March 26, 2014 at 11:03 pm (Food for the soul, Quotes, Quran, Translation)
Tags: Arabic language, Food for the soul, Quotes, Quran, translation
محمد بن يزيد بن خنيس المكي قال سمعت سفيان الثوري سئل عن قوله تعالى وخلق الإنسان ضعيفا ما ضعفه قال المرأة تمر بالرجل فلا يملك نفسه عن النظر إليها ولا هو ينتفع بها فأي شيءأضعف من هذا
Sufyan al-Thawri (رحمة الله) was asked about the saying of Allah , “And man was created weak.” (4:28) What is his weakness? He replied:
“A women passes by a man, and the man can not prevent himself from looking at her and he attains no benefit from it. So is there anything weaker than this?!”
Hilyatul Awliya
March 26, 2014 at 10:55 pm (Current Affairs)
Tags: Current Affairs
March 26, 2014 at 10:05 pm (Current Affairs, Non-Muslim)
Tags: Current Affairs, Non-Muslim
A Chinese American Non Muslim Woman Experiments with Hijaab
by Kathy Chin, originally published in Al-Talib, the newsmagazine of the Muslim Students’ Association of the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) in October 1994. At the time of its publication, Kathy Chin was a senior at UCLA majoring in Psychobiology and Women’s Studies.
I walked down the street in my long white dress and inch-long, black hair one afternoon, and truck drivers whistled and shouted obscenities at me. I felt defeated. I had just stepped out of a hair salon. I had cut my hairshort, telling the hairdresser to trim it as she would a guy’s. I sat numbly as my hairdresser skillfully sheared into my shoulder-length hair with her scissors, asking me with every inch she cut off if I was freaking out yet. I wasn’t freaking out, but I felt self-mutilated.
I WAS OBLITERATING MY FEMININITY
It wasn’t just another haircut. It meant so much more. I was trying to appear androgynous by cutting my hair. I wanted to obliterate byfemininity. Yet that did not prevent some men from treating me as a sex object. I was mistaken. It was not my femininity that was problematic, but my sexuality, or rather the sexuality that some men had ascribed to me based on my biological sex. They reacted to me as they saw me and not as I truly am. Why should it even matter how they see me, as long as I know who I am? But it does.
I believe that men who see women as only sexual beings often commit violence against them, such as rape and battery.Sexual abuse and assault are not only my fears, but my reality. I was molested and raped. My experiences with men who violated me have made me angry and frustrated. How do I stop the violence? How do I prevent men from seeing me as an object rather than a female? How do I stop them from equating the two? How do I proceed with life after experiencing what others only dread?
The experiences have left me with questions about my identity. Am I just another Chinese-American female? I used to think that I have to arrive at aconclusion about who I am, but now I realize that my identity is constantly evolving.
MY EXPERIENCE OF BEING “HIJABED”
One experience that was particularly educational was when I “dressed up” asa Muslim woman for a drive along Crenshaw Boulevard with three Musim men as part of a news magazine project. I wore a white, long – sleeved cottonshirt, jeans, tennis shoes, and a flowery silk scarf that covered my head, which I borrowed from a Muslim woman. Not only did I look the part, I believed I felt the part. Of course, I wouldn’t really know what it feels like to be Hijabed – I coined this word for the lack of a better term everyday, because I was not raised with Islamic teachings.
However, people perceived me as a Muslim woman and did not treat me as a sexual being by making cruel remarks. I noticed that men’s eyes did not glide over my body as has happened when I wasn’t Hijabed. I was fully clothed, exposing onlymy face. I remembered walking into an Islamic center and anAfrican-American gentleman inside addressed me as “sister” and asked where I came from. I told him I was originally from China. That didn’t seem to matter. There was a sense of closeness between us because he assumed I was Muslim. I didn’t know how to break the news to him because I wasn’t sure if I was or not. I walked into the store that sold African jewelry andfurniture and another gentleman asked me as I was walking out if I was Muslim. I looked at him and smiled, not knowing how to respond. I chose not to answer.
BEING HIJABED CHANGED OTHERS’ PERCEPTION OF ME
Outside the store, I asked one of the Muslim men I was with, “Am I Muslim?” He explained that everything that breathes and submits is. I have concluded that I may be and just don’t know it. I haven’t labeled myself as such yet.I don’t know enough about Islam to assert that I am Muslim. Though I don’t pray five times a day, go to a mosque, fast, nor cover my head with a scarf daily, this does not mean that I am not Muslim. These seem to be the natural manifestations of what is within. How I am inside does not directly change whether I am Hijabed or not. It is others’ perception of methat was changed. Repeated experiences with others in turn creates a self-image.
HIJAB AS OPPRESSION: A SUPERFICIAL AND MISGUIDED VIEW
I consciously chose to be Hijabed because I was searching for respect from men. Initially, as both a Women’s Studies major and a thinking female, I bought into the Western view that the wearing of a scarf is oppressive. After this experience and much reflection, I have arrived at the conclusion that such a view is superficial and misguided: It is not if the act is motivated by conviction and understanding.
THE MOST LIBERATING EXPERIENCE OF MY LIFE
I covered up that day out of choice, and it was the most liberating experience of my life. I now see alternatives to being a woman. I discovered that the way I dress dictated others’ reaction towards me. It saddens me that this is a reality. It is a reality that I have accepted,and chose to conquer rather than be conquered by it. It was my sexuality that I covered, not my femininity. The covering of the former allowed the liberation of the latter.
March 23, 2014 at 10:00 pm (Seeking Knowledge)
Tags: Seeking Knowledge
March 23, 2014 at 7:58 pm (Current Affairs, English language)
Tags: Current Affairs, English language
Bismillah
Currently researching how digital talk has affected the English language, in particular the use of SMS. There is much that can be said for and against, but in the nature of digital talk and its love of abbreviations I will just post one of each.
“The convenience of electronically-mediated language is that it tempts us to make a Faustian bargain of sacrificing thoughtfulness for immediacy”
March 22, 2014 at 12:53 pm (Non-Muslim, Refutations, Seeking Knowledge)
Tags: Non-Muslim, Refutations, Seeking Knowledge
The Truth About Abraham and his SON Ishmael, Peace be upon Them
By: Abdul-Rahman (Brent) Klimaszewski
(He is a new convert to Islam)
1) First, let us look at Genesis 16:3, “So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian maidservant Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. (From the NIV Bible, Genesis 16:3)” Clearly this tells us Abraham (PBUH) Married Hagar.
2) Next let us analysis at why and what age Allah (SWT) commanded Abraham (PBUH) to take Ishmael and Hagar to settle in Arabia (Paran)
“Was Ishmael and Hagar sent to the desert before or after the birth of Isaac? If we were to accept the Biblical version, we would encounter a number of inconsistencies and contradictions. It is clear from the story in Gen. 21:14-19 that Ishmael was a little baby at that time. For example according to Gen. 16:16 Abraham was 86 years old when Ishmael was born. And according to Gen. 21:5 Abraham was one hundred years old when Isaac was born. It follows that Ishmael was already fourteen years old when his younger brother Isaac was born. According to Gen. 21:8-19 the incident took place after Isaac was weaned. Biblical scholars tell us the child was probably weaned at about the age of three. Thus, it follows that when Hagar and Ishmael were taken away Ishmael was a full-grown teenager, seventeen years old. However, the profile of Ishmael in Gen 21:14-19 is a small baby and not a full-grown teenager. Why?
Genesis 21:14-21
14 Early next morning Abraham took some food and a full water-skin and gave them to Hagar. He set the child on her shoulder and sent her away, and she wandered about in the wilderness of Beersheba. 15 When the water in the skin was finished, she thrust the child under a bush, 16 then went and sat down some way off, about a bowshot distant. How can I watch the child die? she said, and sat there, weeping bitterly. 17 God heard the child crying, and the angel of God called from heaven to Hagar, What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid: God has heard the child crying where you laid him. 18 Go, lift the child and hold him in your arms, because I shall make of him a great nation.19 Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well full of water; she went to it, filled the water-skin, and gave the child a drink. 20 God was with the child as he grew up. He lived in the wilderness of Paran and became an archer; 21 and his mother got him a wife from Egypt. (The Revised English Bible)
1st) First, the original Hebrew for Gen. 21:14 is ” and put the bread and water on her shoulder AND the boy.” Anyone fluent in Hebrew can confirm this! This reading is still rendered in the Revised English Bible; however, other Bible publishers possibly aware of the discrepancy decided to translate the verse slightly different; however, we can see their trick! How would a mother carry a seventeen-year-old teenager on her shoulder? Certainly he was probably strong enough to carry his mother. Ishmael must have been a baby!
2nd) Second, in Gen 21:15 we are told that Hagar put the child under one of the bushes. Ishmael must have been a baby and not a teenager!
3rd) Third, in Gen 21:16 we are told that Hagar sat away so she did not have to see the child die before her eyes. Is this the profile of a husky seventeen-year-old teenager who probably was capable of being worried about his mother dying before his eyes? Or is it obviously a profile of a small helpless baby? Ishmael must have been a baby and not a teenager!
4th) According to Gen 21:17-18, the angels told Hagar lift the child and hold him in your arms. Is a seventeen-year-old man the object of being lifted up and held in one’s arms by a woman while CRYING? Or is it the reference of a small child. Ishmael must have been a baby and not a teenager!
5th) According to Gen 21:19 we are told that Hagar filled the bottle with water and gave the child a drink. One would expect a seventeen year old to bring water to his mother instead. Ishmael must have been a baby and not a teenager!
6th) According to Gen 21:14 Abraham puts the food and water on Hagar’s shoulder. Why doesn’t the strong husky seventeen-year old Ishmael offer to carry the food and water? Ishmael must have been a baby and not a teenager!
7th) According to Gen 21:20-21?? Ishmael grew up, became an archer and got married. Ishmael must have been a baby and not a teenager!
The above analysis leads to the inevitable conclusion that while the Bible contains some truths as explained earlier, there is also evidence of human additions, deletions and interpolations which only a subsequent authentic revelation could clear. The Islamic version of the story is fully consistent and coherent from A to Z; Ishmael was a baby and Isaac was not born yet when this incident took place. This proves that the real reason behind their settlement in Arabia (Paran) was not the dictation, jealousy, ego or sense of racial superiority on the part of Sarah. It was rather God’s plan, pure and simple!” (From: http://www.why-christians-convert-to-islam.com/nice201.htm).
Of course let us remember the Corrupted bibles own statement; “ ‘How can you say, “We are wise, for we have the law of the LORD,” when actually the lying pen of the scribes has handled it falsely? (From the NIV Bible, Jeremiah 8:8)”
As we can clearly see the Jews tampered with their scripture, and some of the jewish scribes were obviously racist towards Ishmael and believe the jews were the only true human beings (just like the racist zionist jews of today) although we ALL come from the SAME person, Adam!
3) Proof that Ishmael (PBUH) was the child who was to be sacrificed by Abraham (PBUH).
“The following quotes are taken from the Bible.
The Bible Genesis 22:2
“Take now your son, your only son, whom you love,_______, and go to the land of Moriah; and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains”.
The Bible Genesis 22:12
“Since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.”
The important question is who was this only son of Abraham that was offered for sacrifice? Ishmael the eldest son or Isaac the second son? The Bible writers have placed the name of Isaac in the blank space above. Muslims believe Ishmael was around thirteen years old when Abraham was asked to sacrifice him. In both the above quotations the Lord uses the word your only son. Obviously, the logical answer is that the incident must have taken place before the birth of Isaac, the second son of Abraham. So, what could be the reason that the name of Isaac appears in the blank space, as the only son of Abraham? Bible scholars explain that anomalyby putting forward the following two arguments.
The first argument is that after the birth of Isaac, Ishmael lost his status of being a son of Abraham, since he was not born of a wife of Abraham but born to a handmaid of Abraham’s wife. However, this argument is false because Hagar was a wife of Abraham otherwise the Lord would not have used the word wife in the following verse.
Genesis 16:3 So after Abraham had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian maidservant Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife.
Moreover, Jews and Christians contend that only Isaac, the one that was born to Sarai was a son. However the biblical passage below tells us that Ishmael never lost his status as a son, not even after the birth of Isaac. If Ishmael had lost the status, the Lord would not have used the word sons in the following verse.
Genesis 25:9 Then his sons Isaac and Ishmael, buried him (Abraham) in the cave of Machpelah.
A second argument presented is that because Ishmael was born to a handmaid he would qualify as a seed or a descendant of Abraham, but not as a son. This argument is nullified because prevailing Nuzi Laws of marriage (exhibit A) tell us that such marriage contracts were legal in the days of Abraham and the child born of a handmaid or slave-girl would have the same status as one born to the wife, even if the wife had a child of her own later. There can be no doubt concerning the validity of the Nuzi laws of marriage. For example, when one traces the maternal side of the children of Israel, Genesis tells us that Jacob (later called Israel Gen 32:28) had four wives. He married Leah (Gen 29:22-23), Rachel (Gen 29:28), a slave-girl Bilhah (Gen 30:4), and another slave-girl Zilpah (Gen 30:9). From these four wives came the twelve Children of Israel: Reuben, Simeon, Levi,Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, Benjamin, Dan, Naptali, Gad and Asher (Gen 35:23-26 & 1 Chronicles 2:1-2). All twelve of these children make up the Israelites and are all referred as a combined group, see (Exodus 1:1-9). Four of the twelve children (Gad, Dan, Naphtali and Asher) were sons of the slave-girls. Thus, it follows that about one third of all Israelis are children of slave-girls! Will a third of all Jews stand up and say they are illegitimate? Moreover, further evidence that the Bible clearly includes the slave-children as part of the combined group of Israelis is the Bible’s tracking of their genealogy in (1 Chronicles 5:18; 1 Chronicles 7:12, 13, 30). Moreover, we are told that the children of Asher were leading princes.
1 Chronicles 7:40 “All these were descendants of Asher, heads of families, picked men of ability, leading princes.”
Consequently, the entire Abrahamic family tree is tracked in 1 Chronicles, including Abraham’s children from his first wife Hagar (1 Chronicles 1:29), his second wife Sarah (1 Chronicles 1:34) and his third wife Keturah (1 Chronicles 1:32 – see family tree at main web page).
Moreover, there is a very similar incident in the Bible (Ruth 1-4). In this story a child born to a handmaid is indeed recognized as a son. For example, Boaz, a landowner of Bethlehem, meets a handmaid named Ruth(Ruth 3:9) and marries her. Ruth was a young widow and a handmaid of Moabite descent (Ruth 1:4); the Moabite people were descendants of an act of incest by Lot and his daughters (Genesis 19:36-37). Boaz and Ruth latter had a son named Obed. Later on, Obed became the founder of the royal line of Israel (Ruth 4:17-22), an ancestor of both king David and of the great prophet Jesus. If the son of a maidservant of questionable heritage could have the honor of being the progenitor and forbearer of the most important lines of descent for both Jews and Christians, then why cannot Ishmael, a son of a handmaid, be offered by his father for a burnt offering as his only son? Moreover, this argument cannot be correct because if it were, Sarah would have never said. (Gen 16:2) The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her. Abraham agreed. It is certain that Sarah and Abraham knew the law and did not want to waste their time during their old age building an illegitimate family that would serve them no good!
So, is it out of tribal rivalry that the descendants of Isaac (Jews) are concealing these facts and depriving the preeminence due to the descendants of Ishmael (Arabs)? In Encyclopaedia Judaica Jerusalem, volume 9, under the heading Ishmael it is written:
“It is related that a renowned traditionalist of Jewish origin, from Qurayza tribe and another Jewish scholar who converted to Islam, told Caliph Omar ibn Abd al-Aziz (717-20) that the Jews were well informed that Ismail (Ishmael) was the one who was bound (sacrificed), but they concealed this out of jealousy. (All this, From: http://www.why-christians-convert-to-islam.com/nice201.htm)”.
http://www.answering-christianity.com/abdul-rahman_klimaszewski/abraham_and_ishmael.htm
March 19, 2014 at 12:07 pm (Current Affairs)
Tags: Current Affairs
Appearing by telepresence robot, Edward Snowden speaks at TED2014 about surveillance and Internet freedom. The right to data privacy, he suggests, is not a partisan issue, but requires a fundamental rethink of the role of the internet in our lives — and the laws that protect it. “Your rights matter,” he say, “because you never know when you’re going to need them.” Chris Anderson interviews, with special guest Tim Berners-Lee.
March 17, 2014 at 4:21 pm (Current Affairs)
Tags: Current Affairs
Were are the feminists campaigning against this??.
Filling a 25,000-seater stadium, Philadelphia’s annual chicken wing-eating competition is hotly contested by the some of the “best” eaters in the land. But the Wing Bowl is so much more than a spectator sport – it’s a night of debauchery.
It’s 5am and everybody’s already drunk.
The Wells Fargo stadium has only just opened its doors, but most people here have been standing vigil in the parking lot, passing beer cans back and forth out of the trunks of cars.
“It’s the Wing Bowl,” my host Nick tells me, “it’s the Mardi Gras of Philadelphia.”
Two teenagers pass out tablets of the stimulant Adderall to “stay awake.”
Once inside the stadium, the lights are so bright it’s easy to believe it’s day.
Everything here is branded – from the Lexus Club and Cadillac Grille, accessible only to those with special passes, to the Cure Insurance Club for the rest of us.
Whatever is on top tastes nothing like cheese.
The contestants are paraded, one by one, each with a gladiatorial pseudonym – Mann of Pie, Oink Oink, Wing-a-Tron, The Bear.
Their 25ft (7.6m) high images are beamed onto enormous Jumbotron screens.
Each entrance is styled to perfection, each contestant carefully costumed, each flanked by an entourage of strippers.
Yet I soon realise that the strippers are not the only women in the stadium expected to bare all for the crowd’s amusement.
You see, at the Wing Bowl, the eating of the wings is hardly the main event.
As the competition rumbles on – 30 minutes of wing-scoffing separated by a few commercial breaks – our eyes are on the Can Cam – a camera which picks out the chests of individual audience members and broadcasts them on the gargantuan JumboTron screens.
The more wings consumed, the more aggressive it gets.
The first few women broadcast are expecting it.
They cheer and pull up their shirts the moment they see themselves on screen.
A few have even worn specially coloured bras in anticipation.
Each chicken wing is usually split into two parts – or portions – known as the “drumette”; and the mid-section or “flat”
To qualify for the Wing Bowl, Molly Schuyler ate nine pounds of cottage cheese in 114 seconds
According to the National Chicken Council’s 2014 Wing Report, 1.25 billion wings will be devoured in the US during Super Bowl XLVIII in 2014
A chicken has two wings, and chicken companies are not able to produce wings without the rest of the chicken
The concept of cooking wings in peppery hot sauce was born in 1964 at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York, when co-owner Teressa Bellissimo cooked leftover wings in hot sauce as a late-night snack for her son and his friends
But the camera, and the crowd turn unforgiving.
The women chosen by the Can Cam are no longer the designated strippers, or those actively courting the lens, but ordinary punters – women in sweatshirts and knit caps making every effort to be left alone.
One woman notices herself on the screen and titters awkwardly, trying to wave the camera away.
The audience starts heckling her, but the camera doesn’t move.
The boos grow louder, and at last she realises it will not pan away until she does.
Half a second of her breasts, and the camera grows bored, moving on to the next victim.
Only in the final rounds of the competition does the audience’s attention shifts toward the wing-eating itself.
One of the contestants -Tiger Wings n’ Things – has reached the verge of vomiting.
Barbecue sauce smears across his face; some has dribbled down to his beard. He retches but manages not to open his lips.
Her fingers jerk from the bowl to her mouth with mechanistic speed”
The camera is on him now. It will not look away.
Everyone screams together: “You heave, you leave!”
The Jumbotron starts up in slow motion, replaying regurgitations past.
One, from 2011, is the crowd’s clear favourite – pink spew no less revolting at 26,000 frames per second.
Tiger Wings n’ Things tries not to look, but it’s too late.
His vomit, when it spirals from between his fingers, is almost dainty – nevertheless, it’s enough.
The crowd is ecstatic.
Soon, a leader emerges.
Molly Schuyler, a slender square-jawed woman, sporting multiple ear-piercings and a red and black bandana, breaks the world record when she eats her 348th wing.
She is the only woman contestant and the only one without a costume or a campy pseudonym.
Her fingers jerk from the bowl to her mouth with mechanistic speed. The other contestants are bestial, managing to seem hungry even after several hundred wings. But Molly is a machine.
Our neighbour, Frank – an 18-year veteran attendee – provides her backstory.
“You know, that girl ate a 72-ounce steak in two minutes and 44 seconds. Can you believe that?” He beams at us and goes on cheering.
We’ve forgotten the Can Cam. We’ve forgotten the strippers. Schuyler’s is the only face on the screen.
“A housewife from Nebraska.”
That’s how they announce it when she wins.
Nobody asks her to expose herself. We’re all too busy screaming her name.
She wins $22,000, a medal, and a championship ring.
She has eaten 363 wings.
The moment the applause is over, we all force our way out.
“Totally debauched, right?” Nick doesn’t even try to hide his glee. “It’s like Hell on Earth.”
A crowd elbows past us. I ask Nick if people are rushing to work.
“The strip clubs all do free breakfast today,” he scoffs. “Everyone knows that.”
BBC News
March 16, 2014 at 9:25 pm (Current Affairs, Quotes)
Tags: Current Affairs, Quotes
March 16, 2014 at 5:27 pm (English language)
Tags: Food for the soul
Mohammad Awan 