Canadians React to Rogers’ iPhone Data Plan- MacLife

Canadians have been waiting for the iPhone for more than a year. But now, with the phone set to arrive in Canadian stores on July 11, anticipation has been replaced with disappointment and anger.

The decline of America’s religious right | Macleans.ca - World - USA

Given that 10 per cent of Americans believe that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is a Muslim, and many more believe he followed a preacher who is radical if not unhinged, the Illinois senator seems an unlikely candidate to deliver religious voters to the Democratic ticket. “Jesus Christ would not vote for Barack Obama,” charged Alan Keyes, Obama’s Republican challenger for his U.S. Senate seat during the campaign in 2004, noting that as a state lawmaker Obama had voted against anti-abortion legislation. Yet Obama, the formerly atheist son of a religiously skeptical mother and a Muslim-turned-atheist father, is emerging as the candidate with the greatest chance in decades to coax at least some Christian evangelicals and other churchgoing voters away from the Republican fold.

Dubai ’shape-shifting skyscraper’ unveiled - CNN.com

Ambitious plans to build a revolutionary 420-meter shape-shifting skyscraper in Dubai have been unveiled by architects.

People have been asking whether I’m still teaching or answering questions at SunniPath; why I haven’t answered the questions they’ve submitted; and so on. So just to make things clear:

Due to irreconcilable differences, I’m no longer associated with SunniPath in any way (as of early May 2008). I do not answer questions there, nor do I teach any courses there.

And Allah alone gives success.

Faraz Rabbani

Reflections for a New Age

The Generals’ Secret Plan: ‘Erdogan Is to Be Toppled’ - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News

The power struggle in Turkey is escalating with the headscarf ban, the move to prohibit the ruling AK Party and now the leaking of a secret plan by the military to overthrow Prime Minister Erdogan. SPIEGEL ONLINE spoke to Yasemin Congar, the editor at the newspaper Taraf who recently broke news of the putsch plans.

Project Syndicate

BRUSSELS – What will it mean to be European 25 years from now? Unlike the United States, whose history as a “melting pot” has given Americans a truly multi-ethnic character, native Europeans are becoming an endangered species. Europe badly needs immigrants, yet is not culturally prepared to welcome them. The coming decades will therefore see substantially greater social change in Europe than elsewhere, although the nature of that change is far from clear.

Guess who’s watching porn | Macleans.ca - Culture - Lifestyle

These days it’s kids as young as eight or 10. As boys get hooked ever earlier, Net porn is reshaping youth sexuality.

Yahoo!, eBay and Amazon | The three survivors | Economist.com

AND so Yahoo! survives. The internet company—which, at the age of 14, is one of the oldest—appears in the end to have rebuffed Microsoft, the software Goliath that wanted to buy it. It has done so, in part, by surrendering to Google, the younger internet company that is its main rival. In a vague deal apparently designed to confuse antitrust regulators, Yahoo! is letting Google, the biggest force in web-search advertising, place text ads next to some of Yahoo!’s own search results. Google thus controls some or all of the ads on all the big search engines except Microsoft’s. Yahoo! lives, but on the web’s equivalent of life support.

How to Know Halal is Really Halal : NPR: “Recent allegations of employee abuse at an Iowa kosher meat plant have shaken the religious meat industry. For the millions who buy ritually-slaughtered meat, the raid fueled questions over where it really comes from. Some Muslims in Chicago aimed to find an answer. They began one of the nation’s first sustainably-raised ‘halal’ meat cooperatives, bringing together two groups that don’t usually interact — rural midwestern farmers and urban Muslims.”

Islam and the West | When religions talk | Economist.com

Religious leaders, scholars and business people are meeting all over the world to argue about free speech and Islamic sensibilities. How much does this achieve?

Qurba

Fuel Expense Isn’t The Crisis - Forbes.com

Here’s some heresy. The airline industry’s real problems are not fuel-based. Just parking airplanes, reducing capacity and dropping suddenly-unprofitable routes only make a dysfunctional airline system a little smaller. That’s because most carriers have ignored controlling the No. 1 cost metric in the scheduled airline business: minutes…

.

YouTube - الشريعة والحياة - كيف تتعامل مع الحديث النبوي

Mohsin Hamid | Why I write | guardian.co.uk Books

The author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist explains why he’s always had an unusual compulsion to share his fantasies

“No justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous. Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism. I had sooner play cards against a man who was quite sceptical about ethics, but bred to believe that ‘a gentleman does not cheat’, than against an irreproachable moral philosopher who had been brought up among sharpers.

In battle it is not syllogisms that will keep the reluctant nerves and muscles to their post in the third hour of the bombardment. The crudest sentimentalism (such as Gaius and Titius* would wince at) about a flag or a country or a regiment will be of more use. We were told it all long ago by Plato. As the king governs by his executive, so Reason in man must rule the mere appetites by means of the ’spirited element’.

The head rules the belly through the chest–the seat, as Alanus tells us, of Magnanimity, of emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments. The Chest–Magnanimity–Sentiment–these are the indispensable liaison officers between cerebral man and visceral man. It may even be said that it is by this middle element that man is man: for by his intellect he is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal.”

*Pseudonyms for a pair of educators who disparage Sentiment.

C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, pg. 19

Mere Islam: Some Qur’an Related Links

I agree with the following:

I was recently informed about The Koran Interpreted website, where you can download “English Audio of Islam’s primary sources”
(in a 16,398 KB zip file which contains seventeen MP3 files). The
English reading is based on A. J. Arberry’s translation (i.e. The Koran Interpreted)
which I still consider to be one of the best English translations out
there today. Although I prefer to listen to the Qur’an being recited in
the original Arabic, I do recall that as a new convert I sometimes
enjoyed listening to cassettes of an English translation. This reading and translation are much superior to that one, so I’m confident many out there will benefit from it, insha’llah.

On that note, I’ll mention that my favorite translation of the Qur’an, especially for outreach (i.e. da’wah) purposes, is M. A. S. Abdel Haleem’s The Qur’an, published by Oxford World’s Classics.

Sheikh Google vs Wiki Islam at Yahya Birt

The digital age is crucial to reshaping religious authority among Muslims today. The mass media and the internet have changed the way in which religious teachings are disseminated and indeed how religious disputes are projected and replicated to a vast audience. This is not new but arose two hundred years ago when the ulema began to write treatises addressed to the literate constituency of the Muslim masses through the medium of print. Since then the ulema, and the reformers who now contest their authority, have cultivated constituencies of opinion through the mass media.

Go East … Go West : ALL THINGS PAKISTAN

The photo was taken on May 14, 2008 in Landhi, Karachi. Private educational institutions have become big business in Pakistan, but this picture is also about so much more. What comes to your mind when you see this?

Imam Abu Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami (Allah have mercy on him), one of the great sufi masters, wrote in his work The Proper Manners of Companionship (Adab al-Suhba) that,

Proper companionship with one’s friends is through:

[1] Remaining constantly cheerful

[2] Doing the good

[3] Spreading mention of their virtues

[4] Concealing their errors

[5] Considering great this little acts of good

[6] Considering little anything one does for them

[7] Taking care of them with one’s person and wealth

[8] Avoiding malice, envy, harming, hurting, and all matters
that they dislike, in any way

[9] Leaving anything one would have to apologize for.

آداب الصحبة لأبي عبد الرحمن السلمي - (ج 1 / ص
178)

Spending on Happiness — HBS Working Knowledge

Can money buy you happiness? Yes—so long as you spend the money on someone else. According to new research, giving other people even as little as $5 can lead to increased well-being for the giver.

Spending on Happiness — HBS Working Knowledge

Can money buy you happiness? Yes—so long as you spend the money on someone else. According to new research, giving other people even as little as $5 can lead to increased well-being for the giver.

TheKoranInterpreted.org

Fascinating…