Islam-Hacks

4 Resolutions To Become a Better Muslim in 2012 and How to Keep Them:

2012-02-18T13:46:00.001-07:00

Since we’re already into February, the thrill of the new year has most likely simmered down by now. Unfortunately, February also means that most of us may have already given up on our resolutions, be they religious ones or not.

The mistake most of us make when acting on any resolution is overzealousness. For example, if you decided that you wanted to get into better shape this year, you may have thought that hitting the gym every day, running as hard as you can or greatly curbing what you eat would be sure-fire ways to get into the fast lane to your goal. Such enthusiasm can be a great motivational aid initially but achieving any resolution requires dedication, commitment and most of all, consistency. You must first learn to walk before you can run or else you risk burnout!

It also helps to remember that it takes only 21 days to form a habit. When starting out, especially if you hit early obstacles, just remember to stick it out for at least 3 weeks. You will find that by the end of this period, what seemed like a chore before will simply become routine!

With that said, here are five simple resolutions you can do today to become a better Muslim in 2012! With time and effort, they are wide enough in scope to allow you to keep building and adding to them as the months pass!

1) Pray your five daily prayers and wake up for Fajr:

To truly make great strides towards becoming a better Muslim, it is essential to have your basics covered. This means that if you’re not already praying your five daily prayers, today is a great time to start!

Resolve to wake up for Fajr to the best of your ability. Set an alarm every night to go off during Fajr time. Initially, it may seem daunting to interrupt your sleep to answer the call of prayer but with time, it will become second nature.

Track the number of times that you have kept your prayers and the number of times you may have missed them.

For the tech geeks amongst you, Qamar Deen is a great app that gives you a prayer chart where you can record your daily prayers including if you’ve prayed them in Jamaat or by yourself with or without Sunnah. For the ladies, Qamar Deen even allows password protection and an option of recording the days that you are excused from prayer.

2) Make “Allah” part of your daily vocabulary:

Remembering Allah doesn’t only have to happen in prayers. You can easily increase your good deed count for the day by saying Insha-Allah whenever you intend to do something in the future. Sprinkling Masha-Allah whenever you compliment someone else or adding Alhamdullillah whenever you have been blessed with good news are other easy ways to remember Allah.

3) Read 30 verses of the Quran and its translation daily:

Many of us have already read the Quran in the original Arabic script at least once. But not many of us can say that we have undertaken a study of the translation and its meaning. Truly understanding the Qu’ran is a laudable but exhaustive endeavor that many of us may not be able to undertake right away. An easy goal to undertake is to read 30 verses of the Qur’an along with the translation every day. You can even track your daily readings in Qamar Deen!

4) Commit to donating anywhere from 2.5-10% of your monthly income as Sadaqah:

Sadaqah or charity Is a laudable effort but one that can be easily forgotten unless one makes a conscious effort. No matter what your position in life, committing to donating anywhere from 2.5-10% of your monthly income will go a long way in becoming a better Muslim as well as making a difference.

Even if you’re just a student working part-time jobs, assuming you earn about $400.00 per month, 2.5% of that amount is a mere $10.00. With just one less trip to Starbucks or to the movies – a change that you’ll barely notice – you will be making a difference in someone else’s life and reaping tremendous rewards for your efforts.

A Prayer Time I-Cal maker

2012-02-10T10:00:00.001-07:00

I was trying to sort out my schedule one morning, and I thought "wouldn't it be splendid if there was a way to put the prayer times on my iCal calendar?" A quick google search later and I found this:

http://praytimes-ics.appspot.com/

It's an extremely simple webapp that you enter your location into, choose your calculation method, and click which feed type you want! The calendar will download to your Mac, then all you have to do is click on it and it'll put itself into iCal! :D

A Prayer App Idea

2012-01-06T19:23:00.000-07:00

I had this idea for an app the other day, I think it'd be cool if someone made it.

In Fiqh us Sunnah, we are told that the entire world is a masjid to us. A hadith was quoted which goes:

"Abu Zharr asked the Prophet, "What was the first mosque on the earth?" He said: "The Masjid al-Haram [in Makkah]." Abu Zharr asked: "which is the next oldest mosque?" The Prophet sallallahu alehi wassalam said: "The al-Aqsa Mosque." Abu Zharr asked: "How much time was there between [the building of the two]." The Prophet sallallahu alehi wasallam replied: "Forty years." Then, he said: "Wherever you may be, at the time of salah, you may pray for it [the earth] is all a mosque." This is related by the group."

Also, there's hadith floating around that say that the earth will testify against us. A quote I found supporting this goes:

Al-Tabarani narrated on the authority of Rabi'ah al-Jarashi: "Protect [yourselves] from the earth for it is your mother and there is no one who does any act, good or eveil, except that it will tell about [it]."

(from http://www.sunniforum.com/forum/showthread.php?14744-Why-do-pray-sunnah-in-a-diiferent-spot-from-where-we-prayed-fard&s=d76dc9d354a714958718a7281924cd8a)

So we can pray anywhere (as long as the area meets the cleanliness requirements), and the very ground we prayed on will testify that we have prayed there. So my idea was for an app that allows a person to save the coordinates of the place they prayed, a picture of the place, and a note about it (which prayer they did at what time and so on) and put it in an album that can be shared online! They'll be able to see (in Google Maps or such) all the places they prayed and (when sharing) all the places that other users have prayed. That way they can work together to cover the world in prayer, and find places that they haven't prayed in before.

I think it's kinda neat too because it'll encourage people to pray in really unique places. I think the strangest place I ever prayed was on top of a watermill out in the countryside in the middle east. It was such a serene little building. Props to the person who prays at the north pole! :D

Comic: Always Remember to Check the Ingredients

2011-12-16T10:00:00.001-07:00

I've been here before. Buy new candy bar, forget to check ingredients because I just assumed it's all chocolate and nuts, and BAM there's alcohol in it.

Muslim Personality Test

2011-12-09T10:00:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine posted a link to this website on Facebook, it's a Muslim Personality Test.

It'll ask you a few basic questions (age, gender, location, job, are you more religious or spiritual, liberal or conservative, etc.) then it gives you 17 sets of 4 words, and you have to rank them in order from most like you to least like you. Then, they give you another 17 sets of words and you have to choose the one word out of each 4 that best describes what you look for in a spouse.

Then it applies some fancy psychoanalysis and spits out a small report on your personality type. They also offer a comprehensive 25 page report on your personality that you can buy for $29. It's still kinda fun to do, so give it a whirl, I'm a gold personality! :D

http://www.muslimpersonality.com/index

Hadith on Flower Giving

2011-12-02T16:02:00.000-07:00

"He who is presented with a flower should not reject it, for it is light to carry and pleasant in odor." (Muslim)

I quite like this hadith :)

Geektool Daily Hadith (Mac only, sorry)

2011-11-25T10:00:00.003-07:00

I was going to do an article on a hadith I read, but then I thought, why give my readers a fish when I can teach them how to fish!

I recently became interested in a Macintosh tool called Geektool. It's a delightful little program that runs in the background and puts one of 3 things on your desktop:

1) the output from a script (i.e it'll execute a small program and display the result)
2) text from a file
3) a picture from a folder

and using just these three things, people have come up with the most amazing desktops! Just take a look at these!

more available here: http://smokingapples.com/software/15-geektool-desktop-inspirations-for-the-weekend/

It's customizable and pretty straightforward, but most people have difficulty writing the script ones. In this article, I'll teach you how to turn a twitter feed into an rss feed and using some programming, display it on your desktop using Geektool :)

1. Download Geektool: http://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/geektool/id456877552?mt=12
2. Install it, it'll show up as a preference pane.

3. This is the twitter feed we'll be using as our source of hadiths:

http://twitter.com/#!/DailyHadith

unfortunately, none of the programs on your mac can just take the text, so we have to convert it to an RSS feed (a type of simplistic, list approach to getting information from websites) EVEN MORE UNFORTUNATELY, the option to do this from this Twitter feed has been removed, so we have to use another website. I've already done that for you so the RSS feed you'll need will be:

feed://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name=dailyhadith

4. Make a folder on your desktop called "Geektool Desktops" and within that folder, make another one called "Common". (just do it, because that's where mine is and it makes everything easier. You can probably figure out what to change if you want to move your folder somewhere else :))

5. Now, we need to write a bit of code to automatically download the latest hadith, and save it to a text file! So, open "Automator" on your mac. If you go to the little magnifying glass in the very top corner of your screen and start typing "Automator" it'll show up. It looks like a little robot holding a tube.

6. Choose to make a new application

7. Find the "Get specified URLs" command and drag it to the workspace. Then edit it so it looks like this:

8. Below this, drag the "Get feeds from URLs"

9. Below that, drag the "Filter Articles" (we only want the most recent one). And set the options to "Any of the following are true", "Date Published" "Since Yesterday"

10. Drag "Get text from Articles" below the box made in step 9.

***UPDATE**** if you're running osX Lion, it's possible to stop the text from appearing twice. Beneath the "Get Text from Articles" add a "Filter Paragraphs"box. Under conditions set the following:

that is a "- ", there's a space after the dash. That should only save the text of the article, not the title. :)

11. Finally, drag "New Text File" beneath step 10's box, and set it as shown:

12. Finally, save the application as "Get Daily Hadith" (as an application too) inside the folder "Common" within the "Geektool Desktops" folder you created earlier, on your desktop.

13. You can run it if you like, to make sure it's working! Just double click it, or click the "run" button if you still have it open in automator. Now, you're going to have to get your hands a little dirty, because we need to stop this app from interrupting your work whenever we run it. So:
13a. right click on your "Get Daily Hadith" app
13b. select "show package contents"
13c. go into "contents"
13d. find "info.plist"
13e. right click, move to "open with" and choose "other"
13f. change "recommended applications" to "all applications" and find "textedit" in your application folder and use that to open the "info.plist" file
13g. scroll down to the bottom until you find these two lines

LSUIElement

change that "false" to "true", but without the quotes:

LSUIElement

go to the file menu, and select "save" and close all the finder windows to get out of there. What you've done is told the application to open in the background. You'll still be able to tell because your work may hiccup now and then, but at least it's not going to stop everything to load.

14. Now the Geektool code. I have to tell you though, that even the code I'm using isn't perfect. It's was adapted from the code I used to put my facebook feed on my desktop, and it has a tendency to put the hadith twice. Once for the title, and another for the content. This is because of how an RSS is set up, the title is usually a duplicate of the content. The workaround? Make the box small enough to only view one :P

Okay, open up the Geektool preference pane in system preferences and make a religion category. Drag yourself a "Shell"Geeklet to the desktop and a nice greyish square should appear, along with another preference pane that looks like this:

you can name it "get daily hadith" and add it to the "religion" group.

15. Set the font and color to whatever you want, and pick a big refresh rate, it IS called Daily hadith for a reason :P I set mine to about 14400 seconds. Do this all now, because frequently, once you tell it to open anything, it won't let you touch it again without freaking out and running it's command. It calms down after a while, I have no idea why, but still.

16. Now, click on the "..." next to command, and a window will open up. This geeklet will be used to run the app you just made to download the hadith!

In this newly opened window, you will copy and paste the following underlined text:

open /Users/username/Desktop/Geektool\ Desktops/Common/Get\ Daily\ Hadith.app

you have to type it this way, replacing "username" with whatever your username is. I'll tell you a hint though, a "/" means "subfolder" and a "\" means there's a space in the file/folder name. So this says:

open the folder "users" then the subfolder "username" then the subfolder "Desktop" then the subfolder "Geektool Desktops" then the subfolder "Common" then the application "Get Daily Hadith.app".

save it, and close the little window. Hopefully the Geeklet hasn't gone into a tizzy and started executing every time you touch it, but if it does, just...click other geektool stuff until it stops. If you click and hold some part of it, it usually pauses. Try and make the geeklet as small as possible and put it out of the way.

17. Drag another shell geeklet to the desktop, we'll use this one to display the hadith! Set your fonts and colors and groups and names and refresh rates before adding the code (this one's not so bad because it can execute from within Geektool).

18. In the command box, copy and paste this underlined text:

head -n 300 ~//Desktop/Geektool\ Desktops/Common/Daily\ hadith.txt | tr -s '[\n]' '\n' |tr '-' '~'| sed 's/~~/ /g' | sed 's/~//g' | sed 's/+0000//g' |grep '[a-zA-Z]'|sed '/$/G'

That was adapted from another geeklet I have that posts my facebook feed to my desktop, and was obtained from another site. Still, the principle is the same, you can see the address of the file, and the rest is just formatting stuff. Now, one issue I noticed is that this code removes anything in quotations. Which is kind of irritating since a lot of hadith's are quotes. I believe this is because of the grep '[a-zA-Z]' command there, but I'm not sure. If you find yourself with a hadith with missing quotes, try changing the command to this instead:

head -n 300 ~//Desktop/Geektool\ Desktops/Common/Daily\ hadith.txt | tr -s '[\n]' '\n' |tr '-' '~'| sed 's/~~/ /g' | sed 's/~//g' | sed 's/+0000//g' |sed '/$/G'

and see if that helps.

19. Finally, save the command, resize the geeklet to fit, and you should now have a hadith on your desktop! :) It should look something like this:

If you're experiencing any difficulty with this, or something's not working. Let me know, I'll try and help. :)

My Life is Arabic

2011-11-18T10:00:00.000-07:00

There's a couple of websites popping up where people can post little anecdotes about how their life is something, the newest one I found out about is My Life is Arabic.

It's filled with a bunch of funny stories and experiences people have had that a lot of us can identify with, so take a look and share your own!

http://mylifeisarabic.com/

A Few Shiekhy Types who Know How to Treat the Ladies :P

2011-11-11T10:00:00.000-07:00

Gents, take note:

Taking your wife to dinner is sunnah:

60 ways to keep your wife's love p1:

60 ways to keep your wife's love p2:

Cooking and washing is not her duty, it's her Ihsan:

Wife does not mean a servant to her husband

I was a little upset though, that I couldn't find any videos of muslim wives telling fellow muslimahs how to treat their husbands. I knew I couldn't post a video of a guy talking about this, most girls I know take one look at the speaker and think "CHAUVINIST!". So, if anyone knows of a video of a happy muslim wife sharing some tips for keeping your man happy, please let us know! :)

Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat

2011-11-04T10:00:00.000-06:00

When I was little, a long long time ago, I used to listen to Broadway music as I went to sleep. Usually Andrew LLoyd Webbers best, one of which was a song called Joseph MegaRemix. That number was from his Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat musical. One day my mother (God bless her) found the entire CD and bought it for me. I've listened to it so many times I know nearly all the songs, and it was through that CD that I learned the story of Joseph (AS). Of course, it's the Christian version, but he (AS) is such a well known prophet that the differences are extremely minor, in fact it's pretty much religion neutral focusing more on his story, and his prophecies. Even the issue with Potiphar's wife is rated G.

Anyway, if you're looking for an educational gift for your kids, check this out! I've included a link to the version I have (there's a bunch of versions, all the same songs, but just different orchestras and singers), I like it the best.

http://www.amazon.com/Joseph-Amazing-Technicolor-Dreamcoat-London/dp/B000002NWN/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1319302041&sr=1-1

I Should Just Pray the Long Route to Mecca...

2011-10-28T10:00:00.001-06:00

but then my back would be towards the window. :(

We are Rich

2011-10-21T10:00:00.002-06:00

You've probably heard the story before, about a poor muslim man complaining to a scholar about how he's poor and the scholar asks him if he'll trade his eyes for $1000, and the story goes on. Yes? Okay, but have you seen it in cavity-inducing chibi style??? No? Check out the comic below!

It was drawn by a deviantartist named Nayzak. They do a lot of chibi style drawings to promote peace and Islam so check out their page! ( Warning: page may contain one HECKUVALOTTA squee)

We are Rich by *Nayzak on deviantART

The Prophet of Mercy (PBUH)

2011-10-14T10:00:00.000-06:00

Smile for Charity

2011-10-07T10:00:00.000-06:00

Just a quick little post, a friend of mine shared this page, and I thought it was pretty cool!
It's a neat little idea for a fundraiser, you 'like' the page, post a picture of your smile, and they donate $1 to Somalia! :)

Smile Facebook page

That Awkward Moment When

2011-09-30T10:00:00.032-06:00

There's a funny website called http://thatawkwardmoment.net/ which is just filled with sentences that go:

That awkward moment when... *insert awkward moment*

As I sat in the Masjid one friday, I thought to myself, I bet there are a lot of awkward moments in Islam and in our daily lives! Let's see if I can name a few (can you figure out the references?)

That awkward moment when you're the only one not bowing to God's creation, as ordered.
That awkward moment when you, a virgin, are told you're about to have a baby.
That awkward moment when you lose wuduu in the middle of a congregational prayer and have to excuse yourself.
That awkward moment when you have to dodge the hug because male/female interaction is a no-no.
That awkward moment when you get up too early for fajr.
That awkward moment when you go to collect someone's soul and they give you a black eye.
That awkward moment when that shallow pool turns out to be glass.
That awkward moment when you go back to God to ask Him to reduce the number of prayers. Again.
That awkward moment when you realize the guy you've been working for for a hundred+ years has been dead for a while.
That awkward moment when you miscount the number of takbeers during Eid prayer.
That awkward moment when you can't remember if you prayed 3 or 4 rukaas
That awkward moment when you suddenly realize you are naked.
That awkward moment when you're told to take your little band of believers and leave a town of sodomy, but your wife has to stay.
That awkward moment when you go to deliver God's message and His chosen Prophet flees in terror.
That awkward moment when you can't pay the ransom for breaking fast because you and the Prophet (SAW) ARE the poorest guys you know.
That awkward moment when you hit the head of the guy behind you with your bum when returning from rukuu.
That awkward moment when you decide to read the ingredients after taking a bite and you realize it has gelatin in it.
That awkward moment when you come back and realize the people you fought to save have started worshipping a statue.

What other awkward moments have there been/are there in our deen?

The Most Effective Method for Learning a Language

2011-09-23T10:00:00.002-06:00

I read an excellent website called Lifehacker fairly regularly, and I came across an article on learning another language. You can find the article here:

http://lifehacker.com/5839401/the-most-effective-method-for-learning-a-language-alone

Basically what it says to do, is get a hold of a book and audio that goes with it. Like an audiobook, but get the text version too. Sit down with a pen and notebook, and play the audiobook (the recommend using an application called Audacity to do this because it has the ability to repeat sections of audio). After each section you listen to, write down as best you can what you heard. Then, use the book to check yourself and repeat as necessary. They explain the benefits of this technique in the article so take a look if you're interested.

I'm a little embarrassed to say that for a split second I thought to myself "Where can I find an arabic audio book with the text to match?" Where indeed. :P

3 Elements of Personal Prayer

2011-09-16T10:00:00.000-06:00

*updates might be a bit infrequent, as I've returned to school again*

Over summer I started reading some Quran, and I realized that there are 3 things we need to be doing on a regular basis

1) Being grateful to Allah (SWT)
2) Praising Allah (SWT)
3) Seeking forgiveness from Allah (SWT)

Being grateful

In the Mohsin Khan translation of the Quran, the word "grateful" appears 22 times. Yeah I know some of those times are in explanations (Mohsin likes his parenthetical explanations) but still, it started to stand out:

O you who believe (in the Oneness of Allah - Islamic Monotheism)! Eat of the lawful things that We have provided you with, and be grateful to Allah, if it is indeed He Whom you worship. (2:172)

....Allah intends for you ease, and He does not want to make things difficult for you. (He wants that you) must complete the same number (of days), and that you must magnify Allah [i.e. to say Takbir (Allahu Akbar; Allah is the Most Great] for having guided you so that you may be grateful to Him. (2:185)

Muhammad (صلى الله عليه وسلم) is no more than a Messenger, and indeed (many) Messengers have passed away before him. If he dies or is killed, will you then turn back on your heels (as disbelievers)? And he who turns back on his heels, not the least harm will he do to Allah; and Allah will give reward to those who are grateful. (3:144)

And on and on. So one ought to pepper their days with "Alhumdlillah's", over little things like the light turning green, or not so little things like not tripping over your socks and plunging headfirst down the stairs and into Azrael's open arms.

2) Praising Allah (SWT)

Now a quick search of "praise" in the Quran doesn't turn up many ayat telling us to praise Allah, but we do get a bunch of Ayat reminding us how Allah (SWT) is "worthy of all praise". This also falls under the "keep a remembering tongue" category of stuff we ought to be doing. Personally, I find this one a little tricky. I can't toss out a "subhanAllah" at a magnificent sunset or upon reading about how bees can boil a hornet when defending their hive. It's not that I'm proud, it's just that when I say it, I feel like I'm saying it just to show off...it feels very unnatural. So, I do it the good old fashioned robotic way, with TECHNOLOGY! :D I whip out my iPhone and iSubha app and go to town after my prayers.

3) Seeking forgivness

Of all the 3, this is probably the one we should be doing the most. Getting rewards is fine and dandy, but we're just hindering ourselves by not asking forgiveness. We could think of asking forgiveness like earning reward in that we're no longer using our good deeds to nullify bad ones since the bad ones are being taken out entirely. The key element in seeking forgiveness however, is regret. We need to truly regret what we did and not want to do it again. We might do it again, but that's okay sinccne and it gets hard to ask for forgiveness when sometimes we can pretty much bet the farm we'll do it again, still, we live in hope.

I found this on a forum (http://www.ummah.com/forum/showthread.php?258973-When-does-Allah-stop-forgiving-a-person-who-keeps-repeating-the-same-sin)

Al-Bukhaari (7507) and Muslim (2758) narrated from Abu Hurayrah that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said that his Lord said: “My slave commits sin, then he says, ‘O Allaah, forgive me my sin.’ Then Allaah says, ‘My slave has committed a sin, but he knows that he has a Lord Who forgives sin and takes away sin. So I forgive My slave.’ Then he commits sin again, and says, ‘O Allaah, forgive me my sin.’ Then Allaah says, ‘My slave has committed a sin, but he knows that he has a Lord Who forgives sin and takes away sin. So I forgive My slave.’ Then he commits sin again, and says, ‘O Allaah, forgive me my sin.’ Then Allaah says, ‘My slave has committed a sin, but he knows that he has a Lord Who forgives sin and takes away sin. So I forgive My slave.’ …”

Which is reassuring (but not an excuse to keep sinning, mind you)

In summary though, these 3 practices are just ways of making sure we have all our bases covered.

That Pretty Much Sums it Up. :D

2011-09-09T10:00:00.000-06:00

Qamar Deen iPhone App

2011-08-26T10:00:00.002-06:00

The latest revision of iQuran added an option to log your reading. However, it said it needed another app called Qamar Deen in order to do this. So I looked for it, and it's actually a pretty awesome app.

Qamar Deen
by Batoul Apps
Price: Free
http://qamardeen.com/

This little app helps you keep track of 4 things:
your prayers, your fasting, your charity, and your Quran readings.

It's very simple and easy to use, and it can be integrated with iQuran by Guidedways.

Prayers:

The Good: When you do a prayer, you open the app, and go to the Prayers tab and tap the appropriate prayer (choose from Fajr, Duha, Duhr, Asr, Maghrib, Isha, Witr). A little menu will pop up and you can pick from 6 options (or less depending on the prayer):
Jama'a + Sunnah, Jama'a, Alone + sunnah, Alone, late or not set.

The Bad: No complaints here. You can even change your gender so that the image is of a hijabi instead!

Fasting:
The Good: It's the same way, go to the date, tap the screen, choose which applies: Fareedah (An obligatory fast, pretty much only available for Ramadan), Sunnah, Qada (for a missed/broken day of fasting), Kaffarah (for repaying a day of fast that one botched by having intercourse (fun tip: it's apparently supposed to be 60 days of continuous fast or feeding of poor people)), and Nazr (a vowed fast).
The Bad: You cannot adjust the hijri date. Today, it is Ramadan the 26th where I am, as well as being August the 26th. The app however believes it to be Ramadan the 27th.

Quran:
The Good: If you are using iQuran by Guidedways, simply tap and hold on the last ayat you read and select "log". Qamar Deen will open and show you the ayat, chapter and number of ayat read since either the last time you logged, or the beginning of the Quran (if you just started). That's for your daily readings, but it also has an option for you to log extra readings!
The Bad: The extra readings can only add full chapters, as opposed to chapters and ayats. It would have been nice if they had made it go: Extra readings: From X:Y to U:V instead.

Sadaqah:
The Good: The format is the same, pick your day, tap the screen, choose the charity. Now, obviously it cannot include every type of charity, but it does include the main ones: Money, food, clothes, other, but it also includes effort and even a smile! You can also select all that apply.
The Bad: You cant specify how much of something you gave, but that's probably a good thing. Charity is charity.

Settings:
Like I said, you can't change the hijri date which would have been nice, but you can turn on and off the extra prayers (Duha and Witr), pick your gender (affects the little icon), turn on password protection so your right hand doesn't know what your left is doing ;), turn on arabic mode, and even choose your Quran app (choose from Quran Reader, iQuran, or Al Mus'haf). Also, I just found out that if you turn your device sideways, you'll get a chart of your progress and summaries of your deeds (total prayers, total charitable days, total ayahs read, and total days fasted)!

The aim of the app is to help people see what kind of deeds they're doing and to hopefully encourage them to improve the quality and number. It's an excellent little app, and it's free, so I definitely recommend checking it out.

Were Your Great^(some big number) Grandparents Zombies?

2011-08-19T10:00:00.000-06:00

I was reading in that Islamic library App I mentioned about the story of Ezekiel (Hizqeel), and in it there was a little hadith that went like this:

According to Ibn Abbas, there was a place called "Damardan." It's people were inflicted with plague, so they fled, while a group of them who remained in the village perished. The Angel of Death called to the survivors: "Die you all," and they perished. After a long time, a prophet called Ezekiel passed by them and stood wondering over them, twisting his jaws and fingers. Allah (SWT) revealed to him: "Do you want Me to show you how I bring them back to life?" He said: "Yes." His idea was to marvel at the power of Allah (SWT) over them. A voice said to him: "Call: "O you bones, Allah commands you to gather up."" The bones began to fly one to the other until they became skeletons. Then Allah (SWT) revealed to him to say: "Call: "O you bones, Allah (SWT) commands you to put flesh and blood and the clothes in which you had died."" And a voice said: "Allah commands you to call the bodies to rise." And they rose. When they returned to life they said: "Blessed are You O Lord, and all praises are Yours." Ibn 'Abbas reported that the dead who were resurrected were four thousand, while Ibn Salih said they were nine thousand.

Now there's no mention that after this sign was finished these people died again. They could have gone on to lead healthy normal lives. Maybe even have kids. You know what that means (according to popular culture) many of us could be part zombie! :D

"I Wonder", a Poem

2011-08-12T10:00:00.000-06:00

This is a good poem I came across a long time ago, it was taken from The Modern Religion

I WONDER

If The Prophet Muhammad visited you,
Just for a day or two.
If he came unexpectedly,
I wonder what you'd do.

Oh, I know you'd give your nicest room,
To such an honored guest,
And all the food you'd serve to him,
Would be your very best,

And you would keep assuring him,
you're glad to have him there,
That serving him in your home,
Is a joy beyond compare.

BUT ...

When you see him coming,
Would you meet him at the door,
With arms outstretched in welcome,
To your visitor?

OR ...
Would you have to change your clothes
Before you let him in ?
Or hide some magazines
And put the Quran where they had been ?

Would you still watch R-rated movies,
On your TV set ?
Or would you rush to switch it off,
Before He gets upset ?

Would you turn off the radio,
And hope He hadn't heard ?
And wish you hadn't uttered,
That last loud, hasty word ?

Would you hide away your music,
And instead take Hadith books out ?
Could you let him walk right in,
or would you rush about ?

AND, I wonder ...
If the Prophet spent A day or two with you,
Would you go right on doing
The things you always do ?

Would you go right on saying
The things you always say ?
Would life for you continue
As it does from day to day ?

Would your family conversation
Keep up its usual pace ?
And would you find it hard each meal
To say a table grace ?

Would you keep up each every prayer
Without putting on a frown ?
And would you always jump up early
For prayers at dawn ?

Would you sing the songs you always sing
And read the books you read ?
And let him know the things on which
your mind and spirit feed ?

Would you take the prophet with you
Everywhere you plan to go ?
Or, would you, maybe, change your plans,
Just for a day or so ?

Would you be glad to have him meet
your very closest friends?
Or, would you hope they'd stay away
Until his visit ends?
Would you be glad to have him stay
Forever on and on?

OR ...
Would you sigh with great relief,
When he at last was gone ?

It might be interesting to know
The things that you would do
If the Prophet Muhammad, in person,
came to spend some time with you.

Complete Islamic Library For iPhone/iPod Touch

2011-08-05T10:00:00.001-06:00

8 Islamic Books

Cost: $4.99

Link: http://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/8-islamic-books-islam-quran/id402153726?mt=8

Although this app says it contains 8 Islamic books, it actually contains 8 Islamic Volumes of Books including:

"Seerat-un-Nabi" (A history of Prophet Muhammad (SAW))
"Sahih Al-Bukhari" (LOTS of hadith)
"Sahih Al-Muslim" (LOTS of hadith)
"Riyad-us-Saliheen" (Translates out to "Gardens of the Righteous", it appears to be a book on character)
"Fiqh-us-Sunnah" (A general rule book that I personally love)
"Stories from the Quran" (Stories)
"Stories of the Prophets (AS)" (Stories)
"Stories of the Sahaba" (Stories)

The good: It comes with Bukahri, Muslim, and Fiqh-us-Sunnah. The volumes are divided into their different sections, just like in their print counterparts, and they're easy to read. The stories of the Prophets, Quran, and Sahaba are a nice add too. I read through the Story of Ibraheem (AS) and Adam (AS) and Eve (AS), and they were pretty thorough. They were mostly formed using references from the Quran, but included a few additions here and there (but they said "or some version of the story say that..." or "some people think that...") if there was an unsourced bit. For example, in the Story of Ibraheem (AS) they said: "Abraham's father died before his birth and he was raised by an uncle whom Abraham called his father. Other traditions said that his father was alive and was named Azer". At any rate, they go through lots of Prophets:

Abraham
Adam and Eve
Daniel
David
Dhul-Kifl
Elia and Elisha
Enoch
Eekiel
Ezra
Hud
Isaac
Ishmael
Jeremiah bin Hilkiah
Jesus
Job
Jonah
Joseph
Lot
Moses and Aaron
Muhammad (SAW)
Noah
Saleh
Samuel
Shu'aib
Solomon
The People of Ar-Rass
The People of Yaseen
Zacharia and John

Nearly as many Sahaba, and stories from the Quran too! In summary, it's quite extensive, and also features a search!

The bad: no bookmarking, no multi-tasking support. So navigation looks like this:
Series selection (Bukhari, Muslim, Stories, etc), Table of Contents, Page with lots of scrolling. If you leave the app, you lose your spot and have to navigate to it all over again.

Final summary: if you can put up with having to dig through it every time you want to find a particular page in a particular book, it's excellent. I'm hoping they release a version with bookmarking soon, as it is quite a good app.

Quranic Ratios

2011-08-01T10:00:00.001-06:00

From:

http://www.islamicity.com/science/quranmiracle/Numeric.shtml#From%20the%20Numeric%20Miracles%20In%20the%20Holy%20Qur'an

"Credits: Dr. Tarik Al-Suwaidan

From the Numeric Miracles In the Holy Qur'an
The Word	Meaning	#of times Mentioned
Dunya	This life	115
Akhera	The hereafter	115
Allah knows best
Malaekah	Angels	88
Shayateen	Devils	88
Allah knows best
Hayat	Life	145
Mawt	Death	145
Allah knows best
Nafee	Usefulness	50
Fassad	corruption	50
Allah knows best
Nass	Mankind	368
Russul	Messengers	368
Allah knows best
Iblis	Satan	11
Iste'atha from iblis	Ask refuge from Satan	11
Allah knows best
Museebah	Catastrophe, Calamity	75
Shukr	Thankfulness, Gratitude	75
Allah knows best
Infaque	Expenditure	73
Redha	Contentment	73
Allah knows best
Adhaloon	Misguided, astray	17
Almawta	Deceased	17
Allah knows best
Muslims	Muslims	41
Jihad	Struggle for Allah	41
Allah knows best
Thahab	Gold	8
Taraf	Luxurious life	8
Allah knows best
Asseher	Magic	60
Albarakah	Temptation, trial	60
Allah knows best
zakat	almsgivings, Charity	32
Barakah	Benediction	32
Allah knows best
Alaqul	Mind, Brain	49
Annour	Light	49
Allah knows best
Allessan	Tongue	25
Almawethah	Sermon, Preachment	25
Allah knows best
Arasghbah	Desire	8
Arrahbah	Fear	8
Allah knows best
Jahr	Openness	16
Alaneah	Public Ness	16
Allah knows best
Asheddah	Firm	114
Assabr	Patience	114
Allah knows best
Muhammad	Muhammad	4
Sharee'ah	Law	4
Allah knows best
Rajul	Man	24
Marah (nisa)	Woman	24
Allah knows best
shahr	Month	12
Allah knows best
Yawm	Day	365
Allah knows best
Baher	Sea	32
Barr	Landmass	13

The word (Sea or Water) mentioned 32 times, and the word (Landmass) mentioned 13 times in the Holy Qur'an, if we add them together we will get 45.

Now let us do some calculations...

By finding the percentage of the number of the word (Sea) to the total number of the words (Sea and Landmass) we will have:
(32/45)x100% = 71.11111111111%
By finding the percentage of the number of the word (Landmass) to the total number of the words (Sea and Landmass) we will have:
(13/45)x100% = 28.88888888889%

We will find what Allah (swt) said in His Holy Book 14 centaury ago that the ratio of water on earth is 71.11111111111%, and the ratio of landmass is 28.88888888889%,
add them together and you will get 100%, and these are the real ratios of the Water and landmass on earth.

So what do you think? Could it be a Chance?!
Who do you think taught prophet Muhammad all of these?

I am just telling you that " Nor does he say (aught) of (his own) Desire " so bow thankful to your Lord for being a Muslim, what you have read is a small part of the Numeric Miracles of the Holy Qur'an, there are big volumes about the miracles of the Qur'an....

And InshaAllah we'll meet again with more.

Your Brother Hussain Yunus from Maryol Okrania"

Past Lives

2011-07-29T10:00:00.000-06:00

"How can you disbelieve in Allâh? Seeing that you were dead and He gave you life. Then He will give you death, then again will bring you to life (on the Day of Resurrection) and then unto Him you will return. " The Holy Quran 2:28

Matter cannot be created or destroyed, only manipulated. This means that everything we see around us is made up of the same stuff that existed since the universe was made. We also know that we were made from clay which wasn't exactly alive now was it? Finally, one can conclude that since matter can neither be created nor destroyed, but only manipulated we can assume that in order to make us, some non living matter had to be used right? I.e carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, etc. Some of which, of course makes up clay.

Carrying on, we all know we are going to die, THE END IS COMING MWA HAHA.., ahem sorry. And we all know that we are going to be ressurected.

Funny, though in a way we all do have past lives. Part of you, could be made of atoms that were once part of something else, like a dinosaur! Therefore, theoretically we could be, actually, we are as old as the universe itself. Now isn't that neat.

Night Time Soul Extraction

2011-07-22T10:00:00.000-06:00

Here's something interesting: our souls leave us when we go to sleep! Here's some proof:

An evening prayer of our Prophet (SAW): "I am giving my soul to you and turning my face towards you and protecting my back by you. There is no shelter or runaway from you but to you. In your name I put myself to sleep and i will rise. If you hold my soul, please have mercy on it, and if you let it go, then please protect it for me by what you protect your good people."

The Quran 6:140 "It is He, Who takes your souls by night (when you are asleep) and has knowledge of all that you have done by day, then he raises (wakes) you up again that a term appointed (your life period) be fulfilled, then in the end unto Him will be your return. Then He will inform you what you used to do."

A quote of our Prophet (SAW) (I can't find it again but it went something like this) "The only difference between sleep and death is that you wake up the next morning"

This leads one to wonder why; why are our souls taken at night? Maybe because God wants to review them for something. Maybe they just get bored and go about graffitiing buildings and causing mayhem! ( O.k thats probably not it) Maybe this is why we dream. Our dreams are what are soul is seeing or experiencing, or maybe dreams are just the in-flight movie of our sleep. Still, if they can leave our bodies can our conciousness go with them? Maybe this is what out of body experiences are. At any rate, just thought I'd share this.

2011-07-15T10:00:00.000-06:00

You know what's a fun time? Islamic questions and answer sites. A good one is sunnipath.org

Quite a few answers on there, but I was most suprised to see some people asking how to deal with jinn. Some people on there claimed to have been/ are being bothered by them. One person said that a jinn shakes their bed, another said it pushed their sibling during the night. Some really eerie stuff. We know that jinn do exist and without appropriate steps can even share our beds and our dinners, so what can be done to prevent unwilled sharing of our homes and meals? Well:

1) you can move

2) you can never eat again (probably a bad idea)

2) you can live with it (make it pay rent! And you can have movie nights and do each others nails and hair and...O.k, i'll stop now. )

or you can:

1) Mention the name of Allah (SWT) when entering you home (keeps em out of the house)

2) Mention the name of Allah (SWT) when eating, so you aren't having dinner for 2.

3) Mention the name of Allah (SWT) when drinking, so they keep their filthy lips off.

4) Recite Ayatul Qursi before going to bed (protection from the moment you go to sleep to the moment you wake up)

5) Recite the last 3 surats of the Quran.

6) Make your home a Jinn-unfriendly by living with pious people, reciting Quran in it ( the entire Quran is a big plus), praying in it, and remembering Allah (SWT) much in it.

Jabir said, "I heard the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, say, 'When a man enters his house and mentions the name of Allah Almighty both when he enters and when he eats, Shaytan says to his companions, "You have no lodging and no meal." When he enters and does not mention Allah Almighty when he enters, Shaytan says, "You have lodging." When he does not mention Allah Almighty when he eats, he says, "You have lodging and a meal."'" [Muslim]

Muslims Contribution to Medicine

2011-07-08T10:00:00.000-06:00

This was more or less what was included on the handout of a presentation 3 boys in my Introduction to Islam class put together on the Contributions of Muslims to Medicine. Quite interesting really, that 1200 give or take 100 years ago we could do all this. Yay us!

Hospitals

-Served all peoples regardless of color, religion or background

-Separate wards for men and women

-Separate nurses for men and women

-Provided baths and water supplies

-Qualified physicians only allowed to practice

-Medical schools associated with hospitals

Medical Education

-Training in basic sciences

-Clinical training

-Licensure examination

Bacteriology

-First medical description of smallpox and measles

-Suggested teh communicable nature of tuberculosis

-Use of alcohol as an antiseptic

Anesthesia

-Originated the idea of oral anasthetics

-Use of soporific sponge (basically a spong doused with anesthetics)

-Use of anesthesia caused a rise in surgery levels

Surgery

-Developed many surgical instruments

-First mention of hemophilia

-First ot use sections of animal guts for sutures (used animal guts to close wounds)

Opthalmology

-Foremost in treatment of eye diseases

-Words such as retina and cataract are of Arabic origin

-Developent of extraction of cataract (a cloudiness of the lense of the eye)

Psychotherapy

-Combined psychological methods and physiological explanations

-Recognized "physiological psychology" in treating emotional illnesses

-Developed a system for associating changes in pulse rate with inner feelings.

ProductiveMuslim.com

2011-07-01T10:00:00.001-06:00

I could hardly believe it. A website that combines my love of lifehacks with my love of religion:

ProductiveMuslim.com

They've got articles on productive studying, increasing productivity, sleeping, and developing good habits, as well as videos, interviews, wallpapers, worksheets, a free ebook, and lots more, all from an Islamic perspective! The website manager's even planning on climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, in what they're calling a the Kilimanjaro Challenge ((click here and scroll down a bit for the link)!

This website is definitely worth checking out!!

The Kaaba and its Antipode

2011-06-24T10:00:00.008-06:00

An Antipode is the spot on the exact opposite side of the earth from a particular point. There's a formula for calculating it, but I've saved you the trouble! :D

(To see the Antipode in google maps, just search for:
-21.422509,-140.173826 @-21.422509,-140.173826)

You'll see I've marked out the Kaaba too, and that the antipode is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, somewhere near French Polynesia it turns out, but not on an island (from what Google Maps will show). If you can get a boat to hold still, you can pray in any direction from that spot! You might even be able to make Tawaaf! :P

Minimalist Living

2011-06-17T10:00:00.000-06:00

One Friday, our Imam related a story that I found quite amusing.

I can't find the story anywhere else, unfortunately, but it went something like this:

****DISCLAIMER: I AM ESSENTIALLY MAKING THIS HADITH UP AS I REMEMBER IT. IT MAY NOT HAVE EVEN HAPPENED. WORDING IS NOT EXACT, ETC. DO NOT HOLD ME TO THIS. IF YOU TAKE ANYTHING FROM THIS, JUST TAKE THE POINT, NOT THE DETAILS************

Prophet Muhammad (SAW) was dividing up spoils (I dislike using the term "booty" these days) and Ali (RA) was present. Rasul Allah (SAW) gave lots of the spoils to the others present, I think Abu Bakr was among them, but to Ali he only gave a sheep. Naturally Ali (RA) felt a little hurt and he asked why he only got a sheep. Prophet Muhammad (SAW) told him to be patient. A while later, Prophet Muhammad (SAW) called Ali (RA), Abu Bakr (RA), and maybe others who received some share of the spoils from before, and he took them out to a large flat rock that had been sitting in the sun all day. Turning to Abu Bakr (RA), he told him to take his sandals off and stand barefoot on the rock. Once Abu Bakr (RA) was up there (doing his best not to let his feet get burned), Prophet Muhammad (SAW) asked him how he spent his share of the spoils. Since he had got a good share, naturally this took a while to recall. Finally, he got down after finishing. Now, obviously, when it was Ali (RA)'s turn, it took about 10 seconds for him to share what he had done with his sheep. What Prophet Muhammad (SAW) was trying to illustrate was how it is going to feel when we are in front of Allah (SWT) on judgement day and he asks us about how we spent our money, etc. and that essentially, the more we have to answer for, the longer we are going to have to stand there. And although it might not burn like the rock did, it's probably going to be VERY uncomfortable.

****IF ANYONE CAN TELL ME THE ORIGIN OF THIS STORY, OR IF IT EVEN EXISTS I WOULD GREATLY APPRECIATE IT****

A big part of our religion is the constant reminder of death and the afterlife. We are told to 'Be in this life like a stranger or a traveller' (said to be from Prophet Muhammad (SAW), but I can't find it in hadith) Unfortunately,in this day and age of stuff (and I LOVE stuff btw) it's easy to...well...end up with lots of stuff that we not only can't take with us, but also find cluttering up our houses.

Fortunately, there's a good deal of people out there who have started websites and blogs about "minimalist living". They're not all muslims either, they're just people who are prefer the simplicity of a nice clean home to having to deal with all kinds of "stuff". Lucky for us though, we can use their tips to help us live like travellers, without having to live in a tent and out of a suitcase!

One good website I've read a bit before is Zenhabits (zenhabits.net). They've got some interesting stuff on there, but here's a link to their guide to minimalist living:

http://zenhabits.net/a-guide-to-creating-a-minimalist-home/

You could also do a quick google search for stuff like:

Minimalist Lifestyle
Minimalist Home
Minimalist Living
Living Simply

Here are some websites also aimed at helping you minimize, or about people's experience minimizing!

http://minimalistlifestyle.net/
http://urbanminimalistlife.blogspot.com/
http://artofminimalism.com/103-essential-rules-to-live-simply/
This girl LEGITIMATELY lives like a traveller!: http://www.everydayminimalist.com/
http://www.theminimalistmom.com/

I'd love to try it when I move out. My families home is pretty cluttered, even my own bedroom. Looking at some pictures of minimalist homes I can see why people do it; space. GLORIOUS SPACE.

And, of course, by living minimalist, one will also have not spent their money of stuff they'd rather not have to answer for! I think Prophet Muhammad (SAW) really set the bar for minimalist living though:

A'isha reported: Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) left neither dinar nor dirham (wealth in the form of cash), nor goats (and sheep), nor camels. And he made no will about anything (in regard to his material possessions, as he had none), (Muslim, Book #013, Hadith #4011)

Canadian Hijabi: Hadith

2011-06-10T10:00:00.002-06:00

I saw this hadith on Canadian Hijabi's Blog (http://nazia-canadianhijab.blogspot.com/) , and couldn't help but go "awwwwwwwwwwww!" :')

""When a husband and wife look at each other with Love, Allah looks at both with Mercy" [Bukhari 6:19 & Tirmidhi 14:79] What a BEAUTIFUL Hadith. I absolutely love this! Masha'Allah."

Yup, she sums it up pretty well!

Check out her blog, she's got some interesting posts there, many of which answer some common questions like "Why don't men wear hijab?" (http://nazia-canadianhijab.blogspot.com/2011/05/why-men-dont-wear-hijab.html) and "Why a muslim woman is not allowed to marry a non-muslim man?" (http://nazia-canadianhijab.blogspot.com/2011/05/why-muslim-woman-is-not-allowed-to.html)

Weight of the Human Soul

2011-06-03T10:00:00.001-06:00

A Physician by the name of Duncan McDougall attempted to measure the weight of a soul by measuring the weight of a human before and after death. It turns out, when a person dies, they lose about 3/4 of an ounce, or 21 grams. Now, killjoys have called this insensible loss; basically, some kind of unexplainable evaporation. Here's what I propose though. If a soul really does weigh 21 grams, shouldn't there also be an unexplainable GAIN of 21 grams at the instant a foetus gains it's soul? See, it's easy enough to say "oh, the loss was due to some kind of rapid perspiration" since the human body excretes stuff all the time without our conscious effort: sweat, oils, air... but we have a lot of control over what enters our body: nose, and mouth, and clearly nothing would be entering these area's of the mother. A sudden gain in the same weight, then, would be a very clear indicator that the soul does indeed have mass.

See this link for more information on the experiment:

http://www.lostmag.com/issue1/soulsweight.php

Philosophy of Religion

2011-05-28T20:01:00.000-06:00

Late post, but here it is.

I came across a delightful logical argument for the existence of God in a website called Philosophy of Religion (www.philosophyofreligion.info). The website, it seems is neither here nor there, but they simply wish to provide arguments for and against the existence of God. Most arguments for use the Bible for examples, etc. but they (from what I have seen) refer to God simply as God, which is excellent because now we can extend all their arguments to our favor. :P

Anyway, among other interesting topics, I found one called The Modal Ontological Argument, which is a logic based argument for the existence of God and it goes, as I understand it, as follows.

If God exists, He is a necessary Being. That is, he exists in all possible worlds. (Hold on to your hats folks, were entering parallel universe territory.) Next, it says IF God exists, then it is possible that there is some possible world in which He exists. Therefore, according to the first argument, He must exist in ALL worlds; in other words, God exists.

The full argument is delightfully wordy and uses the typical philosophical argument format involving exclusives and inclusives, and can be found here:

http://www.philosophyofreligion.info/theistic-proofs/the-ontological-argument/the-modal-ontological-argument/

Be careful though, there are links on that website to places where they argue against the existence of God, and I don't recommend you read them.

I do like this one argument I read though in which they invoke something called Ockham's razor (yes, razor) which is the rule that between two arguments, the simpler is to be taken as superior. The author then states that the argument between a finite force, and an infinite force is won by the infinite force because an argument for a finite force assumes 2 things: the force, and that which causes it, whereas the argument for an infinite force needs only the infinite force because an infinite force cannot be constrained.

Anyway, have a look, but hold fast to your deen; it's in places like these that it is quickly snatched away!

Comic: Trolling Big Toe

2011-05-23T23:15:00.000-06:00

Gonna be a bit late....

2011-05-20T09:58:00.000-06:00

Hey, sorry for the delay, but today's post is going to be a bit late (isA) (I've been moving in and out of internet-available areas).

How to Give a Khutba

2011-05-13T10:00:00.000-06:00

Last friday, it happened that all of the guys who usually give the khutba were unable to attend Jumaa. The result was everybody sitting around waiting for 45 minutes because no one knew if they were coming or where they were. Finally, one of the older men got someone to give the sermon. A thought then occurred to me: what if they had asked me to do it?

Okay, it's a little bit more complicated than that. It starts with deciding who is best to be Imam:

Selecting an Imam

Imam selection is done in the following order:

a) The person who knows the most Quran
b) The person who knows the most sunnah
c) The person who performed the migration (hajj?) first
d) The person who is the eldest

Who can be imam? (I was going to list them as they were given in Fiqh us Sunnah, but I changed my mind) Instead, I'll tell you whose imamate is NOT acceptable:

Someone who has a health problem which does not allow him to remain in a state of purity should not be an Imam for people who don't have this problem.

Okay, so it turns out you're the most qualified to be the Imam, now what?

1) Greet the people when you come to the pulpit, and take a seat. A simple "Salam-alaykom" should do. Then ask someone to give the adhan.
2) Stand up, and start the khutba off by praising Allah (SWT). The Prophet (SAW) used to say:

"All praise be to Allah, we seek His aid and we seek His forgiveness and we seek refuge in Allah from the evil of our souls. Whomever Allah guides, no one will be able to mislead him. Whoever He leaves astray will have no guidance. And I testify that there is no God except Allah and that Muhammad is His servant and His Messenger whom He sent with the truth and as a warner before the Hour. Whoever obeys Allah and His Messenger will be guided aright, and whoever disobeys them will only harm his own self and he will not harm Allah, the Exalted, at all."

3) Give the first khutba. The khutba should be a bit short, or as long as it usually is in your place of prayer. Remember, the purpose of the khutba is to encourage people to do good, and warn them about the consequences of wrongdoing. Fiqh us-Sunnah says to admonish (warn) the congregation, but I feel too much warning, doom and gloom will make them resent the religion. I think the ideal khutba, from my own experience, has a healthy mix of Quran, hadith, arabic wording, talk of reward, and talk of punishment, while providing the congregation with information they can use instantly. Of course, I always enjoy a good story too. ;)

4) According to islamicity.com, conclude the first khutba by inviting everyone to make a supplication (dua) to Allah (SWT), and sitting down.

5) *brief pause for supplications* in my local masjid, we use a bit of time after duas to give some announcements.

6) The second Khutba. Start off again by praising Allah (SWT) and sending peace and blessings upon Prophet Muhammad (SAW), then reiterate what was discussed in the first khutba, summarizing and generally ensuring that the audience really understands the message.

7) The supplication before the prayer, say the following, pausing after each to allow the congregation to say "Ameen" (translations in blue)

"Allahuma’ Eghfir Lil’ Muslimeena wal Muslimat"
"Almighty God, forgive the Muslim men and women"

"Wal Moumineena wal Mouminaat"
"And the believing men and women"

"Al-Ahya’ee minhum wal amwat"
"Those who area live and those who died"

"Innaka samee’un mujibul dawat"
"You are indeed the One who listens and accepts all supplications"

Now you can add any additional supplications you like, such as praying for muslims in another part of the world.

8) Conclude the khutba by saying:

"Ibada Allah: inna Allah Ya’amuru Bil Aadli wal Ihsan, wa Ita’ee Zil Qurbaa, wa yanhaa anil fahshaa’ee wal munkaree wal bagh’yi. Ya’Izukum La’allakum tazakkaroon"

"Servants of Allah: indeed Allah orders us to be just and to excel in what we do, be generous and to take care of our kin and relatives, never do what is forbidden of all sins and not to transgress. He almighty advises you so you can remember."

9) Ask the muezzin to call the iqamah to start the prayer:

"Aqimi Salah, innaa asalata tanha anil fahshaa’ee wal munker"

(no translation, sorry :( )

10) Begin the salat.

Congratulations! You survived giving a khutba!
For more information, check out:

http://www.islamicity.com/library/Articles/Khutba_GuideLine.htm

Thoughts: God and Physics

2011-05-06T10:00:00.000-06:00

*WHAT FOLLOWS ARE MY OWN THOUGHTS AND EXPERIENCES AND HAVE NO REAL WEIGHT IN THE RELIGIOUS WORLD. THEY ARE MY OWN ATTEMPT TO UNDERSTAND MY RELIGION AND COULD BE ENTIRELY WRONG*

I was talking with a friend of mine a while ago. Since I'm muslim and he's a science-tist (essentially an atheist who believes only in the laws of science) we frequently get on the topic of God and religion. What all of our arguments boil down to is the "leap of faith": that I believe God is the cause of all physical phenomena, the Creator of all, and he believes that everything is a result of physics.

And then he said something I, at the time, didn't have a full answer for. I said that we can't "prove" God exists in a physical way because we don't have the equipment to do it, and he said that science dictates that we should be able to prove all things, therefore, there must be something we could test that would indicate God exists. A result of this is that God must have physical properties and therefore follows laws of physics. If this is the case, God is not omnipotent since He must follow the laws of something that bind him.

Which is a (somewhat) fair assumption. God can manipulate matter and energy, so he must follow some laws of physics. Everything follows laws, the difference, however, the key difference between our physics and God's physics, is that God defined and defines his own physics. That is what keeps Him, logically, omnipotent. It's like when God says:

"He has prescribed mercy for Himself" (Quran 6:12)

Mercy wasn't prescribed for Him by someone else, HE prescribed it for Himself.

So the way I see it, there's our physics, with our laws of motion, electricity, etc. which God created, and then there's God's physics which He created for Himself. Of course then we get into the whole issue of "well, if everything came from something, where did God come from?" and to that I refer you to this hadith:

It is narrated on the authority of Abu Huraira that the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) said: Men will continue to question one another till this is propounded: Allah created all things but who created Allah? He who found himself confronted with such a situation should say: I affirm my faith in Allah. (Sahih Muslim, Book#001, Hadith #0242)

and I add the idea that creationism is part of our physics, but is not part of God's physics. The way of OUR world is that stuff is made from other stuff, but the way of God isn't. I bet though, if we make it to heaven (inshaAllah), God'll explain this discrepancy. I'm sure there's a simple explanation that won't at all involve time moving in a circular pattern and other stuff that would make the mind of the most brilliant physicist melt into a puddle of confused goo.

So, summary:

a) THE ABOVE WAS FROM MY OWN THOUGHTS AND OPINION
b) God defines His own physics and can change it whenever He likes.
c) There's OUR physics and then there's God's physics. Just because we can detect ours doesn't mean we can detect God's.
d) God is the Creator who wasn't created.

Jummah! Jummah! Gotta get down on Jummah!

2011-04-29T10:00:00.001-06:00

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

2011-04-21T10:00:00.001-06:00

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

2011-04-15T10:00:00.000-06:00

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

2011-04-08T10:00:00.000-06:00

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

Qunut Nazila, The Supplication of Calamity

2011-03-25T10:00:00.000-06:00

Last week I made a short post about a mid prayer supplication that we did during Jumaa prayer that I had never done before. Fortunately, last week we did it again, but this time the Imam said it by name, it is called Qunut Nazila, or the Supplication of Calamity.

Sahih Muslim, Chapter 94 is actually dedicated to it, but Bukhari's got some quotes too:

Narrated Muhammad bin Sirin: Anas was asked, "Did the Prophet recite qunut in the Fajr prayer?" Anas replied in the affirmative. He was further asked, "Did he recite qunut before bowing?" Anas replied, "He recited qunut after bowing for some time (for one month)." (Bukhari Book #16, Hadith #115)

**By "for one month" I think they meant, RasulAllah (SAW) did this every day for a month. It seems there was an incident where Seventy of our men were killed by some men from another tribe who had claimed to be muslims:

Narrated 'Abdul Aziz: Anas said, "The Prophet sent seventy men, called Al-Qurra 'for some purpose. The two groups of Bani Sulaim called Ri'l and Dhakwan, appeared to them near a well called Bir Ma'una. The people (i.e. Al-Qurra) said, 'By Allah, we have not come to harm you, but we are passing by you on our way to do something for the Prophet.' But (the infidels) killed them. The Prophet therefore invoked evil upon them for a month during the morning prayer. That was the beginning of Al qunut and we used not to say qunutbefore that." A man asked Anas about Al-qunut, "Is it to be said after the Bowing (in the prayer) or after finishing the Recitation (i.e. before Bowing)?" Anas replied, "No, but (it is to be said) after finishing the Recitation." (Bukhari Book #59, Hadith #414)

So, how do you perform Qunut Nazila? Well, it appears the nice folks over at Sunnipath have already answered nearly all questions anyone could have on the topic:

From: http://qa.sunnipath.com/issue_view.asp?HD=3&ID=1621&CATE=389

a brief summary:

In the last rukaa of an obligatory prayer (it's not recommended for sunna prayers), stand up straight after performing rukuu (the L shaped bow with hands on knees for those of you just joining us), raise your hands to about chest level, palms facing the sky (typical supplication form I'm sure you've all seen it), and supplicate.

It seems there is no exact supplication (trials and tribulations change), so supplicate for the removal of whatever calamity has stricken our good people at the time. There's no shortage of them these days: the nutcase ruining Libya, the earthquake and Tsunami in Japan, the unrest in Syria (check out the BBC if you need some more). Also, since it's not a Quranic recitation, you could probably do it in your native tongue. I'm pretty sure Allah (SWT)'ll understand :)

Once you're done supplication, carry on your prayer like normal!

Mid Prayer Dua?

2011-03-18T10:00:00.000-06:00

Two fridays ago, in Jumaa prayer, we did something I've never done before or knew we could do.

After the Quranic recitation, right before the rukuu, we raised our hands and the Imam made what sounded like a dua. It was all in arabic, but it had the structure of a dua (there were male and female versions of the same words and it had a repetitive structure, you know: forgive all the believers men and women, and all the muslims men and women...) and I'm pretty sure I heard something about helping the people of Libya. Then he said "Allahu Akbar" and we went straight to sujood, no rukuu, and continued the Jumaa prayer like normal.

I've looked for information on this practice, but so far haven't found any instructions. If anyone know's anything, please let me know! :)

No Post

2011-03-11T10:00:00.000-07:00

Hey, still kind of reeling from projects, maybe I'll have something up later today, isA. Although, I need ideas for comic material (see last post), so if you have any stories that you think other muslims can relate to that would make for a good short comic, lemme know in the comments! :D

Comic: Whispers

2011-03-09T09:57:00.002-07:00

There are these hilarious and sometimes entirely inappropriate comics online that usually centre around funny situations that happen to all of us. They made a way of making these comics, so I'm going to try my hand at them. This is my first attempt.

*DISCLAIMER*

THESE COMICS ARE PURELY FOR ENTERTAINMENT AND FOR US ALL TO HAVE A LAUGH OVER STUFF THAT HAPPENS TO ALL OF US AS MUSLIMS. THEY ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE EDUCATIONAL.

The Artist Leaves a Signature

2011-03-04T10:00:00.000-07:00

Was going to do an article on supplication in prayer (not regular supplication, but the prayer halting, pre-sujood supplication I experienced for the first time last friday) but found this MUCH more entertaining!

This website has a collection of images where you can clearly (mostly) see God's name written on things, mostly plants, but a few mountains and clouds too. And this baby which gets Quranic verses on it's legs every now and then, that's some weird stuff right there, but pretty cool!

http://www.islamcan.com/miracles/index.shtml

No Post :(

2011-02-18T10:00:00.000-07:00

Hey, everything got REALLY heavy all of a sudden in terms of my academic life, and I haven't had time to make a post. I may not have one next week, or the week after either. :(

Back to Basics: Wuduu

2011-02-11T10:00:00.000-07:00

"When a slave makes ablution and rinses his mouth, his wrong deeds fall from it. As he rinses his nose, his wrong deeds fall from it. When he washes his face, his wrong deeds fall from it, until they fall from beneath his eyelashes. When he washes his hands, his wrong deeds fall from them until they fall from beneath his finger-nails. When he wipes his head, his wrong deeds fall from it until they fall from his ears. When he washes his feet, his wrong deeds fall from them until they fall from beneath his toenails. Then his walking to the mosque and his prayer give him extra reward." -Prophet Muhammad SAW (via Abdullah ibn as-Sunnabiji, related by Malik, an-Nasai, Ibn Majah and Hakim)

Source: Fiqh Us-Sunnah

The Obligatory Parts of the Ablution

1) Intention to make Wuduu

Without it, you're just washing yourself.

2) Washing the Face

Face means everything from the top of the forehead to the bottom of the jaw, and from one ear to the other.

3) Washing the arms up to the elbow.

I've always understood this to mean everything from the wrist, up to and including the elbow. Fiqh does't say where the start is, but it says the elbows must be included.

4) Wiping the head

Means one of 3 things:

4a) Wiping all of the head (starting at the front, moving to the back)

Abdullah ibn Zaid reported that the Prophet (SAW) wiped his entire head with his hands. He started at the front of his head, then moved to the back, and then returned his hands to the front.

4b) Wiping over the turban only. Amru ibn Umayyah said "I saw the Messenger of Allah, upon whom be peace, wipe over his turban and shoes."

4c) Wiping over the front portion of the scalp and the turban. Al Mughirah ibn Shu'bah said that the Messenger of Allah, upon whom be peace, made ablution and wiped over the front portion of his scalp, his turban and his socks. (Related by Muslim)

Now, the author also says:

"There is however, no strong hadith that he wiped over part of his head, even through al-Ma'idah: 6 apparently implies it. It is also not sufficient just to wipe over locks of hair that proceed from the head or along the sides of the head."

I don't believe you need to soak your head in a bucket in order to meet these requirements, just wet your hands thoroughly, clasp your head like you've got a headache, and move your hands from back to front.

5) Washing the feet and the heels.

Wash everything up to and including the ankle, and your'e good.

And believe it or not, that's it. Those 5 parts are ALL you NEED to do for wuduu (don't believe me? Check the Quran 5:6.)

6) Following the order. This is the way they've been mentioned in the Quran, this is the way the Prophet (SAW) did them, this is the way we do it.

The Sunnah Parts of the Ablution

1) Mention the name of Allah at the beginning.

No real concrete evidence for this, but we do it for everything else, so why not? Just..say it in your head if you're in your bathroom; have a little respect. :P

2) Dental Hygiene.

For best results use a toothbrush, for additional points use a Miswak. No teeth? NO PROBLEM! Use your finger! Aisha (RA) asked "O Messenger of Allah, how should a toothless person cleanse his mouth?" to which he replied "By putting his fingers into his mouth." (Related by at-Tabarani) Although I'm pretty sure you can buy some kind of gum-brush too.

3) Washing the hands 3 times at the beginning.

Yes, you heard correct that's a sunnah!

4) Rinsing the mouth 3 times.

Also a sunnah! And THANK GOD for that, especially during Ramadan. If you're like me, you probably have some concerns putting stuff in your mouth when you're supposed to be fasting, especially water. You can do it, you're allowed to rinse your mouth for wuduu when fasting, but it still makes me nervous. Fortunately, we are not obliged to!

5) Sniffing up and blowing out water 3 times.

Yup! This one's a sunnah too! Another blessing, especially during Ramadan.

6) Running one's fingers through their beard.

A special sunnah for you beardy readers out there.

7) Running water through one's fingers and toes.

This one's kind of confusing, since you have to wash your hands and feet anyway you'd kind of wonder why it is mentioned as a sunnah....no big deal though; I guess it just means actually "running" the water through them as opposed to simply wetting them, then rubbing with your hand. It's kind of hard NOT to do this one what with taps being the main source of water for wuduu nowadays.

8) Repeating each washing three times

It's also okay to do it once, or twice! But not more than 3: the Prophet (SAW) said "This is the ablution. Whoever does more than that has done wrong, transgressed and committed evil." (Related by Ahmad, an-Nasai and Ibn Majah)

9) Beginning each action with the right side

Same with anything else: always start from the right.

10) Rubbing the limbs with water

As opposed to simply submerging them, I guess... again, a difficult one NOT to do, unless you've got a GIGANTIC sink and 10 minutes to wait while it fills. Or the Ocean is your sink ;)

11) Close sequence.

Don't dawdle; get in, get wet, get out. Do each part, one after the other.

12) Wiping the ears.

This one is also a sunnah (my guess: it's, again, because of Ramadan; the ear has pathways to the throat through which water can be conducted). The sunnah is to wipe the interior of the ears with the index fingers and the exterior portions with the thumbs. Al-Miqdam ibn Mad Yakrib reported that the Prophet, upon whom be peace, wiped his head and his ears, the interior and exterior, while making ablution. He also put his fingers inside his ear. (Related by Abu Dawud and at-Tahawi)

13) Elongating the streaks of light

The parts washed during wuduu will be emitting light on the day of judgement, by "elongating the streaks of light" it is meant to wash a bit above the ankles, elbow, and forehead. Abu Hurairah (reports Abu Zar'ah) would wash his arms above the elbows, and his feet up to his calves. He was asked "Why do you do this?" and he replied "This is the extent of the embellishment." (Related by Ahmad).

14) Economizing the use of water, even if one is in front of the sea.

Naturally this would make sense for desert dwellers, but it IS a sunnah, so we should do it too!

15) Supplication while performing ablution

Nothing concrete here, except one hadith from Abu Musa al-Ash'ari who said "I came to the Messenger of Allah with water. While he was performing ablution, I heard him supplicate, 'O Allah, forgive my sins. Make my residence spacious for me and bless me in my provisions.' I said, 'O Prophet of Allah, I heard you supplicating such and such.' He said, 'Did I leave anything out?'" (Related by an-Nasai and Ibn as-Sunni)

16) Supplication after ablution

A few of these around, check out the Dua apps and Fortification of the Muslim.

17) Praying two rak'ah after the ablution

pretty self explanatory.

And now you know! How much of what you do is actually a sunnah? :D

Recommend Button

2011-02-08T20:40:00.002-07:00

I FINALLY added a recommend button! Not as easy as everyone made it out to be. -_-b

Missing Prayers

2011-02-04T10:00:00.001-07:00

You'd think that with (at the very least) about an hour and a half to do it, you wouldn't be able to miss any prayers. 10 minute wuduu, 7 minute prayer (I take it slow and steady, sue me :P) that leaves you with, what?, nearly an hour and 15 minutes to a) find a sink, and b) find a place to pray, how hard can that be?

But, thanks to our good (HAH!) man (HAH!) Satan, the inevitable happens and we find ourselves missing our prayers. What does this mean? What do we do? Well, let's find out.

There are a few ways to find yourself with a missed prayer:

1) You slept through the prayer.

This is easy to deal with. You simply pray when you wake up:

In Fiqh Us-Sunna, Supererogatory Prayer, pg 99, we find the author quoting a hadith that says:

"There is no negligence while one is asleep but forgetfulness occurs when one is awake. If one of you forgets the prayer or sleeps through its time, then he should perform the salah when he recalls it."

In a nutshell: sleep through the prayer? Pray it when you wake up.
Now you have to make an effort of course, it doesn't make much sense to say: go to bed without planning to wake up and pray, then just pray when you wake up. That's the same as intentionally missing a prayer because you are intending to sleep through it.

2) You've forgotten the salah

You're still in the clear, it was an accident, accidents happen. The ruling is the same as for sleeping through it, just do the prayer when you remember.

Here's one issue though, you've lost your prayer by sleeping through it, or forgetting it, and it's now time for the next prayer. What do you do? Do you do the prayer you missed, or the current prayer?

On pages 100 to 101 of the Supererogatory Prayer book of Fiqh Us Sunnah, there's a great big messy rationalization that some guy (Ibn Hamza) went through to try and explain the sin of intentionally missing a prayer. Near the beginning, however, he says:

"Abu Hanifah, Malik, and Ash-Shafi'i say that he can make up the prayer after its time has expired, and Malik and Abu Hanifah even say that if a person intentionally misses a prayer or a few prayers, then he is to make up those prayers before he prays the present salah, even if he has missed all five prayers and should, while making them up, miss the present salah. They say that if he missed more than five prayers, he is to begin by praying the salah whose time is present (and then he is to make up the prayers he missed)."

Also, take a look at this link: http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?pagename=Islamonline-English-Ask_Scholar/FatwaE/FatwaE&cid=1119503546664

this guy had the same question, and the Imam gave the same answer.

3) You fell unconscious and missed the prayer

This one's even EASIER. You don't even have to make it up! (Don't even think about it: INTENDING to make yourself fall unconscious to get out of prayer counts as intending to miss the prayer). This refers to the good old fashioned pass-out, due to hunger, heat, illness, whatever. One second your awake enjoying a good chat, next thing you know you're waking up with everyone standing over you with concerned faces.

From Fiqh Us Sunnah, Supererogatory Prayer, page 99:

If one falls unconscious, then he need not repeat the salah, unless he regains his consciousness with enough time to purify himself and perform the salah within it's proper time.

Abdurrazzaq relates from Nafi' that Ibn Umar once fell sick and become unconscious and missed the prayer. When he regained his consciousness, he did not make up the missed prayer.

4) You delayed the prayer

The way I see it, there are only 2 prayers you can TRULY lose; Asr and Isha. You see, we are actually allowed to combine duhur with Asr, and Maghrib with Isha (according to Fiqh Us-Sunnah "Due to some pressing need"). If you're going to miss duhur, you can combine it with Asr, and if you're going to miss Mugharib, you can combine it with Isha, but if you're going to miss Asr or Isha, there's nothing to save you.

Page 118 of Fiqh Us-Sunnah, Supererogatory Prayer:

Imam Muslim has said "The Messenger of Allah (SWT) combined the Zuhr and Asr and then the Maghrib and Isha in Madinah without there being any danger or rain." Ibn Abbas was asked: "What did he desire by that action?" He replied: "He did not want any hardship for his ummah."

There, now you don't have any excuse!

Although every time I do this, I can't help but feel a LITTLE cheap....:S
But what happens if you do miss it. You've left your prayer, and now it's gone. Never coming back, and you can almost hear the devil cackling as he runs away. Well buddy, you're pretty much hooped: the majority of the scholars believe that it is a sin and the missed salah must be made up. MADE up, not repeated:

"By law, there is no way for one who leaves a salah intentionally to make its qadah. He may, however, resort to increasing his voluntary and supererogatory acts."- Ibn Taimiyyah

Ibn Hamza then says "Concerning one who leaves a salah intentionally until its time expires, he will never be able to make up for that salah. Such a person should turn to Allah and ask His forgiveness and increase his good deeds and nawafil in order to increase his weight (of good) on the Day of Resurrection."

Then there's the quote I mentioned earlier about re-praying the lost prayers in order. But Ibn Hamza quotes the Quran saying "Woe unto the worshippers who are heedless of their prayers," (Quran 107:5) and "And then there succeeded them a later generation who wasted the prayers and followed their own lusts, but they will meet with destruction."(Quran 19:59). And said that if you can intentionally miss it and make it up, why will is it mentioned with affliction and transgression? And then it gets all complicated. SO......

My recommendation to you, you naughty little prayer leaving sinner (hey, why else are you reading this article? :P), is to:
a) do the prayer you left (it can't hurt)
b) ask for God's Forgiveness
c) do good deeds to try and outweigh the sin
d) DON'T LET IT HAPPEN AGAIN.

Al-Araf, The Heights

2011-01-28T10:00:00.000-07:00

Now don't get me wrong; I like a good Quranic Recitation as much as the next guy (as long as he's muslim), but 99% of the time I find reciters going on in a very solemn, revering tone. Okay sure that kind of makes sense, it's the Word of God and should be treated as such, and yes, there is some bad news in it...but there's also a lot of good news and even some stories with happy endings (for us :P ) would it be so bad to recite it in a cheerful tone?

And then I heard Al-Araf, read by Mishary-Rashid. It itself isn't a cheerful Surat, it's about our fall from Heaven, and punishment, and a bit of Moses' (AS) story, but the recitation is actually kind of uplifting in parts. Of course, I can't understand what he's saying so it'll probably be a little more morbid if you can understand the meaning.

On that note, if anyone knows a consistently cheerful recitation of the Quran, I'd love to know about it! :)

Why We say "Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala" and "SalAllahu Alayhi Wasallam"

2011-01-21T10:00:00.001-07:00

Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala (soob-hana-hoo wa taA-laa)

Now, as for why we say Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala: I don't have a concrete, embedded in Hadith, Sunnah or Quran reason actually....you try googling that! All the reasons I found can pretty much be summed up to "it's an acknowledgement of God's One-ness, a form of praise out of respect for Him (SWT)". There are, however, a few different things we can say!

Subhanahu Wa ta'ala: "The Most Glorified, The Most High"

Ta'ala: "The Most High"

Azza Wa Jall: "Mighty and Majestic"

SalAllahu Alayhi Wasallam (Sal-Allah-hoo Alay-hee Wa-Salam)

This translates out to "May Allah (SWT) bless him and grant him peace".

We append this to every mentioning of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) usually like that, but now that I've looked it up, there's a lot of people saying that SAW doesn't count at all since it is an abbreviation and not the actual word (go to the internets if you don't believe me). But that's the way I've been doing it for years, and the way MANY people do it. Interestingly enough, when you read (SAW), do you read es-ay-doubleyoo? or do you think "SalAllahu Alayhi Wasallam"? :P I think the latter.

But why? Why do we do this? Quite simply, because we're told to:

"Allah sends His Salat (Graces, Honours, Blessings, Mercy) on the Prophet (Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم), and also His angels (ask Allah to bless and forgive him). O you who believe! Send your Salat on (ask Allah to bless) him (Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم), and (you should) greet (salute) him with the Islamic way of greeting (salutation i.e. As-Salamu 'Alaikum )." (Quran 33:56, Mohsin Khan Interpretation)

But there's another hadith that quotes Prophet Muhammad (SAW) as saying:

"(Truly) a miserly person is he who (when) heard my name being mentioned did not recite Salawat in my favour." (Mishkat)

(taken from: Benefits of Reciting Salawat upon the Prophet)

And there's a bunch of other benefits too, from the above web site we have:

(1) The one who recites Salawat (Durood) once Allah sends ten blessings upon him, eradicates ten of his sins and inproves ten of his grades. (Mishkat)

(2) On the Day of Judgement the nearest person to me, from amongst the people, would be the one who would have recited Salawat the most in this (mortal) world. (Tirmidhi)

(3) (Truly) a miserly person is he who (when) heard my name being mentioned did not recite Salawat in my favour. (Mishkat)

(4) You decorate your meetings by reciting salawat on me because your salawat would (turn out to) be the Divine Light for yourself on the "Day of Judgement." (Jamih us-Sahih)

(5) Recite salawat on Friday in abundance because it is the "Day of presence of angels (for witness)." On this day Angels present themselves (in my court). And undoubtedly when any one from amongst you recites salawat in my favour then before he has finished his recitation of salawat in my favour, his salawat reaches my court. (Jamih us-Sahih)

(6) In the magnificent night of Friday (i.e. the night between Thursday and Friday) and the luminous day of Friday recite salawat in my favour abundantly, because your recited salawat is presented to me (by the Angels). (Jamih us-Sahih)

(7) Recite salawat on the day of "Friday" and the "Friday Night" (The night between Thursday and Friday) excessively because who-so-ever does that, I shall stand witness to him and would be his advocate on the "Day of Judgement." (Jamih us-Sahih)

(check out their website, it's pretty big: The Modern Religion)

And that's it! :D

Athan, a Brief Guide

2011-01-14T10:00:00.000-07:00

It's inevitable, one day we're each going to find ourselves in a situation where we have to give the athan (the "get ready to pray" call to prayer) and maybe even the iqamah (the "time to pray" call to prayer). And while we've probably heard it a thousand times, are you ready to give it? Do you know the intricacies and differences between the words? You know how we love our poetry and things sound the same. Anyway, here is a primer on what to say during the Athan and Iqamah, and what to say as a hearer of them!

Black: What the Muezzin Says

Blue: What you say (Same, obviously means that you say the same thing that the Muezzin did)

Green: A translation of more uncommon words.

The athan:

Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar: Same

Ashadu-an la-illaha illAllah: Same

Ashadu-an a-Mohammaden rasul-Allah: Same

Hayala salat: "la howla wala qawta illa billa", "there is no might and no power except in Allah"

Hayala salat: "la howla wala qawta illa billa","there is no might and no power except in Allah"

Hayala falah: "la howla wala qawta illa billa", "there is no might and no power except in Allah"

Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar: Same

La illaha illAllah: Same

Now, fajr's is a little different:

Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar: Same

Ashadu-an la-illaha illAllah: Same

Ashadu-an a-Mohammaden rasul-Allah: Same

Hayala salat: "la howla wala qawta illa billa", "there is no might and no power except in Allah"

Hayala salat: "la howla wala qawta illa billa","there is no might and no power except in Allah"

Hayala falah: "la howla wala qawta illa billa", "there is no might and no power except in Allah"

As-salatu khayru min an-nawm, "Prayer is better than sleep": Same

As-salatu khayru min an-nawm, "Prayer is better than sleep": SameAllahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar: Same

La illaha illAllah: Same

Now that the athan's been called, you can recite the following duas:

"O Allah, Lord of this perfect call and of the prayer which is established for all time, grant Muhammad the wasila and excellency and raise him up in a praise-worthy position which you have promised." (from Bukhari, and recitation of that will assure you of the Prophet (SAW)'s intercession)

Also pray for prosperity in religion and worldly affairs:

"O Allah, I ask of You for Your pleasure and pardon and for my comfort in this world and in the hereafter and in my family and in my belongings."

And for some good old fashioned forgiveness:

"I testify that there is no God but Allah, alone, who has no partner, and that Muhammad (SAW) is His servant and messenger; I am satisfied with Allah as Lord, with Muhammad (SAW) as messenger, and with Islam as religion" (Muslim, Ma'ariful Hadith)

The iqamah is very similar to the athan, but has a few key differences. It is usually recited just a little bit faster, and has some different words.

Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar: Same

Ashadu-an la-illaha illAllah: Same

Ashadu-an a-Mohammaden rasul-Allah: Same

Hayala salat: "la howla wala qawta illa billa","there is no might and no power except in Allah"

Hayala falah: "la howla wala qawta illa billa", "there is no might and no power except in Allah"

Qad qama tis-salat "Prayer has begun": "Aqamaha Allah wa adamaha"***

Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar: Same

La illaha illAllah: Same

This phrase "Aqamaha Allah wa adamaha" is starred because it may or may not be used. I transliterated it from the book " The Ways of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (SAW)" by Dr. Muhammad Abdul Hai Aarfi. But, according to

http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?cid=1119503548986&pagename=IslamOnline-English-Ask_Scholar%2FFatwaE%2FPrintFatwaE

it is from a weak chain, so I don't know anymore. Also, I don't know what it means, sorry.

Also, sadly, some of the information was from Wikipedia (it's a sad day when I have to use wikipedia for religious information, but it was basic stuff, so it should be pretty reliable) Other information can be found in "The Ways of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (SAW)" by Dr. Muhammad Abdul Hai Aarfi, and if you do a search for Athan, and Iqama most of the results you'll get are youtube videos with recordings.

**If I made a mistake somewhere, PLEASE point it out.

The Amazing Quran

2011-01-07T10:00:00.000-07:00

I read this as a forwarded email a while ago, it's an article by a guy called Gary Miller. I don't know much about the back story, or about the author, but it's a bunch of arguments in favour of the Quran. It's a really good read, the kind that gives you ammunition against people who say our Good Book is a forgery. :D

The Amazing Qur'an

by Gary Miller

Calling the Qur'an amazing is not something done only by Muslims, who have an appreciation for the book and who are pleased with it; it has been labeled amazing by non-Muslims as well. In fact, even people who hate Islam very much have still called it amazing.

One thing which surprises non_muslims who are examining the book very closely is that the Qur'an does not appear to them to be what they expected. What they assume is that they have an old book which came fourteen centuries ago from the Arabian desert; and they expect that the book should look something like that - an old book from the desert. And then they find out that it does not resemble what they expected at all. Additionally, one of the first things that some people assume is that because it is an old book which comes from the desert, it should talk about the desert. Well the Qur'an does talk about the desert - some of its imagery describes the desert; but it also talks about the sea - what it's like to be in a storm on the sea.

Some years ago, the story came to us in Toronto about a man who was in the merchant marine and made his living on the sea. A Muslim gave him a translation of the Qur'an to read. The merchant marine knew nothing about the history of Islam but was interested in reading the Qur'an. When he finished reading it, he brought it back to the Muslim and asked, "This Muhammed, was he a sailor?" He was impressed at how accurately the Qur'an describes a storm on a sea. When he was told, "No as a matter of fact, Muhammed lived in the desert," that was enough for him. He embraced Islam on the spot. He was so impressed with the Qur'an's description because he had been in a storm on the sea, and he knew that whoever had written that description had also been in a storm on the sea. The description of "a wave, over it a wave, over it clouds" was not what someone imagining a storm on a sea to be like would have written; rather, it was written by someone who knew what a storm on the sea was like. This is one example of how the Qur'an is not tied to a certain place and time. Certainly, the scientific ideas expressed in it also do not seem to originate from the desert fourteen centuries ago.

Many centuries before the onset of Muhammed's Prophethood, there was a well-known theory of atomism advanced by the Greek philosopher, Democritus. He and the people who came after him assumed that matter consists of tiny, indestructible, indivisible particles called atoms. The Arabs too, used to deal in the same concept; in fact, the Arabic word dharrah commonly referred to the smallest particle known to man. Now, modern science has discovered that this smallest unit of matter (i.e., the atom, which has all of the same properties as its element) can be split into its component parts. This is a new idea, a development of the last century; yet, interestingly enough, this information had already been documented in the Qur'an which states:

" He [i.e., Allah] is aware of an atom's weight in the heavens and on the earth and even anything smaller than that..."

Undoubtedly, fourteen centuries ago that statement would have looked unusual, even to an Arab. For him, the dharrah was the smallest thing there was. Indeed, this is proof, that the Qur'an is not outdated.

Another example of what one might expect to find in an"old book" that touches upon the subject of health or medicine is outdated remedies or cures. Various historical sources state that the Prophet gave some advice about health and hygiene, yet most of these pieces of advice are not contained in the Qur'an. At first glance, to the non-Muslims this appears to be a negligent omission. They cannot understand why Allah would not "include" such helpful information in the Qur'an. Some Muslims attempt to explain this absence with the following argument: "Although the Prophet's advice was sound and applicable to the time in which he lived, Allah, in His infinite wisdom, knew that there would come later medical and scientific advances which would make the Prophet's advice appear outdated. When later discoveries occurred, people might say that such information contradicted that which the Prophet had given. Thus, since Allah would never allow any opportunity for the non-Muslims to claim that the Qur'an contradicts itself or the teachings of the Prophet, He only included in the Qur'an information and examples which could stand the test of time."

However, when one examines the true realities of the Qur'an in terms of its existence as a divine revelation, the entire matter is quickly brought into its proper perspective, and the error in such argumentation becomes clear and understandable. It must be understood that the Qur'an is a divine revelation, and as such, all information in it is of divine origin. Allah revealed the Qur'an from Himself. It is the words of Allah, which existed before creation, and thus nothing can be added, subtracted or altered. In essence, the Qur'an existed and was complete before the creation of Prophet Muhammed, so it could not possibly contain any of the Prophet's own words or advice. An inclusion of such information would clearly contradict the purpose for which the Qur'an exists, compromise its authority and render it inauthentic as a divine revelation.

Consequently, there was no "home remedies" in the Qur'an which one could claim to be outdated; nor does it contain any man's view about what is beneficial to health, what food is best to eat, or what will cure this or that disease. In fact, the Qur'an only mentions one item dealing with medical treatment, and it is not in dispute by anyone. It states that in honey there is healing. And certainly, I do not think that there is anyone who will argue with that!

If one assumes that the Qur'an is the product of a man's mind, then one would expect it to reflect some of what was going on in the mind of the man who "composed" it. In fact, certain encyclopedias and various books clam that the Qur'an was the product of hallucinations that Muhammed underwent. If these claims are true - if it indeed originated from some psychological problems in Muhammed's mind - then evidence of this would be apparent in the Qur'an. Is there such evidence? In order to determine whether or not there is, one must first identify what things would have been going on in his mind at that time and then search for these thoughts and reflections in the Qur'an.

It is common knowledge that Muhammad had a very difficult life. All of his daughters died before him except one, and he had a wife of several years who was dear and important to him, who not only proceeded him in death at a very critical period of his life. As a matter of fact, she must have been quite a woman because when the first revelation came to him, he ran home to her afraid. Certainly, even today one would have a hard time trying to find an Arab who would tell you, "I was so afraid that I ran home to my wife." They just aren't that way. Yet Muhammed felt comfortable enough with his wife to be able to do that. That's how influential and strong woman she was. Although these examples are only a few of the subjects that would have been on Muhammed's mind, they are sufficient in intensity to prove my point. The Qur'an does not mention any of these things - not the death of his children, not the death of his beloved companion and wife, not his fear of the initial revelations, which he so beautifully shared with his wife - nothing; yet, these topics must have hurt him, bothered him, and caused him pain and grief during periods of his psychological reflections, then these subjects, as well as others, would be prevalent or at least mentioned throughout.

A truly scientific approach to the Qur'an is possible because the Qur'an offers something that is not offered by other religious scriptures, in particular, and other religions, in general. It is what scientists demand. Today there are many people who have ideas and theories about how the universe works. These people are all over the place, but the scientific community does not even bother to listen to them. This is because within the last century the scientific community has demanded a test of falsification. They say, "If you have theory, do not bother us with it unless you bring with that theory a way for us to prove whether you are wrong or not."

Such a test was exactly why the scientific community listened to Einstein towards the beginning of the century. He came with a new theory and said, "I believe the universe works like this; and here are three ways to prove whether I am wrong!". So the scientific community subjected his theory to the tests, and within six years it passed all three. Of course, this does not prove that he was great, but it proves that he deserved to be listened to because he said, "This is my idea; and if you want to try to prove me wrong, do this or try that." This is exactly what the Qur'an has - falsification tests. Some are old (in that they have already been proven true), and some still exist today. Basically it states, "If this book is not what it claims to be, then all you have to do is this or this or this to prove that it is false." Of course, in 1400 years no one has been able to do "This or this or this, " and thus it is still considered true and authentic. I suggest to you that the next time you get into dispute with someone about Islam and he claims that he has the truth and that you are in darkness, you leave all other arguments at first and make this suggestion. Ask him, "Is there any falsification test in your religion? Is there anything in your religion that would prove you are wrong if I could prove to you that it exists - anything?" Well, I can promise right now that people will not have anything - no test, no proof, nothing! This is because they do not carry around the idea that they should not only present what they believe but should also offer others a chance to prove they're wrong. However, Islam does that. A perfect example of how Islam provides man with a chance to verify it authenticity and "prove it wrong" occurs in the 4th chapter. And quiet honestly, I was surprised when I first discovered this challenge. It states:

"Do they not consider the Qur'an? Had it been from any other than Allah, they would surely have found therein much discrepancy."

This is a clear challenge to the non-Muslim.Basically, it invites him to find a mistake. As a matter of fact, the seriousness and difficulty of the challenge aside, the actual presentation of such a challenge in the first place is not even in human nature and is inconsistent with man's personality. One doesn't take an exam in school after finishing the exam, write a note to the instructor at the end saying, "This exam is perfect. There are no mistakes in it. Find one if you can!". One just doesn't do that. The teacher would not sleep until he found a mistake! And yet this is the way the Qur'an approaches people. Another interesting attitude that exists in the Qur'an repeatedly deals with its advice to the reader. The Qur'an informs that reader about different facts and then gives the advice: "If you want to know more about this or that, or if you doubt what is said, then you should ask those who have knowledge." This too is a surprising attitude. It is not usual to have a book that comes from someone without training in geography, botany, biology, etc., who discusses these subjects and then advises the reader to ask men of knowledge if he doubts anything.

Yet in every age there have been Muslims who have followed the advice of the Qur'an and made surprising discoveries. If one looks to the works of Muslim scientists if many centuries ago, one will find them full of quotations from the Qur'an. These works state that they did research in such a place, looking for something. And they affirm that the reason they looked in such and such a place was that the Qur'an pointed them in that direction. For example, the Qur'an mentions man's origin and then tells the reader, "Research it!" It gives the reader a hint where to look and then states that one should find out more about it. This is the kind of thing that Muslims today largely seem to overlook - but not always, as illustrated in the following example. A few years ago, a group of men in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia collected all if the verses in the Qur'an which discuss embryology - the growth of the human being in the womb. They said, "Here is what the Qur'an says. Is it the truth?" In essence, they took the advice of the Qur'an: "Ask the men who know." They chose, as it happened, a non-Muslim who is a professor of embryology at the University of Toronto. His name is Keith Moore, and he is the author of textbooks on embryology - a world expert on the subject. They invited him to Riyadh and said, "This is what the Qur'an says about your subject. Is it true? What can you tell us?" While he was in Riyadh, they gave him all of the help that he needed in translation and all of the cooperation for which he asked. And he was so surprised at what he found that he changed his textbooks. In fact, in the second edition of one of his books, called Before we are born... in the second edition about the history of embryology, he included some material that was not in the first edition because of what he found in the Qur'an. Truly this illustrates that the Qur'an was ahead of its time and that those who believe in the Qur'an know what other people do not know.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Keith Moore for a television presentation, and we talked a great deal about this - it was illustrated by slides and so on. He mentioned that some of the things that the Qur'an states about the growth of the human being were not known until thirty years ago. In fact, he said that one item in particular - the Qur'an's description of the human being as a "leech-like clot" ('alaqah) at one stage - was new to him; but when he checked on it, he found that it was true, and so he added it to his book. He said, "I never thought of that before," and he went to the zoology department and asked for a picture of a leech. When he found that it looked just like the human embryo, he decided to include both pictures in one of his textbooks. Dr. Moore also wrote a book on clinical embryology, and when he presented this information in Toronto, it caused quite a stir throughout Canada. It was on the front pages of some of the newspapers across Canada, and some of the headlines were quite funny. For instance, one headline read: "SURPRISING THING FOUND IN ANCIENT BOOK!"! It seems obvious from this example that people do not clearly understand what it is all about. As a matter of fact, one newspaper reporter asked Professor Moore, "Don't you think That maybe the Arabs might have known about these things - the description of the embryo, its appearance and how it changes and grows? Maybe there were not scientists, but maybe they did something crude dissections on their own - carved up people and examined these things."

The professor immediately pointed out to him that he [i.e., the reporter] had missed a very important point - all of the slides of the embryo that had been shown and had been projected in the film had come from pictures taken through a microscope. He said, "It does not matter if someone had tried to discover embryology fourteen centuries ago, they could not have seen it!". All of the descriptions in the Qur'an of the appearance of the embryo are of the item when it is still too small to see with the eye; therefore, one needs a microscope to see it. Since such a device had only been around for little more than two hundred years, Dr. Moore taunted, "Maybe fourteen centuries ago someone secretly had a microscope and did this research, making no mistakes anywhere. Then he somehow taught Muhammad and convinced him to put this information in his book. Then he destroyed his equipment and kept it a secret forever. Do you believe that? You really should not unless you bring some proof because it is such a ridiculous theory." In fact, when he was asked "How do you explain this information in the Qur'an?" Dr. Moore's reply was, "It could only have been divinely revealed."!

Although the aforementioned example of man researching information contained in the Qur'an deals with a non-Muslim, it is still valid because he is one of those who is knowledgeable in the subject being researched. Had some layman claimed that what the Qur'an says about embryology is true, then one would not necessarily have to accept his word. However, because of the high position, respect, and esteem man gives scholars, one naturally assumes that if they research a subject and arrive at a conclusion based on that research, then the conclusion is valid. One of Professor Moore's colleagues, Marshall Johnson, deals extensively with geology at the University of Toronto.

He became very interested in the fact that the Qur'an's statements about embryology are accurate, and so he asked Muslims to collect everything contained in the Qur'an which deals with his specialty. Again people were very surprised at the findings. Since there are a vast number subjects discussed in the Qur'an, it would certainly require a large amount of time to exhaust each subject. It suffices for the purpose of this discussion to state that the Qur'an makes very clear and concise statements about various subjects while simultaneously advising the reader to verify the authenticity of these statements with research by scholars in those subjects. And as illustrated by the Qur'an has clearly emerged authentic. Undoubtedly, there is an attitude in the Qur'an which is not found anywhere else. It is interesting how when the Qur'an provides information, it often tells the reader, "You did not know this before." Indeed, there is no scripture that exists which makes that claim. All of the other ancient writings and scriptures that people have, do give a lot of information, but they always state where the information came from.

For example, when the Bible discusses ancient history, it states that this king lived here, this one fought in a certain battle, another one had so may sons, etc. Yet it always stipulates that if you want more information, then you should read the book of so and so because that is where the information came from. In contrast to this concept, the Qur'an provides the reader with information and states that this information is something new. Of course, there always exists the advice to research the information provided and verify its authenticity. It is interesting that such a concept was never challenged by non-Muslims fourteen centuries ago. Indeed, the Makkans who hated the Muslims, and time and time again they heard such revelations claiming to bring new information; yet, they never spoke up and said, "This is not new. We know where Muhammad got this information. We learned this at school."

They could never challenge its authenticity because it really was new! In concurrence with the advice given in the Qur'an to research information (even if it is new), when 'Umar was caliph, he chose a group of men and sent them to find the wall of Dhul-Qarnayn. Before the Qur'anic revelation, the Arabs had never heard of such a wall, but because the Qur'an described it, they were able to discover it. As a matter of fact, it is now located in what is called Durbend in the Soviet Union. It must be stressed here that the Qur'an is accurate about many, many things, but accuracy does not necessarily mean that a book is a divine revelation. In fact, accuracy is only one of the criteria for divine revelations.

For instance, the telephone book is accurate, but that does not mean that it is divinely revealed. The real problem lies in that one must establish some proof of the source the Qur'an's information. The emphasis is on the reader. One cannot simply deny the Qur'an's authenticity without sufficient proof. If, indeed, one finds a mistake, then he has the right to disqualify it. This is exactly what the Qur'an encourages. Once a man came up to me after a lecture I delivered in South Africa. He was very angry about what I had said, and so he claimed, "I am going to go home tonight and find a mistake in the Qur'an." Of course, I said, "Congratulations. That is the most intelligent thing that you have said." Certainly, this is the approach Muslims need to take with those who doubt the Qur'an's authenticity, because the Qur'an itself offers the same challenge. An inevitably, after accepting it's challenge and discovering that it is true, these people will come to believe it because they could not disqualify it. In essence, the Qur'an earns their respect because they themselves have had to verify its authenticity. An essential fact that cannot be reiterated enough concerning the authenticity of the Qur'an is that one's inability to explain a phenomenon himself does not require his acceptance of the phenomenon's existence or another person's explanation of it.

Specifically, just because one cannot explain something does not mean that one has to accept someone else's explanation. However, the person's refusal of other explanations reverts the burden of proof back on himself to find a feasible answer. This general theory applies to numerous concepts in life, but fits most wonderfully with the Qur'anic challenge, for it creates a difficulty for one who says, "I do not believe it." At the onset of refusal one immediately has an obligation to find an explanation himself if he feels others' answers are inadequate. In fact, in one particular Qur'anic verse which I have always seen mistranslated into English, Allah mentions a man who heard the truth explained to him. It states that he was derelict in his duty because after he heard the information, he left without checking the verity of what he had heard. In other words, one is guilty if he hears something and does not research it and check to see whether it is true. One is supposed to process all information and decide what is garbage to be thrown out and what is worthwhile information to be kept and benefited from at a later date. One cannot just let it rattle around in his head. It must be put in the proper categories and approached from that point of view. For example, if the information is still speculatory, then one must discern whether it's closer to being true or false. But if all of the facts have been presented, then one must decide absolutely between these two options. And even if one is not positive about the authenticity of the information, he is still required to process all of the information and make the admission that he just does not know for sure. Although this last point appears to be futile, in actuality, it is beneficial to the arrival at a positive conclusion at a later time in that it forces the person to at least recognize, research and review the facts. This familiarity with the information will give the person "the edge" when future discoveries are made and additional information is presented. The important thing is that one deals with the facts and does not simply discard them out of empathy and disinterest.

The real certainty about the truthfulness of the Qur'an is evident in the confidence which is prevalent throughout it; and this confidence comes from a different approach - "Exhausting the Alternatives." In essence, the Qur'an states, "This book is a divine revelation; if you do not believe that, then what is it?" In other words, the reader is challenged to come up with some other explanation. Here is a book made of paper and ink. Where did it come from? It says it is a divine revelation; if it is not, then what is its source? The interesting fact is that no one has with an explanation that works. In fact, all alternatives have bee exhausted. As has been well established by non-Muslims, these alternatives basically are reduces to two mutually exclusive schools of thought, insisting on one or the other. On one hand, there exists a large group of people who have researched the Qur'an for hundreds of years and who claim, "One thing we know for sure - that man, Muhammad, thought he was a prophet. He was crazy!" They are convinced that Muhammad (SAW) was fooled somehow. Then on the other hand, there is another group which alleges, "Because of this evidence, one thing we know for sure is that that man, Muhammad, was a liar!" Ironically, these two groups never seem to get together without contradicting. In fact, many references on Islam usually claim both theories. They start out by saying that Muhammad (SAW) was crazy and then end by saying that he was a liar. They never seem to realize that he could not have been both!

For example, if one is deluded and really thinks that he is a prophet, then he does not sit up late at night planning, "How will I fool the people tomorrow so that they think I am a prophet?" He truly believes that he is a prophet, and he trusts that the answer will be given to him by revelation. As a matter of fact, a great deal of the Qur'an came in answer to questions. Someone would ask Muhammad (SAW) a question, and the revelation would come with the answer to it. Certainly, if one is crazy and believes that an angel put words in his ear, then when someone asks him a question, he thinks that the angel will give him the answer. Because he is crazy, he really thinks that. He does not tell someone to wait a short while and then run to his friends and ask them, "Does anyone know the answer?" This type of behavior is characteristic of one who does not believe that he is a prophet. What the non-Muslims refuse to accept is that you cannot have it both ways. One can be deluded, or he can be a liar. He can be either one or neither, but he certainly cannot be both! The emphasis is on the fact that they are unquestionably mutually exclusive personal traits.

The following scenario is a good example of the kind of circle that non-Muslims go around in constantly. If you ask one of them, "What is the origin of the Qur'an?" He tells you that it originated from the mind of a man who was crazy. Then you ask him, "If it came from his head, then where did he get the information contained in it? Certainly the Qur'an mentions many things with which the Arabs were not familiar." So in order to explain the fact which you bring him, he changes his position and says, "Well, maybe he was not crazy. Maybe some foreigner brought him the information. So he lied and told people that he was a prophet." At this point then you have to ask him, "If Muhammad was a liar, then where did he get his confidence? Why did he behave as though he really thought he was a prophet?" Finally backed into a corner, like a cat he quickly lashes out with the first response that comes to his mind. Forgetting that he has already exhausted that possibility, he claims, "Well, maybe he wasn't a liar. He was probably crazy and really thought that he was a prophet." And thus he begins the futile circle again.

As has already been mentioned, there is much information contained in the Qur'an whose source cannot be attributed to anyone other than Allah. For example, who told Muhammad about the wall of Dhul-Qarnayn - a place hundreds of miles to the north? Who told him about embryology? When people assemble facts such as these, if they are not willing to attribute their existence to a divine source, they automatically resort to the assumption someone brought Muhammad the information and that he used it to fool the people. However, this theory can easily be disproved with one simple question: "If Muhammad was a liar, where did he get his confidence? Why did he tell some people out right to their face what others could never say?" Such confidence depends completely upon being convinced that one has a true divine revelation. For example, the Prophet (SAW) had an uncle by the name of Abu Lahab. This man hated Islam to such an extent that he used to follow the Prophet around in order to discredit him. If Abu Lahab saw the Prophet (SAW) speaking to a stranger, he would wait until they parted and then would go to the stranger and ask him, "What did he tell you? Did he say, 'Black.'? Well, it's white. Did he say, 'Morning.'? Well, it's night." He faithfully said the exact opposite of whatever he heard Muhammad (SAW) and the Muslims say. However, about ten years before Abu Lahab died, a little chapter in the Qur'an was revealed to him. It distinctly stated that he would go to the Fire (i.e., Hell). In other words, it affirmed that he would never become a Muslim and would therefore be condemned forever. For ten years all Abu Lahab had to do was say, "I heard that it has been revealed to Muhammad that I will never change - that I will never become a Muslim and will enter the Hellfire. Well I want to become a Muslim now. How do you like that? What do you think of your divine revelation now?" But he never did that. And yet, that is exactly the kind of behavior one would have expected from him since he always sought to contradict Islam. In essence, Muhammad (SAW) said, "You hate me and you want to finish me? Here, say these words, and I am finished. Come on, say them!" But Abu Lahab never said them. Ten years! And in all that time he never accepted Islam or even became sympathetic to the Islamic cause. How could Muhammad possibly have known for sure that Abu Lahab would fulfill the Qur'anic revelation if he (i.e., Muhammad) was not truly the messenger of Allah? How could he possibly have been so confident as to give someone 10 years to discredit his claim of Prophethood? The only answer is that he was Allah's messenger; for in order to put forth suck a risky challenge, one has to be entirely convinced that he has a divine revelation.

Another example of the confidence which Muhammad (SAW) had in his own Prophethood and consequently in the divine protection of himself and his message is when he left Makkah and hid in a cave with Abu Bakr during their emigration to Madeenah. The two clearly saw people coming to kill them, and Abu Bakr was afraid. Certainly, if Muhammad (SAW) was a liar, a forger and one who was trying to fool the people into believing that he was a prophet, one would have expected him to say in such a circumstance to his friend, "Hey, Abu Bakr, see if you can find a back way out of this cave." Or "Squat down in that corner over there and keep quiet." Yet, in fact, what he said to Abu Bakr clearly illustrated his confidence. He told him, "Relax! Allah is with us, and Allah will save us!"

Now, if one knows that he is fooling the people, where does one get this kind of attitude? In fact, such a frame of mind is not characteristic of a liar or a forger at all. So, as has been previously mentioned, the non-Muslims go around and around in a circle, searching for a way out - some way to explain the findings in the Qur'an without attributing them to their proper source. On one hand, they tell you on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, "The man was a liar," and on the other hand, on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday they tell you, "He was crazy." What they refuse to accept is that one cannot have it both ways; yet they refuse to accept is that one cannot have it both ways; yet they need both excuses to explain the information in the Qur'an.

About seven years ago, I had a minister over to my home. In the particular room which we were sitting there was a Qur'an on the table, face down, and so the minister was not aware of which book it was. In the midst of a discussion, I pointed to the Qur'an and said, "I have confidence in that book." Looking at the Qur'an but not knowing which book it was , he replied, "Well, I tell you, if that book is not the Bible, it was written by a man!" In response to his statement, I said, "Let me tell you something about what is in that book." And in just three to four minutes I related to him a few things contained in the Qur'an. After just those three or four minutes, he completely changed his position and declared, "You are right. A man did not write that book. The Devil wrote it!" Indeed, possessing such an attitude is very unfortunate - for many reasons. For one thing, it is a very quick and cheap excuse. It is an instant exit out of an uncomfortable situation. As a matter of fact, there is a famous story in the Bible that mentions how one day some of the Jews were witnesses when Jesus raised a man from the dead. The man had been dead for four days, and when Jesus arrived, he simply said, "Get up!" and the man arose and walked away. At such a sight, some of the Jews who were watching said disbelievingly, "This is the Devil. The Devil helped him!" Now this story is rehearsed often in churches all over the world, and people cry big tears over it, saying, "Oh, if I had been there, I would not have been as stupid as the Jews!" Yet ironically, these people do exactly what the Jews did when in just three minutes you show them only a small part of the Qur'an and all they can say is, "Oh, the Devil did it. The devil wrote that book!". Because they are truly backed into a corner and have no other viable answer, they resort to the quickest and cheapest excuse available. Another Example of people's use of this weak stance can be found in the Makkans' explanation of the source of Muhammed's message. They used to say, "The devils bring Muhammad that Qur'an!" But just as with every other suggestion made, the Qur'an gives the answer. One verse in particular states:

"And they say, 'Surely he is possessed [by jinn], 'but it [i.e., the Qur'an] is not except a reminder to the worlds."

Thus it gives an argument in reply to such a theory. In fact, there are many arguments in the Qur'an in reply to the suggestion that devils brought Muhammad (SAW) his message. For example, in the 26th chapter Allah clearly affirms:

"No evil ones have brought it [i.e., this revelation] down. It would neither be fitting for them, nor would they be able. Indeed they have been removed far from hearing."

And in another place in the Qur'an, Allah instructs us:

"So when you recite the Qur'an seek refuge in Allah from Shaytaan, the rejected."

Now is this how Satan writes a book? He tells one, "Before you read my book, ask God to save you from me."? This is very, very tricky. Indeed, a man could write something like this, but would Satan do this? Many people clearly illustrate that they cannot come to one conclusion on this subject. On one hand, they claim that Satan would not do such a thing and that even if he could, God would not allow him to; yet, on the other hand, they also believe that Satan is only that much less than God. In essence they allege that the Devil can probably do whatever God can do. And as a result, when they look at the Qur'an, even as surprised as they are as to how amazing it is, they still insist, "The Devil did this!" Thanks be to Allah, Muslims do not have that attitude. Although Satan may have some abilities, they are a long way separated from the abilities of Allah. And no Muslim is a Muslim unless he believes that. It is common knowledge even among non-Muslims that the Devil can easily make mistakes, and it would be expected that he would contradict himself if and when he wrote a book. For indeed, the Qur'an states:

"Do they not consider the Qur'an? Had it been from any other than Allah, they would surely have found therein much discrepancy."

In conjunction with the excuses that non-Muslims advance in futile attempts to justify unexplainable verses in the Qur'an, there is another attack often rendered which seems to be a combination of the theories that Muhammad (SAW) was crazy and a liar. Basically, these people propose that Muhammad was insane, and as a result of his delusion, he lied to and misled people. There is a name for this in psychology. It is referred to as mythomania. It means simply that one tells lies and then believes them. This is what the non-Muslims say Muhammad (SAW) suffered from. But the only problem with this proposal is that one suffering from mythomania absolutely cannot deal with facts, and yet the whole Qur'an is based entirely upon facts. Everything contained in it can be researched and established as true. Since facts are such a problem for a mythomaniac, when a psychologist tries to treat one suffering from that condition, he continually confronts him with facts. For example, if one is mentally ill and claims, "I am the king of England," a psychologist does not say to him "No you aren't. You are crazy!" He just does not do that. Rather, he confronts him with facts and says, "O.K., you say you are the king of England. So tell me where the queen is today. And where is your prime minister? And where are your guards?" Now, when the man has trouble trying to deal with these questions, he tries to make excuses, saying Uh... the queen... she has gone to her mother's. Uh... the prime minister... well he died." And eventually he is cured because he cannot deal with the facts. If the psychologist continues confronting him with enough facts, finally he faces the reality and says, "I guess I am not the king of England." The Qur'an approaches everyone who reads it in very much the same way a psychologist treats his mythomania patient. There is a verse in the Qur'an which states:

"Oh mankind, there has come to you an admonition [i.e., the Qur'an] from your Lord and a healing for what is in the hearts - and guidance and mercy for the believers."

At first glance, this statement appears vague, but the meaning of this verse is clear when one views it in light of the aforementioned example. Basically, one is healed of his delusions by reading the Qur'an. In essence, it is therapy. It literally cures deluded people by confronting them with facts. A prevalent attitude throughout the Qur'an is one which says, "Oh mankind, you say such and such about this; but what about such and such? How can you say this when you know that?" And so forth. It forces one to consider what is relevant and what matters while simultaneously healing one of the delusions that the facts presented to mankind by Allah can easily be explained away with flimsy theories and excuses. It is this very sort of thing - confronting people with facts - that had captured the attention of many non-Muslims. In fact, there exists a very interesting reference concerning this subject in the New Catholic Encyclopedia.

In an article under the subject of the Qur'an, the Catholic Church states, "Over the centuries, many theories have been offered as to the origin of the Qur'an... Today no sensible man accepts any of these theories."!! Now here is the age-old Catholic Church, which has been around for so many centuries, denying these futile attempts to explain away the Qur'an. Indeed, the Qur'an is a problem for the Catholic Church. It states that it is revelation, so they study it. Certainly, they would love to find proof that it is not, but they cannot. They cannot find a viable explanation. But at least they are honest in their research and do not accept the first unsubstantiated interpretation which comes along. The Church states that in fourteen centuries it has not yet been presented a sensible explanation. At least it admits that the Qur'an is not an easy subject to dismiss. Certainly, other people are much less honest. They quickly say, "Oh, the Qur'an came from here. The Qur'an came from there." And they do not even examine the credibility of what they are stating most of the time. Of course, such a statement by the Catholic Church leaves the everyday Christian in some difficulty. It just may be that he has his own ideas as to the origin of the Qur'an, but as a single member of the Church, he cannot really act upon his own theory. Such an action would be contrary to the obedience, allegiance and loyalty which the Church demands. By virtue of his membership, he must accept what the Catholic Church declares without question and establish its teachings as part of his everyday routine. So, in essence, if the Catholic Church as a whole is saying, "Do not listen to these unconfirmed reports about the Qur'an," then what can be said about the Islamic point of view? Even non-Muslims are admitting that there is something to the Qur'an - something that has to be acknowledged - then why are people so stubborn and defensive and hostile when Muslims advance the very same theory? This is certainly something for those with mind a to contemplate - something to ponder for those of understanding!

Recently, the leading intellectual in the Catholic Church - a man by the name of Hans - studied the Qur'an and gave his opinion of what he had read. This man has been around for some time, and he is highly respected in the Catholic Church, and after careful scrutiny, he reported his findings, concluding, "God has spoken to man through the man, Muhammad." Again this is a conclusion arrived at by a non-Muslim source - the very leading intellectual of the Catholic Church himself! I do not think that the Pope agrees with him, but nonetheless, the opinion of such a noted, repute public figure must carry some weight in defense of the Muslim position. He must be applauded for facing the reality that the Qur'an is not something which can be easily pushed aside and that, in fact God is the source of these words. As is evident from the aforementioned information, all of the possibilities have been exhausted, so the chance of finding another possibility of dismissing the Qur'an is nonexistent. For if the book is not a revelation, then it is a deception; and if it is a deception, one must ask, "What is its origin" And where does it deceive us?" Indeed, the true answers to these questions shed light on the Qur'an's authenticity and silence the bitter unsubstantiated claims of the unbelievers. Certainly, if people are going to insist that the Qur'an is a deception, then they must bring forth evidence to support such a claim. The burden of proof is on them, not us! One is never supposed to advance a theory without sufficient corroborating facts; so I say to them, "Show me one deception! Show me where the Qur'an deceives me! Show me, otherwise, don't say that it is a deception!" An interesting characteristic of the Qur'an is how it deals with surprising phenomena which relate not only to the past but to modern times as well. In essence, the Qur'an is not and old problem. It is still a problem even today - a problem to the non-Muslims that is. For everyday, every week, every year brings more and more evidence that the Qur'an is a force to be contended with - that its authenticity is no longer to be challenged! For example, one verse in the Qur'an reads;

"Do not the unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together, then We clove them asunder, and made from water every living thing? Will they not then believe?"

Ironically, this very information is exactly what they awarded the 1973 Noble Prize for - to a couple of unbelievers. The Qur'an reveals the origin of the universe - how it began from one piece - and mankind continues to verify this revelation, even up to now. Additionally, the fact that all life originated from water would not have been an easy thing to convince people of fourteen centuries ago. Indeed, if 1400 years ago you had stood in the desert and told someone, "All of this, you see (pointing to yourself), is made up of mostly water," no one would have believed you. Proof of that was not available until the invention of the microscope. They had to wait to find out that cytoplasm, the basic substance of the cell, is made-up of 80% water. Nonetheless, the evidence did come, and once again the Qur'an stood the test of time. In reference to the falsification tests mentioned earlier, it is interesting to note that they, too, relate to both the past and the present. Some of them were used as illustrations of Allah's omnipotence and knowledge, while others continue to stand as challenges to the present day. An example of the former is the statement made in the Qur'an about Abu Lahab. It clearly illustrates that Allah, the Knower of the Unseen, knew that Abu Lahab would never change his ways and accept Islam. Thus Allah dictated that he would be condemned to the Hellfire forever. Such a chapter was both an illustration of Allah's divine wisdom and a warning to those who were like Abu Lahab.

An interesting example of the latter type of falsification tests contained in the Qur'an is the verse which mentions the relationship between the Muslims and the Jews. The verse is careful not to narrow its scope to the relationship between individual members of each religion, but rather, it summarizes the relationship between the two groups of people as a whole. In essence, the Qur'an states that the Christians will always treat the Muslims better than the Jews will treat the Muslims. Indeed, the full impact of such a statement can only be felt after careful consideration of the real meaning of such a verse. It is true that many Christians and many Jews have become Muslims, but as a whole, the Jewish community is to be viewed as an avid enemy of Islam. Additionally, very few people realize what such an open declaration in the Qur'an invites. In essence, it is an easy chance for the Jews to prove that the Qur'an is false - that it is not a divine revelation. All they have to do is organize themselves, treat the Muslims nicely for a few years and then say, "Now what does your holy book say about who are your best friends in the world - the Jews or the Christians? Look what we Jews have done for you!" That is all they have to do to disprove the Qur'an's authenticity, yet they have not done it in 1400 years. But, as always, the offer still stands open!

All of the examples so far given concerning the I various angles from which one can approach the | Qur'an have undoubtedly been subjective in nature; I however there does exist another angle, among others, which is objective and whose basis is mathematical. It is surprising how authentic the Qur'an becomes when one assembles what might be referred to as a list of good guesses. Mathematically, it can be explained using guessing and prediction examples. For instance, if a person has two choices (i.e., one is right, and one is wrong), and he closes his eyes and makes a choice, then half of the time (i.e., one time out of two) he will be right. Basically, he has a one in two chance, for he could pick the wrong choice, or he could pick the right choice. Now if the same person has two situations like that (i.e., he could be right or wrong about situation number one, and he could be right or wrong about situation number two), and he closes his eyes and guesses, then he will only be right one fourth of the time (i.e., one time out of four). He now has a one in four chance because now there are three ways for him to be wrong and only one way for him to be right. In simple terms, he could make the wrong choice in situation number one and then make the wrong choice in situation number two; OR he could make the wrong choice in situation number one and then make the right choice in situation number two; OR he could make the right choice in situation number one and then make the wrong choice in situation number two; OR he could make the right choice in situation number one and then make the right choice in situation number two. Of course, the(only instance in which he could be totally right is the last scenario where he could guess correctly in both situations. The odds of his guessing completely correctly have become greater because the number of situations for him to guess in have increased; and the mathematical equation representing such a scenario is 1/2 x 1/2 (i.e., one time out of two for the first situation multiplied by one time out of two for the second situation).

Continuing on with the example, if the same person now has three situations in which to make blind guesses, then he will only be right one eighth of the time (i.e., one time out of eight or 1/2 X 1/2 X 1/2). Again, the odds of choosing the correct choice in all three situations have decreased his chances of being completely correct to only one time in eight. It must be understood that as the number of situations increase, the chances of being right decrease, for the two phenomena are inversely proportional.

Now applying this example to the situations in the Qur'an, if one draws up a list of all of the subjects about which the Qur'an has made correct statements, it becomes very clear that it is highly unlikely that they were all just correct blind guesses. Indeed, the subjects discussed in the Qur'an are numerous, and thus the odds of someone just making lucky guesses about all of them become practically nil. If there are a million ways for the Qur'an to be wrong, yet each time it is right, then it is unlikely that someone was guessing. The following three examples of subjects about which the Qur'an has made correct statements collectively illustrate how the Qur'an continues to beat the odds.

In the 16th chapter the Qur'an mentions that the female bee leaves its home to gather food.l2 Now, a person might guess on that, saying, "The bee that you see flying around - it could be male, or it could be female. I think I will guess female." Certainly, he has a one in two chance of being right. So it happens that the Qur'an is right. But it also happens that was not what most people believed at the time when the Qur'an was revealed. Can you tell the difference between a male and a female bee? Well, it takes a specialist to do that, but it has been discovered that the male bee never leaves his home to gather food. However, in Shakespeare's play, Henry the Fourth, some of the characters discuss bees and mention that the bees are soldiers and have a king. That is what people thought in Shakespeare's time - that the bees that one sees flying around are male bees and that they go home and answer to a king. However, that is not true at all. The fact is that they are females, and they answer to a queen. Yet it took modern scientific investigations in the last 300 years to discover that this is the case.

So, back to the list of good guesses, concerning the topic of bees, the Qur'an had a 50/50 chance of being right, and the odds were one in two.

In addition to the subject of bees, the Qur'an also discusses the sun and the manner in which it travels through space. Again, a person can guess on that subject. When the sun moves through space, there are two options: it can travel just as a stone would travel if one threw it, or it can move of its own accord. The Qur'an states the latter - that it moves as a result of its own motion.'3 To do such, the Qur'an uses a form of the word sabaha to describe the sun's movement through space. In order to properly provide the reader with a comprehensive understanding of the implications of this Arabic verb, the following example is given. If a man is in water and the verb sabaha is applied in reference to his movement, it can be understood that he is swimming, moving of his own accord and not as a result of a direct force applied to him. Thus when this verb is used in reference to the sun's movement through space, it in no way implies that the sun is flying uncontrollably through space as a result of being hurled or the like. It simply means that the sun is turning and rotating as it travels. Now, this is what the Qur'an affirms, but was it an easy thing to discover? Can any common man tell that the sun is turning? Only in modern times was the equipment made available to project the image of the sun onto a tabletop so that one could look at it without being blinded. And through this process it was discovered that not only are there three spots on the sun but that these spots move once every 25 days. This movement is referred to as the rotation of the sun around its axis and conclusively proves that, as the Qur'an stated 1400 years ago, the sun does, indeed turn as it travels through space.

And returning once again to the subject of good guess, the odds of guessing correctly about both subjects - the sex of bees and the movement of the sun - are one in four!

Seeing as back fourteen centuries ago people probably did not understand much about time zones, the Quran's statements about this subject are considerably surprising. The concept that one family is having breakfast as the sun comes up while another family is enjoying the brisk night air is truly something to be marveled at, even in modern time. Indeed, fourteen centuries ago, a man could not travel more than thirty miles in one day, and thus it took him literally months to travel from India to Morocco, for example. And probably , when he was having supper in Morocco, he thought to himself, "Back home in India they are having supper right now." This is because he did not realize that, in the process of traveling, he moved across a time zone. Yet, because it is the words of Allah, the All-Knowing, the Qur'an recognizes and acknowledges such a phenomenon. In an interesting verse it states that when history comes to an end and the Day of Judgment arrives, it will all occurring an instant; and this very instant will catch some people in the daytime and some people at night. This clearly illustrates Allah's divine wisdom and His previous knowledge of the existence of time zones, even though such a discovery was non-existent back fourteen centuries ago. Certainly, this phenomenon is not something which is obvious to one's eyes or a result of one's experience, and this fact, in itself, suffices as proof of the Qur'ans authenticity.

Returning one final time to the subject of good guesses for the purpose of the present example, the odds that someone guessed correctly about all three of the aforementioned subjects - the sex of bees, the movement of the sun and the existence of time zones - are one in eight!

Certainly, one could continue on and on with this example, drawing up longer and longer list of good guesses; and of course, the odds would become higher and higher with each increase of subjects about which one could guess. But what no one can deny is the following; the odds that Mohammed an illiterate, guessed correctly about thousands and thousands of subjects, never once making a mistake, are so high that any theory of his authorship of the Qur'an must be completely dismissed - even by the most hostile enemies of Islam!

Indeed, the Qur'an expects this kind of challenge. Undoubtedly, if one said to someone upon entering a foreign land, "I know your father. I have met him," probably the man from that land would doubt the newcomer's word, saying, "You have just come here. How could you know my father?" As a result, he would question him, "Tell me, is my father tall, short, dark, fair? What is he like?" Of course, if the visitor continued answering all of the questions correctly, the skeptic would have no choice but to say, "I guess you do know my father. I don't know how you know him, but I guess you do!" The situation is the same with the Qur'an. It states that it originates from the One who created everything. So everyone has the right to say, "Convince me! If the author of this book really originated life and everything in the heavens and on the earth, then He should know about this, about that, and so on." And inevitably, after researching the Qur'an, everyone will discover the same truths. Additionally, we all know something for sure: we do not all have to be experts to verify what the Qur'an affirms. One's iman (faith) grows as one continues to check and confirm the truths contained in the Qur'an. And one is supposed to do so all of his life.

May God (Allah) guide everyone close to the truth.

SUPPLEMENT

An engineer at the University of Toronto who was interested in psychology and who had read something on it, conducted researched wrote a thesis on Efficiency of Group Discussions. The purpose of his research was to find out how much people accomplish when they get together to talk in groups of two, three, ten, etc. The graph of his findings: people accomplish most when they talk in groups of two. Of course, this discovery was entirely beyond his expectations, but it is very old advice given in the Qur'an:

Additionally, the 89th chapter of the Qur'an mentions a certain city by the name of 'Iram (a city of pillars), which was not known in ancient history and which was non-existent as far as historians were concerned. However, the December 1978 edition of National Geographic introduced interesting information which mentioned that in 1973, the city of Elba was excavated in Syria. The city was discovered to be 43 centuries old, but that is not the most amazing part. Researchers found in the library of Elba a record of all of the cities with which Elba had done business. Believe or not, there on the list was the name of the city of 'Iram. The people of Elba had done business with the people of 'Iram!

"Say, 'I exhort you to one thing - that you stand for Allah, [assessing the truth] by twos and singly, and then reflect.....' In conclusion I ask you to consider with care the following:

"And they say, 'Why are not signs sent down to him from his Lord?' Say, 'Indeed, the signs are with Allah, and I am but a clear warner.' But is sufficient for them that We have sent down to you the Book [i.e. Qur'an] which is rehearsed to them? Verily, in that is mercy and a reminder to people who believe."

Imake Dua

2010-12-31T12:37:00.000-07:00

PSYCH! QUICK POST!

I'm looking for a replacement app for Duas. The one I have is comprehensive (VERY COMPREHENSIVE) but is lacking in the navigation and user friendliness department. I'd also like it to be free. I came across this one:

Imake Dua (http://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/imake-dua/id356925192?mt=8)

It's pretty, easy to read, and easy to navigate. It features a "Favorites" option, and (like the other one) takes it's material from "Fortification of the Muslim Through Remembrance and Supplication from the Quran and Sunnah" (GREAT book by the way).

The negative qualities however, are that the search option is more of an index page than a word search, and the home screen doesn't include every section of the book. It has "When waking up", "When leaving home", "Going to the masjid" for instance, but doesn't have a button for more random ones like making Wuduu, or in times of fear. I suppose that's okay though; they did put "Dua Throughout the Day" at the top of the home screen, and you can always add those to favourites.

If anyone knows of a better app, I'd like to hear about it! :D

away for new years...

2010-12-31T10:00:00.000-07:00

no post this week, sorry....

Fajr as a Lawyer?

2010-12-24T10:00:00.000-07:00

I WAS going to write an article on the khutba I heard on friday, but unfortunately I can't actually find any information on it. :(

Our Imam was talking about the benefits of waking up to pray fajr, and one of the benefits he said which he read in a book (which caught me by suprise because I was expecting him to say something else) was that the fajr prayer will act as an intermediary between your soul and the angels of the grave. Quoting this book (I REALLY wish I remembered which one it was, I'll ask him when I get a chance), he said that after you're dead, and you've been put in your grave, and you can hear the footsteps of the people leaving, two angels will come to you (Munkar and Nakir):

Narrated Anas: The Prophet said, "When a human being is laid in his grave and his companions return and he even hears their foot steps, two angels come to him and make him sit and ask him: What did you use to say about this man, Muhammad ? He will say: I testify that he is Allah's slave and His Apostle. Then it will be said to him, 'Look at your place in the Hell-Fire. Allah has given you a place in Paradise instead of it.' " The Prophet added, "The dead person will see both his places. But a non-believer or a hypocrite will say to theangels, 'I do not know, but I used to say what the people used to say! It will be said to him, 'Neither did you know nor did you take the guidance (by reciting the Quran).' Then he will be hit with an iron hammer between his two ears, and he will cry and that cry will be heard by whatever approaches him except human beings and jinns." (Bukhari, Book #23, Hadith #422)

but our Imam said (according to this book) that a very handsome man will also come to you (before these angels do), and he'll tell you to keep quiet and let him do the talking. After the interview, you'll ask this guy who he is and he'll respond by saying something like "don't you recognize me? I'm your fajr prayer which you would leave your sleep to do!".

Now I've heard this, which I can't find in any book of hadith and I'm actually not going to repeat word for word because fake hadith's should roll over and die, but it says that the handsome man is instead one's Quranic recitation which they used to do throughout their life.

If I read it online I'd be relatively skeptical of course, but this is the local Imam, and he has an enormous responsibility to transmit only true information. At any rate, if anyone has any information on this, or knows where I can find it or where it came from, please let me know. If I find anything I'll update this article, isA.

9th and 10th of Muharram

2010-12-13T10:00:00.000-07:00

Early Post! :D

This 15th and 16th (by my watch) are the 9th and 10th of Muharram, and you know what that means! FASTING!!! Just google 9th and 10th of Muharram, if you don't believe me. Anyway, here's some proof for fasting on the 10th (the 9th was a bit of an afterthought towards the end of Prophet Muhammad SAW's life):

Narrated Ibn 'Abbas: When the Prophet came to Medina, he found (the Jews) fasting on the day of 'Ashura' (i.e. 10th of muharram). They used to say: "This is a great day on which Allah saved Moses and drowned the folk of Pharaoh. Moses observed the fast on this day, as a sign of gratitude to Allah." The Prophet said, "I am closer to Moses than they." So, he observed the fast (on that day) and ordered the Muslims to fast on it. (Bukhari, Book #55, Hadith #609)

So what's in it for you? Well, how about a heaping plateful of FORGIVENESS!!

"...He (Prophet Muhammad SAW) was asked about fasting on the day of 'Ashura (10th of muharram), whereupon be said: It expiates the sins of the preceding year. (Imam Muslim said that in this hadith there is a) narration of Imam Shu'ba that he was asked about fasting on Monday and Thursday, but we (Imam Muslim) did not mention Thursday for we found it as an error (in reporting)." (Muslim, Book #006, Hadith #2603)

What's interesting though, is that a bunch of other stuff happened on this day. So MUCH stuff actually, over such a long period too....

(from: http://www.sunnah.org/ibadaat/fasting/ashura.htm who in turn got it from: Ghunya li-Talibi Tariq al-Haqq, Sayyidina Abdul Qadir al-Jilani)

On this day in History:

1) Allah (SWT) accepted the repentance of Prophet Adam (AS) after his exile from Paradise;

2) Allah (SWT) saved Sayyidina Noah (AS) and his companions in the ark;

3) Allah (SWT) extinguished the fire in which Prophet Ibrahim (AS) was thrown by Nimrod

4) Allah (SWT) spoke directly to Prophet Musa (AS) and gave him the Commandments.

5) Prophet Ayyub (AS) was restored to health (from leprosy);

6) Prophet Yusuf (AS) was reunited with his father Ya’qub (AS);

7) Prophet Yunus (AS) was taken out from the belly of the fish;

8) The sea was divided as the nation of israel was delivered from captivity and Pharoah’s army was destroyed.

9) The kingdom of Sulaiman (AS) was restored;

10) Prophet Isa (AS) was raised to Jannah; and

11) Al- Imam Husayn (RA) (the Holy Nabi’s, Sall Allahu alaihi wa Aalihi wa Sallim, grandson) achieved the honor of Martyrdom.

I've also read stuff about the Day of Qiyama (judgement day) starting on Ashura (no quotes though, sorry). I WAS going to say " I bet it'll be on this day that Dajjal comes too!" but if you look at all these events, they're all happy events. Saving, restoring, healing, forgiving....Dajjal's arrival doesn't fit with that....so, I'm guessing Jesus (AS) is gonna come back on this day then!

Happy Fasting! :D