Jummah! Jummah! Gotta get down on Jummah!

Someone parodied Rebecca Black's "Friday" and Muslimized it! This version is called "It's Jumuah!"

**I prefer Jummah to Jumuah, but that's how the author spelled it.

Muhammad: A Story of the Last Prophet by Deepak Chopra

I was perusing Indigo a few days ago, and a book caught my eye. I had seen it on iBooks, but now I had the opportunity to open it up and take a read. It was called "Muhammad: A Story of the Last Prophet" by Deepak Chopra. 


I had a skim through it, and I have to say, the writing style held my interest. It's not written like the usual books on Prophet Muhammad (SAW)'s life, which tend to be very history-bookish, and textbooky. It was written very much like a story, with characters and different viewpoints. One such viewpoint was from the Angel Jibreel (AS). I don't know where that lies on the scale of religious no-no's, but it kind of gave an idea of what Jibreel (AS) may have been thinking as he carried out his orders. At another part, it's from the viewpoint of Prophet Muhammad (SAW)'s grandfather. 


Now for my concerns, first of all, the Author, Deepak Chopra, isn't muslim. He's more of a Hindu, mystic, new age endocrinologist, and apparently a friend of Michael Jackson. Which is good in a way, because we can expect (read: hope) him to just give the facts, and not bias the story in any way. This is good, because then the book can become popular with anyone, not just Muslims. A non-muslim can pick it up, read it and shouldn't complain "Oh, this book was written by a Muslim so of course it's going to make the Prophet (SAW) look good". However, because he's not a muslim, he may not fully understand some of the how's and why's of the...shall we say...less accepted things Prophet Muhammad (SAW) did. Like marry Aisha (RA) when she was extremely young. 


Of course, I haven't read the whole book yet (although I'm really considering it), so I may be a little biased. It may be nice for my younger brothers too: being a story, it may hold their interest more than a history text. 


At any rate, here's a link to the book on Amazon.com, take a read, share it if it's good and accurate, spread the word if it isn't. 


http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0061782424?ie=UTF8&tag=book-search-engine-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0061782424

Mathematical Relations in the Quran

I LOVE me a good proof. Not that I really need any more to validate my religion, but it's nice to see them, especially those that apply a bit more to me as an engineer. Well, I came across a delightful little paper titled "Numerical Miracles of the Holy Quran - Chosen Examples" from a little website called: Islamnoon.com


Here's the link to the paper: http://www.islamnoon.com/language/chosen%20examples.pdf


but how about a little taste of what they found? Here's my favourite:


Surat Al-Nahl (The bee) is Surat 16 in the Quran. 
Male (drone) bees have 16 chromosomes. Female bees have 2 sets of 16 chromosomes. 


Surat Al-Hadeed (the iron) is Surat 57 in the Quran.
They gave a relation between this and the median isotope of Iron, which they said to be Iron 57, but an internet search couldn't confirm this so I'm guessing science hasn't come that far just yet ;) BUT, by applying a geometric formula to the arabic word for Iron (they call it a Jummal, I don't fully understand it, but it's like numbering the arabic letters in their widely accepted order (there's a whole study around this)) ANYWAY, the Jammal of Hadeed (iron), turns out to be 26. Guess what the atomic number of Iron is. It's 26. 


Anyway, a lot of the stuff in the file is very mathematical (a lot of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) so you'll have to keep up a bit, but it's pretty interesting stuff. 

Quick Hadith

Hey, it's the end of term (and hopefully degree) for me, so it's been pretty crazy. I don't have a nice long rambling post, but I did come across this little hadith from Adaptive Solutions Inc's delightful iPhone App "Daily Hadith":




It was narrated from Ibn Umar (Radi Allahu Anhu) that the Messenger of Allah (SAW) said: "If anyone of you knew what was wrong with being alone, no one would travel at night by himself." [Sahih Bukhari]. 


That kinda freaked me out a little. Anyone want to go watch Insidious? :P