TheStar.com | GTA | Syed Mumtaz Ali, 82: Lawyer led fight for religious arbitration
When Syed Mumtaz Ali, a young lawyer from Hyderabad, moved to Toronto in 1960, he saw it as a place of unparalleled religious freedom. A city where, even years before prime minister Pierre Trudeau’s ideal of multiculturalism became public policy, Muslims could live, work and practise their faith freely.
It was a first impression that Ali dedicated his life to preserving.
He was one of the first Muslims to obtain a law degree in Ontario, in 1962. He challenged convention when, after being called to the bar, he became the first lawyer to take the oath of office on the Qur’an instead of the Bible. But his foray into the public sphere came when he spearheaded the movement to bring religious arbitration and Muslim family law to Ontario.
Ali, a visionary and a leader in the city’s Muslim community, died Thursday after complications from kidney failure. He was 82. Read more
Pakistan In New Guinness Record for Tree Planting : ALL THINGS PAKISTAN
Not all world records are created equal.
Being in the Guinness Book of World Records is as often a sign of being just weird as of having done something truly of import. Having the world’s longest nails or being the world’s fattest person is intriguing but not really consequential.
Sometimes, however, the record created is truly consequential. On July 15, 2009, one just truly consequential record was created when a team of 300 volunteers in Pakistan planted 5,41,176 mangrove tree saplings in the back waters of Arabian Sea near Keti Bandar.
This is consequential not because it is a ‘world record’ but because it is truly important for the world. In the midst of environmental degradation and rising sea levels the coastal Mangroves in Pakistan are natures defense against all sorts of environmental calamities, and this defense has been progressively disappearing. Bolstering the Mangroves can make a real difference not only to Pakistan’s environment, but to the world’s.
Barack Obama’s world | open Democracy News Analysis
The United States president’s global ambitions match the expectations placed on him. But the resources to fulfil either are lacking, says Godfrey Hodgson, in the second part of a six-month assessment.
Muslims United for Change Against Malaria – HD Promo Video – S. Wahhaj, H. Yusuf, Y. Qadhi, Z. Shakir, M. Ninowy & F. Rabbani | MR’s Blog
Check out the website here and buy your tickets here.
United For Change is historic; the maiden voyage is a unique convention entitled: United For Change Presents: United Against Malaria, One Goal, One Body during Labor Day weekend at the Gaylord Hotel, just outside of Washington, D.C.
Rarely have so many Muslim speakers committed themselves to this day, and collectively found agreement in a cause of this nature.
Amongst the many confirmed speakers to attend the convention will be:
Shaykh Muhammad Ninowy, Imam Mohamed Majid, Shaykh Yasir Qadhi, Shaykh Faraz Rabbani, Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, Imam Suhaib Webb, Imam Siraj Wahhaj, Imam Zaid Shakir and Imam Syed Naqvi.
The Virtues of Declaring Allah’s Oneness in the Marketplace
In this lesson, Shaykh Faraz discusses the immense spiritual benefits of pronouncing the oneness of Allah (The Most Exalted) upon entering the market place. `Umar ibn al-Khattab (Allah be pleased with him) relates that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said, “Whoever enters the market and says: La ilaha illa’l Llahu wahdahu la sharika lahu. Lahu’l mulku wa lahu’l Hamdu. Yuhyi wa yumeet. Wa huwa hayyun la yamut. Bi-yadihi’l khayr. Wa huwa `ala kulli shay’in qadeer (‘There is no god but God, One without partner. His is the dominion and His is all praise. He gives life and death. And He is living, undying. In His Hand is all good, and He has Power over all things’) shall have a million good deeds written for them by Allah; Allah will wipe a million bad deeds from them; and He will raise them a million ranks.” [Tirmidhi (3425)]
Download Options:
(1) Download this talk here. (right click and “save”) or
(2) Download podcasts directly onto your iPod by going to Seekers Guidance Islamic Knowledge Podcasts
SeekersGuidance Islamic Knowledge Podcast
This lesson discusses the reward and power of tasbih through emphatic remembrance so that it assists us in rising in rank with Allah (The Most Exalted). Safiyya relates (Allah be pleased with her) that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) entered while she was sitting engaged in magnification (tasbih) of Allah with four thousand date-pits. He said, “You were making tasbih with these? Should I not teach you something more than that you have made tasbih with?” I said: Teach me. He replied (peace and blessings be upon him), “Say: Subhan Allahi `adada khalqihi (‘Glory be to Allah by the number of His creation’).” [Tirmidhi (3549)]
Direct download: Understanding_Virtue_-_032_-_Virtues_of_Emphatic_Remembrance.mp3
Subscribe to the SeekersGuidance Islamic Knowledge Podcast on iTunes (free!)
Time: Is There Hope for the American Marriage?
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1908243,00.html
The reason for these appeals to lasting unions is simple: on every single significant outcome related to short-term well-being and long-term success, children from intact, two-parent families outperform those from single-parent households. Longevity, drug abuse, school performance and dropout rates, teen pregnancy, criminal behavior and incarceration — if you can measure it, a sociologist has; and in all cases, the kids living with both parents drastically outperform the others.
Few things hamper a child as much as not having a father at home. “As a feminist, I didn’t want to believe it,” says Maria Kefalas, a sociologist who studies marriage and family issues and co-authored a seminal book on low-income mothers called Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage. “Women always tell me, ‘I can be a mother and a father to a child,’ but it’s not true.” Growing up without a father has a deep psychological effect on a child. “The mom may not need that man,” Kefalas says, “but her children still do.”
This turns out to be true across the economic spectrum. The groundbreaking research on the effects of divorce on children from middle- and upper-income households comes from a surprising source: a Princeton sociologist and single mother named Sara McLanahan, who decided to study the fates of these children with the tacit assumption that once you control for income, being part of a single-parent household does not adversely affect kids. The results — which she published in the 1994 book Growing Up with a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps — were surprising. “Children who grow up in a household with only one biological parent,” she found, “are worse off, on average, than children who grow up in a household with both of their biological parents, regardless of the parents’ race or educational background.”
[Topi-tip to: Time: Is There Hope for the American Marriage? | Mind, Body, Soul]
The Sunna of Following the Sunna
In this lecture, Shaykh Faraz Rabbani describes why people often fail to follow the Sunnah or follow it but in an insufficient manner. He shares valuable lessons from Imam Nawawi’s “Riyadh us Saliheen” that teach us the Sunna of following the Sunna.
Download Options:
(1) Download this talk here. (right click and “save”)
or
(2) Download podcasts directly onto your iPod by going to Seekers Guidance Islamic Knowledge Podcasts
BBC NEWS | Middle East | Baghdad church bombing kills four
A car bomb outside a church in eastern Baghdad has killed four people and injured 21, Iraqi police say. The bomb went off on Sunday evening and could be heard around the city. The bombing came after three other churches were targeted by smaller bombs, injuring seven people, reports said. A later fifth bomb injured three.
There are some 750,000 people in Iraq’s Christian community. Christian targets have been attacked in the past, but are spared much of Iraq’s deadly violence. They have been targeted in some areas of the country, mainly in Baghdad and in the northern city of Mosul.
Read more
Imam Suhaib Webb’s comment on: Hip Hop in the 21th century: The Rise Of Satanism In Urban America by Sh. Abul Hussein at Suhaib Webb
Imam Suhaib writes:
Excellent post and thoughts akhi. I was brought into Islam through the Hip-Hop world. That being said, once I became Muslim and started studying, I realized that in order for me to develop and grow as a Muslim I would have to amputate my relations with Hip-Hop and its community. I realized that the Qur’an and Hip Hop simply don’t mix. What is sad about many of our Muslim Hip-Hoppers and well as performers in general is their acute poverty when it comes to religious knowledge. I have never understood how people could stand on stage, carry themselves like some type of Rakim rejects knowing that they lack the basic fundamentals of religion and faith?
I have gone back and forth on this issue trying to be just, but have failed to find any excuse for Muslim Hip Hop and comedy. Let’s be honest, when one listens to hip-hop what is the feeling found in the heart? Is it a feeling of bliss? Is it a feeling of tenderness and love, or is it a feeling that “I’m the baddest [you insert the swear word] on the planet and can’t nobody [insert] with me? Read more
Naeem Abdul Wali » Jesus and Muhammad: Brothers in Faith
“If you would trust in God as is His right to be trusted He would give you your provision as He gives it to the birds, they leave their roosts hungry and return satiated”, said the final universal Messenger, Muhammad. Similarly the author of the Gospel of Mathew has his closest brother, Jesus saying to the crowds around him, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” A little later he addressed them as, “O you of little faith?”
The word faith originally meant something akin to placing one’s trust in someone as when we say we have ‘faith’ in a friend or in an ideal. As Karen Armstrong said, “Faith was not an intellectual position but a virtue: it was the careful cultivation, by means of rituals and myths of religion, of the conviction that despite all the dispiriting evidence to the contrary, life had some ultimate meaning and value”.
Read more
SeekersGuidance Islamic Knowledge Podcast
Understanding Virtue through the Prophetic Teachings (Lesson Twenty-nine): In this lecture, Shaykh Faraz discusses the virtues of Remembrance at all Times. Abu Hurayra (Allah be pleased with him) relates that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said, “There are two phrases that are light on the tongue, weighty on the Scales, and beloved to the All-Merciful: Subhana’l Llahi’l `Adheem. Subhana’l Llahi wa bi Hamdih (’Glory be to Allah the Tremendous. Glory be to Allah and His is all Praise’).” [Bukhari and Muslim]
Qurtuba Institute & SeekersGuidance.org present:
Join Faraz Rabbani and Shireen Ahmed as they teach us more about the Prophetic Way of raising righteous children….
Registration is required, so please send an e-mail to Qurtuba@adamscenter.us to ensure you have a seat for the program. (Also, please feel free to let us know if you would like to help sponsor this event.)
The program will be held in the ADAMS Main Hall all day on Saturday, July 25th and Sunday, July 26th. Timings are tentatively 10AM-6PM both days. Break will be provided on Saturday to allow you to attend the ADAMS Picnic.
ADAMS CENTER [Google Map]
46903 Sugarland Road
Sterling,VA 20164
Facebook Event: Raising Righteous Children
New Islamic Directions - Imam Zaid Shakir
[Read in full (note that Imam Zaid's response is after the full article he is res
ponding to. Appreciate, reflect, and thank Allah for the blessing of leaders such as Imam Zaid... and consider how little we do to support their efforts. - Faraz Rabbani]
In Response to a brief essay I wrote in the aftermath of Michael Jackson’s passing, an individual identifying himself as RHM wrote the following comment: Read more
YouTube - Why Islamic Finance? (Part 1)
What makes Islamic finance different from conventional finance? And what makes it better? We look at 3 real-world examples and find out. We also introduce you to the 4 principles that guide Islamic finance transactions.
BBC NEWS | South Asia | Swabi families shoulder refugee burden
The population of Swabi, south of Swat in north-west Pakistan, has almost doubled in recent months as people have fled here to escape fighting further north.
Some are living in camps. But, as in many other places, the vast majority - about 80% - are less visible, crammed into the homes of local families. Hamid Navaad Khan works with a girls’ education project here, run by Unicef. He, like most of his friends and neighbours, is trying to do his bit. He took me to his small guestroom which is now accommodating an extended 
family of 17 people.
During the day, they spilled out into the narrow garden outside. One woman was crouched over a small fire, cooking roti, local bread. Another was washing clothes in a bucket. Women and children gathered under the trees, sheltering from the burning sun. Isruruddin, one of the men of the family, told me that he runs a pharmacy shop at home. Now all his stock would be out-of-date or spoiled, he said, and the cash he brought with him was already almost exhausted.
‘Desperate’
He told me about the hardships of 17 people sharing one room. The men had to sleep outside on the open ground at night, he said and were bitten by mosquitoes. The children were getting heat rashes and skin infections. “I never thought I’d ask for handouts from the government,” he said, “but now I’m really desperate.”
I asked him what aid he had received from the government. “A friend gave us two blankets and three floor mats,” he said. “That’s all we have had from the government, nothing else.”
The women and girls told me they found it particularly difficult here. Theirs is a very conservative culture and they hadn’t been out of this tiny garden since they first arrived more than a week ago.
Difficult situation
“I left behind a house filled with everything I needed,” said one woman. “Now all our shelter and food is coming from local people.”
“ We used to eat two rotis. Now we eat one and share one ”
Hamid Navaad Khan Swabi resident
It’s an increasingly difficult situation for the host families as well. They have lots of extra mouths to feed and no idea how long this is going to last. Hamid said he had enough resources to feed the new arrivals for a few months but no longer. “We can spare some of our own food,” he said.
“We used to eat two rotis. Now we eat one and share one.”
He was cautious about criticising the government, pointing out that a crisis involving such a sudden and enormous movement of displaced people would be a challenge for anyone. But he did say there should have been more groundwork. 
“This was not a natural disaster,” he told me, “it was a planned operation. They should have prepared for it for several months and then started the military offensive. “But they rushed in and started the operation. And that made the displacement very sudden and unexpected.” There’s a strong culture of hospitality here. Pathans find it unthinkable to refuse a guest or ask them to leave. But as the weeks pass, some are starting to ask why the government isn’t shouldering more of the burden itself.
Do something: Donate to ReliefWorks’ Swat Relief Campaign
City Council resolution calls for Muslim school holidays; Mayor Bloomberg says no to recommendation
After a three-year lobbying effort, the City Council overwhelmingly passed a resolution Tuesday calling for school to be closed on the two holiest Muslim holidays. But Mayor Bloomberg said he would not make the change called for in the resolution, which is nonbinding. “One of the problems you have with a diverse city,” he said, “is that if you close the schools for every single holiday, there won’t be any school.”
Schools are closed for the Christian holidays Good Friday and Christmas as well as the Jewish holidays Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Passover. The resolution would add two Muslim holidays Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. Advocates estimate that about 12% of the student population is Muslim. The Education Department does not keep enrollment figures by religion.
ReliefWorks
The UN refers to it as “the worst humanitarian disaster since Rwanda.” Do something: donate generously… and encourage others to donate.
Joy Of Learning Through PLAY
Part of the key note speech by Sh. Hamza Yusuf - Director (Zaytuna Institute, California) at 2008 IBERR Forum. Early years foundation education and the guidance (Hidaya) on moral development based on traditional classical sources as well as contemporary practice. Neurological scienctific research, Montesori approach and Hazrat Iman Ali (RA) vis-a-vis the impact of play activities on children up to the age of seven.
YouTube - United For Change - A Message from Imam Zaid Shakir
Vision: United For Change has assumed an historic role as the lead body for eight prominent Muslim organizations. The uniqueness of United For Change is that it was created to respond to the suffe…
Vision:
United For Change has assumed an historic role as the lead body for eight prominent Muslim organizations. The uniqueness of United For Change is that it was created to respond to the suffering and utter despair of the Muslim family; and through a distinct strategic alliance United For Change is inspired to engage all national American Muslim organizations to work together under a united front to take on major issues no one group can handle effectively. Through this partnership and with compassion and empathy United For Change will prove capable of addressing issues that are well known, but rarely effectively engaged.
Mission:
United For Change is dedicated to increasing the awareness of and sympathy for issues requiring the attention and action of the Muslim community. United For Change will raise the level of consciousness within the Muslim community while simultaneously developing resolutions and creating an action oriented partnership between the public and United For Change.
The organization will methodically tackle the broadest and most consuming issues that require the motivation, dedication and resources of the united Muslim community. See: United For Change.
YouTube - United For Change - A Message from Imam Zaid Shakir
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