Showing posts with label Life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Life. Show all posts
Tuesday, 22 March 2011
Sunday, 13 February 2011
Sabr or Shukr – The Worry Stops Here
Aasiyah, the wife of Fir'own, had eman in Allah subhaanahu wa ta ‘aala that thrived under the shadow of someone who said, "I am your Lord, Most High!" When news reached Fir'own of his wife's eman, he beat her and commanded his guards to beat her. They took her out in the scalding noon heat, tied her hands and feet, and beat her perpetually. Who did she turn to? She turned to Allah! She prayed, "My lord, build for me a home with You in Paradise and save me from Fir'own and his deeds and save me from the transgressive people."
It was narrated that when she said this, the sky opened for her and she saw her home in Paradise and she smiled. The guards watched in astonishment as she was being tortured but yet smiling. Frustrated, Fir'own commanded a boulder to be brought and dropped on Aasiyah, to crush her to death. But Allah took her soul before the boulder was brought and she became an example for all the believing men and women until the end of time:
And Allah has set forth an example for those who believe – the wife of Fir'own – when she said, "My Lord, build for me a home with You in Paradise, and save me from Fir'own and his deeds, and save me from the transgressive, disbelieving people” (At-Tahreem 66/11).
In the hadith of Jibraeel, when he came to the Prophet sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam and asked him about Islam, eman, and ihsaan, the Prophet sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam said about eman:
"Eman is to believe in Allah, His angels, His books, His messengers, the Final Day, and the divine decree – the good and the bad thereof."
Today I shall focus on the last article of eman – to believe in the divine decree, the good and the bad thereof.
As you and I travel though life, we find ourselves in one of two situations. Either something good is happening in our lives, in which case as Muslims our role is to thank Allah for the blessing, or something bad or something we dislike is happening to us, and our role then is to be patient. This is the formula for a happy life, a life cruising towards the pleasure of Allah. Sabr (patience) or shukr (gratitude), the worry stops here.
The Messenger of Allah sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam said:
"Strange is the affair of the mu'min (the believer). Verily, all his affairs are good for him. If something pleasing befalls him he thanks (Allah) and it becomes better for him. And if something harmful befalls him he is patient (saabir) and it becomes better for him. And this is only for the mu'min."
Ibn Al-Jowzee said, "If this dunya was not a station of tests it would not be filled with sicknesses and filth. If life were not about hardship, then the prophets and the pious would have lived the most comfortable of lives. Nay, Adam suffered test after test until he left the dunya. Nuh cried for 300 years. Ibrahim was thrown into a pit of fire and later told to slaughter his son. Ya'qub cried until he became blind. Musa challenged Fir'own and was tested by his people. Eesa had no provision except the morsels his disciples provided him with. And Muhammad sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam met poverty with patience as his uncle, one of the most beloved relatives to him, was slain and mutilated and his people disbelieved in him ... and the list of prophets and the pious goes on and on."
What happens to us happens by the will of Allah subhaanahu wa ta ‘aala. It is an article of our eman that we believe in qada' and qadr and that we are pleased with Allah’s choice. Good or seemingly bad, it is all the test of this dunya. How can we imagine that we shall not be tested when those who were better than us suffered what they suffered? They, however, came away with the pleasure of Allah subhaanahu wa ta ‘aala.
Al Hasan ibn Arafah narrated that he visited Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal after he was whipped and tortured. He said to him, "O Abu Abdillah, you have reached the station of the Prophets!"
He said, "Keep quiet. Verily, I saw nothing more than people selling their deen and I saw scholars that were with me sell their faith. So I said to myself, 'Who am I, what am I? What am I going to say to Allah tomorrow when I stand in front of Him and He asks me, 'Did you sell your deen like the others did?'"
He continued, "So I looked at the whip and the sword and chose them. And I said, 'If I die, I shall return to Allah and say that I was told to say that one of Your Characteristics was something created but I did not. ' After that, it will be up to Him - either to punish me or be Merciful to me."
Al-Hasan ibn Arafah then asked, "Did you feel pain when they whipped you?"
He said, "Yes, I felt the pain up to 20 lashes then I lost all feeling (They whipped him over eighty times). After it was over I felt no pain and that day I prayed Dhuhr standing."
Al-Hasan ibn Arafah started weeping when he heard what had happened. Imam Ahmad questioned him, "Why are you crying? I did not lose my eman. After that why should I care if I lose my life?"
These people were better than us, but this was how they were tested.
There some facts about the tests of life, the good and the bad that befalls us:
1. Much of what befalls us is the direct result of our own sins. Allah subhaanahu wa ta ‘aala says:
And whatever misfortune befalls you it is because of what your hands have earned. And He pardons much Ash-Shura 42/30).
Muhammad ibn Seereen used to say when his debts piled up and he felt sad, "I know that the cause of this sadness is a sin I committed over 40 years ago."
2. People understand that when something bad happens it is a test from Allah ‘azza wa jall. But dear brothers and sisters, the good things that happen to us are also a test. Allah subhaanahu wa ta ‘aala says:
And we tested them with good (blessings) and evil (calamities) in order that they might turn back (Al-A’raf 7/168).
Abd alMalik ibn Ishaq said, "There is no one that is not tested with health and prosperity to measure how thankful he is."
And the Companion AbdurRahman ibn 'Awf radi Allahu anhu said, "We
were tested with hardship and were patient. And then we were tested with prosperity and we were not patient. Because of this Allah states:
O ye who believe! Let not your wealth or your children divert you from the remembrance of Allah. And whosoever does that, then they are the losers (Al-Munafiqun 63/9).
3. Patience must happen from the beginning, not three days later or one day later, but rather at the first news of the calamity. The Prophet sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam said, "Verily patience (is only sabr when practiced) at the first hit (of news)."
4. There are things that contradict sabr. Tearing ones shirt, for example, slapping ones face, slapping hands, shaving ones head, and cursing and wailing. Umm Salamah radi Allahu anha narrates that she heard the Messenger of Allah sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam say:
"Any Muslim who says when a calamity befalls him that which Allah commanded him: ‘To Allah we belong and to him we return. O Allah reward me in this calamity and give me better then it’ - Allah will grant him better than (that which he lost) (Muslim)."
5. These tests and hardships wash away our sins. Aisha radi Allahu anha said, "Verily, fever sheds sins like a tree sheds leaves."
6. The hardships that befall us distinguish the believers from the insincere. Shumayt ibn Ajlaan said, "The pious and the ungrateful are hidden by health. Yet when calamities befall, the two men are separated (by how they react)."
Allah ‘azza wa jall says in the Quran:
Alif laam meem. Do people think that they will be left alone because they say, "We believe," and will not be tested? Indeed We tested those who (lived) before them (Al-Ankaboot 29/1-3).
PART II: Towards Sabr
Ali radi Allahu anhu said, "Verily sabr is to eman what the head is to the body. When the head is cut off, the body falls. (He then raised his voice) Verily there is no eman for he who has no sabr (patience)."
There are three types of sabr that the Muslim must have:
1. Sabr in the obedience of Allah subhaanahu wa ta ‘aala. For example, one must be patient and perform their Fajr salah at it's appointed time.
2. Sabr in not disobeying Allah subhaanahu wa ta ‘aala. For example, someone might be upset at another person and think, "I just have to insult him." No, rather we are commanded by He who gave us our tongues not to follow the whispers of Shaytaan. We must have sabr in not disobeying Allah.
3. Sabr in what Allah subhaanahu wa ta ‘aala decrees on us. For example, if our child was to pass away we should be patient and seek the reward of Allah in our patience and say only that which is pleasing to Allah.
There are two keys which, if we understand them, we shall open the door to sabr
in our lives:
The first key: know that our souls, families and wealth do not belong to us, they belong to Allah subhaanahu wa ta ‘aala. He gave them to us as a loan to see what we would do with them. When he takes them back, He is taking back what belongs to Him. We had nothing before the blessing and we'll have nothing after it. We did not create the blessing from nothing, so how can we claim that it belongs to us?
The second key: We are on a journey and the destination is the Hereafter - Paradise or Hell. We shall be leaving the dunya behind us and we will return back to Allah by ourselves. This is what needs our focus. If Allah subhaanahu wa ta ‘aala is pleased with us then no worry. If He is not pleased with us then all worry.
Allah subhaanahu wa ta ‘aala revealed:
Guard strictly the (five obligatory) prayers, especially the middle salah and stand before Allah in obedience (Al-Baqarah 2/238).
The verses before this aayah deal with divorce. The verses after it deal with divorce. So why was this verse placed in the middle?
The ‘ulama have suggested, wa Allahu ta‘aala ‘alim, that in the hard times that a person goes through (especially in a divorce) he should not forget the remembrance of Allah, the salah. It is that salah, coupled with sabr, that will pull him through the difficulty.
O you who believe! Seek help in patience and salah. Truly, Allah is with those that are patient (Al-Baqarah 2/153).
In conclusion, Allah subhaanahu wa ta ‘aala gives the following good news:
And give good news to the patient / who, when afflicted with calamity say, "Truly, to Allah we belong and truly, to Him we shall return." / They are those on whom the salawat (i.e. the blessing and forgiveness) of their Lord is upon them, and who shall receive His Mercy, and it is they who are the guided ones (Al-Baqarah 2/155-157).
Allah promises anyone who wants to work on his or her patience three things: forgiveness, mercy, and guidance. Who could ask for more?
by Muhammad Alshareef
khutbah.com
It was narrated that when she said this, the sky opened for her and she saw her home in Paradise and she smiled. The guards watched in astonishment as she was being tortured but yet smiling. Frustrated, Fir'own commanded a boulder to be brought and dropped on Aasiyah, to crush her to death. But Allah took her soul before the boulder was brought and she became an example for all the believing men and women until the end of time:
And Allah has set forth an example for those who believe – the wife of Fir'own – when she said, "My Lord, build for me a home with You in Paradise, and save me from Fir'own and his deeds, and save me from the transgressive, disbelieving people” (At-Tahreem 66/11).
In the hadith of Jibraeel, when he came to the Prophet sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam and asked him about Islam, eman, and ihsaan, the Prophet sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam said about eman:
"Eman is to believe in Allah, His angels, His books, His messengers, the Final Day, and the divine decree – the good and the bad thereof."
Today I shall focus on the last article of eman – to believe in the divine decree, the good and the bad thereof.
As you and I travel though life, we find ourselves in one of two situations. Either something good is happening in our lives, in which case as Muslims our role is to thank Allah for the blessing, or something bad or something we dislike is happening to us, and our role then is to be patient. This is the formula for a happy life, a life cruising towards the pleasure of Allah. Sabr (patience) or shukr (gratitude), the worry stops here.
The Messenger of Allah sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam said:
"Strange is the affair of the mu'min (the believer). Verily, all his affairs are good for him. If something pleasing befalls him he thanks (Allah) and it becomes better for him. And if something harmful befalls him he is patient (saabir) and it becomes better for him. And this is only for the mu'min."
Ibn Al-Jowzee said, "If this dunya was not a station of tests it would not be filled with sicknesses and filth. If life were not about hardship, then the prophets and the pious would have lived the most comfortable of lives. Nay, Adam suffered test after test until he left the dunya. Nuh cried for 300 years. Ibrahim was thrown into a pit of fire and later told to slaughter his son. Ya'qub cried until he became blind. Musa challenged Fir'own and was tested by his people. Eesa had no provision except the morsels his disciples provided him with. And Muhammad sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam met poverty with patience as his uncle, one of the most beloved relatives to him, was slain and mutilated and his people disbelieved in him ... and the list of prophets and the pious goes on and on."
What happens to us happens by the will of Allah subhaanahu wa ta ‘aala. It is an article of our eman that we believe in qada' and qadr and that we are pleased with Allah’s choice. Good or seemingly bad, it is all the test of this dunya. How can we imagine that we shall not be tested when those who were better than us suffered what they suffered? They, however, came away with the pleasure of Allah subhaanahu wa ta ‘aala.
Al Hasan ibn Arafah narrated that he visited Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal after he was whipped and tortured. He said to him, "O Abu Abdillah, you have reached the station of the Prophets!"
He said, "Keep quiet. Verily, I saw nothing more than people selling their deen and I saw scholars that were with me sell their faith. So I said to myself, 'Who am I, what am I? What am I going to say to Allah tomorrow when I stand in front of Him and He asks me, 'Did you sell your deen like the others did?'"
He continued, "So I looked at the whip and the sword and chose them. And I said, 'If I die, I shall return to Allah and say that I was told to say that one of Your Characteristics was something created but I did not. ' After that, it will be up to Him - either to punish me or be Merciful to me."
Al-Hasan ibn Arafah then asked, "Did you feel pain when they whipped you?"
He said, "Yes, I felt the pain up to 20 lashes then I lost all feeling (They whipped him over eighty times). After it was over I felt no pain and that day I prayed Dhuhr standing."
Al-Hasan ibn Arafah started weeping when he heard what had happened. Imam Ahmad questioned him, "Why are you crying? I did not lose my eman. After that why should I care if I lose my life?"
These people were better than us, but this was how they were tested.
There some facts about the tests of life, the good and the bad that befalls us:
1. Much of what befalls us is the direct result of our own sins. Allah subhaanahu wa ta ‘aala says:
And whatever misfortune befalls you it is because of what your hands have earned. And He pardons much Ash-Shura 42/30).
Muhammad ibn Seereen used to say when his debts piled up and he felt sad, "I know that the cause of this sadness is a sin I committed over 40 years ago."
2. People understand that when something bad happens it is a test from Allah ‘azza wa jall. But dear brothers and sisters, the good things that happen to us are also a test. Allah subhaanahu wa ta ‘aala says:
And we tested them with good (blessings) and evil (calamities) in order that they might turn back (Al-A’raf 7/168).
Abd alMalik ibn Ishaq said, "There is no one that is not tested with health and prosperity to measure how thankful he is."
And the Companion AbdurRahman ibn 'Awf radi Allahu anhu said, "We
were tested with hardship and were patient. And then we were tested with prosperity and we were not patient. Because of this Allah states:
O ye who believe! Let not your wealth or your children divert you from the remembrance of Allah. And whosoever does that, then they are the losers (Al-Munafiqun 63/9).
3. Patience must happen from the beginning, not three days later or one day later, but rather at the first news of the calamity. The Prophet sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam said, "Verily patience (is only sabr when practiced) at the first hit (of news)."
4. There are things that contradict sabr. Tearing ones shirt, for example, slapping ones face, slapping hands, shaving ones head, and cursing and wailing. Umm Salamah radi Allahu anha narrates that she heard the Messenger of Allah sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam say:
"Any Muslim who says when a calamity befalls him that which Allah commanded him: ‘To Allah we belong and to him we return. O Allah reward me in this calamity and give me better then it’ - Allah will grant him better than (that which he lost) (Muslim)."
5. These tests and hardships wash away our sins. Aisha radi Allahu anha said, "Verily, fever sheds sins like a tree sheds leaves."
6. The hardships that befall us distinguish the believers from the insincere. Shumayt ibn Ajlaan said, "The pious and the ungrateful are hidden by health. Yet when calamities befall, the two men are separated (by how they react)."
Allah ‘azza wa jall says in the Quran:
Alif laam meem. Do people think that they will be left alone because they say, "We believe," and will not be tested? Indeed We tested those who (lived) before them (Al-Ankaboot 29/1-3).
PART II: Towards Sabr
Ali radi Allahu anhu said, "Verily sabr is to eman what the head is to the body. When the head is cut off, the body falls. (He then raised his voice) Verily there is no eman for he who has no sabr (patience)."
There are three types of sabr that the Muslim must have:
1. Sabr in the obedience of Allah subhaanahu wa ta ‘aala. For example, one must be patient and perform their Fajr salah at it's appointed time.
2. Sabr in not disobeying Allah subhaanahu wa ta ‘aala. For example, someone might be upset at another person and think, "I just have to insult him." No, rather we are commanded by He who gave us our tongues not to follow the whispers of Shaytaan. We must have sabr in not disobeying Allah.
3. Sabr in what Allah subhaanahu wa ta ‘aala decrees on us. For example, if our child was to pass away we should be patient and seek the reward of Allah in our patience and say only that which is pleasing to Allah.
There are two keys which, if we understand them, we shall open the door to sabr
in our lives:
The first key: know that our souls, families and wealth do not belong to us, they belong to Allah subhaanahu wa ta ‘aala. He gave them to us as a loan to see what we would do with them. When he takes them back, He is taking back what belongs to Him. We had nothing before the blessing and we'll have nothing after it. We did not create the blessing from nothing, so how can we claim that it belongs to us?
The second key: We are on a journey and the destination is the Hereafter - Paradise or Hell. We shall be leaving the dunya behind us and we will return back to Allah by ourselves. This is what needs our focus. If Allah subhaanahu wa ta ‘aala is pleased with us then no worry. If He is not pleased with us then all worry.
Allah subhaanahu wa ta ‘aala revealed:
Guard strictly the (five obligatory) prayers, especially the middle salah and stand before Allah in obedience (Al-Baqarah 2/238).
The verses before this aayah deal with divorce. The verses after it deal with divorce. So why was this verse placed in the middle?
The ‘ulama have suggested, wa Allahu ta‘aala ‘alim, that in the hard times that a person goes through (especially in a divorce) he should not forget the remembrance of Allah, the salah. It is that salah, coupled with sabr, that will pull him through the difficulty.
O you who believe! Seek help in patience and salah. Truly, Allah is with those that are patient (Al-Baqarah 2/153).
In conclusion, Allah subhaanahu wa ta ‘aala gives the following good news:
And give good news to the patient / who, when afflicted with calamity say, "Truly, to Allah we belong and truly, to Him we shall return." / They are those on whom the salawat (i.e. the blessing and forgiveness) of their Lord is upon them, and who shall receive His Mercy, and it is they who are the guided ones (Al-Baqarah 2/155-157).
Allah promises anyone who wants to work on his or her patience three things: forgiveness, mercy, and guidance. Who could ask for more?
by Muhammad Alshareef
khutbah.com
Tuesday, 3 August 2010
Jack and Charlotte again.
Jack and Charlotte are getting ready to visit Charlottes mum.Jack: "How do I say to your mum in her language: I'm really proud to be your son in law'?"
Charlotte smiles: "Oh that's easy. You don't"
Jack: "Huh?"
Charlotte: "You just don't say thing's like that in our culture."
Jack: "Okay, but how would you say it?"
Charlotte: "I really don't know, because you just wouldn't say that."
Jack laughs: "You call yourself Bengali and you can't even speak the language!"
Charlotte smiles: "Yes, just like you call yourself your father son and you can't even cook."
(Jack's father is a Chef).
Later on Jack speaks to his sister on the phone.
"Can you believe she said that to me(!)?"
Jack's sister: "Well...."
Jack: "Well what?"
Jack's sister: "Well, she's right. You don't know how to cook.."
A resolute Jack tells his sister: "Right, you're giving me cooking lessons."
Charlotte thanks God for Sister-In-Laws and looks forward to putting her feet up for a while.
Tuesday, 27 July 2010
The French Taxi-driver
Going to a meeting today I was quite surprised to hear the SatNav in the taxi speaking French.
"You're French?" I asked the driver, (well I kind of exclaimed actually).
"Yes." He replied. "Blah blah blah?" (I didn't understand what he was saying but from the tone I figured he was asking me if I spoke it.
I told him "No", and couldn't help myself from saying the first thing that came to my mind, usually I think before I speak(!).
"You guys have just banned the burka." I said sitting behind him covered from head to toe.
"No, we didn't. Our Government did. There were many people against it. Me? I don't see the big deal about it. What's next? Banning the jeans I wear?"
"Hmm" I mused.
"You wear it for your husband?"
"No. I wore it even before I met him."
"I actually spoke to a governor in my country, I asked him why, he told me it's because of terrorism. I told him how many terrorists do you know that wore one? I was in Sham El Sheikh when the bombings took place there a few years ago. Those terrorists wore normal clothes, so what do we do? Ban normal clothes? I don't know the French are backwards. I don't like French culture. Then the man told me it's to prevent accidents because women who wear it, their vision is impaired, but really how many women that wear it have caused accidents? I tell you, none."
"Yes, I'm taking driving lessons, I can see perfectly fine." I said.
"Anyhow, you know at least you Women have principles. Me? I was married 20 years and she with somebody else. While I was working for my family, to support them she was with another man, 20 years. She was English. I can't trust English women, I don't trust them, never again."
"I'm really sorry to hear that." I really was.
"My children, they knew about it too, but they didn't tell me you know, cause' they didn't want the family to break up. I understand they were scared but I feel betrayed by them too you know, you can't trust English women."
He talked the rest of the way while I listened, about the French, about the English, about his ex -wife and about his children betraying him. I found myself wondering if his 5 children were all his, but I didn't dare voice my thoughts.
We arrived at my destination.
"Thirteen pounds," He exclaimed. "I'm so sorry about that, you know the English?" They over charge for everything. A short journey like this and it's so expensive. The English they can't be trusted."
I paid and thanked him and walked away feeling very sorry for a man who had lost faith in a whole society because of the actions of a few.
"You're French?" I asked the driver, (well I kind of exclaimed actually).
"Yes." He replied. "Blah blah blah?" (I didn't understand what he was saying but from the tone I figured he was asking me if I spoke it.
I told him "No", and couldn't help myself from saying the first thing that came to my mind, usually I think before I speak(!).
"You guys have just banned the burka." I said sitting behind him covered from head to toe.
"No, we didn't. Our Government did. There were many people against it. Me? I don't see the big deal about it. What's next? Banning the jeans I wear?"
"Hmm" I mused.
"You wear it for your husband?"
"No. I wore it even before I met him."
"I actually spoke to a governor in my country, I asked him why, he told me it's because of terrorism. I told him how many terrorists do you know that wore one? I was in Sham El Sheikh when the bombings took place there a few years ago. Those terrorists wore normal clothes, so what do we do? Ban normal clothes? I don't know the French are backwards. I don't like French culture. Then the man told me it's to prevent accidents because women who wear it, their vision is impaired, but really how many women that wear it have caused accidents? I tell you, none."
"Yes, I'm taking driving lessons, I can see perfectly fine." I said.
"Anyhow, you know at least you Women have principles. Me? I was married 20 years and she with somebody else. While I was working for my family, to support them she was with another man, 20 years. She was English. I can't trust English women, I don't trust them, never again."
"I'm really sorry to hear that." I really was.
"My children, they knew about it too, but they didn't tell me you know, cause' they didn't want the family to break up. I understand they were scared but I feel betrayed by them too you know, you can't trust English women."
He talked the rest of the way while I listened, about the French, about the English, about his ex -wife and about his children betraying him. I found myself wondering if his 5 children were all his, but I didn't dare voice my thoughts.
We arrived at my destination.
"Thirteen pounds," He exclaimed. "I'm so sorry about that, you know the English?" They over charge for everything. A short journey like this and it's so expensive. The English they can't be trusted."
I paid and thanked him and walked away feeling very sorry for a man who had lost faith in a whole society because of the actions of a few.
Saturday, 17 July 2010
My New Best Friend
My new - human, alive now, other than family, not Muslim yet (May Allah guide Him), best friend is...
Thursday, 8 July 2010
A new light on the harms of porn
Yusuf Smith
A few months ago I read a book called Living Dolls by Natasha Walter, who argued that the “new feminism” she thought was emerging in the 1990s had given way to a culture in which girls were being pressurised to be sexualised at younger and younger ages, with anyone resisting being seen as a prude, and that this culture is seen as liberating when it’s actually degrading. A new book is released this month entitled Pornland, by long-standing anti-porn activist Gail Dines, which argues that people’s sexuality is being changed forever by a culture of commercial porn in which acts which are extreme and unusual are promoted as normal, and which ruins intimacy and people’s relationships.
Dines was interviewed in the Guardian by Julie Bindel last Thursday; there is another interview with her here and you can find excerpts from it here.
I’m kind of lucky in that porn has never really interested me. I took one look at the pictures in a top-shelf magazine in the UK when I was a teenager, I think, and I found it so revolting that I just put it back and put it out of my mind. But it seems that what I saw was probably tame by today’s standards, with boys getting access to the stuff younger and younger, and expecting real women to replicate the sexual acts they find in it, and being shocked that they do not want to. The material depicts stuff which is not only degrading but stressful and painful for women’s bodies, and the video (rather than still) stuff often shows the man showering the woman with insults as he carries out his bizarre acts (really, I’m not describing them — you can follow any of the links above if you want to know).
The two biggest problems with it is that it removes elements such as tenderness and intimacy from sexual relationships, and that it forms an addiction that causes men to lie and to neglect their duties to their families so as to pursue their addiction. As with so many chemical addictions, they often find that what they start out on loses its thrill, so they move onto harder stuff, often involving children. Mary Ann Layden of the University of Pennsylvania related, in a speech at Capitol Hill last month, that she had known a man who had worked for years to build a career in a given field, and then secured an interview for a “dream job”, but in the even didn’t attend because he was too busy surfing porn sites on the Internet. Another was a police officer who was jailed for viewing child porn on his work computer; he lost his marriage and could no longer see his children.
A few years ago Muslim Matters had some posts on Muslim men’s addiction to this stuff. Of course, viewing this stuff is completely against Islam, but one supposes that these same men married their wives on the basis that they were chaste and not the sort of women they’d find in these videos. As is so often the case, the brothers expect the women to be utterly pure and devoted while they are anything but. I don’t want to imply that all Muslim women are super-pure and other women are sluts, and most non-Muslim women wouldn’t want to be seen dead in these productions either, but when an ostensibly religious Muslim man, married to a woman of a similar stripe, expects her to perform similarly to the females he sees in porn videos, there is likely to be conflict, to say the least.
Dines herself is not anti-sex or, I suspect, against erotic material being available — Bindel compares her to Andrea Dworkin, commonly accused of being a militant man-hating prude when she was in fact married to a man and, in her writings on porn, distinguished between genuinely erotic and “thanatic”, or destructive, pornography which depicted the degradation of women. After all, porn depicting children is already illegal in most places, and many men have been prosecuted for downloading the material, which is footage of child abuse. The material discussed here depicts adults, but it is often readily available to younger and younger boys, who themselves learn about sex through it and end up thinking what they see there is normal when it isn’t. The things depicted are acted out and the females are being paid, but the acts are meant to look like assaults.
There are a couple of aspects of Dines’s critique of porn culture I don’t agree with. One is her emphasis on hair removal as a product of this culture; she claims that none of the female students she meets keep their pubic hair, as its removal is now the norm, thanks to porn culture. That all of them remove their hair I don’t quite believe anyway, but they were introduced to America through a salon run by several Brazilian sisters and were known of in Brazil before that on account of the skimpy bikinis worn on beaches there. Even so, it’s a fashion and surely not all the women who do it are directly influenced by porn. It was the norm in the Muslim world long before it became popular here. There is quite a generational difference here, with the older generation considering that hair is what distinguishes women from little girls, while a lot of younger women disagree.
A second issue is the use of the term “patriarchy” as a lazy synonym for male domination, as in:
“To think that so many men hate women to the degree that they can get aroused by such vile images is quite profound,” says Dines. “Pornography is the perfect propaganda piece for patriarchy. In nothing else is their hatred of us quite as clear.”
Patriarchy actually connotes a society in which men protect women, not simply allow any Tom, Dick or Harry to exploit them. Most fathers would be outraged, or at least profoundly sad, at the thought of their daughters performing in this way, even if they were getting paid for it and when the family and parental authority in this country was stronger, pornography was less readily available and much less extreme than it is now. A society in which men are free to abuse and exploit women and girls may be many things, but this does not make it patriarchal.
I had heard of the problems with widely-available porn before, but reading these interviews with Dines really shocked me in terms of what these things consisted of and the fact that people who view it come to consider the things depicted as normal. Unfortunately, attempts to curb this material in the USA have been struck down under the First Amendment, and there is only so much we can do when such a big population has decided that it cannot control such material, but we can pass legislation against such material here and should not be afraid to. Of course, education is an important tool here as well — for young people, so that boys know that this is harmful and unreal, and that parents know that they should keep tabs on what their children are seeing online, and know how to. Dines’ is a welcome voice on this issue, calm and measured and less influenced by personal trauma than Dworkin was, and one hopes that her book opens people’s eyes to how damaging this trend is.
A few months ago I read a book called Living Dolls by Natasha Walter, who argued that the “new feminism” she thought was emerging in the 1990s had given way to a culture in which girls were being pressurised to be sexualised at younger and younger ages, with anyone resisting being seen as a prude, and that this culture is seen as liberating when it’s actually degrading. A new book is released this month entitled Pornland, by long-standing anti-porn activist Gail Dines, which argues that people’s sexuality is being changed forever by a culture of commercial porn in which acts which are extreme and unusual are promoted as normal, and which ruins intimacy and people’s relationships.
Dines was interviewed in the Guardian by Julie Bindel last Thursday; there is another interview with her here and you can find excerpts from it here.
I’m kind of lucky in that porn has never really interested me. I took one look at the pictures in a top-shelf magazine in the UK when I was a teenager, I think, and I found it so revolting that I just put it back and put it out of my mind. But it seems that what I saw was probably tame by today’s standards, with boys getting access to the stuff younger and younger, and expecting real women to replicate the sexual acts they find in it, and being shocked that they do not want to. The material depicts stuff which is not only degrading but stressful and painful for women’s bodies, and the video (rather than still) stuff often shows the man showering the woman with insults as he carries out his bizarre acts (really, I’m not describing them — you can follow any of the links above if you want to know).
The two biggest problems with it is that it removes elements such as tenderness and intimacy from sexual relationships, and that it forms an addiction that causes men to lie and to neglect their duties to their families so as to pursue their addiction. As with so many chemical addictions, they often find that what they start out on loses its thrill, so they move onto harder stuff, often involving children. Mary Ann Layden of the University of Pennsylvania related, in a speech at Capitol Hill last month, that she had known a man who had worked for years to build a career in a given field, and then secured an interview for a “dream job”, but in the even didn’t attend because he was too busy surfing porn sites on the Internet. Another was a police officer who was jailed for viewing child porn on his work computer; he lost his marriage and could no longer see his children.
A few years ago Muslim Matters had some posts on Muslim men’s addiction to this stuff. Of course, viewing this stuff is completely against Islam, but one supposes that these same men married their wives on the basis that they were chaste and not the sort of women they’d find in these videos. As is so often the case, the brothers expect the women to be utterly pure and devoted while they are anything but. I don’t want to imply that all Muslim women are super-pure and other women are sluts, and most non-Muslim women wouldn’t want to be seen dead in these productions either, but when an ostensibly religious Muslim man, married to a woman of a similar stripe, expects her to perform similarly to the females he sees in porn videos, there is likely to be conflict, to say the least.
Dines herself is not anti-sex or, I suspect, against erotic material being available — Bindel compares her to Andrea Dworkin, commonly accused of being a militant man-hating prude when she was in fact married to a man and, in her writings on porn, distinguished between genuinely erotic and “thanatic”, or destructive, pornography which depicted the degradation of women. After all, porn depicting children is already illegal in most places, and many men have been prosecuted for downloading the material, which is footage of child abuse. The material discussed here depicts adults, but it is often readily available to younger and younger boys, who themselves learn about sex through it and end up thinking what they see there is normal when it isn’t. The things depicted are acted out and the females are being paid, but the acts are meant to look like assaults.
There are a couple of aspects of Dines’s critique of porn culture I don’t agree with. One is her emphasis on hair removal as a product of this culture; she claims that none of the female students she meets keep their pubic hair, as its removal is now the norm, thanks to porn culture. That all of them remove their hair I don’t quite believe anyway, but they were introduced to America through a salon run by several Brazilian sisters and were known of in Brazil before that on account of the skimpy bikinis worn on beaches there. Even so, it’s a fashion and surely not all the women who do it are directly influenced by porn. It was the norm in the Muslim world long before it became popular here. There is quite a generational difference here, with the older generation considering that hair is what distinguishes women from little girls, while a lot of younger women disagree.
A second issue is the use of the term “patriarchy” as a lazy synonym for male domination, as in:
“To think that so many men hate women to the degree that they can get aroused by such vile images is quite profound,” says Dines. “Pornography is the perfect propaganda piece for patriarchy. In nothing else is their hatred of us quite as clear.”
Patriarchy actually connotes a society in which men protect women, not simply allow any Tom, Dick or Harry to exploit them. Most fathers would be outraged, or at least profoundly sad, at the thought of their daughters performing in this way, even if they were getting paid for it and when the family and parental authority in this country was stronger, pornography was less readily available and much less extreme than it is now. A society in which men are free to abuse and exploit women and girls may be many things, but this does not make it patriarchal.
I had heard of the problems with widely-available porn before, but reading these interviews with Dines really shocked me in terms of what these things consisted of and the fact that people who view it come to consider the things depicted as normal. Unfortunately, attempts to curb this material in the USA have been struck down under the First Amendment, and there is only so much we can do when such a big population has decided that it cannot control such material, but we can pass legislation against such material here and should not be afraid to. Of course, education is an important tool here as well — for young people, so that boys know that this is harmful and unreal, and that parents know that they should keep tabs on what their children are seeing online, and know how to. Dines’ is a welcome voice on this issue, calm and measured and less influenced by personal trauma than Dworkin was, and one hopes that her book opens people’s eyes to how damaging this trend is.
Sunday, 28 June 2009
Niqabi, Interrupted
Wearing my niqab is a choice freely made, for spiritual reasons - Naima B.Robert
I put on my niqab, my face veil, each day before I leave the house, without a second thought. I drape it over my face, tie the ribbons at the back and adjust the opening over my eyes to make sure my peripheral vision is not affected.
Had I a full-length mirror next to the front door, I would be able to see what others see: a woman of average height and build, covered in several layers of fabric, a niqab, a jilbab, sometimes an abayah, sometimes all black, other times blue or brown. A Muslim woman in 'full veil'. A niqabi.
But is that truly how people see me? When I walk through the park with my little ones in tow, when I reverse my car into a parking space, when I browse the shelves in the frozen section, when I ask how to best cook asparagus at a market stall, what do people see? An oppressed woman? A nameless, voiceless individual? A criminal?
Well, if Mr Sarkozy and others like him have their way, I suppose I will be a criminal, won't I? Never mind that "it's a free country"; never mind that I made this choice from my own free will, as did the vast majority of covered women of my generation; never mind that I am, in every other respect, an upstanding citizen who works hard as a mother, author and magazine publisher, spends responsibly, recycles and tries to eat seasonally and buy local produce!
Yes, I cover my face, but I am still of this society. And, as crazy as it might sound, I am human, a human being with my own thoughts, feelings and opinions. I refuse to allow those who cannot know my reality to paint me as a cardboard cut-out, an oppressed, submissive, silenced relic of the Dark Ages. I am not a stereotype and, God willing, I never will be.
But where are those who will listen? At the end of the day, Muslim women have been saying for years that the hijab et al are not oppressive, that we cover as an act of faith, that this is a bonafide spiritual lifestyle choice. But the debate rages on, ironically, largely to the exclusion of the women who actually do cover their faces.
The focus on the niqab is, in my opinion, utterly misplaced. Don't the French have anything better to do than tell Muslim women how to dress? Don't our societies have bigger problems than a relative handful of women choosing to cover their faces out of religious conviction? The "burka issue" has become a red herring: there are issues that Muslim women face that are more pressing, more wide-reaching and, essentially, more relevant than whether or not they should be covering with a niqab, burqa or hijab.
At the end of the day, all a ban will do is force Muslim women who choose to cover to retreat even further - it is not going to result in a mass "liberation" of Muslim women from the veil. All women, covered or not, deserve the opportunity to dress as they see fit, to be educated, to work where they deem appropriate and run their lives in accordance with their principles, as long as these choices do not impinge on others' freedoms. And last time I looked, being able to see a woman's hair, legs or face were not rights granted alongside "liberté, egalité et fraternité".
As a Muslim woman living in the UK, I am so grateful for the fact that my society does not force me to choose between being a practising Muslim and an active member of society. I have been able to study, to work, to establish a writing career and run a magazine business, all while wearing a niqaab. I think that that is a credit to British society, no matter what the anti-multiculturali sts may say, and I think the French could learn some very valuable lessons from the British approach.
So, three cheers for those women who make the choice to cover, in whatever way and still go out there every day. Go out to brave the scorn and ridicule of those who think they understand the burka better than those who actually wear it. Go out to face the humiliating headlines. Go out to face the taunts of schoolchildren. Go out to fight another day. Go out to do their bit for society and the common good. Because you never know, if Mr Sarkozy and his supporters have their way, there could come a day when these women think twice about going out there into a society that cannot bear the way they look. And, who knows, I could be one of them.
And, while some would disagree, I think that would be a sad day.
Na'ima B. Robert is the founding editor of SISTERS , a magazine for Muslim women and author of 'From My Sisters' Lips ', a look at the lives of British Muslim women who cover.
Times Online June 26, 2009
I put on my niqab, my face veil, each day before I leave the house, without a second thought. I drape it over my face, tie the ribbons at the back and adjust the opening over my eyes to make sure my peripheral vision is not affected.
Had I a full-length mirror next to the front door, I would be able to see what others see: a woman of average height and build, covered in several layers of fabric, a niqab, a jilbab, sometimes an abayah, sometimes all black, other times blue or brown. A Muslim woman in 'full veil'. A niqabi.
But is that truly how people see me? When I walk through the park with my little ones in tow, when I reverse my car into a parking space, when I browse the shelves in the frozen section, when I ask how to best cook asparagus at a market stall, what do people see? An oppressed woman? A nameless, voiceless individual? A criminal?
Well, if Mr Sarkozy and others like him have their way, I suppose I will be a criminal, won't I? Never mind that "it's a free country"; never mind that I made this choice from my own free will, as did the vast majority of covered women of my generation; never mind that I am, in every other respect, an upstanding citizen who works hard as a mother, author and magazine publisher, spends responsibly, recycles and tries to eat seasonally and buy local produce!
Yes, I cover my face, but I am still of this society. And, as crazy as it might sound, I am human, a human being with my own thoughts, feelings and opinions. I refuse to allow those who cannot know my reality to paint me as a cardboard cut-out, an oppressed, submissive, silenced relic of the Dark Ages. I am not a stereotype and, God willing, I never will be.
But where are those who will listen? At the end of the day, Muslim women have been saying for years that the hijab et al are not oppressive, that we cover as an act of faith, that this is a bonafide spiritual lifestyle choice. But the debate rages on, ironically, largely to the exclusion of the women who actually do cover their faces.
The focus on the niqab is, in my opinion, utterly misplaced. Don't the French have anything better to do than tell Muslim women how to dress? Don't our societies have bigger problems than a relative handful of women choosing to cover their faces out of religious conviction? The "burka issue" has become a red herring: there are issues that Muslim women face that are more pressing, more wide-reaching and, essentially, more relevant than whether or not they should be covering with a niqab, burqa or hijab.
At the end of the day, all a ban will do is force Muslim women who choose to cover to retreat even further - it is not going to result in a mass "liberation" of Muslim women from the veil. All women, covered or not, deserve the opportunity to dress as they see fit, to be educated, to work where they deem appropriate and run their lives in accordance with their principles, as long as these choices do not impinge on others' freedoms. And last time I looked, being able to see a woman's hair, legs or face were not rights granted alongside "liberté, egalité et fraternité".
As a Muslim woman living in the UK, I am so grateful for the fact that my society does not force me to choose between being a practising Muslim and an active member of society. I have been able to study, to work, to establish a writing career and run a magazine business, all while wearing a niqaab. I think that that is a credit to British society, no matter what the anti-multiculturali sts may say, and I think the French could learn some very valuable lessons from the British approach.
So, three cheers for those women who make the choice to cover, in whatever way and still go out there every day. Go out to brave the scorn and ridicule of those who think they understand the burka better than those who actually wear it. Go out to face the humiliating headlines. Go out to face the taunts of schoolchildren. Go out to fight another day. Go out to do their bit for society and the common good. Because you never know, if Mr Sarkozy and his supporters have their way, there could come a day when these women think twice about going out there into a society that cannot bear the way they look. And, who knows, I could be one of them.
And, while some would disagree, I think that would be a sad day.
Na'ima B. Robert is the founding editor of SISTERS , a magazine for Muslim women and author of 'From My Sisters' Lips ', a look at the lives of British Muslim women who cover.
Times Online June 26, 2009
Saturday, 6 June 2009
Redressing The Balance
The Virtues of Marrying Older Sisters and Other Points of Benefit.
By Anonymous
Due lack of Islamic resources/education, etc in the 80s/90s, a lot of us sisters grew up mainly with a secular model, only until we were at late stages of college/uni when we re-established our relationship with Islam. By this stage we have chosen our career/academic path...and were happily bobbing along, until we realised we had unwittingly become less and less sought after in the marital field....and slowly got labelled as 'ambitious', 'career-type', 'too independent', ' too fussy', 'too clever', 'can only read..but can't cook'.
So as the rejections pour in, what do we do...so not to let our grey matter shrivel...we hit the books some more...get a few more qualifications in the bag and make ourselves a new social order 'the unmarriagables'.
Joking aside, think of how many decent sisters you know, who are not married. I have watched this space steadily increase, as the years go by.
I don't think enough has been done/said to promote the virtues of this breed of sisters. So here is my little bit...to redress the balance.
-The maternal desire is no less in these sisters, in fact for many it is stronger, as they have waited longer than most.
-They have the wisdom of years, have achieved a lot for themselves, so are ready to sacrifice for their husband and kids, and due to more life opportunities and experiences have a lot to offer.
-Can be a companion for husband on an intellectual level, so he does not have to escape nappy talk to be with his educated friends, but rather appreciate his wife's company.
-Just because they have a career now, does not mean that they would not drop it (or modify it) to put their family first. Please ask, before you make assumptions based on their job title/qualifications. Most sisters in this situation that I know, are yearning to be a wife/mother, and realise this is where fulfillment is.
-Usually are less clingy, allowing their husband the breathing space he needs, and with some financial independence, put less pressure on him as the sole provider. He can feel confident that his children are in capable hands, should anything happen to him..n'authoo billah.
-Also ambitious women, become ambitious mothers for their kids, so rather than a negative trait, it is a driving force for the ummah. Educated women, promoting the next generation...is what we need for a respected, strong ummah.
-Motherhood in the 30s, can be less stressful, due to having more patience. And having the experience of others around us, so are more mentally prepared and willing for this new role!
These are generalisations, and do not ring true to all individuals, but is food for thought....with a credit crunch and ageing population looming, we may become popular once more.
Please dont get me wrong, I am not saying don't marry young...please do...
rather this is just a plea on behalf of our sisters who have been written off unnecessarily, they need to be considered as they have a lot to offer.
2. The Art Of Rejection.
Let's face it, most of us will face the prospect of being rejected/ or being the rejector at some point in our journey of finding a spouse.
This needs to be done with tact, and many do not know how. How many bros have been invited to a dinner to meet a prospective, and when he realised she wasn't his cuppa chai....he/his family failed to call to pass on this vital information. In the meanwhile, the sis is choosing baby names that will suit his surname.....heartbreaking stuff (us sisters can get carried away)!
So please, let people know in a reasonable amount of time in a reasonable way.
i.e. after about 1 week (so at least you seem like you have deliberated), and on the lines of ' it was lovely meeting your family, thankyou for the meal, I don't think they are a suitable match, however we will keep your daughter/son in mind if we come across anyone more suitable...jazakAllah khair.'
Wow..so easy, job done, relations in tact. This saves awkwardness/bitterness at next social gathering.
Just to illustrate the problem...consider this.
Sister A: age 30,
Profession - Medical Doctor
Height - tall
born- -UK
Brother A: age 30
Profession - Medical Doctor
Height -tall
born - UK
So the only variable is gender, yet due to society norms...look at the difference in possible potentials. Generally speaking...
Sister A could only consider someone older, taller, with a similar/higher education, someone also born/raised in UK, to understand her attitudes/role (we were raised in a different atmosphere which has moulded us, compared to our sisters in the sub-continent).
Brother B could consider someone up to 10 yrs younger perhaps, even someone older, someone significantly shorter or perhaps taller, someone less educated or perhaps same level, and someone from 'back home' as they make apparently more submissive/homely wives or they can choose from here.
As you can see, it's a boys market.
Solutions...
-Educating the parents, at a community level, pre-marital education, etiquettes in searching for a suitable spouse.
-Start looking earlier.
-Marital events for over 30s./ Professionals.
-Friends who are married should play an active role in thinking of their unmarried bros/sister, and play the matchmaker....it works....Nafeesa (ra)was a shining example, helping a twice-widowed older friend (our beloved mother Khadeejah-ra) marry our Nabi (saw).
-Maybe bros should consider a sister a few years older than him.
-If you are still not married in you late 20s/30s..then don't be shy/reserved, let people know, so they can look out for you...we are a caring ummah, no stigmas allowed!
By Anonymous
Due lack of Islamic resources/education, etc in the 80s/90s, a lot of us sisters grew up mainly with a secular model, only until we were at late stages of college/uni when we re-established our relationship with Islam. By this stage we have chosen our career/academic path...and were happily bobbing along, until we realised we had unwittingly become less and less sought after in the marital field....and slowly got labelled as 'ambitious', 'career-type', 'too independent', ' too fussy', 'too clever', 'can only read..but can't cook'.
So as the rejections pour in, what do we do...so not to let our grey matter shrivel...we hit the books some more...get a few more qualifications in the bag and make ourselves a new social order 'the unmarriagables'.
Joking aside, think of how many decent sisters you know, who are not married. I have watched this space steadily increase, as the years go by.
I don't think enough has been done/said to promote the virtues of this breed of sisters. So here is my little bit...to redress the balance.
-The maternal desire is no less in these sisters, in fact for many it is stronger, as they have waited longer than most.
-They have the wisdom of years, have achieved a lot for themselves, so are ready to sacrifice for their husband and kids, and due to more life opportunities and experiences have a lot to offer.
-Can be a companion for husband on an intellectual level, so he does not have to escape nappy talk to be with his educated friends, but rather appreciate his wife's company.
-Just because they have a career now, does not mean that they would not drop it (or modify it) to put their family first. Please ask, before you make assumptions based on their job title/qualifications. Most sisters in this situation that I know, are yearning to be a wife/mother, and realise this is where fulfillment is.
-Usually are less clingy, allowing their husband the breathing space he needs, and with some financial independence, put less pressure on him as the sole provider. He can feel confident that his children are in capable hands, should anything happen to him..n'authoo billah.
-Also ambitious women, become ambitious mothers for their kids, so rather than a negative trait, it is a driving force for the ummah. Educated women, promoting the next generation...is what we need for a respected, strong ummah.
-Motherhood in the 30s, can be less stressful, due to having more patience. And having the experience of others around us, so are more mentally prepared and willing for this new role!
These are generalisations, and do not ring true to all individuals, but is food for thought....with a credit crunch and ageing population looming, we may become popular once more.
Please dont get me wrong, I am not saying don't marry young...please do...
rather this is just a plea on behalf of our sisters who have been written off unnecessarily, they need to be considered as they have a lot to offer.
2. The Art Of Rejection.
Let's face it, most of us will face the prospect of being rejected/ or being the rejector at some point in our journey of finding a spouse.
This needs to be done with tact, and many do not know how. How many bros have been invited to a dinner to meet a prospective, and when he realised she wasn't his cuppa chai....he/his family failed to call to pass on this vital information. In the meanwhile, the sis is choosing baby names that will suit his surname.....heartbreaking stuff (us sisters can get carried away)!
So please, let people know in a reasonable amount of time in a reasonable way.
i.e. after about 1 week (so at least you seem like you have deliberated), and on the lines of ' it was lovely meeting your family, thankyou for the meal, I don't think they are a suitable match, however we will keep your daughter/son in mind if we come across anyone more suitable...jazakAllah khair.'
Wow..so easy, job done, relations in tact. This saves awkwardness/bitterness at next social gathering.
Just to illustrate the problem...consider this.
Sister A: age 30,
Profession - Medical Doctor
Height - tall
born- -UK
Brother A: age 30
Profession - Medical Doctor
Height -tall
born - UK
So the only variable is gender, yet due to society norms...look at the difference in possible potentials. Generally speaking...
Sister A could only consider someone older, taller, with a similar/higher education, someone also born/raised in UK, to understand her attitudes/role (we were raised in a different atmosphere which has moulded us, compared to our sisters in the sub-continent).
Brother B could consider someone up to 10 yrs younger perhaps, even someone older, someone significantly shorter or perhaps taller, someone less educated or perhaps same level, and someone from 'back home' as they make apparently more submissive/homely wives or they can choose from here.
As you can see, it's a boys market.
Solutions...
-Educating the parents, at a community level, pre-marital education, etiquettes in searching for a suitable spouse.
-Start looking earlier.
-Marital events for over 30s./ Professionals.
-Friends who are married should play an active role in thinking of their unmarried bros/sister, and play the matchmaker....it works....Nafeesa (ra)was a shining example, helping a twice-widowed older friend (our beloved mother Khadeejah-ra) marry our Nabi (saw).
-Maybe bros should consider a sister a few years older than him.
-If you are still not married in you late 20s/30s..then don't be shy/reserved, let people know, so they can look out for you...we are a caring ummah, no stigmas allowed!
Wednesday, 20 May 2009
Fighting Your Nature
In ‘Hilyat al-Awliya” (10/287), it’s related that al-Junayd said:
الإنسان لا يعاب بما في طبعه إنما يعاب إذا فعل بما في طبعه
“A person is not to be blamed for his nature. Rather, he is to be blamed if he acts according to his nature.”
This is a very deep statement.
A person should not bring his status as an imperfect human being to serve as an excuse for manifesting blameworthy characteristics and actions. Yes, we were fashioned with varying degrees of negative attributes within us, such as envy, greed, lack of gratitude, arrogance, the desire to commit certain sins, etc.
However, we were also fashioned with the ability to repel, change, and strive against the inclinations to openly manifest them.
It is possible to abandon negative traits you find in yourself and change your character for the better. You just have to know what you want to become, and want it badly enough to put up a fight whenever the negative traits that get in the way begin to surface.
From http://iskandrani.wordpress.com/2009/05/11/fighting-your-nature
الإنسان لا يعاب بما في طبعه إنما يعاب إذا فعل بما في طبعه
“A person is not to be blamed for his nature. Rather, he is to be blamed if he acts according to his nature.”
This is a very deep statement.
A person should not bring his status as an imperfect human being to serve as an excuse for manifesting blameworthy characteristics and actions. Yes, we were fashioned with varying degrees of negative attributes within us, such as envy, greed, lack of gratitude, arrogance, the desire to commit certain sins, etc.
However, we were also fashioned with the ability to repel, change, and strive against the inclinations to openly manifest them.
It is possible to abandon negative traits you find in yourself and change your character for the better. You just have to know what you want to become, and want it badly enough to put up a fight whenever the negative traits that get in the way begin to surface.
From http://iskandrani.wordpress.com/2009/05/11/fighting-your-nature
Sunday, 22 February 2009
The Many Facets of Happiness
Sheikh Salmaan Al Oadah Hafidhahullah
I went on an outing with my children. Our main intention was to swim and for the children to have their fair share of recreation and of my quality time. It was also a chance for me as a father, to have my rightful share of the joy of being with my children, for truly we need our children as much as they need us, if not more. I found myself busy on that day with all sorts of little tasks – like making sandwiches, setting the picnic table, and handing out sweets. It was a beautiful day to harvest some of the fruits of happiness just by enjoying ordinary activities in total relaxation and familiarity.
That day made me think about how much we, as people, speak about happiness. Hundreds of books are published every year to address the issue from a dry, philosophical standpoint. These works strive to define happiness and reveal its connection with factors like prosperity, pleasure, and our state of mind. There is considerable controversy about what brings about happiness and, more essentially, what it actually means to be happy. This leads to the more mundane questions of role that health, wealth, one's job, one's marriage, and being successful play in our chances for happiness.
We might fail to see that happiness is an inner state of our being, which comes into its being within ourselves, and is often connected with the most ordinary and seemingly insignificant events of our lives. It is the normal state of a person's mind when that person is enjoying an experience or an activity. Those of us who disdain engaging in some pleasant activities, or simply fail to admit our enjoyment of them – due to our preconceived notions of what is suitable for us as adults, or as elderly people, or as people of social prominence – need to rethink some of our ideas. We should not rob ourselves of life's small but significant pleasures.
Be like a small child and really enjoy that cup of tea you are drinking. Take time to taste it. The same goes for a piece of chocolate or your ordinary daily meal. Enjoy it. Enjoy eating alone and in the company of people you care about.
Allah says: "There is nothing wrong with you eating together or by yourselves." [Sûrah al-Nûr: 61]
Be like a child who looks forward excitedly to taking a ride. Look forward to pleasant things. Laugh at a funny joke without first examining it to deduce whether the humor of the joke holds up under close scrutiny. Look forward to your sleep. Recognize it as being Allah's blessing and a refreshment for your body and mind. Maybe you will dream about those you love.
Look forward to the activity that is ahead of you. Take pleasure in the accomplishment – however small – that completing your task provides you with. This can be said of reading a book, preparing a letter, a lesson that you attend, or a social event that you participate in.
Try to see the beauty of a flower in bloom, the fields of crops, a flowing stream, the sparrow's song, and a child in play. Do not block these things from your sight, thinking them to be unimportant. Indeed, our sense of importance and of what carries weight with us – this is one of the greatest obstacles to happiness. This is an affliction that we impose upon ourselves. We need no enemy to do this to us.
We are happiest when we are the least inhibited in acknowledging and expressing how we feel. This is the case whether we are in the company of those we know or those we do not know. Expressing our feelings should not carry with it a sense of dread as if we are disclosing the most sensitive of state secrets.
We are happiest when we shed our ostentation and inflated sense of self-importance, so we can really listen to ourselves and acknowledge our inner needs and aspirations.
We are happiest when we are not pining after unrealistic and overly idealistic dreams but look at our lives naturally, without shame, and without exaggerating things.
We are happiest when we focus keenly on the experience of the moment, taking note of the billions – nay trillions – of blessings that are right in front of us. Allah's generosity extends to each living cell of our bodies and to everything on the land, the air, and in the sea. His grace extends to all the intangibles as well, like those feelings and sensations that we cannot describe in physical terms. Faith is a good example, love, pleasure, the apprehension of language, longing, joy, hope…
We may be happiest of all when we realize that happiness is not a package we receive in the mail – either by design or fortune – nor is it a degree conferred upon us like a diploma. It is rather the felling of the moment, if we harvest well what that moment has to offer and resolve to make the best of it. It is when we shove aside despair, worry, fear, hatred, envy, and the other negative emotions that too often preoccupy our thoughts.
We are the happiest we can be when we choose to be happy.
Source
I went on an outing with my children. Our main intention was to swim and for the children to have their fair share of recreation and of my quality time. It was also a chance for me as a father, to have my rightful share of the joy of being with my children, for truly we need our children as much as they need us, if not more. I found myself busy on that day with all sorts of little tasks – like making sandwiches, setting the picnic table, and handing out sweets. It was a beautiful day to harvest some of the fruits of happiness just by enjoying ordinary activities in total relaxation and familiarity.
That day made me think about how much we, as people, speak about happiness. Hundreds of books are published every year to address the issue from a dry, philosophical standpoint. These works strive to define happiness and reveal its connection with factors like prosperity, pleasure, and our state of mind. There is considerable controversy about what brings about happiness and, more essentially, what it actually means to be happy. This leads to the more mundane questions of role that health, wealth, one's job, one's marriage, and being successful play in our chances for happiness.
We might fail to see that happiness is an inner state of our being, which comes into its being within ourselves, and is often connected with the most ordinary and seemingly insignificant events of our lives. It is the normal state of a person's mind when that person is enjoying an experience or an activity. Those of us who disdain engaging in some pleasant activities, or simply fail to admit our enjoyment of them – due to our preconceived notions of what is suitable for us as adults, or as elderly people, or as people of social prominence – need to rethink some of our ideas. We should not rob ourselves of life's small but significant pleasures.
Be like a small child and really enjoy that cup of tea you are drinking. Take time to taste it. The same goes for a piece of chocolate or your ordinary daily meal. Enjoy it. Enjoy eating alone and in the company of people you care about.
Allah says: "There is nothing wrong with you eating together or by yourselves." [Sûrah al-Nûr: 61]
Be like a child who looks forward excitedly to taking a ride. Look forward to pleasant things. Laugh at a funny joke without first examining it to deduce whether the humor of the joke holds up under close scrutiny. Look forward to your sleep. Recognize it as being Allah's blessing and a refreshment for your body and mind. Maybe you will dream about those you love.
Look forward to the activity that is ahead of you. Take pleasure in the accomplishment – however small – that completing your task provides you with. This can be said of reading a book, preparing a letter, a lesson that you attend, or a social event that you participate in.
Try to see the beauty of a flower in bloom, the fields of crops, a flowing stream, the sparrow's song, and a child in play. Do not block these things from your sight, thinking them to be unimportant. Indeed, our sense of importance and of what carries weight with us – this is one of the greatest obstacles to happiness. This is an affliction that we impose upon ourselves. We need no enemy to do this to us.
We are happiest when we are the least inhibited in acknowledging and expressing how we feel. This is the case whether we are in the company of those we know or those we do not know. Expressing our feelings should not carry with it a sense of dread as if we are disclosing the most sensitive of state secrets.
We are happiest when we shed our ostentation and inflated sense of self-importance, so we can really listen to ourselves and acknowledge our inner needs and aspirations.
We are happiest when we are not pining after unrealistic and overly idealistic dreams but look at our lives naturally, without shame, and without exaggerating things.
We are happiest when we focus keenly on the experience of the moment, taking note of the billions – nay trillions – of blessings that are right in front of us. Allah's generosity extends to each living cell of our bodies and to everything on the land, the air, and in the sea. His grace extends to all the intangibles as well, like those feelings and sensations that we cannot describe in physical terms. Faith is a good example, love, pleasure, the apprehension of language, longing, joy, hope…
We may be happiest of all when we realize that happiness is not a package we receive in the mail – either by design or fortune – nor is it a degree conferred upon us like a diploma. It is rather the felling of the moment, if we harvest well what that moment has to offer and resolve to make the best of it. It is when we shove aside despair, worry, fear, hatred, envy, and the other negative emotions that too often preoccupy our thoughts.
We are the happiest we can be when we choose to be happy.
Source
Thursday, 18 December 2008
Dedicated to all 'stay at home Mums!'
A man came home from work and found his three children outside,
still in their pajamas,
playing in the mud,
with empty food boxes and wrappers strewn all around the front yard.
The door of his wife's car was open,
as was the front door to the house and there was no sign of the cat.
Proceeding into the entry,
he found an even bigger mess.
A lamp had been knocked over,
and the throw rug was wadded against one wall.
In the front room the TV was loudly blaring a cartoon channel,
and the family room was strewn with toys and various items of clothing.
In the kitchen dishes filled the sink,
breakfast food was spilled on the counter,
the fridge door was open wide,
cat food was spilled on the floor,
a broken glass lay under the table,
and a small pile of sand was spread by the back door.
He quickly headed up the stairs,
stepping over toys and more piles of clothes,
looking for his wife.
He was worried she may be ill,
or that something serious had happened.
He was met with a small trickle of water as it made its way out the bathroom door.
As he peered inside he found wet towels,
scummy soap and more toys strewn over the floor.
Miles of toilet paper lay in a heap and toothpaste had been smeared over the mirror and walls.
As he rushed to t he bedroom,
he found his wife still curled up in the bed in her pajamas, reading a novel.
She looked up at him, smiled, and asked how his day went.
He looked at her bewildered and asked, "What happened here today?"
She again smiled and answered, "You know every day when you come home from work and you ask me what in the world did I do today?"
"Yeah," was his incredulous reply.
She answered, "Well, today I didn't do it."
Taken from AlMaghrib Forum.
still in their pajamas,
playing in the mud,
with empty food boxes and wrappers strewn all around the front yard.
The door of his wife's car was open,
as was the front door to the house and there was no sign of the cat.
Proceeding into the entry,
he found an even bigger mess.
A lamp had been knocked over,
and the throw rug was wadded against one wall.
In the front room the TV was loudly blaring a cartoon channel,
and the family room was strewn with toys and various items of clothing.
In the kitchen dishes filled the sink,
breakfast food was spilled on the counter,
the fridge door was open wide,
cat food was spilled on the floor,
a broken glass lay under the table,
and a small pile of sand was spread by the back door.
He quickly headed up the stairs,
stepping over toys and more piles of clothes,
looking for his wife.
He was worried she may be ill,
or that something serious had happened.
He was met with a small trickle of water as it made its way out the bathroom door.
As he peered inside he found wet towels,
scummy soap and more toys strewn over the floor.
Miles of toilet paper lay in a heap and toothpaste had been smeared over the mirror and walls.
As he rushed to t he bedroom,
he found his wife still curled up in the bed in her pajamas, reading a novel.
She looked up at him, smiled, and asked how his day went.
He looked at her bewildered and asked, "What happened here today?"
She again smiled and answered, "You know every day when you come home from work and you ask me what in the world did I do today?"
"Yeah," was his incredulous reply.
She answered, "Well, today I didn't do it."
Taken from AlMaghrib Forum.
Friday, 1 August 2008
The Man Rules
Some light humour - my husband sent me this.....
The Man Rules
At last a guy has taken the time to write this all down
Finally , the guys' side of the story
We always hear
'the rules'
From the female side
Now here are the rules from the male side
These are our rules!
Please note... they are all numbered '1' ON PURPOSE!
1. Men are NOT mind readers.
1. Learn to work the toilet seat. You're a big girl. If it's up, put it down. We need it up, you need it down. You don't hear us complaining about you leaving it down.
1. Sunday sports It's like the full moon or the changing of the tides. Let it be.
1. Crying is blackmail.
1. Ask for what you want. Let us be clear on this one! Subtle hints do not work! Strong hints do not work! Obvious hints do not work! Just say it!
1. Yes and No are perfectly acceptable answers to almost every question.
1. Come to us with a problem only if you want help solving it. That's what we do. Sympathy is what your girlfriends are for.
1. Anything we said 6 months ago is inadmissible in an argument. In fact, all comments become Null and void after 7 Days.
1. If you think you're fat, you probably are. Don't ask us.
1. If something we said can be interpreted two ways and one of the ways makes you sad or angry, we meant the other one.
1. You can either ask us to do something Or tell us how you want it done. Not both. If you already know best how to do it, just do it yourself.
1. Whenever possible, Please say whatever you have to say during commercials.
1. Christopher Columbus did NOT need directions and neither do we.
1. ALL men see in only 16 colors, like Windows default settings. Peach, for example, is a fruit, not A color. Pumpkin is also a fruit. We have NO idea what mauve is.
1. If it itches, it will be scratched. We do that.
1. If we ask what is wrong and you say 'nothing,' We will act like nothing's wrong. We know you are lying, but it is just not worth the hassle.
1. If you ask a question you don't want an answer to, Expect an answer you don't want to hear.
1. When we have to go somewhere, absolutely anything you wear is fine... Really!
1. Don't ask us what we're thinking about unless you are prepared to discuss such topics as computers or golf.
1. You have enough clothes.
1. You have too many shoes.
1. I am in shape. Round IS a shape!
1. Thank you for reading this. Yes, I know I have to sleep on the couch tonight;But did you know men really don't mind that? It's like camping.
Pass this to as many men as you can - to give them a laugh.
Pass this to as many women as you can - to give them a bigger laugh.
The Man Rules
At last a guy has taken the time to write this all down
Finally , the guys' side of the story
We always hear
'the rules'
From the female side
Now here are the rules from the male side
These are our rules!
Please note... they are all numbered '1' ON PURPOSE!
1. Men are NOT mind readers.
1. Learn to work the toilet seat. You're a big girl. If it's up, put it down. We need it up, you need it down. You don't hear us complaining about you leaving it down.
1. Sunday sports It's like the full moon or the changing of the tides. Let it be.
1. Crying is blackmail.
1. Ask for what you want. Let us be clear on this one! Subtle hints do not work! Strong hints do not work! Obvious hints do not work! Just say it!
1. Yes and No are perfectly acceptable answers to almost every question.
1. Come to us with a problem only if you want help solving it. That's what we do. Sympathy is what your girlfriends are for.
1. Anything we said 6 months ago is inadmissible in an argument. In fact, all comments become Null and void after 7 Days.
1. If you think you're fat, you probably are. Don't ask us.
1. If something we said can be interpreted two ways and one of the ways makes you sad or angry, we meant the other one.
1. You can either ask us to do something Or tell us how you want it done. Not both. If you already know best how to do it, just do it yourself.
1. Whenever possible, Please say whatever you have to say during commercials.
1. Christopher Columbus did NOT need directions and neither do we.
1. ALL men see in only 16 colors, like Windows default settings. Peach, for example, is a fruit, not A color. Pumpkin is also a fruit. We have NO idea what mauve is.
1. If it itches, it will be scratched. We do that.
1. If we ask what is wrong and you say 'nothing,' We will act like nothing's wrong. We know you are lying, but it is just not worth the hassle.
1. If you ask a question you don't want an answer to, Expect an answer you don't want to hear.
1. When we have to go somewhere, absolutely anything you wear is fine... Really!
1. Don't ask us what we're thinking about unless you are prepared to discuss such topics as computers or golf.
1. You have enough clothes.
1. You have too many shoes.
1. I am in shape. Round IS a shape!
1. Thank you for reading this. Yes, I know I have to sleep on the couch tonight;But did you know men really don't mind that? It's like camping.
Pass this to as many men as you can - to give them a laugh.
Pass this to as many women as you can - to give them a bigger laugh.
Thursday, 17 July 2008
Why US is 'stuck' with Guantanamo Bay
By Paul Reynolds
World affairs correspondent, BBC News website
The statement by US Defence Secretary Robert Gates that Washington is "stuck" with Guantanamo Bay is a reflection of the mounting problems that the camp faces.
Mr Gates told a Senate committee that out of the 270 or so prisoners still there, about 50 to 70 were an "irreducible" minimum.
He said: "The problem is that either their home government won't accept them or we're concerned that the home government will let them loose once we return them home."
Some released prisoners, Mr Gates suggested, had returned to the battlefield. One is thought to have become a suicide bomber in Mosul in Iraq.
Yet these 50 to 70 prisoners could not be charged either, he said. This is presumably because there is not enough or no evidence against them.
The prospect for these prisoners therefore is indefinite detention, which raises its own legal and moral problems.
Eventual closure is the stated policy of the Bush administration, but one which looks like being missed in the remaining months of the presidential term. Human rights groups and other governments have for long argued for closure anyway.
Returnees issue
"Gates is admitting they have a problem we all knew about," said Andy Worthington of the British group Reprieve, which monitors and offers legal advice to Guantanamo Bay prisoners.
"These are the 50-70 who have been cleared for release but who cannot be returned. They come from China, Uzbekistan, Tunisia, Libya and Algeria mainly.
"The US tried last year to agree memoranda of understanding with some countries, including Tunisia and two prisoners were sent back there. They have been jailed for three and seven years after an unsatisfactory trial. A US court has blocked a third return.
"Several Chinese Muslims picked up in Afghanistan were sent to Albania and all but one are thought to be there still. One has applied for asylum in Sweden."
Mr Worthington says there is another group that will also hold up any plans for closure. "This group is made up of prisoners who are regarded as too dangerous to release but against whom there is not sufficient evidence to justify a charge and trial by a military commission.
"But what kind of legal handbook does this come from? They face unlimited imprisonment."
Military tribunals
The administration has also faced huge problems in starting the military commissions or tribunals that Congress has authorised.
The tribunals were supposed to be starting soon but the first two had to be put off after military judges ruled that the defendants had not been formally classified as "unlawful enemy combatants," as required by the law, and only as "enemy combatants."
One of those defendants was Osama Bin Laden's driver Salim Ahmed Hamdan. His trial has now been put off for another reason.
The US Supreme Court is due to rule by the end of June on whether prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have a constitutional right to habeas corpus, a procedure whereby a prisoner has to be brought to a court for justification of his detention. Until this issue is ruled upon, the military trials are unlikely to start.
Evidence and torture
There is also a question of evidence. One major al-Qaeda suspect Mohammed al-Qatani, one of six so-called "high-value" prisoners who were charged earlier this year, has had charges against him dropped.
The upshot is that the system is in some doubt, not to say chaos.
It is thought this is because he was subject to what a military inquiry called "abusive" questioning, described as torture by his lawyer, at Guantanamo Bay and that his defence could move to have evidence based on these interrogations dismissed.
Mohammed al-Qatani is often referred to as the missing "2Oth hijacker" on 9/11, He was not allowed to enter the US on arrival at Orlando, where the hijackers' leader Mohammed Atta is thought to have been waiting to pick him up.
Prosecutors' unease
There have also been problems for the administration among the military prosecutors themselves, several of whom have resigned rather than enforce the system of military tribunals.
One of them, Colonel Morris Davis, was chief prosecutor and he has stated that he did not want to use al-Qatani's alleged confessions as evidence because the prisoner had been abused. Col Davis claims that the senior legal officer for the commissions, Brigadier-General Thomas Hartmann clashed with him on this, though Brig Gen Hartmann denies that he discussed the issue of coerced confessions with Col Davis.
The upshot is that the system is in some doubt, not to say chaos.
However the administration is determined to try to press on with the remaining five "high-value" trials. The defendants include the alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
He was subjected to waterboarding process but not at Guantanamo Bay , so it is possible that a trial could ignore that. There has been an effort to get subsequent "clean confessions" from these prisoners which could then be presented in court.
In more than one way, Guantanamo Bay continues in its legal limbo.
Paul.Reynolds-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk
World affairs correspondent, BBC News website
The statement by US Defence Secretary Robert Gates that Washington is "stuck" with Guantanamo Bay is a reflection of the mounting problems that the camp faces.
Mr Gates told a Senate committee that out of the 270 or so prisoners still there, about 50 to 70 were an "irreducible" minimum.
He said: "The problem is that either their home government won't accept them or we're concerned that the home government will let them loose once we return them home."
Some released prisoners, Mr Gates suggested, had returned to the battlefield. One is thought to have become a suicide bomber in Mosul in Iraq.
Yet these 50 to 70 prisoners could not be charged either, he said. This is presumably because there is not enough or no evidence against them.
The prospect for these prisoners therefore is indefinite detention, which raises its own legal and moral problems.
Eventual closure is the stated policy of the Bush administration, but one which looks like being missed in the remaining months of the presidential term. Human rights groups and other governments have for long argued for closure anyway.
Returnees issue
"Gates is admitting they have a problem we all knew about," said Andy Worthington of the British group Reprieve, which monitors and offers legal advice to Guantanamo Bay prisoners.
"These are the 50-70 who have been cleared for release but who cannot be returned. They come from China, Uzbekistan, Tunisia, Libya and Algeria mainly.
"The US tried last year to agree memoranda of understanding with some countries, including Tunisia and two prisoners were sent back there. They have been jailed for three and seven years after an unsatisfactory trial. A US court has blocked a third return.
"Several Chinese Muslims picked up in Afghanistan were sent to Albania and all but one are thought to be there still. One has applied for asylum in Sweden."
Mr Worthington says there is another group that will also hold up any plans for closure. "This group is made up of prisoners who are regarded as too dangerous to release but against whom there is not sufficient evidence to justify a charge and trial by a military commission.
"But what kind of legal handbook does this come from? They face unlimited imprisonment."
Military tribunals
The administration has also faced huge problems in starting the military commissions or tribunals that Congress has authorised.
The tribunals were supposed to be starting soon but the first two had to be put off after military judges ruled that the defendants had not been formally classified as "unlawful enemy combatants," as required by the law, and only as "enemy combatants."
One of those defendants was Osama Bin Laden's driver Salim Ahmed Hamdan. His trial has now been put off for another reason.
The US Supreme Court is due to rule by the end of June on whether prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have a constitutional right to habeas corpus, a procedure whereby a prisoner has to be brought to a court for justification of his detention. Until this issue is ruled upon, the military trials are unlikely to start.
Evidence and torture
There is also a question of evidence. One major al-Qaeda suspect Mohammed al-Qatani, one of six so-called "high-value" prisoners who were charged earlier this year, has had charges against him dropped.
The upshot is that the system is in some doubt, not to say chaos.
It is thought this is because he was subject to what a military inquiry called "abusive" questioning, described as torture by his lawyer, at Guantanamo Bay and that his defence could move to have evidence based on these interrogations dismissed.
Mohammed al-Qatani is often referred to as the missing "2Oth hijacker" on 9/11, He was not allowed to enter the US on arrival at Orlando, where the hijackers' leader Mohammed Atta is thought to have been waiting to pick him up.
Prosecutors' unease
There have also been problems for the administration among the military prosecutors themselves, several of whom have resigned rather than enforce the system of military tribunals.
One of them, Colonel Morris Davis, was chief prosecutor and he has stated that he did not want to use al-Qatani's alleged confessions as evidence because the prisoner had been abused. Col Davis claims that the senior legal officer for the commissions, Brigadier-General Thomas Hartmann clashed with him on this, though Brig Gen Hartmann denies that he discussed the issue of coerced confessions with Col Davis.
The upshot is that the system is in some doubt, not to say chaos.
However the administration is determined to try to press on with the remaining five "high-value" trials. The defendants include the alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
He was subjected to waterboarding process but not at Guantanamo Bay , so it is possible that a trial could ignore that. There has been an effort to get subsequent "clean confessions" from these prisoners which could then be presented in court.
In more than one way, Guantanamo Bay continues in its legal limbo.
Paul.Reynolds-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk
Thursday, 5 June 2008
Al Furqan Mosque & Coffee
My Long Lost Coffee...
Well this probably doesn't tie in very well after Umm Zaida's post on 'Balanced Diet,' but I'm sure she'll forgive me after trying this coffee!
My husband and I are very into our coffee and trying different ones. Not long ago I was at the hairdressers and they made me a cup of coffee. It was the nicest coffee that I have ever tasted, trust me - I've been drinking coffee since I was 8!
My Nanny, an elderly English Widow who would often look after us, used to make it for me as a way to make me drink milk.
So since tasting it at the hairdressers I've been wondering which coffee it is and Alhamdulillah I finally found it!
Al Furqan Mosque
And Speaking of coffee or rather coffee breaks... Myself and Umm Zaida, (a former Mancunian,) used to teach at Al Furqan Mosque In Rusholme.
The Masjid is in urgent need of charity donations in order to secure their premises.
Please check out their website on http://www.alfurqancentre.org.uk and donate whatever you can for the sake of Allah.
The brothers and sisters there do many things for children and the youth, as Myself and Umm Zaidah both witnessed first hand whilst working there.
With regards to the children we taught - many of whom were the children of the brothers who run the Mosque, I have to say I have never met such well mannered children. MashaAllah they were all so respectful and helpful, they would actually fight over who would help to carry our books, bags and even my umbrella! I had to have a child carry each of my things for me so that they all got a chance to help! May Allah have mercy on them all.
They have until October to raise these funds so please pass this message on to as many people as possible and support this.
.
Well this probably doesn't tie in very well after Umm Zaida's post on 'Balanced Diet,' but I'm sure she'll forgive me after trying this coffee!
My husband and I are very into our coffee and trying different ones. Not long ago I was at the hairdressers and they made me a cup of coffee. It was the nicest coffee that I have ever tasted, trust me - I've been drinking coffee since I was 8!
My Nanny, an elderly English Widow who would often look after us, used to make it for me as a way to make me drink milk.
So since tasting it at the hairdressers I've been wondering which coffee it is and Alhamdulillah I finally found it!
Al Furqan Mosque
And Speaking of coffee or rather coffee breaks... Myself and Umm Zaida, (a former Mancunian,) used to teach at Al Furqan Mosque In Rusholme.
The Masjid is in urgent need of charity donations in order to secure their premises.
Please check out their website on http://www.alfurqancentre.org.uk and donate whatever you can for the sake of Allah.
The brothers and sisters there do many things for children and the youth, as Myself and Umm Zaidah both witnessed first hand whilst working there.
With regards to the children we taught - many of whom were the children of the brothers who run the Mosque, I have to say I have never met such well mannered children. MashaAllah they were all so respectful and helpful, they would actually fight over who would help to carry our books, bags and even my umbrella! I had to have a child carry each of my things for me so that they all got a chance to help! May Allah have mercy on them all.
They have until October to raise these funds so please pass this message on to as many people as possible and support this.
.
Friday, 25 April 2008
I ask again...
Well now that I've got two little ones I ask again....
Is it REALLY possible to be a busy wife, mother AND look good?
Here's a post I wrote a year ago in March O7. Some Spring Fashion stuff will follow in a few days InshaAllah.
Anas, may Allah be pleased with him, reported that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: "When a woman prays her five prayers, fasts her month (of Ramadan), preserves her chastity, and obeys her husband, then she may enter the Jannah (Paradise) from any door she chooses." [Ahmad and others; authentic]
Before marriage we read many books on how to obey our husbands and how to be good wives. One of the main things that was emphasized was adorning ourselves for our husbands.
How easy! We would think. Is that it? And we couldn't understand it when we would see married sisters who didn't.
After marriage - 'It's still easy - with the odd 'bad hair day' here and there.'
After children - quotes:
'HELP!!'
'HUSBAND WHO?'
'I can't remember the last time I had a hair cut!'
'Maybe I'll just wait till Jannah InshaAllah to look beautiful....'
'I don't know where to start, it seems like sooo long ago....'
'I need to loose 2 stones first!'
Lately I've been thinking. We make too many excuses, there are too many beautiful woman out there to make excuses. As for the last excuse, a sister responded, 'We know that losing even a few pounds doesn't happen over night. And what to do in the meantime? Plus we could die tommorrow so lets make the most of how we look.'
A sister commented about adorning herself for her husband, 'I'd honestly rather have him expect to come home to see his wife in the best form and therefore push himself harder to lower his gaze, than have him expect to come home and find me in jogging pants and a t-shirt and find it harder to resist the temptations. He's out all day, and he sees all kinds of things. When he knows that if he lowers his gaze, he will be rewarded in the akhirah by Allah, and in the dunya by going home to a wife who can show him what he saw and better (because it's halal) it makes the struggle all the more worth it for him. '
Allah describes the woman as: “…one brought up among adornments” [Sûrah al-Zukhruf: 18]
Below are some practical tips and advice from various sisters that inshaAllah will help us to balance our obligations, to Allah, our husbands and children.
* Buy clothes that are crease resistant or drip dry them to save time on ironing.
* Wear kohl - it takes a second to apply and you can do wudu over it without removing it.
* Try to find out what your husband likes, styles, clothes etc. That always makes things easier. (Ebay is great for this because you can show the pictures of the items before buying - pictures without women in them of course.)
* Time is of the essence! Learn to have quick showers and get ready in a few minutes.
* Practice doing different hairstyles and keep a note of quick ones that look good. Loose buns look great with casual clothes.
* Wear perfume and matching body lotion. A sister said, 'I quickly apply body lotion to sweat areas (ie under arms) straight after a shower and a quick spray of matching perfume to my home clothes so I'm always smelling good.
* Buy clothes that are comfortable - but look good. A sister said, 'Lately I've bought a new wardrobe from ebay (bargain prices! My husbands favourite dress cost me 2 pounds - including postage and packaging!) I've bought some dresses that are comfortable, flattering, not too long so i don't trip over it and can climb up and down the stairs with my daughter. I buy dresses that have some sleeves so i can wear them in front of other women also . I try to look for Warm fabric so i don't freeze on cold days and Comfortable enough to do all household chores in. Also I make sure it has a side zip, or i can pull down the neck because im breastfeeding still.'
* Wear Simple Jewelery that don't get in the way of things.
* Try to balance things ie cooking, cleaning, dressing up. Don't do too much of any so it ends up that you're neglecting the others.
* Going out. A sister said, 'I try not to go out too much Because my hijab makes my hair flat. Also I do most of my shopping online rather than spend a whole day in town with my toddler moaning in her buggy and not getting anything I needed or wanted.'
* Mirror Mirror.... A sister once said, 'A wise woman is one who has a mirror in her Kitchen!'
* Water of life. Remember to always drink plenty of water for radiant skin.
* Oh Sugar! Sugar and water is a fast, cheap and effective way to Exfoliate!
* Remember the most important thing is DUA!!! A sister said, 'I pray to Allah in Sujood to make me the most beautiful woman for my Husband in this world and the next.'
May Allah help us to keep steadfast on the deen and be balanced Muslimaat. Ameen.
Is it REALLY possible to be a busy wife, mother AND look good?
Here's a post I wrote a year ago in March O7. Some Spring Fashion stuff will follow in a few days InshaAllah.
Anas, may Allah be pleased with him, reported that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: "When a woman prays her five prayers, fasts her month (of Ramadan), preserves her chastity, and obeys her husband, then she may enter the Jannah (Paradise) from any door she chooses." [Ahmad and others; authentic]
Before marriage we read many books on how to obey our husbands and how to be good wives. One of the main things that was emphasized was adorning ourselves for our husbands.
How easy! We would think. Is that it? And we couldn't understand it when we would see married sisters who didn't.
After marriage - 'It's still easy - with the odd 'bad hair day' here and there.'
After children - quotes:
'HELP!!'
'HUSBAND WHO?'
'I can't remember the last time I had a hair cut!'
'Maybe I'll just wait till Jannah InshaAllah to look beautiful....'
'I don't know where to start, it seems like sooo long ago....'
'I need to loose 2 stones first!'
Lately I've been thinking. We make too many excuses, there are too many beautiful woman out there to make excuses. As for the last excuse, a sister responded, 'We know that losing even a few pounds doesn't happen over night. And what to do in the meantime? Plus we could die tommorrow so lets make the most of how we look.'
A sister commented about adorning herself for her husband, 'I'd honestly rather have him expect to come home to see his wife in the best form and therefore push himself harder to lower his gaze, than have him expect to come home and find me in jogging pants and a t-shirt and find it harder to resist the temptations. He's out all day, and he sees all kinds of things. When he knows that if he lowers his gaze, he will be rewarded in the akhirah by Allah, and in the dunya by going home to a wife who can show him what he saw and better (because it's halal) it makes the struggle all the more worth it for him. '
Allah describes the woman as: “…one brought up among adornments” [Sûrah al-Zukhruf: 18]
Below are some practical tips and advice from various sisters that inshaAllah will help us to balance our obligations, to Allah, our husbands and children.
* Buy clothes that are crease resistant or drip dry them to save time on ironing.
* Wear kohl - it takes a second to apply and you can do wudu over it without removing it.
* Try to find out what your husband likes, styles, clothes etc. That always makes things easier. (Ebay is great for this because you can show the pictures of the items before buying - pictures without women in them of course.)
* Time is of the essence! Learn to have quick showers and get ready in a few minutes.
* Practice doing different hairstyles and keep a note of quick ones that look good. Loose buns look great with casual clothes.
* Wear perfume and matching body lotion. A sister said, 'I quickly apply body lotion to sweat areas (ie under arms) straight after a shower and a quick spray of matching perfume to my home clothes so I'm always smelling good.
* Buy clothes that are comfortable - but look good. A sister said, 'Lately I've bought a new wardrobe from ebay (bargain prices! My husbands favourite dress cost me 2 pounds - including postage and packaging!) I've bought some dresses that are comfortable, flattering, not too long so i don't trip over it and can climb up and down the stairs with my daughter. I buy dresses that have some sleeves so i can wear them in front of other women also . I try to look for Warm fabric so i don't freeze on cold days and Comfortable enough to do all household chores in. Also I make sure it has a side zip, or i can pull down the neck because im breastfeeding still.'
* Wear Simple Jewelery that don't get in the way of things.
* Try to balance things ie cooking, cleaning, dressing up. Don't do too much of any so it ends up that you're neglecting the others.
* Going out. A sister said, 'I try not to go out too much Because my hijab makes my hair flat. Also I do most of my shopping online rather than spend a whole day in town with my toddler moaning in her buggy and not getting anything I needed or wanted.'
* Mirror Mirror.... A sister once said, 'A wise woman is one who has a mirror in her Kitchen!'
* Water of life. Remember to always drink plenty of water for radiant skin.
* Oh Sugar! Sugar and water is a fast, cheap and effective way to Exfoliate!
* Remember the most important thing is DUA!!! A sister said, 'I pray to Allah in Sujood to make me the most beautiful woman for my Husband in this world and the next.'
May Allah help us to keep steadfast on the deen and be balanced Muslimaat. Ameen.
Tuesday, 15 April 2008
Why Costs Are Climbing
As food prices surge, starvation looms for millions. Experts call for emergency action but admit there's no quick fix
By Eric Reguly
12/04/08 "Globe and Mail" -- -ROME — Fatal food riots in Haiti. Violent food-price protests in Egypt and Ivory Coast. Rice so valuable it is transported in armoured convoys. Soldiers guarding fields and warehouses. Export bans to keep local populations from starving.
For the first time in decades, the spectre of widespread hunger for millions looms as food prices explode. Two words not in common currency in recent years — famine and starvation — are now being raised as distinct possibilities in the poorest, food-importing countries.
Unlike past food crises, solved largely by throwing aid at hungry stomachs and boosting agricultural productivity, this one won't go away quickly, experts say. Prices are soaring and stand every chance of staying high because this crisis is different.
A swelling global population, soaring energy prices, the clamouring for meat from the rising Asian middle class, competition from biofuels and hot money pouring into the commodity markets are all factors that make this crisis unique and potentially calamitous. Even with concerted global action, such as rushing more land into cultivation, it will take years to fix the problem.
The price increases and food shortages have been nothing short of shocking. In February, stockpiles of wheat hit a 60-year low in the United States as prices soared. Almost all other commodities, from rice and soybeans to sugar and corn, have posted triple-digit price increases in the past year or two.
Read More...
Source: Information Clearing House
By Eric Reguly
12/04/08 "Globe and Mail" -- -ROME — Fatal food riots in Haiti. Violent food-price protests in Egypt and Ivory Coast. Rice so valuable it is transported in armoured convoys. Soldiers guarding fields and warehouses. Export bans to keep local populations from starving.
For the first time in decades, the spectre of widespread hunger for millions looms as food prices explode. Two words not in common currency in recent years — famine and starvation — are now being raised as distinct possibilities in the poorest, food-importing countries.
Unlike past food crises, solved largely by throwing aid at hungry stomachs and boosting agricultural productivity, this one won't go away quickly, experts say. Prices are soaring and stand every chance of staying high because this crisis is different.
A swelling global population, soaring energy prices, the clamouring for meat from the rising Asian middle class, competition from biofuels and hot money pouring into the commodity markets are all factors that make this crisis unique and potentially calamitous. Even with concerted global action, such as rushing more land into cultivation, it will take years to fix the problem.
The price increases and food shortages have been nothing short of shocking. In February, stockpiles of wheat hit a 60-year low in the United States as prices soared. Almost all other commodities, from rice and soybeans to sugar and corn, have posted triple-digit price increases in the past year or two.
Read More...
Source: Information Clearing House
Thursday, 27 March 2008
Where's the Logic?
Charlotte gives jack a shopping list, among the list was 'white cabbage'.
Jack returns home with the shopping.
Jack, 'I didn't find any white cabbage so I got you some lettuce instead.'
I mean like - where's the logic?!!
More About Lettuce.
More about Cabbage.
Jack returns home with the shopping.
Jack, 'I didn't find any white cabbage so I got you some lettuce instead.'
I mean like - where's the logic?!!
More About Lettuce.
More about Cabbage.
Tuesday, 26 February 2008
Do you envision us meeting,
Hal Turaana Naltaqi MP3 by Saad Al-Ghamdi
Wording in Arabic
English Translation
Do you envision us meeting, or has it already,
Taken place in the land of the mirage;
Then it withdrew and its shadow vanished,
And turned into torturous memories;
Thus asks my heart whenever,
The days grow long, after your absence;
When your shadow stares, smiling,
It is as if I am listening to the response;
Did we not walk upon Truth together,
So that Good can return to barren land;
So we walked along a thorny path,
Abandoning all our ambitions;
We buried our desires deep within ourselves,
And we strove on in contentment, expecting reward from Allah;
We had made a pact to walk together,
And then you hurried in responding and departing;
When a Benevolent Lord called me,
To a life amidst gardens and vast lands;
And towards a sublime meeting amidst divine favours,
With the Soldiers of Allah, joyful in companionship;
Presenting their souls and lives, a sacrifice,
Responding without slightest doubts;
So to renew your heart from its slumber,
An ever-lasting meeting in such a land;
Oh traveler, Forgiveness from my complaints,
Unto me is your ghost, to him a patient reproach;
I abandoned my heart to bleed heavily,
Lost in the night, in the depths of fog;
And if I traverse, confused and alone,
I'll interrupt the path, long it is in depression;
And if in the night, I find a gloomy sea,
Encountering in it waves of pain;
Ceasing in my nights, is the radiance of lightening,
And the brightness of stars have disappeared;
Despite this, I shall continue just as,
You used to find me, in the face of adversity;
I shall continue keeping my head raised, And won't,
Consent to weakness in speech, nor reply;
I shall be guided by the sweet-scented blood,
And light has illuminated the horizons of escape;
Do you envision us meeting, or has it already,
Taken place in the land of the mirage;
Then it withdrew and its shadow vanished,
And turned into torturous memories;
Thus asks my heart whenever,
The days grow long, after your absence;
When your shadow stares, smiling,
It is as if I am listening to the response
Wording in Arabic
English Translation
Do you envision us meeting, or has it already,
Taken place in the land of the mirage;
Then it withdrew and its shadow vanished,
And turned into torturous memories;
Thus asks my heart whenever,
The days grow long, after your absence;
When your shadow stares, smiling,
It is as if I am listening to the response;
Did we not walk upon Truth together,
So that Good can return to barren land;
So we walked along a thorny path,
Abandoning all our ambitions;
We buried our desires deep within ourselves,
And we strove on in contentment, expecting reward from Allah;
We had made a pact to walk together,
And then you hurried in responding and departing;
When a Benevolent Lord called me,
To a life amidst gardens and vast lands;
And towards a sublime meeting amidst divine favours,
With the Soldiers of Allah, joyful in companionship;
Presenting their souls and lives, a sacrifice,
Responding without slightest doubts;
So to renew your heart from its slumber,
An ever-lasting meeting in such a land;
Oh traveler, Forgiveness from my complaints,
Unto me is your ghost, to him a patient reproach;
I abandoned my heart to bleed heavily,
Lost in the night, in the depths of fog;
And if I traverse, confused and alone,
I'll interrupt the path, long it is in depression;
And if in the night, I find a gloomy sea,
Encountering in it waves of pain;
Ceasing in my nights, is the radiance of lightening,
And the brightness of stars have disappeared;
Despite this, I shall continue just as,
You used to find me, in the face of adversity;
I shall continue keeping my head raised, And won't,
Consent to weakness in speech, nor reply;
I shall be guided by the sweet-scented blood,
And light has illuminated the horizons of escape;
Do you envision us meeting, or has it already,
Taken place in the land of the mirage;
Then it withdrew and its shadow vanished,
And turned into torturous memories;
Thus asks my heart whenever,
The days grow long, after your absence;
When your shadow stares, smiling,
It is as if I am listening to the response
Thursday, 25 October 2007
Why do I need to write?
When there are so many great writers out there!
Umm Yusuf talks about 'That Lovin’ Feeling!'
By Fatima Barkatulla
Wondering what’s happened to the romance since you became parents? It needn’t be that way! With a little effort, your relationship can be stronger and more meaningful than ever before. After all, your children are the fruits of your love and commitment to each other. So come on…renew the strength of your relationship and through it, you’ll re-ignite the passion you have for one another…
Pray together
In any situation, even the most stressful, remind each other of how Allah would want his true servants to behave. Pray together at least once a day, standing as servants together in front of your Creator. Remind each other to have sabr (patience) and tawakkul (reliance upon Allah).
Embrace one another
Physical contact is so important and even an embrace and a simple back rub or head massage can reduce stress levels and keep you connected to each other. Take time out to have a hug and renew yourselves.
Argue with boundaries
Arguments can make you eventually closer to your husband if they are constructive. How? Well, say you wanted him to do something, he doesn’t understand why, you explain how it makes you feel, he eventually sees why you are upset and why it means so much to you, so in the end you understand each others needs a little bit better…you have been fighting yourselves closer to one another! Don’t cross the boundaries of decency when you argue. Don’t character assassinate and do not deny his good qualities. Being unthankful to our husbands is one of the characteristics we have to avoid.
Be prepared to apologise.
Apologise sincerely when you are wrong and accept his apologies. Don’t bring up the past…deal with the present. Life is too short for bickering and you’ll be surprised at how saying sorry can allow you both to move on and start afresh.
Notice the beauty and it will magnify.
Why is it that we tend to treat strangers with more courtesy and respect than those whom we are closest to? Treat your husband with the respect, careful choice of words and body language that you would treat a person who you have met for the first time and want to leave a good impression on. Praise your husband for his skills and characteristics. Notice the good and it will increase and grow!
Have a routine
If your kids are up till late, and your home is disorderly, then it’s hardly surprising that you don’t get a chance to bond with your spouse. There has to be time for you to be together as a couple, for you to be able to pay full attention to each other. So get your kids into a good meal and bedtime routine and stick to it! It’ll change your life!
Go on a date!
Have regular time alone together…uninterrupted! Even if that means asking your mum to keep the kids for a few hours. You could use that time to talk, remember how you met and what your feelings were for each other when you got married. Eat out together or go to a quiet spot by a river or for a stroll in the park. Only talk about positive things in that time that you have set aside for yourselves.
Keep communicating
Listen and empathise with your husband’s struggles. Communicate to him what your needs are, don’t expect him to guess! Things that seem obvious to you aren’t always to him, so tell him how he could make things easier for you and work to make things easier for him too.
Don’t go to sleep on an argument
Try to resolve issues before you go to bed. Leaving things unresolved can lead to a build up of bad feelings which eat away at your relationship.
Flirt with each other!
Leave a little love note in his lunch box or stick it on his rear-view mirror. Send him a text message with a message of love and gratitude for all he has done for you. You are never more attractive than when you are smiling and happy. Be a bit of a bimbo sometimes! What I mean by that is: joke and be light hearted around your husband and don’t always bring up the heavy stuff when you’re with him.
Get your glad rags out!
You know! The make-up and jewellery you once wore but now don’t seem to be able to find. Make an effort to look good and both you and your husband will benefit! Even if you can’t do it every day, dress up once in a while and your husband is sure to notice the extra effort you’ve put in. Indulge in nice smelling bath scrubs that’ll make your skin soft and smelling sensual. A mud mask or facial, once a week will make your face shine with radiance!
Copyright Sisters Magazine 2007
http://www.sisters-magazine.com/
Umm Yusuf talks about 'That Lovin’ Feeling!'
By Fatima Barkatulla
Wondering what’s happened to the romance since you became parents? It needn’t be that way! With a little effort, your relationship can be stronger and more meaningful than ever before. After all, your children are the fruits of your love and commitment to each other. So come on…renew the strength of your relationship and through it, you’ll re-ignite the passion you have for one another…
Pray together
In any situation, even the most stressful, remind each other of how Allah would want his true servants to behave. Pray together at least once a day, standing as servants together in front of your Creator. Remind each other to have sabr (patience) and tawakkul (reliance upon Allah).
Embrace one another
Physical contact is so important and even an embrace and a simple back rub or head massage can reduce stress levels and keep you connected to each other. Take time out to have a hug and renew yourselves.
Argue with boundaries
Arguments can make you eventually closer to your husband if they are constructive. How? Well, say you wanted him to do something, he doesn’t understand why, you explain how it makes you feel, he eventually sees why you are upset and why it means so much to you, so in the end you understand each others needs a little bit better…you have been fighting yourselves closer to one another! Don’t cross the boundaries of decency when you argue. Don’t character assassinate and do not deny his good qualities. Being unthankful to our husbands is one of the characteristics we have to avoid.
Be prepared to apologise.
Apologise sincerely when you are wrong and accept his apologies. Don’t bring up the past…deal with the present. Life is too short for bickering and you’ll be surprised at how saying sorry can allow you both to move on and start afresh.
Notice the beauty and it will magnify.
Why is it that we tend to treat strangers with more courtesy and respect than those whom we are closest to? Treat your husband with the respect, careful choice of words and body language that you would treat a person who you have met for the first time and want to leave a good impression on. Praise your husband for his skills and characteristics. Notice the good and it will increase and grow!
Have a routine
If your kids are up till late, and your home is disorderly, then it’s hardly surprising that you don’t get a chance to bond with your spouse. There has to be time for you to be together as a couple, for you to be able to pay full attention to each other. So get your kids into a good meal and bedtime routine and stick to it! It’ll change your life!
Go on a date!
Have regular time alone together…uninterrupted! Even if that means asking your mum to keep the kids for a few hours. You could use that time to talk, remember how you met and what your feelings were for each other when you got married. Eat out together or go to a quiet spot by a river or for a stroll in the park. Only talk about positive things in that time that you have set aside for yourselves.
Keep communicating
Listen and empathise with your husband’s struggles. Communicate to him what your needs are, don’t expect him to guess! Things that seem obvious to you aren’t always to him, so tell him how he could make things easier for you and work to make things easier for him too.
Don’t go to sleep on an argument
Try to resolve issues before you go to bed. Leaving things unresolved can lead to a build up of bad feelings which eat away at your relationship.
Flirt with each other!
Leave a little love note in his lunch box or stick it on his rear-view mirror. Send him a text message with a message of love and gratitude for all he has done for you. You are never more attractive than when you are smiling and happy. Be a bit of a bimbo sometimes! What I mean by that is: joke and be light hearted around your husband and don’t always bring up the heavy stuff when you’re with him.
Get your glad rags out!
You know! The make-up and jewellery you once wore but now don’t seem to be able to find. Make an effort to look good and both you and your husband will benefit! Even if you can’t do it every day, dress up once in a while and your husband is sure to notice the extra effort you’ve put in. Indulge in nice smelling bath scrubs that’ll make your skin soft and smelling sensual. A mud mask or facial, once a week will make your face shine with radiance!
Copyright Sisters Magazine 2007
http://www.sisters-magazine.com/
Monday, 20 August 2007
Don’t just blame the parents; blame us too
It was better when we all took it upon ourselves to discipline children
Carol Sarler
Blame the parents, by all means. Blame the social workers, while you’re at it. Both are rational responses to the revulsion evoked when a mother and her boyfriend are convicted of murdering her four-year-old child over a prolonged period of 100 blows; not again, we say, not again. And then, three days after sentence was passed on Sharon Wright and Peter McKenzie-Seaton in Bradford, a couple are arrested in London for the suspicious death of their toddler and we cry not again. Again.
By the same token, we blame the parents for feral gangs who roam the streets; for violence, for crime, for unprecedented numbers of fatal shootings by gunslingers still only children themselves. Whether it is damage to children or damage by children, sensibly alarmed politicians turn their sights towards families and those professionally charged with effecting cure upon dysfunctional ones. The message reads clearly: they are your children, therefore your job and your responsibility – and, of course, they are. The less clear question, however, might be: are they solely the responsibility of those who raise them? Or should the civilian rest of us also reasonably be expected to play a bigger part?
Current thinking says no. Inadequacies within the insularity of the family are addressed by, for instance, “parenting classes” or, at the posh end, “family therapy”, both designed to address the inadequacies while retaining the insular structure of the unit. In the light of the manifest failure of such an approach, is it time to wonder whether the root of the problems lies in the insularity itself?
The model of the nuclear family, apparently accepted without question by those who seek to nurture it, is not, I venture, entirely historically correct. Its emergence, according to conventional wisdom, is explained something like this: once upon a time, we all lived in enormous, sprawling multigenerational families, paying feudal dues and doffing caps to his liege as young and old scratched a happy living in bucolic pastures where we slept with our goats and breast-fed our chickens – until along came the Industrial Revolution and blew the whistle for time. The need for a mobile workforce became paramount, so the population helpfully parcelled itself into two-generation families, moved into two-up two-downs and slammed the front door behind them.
Police chief calls for alcohol ban in public
Cheshire Chief Constable stepped up his campaign on drink-related youth crime today with call for ban on street-drinking
* Police chief calls drinks industry to account for yob culture
* A daughter’s last letter to father killed tackling gang of vandals
* Father who confronted gang 'was best dad'
Which, I suppose, was pretty much the gist of it, save this: it does not tally with personal observation. Those front doors slammed not in the 19th century, but only in the past few years. In the street where my mother was raised (urban, poor) and, even more recently, in the street where I was raised (shires, middle) the doors of the family units were open – literally and otherwise.
Everybody involved themselves with the maintenance of other people’s children; should a child bunk off school for the day, every adult in the street would know and would think nothing of reprimanding him. We took it for granted that there were eyes everywhere: “Hey, young Sarler! Cut it out! Now!” And when two teenage girls were trusted alone in the house overnight and elected to – how shall I put this? – have a few friends around, our parents came home the next day to a disorderly queue of neighbours busting guts to tell them about it. BLEEP.
The corollary, however, was that if it was inconceivable that we could misbehave without being spotted, so it was inconceivable that anybody could misbehave towards us without equal scrutiny; paedophilia existed, but was scant terror given that pretty much everyone – especially the children – knew who, what and where lay the local kiddie-fiddlers. Strangers they were not.
As for parents of ineptitude or ill intent, they could not possibly have systematically beaten a child to a deathly pulp in one of our streets. It wasn’t just a matter of our being prepared to snitch to authorities, either; face-to-face confrontation was coded, but all understood what it meant. Mrs Jones would be asked, with an air of concern, if she was all right – looking a little tired, we thought; children getting you down? And Mr Jones was home so late last night . . . The Joneses, thus, would know that we knew.
This may well be too much of a Hovis commercial for your taste and naturally it is not a full social snapshot. Nevertheless, in many respects it was better than what followed when, as every sitcom cast a character to remind us, neighbour came to mean nosy and nosy to mean bad. We became fearful of the accusation of interfering in other people’s lives, let alone in other people’s children and – as that made us unknown to the children and they to us – we became fearful of the children themselves.
Last week, in the dappled sunshine of a London park, I did tick off a bunch of brats: surly, early teens who were being horrid to our dog, or I surely would neither have bothered nor, probably, dared. Certainly, there was anxiety; you hear such stories; don’t they all carry knives these days?
The thing is, though, they were local kids – had to be, to be there at all. And if I had engaged with them in the past when they were much smaller, I would have known their names and homes and schools and very likely wouldn’t have felt nervous at all. But I hadn’t, so I didn’t and next time, for all I know, the dog gets it.
Because of our mutual unfamiliarity I may be at risk – and so, in their homes, may they. Two sides of the same chasm. All in the interests of what? Privacy? Rights? Minding our own business?
Hillary Clinton, in 1996, contentiously borrowed from an old African saying and applied to America the idea that “it takes a village to raise a child”. She was roundly condemned, most notably by Robert Dole, who retorted briskly that, no, it doesn’t; it takes a family.
A decade later, with children dying and with children killing, we may ask why we should have to choose between the two positions. The probable truth is that it is now as it ever was: we still need both.
Carol Sarler
Blame the parents, by all means. Blame the social workers, while you’re at it. Both are rational responses to the revulsion evoked when a mother and her boyfriend are convicted of murdering her four-year-old child over a prolonged period of 100 blows; not again, we say, not again. And then, three days after sentence was passed on Sharon Wright and Peter McKenzie-Seaton in Bradford, a couple are arrested in London for the suspicious death of their toddler and we cry not again. Again.
By the same token, we blame the parents for feral gangs who roam the streets; for violence, for crime, for unprecedented numbers of fatal shootings by gunslingers still only children themselves. Whether it is damage to children or damage by children, sensibly alarmed politicians turn their sights towards families and those professionally charged with effecting cure upon dysfunctional ones. The message reads clearly: they are your children, therefore your job and your responsibility – and, of course, they are. The less clear question, however, might be: are they solely the responsibility of those who raise them? Or should the civilian rest of us also reasonably be expected to play a bigger part?
Current thinking says no. Inadequacies within the insularity of the family are addressed by, for instance, “parenting classes” or, at the posh end, “family therapy”, both designed to address the inadequacies while retaining the insular structure of the unit. In the light of the manifest failure of such an approach, is it time to wonder whether the root of the problems lies in the insularity itself?
The model of the nuclear family, apparently accepted without question by those who seek to nurture it, is not, I venture, entirely historically correct. Its emergence, according to conventional wisdom, is explained something like this: once upon a time, we all lived in enormous, sprawling multigenerational families, paying feudal dues and doffing caps to his liege as young and old scratched a happy living in bucolic pastures where we slept with our goats and breast-fed our chickens – until along came the Industrial Revolution and blew the whistle for time. The need for a mobile workforce became paramount, so the population helpfully parcelled itself into two-generation families, moved into two-up two-downs and slammed the front door behind them.
Police chief calls for alcohol ban in public
Cheshire Chief Constable stepped up his campaign on drink-related youth crime today with call for ban on street-drinking
* Police chief calls drinks industry to account for yob culture
* A daughter’s last letter to father killed tackling gang of vandals
* Father who confronted gang 'was best dad'
Which, I suppose, was pretty much the gist of it, save this: it does not tally with personal observation. Those front doors slammed not in the 19th century, but only in the past few years. In the street where my mother was raised (urban, poor) and, even more recently, in the street where I was raised (shires, middle) the doors of the family units were open – literally and otherwise.
Everybody involved themselves with the maintenance of other people’s children; should a child bunk off school for the day, every adult in the street would know and would think nothing of reprimanding him. We took it for granted that there were eyes everywhere: “Hey, young Sarler! Cut it out! Now!” And when two teenage girls were trusted alone in the house overnight and elected to – how shall I put this? – have a few friends around, our parents came home the next day to a disorderly queue of neighbours busting guts to tell them about it. BLEEP.
The corollary, however, was that if it was inconceivable that we could misbehave without being spotted, so it was inconceivable that anybody could misbehave towards us without equal scrutiny; paedophilia existed, but was scant terror given that pretty much everyone – especially the children – knew who, what and where lay the local kiddie-fiddlers. Strangers they were not.
As for parents of ineptitude or ill intent, they could not possibly have systematically beaten a child to a deathly pulp in one of our streets. It wasn’t just a matter of our being prepared to snitch to authorities, either; face-to-face confrontation was coded, but all understood what it meant. Mrs Jones would be asked, with an air of concern, if she was all right – looking a little tired, we thought; children getting you down? And Mr Jones was home so late last night . . . The Joneses, thus, would know that we knew.
This may well be too much of a Hovis commercial for your taste and naturally it is not a full social snapshot. Nevertheless, in many respects it was better than what followed when, as every sitcom cast a character to remind us, neighbour came to mean nosy and nosy to mean bad. We became fearful of the accusation of interfering in other people’s lives, let alone in other people’s children and – as that made us unknown to the children and they to us – we became fearful of the children themselves.
Last week, in the dappled sunshine of a London park, I did tick off a bunch of brats: surly, early teens who were being horrid to our dog, or I surely would neither have bothered nor, probably, dared. Certainly, there was anxiety; you hear such stories; don’t they all carry knives these days?
The thing is, though, they were local kids – had to be, to be there at all. And if I had engaged with them in the past when they were much smaller, I would have known their names and homes and schools and very likely wouldn’t have felt nervous at all. But I hadn’t, so I didn’t and next time, for all I know, the dog gets it.
Because of our mutual unfamiliarity I may be at risk – and so, in their homes, may they. Two sides of the same chasm. All in the interests of what? Privacy? Rights? Minding our own business?
Hillary Clinton, in 1996, contentiously borrowed from an old African saying and applied to America the idea that “it takes a village to raise a child”. She was roundly condemned, most notably by Robert Dole, who retorted briskly that, no, it doesn’t; it takes a family.
A decade later, with children dying and with children killing, we may ask why we should have to choose between the two positions. The probable truth is that it is now as it ever was: we still need both.
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