Ottoman Time Keeping | Mind, Body, Soul

You may have heard that the Islamic Day ends at Maghrib (sunset) time. Imagine a society which actually lived this rather than it being an interesting fact…. [Read more]

Fascinating… I’ve seen mosques in Istanbul that use these Islamic clocks. Fascinating. As Shaykh Talal al-Ahdab once mentioned, years ago, it is from the Wisdom of Allah that He’s spread the perfections of Islam across the peoples of this Umma, such that different aspects of its beauty and perfection are more clearly manifest in different places and peoples. Subhan Allah.

Ottoman Time Keeping | Mind, Body, Soul

Questions on Islamic Finance - Mohammad Fadel - Joost

Questions on Islamic Finance - Mohammad Fadel - Joost

The greater middle east: Obama’s six problems | open Democracy News Analysis

An arc of states across “greater west Asia” will force itself to the new president’s attention, says Fred Halliday.

The inauguration of a new United States president is a moment of unusually high hopes the world over as well in the homeland. This is understandable in view both of the legacy Barack Obama inherits and his own striking qualities. But there is also - as ever, but perhaps more in view of the tendency to excess in much media coverage - a need for some proportion.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the middle east - even though, and despite Israel’s assault on Gaza, the affairs of this region will be far from the only priority of the new president on his first days in the White House. For there are many others: the domestic economic crisis: dealing with Russia and China (and perhaps even a recalcitrant Congress); the war in Afghanistan and relations with Pakistan; the diplomacy of global warming.

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YouTube - Tony Benn to BBC “If you wont broadcast the Gaza appeal then I will myself”

How presidents use the words “hope” and “change” in inaugural addresses | The hope-and-change index | The Economist

Barack Obama finds little room for hope or change in his inaugural address

BARACK OBAMA is fond of hope and change. By one tally, he said “hope” nearly 450 times in speeches delivered on the campaign trail. (By contrast, his rival John McCain only used the word 175 times.) “Change”, too, was a campaign buzzword. In his inaugural speech Mr Obama made three mentions of hope and only one of change (plus a “changed”). He mentioned America seven times, followed by “work” and “common” (six times each).

While hope has found a place in each of the 26 inaugural addresses, change is used more sparingly. Seven inaugural speeches did not contain the word; six more made use of it just once. Presidents coming to office during economic booms, such as Calvin Coolidge and Warren Harding in the 1920s, Dwight Eisenhower and then George Bush junior, have been heavier users of hope than those who were inaugurated during leaner times.

How presidents use the words “hope” and “change” in inaugural addresses | The hope-and-change index | The Economist

SeekersGuidance: Spring 2009 Courses Open - Learn to Live

SEEKING GUIDANCE? Find the Knowledge You Have Been Seeking at www.SeekersGuidance.com   SPRING 2009 COURSES BEGIN FEBRUARY 15th, 2009. Registration Now Open Register early and get a Free Course: Imam Ghazali’s Living the Qur’an Explained by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani* Early Registration closes on Feb 1st, 2009    SPRING 2009 FEATURED COURSES: The Fiqh of Life: Essentials of Halal and Haram (NEW!). Shaykh Faraz Rabbani Money Matters: The Importance of Islamic Finance. Shaykh Faraz Rabbani Gardens of the Righteous: The sunnah of the Sunnah (Riyad al-Saliheen). Shaykh Faraz Rabbani Islamic Law for Seekers (Hanafi): Mawsuli’s Mukhtar Explained: Worship (Part 1). Shaykh Faraz Rabbani and many more…   WHY SEEKERSGUIDANCE? Affordable Courses Accessible Instructors Reliable Scholarship Convenient, downloadable lessons  Relevant courses for advanced seekers as well as beginners Click Here to subscribe to regular updates from SeekersGuidance Seeking help? Please email us at help@seekersguidance.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it *Students must send registration request for free course to help@seekersguidance.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
	SeekersGuidance is an Islamic educational portal that provides relevant courses, clear answers and inspiring media. Courses are offered in Islamic law (fiqh), belief and understanding (aqida), Prophetic guidance, and Qur’anic studies.

The clock that every business traveller should leave at home | Economist.com

A CLOCK that looks like a bomb? Now there’s an inappropriate item for a business traveller. I realise this gadget has been on the market since 2007, but I’ve only just seen it (thanks to Trusty Pony) and thought it was worth sharing. The “Danger Bomb Clock”, made by a Japanese firm called Banpresto, wakes you with a horrendous ticking noise and a flashing light. You then pull apart the wire whose colour matches the lit bulb to defuse the “bomb”. If you get it wrong or you’re too slow, there’s a loud explosion.

Given the problems that a flyer can experience for wearing a T-shirt with Arabic script,
this is clearly an item that’s best left at home. Especially if there’s
any chance that a man in uniform will inspect your luggage.

- Faraz Notes: Travel safe; maintain good character; be patience with grace.

TheStar.com | Food | Stale spices, canned beans are no-nos for new year

Start 2009 with the good taste of fresh ingredients and resolve to embrace real food, writes Mark Bittman

TheStar.com | Food | Stale spices, canned beans are no-nos for new year

A Thoughtful Seven-Year Old’s Beliefs on Life

Thirty Things I Believe : NPR

Seven-year-old Tarak McLain was born in Thailand and lives with his family in Austin, Texas. He collects and hands out food to the homeless and raises money for orphans and impoverished schools. He reads about the world’s religions and listens to public radio.

After Gaza: Israel’s last chance | open Democracy News Analysis

Israel’s failure to achieve its key objectives in the Gaza war is rooted in an exhausted and counterproductive security doctrine.

The war in Gaza that began on 27 December 2008 reaches the end of its
third week with its human toll still rising: by the end of 16 January
2009, more than 1,100 people had been killed (including over 300
children) and 5,100 injured (including over 1,500 children).
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF’s) air attacks intensified as the
three-week mark approached, and its tanks and armoured vehicles moved
closer into the crowded urban areas where the majority of the strip’s
1.5 million Palestinians live. The concentrated assaults have inflicted
damage estimated at $1.4 billion on Gaza’s infrastructure, destroyed
much of the infrastructure of the governing Hamas movement and
eliminated some of its senior officials.

Read more:
After Gaza: Israel’s last chance | open Democracy News Analysis

Bush: His Own Imaginary Texas - An Assessment - The Economist

Technology in the recession | Less is Moore | The Economist

There is strong demand for technologies that do the same for less money, rather than more for the same price

FOR years, the computer industry has made steady progress by following Moore’s law, derived from an observation made in 1965 by Gordon Moore, a co-founder of Intel, now the world’s biggest chipmaker. His original formulation was rather technical, and was based on the number of transistors that could be crammed onto a chip, but it was adopted as a road map by the industry, so that it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. In practice, it boils down to the following: the cost of a given amount of computing power falls by half roughly every 18 months; so the amount of computing power available at a particular price doubles over the same period.

This has resulted in a geometric increase in the processing power of desktop computers, laptops, mobile phones, and so forth. Constant improvements mean that more features can be added to these products each year without increasing the price. A desire to do ever more elaborate things with computers—in particular, to supply and consume growing volumes of information over the internet—kept people and companies upgrading. Each time they bought a new machine, it cost around the same as the previous one, but did a lot more. But now things are changing, partly because the industry is maturing, and partly because of the recession. Suddenly there is much more interest in products that apply the flip side of Moore’s law: instead of providing ever-increasing performance at a particular price, they provide a particular level of performance at an ever-lower price.

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Gaza Relief Concert: January 18, 2009 - Islamic Forum, with Nader Khan

ReliefWorks Gaza Relief Concert: January 18, 2009 with Nader Khan.

Brief Talks by: Shaykh Faisal Abdur-Razak, Faraz Rabbani, and Hussein Hamdani at Islamic Forum, Brampton, 6.30 - 7.30

Eliyahu advocates carpet bombing Gaza | Israel | Jerusalem Post

All civilians living in Gaza are collectively guilty for Kassam attacks on Sderot, former Sephardi chief rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu has written in a letter to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Eliyahu ruled that there was absolutely no moral prohibition against the indiscriminate killing of civilians during a potentia massive military offensive on Gaza aimed at stopping the rocket launchings.

The letter, published in Olam Katan [Small World], a weekly pamphlet to be distributed in synagogues nationwide this Friday, cited the biblical story of the Shechem massacre (Genesis 34) and Maimonides’ commentary (Laws of Kings 9, 14) on the story as proof texts for his legal decision.

According to Jewish war ethics, wrote Eliyahu, an entire city holds collective responsibility for the immoral behavior of individuals. In
Gaza, the entire populace is responsible because they do nothing to stop the firing of Kassam rockets.

Eliyahu advocates carpet bombing Gaza | Israel | Jerusalem Post

The Divine Word - Detailed Tafsir Lessons by Ustadha Umm Sahl, from the trachings of Shaykh Ali Hani - SunniPath

Home - Sunnipath Publishing

There is no serious Muslim on the face of the earth who does not want to grasp the true significance of the Quran. Yet the resources available up to now to English-speaking Muslims have been mostly confined to ordinary translations into their own language. Virtually none of these have adequately reflected the sciences that alone form the criteria for a knowledge-based understanding of the Divine Word: hadith; Arabic grammar, diction, and rhetoric; and especially, the prolific and excellent works of Islam’s greatest exegetes, the Imams of tafsir. The often puzzling renderings in English, and verses that seem to bear no relation to what precedes or follows them, are not the result of revelation, but of a lack of the light of understanding in which all parts of the text fit together and make perfect sense.

This special offering from SunniPath represents the talaqqi or ‘personal instruction’ of a contemporary master in the sciences of the Quran, Sheikh Ali Hani, from the most authoritative sources, in private sessions to Sheikh Nuh Keller also audited by his wife Umm Sahl. The latter now presents this material to the public in detail for the first time. She exposits the text of the Quran verse-by-verse, providing a living window onto the traditional method of scholarly Quranic transmission, and making plain the order and perfection of the revelation as a whole. The result is quite different from anything in English before.

Click here to download a Free introduction to this series.

(This is AMAZING, Masha’ Allah. Don’t miss out. - Faraz Rabbani)

Into the Abyss: Gaza and the Crisis of Political Morality - Imam Zaid Shakir

Carrying the Word

“If he has not virtue, man is the most unholy and the most savage of animals…” Aristotle

In America and Israel it is frequently said that Hamas is guilty of
killing the political process evolving between Israel and the
Palestinians, owing to its obscurantist insistence on Israel’s
destruction. The truth of the matter is that the political process died
long before Hamas even ascended to power. Although it is frequently
stated, again in Israel and America, that there is no meaningful
political process between Israel and the Palestinians because Israel
can find no Palestinian partners desiring peace, the truth of the
situation, captured by what Henry Siegman writes in the New York Review
of Books, is to the contrary:

Whatever one’s reading of Hamas’s
intentions as it takes over the leadership of the Palestinian
Authority, the notion that its sweeping electoral victory spells
“the end of the peace process” is nonsense. The peace
process died when Sharon was elected prime minister in 2000. More
correctly, it was killed—with malice aforethought—by
Sharon’s “unilateralism” with which he implemented
the disengagement from Gaza, which in turn provided cover for his
continued unilateralism. That he was bringing off the disengagement
against the wishes of the settlers helped to divert attention from his
refusal to have any negotiations with the Palestinians.

Unilateralism continues to serve as the euphemism for Israeli
policies that are expropriating half of what was to have been the state
of Palestine, and are concentrating the Palestinian population, about
to outnumber the Jewish population, in territorially disconnected
Bantustans that make a mockery of the promise of an independent,
sovereign, and viable Palestinian state made in the “road
map” of 2003, which was put forward by the Quartet of the US, the
EU, the UN, and Russia. [1]

Israel’s unilateralism and the callous disregard for Palestinian
suffering that it involves is the real reason for the collapse of any
viable political process between the Palestinians and Israel. The
arrogant political morality that such unilateralism is predicated on is
captured in the remarks made by Dov Weissglas, a top Israeli political
advisor and a member of the Israeli government’s “Hamas
Team” when he joked about the prospects for the Palestinians in
the aftermath of their electing the Hamas government, to the raucous
laughter of an assembly of high-ranking Israeli officials:
“It’s like an appointment with a dietician. The
Palestinians will get a lot thinner, but they won’t die.”
[2]

Read more

Naomi Klein: Enough. It’s time for a boycott of Israel

The best way to end the bloody occupation is to target Israel with the kind of movement that ended apartheid in South Africa, writes Naomi Klein

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Humanity’s Stake in Gaza

Project Syndicate

Humanity’s Stake in Gaza - by Vaclav Havel, El Hassan bin Talal, Hans Kung, Desmond Tutu, Karel Schwarzenberg and Yohei Sasakawa

Amman – Wasted time is always to be regretted. But in the Middle East, wasting time is also dangerous. Another year has now passed with little progress in bridging the divide between Palestinians and Israelis. The current air strikes on Gaza, and continuing rocket attacks on Askelon, Sderot and other towns in southern Israel, only prove how dire the situation is becoming.

The security impasse that exists between Israel and the Gazan-Palestinian leadership has also led to blockades of food aid by Israel that have left Gaza’s 1.5 million people facing conditions of real hunger. Israel, it seems, is once again emphasizing the primacy of “hard” security in its dealings with the Palestinians of Gaza, but this focus only serves to block non-violent opportunities for creative solutions to the Israel-Palestine dispute.

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Jimmy Carter - An Unnecessary War - washingtonpost.com

I know from personal involvement that the devastating invasion of Gaza by Israel could easily have been avoided.

Read more

Nader Khan: Take My Hand

This is one of the best Islamic albums I’ve ever heard by a Western Muslim artist. Masha’ Allah!

Clips of his nasheeds from his album on his facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Nader-Khan/35891137163

His website:

http://www.naderkhan.com/

Nader Khan is a Canadian Muslim singer/songwriter, who grew up in India and Saudi Arabia. He’s been performing in the GTA since he first arrived in Canada in the early nineties. His was released to critical acclaim at the RIS 2008 Convention in Toronto.

Nader produces his albums through Relief Works, a unique initiative that promotes local and international relief efforts via Islamic music and arts, in pursuit of Divine pleasure through beauty, excellence, and service of His creation.

Available for download through SeekersGuidance: Media

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