونَ إِلَى اللَّهِ وَيَسْتَغْفِرُونَهُ وَاللَّهُ غَفُورٌ رَحِيمٌ

Will they not then turn to Allah and ask His forgiveness? And Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.

Life of Pi

2009-05-26T09:56:00.007+03:00

I just finished this wonderful book. Read it over almost one whole year, mainly because I don't read unless I can't get on my computer. Which ends up being when I'm traveling, hence my bookmarks are always boarding pass stubs!

It's about a young Indian boy named Piscine, or Pi as his self chosen nickname. His dad is the proud zookeeper of Pondicherry Zoo, a humble community attraction in none other than Pondicherry, South East India.

If you can get past the introductory 1/3 of the book (which is in itself both entertaining and funny), you reach the point where Pi's family have to migrate to Canada, so they sell the animals to various Zoos around the world, and board a cargo ship heading to Vancouver across the Pacific.

The ship Tsimsum is carrying many of the animals which have been sold to Vancouver Zoo as well, and then it sinks... and Pi's stranded "cast-away" journey begins.

Pi finds himself sharing a lifeboat with a Zebra, a Hyena, an Orangutan a few flies and last but definitely not least, a 400 pound Bengal Tiger.

From this last tidbit you probably think, "ok.. so it's a fantasy about a mini Noah's Ark.. I see where this is going." But hang on..

The Animals do not have philosophical conversations with each other about the meaning of life. Instead, they behave like real animals and Pi tells you what happens in frame by frame Clarity that bests the National Geographic, and with him trapped in there, with Reality that makes you regret putting the book down each night as you realise how late the hour became.

The boy Pi tells us that he is a Muslim, a Christian and a Hindu all at the same time. He also manages to have his Muslim Mulla and his Christian Priest as well as his Hindu Guru to accidentally meet all at once and have one of the most amusing exchanges I read in years.

But amusing anecdotal quirks aside, the book simply wants to show us how deeply aware of God Pi is. And ultimately and eventually, how this relationship ends up between the two towards the end of his ordeal at sea.

At the beginning of the book one Indian old man tells the western author:
"I shall tell you a story so wonderous that I promise you, by the time I am finished, you will believe in God!"

One point during his lonely time in the middle of the ocean Pi says one of my favorite lines that stuck with me:
"The stars shone with such fierce brilliance, it seemed ridiculous to call the night dark!"

and this one about Atheism:
"To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation."

Enjoy :)

‏ ‏لن يفلح قوم ولوا أمرهم امرأة

2009-05-17T21:53:00.002+03:00

هذا الحديث في صحيح البخاري كتاب الفتن رقم 6570

حدثنا ‏ ‏عثمان بن الهيثم ‏ ‏حدثنا ‏ ‏عوف ‏ ‏عن ‏ ‏الحسن ‏ ‏عن ‏ ‏أبي بكرة ‏ ‏قال ‏
لقد نفعني الله بكلمة أيام الجمل لما بلغ النبي ‏ ‏صلى الله عليه وسلم ‏ ‏أن ‏ ‏فارسا ‏ ‏ملكوا ابنة ‏ ‏كسرى ‏ ‏قال:
لن يفلح قوم ولوا أمرهم امرأة

و المقصود "نفعني الله بكلمة أيام الجمل" أن أبي بكرة رضي الله عنه كان مناصرا لأم المؤمنين عائشة رضي الله عنها بعد مقتل عثمان رضي الله عنه و لكن لما وصل أمر الفتنة الى القتال رجع أبي بكرة و كف بسبب هذا الحديث

So.

The question here is being a parliament member considered "welaya 3amma" or not.

Since Majles il-Umma's main function is to be the "Legislative arm of Government", it is actually in a higher position than the "Executive arm of Government". Because simply put, it lays down the laws which Government should follow.

I also think the position of "Judge" is also "welaya 3amma". And again I don't think a woman should be appointed Judge either.

So based on the above 7adeeth I think it's a prophetic statemtent that speaks about any people who appoint a lady to public office.

I did not vote for women yesterday, and I had no doubt in my mind that Ma3sooma (my vote is in her constituency) was a great person. If she had been a man, I would probably vote for her. But again I didn't vote for her because of this 7adeeth.

So best of luck to Kuwait in their misguided choice to place 4 women into Parliament. Inshalla we don't get more in the future.

The Bridge in the Title

2009-05-02T11:41:00.011+03:00

For the longest time I thought Monet's Water-lilies was my favorite painting of all time. It sits in Japan's Museum of Western Art, and I don't plan on visiting Japan anytime soon.

But later I saw his Japanese bridge series and my eyes were lost in the green shades in it, and I changed my mind about my favorite of all time. You guys remember Robin Williams' movie "What Dreams May Come"? Heaven was presented as if it were a Monet impressionist canvas.

I know that any stretch of the imagination of what Heaven would be like is going to do it great injustice. But we can't help trying to imagine it, because we hope for it so much. Hope for the final lasting joy we'll meet there.

Here's a collection of the paintings which Monet painted in Giverny with the bridge at it's center. Thank God for Monet's failing vision by the end of his years.

note: if you find the paintings a bit fuzzy, try clicking on them to get clearer resolution.

Is Being an Extremist a Good Thing?

2009-04-25T17:05:00.007+03:00

*Judith's face in "Judith Beheading Holofernes" by Caravaggio

Before you can answer, you need to know what the word "Extremist" means 1st correct?

The meaning according to today's media is usually referring to any "religious fundamentalist". Which is why recently news broadcasters are more careful to add "Islamic", so the title becomes "Islamic Extremist".

Sometimes non-religious groups such as the secular Turks go SO overboard that even they get to be called "Extremists". In their case, their secularism becomes a religion in itself (take one look at Attaturk's shrine and how Turks feel about him to confirm this).

Some Christians get called Extremists, some Orthodx Jews get called Extremists. So the term is definitely not specific to Muslims. But is really more related to Ideology.

But how about we go to the root of the word itself? EXTREME.

Extremity:

1. the farthest point

2. an unacceptable or extreme nature or degree: the extremity of his views alienated other nationalists

3. an extreme condition, such as misfortune

4. extremities hands and feet

So hands and feet are extreme too! because they are far from the center.

Also there's a negative connotation to it, "unacceptable", "misfortune".

Being Extreme basically means "far from the center". And we mostly feel that that is a bad thing, but why is it a bad thing? I'm not disputing, I'm only trying to understand why.

The center is good. Why though?

Most people in any given situation will be congregated around a fuzzy middle. And the farther away from that "average center point" the fewer people you'll find. So the Extreme sides of any argument usually finds the least amount of supporters for it, correct? (usually atleast)

If you stay in the middle, you'll find yourself closer to "most" people. And hence have the least amount of arguments. It's the point of equilibrium. The point of least resistance.

In contrast, if you stand on the edge of a spectrum, you'll have the biggest amount of argument with everyone else. It's the toughest place to sit peacefully.

A calculation of any airline's trip distances would show this clearly:

If you wanted to serve the same destinations from the far east of Egypt, (for example Sharm elShaikh), then the total of all these distances would become alot higher.

So if we correlate distance between places to differences in ideological views, then we can say that being in the middle makes you the most popular, and least hated among the people around you, right?

Which is exactly why Extremists are the most disliked people anywhere.

So the answer is clear here, Extremism is bad right?

Well, the answer will depend here on whether or not the views of the majority of society (which by definition is the middle) are good views, or bad views.

But if the definition of "good" is to "get along" and "be good to one another", then being in the "center" is the best thing for that as we just discovered right? I mean, in order to have the least amount of argument or "trouble" with other people, the best thing is to follow what the majority wants right?

After all that is what Democracy is all about.

Ok.. but it gets more problematic when the "center" of one society differs from the "center" of another.. so which is the "correct" center? In Muslim societies it's very inappropriate to drink alcohol, while in others around the world it's alright if taken "in moderation".

One might say it's ok to drink if you're in the West, but you should stop when you're in a muslim country. That is what my English friend visiting Kuwait would do. He'll try to "blend" in. He's again trying to "please everybody as best he can". Changing his position according to the surroundings.

But again, drinking a glass of wine is either "good", or "bad". Regardless of whatever everyone around you feels. It is either:
1- Poison. so it will harm you and is bad for you EVEN IF YOU'RE IN THE WEST.
or..
2- Healthy in small doses and good for your heart as long as you don't get yourself drunk. So according to this view it is good for you EVEN IF YOU'RE IN SAUDI ARABIA.

So basically what I'm trying to say is, if we always assume the center to be good, we still don't have a clear picture of what rules we should apply in order to become good people. The Aztecs used to think they should sacrifice a person every day:

If you teleport an Aztec high priest to today's world he'd feel ashamed and depressed that he's forbidden to sacrifice people for his gods. Talk about severe culture shock.

Well to cut a long story short, because this post is already too long, I don't believe the center is always "good". I believe that whatever God tells us to do is always "good". Even when it becomes out of style. In the minority. At the extreme.

Alot of what is now considered to be the "norm", such as:
1- Athiesm or Idolatry (Worship of men or denial of God's existence)
2- Reba. (Usury, or Loans with Interest)
3- Zina. (Unmarried sex)
4- Gay and Lesbian sex.

These are only examples of things which God clearly forbids, and which today's western societies do not forbid.

People don't do these things because they think they're the "right" things to do, they do them because they don't like to be told to stop doing something they like. People did not make long and careful scientific studies to determine the long lasting effects (good or bad) of the above behaviors, and then base their judgement based on the results. People simply reject God's authority over them, and do whatever they like to do.

No one in his right mind would have speculated only 1 year ago, that the World's Economy would collapse because of debt. And now they can't stop talking about it. And the crisis is real and hereto stay.

1 year ago I argued with another MBA student that the current form of loans is 7aram and is bad for the economy. And his answer was "If we stop doing interest loans, no one will loan, projects will stop and the economy will stop!". Why don't we consider that without interest loans the economy will continue to go ahead using Joint Ventures? partnerships. The people with money and the people with Ideas will become partners in success or failure, which makes the financier WAY more careful with their money and where they invest it.

1 year ago I was the Extremist on this particular topic. and now my view is inching it's way towards the center vveeeerry slowly. But in order to learn the lesson we needed a world-wide crisis? (and even now most westerners don't agree that the Islamic model is the best still, even though they lowered their interest rates from Gov. to Banks to almost Zero ANYway!).

The main outcome of being a muslim, is to believe that Allah's way is the best way. Without needing proof.

So I for one don't need a world-crisis to learn that Riba is bad. Even when the rest of the world is doing it.

Israel = 3abdAlla ... ?

2009-04-07T11:32:00.006+03:00

Spirit of Nature by Betty Rubinstein

I was astounded too when I learned what Israel translated into. The sources (and here as well) I checked explain it by separating its two parts:

1- Isra (or the hebrew verb sara).
2- El, which is a short form for "the God" il-Elah.

So the 2nd is obvious, but what about the 1st part? They seem to point to the meaning of "Dominion" and "Rule". But then they go into really ugly blasphemous meanings where Jacob (who's name is Israel) supposedly fights and overcomes the Angel of God. And by extension, "He who dominated God". Which I think is ridiculous.

But from a Muslim's point of view, I think the meaning makes perfect sense if it simply means "Dominated".

So Isra -El would become "Dominated by God". Which in arabic is simply: Abd Allah.

So the prophet Jacob pbuh was simply named 3abdalla :)

Another translation for "ysera" mentioned was: "striven or saved".

Again I reject the meaning of "striven against God" which they suggest, but the latter is ok with me: "Saved by God"

I'm not sure which of the two is correct, "Dominated by God" or "Saved by God". But I like both.

Now, what started this whole question in my head was that I recently added a guy to my MSN contacts whose very NAME is Israel. I chat with Israel from time to time these days!

feels weird doesn't it?

So what's the background? who and why? the plot shall thicken I promise you.

About 1 year ago our ISP was facing a problem with people who consume lots and lots of bandwidth using bittorrent. They're usually 2-4% of the total number of users, yet they consume as much as 20-25% of the total pipes.

No devices existed at the time that cached the files which you get through bittorrent. Caching is so simple and useful, it basically means when more than 1 user tried to download the same file, then the system would save the huge file locally on its disks so the 2nd time it would not have to pull it through the expensive international links. Saving lots of bandwidth in the process.

However, we found 3 companies that did it for Bittorrent, and only 1 of them worked well enough to be used in a live network serving half a country.

The product worked so well and I loved it so much that I took it as my personal crusade to resell it to other ISP's in the region!

The catch was that the company that makes it originated in Israel. And dealing with Israeli companies is illegal according to Kuwaiti law. And also morally I would feel very uncomfortable handing cash to people who support bombing ghazans so brutally and so on and so forth.

The company did everything it can to "mask" it's true identity, by basing its main office in Boston US, changed the numbers of all it's support employees to US numbers. Yet, strangely the support engineers would "wake up and sleep" in sync with the middle-east's timezones?

Ya3ne i7na mo aghbiya or naive lhaddaraja.

Now, when it comes to my own moral dillema here, if there was a "Mexican" company for example that made a similarly effective product, I'd switch to it in a heartbeat. but there isn't.

So I decided to not only buy it with a strong conviction, but also to resell it and believe in it and add my own sales/marketing markup on top >:-P

I'm even giving a presentation this coming Thursday in Bahrain to other ISPs in the middle east showing them how this system benefited our network.

Either go all the way, or not at all. There is no middle ground.

What do you guys think? am I doing something wrong here?

Cable Cut 2 Days Ago

2009-04-02T08:50:00.004+03:00

"The Waiting" by Morteza Katouzian

And yet another cable cut in the FOG cable (sea fiber cable linking Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and Dubai) happened 2 days ago, on 31st. March 8:30 PM.

This is the 4th cable cut that affects Kuwait internet in the last THREE MONTHS only *mumble grumble*

And to top it off, our Ministry of Communications officially tells us it has NO MORE capacity for ISP's to purchase to cross over the Khafji border into Saudi (The Saudi side has bandwidth to offer, but our side doesn't, because there's no minister to take the decision of buying the new equipment. We're talking no more than 20k-40k KD here).

So now we are about 20% down from our normal bandwidth capacity, which explains the congestion and latency last night. The latest update is that the ship reached the cable off the shore of Dubai last night, and estimated time to finish is 4 more days. Will update you inshalla.

=====================================================
Update 6th. April, 2009

The cable is now fixed since last night, and they began testing it and bringing the downed circuits back up this morning around 9:30 AM.

il7emdella 3alassalama

Yesterday I Was Happy :)

2009-03-28T10:58:00.004+03:00

Yesterday was the milcha (official marriage) of one of my close work friends (Bojacob) to my cousin.

Seeing them happy made me happy, and I hope to God they make each other happy for the rest of their lives =)

What's up with the "mini 3ers" that happens at the milcha?? I thought that was too much honestly. There was a mini-koosha too.

My mom, my aunts and sisters were.. almost un-recognizable. Even Um-Jacque came to visit from the U.S.!! she's almost 90 I think. She played with me when I was about 1 year old in Florida. She can't get enough of Kuwaiti culture. All her daughters and granddaughters call her "Yuma" :)

My daughter Taiba (8 yo) surprised everyone with her dancing!! she danced so much she ended up sitting in the middle of the floor from tiredness lol

Mabrook Bojacob and mabrook cuz. I'm truly happy for you two.

I'm Only 3.5 Years Old

2009-03-16T23:44:00.003+03:00

I believe now that (and this is debatable) a person who chooses to not pray (even for 1 prayer) is not a muslim anymore. I also believe that whoever stops being a muslim, all his past good deeds become void and useless. Ya3ne bel3arabi esaffer il3addad.

And I only started praying regularly and on time for the past 3.5 years. And I thank Allah profusely for that, and ask Allah fervently that I never leave it ever again, til the day I die.

So I'm only 3.5 years old.

Also, tonight, I sat in a cafe' across a long time friend of mine, who used to be quite religious and is extremely well-educated intellectual. He called me up yesterday that he wanted to sit with me to "talk".. and that he had a... "crisis of faith"... that's how he said it over the phone. And from that phone call until a few hours ago my mind was so worried about what he meant. We rarely go out to talk. almost never. never one on one atleast. So all through last night I was worried if he was serious or only joking. Shino qasda crisis of faith?? those aren't light words at all.

And tonight in the cafe' he tells me that he agrees that there's only one God and that God exists.. but he's wondering how can he be sure that Islam is the correct religion.. is the Qur'an really the word of Allah, and that possibly it was made up by Mohammad (pbuh)...

I won't attempt to say everything he said to me.. or everything I replied with.

I just tried to be as calm and methodical as I possibly could.. while hiding (or trying anyway) my shock and disbelief at the words coming out of his mouth.

We parted with me simply stressing to him that he asks guidance in this matter from Allah and that if he's really truthful in his plea, God will not lead him astray.

And as I dropped him home and drove off my face contorted fiercly with great fear and horror for what is "possible".. that such a previously religious person could openly utter such blasphemy. sej sej inna Allah yahdee man yashaa' wa yudhillu man yashaa'.

I was chocking up in the car just desperately asking God to save myself and save those who I loved the most from the fate of kufur.

I'm only 3.5 years old, I'm a baby basically. And I witnessed a grown man die infront of me as he spoke.. paid the bill then walked with me towards my car. a dead man. Sub7aan Allah.

High Divorce Rate in Kuwait?

2009-02-28T11:17:00.003+03:00

First of all, the proof. Is there really a high divorce rate in Kuwait?

This report says that "The divorce rate in the UAE has touched 46 per cent, the highest in the AGCC. The divorce rate in Qatar is 38 per cent; it is 35 per cent in Kuwait and 34 per cent in Bahrain"

Why is it this high? I think it's because we're spoiled. plain and simple. And we love ourselves more than we love other people.

A good, productive and stable marriage is built on one's ability to "LOVE" someone else and make sacrifices for them. We in this region as a whole are materialistic and wealthy. Couples get married because marriage is the new "thing to do", it's merely the new toy. Maybe the honeymoon period is the only highlight of the whole affair. Both sides needed intimacy and (Yes,) they needed some good sex, so they get married to do it. There's nothing wrong with that. Infact if there's one good thing this says about our society is that atleast some young people feel that they should "get married first" before "doing it". That's a noble and encouraging thought.

But after the 1st few months? the 1st couple of years?

First sign of trouble, and you see both sides contemplating the "Dee" word. They think "I don't need this.". And rightly so, they really don't need it. Either of them. Both are wealthy, both have high paying jobs, their rooms in their parents' houses are still empty and perhaps are still untouched with their original furniture of the previously "single" boy or girl.

So High Divorce Rate in Kuwait means 2 things:
1- We're too spoiled to want to stay in the marriage team. (Negative)
2- We still respect our Islamic sensibility enough to get married in order to have regular sex. (Positive)

So what will happen to us in umm... say 50 years?

The world will be less dependent on our oil, the oil will become less abundant anyway. We will become poorer in general. Right?

We will have less materialistic "toys" to play with. We will become less spoiled. And I think we will tend to stay committed to our marriages more.

Our men will start actually doing some "work" to earn a living. And less of these jobs will be suited to women, and the women will have less incentive to leave the umbrella of her husband's (modest) financial security.

Just like the stories of our grandfathers and grandmothers, remember those?

Now, is that a bleak picture? I don't think so!

With less material distractions, and with healthier marriages, I only see us becoming happier people.

What do you think about that upside-down logic? :)

Dr. Laurence B. Brown's Conversion Story

2009-02-18T23:21:00.002+03:00

I found out about Dr. Laurence Brown from my aunt, then I looked him up and found his website and turned out to be truly his, and the story was authentic from his own telling. The first few times I told the story to others, I couldn't help choking up as I reached the end, it is nothing short of truly miraculous:

=================================================================

There is a certain fascination with conversion stories, and for good reason. Frequently they involve dramatic life-altering events, sufficient to shock the convert out of the materialistic world and into the spiritual. Most who pass through such moments of trial and panic experience an overwhelming feeling of helplessness, and turn to their Creator in prayer. In virtually every case I know, they forget the strained theological formulas they have been taught and instinctively pray directly to our Creator.

For example, a lady once related her ‘Born Again Christian’ conversion story on a popular evangelical television show. This lady told how she had been the sole survivor of a terrible boat-wreck. During her days and nights alone in the harsh elements of the open ocean, she told how God spoke to her, guided her and protected her and how, seeking His favor, she prayed to God and to God Alone. In her long tale, she mentioned God over and over again, and never once mentioned Jesus Christ. However, the moment she was saved by a passing ship, she threw her arms open to the heavens and yelled, “Thank you, Jesus!”

There is a lesson here. When in panic and stress, people instinctively pray directly to God, without intermediary or intercessor. That is the default setting of our spiritual consciousness. However, when relieved of their distress, people frequently return to their previously held theological formulas, no matter how strained or bizarre. All converts feel God saved them, and that the miracle of their salvation justifies their beliefs. But there is only One God, so it makes sense that there can only be one religion that is true in all aspects. Hence, only one group can be right and all others are, to one degree or another, wrong. For the latter group, their personal miracles serve to confirm them upon disbelief rather than upon truth. As Allah teaches in the Holy Qur’an, “Allah leaves astray whom He wills and guides to Himself whoever turns back [to Him]” (TMQ -- Translation of the Meaning of the Qur’an: 13:27) and “So those who believe in Allah and hold fast to Him – He will admit them to mercy from Himself and bounty and guide them to Himself on a straight path.” (TMQ 4:175) As for those astray in disbelief, our Creator leaves them to stray upon whatever misdirected path they themselves choose.

So who will become Muslim based upon my conversion story? Only one person: me. Muslims might appreciate my story, others might not. Either way, here it is:

In 1990, I was in the last year of my ophthalmology residency at George Washington University hospital in Washington, DC. My second daughter was born October tenth. To my great dismay, she was a dusky, gunmetal blue from the chest to the toes. Her body was not getting enough blood, and the cause was found to be a coarctation of the aorta -- a critical narrowing in the major artery from the heart. Needless to say, I was shattered. Being a doctor, I understood she needed emergency surgery, with a poor chance of long-term survival. A consultant pediatric cardio-thoracic surgeon was called from across town, and I left him in the neonatal intensive care unit to examine my daughter. With no companion but my fears, I went to the hospital prayer room and fell to my knees. A product of Christian-American heritage dating back to 1677, nonetheless this was the first time that I even partially recognized God. I say partially, for even then I prayed the prayer of a skeptic, “Oh, God, if you are there . . .” I promised that if God existed, and if He saved my daughter and then guided me to the religion most pleasing to Him, that I would follow. I returned to the neonatal ICU roughly fifteen minutes later, and was shocked when the consultant told me that my daughter would be fine. True to his assessment, within the next two days her condition resolved miraculously, without medicine or surgery. She grew to be a perfectly normal child and as of this date -- July 2008 -- is on the verge of her eighteenth birthday.

Now, as I said before, I am a doctor. And although the consultant provided a medical explanation for my daughter’s miraculous recovery, I simply didn’t buy it. I remember him explaining about a patent ductus arteriosis, low oxygenation and spontaneous resolution. But I also remember thinking, “No,” my daughter’s salvation was not a medical miracle, but a divine one. Many who make promises to God in moments of panic find or invent excuses to escape their part of the bargain, once God relieves them of their distress. I could easily have assigned my daughter’s recovery to the doctor’s explanation rather than to a miracle from God. But faith had entered my heart, and it wouldn’t leave. We had cardiac ultrasounds taken before and after, showing the stricture one day and gone the next, and all I could think was that God had made good on His part of the deal, and I had to make good on mine. Even if there was a medical explanation, that was nothing more than the pathway by which Almighty God chose to answer my prayer and effect His decree. I did not then, and I do not now, accept any other explanation.

For the next few years I tried to fulfill my side of the bargain, but failed. I studied Judaism and a large number of Christian sects. I felt I was on the right track, close to the truth but not upon it. I never fully embraced any specific Christian formula, for I could not reconcile the differences between Christian canon and Jesus’ teachings. Eventually I was introduced to the Holy Qur’an and Martin Lings’s biography, Muhammad, His Life Based on the Earliest Sources.

During my years of study, I had encountered the Jewish scriptures’ reference to three prophets to follow Moses. I had concluded that John the Baptist and Jesus Christ were two, but that left one. In the New Testament Jesus Christ spoke of a final prophet to follow. When I found the Holy Qur’an teaching the oneness of God, as both Moses and Jesus Christ had taught, I become convinced Muhammad was the predicted final prophet. Suddenly, everything made sense: The continuity in the chain of prophethood and revelation, the One-ness of Almighty God, and the completion of revelation in the Holy Qur’an. It was then that I became Muslim.

Pretty smart, hunh? No, I would err greatly if I believed that I figured it out for myself. One lesson I have learned is that there are a lot of people more intelligent than I who have not learned the truth of Islam. It is not a matter of intelligence but of enlightenment, for “…whoever believes in Allah – He will guide his heart” (TMQ 64:11), “Allah chooses for Himself whom He wills and guides to Himself whoever turns back [to Him]” (TMQ 42:13), “And Allah guides whom He wills to a straight path.” (TMQ 24:46)

So I thank Allah that He chose to guide me, and I attribute that guidance to one simple formula: recognizing our Creator, praying to Him and to Him alone, and sincerely seeking His guidance. And whom He guides, none can lead astray.

==================================================

Standing Next to a Murderer.. infront of God

2009-02-11T17:59:00.003+03:00

About five years ago, at the lunch table with my family, having m6abbag Balool extremely fresh and tender, my dad and grandmother were talking in low shocked voices:

Dad: "He did what???"
Grandmother: "inna lillah wa inna ilaih raje3oon, what can you do or say? it's hard to imagine."
Dad: "That man?? he prays with us in our mosque!! are you sure it's him??!"
Grandmother: "Yes I am sure as I am sure you are my son. There's no mistake."

Then they stop while my dad shakes his head "La 7ola wala qowata illa billah". and my grandmother sighs and her hand forming her next lugma not enthusiatsically. My dad's shock stopped him from eating altogether. My eyes following both of them with concern and curiousity, I can't help but ask what's going on? And they tell me the horrific story.

This man who's only maybe a few years older than I am, in his mid 30's at the time, very quiet and mild mannered, divorced with children, and regularly prays at our neighborhood mosque, was in the newspaper for murder.

Turns out he was not mentally stable, and was on medication for a long time. I would never have suspected it, because he always had this air of calm and good manners about him. He even walked slowly, never rushing to catch a rak3a.

The reason he was in the paper was that he had come to his father's house one day, where his ex-wife lived with his children, he got a knife from the kitchen, and as he sharpened it he told his eldest daughter not to be afraid, and that she would go to heaven, then as she was totally unsuspecting, he cut her throat. (that was pretty hard to type out)

He was going to continue with the rest of his children but his son ran crying to his mother and they all escaped.

The man disappeared and the case was famous at the time, it was too shocking to comprehend.

I had trouble for a long time to connect the face of the man I remember from the mosque to the man in the story. I couldn't imagine such a horrific act from ANYone I knew, let alone knew from the mosque.

Almost a year ago, I see the man in our mosque and my dad points him out to me.

He must have been released from the psychiatric hospital and heavily treated, and God knows what has been done to him. I am not a legal expert, but I think perhaps a death sentence wouldn't have been understandable in his case. Who could gaurantee that he's not a danger to anyone now? What if he forgot to take his pills?! My mind is having trouble handling him, free and so close to me physically. There are many parents who bring their sons to the mosque, from 4 years and upward. I fear for their safety near him.

Since he came back his presence has been very noticeable to me. Where he sits. He sits at the right back corner of the mosque with a few cushions and a Qur'an on its X shaped wooden carrier. He prays in his spot all the time, before and after prayers. He reads that Qur'an all the time. He doesn't talk to anyone. And not many talk to him.

Sometimes I see one of the old respected men of the mosque sitting with him talking softly.

I am always aware of his presense or absence. And whenever he turns towards me I intentionally turn my head away from him, ignoring him. I can't bring myself to say Salam to him. Always on the defensive around him.

I also feel sad thinking of his crime and how is he dealing with his guilt. He certainly looks like he's in pain because of it. I can't imagine what sort of strong will to live and faith in Allah's mercy he must have just to be able to walk and eat and breathe every morning, and pray and ask for Allah's forgiveness. I feel sorry for him. But I also can't speak to him or even offer greeting.

Yesterday and today it was by chance that he stood next to me for the first time in salaat. Which pushed me to write this post.

We're both men of very different circumstances. il7amdulillah Allah gave me beautiful kids and a beautiful wife who loves me and I love them all. and I can't imagine hurting them. And next to me is another man who has many years ahead of him and has to live with this horrible crime he did. He's not in prison for life, he's not sentenced to death. He's a Kuwaiti who the government didn't know what to do with. It's too strange to judge. But his biggest judge which he has to face now is Allah's judgement.

All he has to face that is repentance. As much as he is man enough to muster.

I still can't bring myself to pray to Allah to forgive him. I don't know him much. I don't want to know him at all. I am curious to what he's thinking now, but he repulses me.

And the wonderous and amazing thing is... No one can ever say who was a better man as we stood there, me or him.

Giving and Receiving in the Didache

2009-02-02T07:48:00.006+03:00

I was thinking of avoiding people who hurt you in any way this morning. Usually they do it without meaning to. But in the end, the hurt is received, and it is not pleasant. You may have a certain level of tolerance for being hurt. A threshold for pain. Anything bellow that level is fine, you can take it. But with time, either that threshold becomes lower, or the hurt being received becomes higher, and they meet in the middle, and you can't endure it, you can't take it. You WANT to endure it, because enduring it would be good. But your knees simply buckle from underneath you and you fall. Or perhaps not yet, they just threaten to fall.

And then your alarm goes off. You have to protect yourself from more hurt, otherwise the next hit will surely mean you WILL fall. And you don't want to fall. Falling is the most shameful thing that could happen. So what to do? if you tried returning hurt back, you would know how useless and bad that was. It only breeds regret. And regret makes you hate yourself for being not wise enough.. to simply just.. avoid.

If you simply want to avoid hurt, you just stop receiving from people. You close the door shut, to the good as well as the bad. And you definitely never ask to receive.

As I was pondering all this, this morning I was researching old texts from the Bible (I needed information talking to a christian who was curious about Islam), and I came to hear of the "Didache", it's a text believed to have been written in greek by early 100-200 A.D. christians concerning the newly converted, and as I read into it, I found this piece (what's between parentheses are my comments):

Happy is he who gives according to the commandment, for he is guiltless. (Generousity)
Woe to him who receives; (The Warning)
for if one receives who has need, he is guiltless;
but he who receives not having need shall pay the penalty, why he received and for what. (The Accounting and the Reckoning)
And coming into confinement, he shall be examined concerning the things which he has done, and he shall not escape from there until he pays back the last penny.
And also concerning this, it has been said,
Let your alms sweat in your hands, until you know to whom you should give. (The Responsibility and Care in Helping those who Deserve it)

What struck me was the responsibility tied with receiving. You can't get anything completely for free. If someone is kind to you now.. you need to be careful of the hurt that might come later.. if for no other reason that they feel entitled to.

Lesbo Concert One Summer Evening

2009-01-26T14:01:00.004+03:00

I've been a fan of the Indigo Girls since the 80's. And when I went to San Diego this past summer and saw that they were to play at this place: Humphrey's "Concerts by the Bay" me and my youngest sister immediately booked tickets and went.

The catch was that both Indigo Girls are lesbians (but not lovers themselves), and at the time California was juuuuust starting to issue marriage licenses to gay/lesbian couples, it was an issue being talked about all over the news.

The morning the courts started doing that me and my wife went to a great breakfast restaurant which serves the best scrambled eggs with home baked bread, along with cut fruit and watermelon, the whole table is just filled with hearty juicy food. There were atleast 4 different tables around us that had gay couples dressed in tuxedo suits, with maybe a pink/peach handkerchief neatly tucked in. All celebrating their "weddings". One table had two couples with their families celebrating, the table was so long it took the whole side of the place.

The mood was festive, everyone was happy, they all felt like it was a triumph for humanity and justice.

That night at the concert with my sister I was waiting for salat ilmaghreb and I can clearly see when the sun is setting on the pacific horizon. So I get up to go to the bathroom and I'm told that most of the restrooms are reserved for women. The door with the Male sign has been taped with a piece of paper that said:
"We are sorry, but this restroom is for women only. Please use the male restroom at the gates"

Turns out since most of the fans for this band were also lesbians, 90% of the people attending were women. So I go and join the line of grumbling men waiting to use the single male-dedicated bathroom at the gates, overhearing lines like "How's this for discrimination", and "This is so unfair".

As my turn comes I quickly do my ablution (wudhu) and I hear the opening band starts, Brandi Carlile (The Story):

Lovely song, but I have a bit of a hard time finding a suitable patch of grass behind the bungalows and the stage to actually pray.

Then when I go to my seat which happened to be many rows behind my sister, because she reserved her ticket a month before, while mine was almost a previous day's notice. And surrounding me on all four sides were lesbian couples. And as the night went on and the songs became more affectionate, and the more beer consumed, the more kissing and smooching that happened all around me.

I felt VERY out of place and VERY uncomfortable needless to say. True that I had a good time repeating the words of some of the songs almost by heart, since they were so familiar to me. But I didn't actually like alot of what they stood for, I simply liked the beats and melodies which they wrote. As far as gay/lesbian rights go, I think what Allah decides in them is the most appropriate. Imagine if all the gay/lesbian people in the world lived in a single country, by theory and definition, that country should become extinct in a matter of 50 years or so... basically it threatens the continuation of the human race. Nothing serious really :P

My sister was screaming her head off on 2nd row, so she was clearly having fun. Good for her. Plus as a full blown feminist, the frenzy of justice and vindication for women was right up her alley, true she's not really comfortable with lesbians either, but I suppose she can indulge in some denial here, details details.. don't get bogged down in the details. Only liberty matters right? sure whatever.

And in the end, the noise was so loud throughout the concert my head hurt and I thought to myself, I could have just downloaded their albums and listened in the comfort and solitude of my iPod...... right?

But atleast Ms. Carlile was a pleasant surprise.

His Voice Tore My Heart Out

2009-01-20T15:16:00.004+03:00

I 1st heard his voice talking to BBC's Lucy Ash last Thursday, he was afraid for his children. This morning I heard him again on BBC, his voice barely sustained, his sobbing unstoppable, three of his daughters and a niece killed in their room by a tank shell slamming into their building. This happened Friday, the exact next day after the 1st interview I heard.

This is the full heart-wrenching story from BBC's Lucy Ash:
Gaza doctor's loss grips Israelis

He used to work in Israeli hospitals helping jewish mothers deliver their babies. He's been an activist for peace. And during the 21 days of bombing he's been a frequent face of Palestinian suffering on Israeli TV, and 1 day before the cease-fire his tragedy is as we speak shocking Israelis to their core, and forcing them to question what they did to Gaza.

This is the same story reported by Haaretz:
Israeli-trained Gaza doctor loses three daughters and niece to IDF tank shell

And now all he could muster was a cry of impaling pain "Why did my daughters die?". I ask of Allah to give him the faith to endure this and hope for God's reward.

Only a couple of days ago I got a call from my wife that my 4.5 yo son ran infront of a large Yukon at the co-op and got his foot wedged under the tyre before the driver managed to stop the car quickly and the tyre didn't go over my son's foot. il7amdellah alf. Thankfully his foot didn't have any breaks, just a minor injury to the muscle and it swelled.

The point is, when I first heard it on the phone, I was silent for about maybe 5-10 seconds, then was able to ask where they were, and that I'm going to follow them to al-Razi hospital. I guess those blank seconds had my head filled with fears of what might be wrong with his foot, and if the injury is going to ruin his foot permanently or not. and so on of the many fears a parent might have for his child.

It only occured to me to thank God later. Maybe 1 hour later. And I don't mean only thank Allah that his injury wasn't any worse (God forbid), but I mean actually accept the bad and thank Allah for it. because even the bad things than happen to us can be good things if we thank Allah and be patient.

I truly regret that I wasn't able to come to my senses on the spot, and consider how minor this event was. and consider how this doctor lost three of his eldest daughters in a single moment. I really ask of God never to place me a in a moment of enormous test like this one without me being ready to accept it and be thankful for it.

Yalla la teblana.

Kiva Rocks the World

2009-01-11T10:05:00.005+03:00

Ever heard of Kiva before?

Ever heard of Micro Financing?

It's somewhat like charity, but where you get your money back.

Mohammad Yunus started the whole thing with Grameen bank and won the Nobel Prize for it.

The IDEA is simple:
You give a small loan to a poor person with a small idea (usual example: indian lady wanting to buy a sewing machine). That lady then repays the loan (without interest) using the income of the sewing machine, and can then support herself better. The lender keeps a database of the loan and repayment schedule, and if the lady doesn't pay back in time, she's not taken to the police, she's simply blacklisted to not receive any more money in the future.

The repayment rate is usually between 98-100%!!!!

These people take their loans seriously.

So what's Kiva? It's a website that takes this model to the next level, the INTERNET.

It lists thousands of loan seekers, and you can lend any of them using paypal! You get your money back over a certain time period.

Here's a video that tells the whole story:

A Fistful Of Dollars: The Story of a Kiva.org Loan from Kieran Ball on Vimeo.

A Mouse Trap That Doesn't Work..

2009-01-02T08:45:00.002+03:00

I only recently noticed a comment by "The Wise One" under "My Friend The Atheist" in which he basically proclaims that he is an atheist himself and mentions a few issues which he thought were proofs that Islam is a lie and also mentions "Intelligent Design" and how our human bodies are not well designed.

I wish to respond. O' Mr. Wise One:

You mentioned how our blood vessels are all chaotic and tangled up. You prefer them all proper and straight and parallel for example? you don't like that there's way too many in there? more than what's efficiently needed? And what about redundancy and failure tolerance? You see chaos but when you get cut and start bleeding, you don't think how all a doctor really has to do is put the parts close together and wait for these veins to find their way to each other and mesh? How come you don't marvel at that? How do cells understand what they need to do as group? how is it that when the healing is sufficiently complete, that the cells actually STOP?? because you know that extra unwanted rampantly growing tissue is nothing but cancer. How is it that we don't get cancer after every cut?

Intelligent Design proponents usually bring the example of a simple Mouse Trap. I recommend this book I read a few years ago "Darwin's Black Box". We all know that the basis of the theory of evolution is "Survival of the Fittest". That random mutations occur throughout generations and which ever mutation is more "fit" (stronger, faster, smarter, more gorgeous) , is more likely to reproduce and survive, while the "unfit" (weaker, slower, dumber, uglier) is less likely to have offspring, and eventually die out of the population.

The problem is that some of our biological systems are so complicated and advanced in order to give the slightest bit of benefit, that slow and gradual mutation can NOT produce middle steps that are "partially beneficial" to the animal.

The book explains in heavy detail the process of blood coagulation, or clotting. If you get cut and your blood doesn't clot quickly, you'll bleed until you die. No one has yet been able to show how the modern clotting process could have had a simpler ancestral chain which would have worked, say with 50% or even 20% effectiveness.

To illustrate the idea more, the book uses the example of a mousetrap, which is many many times simpler than the chain of chemical reactions which clotting needs. To make a mouse trap to work and catch mice, you need about 4-5 parts to make it work. A base, a spring, a hammer, a holding bar and ofcourse the cheese. Those parts need to be aligned so carefully together in order to be ready to trap anything, (I remember that from my childhood qubbi trapping days). Now if any of the parts is missing, or not positioned correctly, the whole trap's effectiveness would not be reduced by a certain amount, the whole trap would STOP working. There's no "previous ancestor mutation" to it. Any previous random mutation to the mousetrap would have been a complete failure at catching mice.

And since we know that these mutations take 10's of thousands of generations to occur, I ask why would any organism that includes a bunch of parts of a system that does not really benefit the animal in any way, keep the system? wouldn't evolution theory dictate that a useless mousetrap be removed? to save the energy and cells required to make it atleast. The animal itself can not predict that the system of parts is useless now, but is HOPING to evolve it into a useful mousetrap 100's of yearsin the future, and thousands of generations later.

I agree that evolutionary mutation is correct when each step produces a benefit. But when each individual step does not produce a benefit, then why would the animal continue in that path? the more logical way for it is to mutate backwards and remove the part in later generations no?

Here's a link that the author of the book Behe talks about an evolutionary experiment where a kind of bacteria evolves to be able to benefit from cirtus Multiple Mutations Needed for E.Coli:

if only one mutation is needed to confer some ability, then Darwinian evolution has little problem finding it. But if more than one is needed, the probability of getting all the right ones grows exponentially worse. “If two mutations have to occur before there is a net beneficial effect — if an intermediate state is harmful, or less fit than the starting state — then there is already a big evolutionary problem.” (4) And what if more than two are needed? The task quickly gets out of reach of random mutation.

Cable Cut and Great Morning Song

2008-12-20T09:20:00.006+03:00

Update (27th Dec. 5:30AM):

One of the cables was supposed to get fixed last night, but it got cut again (on the ship, not somewhere else along the cable) and will need 2 more days for reparations. I know this sounds funny, but the fibers are very fragile.

We however are running at 75% as of last night.

=================================================================================
Update (23rd Dec. 7:50AM):

BBC published this update on the cable cut. They say the cut was probably caused by an anchor dropped by a ship somewhere between Sicily and Tunis. They arrived at the damage site on Sunday afternoon and said they'll have SEMEWE4 fixed by the 25th. and SEMEWE3 by the end of the year.

But FLAG (the 3rd cable) is owned by someone else and isn't being fixed by this ship. talk about bad service.
=================================================================================
Update (22nd Dec. 8:00AM):

Our total usage last night reached a maximum of 71% of its usual peak. And the repair ship is said to be expected to finish the repairs on the cable by the 26th. Alla y3een.

=================================================================================
Update on the Bandwidth (21st Dec. 1:00AM):

As promised, the 3rd provider gave us more bandwidth from South East Asia and now we're running at 54% of our usual peak usage.

=================================================================================

Original post:

Yesterday morning about 10:15 AM 3 of the 4 main internet cables linking our region with Europe and the US have been cut, so far they think it might be due to seismic activity near Malta. Here's the story on BBC.

At my ISP we use three international providers and 1 is completely down, the 2nd is running at about 30%, and the 3rd rerouted us toward the eastern side of the cables to Singapore and are giving us about 50%.

So on the whole, we're running at about 40% of our usual traffic. Congested to the gills :P

Our 50% provider is expected to give us more bandwidth very soon, also to the east. Which should make things better, albeit with higher latency than usual (like 600-700 millisec compared to the usual 200-300 millisec).

Twice in 1 year... :(

So here's a bandwidth consuming Video to cheer you up! my sister sent it to me and it's awesome in the morning.

Note: I guess the previous post is not relevant now. Thank you for your encouragement :)

Until further notice...

2008-12-18T13:42:00.002+03:00

This blog is inactive starting today inshalla.

Thanks for reading :)

Regret is a Useful Emotion?

2008-12-13T09:21:00.002+03:00

My friend used to tell me about a teacher he had in grade school. There was one kid who's habit was to do things in class that annoy the teacher and distract everybody, and as soon as she zooms her anger on him he immediately says "I'm sorry miss, I'm sorry." and sits still for not a very long time before the cycle begins again.

Through this cycle the teacher is being wound up toward an inevitable explosion. So one day the boy is whimpering as usual:

"Sorry miss, walla sorry." and sits. And then the Miss has had enough.....

"NO!!! You're NOT SORRY. STOP SAYING YOU'RE SORRY. YOU'RE LYING. IF YOU WERE REALLY SORRY YOU WOULD STOP DOING IT AGAIN."

The story is a bit funny and me and my friend laugh about it whenever someone says "sorry" quoting her last line as an inside joke. "YOU'RE NOT SORRY!"

But what's funny about it? usually things are funny because there's some profound truth hidden inside. And in this case I think what she says about him not really being sorry is very true.

Which brings me to Regret. Being "Sorry" and being "Regretful" are almost the same thing. And recently I was reading about Hajj and Tawba and came across the 3 conditions for Tawba:

1- Intention to not go back to the sin. Future
2- Stop doing the sin. Present
3- Regretting the sin. Past

And when you think about these 3 conditions for true repentance, you can see that if one of them is not available, then: "YOU'RE NOT REALLY SORRY!"

The boy for example only fulfilled the 2nd condition, but not the 1st or 3rd. He did not resolve to stop doing it in the future, nor did he regret doing it in the past.

Same goes with most people who have a certain vice which has become habit and a normal and accepted part of their life. Like the woman who knows il7ejab wajeb but doesn't wear it and says she feels sorry for that, o inna inshalla Allah yahdeha. (assuming she admits inna wajeb, if she argues inna mo wajeb that's a totally different post :P). Like the guy who uses usurous (Reba) banking to gain interest on his savings (those guys usually never even admit they're wrong, and just avoid the discussion). Or the guy who smokes knowing that there are pretty valid arguments supporting that smoking is 7aram based on its a slow form of killing yourself, and that it has no real benefit.

My point of this post is this:
Let's say you actually stop smoking, or that you start wearing 7ejab, or whatever thing you felt was wrong, and actually DO stop doing it in the future (1st and 2nd condition fulfilled), is it really necessary for you to also REGRET doing it in the past?

What if you stop doing it, but you remember the times in which you did with nothing but fondness and joy, almost wishing to go back to doing it all over again? certainly no regret there. Yes ofcourse you're not doing it now, but if you love the times when you did, is this really a true tawba? I mean, Allah doesn't only want you to stop doing the bad thing, because all the sins of the whole world don't affect Him negatively one bit. Allah wants you mainly to feel that what you did was to the contrary to His command, and therefor you did not place His command above your own human whim. And Allah wants you to repent from THAT. He wants you to be sorry from THAT. The sinful deed is nothing but a byproduct of an arrogant feeling really.

So, I guess what I'm trying to say is:
Regret being a useless emotion is not only wrong (in my humble opinion), but actually a mandatory and necessary emotion. Required for all sinners who attempt to repent (and we're all sinners in one form or another).

حدثنا أحمد بن منيع قال : حدثنا زيد بن حباب قال : حدثنا علي بن مسعدة الباهلي قال : حدثنا قتادة ، عن أنس ، أن النبي صلى الله عليه وسلم قال : " " كل ابن آدم خطاء وخير الخطائين التوابون "
سنن الترمذي

Because if you don't regret it, you're NOT REALLY SORRY :P
If you don't resolve to never do it in the future, you're... NOT REALLY SORRY :P
and lastly... if you're still doing it, you're NOT REALLY SORRY :)

تقبل الله طاعتكم و عسى عيدكم مبارك

2008-12-08T06:02:00.005+03:00

و على قولة جدي: أيامك عصيدة

Human Suffering Overload

2008-11-27T17:39:00.002+03:00

A couple of weeks back I hear of this boy "Baby P" in England who died only 17 months old.

"After 17 months enduring abuse of an almost unimaginable cruelty, the boy had been reduced to a nervous wreck, his hair shaved to the scalp and his body covered in bruises and scabs. Physical injuries included eight broken ribs, a broken back and the missing top of a finger, while the emotional damage was almost incalculable. Despite it all, Baby P was said to have still attempted a smile."

And all of this was done to him by his own mother, and the two boyfriends she took after splitting with the boy's father.

And yesterday I went to this movie "TV's Promised Land" at the Film Week in KUniv in Khaldiya. And its filled with western depictions of Arabs/Muslims as demons, rats, snakes, mosquitoes and many other sub-human beings. And in the middle of that film, a pretty long scene of 4 Israeli soldiers who barbarically kick and torture 2 sitting palestinians. Midway through that scene one of the soldiers picks up a rock the size of 2 fists and starts hitting on of the men on the shoulders, ribs and head til he passes out. And then another soldier holds the arm of the 2nd palestinian and stretches it out so the other soldier holding the rock can hammer his arm to break it.

The whole auditorium were watching this horror on the verge of walking out... it was very literally "unbearable". After the scene mercifully stops we see the Israeli soldier being interviewed saying that "this" happens "everyday".

This morning I learn from a Palestinian colleague at work that the same two victims were actually born and raised in Kuwait and that he knows the video and knows the two men personally. He told me how they all visited them in the hospital when they arrived back in Kuwait. That just brought my anger and loathing of the soldiers' inhumanity to a much more personal level. These men survived thankfully, and I can go meet them if I wished. The injustice demanded retribution. Allah ilmusta3an. La qowata illa billah.

Then this afternoon I hear on the news about the 100+ victims of the terrorist attack in Mumbay. How the attackers unloaded automatic weapons into civilians indiscriminantly, men, women, children, it didn't make a difference. The buzzing bustling city is in crisis as I am typing away. By some group that calls itself "Mojahideen Decan", Decan being an area. And no one ever heard of the group before.

The whole world is in shock. Real, attention-demanding, bleeding throbbing shock and pain of completely senseless murder and killing.

I arrive to see a movie with my wife, "Taken", and I'm touched by the father's feelings for his daughter. Her guardian angel. Safety and protection guaranteed. Then by the end of the movie (I don't really care if I'm spoiling the movie, coz this bit has pissed me off) you see the ugly, old, bald arab holding the "virgin" daughter as a human shield with a "knife" at her throat. And guess what he's wearing... a bisht.

Where? on an oppulent yacht on the Siene river in Paris. With half a dozen world-class body guards with machine guns on board. And the pictures on the sides of his bedroom door are of hunting falcons and arabian horses.

Demonize me more if you please.

As I'm driving back home my radio's on BBC as usual. My mistake.

She starts talking about more dead people and more evil.

And I just flick it off in a reflex move of pure self-defense. I couldn't take any more.

My mind was filled to the brim with way too much human suffering and injustice and lying. I need a breather. Some time off from it. I need to stop listening to news for a few days at the least.

I gave like a 100kd to my dad because he was collecting aid to help some old expat who needed an operation. Just to try and relieve myself. And it worked a little.

And I thought that I should share this, and spill it out. And thought that, what use is it to listen and absorb sooooo much human tragedy and bad news?

Yes ofcourse it is necessary to be aware. otherwise you can't do any good. You can't help people you don't know are suffering.

But to what extent?? It just crystalized in my head that, I should just hang on to the first bit of bad news I hear, and if I can help with it, just do that and block other bad news until I do.

Insurance is Gambling

2008-10-27T22:22:00.004+03:00

Ok, so everyone's panicking about the global economy..

It's clear that Capitalism as the West defines it is flawed. The West is saying this. Not communists or islamists or any kind of people who would be interested in gloating and pointing fingers saying "We told you so!".

The obviousness is so blinding that opponents of pure hardcore globalized capitalism are not even making an effort to Yteshammetoon.

So what is the west doing wrong?

Me for one, take my right and wrong primarily from Allah and his messenger Mohammad PBUH, and here are 2 main ways in which the "west" is doing business the "wrong" way:

1- Interest Loans. Reba in arabic. Which is how any loan is given out these days, and this is the most dangerous one, and I'll skip it for now and dedicate a future post about it inshalla.

2- Buying and Selling the Unknown. Bay3 gharar in arabic.

And I want to talk about this 2nd form in this post.

Gambling is 7aram because it involves buying an unknown. A yet undefined object. You pay 1 dollar, and you get a lottery ticket, and on the day of the draw, you MAY win (0.00-add appropriate number of zeroes-001 chance) and get millions of dollars, or you MAY lose (0.999-add appropriate number of 9's-999 chance) and get Zero. Nothing.

You can say any business proposition carries ambiguity, which is true, and Islamic economists acknowledge that, but they also differentiate between situations where the ambiguity is either:
A- Unavoidable. or..
B- Intentional

So lets take cases:
- Gambling? Risk is obviously engineered and designed, therefor VERY intentional. hence, 7aram.
- Opening a restaurant on top of Abraj liKuwait? Risk is still there that no one will eat there, or that the tower will collapse or whatever, but the risk is not intentional and largely unavoidable, and in most cases low anyway. hence, obviously and inarguably 7alal.
- So what about Insurance?
You pay X amount per year, and your car MAY get damaged, and MAY not.
The risk gets calculated and crunched endlessly and insurance companies work very hard to make their risk analysis as accurate as possible, putting all sorts of inputs into the equation like car make, car age, driver age, driver traffic history, regional norms of recklessness .. and on and on. They try to predict the future basically. And based on the probability that you'll crash this year, they put their insurance payment and their markup.

Can the insurance buyer (You) get access to all this information? they own multi-million dollar computers and software to do all that calculation, while poor you don't have the feintest idea. What if the odds were in reality on your side? but you buy the insurance anyway out of what?
what do you get out of it? simply assuaging and comforting your fear.

It's an industry based on Paranoia and Fear mongering.

They make you pay money simply so they can remove your fear of a crash.

But there's no limit to one's fear right? they can sell you insurance for ANYthing.

You start with a car's crash, but then you go into maintenance, then you go into REALLY crazy stuff like losing baggage while travelling, they even insured Jennifer Lopez's rear body part. because they made her fear getting fat and losing its attractiveness.

To sell more insurance and make more money they only have to foster FEAR inside you.

Islam deals with this nonsense swiftly. Islam calls it "Bay3 Gharar" which means literally "Trade in the Unknown". Fear is NOT quantifiable.

I faced this problem in my own work, regarding buying hardware support contracts, where simply put, if a server goes bust, the supplier is obliged to replace it. and I pay X KDs a year for this contract.

When I calculated the actual history of servers going KAPUT and which actual parts (usually the harddisks and maybe the fans) are more likely to fry, and the cost of buying a couple of spare parts to keep in the store for the case of an emergency, I found that we were paying atleast 10 times as much. Simply because we chose not to deal with our fear ourselves, and let someone else handle it for us.

Now.. PLEASE argue with me :)

======Update====================================================
My brother sent me this hilarious poster this morning. Take special notice of the blue box

Embryonic Stem Cells can become Cancerous

2008-10-22T08:51:00.005+03:00

First here's what I know about Embryonic Stem Cells from Wikipedia

The gist is that you can either get them from a newly formed embryo, which will then be destroyed after the cells are taken. This is obviously extremely controversial.

How moral is it to make a new embryo and then destroy (kill) it in order to save yourself? they say the embryo is only 4-5 days old when it's ready to be harvested for stem cells. But who can say when do you start seeing a fertilized human egg as a "child-in-development"?

We invent names to call each stage: Egg => Zygote => Blastocyst => Embryo => Fetus => Child

And then at which point do we give the "right of life"? which protects it/him/her from being killed?

In Wikipedia the Fetal Rights page mentiones:
The 1978 American Convention on Human Rights states, in Article 4.1, "Every person has the right to have his life respected. This right shall be protected by law and, in general, from the moment of conception."

Muslims sometimes use a 7adeeth by irrasool PBUH when they bring up this issue, that a fetus receives a "soul" after the 40th day of conception. ya3ne approx. 5-6 weeks. Is that an appropriate marker to use? would that make it OK to exploit embryos younger than 40 days?

Very dodgy stuff.

More than this, I consulted with a close Dr friend who happens to specialize in genetics and he sent me these links about Uncontrollable Growth of some Embryonic Stem Cell treated patients:

Embryo Stem Cells Genetically Unstable after Long Cultivation
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/sep/05090604.html

Embryonic stem lines unstable
http://www.vetscite.org/publish/items/002438/index.html

Ten Problems with Embryonic Stem Cell Research
http://www.icr.org/article/314/

pay attention to point number 9

9- The promises of ESCR are right now nothing more than hoped for possibilities. Successful clinical trials for people are years away at best. Why? The reality is that the scientific evidence so far does not support public statements.

First, one minor complication is that use of human embryonic stem cells requires lifelong use of drugs to prevent rejection of the tissue. Second, another more serious disadvantage is that using embryonic stem cells can produce tumors from rapid growth when injected into adult patients. A third disadvantage reported in the March 8, 2001, New England Journal of Medicine was of tragic side effects from an experiment involving the insertion of fetal brain cells into the brains of Parkinson's disease patients. Results included uncontrollable movements: writhing, twisting, head jerking, arm-flailing, and constant chewing. Fourth, a recent report in the Journal Science reported that mice cloned from ESC were genetically defective. If human ESC are also genetically unstable, that could materially compromise efforts to transform cells extracted from embryos into successful medical therapies. Finally, the research may be hampered because many of the existing stem cell lines were grown with the necessary help of mouse cells. If any of this research is to turn into treatments, it will need approval from the FDA, which requires special safeguards to prevent transmission of animal diseases to people. It is unclear how many of these cell lines were developed with the safeguards in place. This leads to a host of problems related to transgenic issues.

Ya3ne they can cause cancer.

But Adult Stem Cells avoid all this controversy, as well as the cell rejection problem by only taking cells from your own bone marrow. But.. since I'm not in a hurry, and since both methods are not yet approved by major medical centers.. and since my MS Dr. also urged me not to go..

I decided to cancel my trip to Costa Rica and not go ahead with the Stem Cell treatment. Maybe if I wait a year or two, more solid research will get published. Allah a3lam.

Bob Dylan's Prophetic Song

2008-10-16T18:17:00.002+03:00

I'm not a Bob Dylan fan and I never really listened to any of his songs, but one day on the BBC I heard about this Picture Show made by Mark Edwards, a photographer who put together a series of images of human strife and misery around the world, which go along with Dylan's song "Hard Rain", try listening to it with the lyrics and you'll be stunned how it fortells how the end of the 20'th century as well as the 21st. is unfolding, it's pretty creepy how accurate it can get. Famine, War, Deforestation, Floods, Tsunamis:

Lyrics:

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains,
I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways,
I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests,
I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans,
I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard,
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard,
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it,
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin',
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin',
I saw a white ladder all covered with water,
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken,
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children,
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin',
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world,
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin',
Heard ten thousand whisperin' and nobody listenin',
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin',
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter,
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley,
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?
I met a young child beside a dead pony,
I met a white man who walked a black dog,
I met a young woman whose body was burning,
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow,
I met one man who was wounded in love,
I met another man who was wounded with hatred,
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Oh, what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what'll you do now, my darling young one?
I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin',
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where the executioner's face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten,
Where black is the color, where none is the number,
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it,
Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin',
But I'll know my song well before I start singin',
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Funny British Controversial Racism

2008-10-09T09:50:00.002+03:00

First for the sketch from the show Harry and Paul which caused Philipino UK citizens to be offended:

Then for another funny sketch about a elderly american tourist couple and a veiled woman:

Did the 2nd sketch offend you like the 1st one offended the philipino community?

I found both to be very funny.

The 1st obviously portrays philipino women as house help sex objects. But it also makes more fun of the english northerner who think of people as livestock, and it makes even more fun of him for being oblivious to his appalling treatment of the maid.

I mean, a stereotype is offensive if:
1- It is false. therefor is a blatant lie and needs to be corrected in people's mind. Or..
2- It is true. But we get offended because the truth is unjust and should be corrected. that philipino ARE being forced into domestic jobs which put them in a disadvantagous position where they easily get abused physically and sexually.

Which do you think it is?

If you think it's 1, then why would it be funny at all? I mean, a lie is not funny, it's silly and irrelevant right?

So if it's 2, why do we object to it? shouldn't the producers of the show be applauded for revealing a "truth" which needs to be corrected?

Got Multiple Sclerosis? La Tghabbi

2008-10-06T15:02:00.004+03:00

I got diagnosed with MS early this year. It's a mystery disease and has no cure, but in most cases it's also not life threatening, or disabling right away. In most cases disabilities only start showing after 10+ years and usually only if it's left without treatment. My point for this post is that the best weapon I found yet was information and knowledge. When you know more about it, you fear it less and your plans for your future are less uncertain. Having MS is not the end of the world.

Which brings us to the issue of "teghebbi" or "hiding the info" from your friends and not-so-close family. When I first got my diagnosis I instantly became more sensitive to stories about other people who have similar symptoms, and I started asking if it was possible to call these people and ask them about MS and how it affected them so I can learn for myself. But I immediately started getting resistence and not very subtle hints that these people did not wish for others to know about their MS.

Seems to me that since MS has the possibility of disability, it becomes a taboo, sort of like cancer. Cancer is called "ilmarath ishain", as if naming it out loud is bad luck. "He Who Must Not Be Named", like Voldemort or something.

Respecting people's wishes and privacy in this matter is fine, but I found out that hiding can be harmful to you. I personally benefitted alot from being gradually more and more open about my MS. I'll tell you how.

Two weeks ago I got a call from a close friend who knew about my MS. He told me that someone who works with his brother took his niece who has MS to a clinic in Costa Rica (Institute for Cell Medicine) which does "Adult Stem Cell" treatment for multiple diseases:
1- Multiple Sclerosis
2- Diabetes Type 2 (mid-aged people who's pancreas stopped working)
3- Autism
4- Cerebral Palsy
5- Osteoarthiritis & Degenerative Joint Disease
6- Rheumatoid Arthiritis
7- Heart Failure & Stroke
8- Parkinson's Disease

I know that it sounds fishy and too good to be true. and I know that if it does sound too good to be true, then it probably is. So I took the lead and started doing my own research and found many examples of people who went there personally and had treatment and did get better. The first one being the one I talked to in person, who was a friend of a brother of a friend, who if I hadn't told about my MS, would never have occured to him to relay the information to me in the 1st place.

I even have a 2nd cousin who had MS for 6-7 years and I didn't know if it was MS or not until very recently, mainly because his Dad didn't want others in the family to ask about his condition. And only last month after me and my Dad ignored his Dad's wishes and visited him did I know for sure it was a particularly aggressive and rare type of MS where he can barely walk now. So I tell him about this new stem cell treatment and I'm surprised when he tells me that infact he knows about it and already booked a flight to try "Embryonic stem cell" treatment. There's a whole controversy around that one so I didn't press the issue with him, seeing that you create a human emryo then have it get destroyed. But I guess he was desperate.

Here's a few links of people's blogs who did go to the clinic:
Autistic child
http://www.recoveringmatthew.blogspot.com/
MS cop
http://startelegram.typepad.com/my_fight_with_ms/

Here's the summary of my own case so anyone who wanted information can compare:

I'm 35yo, married with 3 children, not obese, don't smoke, don't drink alcohol.

Symptoms & History:
May 2007 - I started feeling numbness and tingling in both my feet, legs, up to my lower torso. The sensation was of hyper-sensitivity as well as less sensitivity to light touches (e.g. a cotton). with slight pain when touched. I also had some problems with balance, and fell a few times. this lasted until Nov-Dec 2007.

Dec 2007 - I developed double-vision when looking sideways to the left, this lasted for a month or so, and the tingling and numbness in my feet subsided slowly and is now almost completely gone. and no balance issues remain. But in the same time I developed the same tingling and numb sensation in the outer 3 fingers of my left hand only. slightly so in my index finger. no other symptoms remained and this sensation in my left hand remains until today.

Diagnosis:
My first MRI was done in Nov 2007 and it showed multiple hyper-intense lesions in the brain's gray matter as well as the cervical section of the spine. After that a Lumbar Puncture (spinal fluid taken) was done to test for Oligoclonal bands and it was positive. So I was diagnosed with MS in January 2008 and immediately was started on treatment using Betaferon shots every other day. I do these shots myself at home.

Followup:
My neurologist suggested doing an MRI every 6 months because Kuwait was proving to be having an epidemic of MS and also because my sister (31yo) was also diagnosed with MS 2 weeks after I was, using the exact same method of LP+MRI. so my latest MRI was done 27 May 2008 and showed recession in the old lesions along with development of newer lesions. My symptoms remain the same with my left hand only. My youngest sister (24yo) also did an MRI and an LP and had small lesions and was also positive for Oligoclonal bands, but never had any symptoms, and the reason for doing the tests was my own MS and my other sister, so her neorologist was unsure if she should be treated or not, and decided to wait and do another MRI in 6 months or a year then decide. My other 2 brothers don't have any brain white spots.

I hope this was helpful. I have other information but the post is already way too long

On Blocking Youtube Day 9

2008-09-29T15:59:00.002+03:00

Please Help Us

This afternoon I got called for a meeting about a new official paper from MoC dated yesterday asking us to "block certain specific links within Youtube.com". And then it goes on through 5 full pages siting URLs and "search key words" which produce objectionable material mostly about sexual content,
- some about "slandering local arabic/kuwaiti women's reputation"
- some were deemed "offensive to Gulf heads of state"
- the singer Maraam.
- kuwaiti whores running away from school
- kuwaiti girl from "al-Awaazim" tribe.
- then multiple links about gay/lesbian content.
- again siting some URLs offending Islam
- then a couple of Youtube links of a shiite cleric insulting Abu-Baker
- then more links of "western lisbianism" written in arabic "سحاق غربي" and "arab sex films".
- then more suggestions of search key words, like "لواط" "سحاق" فضائح" "كويتيات" ..etc
- followed by a mention of "http://anonymous.org/anonwww.html" and how it allows you to bypass ISP's blocking mechanisms and that it should be blocked too.

All the links seemed to be compiled from multiple documents, scanned in very poor quality that is barely readable, one list was signed by a certain:
Khaled Jasem al-Mjaibel
tel: 7930342

and another signed by:
Abdel-Rahman Ibrahim al-Shemmeri
tel: 97906069

Both seem to be addressed to the Dept. Head of Survailance and Control of Phones:
Mr. Jasem Mohammad al-Kanderi (infamous from the previous paper)

We have not yet applied any blocking mechanism, mainly because we're worried that such a long list of URLs might overload the CPU usage on our caches. And we're not sure what to do honestly. And the decision seems to be definitely delayed until after Eid holiday.

The Rules of the Game p.5

2008-09-26T14:03:00.003+03:00

This is a continuation of a past series P1, P2, P3 and P4 about secular morality. or morality without God, can it happen? and what would it look like.
===============================================

The Prisoner's Dilemma:

Two suspects are arrested by the police. The police have insufficient evidence for a conviction, and, having separated both prisoners, visit each of them to offer the same deal. If one testifies ("defects") for the prosecution against the other and the other remains silent, the betrayer goes free and the silent accomplice receives the full 20-year sentence. If both remain silent, both prisoners are sentenced to only 1 year in jail for a minor charge. If each betrays the other, each receives a five-year sentence. Each prisoner must choose to betray the other or to remain silent. Each one is assured that the other would not know about the betrayal before the end of the investigation. How should the prisoners act?

To summarize:

If both are good and loyal to each other, Both win modestly.
If one is good and the other is bad and stabs his friend in the back, good loses MUCH, bad wins MUCH.
If both are bad and each to his own (nafsee nafsee), both lose modestly.

If it was you and your best friend in this example, what would you do? ok, what if it wasn't your best friend, a perfect stranger?

I'm assuming that the crime doesn't matter here, you're only concern is to get the minimum sentence and minimize your jail time. Ya3ne assume that you know for certain that neither you or the other person actually did it. But the police don't care about your testimony.

Now assume that this will happen to both of you many times, over and over, every year, they pull both of you to the police station and accuse you of a different crime. (maybe the Police 7a6een 3alaikom, who knows :) deal with it.

Assuming that both of you cooperate the initial few times, and get the small jail time of 1 year, would one of you get tired of it eventually and betray the other in order to go free?

Which of the Rules of the Game will you use (mentioned in the previous parts)?

Golden
Bronze
or
Iron?

On Blocking Youtube Day 2

2008-09-22T11:47:00.004+03:00

Thanks to you all and the amazing response, it seems the Ministry people are realizing their blunder.

Us the ISP's have communicated on the top levels to decide what to do and to try to do it together at once. The 1st plan yesterday was that of incredulity, and we wanted to all block Youtube last night at 12:00 midnight, the move was intended to basically "force the MoC in the spot light" and hopefully the public's backlash would become a lot bigger, since whoever did not know would definitely KNOW.

But around 10:30pm we got information that the MoC people said they will sit together tomorrow morning (this morning) to "discuss the issue further". Ya3ne in simpler terms "find out the extent of the stink they got themselves into", to decide what to do next.

Which also meant they were indirectly asking us NOT to block. In other words, if we have done what THEY asked us to do, THEY would have been the most negatively affected, and they KNEW that, and were asking us to hold our horses. that to me is just too funny.

====================Update Correction (23rd Sep. 4:20pm)==================
And now I got confirmation that the Minister himself has convened with his department heads and rescinded the order.
concerning the above statement:
I called people close to the Minister and it seems that the Minister was not aware of the official memo in the 1st place, so if I'm implying that he was aware of it or produced, it then I apologize and correct myself and it was not my intention to imply that. What I understand now is that the Minister spent the next day (22nd) trying to find out who was responsible and as you read on alJarida, clearly states that neither he nor any of his deputies uphold the memo.

I thank the Minister al-Ghnaim personally as well as his deputy al-Osaimy for their quick and decisive voice of reason and understanding.
=================================================================

Thank you al-Jarida and thank you bloggers of Kuwait :)

On Blocking Youtube

2008-09-21T16:13:00.006+03:00

Inshalla tomorrow you'll be able to read about this on al-Jarida 1st page.

But I wanted to share my excitement I felt today in how sometimes journalism can make our world better.

This morning at the ISP I work for we received an order from one of the department heads in MoC (Ministry of Communication) asking us quite simply and blatantly, to block Youtube.com

The reason stated in the official paper was that if you do a search on youtube for something like "qur'an mula77an" or something like that you'll get some videos that offend Islam mock ilQur'an and our prophet Mohammad PBUH. I tried to search for the same to check what it was, but couldn't find it, but that's not the issue really because I'm positive that there are, undoubtedly tons more offensive things to be found.

Where to start?!

The issue is very revealing of how our government works. Actually most governments work this way if not enough checks and balances are installed. They say that Power corrupts, I say even if it didn't, in the very least it can be misused.

1- al-Islam, al-Qur'an and irrasool Mohammad PBUH are strong and shining beacons of the right path, and the ammunition you need to defend them is abundant and can be easily found within their pure message and rightous and impecable history. Any of us can argue with these offenders to no end and you'll never be stumped or run out of a reasonable argument to support you, assuming you did your research properly. And who knows maybe the open argument will be more effective in educating others about your plight, definitely much more than if the subject is CENSORED and BANNED. in other words:
banning something usually only succeeds in giving it more credibility, because it implies weakness in what's criticized.

2- Youtube contains EVERY possible point of view. not just the ones you dislike. but also the ones that support yours and perhaps do a better job than you in defending your point of view.

3- These offenses existed long long ago. mo tawhom. Always have, and always will.

So for the above reasons I was shaking my head at the rediculous piece of paper from MoC.

Almost 15-20% of our internet traffic these days is in fact Youtube traffic. To suddenly turn that off would be nothing less than a public relations disaster for the Ministry. But they simply did not do their homework and ask us ISP's about these figures.

Also, Youtube is greatly involved with its users in trying to calibrate itself to their sensitivities, take this story for example: YouTube Bans Gun and Knife Videos In the UK

So we live in a reasonable world, with reasonable people who LOVE to communicate and talk and reason with you. This MOC guy simply chose to BLOCK. wouldn't it have been simpler to just go to Youtube's "contact us" page and file a complaint?

The time of "Freedom of Speech above all else" is slowly being rethought in the world and big internet corporations are now more willing to listen and understand what their users want.

The MOC doesn't really need to mention any reason for the blocking, because if we don't comply and do what they ask, they simply make our life hell by hampering our requests for installations of new fiber connections, new customers and hooking up Kuwait in general.

So they always have been using strong-arm tactics to force us to block stuff they don't like, including Skype.com. What good justification is there really for the MoC to force Kuwaity citizens to use it's own international phone lines with rates easily reaching 250-500 fils a minute (1-2 dollar)? while Skype lets me call the US for 0.017$ a minute (less than 2 measly cents)? that's 50-100 times as much!!

How can they say we want you to pay more, and it will be in Kuwait's best interest??

they're either:
1- crooked and think that WE're too stupid or ignorant to do the math.
2- too stupid or ignorant to do the math themselves.

I don't think it's 1. I think it's 2. because I don't think they're crooked. But in either case they obviously feel that they can do whatever they want with impunity. That no one will tell them they're wrong.

Well today I was asked by al-Jarida's chief editor if I can supply him with a copy of that silly MoC order so he can publish it on 1st page tomorrow morning, and I gladly gave it to him. And may it "tet6arba2 foq dmagh" whoever was stupid enough to think he lives in a single voice country.

A Rockband Ghabga

2008-09-14T11:31:00.003+03:00

So last night, me on bass guitar (on easy, easiest thing ever), Bojacob on drums (hard, he does amazing guitar on expert too! bs marrat mwahhegna, 3ade), and fad on medium guitar (he doesn't have a blog, that I know of atleast :P), and MJKout bailed on us (must be from the prospect of doing vocals!), we got together for our newly established weekly Rockband night.

We came across this piece and really loved it, here's a Youtube video of a MUCH better band:

They're called COHEED and CAMBRIA, weird name I know.. and I checked some of their other songs, didn't like their extreme hardrock muscle flexing, but a "few" of their songs did catch my eye:

like this one: A Favor House Atlantic (the embed was diabled here :P)

What's weird is their lyrics all tell one continuous story written by their lead singer Claudio Sanchez, in the form of a comic book:
Most of the songs we get to play on Rockband aren't on the same wavelength to what I like, but sometimes I get pleasantly surprised! Now I have to check their albums ^^... ok.. right in between the time I spend between Rmuthan schedule, reading some daily Qur'an, playing with Zayona, playing some SPORE , playing my weekly Dungeons & Dragons session... and so on :P

My Friend the Athiest

2008-09-01T08:51:00.002+03:00

..Who I'm finding it difficult to care for again.

Except ofcourse, in the sense that I wish if he would surrender to Allah, and save his eternal self from eternal hellfire.

If my friend reads this he'd most probably feel hurt by my cold feelings. Maybe it is best to let sleeping dogs lie and simply pretend to like him like before, but every now and again, the moral dilemma gets replayed in my conscience.

Would it be more faithful and loyal as a friend for me to do the exact opposite and bring out all the glaring things that he's doing wrong? to tell him time and again without relent that if he dies as he is right now, claiming that there is no God that he'll be committing the most calamitous disaster upon himself, and never ever feel any joy or happiness again? that he will NOT be void and finished, that he'll be brought to Allah and thrown as a worthless heap of corrupt flesh in Jahannam where he'll rightly belong, never dying, never living, forever receiving searing pain and suffering, and I won't say "endure", because no one will be able to endure any of it.

To hide all of this terrible fate and to stop telling him about it would mean that him and I can resume having amusing 15-minute phone talks about humorous nonsense in the time being. That we can go out and have longer chats over dinner with lots of fun and laughs.

But it would all be in bad faith from me. I'd be buying my own amusement for the price of lying to him, as if I'm "fine" and "unphased" by the horrific fate he's threatened of ending up in every minute of his life that passes carrying the possibility of sudden death.

I tried to ignore his calls and avoiding him so to distance myself from the dilemma. But it never really left me. And as he kept on reaching out for me tentatively as his old friend, I found myself again in his company.

I fear something else as well.

What if by keeping the issue in frozen ice and avoiding it as much as possible in order to maintain mirth and laughter, what if by doing that, I start eroding my own faith and love for Allah. It has been said that "man 3aashar ilqawm 40 yawm.."

If you stop protesting the evil long enough, you slowly start accepting it.

Your soul can NOT exist in an undetermined state. If you don't work to decide it, it will get decided for you. decided how? without you actually actively doing something to accept the evil? well by not rejecting the evil yourself. that's how.

The sa7aaba who were riding back with irrasool PBUH from Tabouk simply wanted to engage in "harmless" fun and they said a joke about the other sa7aaba who were "readers" of ilQur'an. that they were cowards in time of war, and big bellied in time feast. And what was the result of that?

Qur'anic verses came down about them proclaiming for all to hear, that they have committed "kofr". "la ta3tathero faqad kafartom ba3d eemaanikom." so they were NOT munafiqeen, they used to be faithful. but they neglected their faith, and let themselves slide back out of it. la 7ola wala qowa illa billah.

Being faithful is a full-time job is what I conclude. mainly conclude it for myself. And I am left with both intense fear, and also, intense hope that Allah will help me do it. as it is He who made me think these thoughts, and it will be only Him who'll help me execute them in my reality.

o Mbaarak 3alaikom eshahar :)

I Love This Man

2008-08-18T13:07:00.004+03:00

I came across this video on Youtube and it really touched me. His honesty about his personal suffering and his journey from being born into a Roman Catholic family, then Athiesm, and finally into Islam just made me tear up. His name is Dr. Jeffrey Lang:

He's a math professor in Kansas State University, he became muslim when he was 28 back in the 80's. He wrote 3 books:

Losing My Religion: A Call for Help
Even Angels Ask: A Journey to Islam in America
Struggling to Surrender: Some Impressions of an American Convert to Islam

And seems to give regular speeches about Islam all over the US. Allah ebarek feh mashallah. It's 17 10-minute parts, and in this particular part he talks about his first encounter with the Qur'an. I ended up watching all the parts and becoming deeply intimate with his inner struggle and journey towards faith. I hope this fondness I feel for him right now is what is called "al-7ob fellah" or "love in God". To love another person for no other reason than that he loves God.

Grandma's Song

2008-05-28T14:19:00.003+03:00

This is a clip from a West End show in London based on the movie Billy Elliot. I saw it last year and really loved the whole thing. I've already seen the movie, and the song writing and stage production were top-rate.

But I especially loved this song. Made me really feel for the old woman. Her anger mixed with longing and mourning for her long dead husband. Plus it's pretty funny.

And these are the lyrics:

I hated the sod - for thirty-three year
We should never have married of that I'm quite clear
He spent the housekeeping money on whisky and beer
And never lifted a finger
Times were hard, but the swine rolled back pissed
So we'd fight and he'd swing and he rarely missed
So I'd clobber the sod when he couldn't resist
Asleep, you can't lift a finger.

But we'd go dancing.., and he'd hold me tight
He was air, He was water, He was breath, He was light
And he would hold me there, with all his might.
And it was bliss for an hour or so
But then they called time to go
And in the morning we were sober.

O he'd drink and he'd talk just like a fool
Lie like a bairn and snore like a mule
Rarely was sober, pretty much was the rule
And he never lifted a finger
I suppose times were hard, things were different then
Women were women and men, they were men
Seventeen, that was it, your life ended when
You had a ring around your finger.

But we'd go dancing, he was me own Brando
And for a moment there my heart was a-glow
We had dust in our hair and nowhere to go
But we were free for an hour or three
From the people we had to be
But in the morning we were sober.

But if I went through my time again,
Oh I'd do it without the help of men
Or at least your Grandad
But then again, you know
Best not to linger

What is the use of dreaming now?
I had my chance, well anyhow,
If I'd only known then what I know now
I'd've given them all the finger

And gone dancing, and not give a shit
And spin around and reel and love every bit
And I'd dance alone and enjoy it
And I'd be me for an entire life.
Instead of somebody's wife
And I never would be sober.
And I never would be sober.

[Thanks to steve.alcorn@gmail.com for lyrics]

I liked the repeated use of "..lift a finger", each time with a different meaning. Similar to arabic "Zhairiyat", I think these have a name in english too. Great writing no doubt.

I advise anyone who passes by London anytime soon to get tickets for it, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did :)

The Rules of the Game p.4 + 3laiwi

2008-05-23T16:22:00.003+03:00

Thank you all who prayed for Ali, his operation went well last Monday and just now I got the message that he's being moved from the ICU to the observation room. Yippeee!

May Allah reward your prayers with Jannat inna3eem ya rab, and save you in your direst of needs inshalla.

==============================================

The Rules of the Game, featuring:

The Iron Rule: Do Unto Others As You Like, Before They Do It Unto You.

Here, the rule goes back to the basics, which is to fulfill your own needs, period. The application of this rule is widespread and very appealing, simply because it offers immediate gratification. You don't have to wait for judgment day or wait for the social system to go through its cycle and reward you God knows when.

You like something, you take it, you are happy, now.

This doesn't mean that followers of this rule are savages, they can be cunning snakes as well, waiting to make sure that they can get away with their crimes before committing them. Which is simply another form of following the same rule, because if they get caught, they will get punished, they will be unhappy, also now.

So its the rule of the jungle, so to speak. And here its also interesting to note that low morality is again associated with stupidity (jungle rules = animal rules).

To expect society to reward you for following the Golden or Silver rules can be misleading, you simply may wait and wait and never get rewarded.

So I claim that only by expecting your reward to come in the form of eternal bliss in heaven can you truly be able to follow the good rules. And if you don't think that heaven is real, or even hell, then I can't imagine why you'd follow anything other than the Iron rule.

I believe that "being good" can only be realized by the fear and love of God.

No amount of democratization, no amount of "secular application of the law" (the law mostly coming from God anyway) can ever make sure that we will be moral people. If you expect your reward for being a "good man/woman" to come from anyone other than Allah, then you'll be disappointed.

Next in this series: The Tin Rule. <= really good one, don't miss it :)

منا و فينا

2008-05-19T14:24:00.003+03:00

أول شي سلامات للكل بعد الإنتخابات أخيرا افتكينا. أنا عن نفسي وجدت ان قدرتي على منع نفسي من الخوض بأعراض الناس و نقل إشاعات عنهم مالي فيها علم موثق تضعف ضعفا شديدا أيام الإنتخابات. و كما قال الرسول الكريم صلى الله عليه و سلم: كفى بالمرء كذبا أن يحدث بكل ما سمع

و ثاني شيء هو أننا إذا كنا نتوقع من نوابنا الكرام أن يكونوا مثال العقل الراجح و الحوار الهادئ فعلينا أن نتذكر انهم منا و فينا

يعني طباعهم من طباعنا. و هم خير من يمثلنا. لم انا واثق من هذا؟ ببساطة لأننا نحن الذين اخترناهم. محاسنهم هي التي اعجبتنا و مساوئهم لدينا منها المزيد. ليسوا بالملائكة و نحن منا الشياطين. فاحمد ربك هذا أفضل الموجود.

اذا هم لا يعجبونك بالجملة فهذا معناه
1- لا يعجبك اختيارك. أو
2- أنك في الأقلية و يجب عليك احترام الأغلبية التي حواليك

صحيح ان حتى الأقليات يجب اعطائها حقها. ولكن حق الأغلبية أولى و أكبر. و النائب اللذي لا تحبه تذكر ان هناك الألاف التي ارتضته فاحترم هالألاف من اخوانك الكويتيين. و عيب ان تقول انهم منومون مغناطيسيا. ففقدان العقل مدعاة للشفقة أو الازدراء بحسب قدرتك للرأفة. يعني أن تصفني بالتبعية و عدم التفكير هو أن تسبني سبا شديدا و هذا هو انعدام الاحترام. فعيب

و إياك أن تقول الأغلبية خاطئة و ما تفهم و غوغاء. فإذا قلت هذا فإنك تسب الكويتيين. و عيب تسب ولو شخص واحد فما بالك بسب شعب كامل؟

مو عاجبك تفكير الكويتيين؟ فكنا و هاجر رجاءا
بس تريد الأفضل من ذلك؟
خلك معانا و حاور بهدوء و افتح عقلك. و لا تزعل اذا خسرت. و حاول مرة أخرى

بس المهم ان نحترم بعضنا بعض و أولى من هذا ان نحترم ولاة الأمر و هم الحكومة و المجلس

Your Prayers Can Help

2008-05-15T12:21:00.002+03:00

Dear Everyone,

My close friend is currently on a plane to the UK with his wife and 3 year old only son.

This afternoon or tomorrow they'll operate on 3ali his son inshalla. This will be his 2nd open chest operation to fix irregularities in the ways his arteries are connected to his heart. The 1st was a success il7amdella, and now this 2nd operation inshalla ya Rab will be just as good.

Ya Rab, I beg of You to save this little rascal. Coz I love how when you ask him "how are you?" he replies "jeen amdella".

Please pray for his safety and quick recovery, o likum il'ajer min Allah sib7ana.

The Rules of the Game p.3

2008-05-10T08:53:00.003+03:00

"Repay kindness with kindness," said Confucius, "but evil with justice."

This might be called the Brass or Brazen Rule:

Do unto others as they do unto you.

It's the lex talionis, "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," plus "one good turn deserves
another."

In actual human (and chimpanzee) behavior it's a familiar standard. "If the enemy inclines toward peace, do you also incline toward peace," President Bill Clinton quoted from the Qur'an at the Israeli-Palestinian peace accords.

وَإِنْ جَنَحُوا لِلسَّلْمِ فَاجْنَحْ لَهَا وَتَوَكَّلْ عَلَى اللَّهِ إِنَّهُ هُوَ السَّمِيعُ الْعَلِيمُ
الأنفال 61

Without having to appeal to anyone's better nature, we institute a kind of operant conditioning, rewarding them when they're nice to us and punishing them when they're not. We're not pushovers, but we're not unforgiving either. It sounds promising. Or is it true that "two wrongs don't make a right?".

-- Carl Sagan, The Rules of the Game.

The above Bronze Rule feels "just" and to me atleast feels more applicable. I have no problems subscribing to it. But does it help societies as a whole become better? let's examine that, other people will start learning that we HIT BACK, but also, that we are GOOD NEIGHBORS. This in theory should encourage all of us to refrain from bad acts, and do good.

The only snag here is CYCLES. What if someone kills someone else on the pretext that it was preceded by a previous killing. I.E. the claim is that its justified, while the victim's family don't recognize the past offense. Some offenses are so hard on our psyche that we tend not to be able to think rationally. So we can slip into a cycle of revenge (THAR) with no end in sight.

Not only that, but our response will never be accurately equal to the original kindness or offense. We tend to easily "overreact" when we are wronged.
And also "underreact" when we are done a good deed.

This is precisely how World War One escalated. A very silly and shameful affair.

So which of the Rules do YOU think is better (and more applicable) now?

The Rules of the Game p.2

2008-05-05T20:38:00.004+03:00

The previous part was entirely dedicated to the Golden Rule. Its the most famous of the moral rules. Why? I think because its the most "weird" to us. Its the one the goes against our grain the most. In short, its the most noble.

But if you think its too much for you, you can try the Silver Rule instead:

Do Not Do Unto Others What You Would Not Have Them Do Unto You.

I know it sounds a bit convoluted, but it simply means: Don't hurt others.

It doesn't say go and be nice to others, but atleast you're not allowed to cause them harm. But what if the other person slaps me a good slap on the cheek? You don't take revenge, you simply refrain, abstain and be passive.

Its essentially the "Ghandi-way". Passive resistance. il7egran yga6e3 ilmesraan taken to the extreme (ignoring someone cuts up their intestines, don't you love literal translations?).

It is less noble than the Golden Rule to be sure, but its still good.

Is it effective in making us better people? I mean atleast its more accessible and easier to comply with. So we're more likely to stick to it. But we become essentially doormats. 6ofa habee6a (low wall.. :P). Sure it served Ghandi well and shamed the english into leaving India, but it also failed the South Africans and eventually they said "to hell with it" and took up arms in the end. Tibetan buddhist monks are reaching their own limits and getting all riled up against the chinese oppressors.

It doesn't take.. it feels weak. At least the Golden Rule shows the offender that you're shaming him with your good deed. At least you're doing SOMEthing. It doesn't even handle the case of if the other person did not offend you at all, but was good to you, how do you treat them then?

Verdict: Silver Rule is too Passive. bleh.. mo shai.

But more importantly, What do YOU think?

Thank You God for Saving Zaina p.2

2008-04-30T22:58:00.003+03:00

So 1 week old they started giving her heart medicines to lower the amount of fluids in her body in order to ease the stress on her heart. Lower the risk of congestive heart failure they called it. And you can imagine how the words "heart failure" came down on our heads. bs il7amdella 3ala kil 7al.

So three months old little Zaina had to go into the hospital for a lung infection. They said it was common for her case. She stayed there for 5 days and did another sonar and that's when the dr. said that the hole in her heart was too big and needs to be patched. And on top of that news, he said that although most cases are done using an inserted wire through the vein "Qas6ara" and insert a sort of round mesh that expands and clamps on the walls of the hole, Zaina's hole was different and required open chest, open heart surgery.

I couldn't imagine the idea of my cute little peaceful girl having her chest opened. There was a moment when I actually found it hard to pull breath.

The Dr. wrote his report and gave it to me to start the whole "3elaj bel5arej" (treatment abroad) procedure. I had to get 4 signatures on it, 2 surgeons and 2 cardiologists, take it to the 3elaj bel5arej dept., make a passport for Zaina, get visas made for her, me, my wife, my mother, the escorting dr. and nurse at the British Embassy, get flight dates from Kuwait Airways, get permission from KWA to put an oxygen tank on board, have the visas get delayed, cancel the flights and get new dates and so on...

Let me just say.. to all the people who helped all the above go faster and the un-used was6at:
Thank you deeply from the bottom of our hearts.

The whole process took 20 days from report to flight lillah il7amd. and the only was6a she needed was her little heart :)

So it was the beginning of il3asher il'awa5er of Ramadan, we just arrived at Harley Street Clinic in the evening straight from the airport by ambulance and the surgeon's assistants came to talk to us and examine her, and the cardiologist did another sonar to confirm the case. They told us they're going to operate the next day in the afternoon. My wife slept with her that night as I went with my mother to the hotel.

The next day they did one more sonar, and said they'll come for her at 1 o'clock. They came at 3, and I carried her with my wife behind me with the doctors. I almost felt like walking on air and all my surroundings didn't matter apart from me carefully shielding Zaina's head from everything. I put her on the anesthetic's table and felt near outrage at how I was surrendering my girl into the care of these kind but strange men. Only remembering the total power and dominion of Allah over her life and everyone else's was what calmed me. Me and my wife kissed her forehead and shed involuntary tears and left.

My wise mother took my wife to Oxford St. to take her mind occupied and her feet moving. While I stayed in the hospital room waiting for any news. I couldn't think of anything to do other than to just start praying. So I prayed a while, reading all of the little Qur'an I knew. Then I took out my mini-Qur'an and read from it. Then standing up after rokoo3 I lifted up my hands and just started praying and asking God to save her with such hot and fervent pleading that I only felt in my darkest hours. I only knew how humble and helpless I was with nothing to offer my little girl but my pleading for Allah to save her. So I did with abandon. I cried and I felt then that this total helplessness was correct, not only for me, but for all people. But we just tend to be oblivious to it most of the time.

I asked Allah to save her and to make her a good and pious servant of His throughout her life.

Later I broke my fast on some chips and water from the hallway and then the nurse came for me and took me to see her in the intensive care unit, and told me that the operation couldn't have gone better, and that she's sedated and sleeping, and recovering.

Alf il7emdella ya Rab. Allah said, ask me truthfully, and you shall receive. That moment I had no doubt in that. Inshalla God help us all to never have such doubt, and help us let our selves go and ask for everything. Because only when you do ask, are you truly subservient.

Thank You God for Saving Zaina p.1

2008-04-27T08:59:00.004+03:00

Zayoona was born 17th of June last year.

She kicked and kicked and kicked so often that my poor wife was usually both happy and queasy at the same time. I knew by seeing her face smile and also holding her breath to control her upset stomach being relentlessly kicked and probed by little Zaina.

The Dr. while she did the pregnancy echo squinted at the screen and then turned to look at me, and then back at the screen, then back at me, then back at the screen and said:

"teshbah obooha" with matter-of-fact finality. (she looks like her father) as if she's jokingly giving disappointing news to my wife. Me and her just exchanged funny looks.

Three days after she was born, just as we were getting ready to leave the hospital room to go home, the pediatrician dr. came to the room and started telling me in a hushed voice:

"This is most probably something not to be worried about, but I suggest you get it looked at after a week or so just to be sure. Your daughter's heart has a faint but clear wooshing sound, we usually call it a Murmur"

It was still too little information for me to process and I didn't know what to make of what he was telling me so I ask him what does that mean.

"This is very common, don't worry about it too much, most likely its the result of a hole in her heart".

When I heard that I thought (how can there be a hole in my baby's heart and she's still breathing??)

"I can't tell how big of a hole it is until you get a chest echo done to your baby. So I suggest you have one within the week at al-Sabah." (I thought to myself, typical, when the going gets tough, private hospitals get cold feet everytime. Alla y3afe il7okooma)

He then explained to me how its common for babies to have tiny holes in the wall that separates the left and right ventricles. VSD they call them, Ventricular Septic Defects. And most babies with these holes don't require any treatment because the hole just gets smaller with time and closes up on its own as the baby grows up. And I start hearing from friends and family how THEY had holes in THEIR hearts when they were small and how it wasn't a big deal at all.

I get relieved somewhat and try to comfort my wife with the statistics and that the odds are unlikely that any treatment will be needed at all.

We go to the chest sonar appointment and even though the place is brand new and clean, but its still a bit crowded and seeing so many other families carrying small babies just like little Zayoona I get a sense of how this issue is larger than just my little family.

The sonar dr is so swamped with cases that to smooth the process they tell us they'll have to put a mild sedative in her milk so she sleeps while the sonar is on her chest. We were apprehensive about giving her a sedative being such a small baby, but I manage to convince my wife that it'll be fine, and it tastes bitter so Zaina started crying when we gave it to her, the whole thing just fried our nerves even more, being already fried from the fear of what the sonar might show.

She finally sleeps a bit but they didn't call us to the sonar room until the sedative started to slowly wear off anyway.. so as we finally are in the room and the dr. is trying to do his sonar, Zaina started to wake up and cry, and he couldn't do his job properly, and I just had to sit near her holding her tiny tiny arms away from her chest and shush her to calm down and sleep as the dr. did his work. He was a little amateurish and took longer than needed and it was getting harder to keep Zaina still and peaceful, and my wife's shot nerves were getting more and more stressed, so when the dr. said any remarks about the baby not being still enough we both snapped at him to just do what he can because we're not giving her any more sedative and waiting for another 30 minutes outside for her to sleep, which she won't because she's already cried too much and too upset.

Anyhow, il7emdella we were done and went and occupied an empty room without permission to feed poor Zayoon and calm her down. But we were too anxious and stressed waiting for the dr. to tell us what the sonar showed.

When he finally came around to talking to us he told us that it was a "Large" hole, and that its location near the aortic valve raised the pressure going towards the lungs, which caused her to breath shallow and fast. This fast breathing later proved to burn alot of her calories and caused her to become a very small and light baby. We tried to offset this by using a high-calorie special type of milk given by the government pharmacy called "Infatrini" which over the next 3 months did help keep her weight up, but still she was thinner than the thinnest 5% of babies.

We were told that after 4 months it would be clear whether an "operation" would be needed.

Hearing the word operation even as a remote possibility hit me like heavy brick in my chest. What kind of operation could be done to an infant's 3 month old tiny heart??

(...to be continued inshalla)

God is talking to you

2008-04-22T10:29:00.002+03:00

روى مسلم في صحيحه و ذكر أربع طرق لنفس الحديث
حدثنا عبد الله بن عبد الرحمن بن بهرام الدارمي، حدثنا مروان، - يعني ابن محمد الدمشقي - حدثنا سعيد بن عبد العزيز، عن ربيعة بن يزيد، عن أبي إدريس الخولاني، عن أبي ذر، عن النبي صلى الله عليه وسلم فيما روى عن الله، تبارك وتعالى أنه قال

‏"‏ يا عبادي إني حرمت الظلم على نفسي وجعلته بينكم محرما فلا تظالموا
يا عبادي كلكم ضال إلا من هديته فاستهدوني أهدكم
يا عبادي كلكم جائع إلا من أطعمته فاستطعموني أطعمكم
يا عبادي كلكم عار إلا من كسوته فاستكسوني أكسكم
يا عبادي إنكم تخطئون بالليل والنهار وأنا أغفر الذنوب جميعا فاستغفروني أغفر لكم
يا عبادي إنكم لن تبلغوا ضري فتضروني ولن تبلغوا نفعي فتنفعوني
يا عبادي لو أن أولكم وآخركم وإنسكم وجنكم كانوا على أتقى قلب رجل واحد منكم ما زاد ذلك في ملكي شيئا
يا عبادي لو أن أولكم وآخركم وإنسكم وجنكم كانوا على أفجر قلب رجل واحد ما نقص ذلك من ملكي شيئا
يا عبادي لو أن أولكم وآخركم وإنسكم وجنكم قاموا في صعيد واحد فسألوني فأعطيت كل إنسان مسألته ما نقص ذلك مما عندي إلا كما ينقص المخيط إذا أدخل البحر
يا عبادي إنما هي أعمالكم أحصيها لكم ثم أوفيكم إياها فمن وجد خيرا فليحمد الله ومن وجد غير ذلك فلا يلومن إلا نفسه ‏"‏ ‏.‏ قال سعيد كان أبو إدريس الخولاني إذا حدث بهذا الحديث جثا على ركبتيه ‏.

I found this translation online:

O My servants, I have forbidden oppression for Myself and have made it forbidden amongst you, so do not oppress one another.
O My servants, all of you are astray except for those I have guided, so seek guidance of Me and I shall guide you,
O My servants, all of you are hungry except for those I have fed, so seek food of Me and I shall feed you.
O My servants, all of you are naked except for those I have clothed, so seek clothing of Me and I shall clothe you.
O My servants, you sin by night and by day, and I forgive all sins, so seek forgiveness of Me and I shall forgive you.
O My servants, you will not attain harming Me so as to harm Me, and will not attain benefiting Me so as to benefit Me.
O My servants, were the first of you and the last of you, the human of you and the jinn of you to be as pious as the most pious heart of any one man of you, that would not increase My kingdom in anything.
O My servants, were the first of you and the last of you, the human of you and the jinn of you to be as wicked as the most wicked heart of any one man of you, that would not decrease My kingdom in anything.
O My servants, were the first of you and the last of you, the human of you and the jinn of you to rise up in one place and make a request of Me, and were I to give everyone what he requested, that would not decrease what I have, any more that a needle decreases the sea if put into it.
O My servants, it is but your deeds that I reckon up for you and then recompense you for, so let him who finds good praise Allah, and let him who finds otherwise blame no one but himself.

===========================================================

The sheer audacity with which God talks to us in this 7adeeth, just humbles me. I could not find a single figure throughout history who speaks with such unlimited power and grandeur. Even the ones who claimed to be Gods. They lacked the imagination to describe themselves in a correctly infinite way. Yet with the simple parable of a needle poking an ocean and coming out with nothing.... No human has this powerful poetry.

What do YOU think?

The Rules of the Game p.1

2008-04-18T10:23:00.008+03:00

The Golden Rule: Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you.

In its most basic meaning, it means to treat others the way you prefer them to treat you, regardless of how they actually DO treat you.

Ya3ne: They treat you good or bad, doesn't matter, you treat them good.

The Parable of the Good Samaritan is found in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 10 verses 25-37.

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" "What is written in the Law?" he replied. "How do you read it?" He answered: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" "You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live." But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"

In reply Jesus said: "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn in Jericho and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Look after him,' he said, 'and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.'

"Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?"

The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him." Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise."

Unconditional mercy. Not preceded by reciprocation. People who do this infront of us command our admiration and awe. We can't help it. It feels alien to us to be like so generous. To follow the Golden Rule feels like going against my very nature. More like ascendance from clay to light. From base humanity to angelic nobility.

It gets even harder when the act of goodness is preceded by offense.

In the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says: You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.' But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

WARNING: The following story is very disturbing. Don't read if you don't want to feel very bad.

This is Zawadi Mongane from east Congo. I heard of her on the BBC, here's her story.

She and 50 of her village were abducted by the Interhamwe "Those who fight together". They were the same people who were the tools in Rwanda's massacres.

They took them to a rebel camp, asked all related to the village chief to stand up, then hacked them to death with knives and machetes.

Her brother was forced to rape her, and when he refused, they decapitated him infront of her.

Then 19 of them raped her.

Then they killed 2 of her children infront of her, one of them only a baby on her back. They put a noose of rope around the baby's neck and forced Zawadi to pull and strangle her own baby to death. Here I just got so disturbed by the story I teared up.

That all happened more than a year ago. Not very long. The reporter returned to her a year later to see how she was doing and although physically she had slightly recovered, but mentally she says she "Has nothing to live or look forward to in the future".

She says she still has nightmares of her pulling the rope around her baby's neck. When asked why she pulled the rope, she said that her 3rd child, her only currently surviving family, would need her help to survive. And that she realized at that moment that they'd kill her baby anyway. So she tried to stay alive so she could have a chance to go back to her living daughter to take care of her.

When asked if she wished these men to be punished or killed, she replied:
"No I don't. I still feel that I don't want those people to be killed. I know that God will judge them."

She says "still feel.." because she was asked the same question while in hospitalization shortly after her incident 1 year ago, and she replied the same way.

Now I don't know whether she's truly of such a noble spirit, or if she's simply too traumatized and afraid of her offenders to even express her "wish" for revenge aloud.

If its the 2nd possibility, then I don't blame her one bit. I've had long and elaborate fantasies of going into these Congo jungles, wearing black ninja robes, tracking down and killing these men one by one. I feel tremendous and powerful need for vengeance against them. So you can try to imagine how SHE must feel. They do not make the world a better place, they make it a worse place, hence they should be removed.

But if it is really the 1st possibility, and that she truly can forgive them, then she's a rare saint on this earth. I would wish to only meet her and try to be like her.

Listen to the MYoosek! and buy the Myka!

2008-04-14T11:20:00.006+03:00

Please Hit PLAY while you check out this awsome BOX
(now this music is stuck in my head, so catchy)

General Infomation

Myka is a state of the art internet video player. Video files are downloaded from the internet on to Myka's hard drive. These videos can be played back directly to a television. Myka also has BitTorrent built in. That means Myka can download using the BitTorrent peer to peer protocol directly, no need to go though a PC. Myka is controlled by a remote control or can be programmed from the web.

It has Wifi, so you don't need to move it around from your PC to your TV, it plays ANYthing, so you don't have to be stuck with only Quicktime movies with the AppleTV. It even does the downloading by itself!!!

Here's their link >>>MYKA<<<

The Rules of the Game, intro

2008-04-09T08:10:00.004+03:00

Ever since my brother sent me this essay by Carl Sagan called "The Rules of the Game", I've fallen in love with it. It talks about the evolution of our morality.

Probably the best and easiest way for me to relate all of it to you is to simply post a link to it, as I did. But I would like to post it in parts so we could discuss and talk about each part separately and at leisure.

Where does Your morality come from? What set of rules do you use to determine right from wrong? here's a very early attempt at answering that question:

Everything morally right derives from one of four sources:
It concerns either full perception or intelligent development of what is true;
or the preservation of organized society, where every man is rendered his due and all obligations are faithfully discharged;
or the greatness and strength of a noble, invincible spirit;
or order and moderation in everything said and done, whereby is temperance and self-control.
CICERO,
De Officiis, I, 5 (45-44 B.C.E)

I did not personally like this answer, it seems a bit lost and unhinged. Translating an arabic parable "he explained water, after much effort, with water". Sagan used it to start his essay, so..

He then relates this simple yet to the point story from his own childhood:

I remember the end of a long ago perfect day in 1939... a day that powerfully influenced my thinking, a day when my parents introduced me to the wonders of the New York World's Fair.
It was late, well past my bedtime. Safely perched on my father's shoulders, holding onto his ears, my mother reassuringly at my side, I turned to see the great Trylon and Perisphere, the architectural icons of the fair, illuminated in shimmering blue pastels. We were abandoning the future, the "World of Tomorrow,", for the BMT subway train. As we paused to rearrange our possessions, my father got to talking with a small, tired man carrying a tray around his neck. He was selling pencils. My father reached into the crumpled brown paper bag that held the remains of our lunches, withdrew an apple, and handed it to the pencil man. I let out a loud wail. I disliked apples then, and had refused this one both at lunch and at dinner. But I had, nevertheless, a proprietary interest in it. It was my apple, and my father had just given it away to a funny-looking stranger... who, to compound my anguish, was now glaring unsympathetically in my direction.
Although my father was a person of nearly limitless patience and tenderness, I could see he was disappointed in me. He swept me up and hugged me tight to him.
"He's a poor stiff, out of work," he said to me, too quietly for the man to hear. "He hasn't eaten all day. We have enough. We can give him an apple."
I reconsidered, stifled my sobs, took another wistful glance at the World of Tomorrow, and gratefully fell asleep in his arms.

So, the dilemma was, the boy Sagan could not comprehend or understand why giving the apple (that he did not like or want) to someone else. His dad explained by immediately trying to get his boy to "empathize" with the homeless person by listing his problems "poor", "out of work", "hungry", and then pointing out that it won't "hurt us". Point being, if it threatened our own "wealth" in any substantial way, then we might not give him the food. So if they had 4 apples and NOTHING else, 1 for papa, 1 for mama, and 1 for little Carl, would they give the 4th apple to the homeless person? probably they'd save it to share it between them when they became hungry tomorrow, since they were homeless hungry people themselves :P

What are the boundaries of goodness?

Us wealthy kuwaitis don't think about such matters. We think about going to chocolate bars in the afternoon. Which flavor, size and caramel or non-caramel of starbucks coffee I'm going to get this morning. And the agony (Oh the agony) of deciding which fancy restaurant to have dinner at tonight. (3asalla la yghayer 3alaina ni3ma, o yzedna ba3ad)

We don't face critical decisions like not knowing what you'll be eating tomorrow and whether or not to split your lunch with another writhing-hungry person sitting on the opposite side of erraseef.

Well, who's more relevant? us? or the hungry people? obviously us because its us. but also obviously we are a very obscure minority in the world. The vast majority of people do NOT share our careless bored existence. But to care about them we'd have to do that awful thing called Empathy :P

So, next post in this series will be about the first and highest of the moral rules:

The Golden Rule.
Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.

Til then, enjoy :)

Strong vs. Smart

2008-04-04T13:09:00.001+03:00

Imagine yourself sitting with your best friend, and you attempt to lift a chair and move it to the other side of the living room, to see how it would look. And as you try to heave it up grunting, your friend says to you:
"Stop, you might hurt yourself, its too heavy, you're not strong enough, I'll help you lift it."

You'd happily accept their offer. And thank them.

Imagine however if the situation did not involve moving a heavy sofa, but was about something that requires some high mental abilities. Say wisdom or intelligence. for example: You're trying to figure out your accounting figures for your small business. Or trying to solve some mathematical equation for a statistics class. Or maybe even trying to figure out how to diplomatically work your way out of a sticky argument at work with some stubborn manager. Take any of these examples or think of one of your own, and imagine that you're failing in dealing with it, and you're telling your best friend about it, clearly in need of help. And the friend says something like:
"Stop, the way you're handling this is wrong, you're not smart enough, let me offer you some advice."

I don't know about you, but the "not smart enough" bit would very likely piss me off.

So, what's the difference between these two situations? both involve your deficiency, and both involve someone else criticizing you in that lack of ability. The first is a muscular ability, the other is a brainy ability.

But we're way more sensitive to criticism when it is directed at our intelligence than if it is towards our athletic prowess.

Lets go down to a childish level. Kids do tease each other based on physical abilities all the time.
"I can easily outrun you and run circles around you. You're SO slow! wahahahaha"

But now as grownups, if someone sneered at how slow you ran, you'd point them out to your friends and laugh at how irrelevant the comment was. "what's this crazy person on about?"

But if the remark mentions anything about how stupid or unwise we are, even if the intention of the remark was friendly and genuine, most likely we'd be very offended and defensive about our mental abilities.

We're all too willing to concede that black athletes are more proficient in speed, jumping height, strength and so on. But dare to mention any hint of academic achievement or mental ability differences between blacks and whites, and you're likely to get scornful and chastising stares from all around you. just incase, here are some references:
The g Factor: The Science of Mental Ability
Chapter 11 of The g Factor fully documents that, on average, the American Black population scores below the White population by about 1.2 standard deviations, equivalent to 18 IQ points. (This magnitude of difference gives a median overlap of less than 15%, meaning that less than 15% of the Black population exceeds the White average of 50%).

So my question is, Why?

Why are we more sensitive towards our mental capabilities, but not so much towards our physical ones?

I'm guessing one possible answer could be that in this day and age, being smart is more important for prosperity. If you're smart and handicapped, you still can get a PhD and be an overpaid consultant. If you're strong and dumb you might end up a janitor on foodstamps.

So was the situation reversed in hunter/gatherer communities 1000's of years ago?

Stone Age Muscular Joe says to his Thinker friend Archimedes : "Oh man, Archie, you're still fiddling with that round rock with the hole in the middle? why don't you get off your ass and hunt some more deer with us? I hate to be so crass and rude, but its sort of straining my family's food supply to always have to trade a deer's leg for the bone hair clasps you make. Don't get me wrong, my wife likes using them to hold up the wet laundry and even hold up her hair, but give me a break, you can't really feed them to your kids now can you. Poor baby timmy even tried and almost choked on one of them."

So what do YOU think?

As If Teddy Was Watching

2008-04-01T11:49:00.002+03:00

So I'm watching this movie called "Resurrecting the Champ", and if you plan on watching it, I might spoil a certain twist in it for you. Anyway, if you don't or you don't think its a big deal (its a 60% on Rotten Tomatoes, and the twist can be expected anyway), then read ahead.

So the main character is a reporter who's having trouble at the paper, they don't think his work is good enough, and he's separated from his wife and has a 6 yo son who he visits on weekends. The reporter catches a lucky break and writes a super good article and starts getting nation-wide attention for it, only to realize later that what he wrote about is a lie and that he didn't check his sources thoroughly enough.

So he and his wife (who works in the same paper) are arguing what to do. He's asking "who'd know if I just stayed quiet?", and his wife is insisting that he should print a retraction of his article, and admit that he was wrong. That would ofcourse mean the end of him and a major embarrassment.

So in the end she tells him:
"Let me put it more clearly to you: You need to act as if Teddy was watching." (Teddy is his son)

And hearing that, I immediately hit pause and started writing this post.

So to this man, if he could visualize in his head that his 6 yo son was present, he'd be too ashamed and embarrassed to do something dishonorable. He would be afraid that his son will either learn to be dishonest, or even that his son will not be proud of him as he grows up. So the movie expected from us the viewers to all relate to this feeling and understand it. That if we could only try to be respectful of our children's feelings, it would make us become better people and do the right thing.

Ofcourse our kids are extremely important. More specifically, their future is the most important thing we care about. So in order to protect them from future disappointment in their own parents, which might destroy their sense of self-worth, we stop ourselves from doing the wrong thing.

But we muslims have an even larger reason to behave don't we? If we replaced Teddy with God, it would be: Act as if God is watching. And God IS watching, all the time, all day, minute in, minute out. We learn something like that when we're young. No more than 4-5 years old and you've already heard that Allah foog, o Allah yshoofna shinsawe.

And our kids will grow old one day, and they'll get over any complexes we might have inflicted on them and they'll die, leaving kids of their own. So the impact of potential damage is limited to his/her lifetime. But if we do something bad infront of God, isn't He more deserving of our embarrassment and shame?

And the consequence of our shameful behavior does not affect your kid in the future. It affects your OWN life for eternity in the afterlife. So any smart person would instantly realize that the latter situation is of compoundedly more gravity to you.

Niste7e min yahel wala niste7e min Allah?

Banning Election Primaries is WRONG

2008-03-28T14:31:00.004+03:00

Yes. I think that the law is wrong, unfair and Unconstitutional.

Which law am I talking about? I'll explain a bit 1st. It is currently illegal in Kuwait to hold Primaries before an election (i.e. inte5abaat far3iya).

I think banning them violates our right to freedom of speech and our right to freedom of assembly.

If you think the US democracy is a good model, then isn't what Obama and Clinton doing nothing other than "inte5abaat far3iya"?

If you tell me that it should be banned to prevent tribal voting and sectarian voting, I say to you, who do you think you are to tell people how to vote?

If people want to vote to a tribes-man. LET THEM BE.

If they want to vote to an extremist sectarian cleric, LET THEM BE.

Trying to control other people's ideas is called "Wesaya Fikriyah". The voters are dumb? so what, we already know that. mo sheghlek what they vote for or why. The "Masses are Asses" its been said before. This is Democracy. Is Democracy wrong? I don't necessarily love it, but I'm giving it a chance. I believe that: "innama yowalla 3alaikom minkom". Regardless of the method of selection. be it democracy or hereditary rule.

Whatever your "perfect" candidate should look/think like, if you had the choice to choose between 3-4 of these "perfect" candidates, wouldn't you rather hold primaries (your own far3iya) within your circles who share your ideology to make sure that all of "your people" concentrate your votes to back only a certain few to make sure they WIN?

This activity is being done ANYWAY since we first started having elections. Before election day we go around the dowaween to ask the guys who are they going to vote for, and get news from the other diwaniyat and try to figure out which of "our" candidates has the wider support, so we can all back him and insure his victory.

Primaries are:
- Unstoppable (its silly to lay a law that is un-enforcable)
- Useful
- A pretty Sophisticated form of organization that we should be proud of, not ban.

They also ruin the plans of some candidates who only put out their names for nomination in hopes that the other "strong" ones will give them a monetary "bail-out" offer. Sleaze bags.

The LAW in this case is WRONG. agolha belfam ilmalyan.

Don't succumb to the mentality of "we like democracy as long as it produces people we like".

I'm not a bdewe, and it is not in my best interest to have a higher presentation % of tribal MPs belmajles. but.. what's wrong is wrong. and what's right is right.

Ma yse7 illa essa7ee7.

The Challenge to Empathize

2008-03-25T18:52:00.003+03:00

Empathy is the ability to feel what the other person is feeling.

Beautiful meaning. Some even choose this quality to measure how "civilized" we are. The true yardstick of civilization. Not Technology, not cleanliness, not punctuality, but something broader that is inclusive of all of these things.

We clean our McDonalds messes only because we care how others coming after us to sit on the same table will feel. We care not to disgust them.

We choose to be punctual and On-time because we think to ourselves how annoyed and frustrated they would feel to be waiting for our late selves.

Even technology is a form of caring about others. The scientist or inventor goes through long and arduous efforts to come up with a new idea, and then implement it in the real world and make it commercially viable. What drives him/her to do it? to use the invention himself? to make his own life a tiny bit easier he would spend years of his life? doesn't make sense. Curiosity? Recognition? nowadays most pioneering inventions are only possible through large collaborative groups rather than individuals. The time of Great Singular Inventors is long gone with the 1800's and early 1900's. What drives technology these days in my opinion is the desire to do good. pure and simple. You hear it often said by innovators as "The gift to the future". Which is very apt because most likely the fruits of such advancements will not be felt in the present, but in the future. So Technology is also a form of Empathy.

Almost every form of Good-doing has to involve in its core the ability to "feel what the other person is feeling". Put yourself in their shoes. Feel their pain and misery. Once you do feel it, you'll start to act, not before. The action comes almost as a way of saving yourself from the pain you're feeling through others, through Empathy.

But again, why do we Empathize? true, lots of people DO know that when they empathize they will be inclined to do the right thing. But, people can learn from that experience and later choose NOT to empathize. They can choose to say "to hell with it, I don't want other people's headaches, I've got enough of my own.". Often I hear women (because I think they have a lesser defense against empathy) say "please don't tell me about that painful story.", or how my wife gets seriously troubled when she sees someone getting beaten or shot in a movie, because she can't help but "feel too much" for them. It disturbs her. Really gets to her.

Often you hear lawyers talking in a movie about a person on trial, about how it would be wise for the defense to mention the defendant's name, or bring his mother to the trial. They say this tactic helps force the jury to think of him as a "person", which causes them to empathize with him, and this way they'll be more capable of understanding the circumstances through his eyes, and therefor may be able to excuse him of ill intent.

Is Empathy "always" a good thing to do? I think so. yes. Even if it was a murderer or a rapist? yes I believe so. I do think that usually we can't over-do it. We have our limits. Up to a certain point where we refuse to subject ourselves to other people's pains anymore. We refuse to suffer emotionally as they suffer. And ofcourse we have every right to shield ourselves. Mo malzomeen.

I can go on and on about this.. it is perhaps one of the things that affect me the most when I think about my own sense of morality. And I am VERY lacking in my ability to empathize. But its already a very long post.

So what do YOU think?

Movies This Week & What's Usury?

2008-03-20T09:47:00.006+03:00

Update (21st March):

Since Rotten Tomatoes only had 2 reviews of this movie (both fresh), I decided to go check it out for myself. And I'm glad I did, so I can review it for you with my own experience.
Result: It's a damn good creature movie! If you loved the old Jaws (part1, none of the other ones) then you'll like this one. It stays true to the ways of creature movies while still trying to be smart and surprising, which ends up being truly mesmerizing and scary. It uses actors that are not superstars, which makes it less distracting and easier to think of them as normal people, and therefor relate to them more and be more scared for their safety. The low-key nature of the film made me enjoy it all the better.

==========================================

Ok here's what's new this week in Kuwait from Cinescape:

Horton Hears a Who!: Rotten Tomatoes rating 80% out of 104 reviews.
The lovely kids story comes to the cinema screen with Jim Carrey's voice on top. And with such a high rating it's bound to be atleast Entertaining as heck.
(Take your younger sibling and Go!)

The Spiderwick Chronicles: Rotten Tomatoes rating 80% as well!
OMG! 2 movies over 75% in 1 week from KNCC? mdal3enna 7ail sara7a.
oh wait, they're both kids movies, so it's ok.
(Take both your younger sibling and the 2nd younger too!)
o 3ayed ya s3ayed

================================

So.. What's Usury?

That's what I set out to find out last week. I first heard of the term while watching "The Merchant of Venice" when a boat full of christians passes under a bridge in the Jewish ghetto and one of them yells up at the Jews:
"Userer!!"

Then again last week I looked up "interest" in Wikipedea and in the end one of the "See Also" links was "Usury". So I followed the link.

To put it shortly, it means what we muslims know as Reba.

So I'm highly intrigued because I've always been curious about this specific Sin. Why? well because as far as I've seen, the similarities between the main 3 Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) were always clear and prevalent:

- We stone adulterers, but Jews stoned adulterers way before we did.
- Muslim women wear 7ejab, Jewish women (the orthodox old ladies atleast) wear hear pieces to cover their "real" hair. One jewish friend told me its a religious thing. His grandmother and old aunts have to cover their hair so they get fake hair. (typical law dodging in my opinion, just like the story of beni Israel who set up their fish nets on Friday and collected the fish on Sunday so they could circumvent the law that they shouldn't catch the fish on Saturday) ilmohem.
- Irrasool tells muslim men to let go their beards, and so do Jewish men are also directed to have beards.

and on and on.. the similarities in the laws of 7aram and 7alal are very similar between us muslims and jews. My only guess explanation of why the similarities are not shared with christianity to that level is, I think that Jesus came to "lift" some of the restrictions that were on the Jews, and not to replace the religion entirely. So Judaism survives with lots and lots of Do's and Don'ts, while Christianity is a more spiritual message in general that complements what the Jews had at the time.

But anyway, I was always curious why is Reba such a grave sin in Islam, but modern day Christians and Jews do it freely. This was my ignorance I was bound to discover. For in that simple Wiki page, it shows passages from the Old Testament (Torah) as well as from the New Testament (Enjeel, well atleast what survived untouched from them). Passages that clearly condemn Usury and very clearly: Interest

If thou lend money to any of My people, even to the poor with thee, thou shalt not be to him as a creditor; neither shall ye lay upon him interest. Exodus 22:24

The list of passages goes long and as I read and read, it was very clear that even among normal people and the common culture it IS considered a grave sin. In Dante's Divine Comedy for example he describes the Userers as being in a level of Hell so low its even bellow the suiciders (the gravest of sins according to all the 3 faiths) in the 7th and lowest circle.

I'm not writing this post to preach how bad Riba is by evidence of old religions and history. I'm writing it because for the longest time when I discuss Riba with some ignorant muslims who deal with Riba on a daily basis, they argue with me as if Islam came with something new and alien to human nature. That charging interest is a necessity for the modern economy. I will discuss that in a future post inshalla. But evidently the issue is ALOT older than Irrasool Mo7ammad PBUH. How could he have known the history of it all?

The first time it became legal was in the time of Henry the 8th (ilmaynoon) who instead of divorcing his wives (because it was 7aram), he beheaded them (ya3ne killing them is better yal Ahbal??). He was the 1st to legalize it, against the huge protest of the churches of the time.

Even to this day, alot of the current "interest rate" laws are rooted in a "moral" foundation. In the state of New York, if you give a loan to someone with an interest rate higher than the Federally approved rate at the time, the borrower can sue you and the loan would be void and illegal and he won't have to pay you a cent. Which is why loan-sharks don't depend on the law to collect but on the threat of breaking your legs. i.e. Muscle.

So my question is, does any of this shock you guys? wella bs ana was too naiive and ignorant about history?

And do you think that interest is fine? and if you do, what's your definition of the 7aram interest?

Harvard Association Project: Implicit

2008-03-16T10:11:00.009+03:00

My cousin showed this to me "Implicit Association Test" and tried it himself with the "Race" test and it concluded that he "slightly" preferred white people to black people.

It has many tests concerning many subjects which "americans" are considered to be biased on, such as:
- Weight (fat or slim)
- Sexuality (gay or straight)
- Religion (Judaism or Others)
- Ethnicity (Arab-Muslims or Others)
and so on... even:
- 2008 Presidential Candidates.

So I took the Religion one and it basically was trying to see how anti-semetic I was. The method is simple and effective, it tells you to place two fingers on the keys E and I. and asks you to press E(left) for example if you see a word associated with Good (pleasure, beautiful,etc.), and I(right) if you see a word associated with Bad (Hate, Agony..etc.). So it trains you to use a certain finger for a certain part of your brain that "likes" stuff, and the other finger for the "hated" stuff.

It later assigns pictures of the star of david, the Torah, and other Judaic symbols to one finger, and other images resembling other religions to the other finger, and measures the speed with which your brain responds. It then switches the fingers and measures again. To be fair.

So by seeing how readily your brain accepts each configuration, it gives you a rating of how "biased" are you towards or against that specific symbolism. I thought it was smart. It IS an academic project after all.

In the end it told me I had a "slight" inclination against Judaism as opposed to other religions, which I guess isn't too far from the truth.

After that I took another test about Arab/Muslims, and the result was that I was "moderately" biased "towards" Arab/Muslims compared to "other people". Which is ofcourse not surprising. But also it showed me the overall results they got from other people who took that test:

Which clearly shows that there's a very significant tendency to prefer Other People to Arab/Muslims among those who took the test (I'm assuming most of them were Harvard students and their friends and families .etc).

I guess it shows that Everyone's a Little Bit Racist:

Please try out some of the tests and share your results!

(my wife's sister has been noticed to judge people and couples based on how "pretty" they are, and she denies this strongly. I also know that when she was little, she used to pinch the girls in her class which she thought were ugly! hah. amazing, I'll see what she gets on one of these tests if I can find one related to looks...)

===========================

Update: My wife just took the age preference test and she said to me clearly before she took it that she strongly preferred Old people to Young. Her result was "Moderate automatic preference for Young compared to Old"! and this is the overall:

Movies Guide & 4 year old Painter

2008-03-13T13:15:00.009+03:00

Lollipop House

Zane's Dance (her 2 year old brother is named Zane)

This post will be a brief rating from Rotten Tomatoes of this week's new movies at KNCC, and also it will be about this little girl Marla Olmstead.

I watched this documentary "My Kid Could Paint That" about her and her family and how real is her phenomenon. The girl herself is so amazing and innocent, its such a captivating and wondrous story. Please checkout her paintings through her website and google and tell me what you think.

Is she a genius Pollack? or is modern art nothing more than "child's play"?
fascinating question.

Now here's what we have this week:

Rotten Tomatoes rating: 06% from 91 reviews (la y7oshek)

Rotten Tomatoes rating: 54% from 150 reviews
(Not Bad, Watchable)

Shaking 2500 Hands

2008-03-10T13:00:00.002+03:00

Sib7aaan Allaaaaaaaaah.

I'm completely and utterly overwhelmed by the sheer size of the response from every ordinary Kuwaiti to the death of Dr. A7mad.

I was only 1 hour out of the hospital before salat li3sha when he died. The news spread so fast that I actually got the call from a friend of mine who wanted me to confirm. My heart sank and told him I'd have to call my mother who was there when I left. So I did and she told me with a shaky voice "irrayal tewaffa". Ofcourse I was half expecting to hear the same words, and also half-expecting it was just a rumor, one of many that always circulated around him and his sickness. She couldn't say more than these two words. There was an air of defeat as she said them.

il7amdella I was relieved later to see that his sons were all calm and ready for the expected event. The eldest gave me the time of the burial, which was fast enough to honor issinna of a fast burial, yet gave enough time for the essential relatives to arrive from eS3oodiya. The 3 sons all participated in his washing that night in Sulaibekhaat. 3asa Alla yajerhom.

As we carried him to the front of the microphone, there were two other bodies being carried behind us, one male, the other female. Three in total. We quickly tried to circle the front rows and find a spot to stand before il'Emam began.

Hopefully inshalla there would be 40 people among us whose prayers Allah would accept for the deceased three. And there were many hundreds mashallah.

What really overwhelmed me however was il3aza at the cemetery itself.

I stood towards the back of the line, and the procession started. I saw so many faces and shook so many hands.. and they didn't stop. They kept on coming.
There were people who I recognized from newspapers, and others were my beloved kin and relatives.
Some were young, clean-shaven and capable, while others were blind old men being guided by an indian servant, and they were so slow they held up the entire line behind them.
The able young ones had opulent soft hands, while the old blind ones had grips of hardened Nowa5tha (sea captains).
Some were known wealthy merchants who owned large tracts of apartment buildings with incomes of hundreds of 1000's of KDs a month, while others were egyptian tea boys with no ghetra on their heads.
Some were famous and known for some reason or another, be it being a singer, an actor or even an old football player known for certain and specific goals against specific rival gulf teams in specific years from the long gone 80's.
Some were kids with wide-eyes full of innocense. Barely concentrating on saying the words "3athem Allah ajerkom" correctly and not embarrass himself or his father infront of him. Barely able to comprehend the concept of death, which encompassed the whole area for 100's of meters in every direction.
Some were long-bearded and without 3egel, equal portions of white and black hairs, the breadth of it royally draping their chests, most of their faces are so familiar to me because I see them almost each and every time I come to the cemetery. Nothing brings them every day other than their faith in iRasool's promise of qeraa6 of ajer for whoever prayed on a funeral, and another qeraa6 if he witnessed its burial til it was done. In contrast with that picture, one person, whose face I thankfully did not see, as he passed by me, reeked of the VERY strong and unmistakable smell of alcohol. Ya3ne en6er lay bacher? la tfashel 3omrek?! anyhow.. the line of men pressed on and others came in his place to shake my hand.
Some were serious men and respectable fathers of families, and some others wore pink spring shirts open to the mid chest with jelled hair, who you wouldn't trust with buying the groceries.

As the afternoon wore on, it came close to 5:30 and the line was still moving, and from my vantage point I couldn't tell how many more remained. But by that time, the emotional toll of all of these people's gracious generosity was starting to weigh very heavily on me. The 2.5 second repetition of "Ajerna wajrek, yzak Allah 5air" over 2,500 times so far, became materialized into a touchable and tangible feeling of gratitude inside my chest towards all of these people. I felt so tiny and unworthy of all of their kindness.

Thank you All and yzakom Allah alf alf 5air.

3asa Allah yej3al gabrek rotha min roth iljanna ya 3amme A7mad o yej3al mathwak iljanna.

عظم الله اجركم

2008-03-05T21:20:00.002+03:00

A7mad iRub3y (Bu Qutaiba) passed away tonight o 3asalla ysabber ahala o ahal ilKuwait.

He'll be buried inshalla tomorrow Thursday il3aser.

He needs your prayers now. Thank you all.

My 4year old Son's Mischief (Updated 11th Mar)

2008-03-04T12:11:00.004+03:00

Update (11th Mar): This is an attempt to translate some of the Kuwaiti expressions so the non-arabic speakers don't miss 3abood's punchlines.

=================================================

Story 1:

After he scattered all his toys and puzzle pieces all over the floor, finished playing with them, and got up quickly to vacate the area...

Me: 3abood, wain raye7 (where are you going?) ? ta3al (come) yalla pick up your things and put them back in the box.

3abood keeps walking straight as if he didn't hear me

Me: 3abdAlla!! la tsawe ro7ek matesma3. 3aib. (don't act like you didn't hear, its impolite)

3abood: inzaaaain... bs ana ta3baaan. Abe cake.

=================================================

Story 2:

My 7 year old daughter is sitting on the sofa watching cartoons. She and 3abood always have this fight over the middle spot of the sofa that is directly infront of the screen. Even though the 2 other spots on its left and right are equally good. And being 3 years older, she usually gets her way.

3abood bursts into the room : 6ayooba! Pony tabeech! (Pony wants you)

6ayoba being the good obedient girl that she is, never ignores a summons, runs out the door to see what the maid wants in order to run back quickly so she misses the least amount possible of the show.

3abood (il'Ahbal) runs to the favorite sofa spot AS SOON AS his sister leaves it. Ya3ne en6er shway until she's out the door? nope, he didn't think that far ahead. He saw, he ran he grabbed.

6ab3an she saw that and immediately bumped him out of the sofa. You live, you learn.

=================================================

Story 3:

6ayooba is changing her clothes in her room which she shares with her brother, and as she enters it calls out loudly:

6ayooba: Tara ana al7een ra7 abaddel! maabe a77ad yed5al o yshoof! (I'm going to change my clothes now, I don't want anyone to enter and see)

3abood who was totally oblivious in the living room and busy playing with something, immediately perks up his ears and is now alerted, RUNs to the door, which 6ayooba quickly tries to close... but too late, 3abood is now pushing it in, and she was pushing it out. A battle of the muscles, but 3abood being smaller just sits down and pushes with his legs.

3abood: Abe Ashoof!! (I want to See!)

Ya3ne lo sakta chan ma dara 3an hawa darha.. (literally) (if she had been silent, he wouldn't have been alerted)

=================================================

Story 4:

3abood is sitting in the favorite sofa middle spot watching Thelvethter on MBC3. Metsammet o frowning, I'm not sure if he's enjoying it, but he sure is concentrating.

My wife: 3abood, wanna come with me awadeek Barroue in Avenues? (he pronounces it Ava.Noes) (wanna come with me to a playground at the mall?)

3abood keeps watching and 3aged innoona (furrowed brows) ignoring her. And an anvil falls on Sylvester (owww! Thuffren Thackatash)

My wife: 3aboooood, matabe tye ma3ai??? (don't you want to come with me?)

3abood: Inzaaaaaaaaaaaaain.. bs intai tsogeen. (fiiine, but you drive)

Me and my wife look at each other and then at him: E7lef!!!
Maskeen shakla he's too tired of 12 hours cross country driving.

Google Reader For The Win

2008-03-02T11:59:00.003+03:00

Whew.. I finally got all the old posts out of there and in a presentable form. They are all minus the wonderful comments and encouragements of all of you readers. So again I'm sorry for losing those.

Anyhow, here's something you might find useful. If you have too many blogs and sites that you want to check every day and you want an easier way than Blogroll for example, then Google Reader is your answer.

You just login to it with your google id and just add subscriptions to any site or blog you like. It will automatically track the RSS feeds and show you any new content as (unread).

I hope it makes your lives easier :)

What to do with your 120kd?

2008-03-02T11:50:00.005+03:00

Without helping cause more inflationary prices?

Here's a few questions you can try to answer:

1- Is this 120kd monthly going to save you from a financial crisis?
2- Do you want it to go straight to whoever exports
secondary/discretionary goods to Kuwait?
3- Do you enjoy seeing the prices of almost everything just simply take a uni-lateral step forward?

If you answered NO to the above questions, then here's what you can do:

1- Go to your bank.
2- Ask them to create a 2nd account for you.
3- Create a monthly automatic transfer of 120KD to it.

If you're young, then in 5 years you'll find 7,200 KD in this little account plus whatever extra the bank adds (I advise you that fawa'ed/interest is 7aram so stay away from those). A pretty good hunk of change to help you get a car or buy furniture for your dream house to start in a married life or whatever. So from now til then, I give you my best "good luck wishes" :)

If you're a bit older and past that then it can be a good amount for you to start a small business or if you're too busy simply invest it in some hot fund (you got 5 years to do your research, so start early ;)

My point is, this is something extra you didn't need before today. If you change your consumption habits next month to accommodate it, then you would have done yourself nothing but more dependence and you'll be causing the rest of us more inflation. So please don't. and Thank you.

Get Yourself One of These

2008-03-02T11:46:00.001+03:00

I heard before that these existed, but I never really bothered to give it much thought. until..

I heard on the radio the other day about Zell Kravinsky, the brief is that he's a very smart and successful man who made alot of money quickly. But he also:

Created a $6.2 million Adria Kravinsky Endowment for Public Health at the CDC Foundation, to support the work of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Kravinsky didn't have a suit to wear at the announcement. He purchased one for $20 at a thrift shop.

Donated a million square feet of Ohio commercial real estate worth $30 million to the Ohio State University school of public health.

Ofcourse generosity is very relative, the woman who gave the remaining tamra to her two hungry daughters by splitting it in half was complimented by iRasool (PBUH) when he saw her do that. And on the other hand, is a billionaire giving away a million dollars considered generous? It's all relative, and every little bit helps, and all that. But Zell interested me because he was very middle class, made some good money, then felt compelled to donate it. To him it was a moral obligation.

"In an effort to save his marriage and family, Kravinsky has put a bunch of equity into a private retirement account for Emily and bought his wife a new house." after he was living in an apartment with his wife and 4 children.

He gave away almost all of the $45 million which he made to charities. but WAIT. he went further.

After his wife threatened to divorce him, he gave away one of his kidneys to a total stranger. who he asked to be given to someone "poor and black".

He studied the statistics and found out that the probability of one of his children needing him to donate his kidney to one of them was very very small. Because the odds of getting kidney failure for someone who does not have a family history with the disease was indeed pretty remote.

He felt it was his moral obligation to give it to someone sick and fighting for his/her life than to keep it and die with it, JUST in case one of his close family might need it.

Call me crazy, but I got so moved by this man that I went to the center for Organ Donation in Rotha (you can see their sign over the house on the corner on eSefar highway and 4th ringroad) and this is their number 2520230.

I went there to ask about how the process goes, the man there greeted me with a warm smile and explained to me they can only take down my name and give me one of these donation cards for me to carry around incase I die in an accident, basically that I'm giving them permission to use any organs in the few hours remaining after brain death.

So I got the card and the man was so pleasant that he said to me: "I'm happy to tell you that since we started the program until today, not a single volunteer died." smiling, and I just laughed at that, because, even though he was trying to encourage me, it also means the program has been so far, useless. Because the program is for getting organs from "dying" people. But he meant well :)

Then I went to Hamad al-Eesa center for kidney transplants and asked around. They told me to start the process of becoming a donor I had to be evaluated Psychologically 1st:

Me: Salam, I'm here to ask about donating?

Tea-Sipping Kuwaiti: to a relative?

Me: No.. to whoever.

TSK: *pause* so you don't have someone you want to give it to?

Me: No, I'm thinking just someone who needs it *then I realized the stupidity of that statement*

TSK: What's your financial situation?

Me: *bewilderment* what does that have to do with anything?

TSK: Its part of the process, *wink wink trying to make me understand* are you employed? how's your salary?

Me: My salary's good il7emdella I'm more than satisfied, why is this required to know?

TSK: well.. some donors ask for money from the recipients' family, and we try to curb that. Usually if the patient is Kuwaiti, the family would put an ad in the paper, and then a desperate expat would contact them and they'd arrange for payment, but in some cases the donor keeps on extorting them long after the transplant. It gets ugly sometimes.

Me: Oh I see.. well I'm not after any compensation..

TSK: why are you doing this? most Kuwaitis get their needs using the ads like I said.

Me: Well I don't know, don't you get poor people who can't pay?? (at this point I'm really surprised by where the conversation is going, I expected encouragment from this guy)

TSK: I see.. so do you have any conditions for the person you want to donate to?

Me: Well, poor I guess, and maybe priority to a young person? shrayek? what do you think?

TSK: hmmm... I'll take your contact information and call if you if I get a candidate.

I left his office and went back to the doctors to ask about what are the real dangers for myself here. Because I'm hoping that I'm thinking clearly at this stage. And if not, someone would tell me I'm wrong.

The information I get is that it IS more likely to succeed if the donated kidney comes from a live and willing person as opposed to one from a brain-dead accident victim, mainly because the window for the latter is much smaller and fluctuating blood pressure can damage the kidneys and make them unusable. I asked about patients who need it and the Dr assured me he has lots of cases.

At home, I have to discuss it with my father now, to get his advice... turns out not only is he outraged, but he calls me depressed, unreasonable, and that it would be 7aram to do it, because I'd be endangering myself. I pacify him. "Malek illa irretha yuba."

Then I go to 2 different famous and knowledgeable A'emma that I know and ask them both about if its 7aram or not. They both tell me if I make sure from doctors that it wouldn't be a danger to me, then it would be Ajer, and not 7aram.

So I call this Dr. Fawzy Al-Khawari who works in Hamad al-Eesa's center himself and does the operations. And he assured me they've been doing it for 30 years now, and that Kuwait has excellent experience in the procedure, and that 95% of the time they don't even open you up. But they do it with minthaar and then the freed kidney is taken out through a small cut.

So now my question is, how hard should I press my father about this?

And am I being crazy and unreasonable here?

Greed Is Good?

2008-03-02T11:30:00.004+03:00

Economic theory dating back to Adam Smith always assures us that the best way to run markets is through competition. Less regulation means more sellers, which means lower prices, better products and more satisfied customers. Survival of the fittest. plain and simple. Sounds all cut-throat and dismally greedy? don't worry, Michael Douglas here says it very clearly (skip to 2:35 etha malek 5ulg :)

And the modern World Economy shows us that as a model its really not that bad in driving Wealth creation and growth. Capitalism does work beautifully.

We as muslims however add a non-secular element to the capitalist equation which is Zakat and sadaqa and so on. Rewards that you receive in the afterlife, in heaven, after you die.

But even for non-religious people, I contest that even though greed is good, absolute greed is not always the best way to go. Here's an example that I saw on the way to Bin-Khaldoun St. (Kuwait's Silicon Valley :P)

I was the Red car, and my lane was standing still. Now the classic Adam Smith theory tells me I should strive to get ahead as much as possible towards my destination, full stop. I shouldn't care where other cars want to go, I should only pour all my thinking into finding new and better ways to reach where I want to go. And the theory is, that if we all do the same, then it would serve the greater good. Just worry about yourself and by not being a liability to others and asking for their help, you'd be doing the rest of the community (the street in this matter) a big favor.

So the car behind me Blue decides to obey Adam Smith and does this:

Creating yet another congestion.

Obviously the road width and design are insufficient for the amount of traffic in that area, and obviously not following the traffic laws can cause more bad than good. But my point is that I in the red car only backed up about 2 meters like so, and the congestion in the road from the right was gone.

Thing is, I was not overly charitable when I did this. I was just as bored and frustrated by the traffic jam as everyone else. So by not sacrificing much at all (only 2 meters of forward advancement) a whole problem of congestion on the right side (who are not related to me in anyway, and I couldn't care less whether they wait or not) got solved.

But if you try to put yourself in other people's shoes and "Empathize" with their problems, then you can find ways to solve their problems at very little cost to yourself if not completely nill. And this goes against Adam Smith and Capitalism.

So yes Greed drives progress and makes a great and better world, but also:
a tiny bit of consideration to other people can go a long way

Sitting Next To a Dying Man

2008-03-02T11:25:00.002+03:00

Last night I went to visit a man, a great man who's widely loved and respected by everyone who knows him.

He was surrounded by close family, watching TV, and he was asking me how "I" was doing, with great detail and interest. I had to strain to make out his words, and fill in the gaps of what I couldn't hear. And it struck me very clearly why he was so loved.

He cared about others more than he did for himself.

He spent most of his life asking people how they were doing, spent it trying to make a difference for other people's betterment.

He was pre-occupied with other people's needs. He was useful to them.

خيركم خيركم لأهله

So you can imagine how much more that is if your concern touched a wider circle of people. I mean, il-Ahl is a flexible term..

All I could do to return his favor of concern was to pray for him the usual sickness prayers and may his pain (which he NEVER showed, and infact was cracking jokes and made US laugh) be 6uhoor and cleansing to whatever sins he had.

أجر و عافية

Anonymous or Not

2008-03-02T10:31:00.001+03:00

Welcome Friends,

I started this post with the title "This Cave is Mine" as a familiar form of announcing a new blog's birth.

But now I'm scratching my head, thinking what this small corner of the world should be dedicated to, what would it's purpose be, and whether or not it would bore you (the guest) by being purely selfish and narrating events that happen to me and thoughts that storm through my head and leave them strewn all over the floor? or..

Should it be about something that you could find interesting. After all you ARE the guest, and I already know what's in my own head.

Now I'll put down this challenge that most things that we find to be interesting have some truth in them. You would argue "but fiction is widely popular!" but I assure you it is not because of how fictional it is, but because how we try ever so hard to find the link between these fictional events and the real events around us.

Each novel is a puzzle for our minds to rationalize and in the end one of the main characteristics we use for its evaluation is? How realistic it was!

So the catch is, the more interesting I try to make this, by being more true and realistic to myself, the less anonymous I'll become.

This dillema I'm sure faces any blogger wishing to stay unknown. The more you share, the more the possibility of someone close to you can complete the puzzle and jump to the conclusion that its you!

You can keep your musings average, unoriginal and uninspired, in order to "blend in" the general public, but then, that would defeat the whole purpose of blogging as a means of Self-expression?

More to that problem, the sheer challenge of trying to STAY anonymous is pretty daunting! who needs the headache of falsifying a whole new identity. Trying to sound and act differently. It can be exciting at first and the warmth of anonymity's cloak gives you the Freedom to do so many things that you normally wouldn't do if you knew others would recognize you. But later on, you begin to feel increasingly ISOLATED by the same cloak that shields you from the rest of the world.

Lets examine the 3 different paths the figure above offers:
a) No identifiable information:
This begs to ask what information is to be considered identifiable, and who's trying to identify you. If the person you need to hide from knows you well enough, your blog would end up being a blank page! that's depressing. Not very good.

b & c) False Identity & Stolen Identity:
Here you have to tell lies to sound like you're someone else. Which also works against your need for self-expression. instead of expressing your own thoughts you're getting busy weaving lies. Very counter-productive.

So, are we saying that Anonymity only enables your Self-expression in the Short-term? and that on the long run it actually works against it??!

Mo3thela wella mo mo3thela?

And we're back

2008-02-29T17:52:00.002+03:00

I apologize for the sudden disappearance, as I was having some technical problems with the blog :P

I'll try to retrieve the old posts later inshalla. Sorry for losing all your comments and feedback.

Negativity Sucks

What makes a super man?

Most/Least Valuable Thing?

Nag Hammadi Library, Apocalypse of Peter and Surat al-Nisa'

Mokaani Mokaani, Ya Zamaani

Who do You Subscribe to on Youtube?

The Bitter Sweet Humility of It

Imogen Heap - Wait it Out

Keep Right

Look up and fear Allah

Please Watch Food Inc.

Wonderful Insight Into How Our Brains Work

Litany Against Fear + Death by Stoning

I must not fear.Fear is the mind-killer.Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.I will face my fear.I will permit it to pass over me and through me.And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.Only I will remain.

Intolerance? No, it's more like Love

Life of Pi

‏ ‏لن يفلح قوم ولوا أمرهم امرأة

The Bridge in the Title

Is Being an Extremist a Good Thing?

Israel = 3abdAlla ... ?

Cable Cut 2 Days Ago

Yesterday I Was Happy :)

I'm Only 3.5 Years Old

High Divorce Rate in Kuwait?

Dr. Laurence B. Brown's Conversion Story

Standing Next to a Murderer.. infront of God

Giving and Receiving in the Didache

Lesbo Concert One Summer Evening

His Voice Tore My Heart Out

Kiva Rocks the World

A Mouse Trap That Doesn't Work..

Cable Cut and Great Morning Song

Until further notice...

Regret is a Useful Emotion?

تقبل الله طاعتكم و عسى عيدكم مبارك

Human Suffering Overload

Insurance is Gambling

Embryonic Stem Cells can become Cancerous

Bob Dylan's Prophetic Song

Funny British Controversial Racism

Got Multiple Sclerosis? La Tghabbi

On Blocking Youtube Day 9

The Rules of the Game p.5

On Blocking Youtube Day 2

On Blocking Youtube

A Rockband Ghabga

My Friend the Athiest

I Love This Man

Grandma's Song

The Rules of the Game p.4 + 3laiwi

منا و فينا

Your Prayers Can Help

The Rules of the Game p.3

The Rules of the Game p.2

Thank You God for Saving Zaina p.2

Thank You God for Saving Zaina p.1

God is talking to you

The Rules of the Game p.1

Listen to the MYoosek! and buy the Myka!

The Rules of the Game, intro

Strong vs. Smart

As If Teddy Was Watching

Banning Election Primaries is WRONG

The Challenge to Empathize

Movies This Week & What's Usury?

Harvard Association Project: Implicit

Movies Guide & 4 year old Painter

Shaking 2500 Hands

عظم الله اجركم

My 4year old Son's Mischief (Updated 11th Mar)

Google Reader For The Win

What to do with your 120kd?

Get Yourself One of These

Greed Is Good?

Sitting Next To a Dying Man

Anonymous or Not

And we're back