Imam Ghazalli's Five Tests for Pride

Are you or someone you know proud? Do you think you or they might be proud but wish there were some way to be sure? Well wish no more!! With Imam Ghazalli's Five Question Pride Test you can find out!

1. In an altercation with a friend, do you reject their opinion though it is correct?
2. When you meet with your friends or other persons, do you have difficulty giving them the best seats available?
3. Do you ignore the invitations of the poor or have difficulty going to the market for the necessities of relatives and friends?
4. Do you cringe at the idea of carrying a friends/relatives items from the market, in addition to your own?
5. Do you only feel comfortable going out in trendy, fashionable, brand name clothing or feel good when wearing such clothing when alone?

If you answered "yes" to one or more of the above then YOU, my friend, may be suffering from pride! Fix it.

What I Learned about Gratefulness

I'm reading this book, "The Revival of Religious Sciences" by one Imam Ghazalli, and I'm at the section regarding gratefulness. Now gratefulness (towards God), I always thought, meant to be thankful for what He has sent/given/saved me from/etc. As I read though, it turns out this is not entirely true. According to the Imam (with some Hadith's for support), proper gratefulness encompasses a few different things.

The first and most basic form of gratefulness is the knowledge that everything comes from God. The Imam sites a hadith that said:

One day, the Prophet Moses said in his invocation: O God, you have created Adam. How has he expressed gratefulness to you? God said: He knew that everything came from Me.

Throughout the book, the Imam says a lot of things about achieving (essentially) enlightenment, and while it still kind of baffles me, I think I'm starting to understand. Part of achieving this "enlightenment" is being able to, without stopping to think about it, immediately recognize that everything comes from God. Now, before you say "Well, duh." let me give you a simple example.

Someone gives you a present, what's the first thing that comes to mind? Probably "SWEET! This person's giving me a present!" Followed shortly after by "Thanks!" then, if you aren't too wrapped up in your present, a "Thanks God!"

From what I understand, it should be more like "SWEET! God sent this person to give me a present! Thanks God!" in the split second before saying "Thanks!" to the person.

There was a short story in here that said a woman while walking, tripped and fell. The first thing she said was "All praise and thanks are for God". The narrator asked her why she exclaimed that, to which she responded that by tripping and falling, God might forgive some of her sins. Being able to do that on cue is probably one of those steps to "enlightenment".

The next thing a person must do, from what I read, is use gifts for their intended purposes and for purposes that bring one closer to God, and not to neglect gifts. Remember that "gift" pretty much refers to anything; an iPhone, your arms or legs, a donors kidney, the flu, and so on. This is pretty much straightforward. If you gave a little race car toy to your younger brother, or a barbie to your little sister, and you found them using the race car as a door stop, or putting the barbie in the microwave, wouldn't you be a little bit ticked? Probably throw around terms like, ungrateful and brat? Yeah, I would too. So wouldn't it make sense that if we misuse our arms, legs, kidneys, or technology that God has gifted us with, He might feel that we're ungrateful for them?

So gratefulness:
To acknowledge in mind and body that all things are from God.

The 16 Gifts

From the Book of Constructive Virtues of Imam Ghazzali's "Revival of Religious Sciences", the Imam has listed 16 gifts of this world which will benefit one in the hereafter:

1. Spiritual Knowledge
2. Knowledge of Duties
3. Self Control
4. Justice
5. Health
6. Strength
7. Beauty
8. Long Life
9. Wealth
10. Family
11. Name
12. Relatives
13. Guidance
14. Injunctions of God
15. Efforts
16. God's Help

Elaborations to come once I figure them out, hopefully; the book is kind of hard to follow.

My Adventure into Stocks

One of the classes I took last year as part of my degree was called Engineering Economics, and in it we had to investigate different investment options. That was when I first started looking into investment vehicles and stocks in particular.

As I understand it a stock is a little slip of paper that says you own part of the company that sold it to you. That company takes the money you paid for the stock and uses it to do whatever they do, then if the company does well, the value of that little slip of paper increases, and if they do poorly, the value of the paper decreases. YOU make money by selling your stock when it's worth more than you paid for it.

Now, there is some concern over whether investing in stocks is permissible in Islam. Some people think it's too close to gambling because the stock market is so volatile. In my humble opinion trading in stock is just fine because you get what you pay for and there is always a risk in any purchase. If you buy a dishwasher you pay $400 dollars and hope the thing works. If it does: huzzah, you got your moneys worth. If it doesn't, well that's just too bad, but that's the risk you have to take. In gambling, you pay, oh I don't know, $400 and hope to God above you get more back, the key word being HOPE. In the case of the dishwasher, sure it didn't work, but you did get a dishwasher, you were being guaranteed a dishwasher in exchange for $400, and nowadays most companies are nice enough to offer exchanges in the event it doesn't work, but in all normal cash transactions, you are getting something.

SO that being said I went to Google finance to play with some stocks.

In google finance all you can do is track stocks, just like a game. You can add fake money then buy and sell fake stocks and see how you do. Actually it's a real tool that you can use to track actual transactions with no money involved. I use it to track the stocks I ACTUALLY purchased through my bank because my banks website is awful at providing useful stock information.

So, if you want to try your hand just go to Google finance, set up a portfolio, add some cash and buy some stocks. I'm not going to go into details about how this works because the interface is quite straightforward.

The first stocks I bought were of my favorite companies: Apple, Nintendo, Sega...but then I stopped and realised something. I can't just put money into ANY company, because that company might be involved in a business that's not entirely religiously sound. So here's what I concluded should be avoided unless you know a company in these fields that is completely clean:

Food and Drink

• Would you believe Coca Cola, despite their tremendous list of family friendly drinks (Tropicana, Rockstar energy drink, bottled water) made an alcoholic drink in cooperation with Bacardi? I was pretty upset, they seemed like a good place to put money: I love coke!
• In general, it's hard to tell what products a company maks, think of Hostess: they make chips, cookies, biscuits, Twinkies, King-dons, the list goes on forever, but it's just too tedious to go and find every last product and make sure it's halal, so just avoid food and beverage companies

Entertainment

• When I started out, I took a stock (fake) of Disney. They seemed like a good company, doing well for themselves. Then I stopped and thought, no wait, they hire actors and actresses and write stories that, while family friendly for the most part, might not be all that great (think: Lizzy McGuire, Raven, The Jonas Brothers).
• Same goes for video games. I love Nintendo, they are my favorite company, but they also liscence M rated games for their consoles that might include violence, course language, adult situations, mild nudity and so on.
  

Arms/weapons development/military

• Do you really want to be the guy who gives money to the people who make the machines and lead the soldiers that kill other people? Think about it, you are saying take my money and invest it in weapons of destruction.
  
• This area gets kind of complicated because a lot of bigger companies sometimes have hidden military divisions. Think of Lockheed Martin, sure they make planes, but they also develop guns, same with Toyota: they make consumer vehicles, but they also develop military vehicles. Sometimes you have to do a bit of digging. I will say this though, I don't mind companies that build defensive military technologies. For example, Irobot, the makers of Roomba and Scuba, the little household vacuums, have a military branch that develop scouting, sensing and detecting robots. They don't kill anyone, they seek out roadside bombs and investigate areas, in effect saving lives.....yes maybe the lives of the enemy, but at least they aren't killing anyone.

banks

• banks charge interest, do you want a part of that?
  

Really, just think about the products and services the company you are choosing to invest in offers. If it's sound, go right ahead, if not, avoid it. Also, don't think too far ahead: well, what if I invest in biofuel energy corp., and their fuel is put into a car which a criminal uses to rob a bank...no. That's a bit much.

Alright, so where CAN you put your money?? Here are a few suggestions:

• healthcare
• housing
• education
• textbooks
• materials (metals, glass)
• energy
• research
• household
• computer technologies
• fertilizer and farm product

And for anyone interested, here's the stocks I have in my test portfolio that I plan to actually purchase:

3M: Innovators, makers of many household items including those little adhesive hooks.

Agrium Inc.: make agricultural products and services in the U.S and other countrie.

BioClinica Inc.: solutions for medical image management and data capture. Medical Technology.

Biofuel Energy Corp.: Sells ethanol, an up and coming form of clean fuel.

China Precision Steel: makes Steel in china.

Clean Harbors, Inc.: through its subsidiaries, provides environmental services and operation of non-nuclear hazardous waste treatment facilities in North America.

Emergency Medical Services: yeah, EMS, those guys that save people, bet you didn't know they
were part of a company!

Energizer holdings, inc.: Makers of batteries.

Enersis S.A. (ADR): An electric utility company for Chile, Argentina, Brazil, columbia and Peru.

EPCOR Power, L.P: An energy company. A big one.

Hanfeng Evergreen: makes fertilizers for china.

Hold-key Electric Wire and Cable Co Ltd.: makers of electric wire and cable.

Humana Inc: A health and suplemental benefits company.

Intuitive Surgical, Inc.: Makes the da Vinci surgical Systems, an huge, advanced medical robot.

Irobot: makers of robotic vacuum cleaners

Johnson & Johnson: Makers of household and consumer products.

Karuturi Global Limited: Get this, they deal with floriculture, processing foods-gherkins (something like a cucumber) and IT. It has subsidiaries in Ethiopia and Africa.

Meade Instruments Corp: makers of telescopes (the shares of these guys increased 3000% just a few days ago, too bad I didn't have any real money in them.)

Migao Corporation: makes potash based fertilizers.

Newell Rubbermaid: makers of household products (tubs and plastics mainly)

Nobel Learning Communities: A national network of nonsectarian private schools, including preschools, elementary, middle and specialtiy high schools in 15 states.

Panasonic Corporation: makers of electronics. They do have a military laptop and make military grade power adapters. :S

Potash Corp Saskatchewan: Fertilizer

Rangold Resources Ltd: Like buying gold bars really.

SPDR Gold Trust: more gold.

SXC Health Solutions Corp.: provider of pharmacy benefit management services and healthcare IT solutions.

Taiwan Glass Ind. Corp: Glass, fibreglass and tableware and kitchenware glass. Ships internationally.

The Black and Decker Corp.: Makes household tools and appliances.

The McGraw-Hill companies: If you've read a textbook, there's a 99% chance Mcgraw hill published it.

Tyco International Ltd.: make remote controlled things,and remote controllers.

United Parcel Service (UPS): deliver packages everywhere.

Whirlpool Corporation: makers of washing machines.

Xerox Corporation: audio visual solutions, electronics.

And there you have it! With this healthy mix of companies, I have, in theory, actually made money! Not a whole lot, since the shares in any company I have usually hang around $100 to $200 (that is $100 to $200 worth of shares in any one company) since the economy is so cruddy and all. But I've made (again, in theory) about $1,183 in about 7 months, not too bad for a first timer! Of course, I'm no day trader, and no one should be. Stocks are the kind of investment you keep for a few years before deciding to sell (unless something spectacular happens, like your 0.18 dollars/share company of which you have 10000 shares in (only 1800 dollars) jumps 3000% ($54000) then you sell, because chances are that won't be happening again for a long time.)

Prayer Etiquette

I'm a very light prayer; much like a light sleeper, it doesn't take much stimulus to distract me from my prayer and throw the entire thing off course. I also need to be able to hear myself when I pray or else I start mispronouncing the words. Unfortunately, sometimes I feel like I'm the only one in the world like that because in the event I have to pray with someone else in the room (I try my best not to, but sometimes the circumstances are out of my control (i.e like in a hotel room)), they don't seem to care that I'm trying to pray and they make all sorts of noises, snapping their fingers, laughing to themselves, or not bothering TO MUTE THE RUDDY TELEVISION FOR 7 MINUTES SO I CAN FOCUS!!!! >_<

On the flip side, it can be really irritating when someone is praying in a room and seem to completely oblivious to the fact that there are others in there who may be trying to focus on something themselves. Yes. We know you're praying. Good for you. Now keep it down, are you praying for show or what?

So here I've decided to come up with a list of prayer etiquette, both for the prayer and others who might be around.

If you see someone praying

• leave the room, let them be alone so they can focus and finish
• if you can't leave the room, move out of their sight and keep quiet until they are done.
• don't be constantly moving around them; it's distracting!!
• if you must talk with someone else in the room, talk like you're trying to evade death himself.
• MUTE THE T.V. Don't wind it down, MUTE IT. Humans are quite adept at understanding body language and facial expressions, you can last for 7 minutes!!!!
• Don't turn on machines that are going to make noise or change the room conditions unless it's for the better, like turning on the a/c when the room is stifling.

If you are going to pray with someone else in the room (because you can't find somewhere secluded)

• Keep your voice to a minimum, so that ONLY YOU can hear it. I know some prayers are supposed to be recited aloud, but seriously, if you want to recite aloud go somewhere else. Also, and usually for people who don't speak arabic as a first language, you're recitation might just annoy the heck out of those around you.
• Go a bit faster than you normally would. Not so fast that you're movements become jerky and the prayer is lost anyway, but just a bit faster so that everyone can get on with what they're doing.
• Don't pray where everyone is going to walk or might need to walk. Find a nice corner with something in front of you so that you're out of the way.
• Don't make a scene; it becomes so much easier to try and show off when there are people watching. Remember why you are praying.

If you are going to be praying in a room with another person who is also praying, but not with you.

• Follow all of the above rules that apply.
• Maybe keep your distance from each other.
• Don't race.
• Don't base your timings on them.

That's what I have so far, most of it is just common sense, but sometimes people can be remarkably inconsiderate.

Prayer Courtesy