As with every Ramadan, I love the nightly lectures. This year, I’ve become quite fond of a young man named Ammar Nakshawani. He is a self-taught student of knowledge who delivers powerful and touching lectures filled with pearls of wisdom.
You can listen to his current lectures here.
Also, for other dynamite lecturers and scholars, see this site.
For whatever reason, during Ramadan, I tend to have more vivid dreams. In some cases I even become lucid, whereas that normally does not happen. I have no training in lucid dreaming, although I have desired it on occasion (and then chickened out).
This morning, my alarm clock did not go off or was not loud enough for me to hear. At that time, I was having a dream that a boy was supposed to come and wake me up, but he was absent that day (yes, as if I lived in a school). When I realized that, I fumbled around looking for my clock only to realize that I had missed suhoor.
Momements later, I realized, “Wait! I’m dreaming!” Then, as I gradually became conscious, I said to myself, “And it’s happening in real life!”
I woke up and reached for my clock to discover that I still had about 30 minutes to eat suhoor. Allahu Akbar.
I pray that all Muslims around the world have a Ramadan filled with blessings and good deeds.
Here is my formal greeting card to all of you. 
If you’re a person on the go but don’t want to get behind on your Ramadan Qur’an reading, there are a few free sites that offer audio recitation along with English translation.
Any of these can be downloaded, installed on an MP3 player, or burned to several CDs.
If you have the money, there are also many Islamic bookstores that sell complete CD sets of Qur’an recitation in arabic with english translation. They run anywhere from $150 to $200. You can also buy DVD sets with added features.
This is from the Islamic Information Center:
July 29, 2008
In a recent interview, Ayatollah Fadlallah, one of Lebanon’s chief theologians, stated that any notions of strife between Shi’ites and Sunnis was untrue. Most Muslims value unity, and simply need some sort of motivation to work together said Fadlallah, suggesting a large scale collaborative project. He admitted that there were elements in the Arab community who wanted to promote discord, but that they were the extreme minority and did not represent Islamic views. For more information, please click here.
Here is a new article posted on OneUmmah.net by Maryam Sakeenah, a contributing author:
“States in the West loyally commit themselves to it, living under a grandiose fantasy of superior humanity and a higher civilization. With this narcissistic perception comes the license to play the global Big Brother, dictating the order of things arbitrarily”
Click here to read the full article
It’s worth reading.
We’re in the beginning stage of a total lunar eclipse tonight. Quite a site!
Salat al-ayat is an obligation during such events. Please be sure to perform it during the appropriate time.
Total eclipse begins at 10:01 PM EST in the US.
‘Ashura is not a time only of sadness. It is not a time in which Muslims should remember defeat. It is not a time in which Muslims should be divided. Imam Husayn (peace be upon him) was the imam of Islam for all Muslims of his time. No one, even the enemies of Islam, would dispute his piety, his service in the cause of Allah, his knowledge of the religion of Allah, his devotion and loyalty to the leadership and vision of Prophet Muhammad (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) and that of the Commander of the Faithful Imam Ali (peace be upon him).
It is neither a time of pure sadness nor a time to remember defeat, because from it sprang a movement, one that rescued Islam from the clutches of tyranny and strengthened the message of the Messenger of Allah that morality and justice must always prevail over avarice, oppression, and miserliness. For this, the Muslim Ummah should experience the ultimate joy, knowing that, as Allah has promised, the believers will be victorious.
It is not a time in which Muslims should be divided because all of us owe our debt to the struggle of the Imam and his companions on that day (the 10th of Muharram) in that desert (in Karbala, Iraq). The movement that emerged after the tragedy, under the guidance of the Imam’s surviving son, Ali Zain-ul-’Abideen (peace be upon him) and with the tenacity, loyalty, perseverance, wisdom, and honor demonstrated by his sister, Zaynab bint Ali (peace be upon her), the message of Islam not only survived, it championed righteousness over treachery and lewdness. It summoned the people of knowledge to their feet and challenged them to deny the truth.
For this reason, there is essentially only one version of this event. For most other events, there is a Sunni version and a Shi’i version, but for Karbala, for the struggle of Imam Husayn, the Muslim Ummah stands in unity. The account in At-Tabari’s Tarikh is essentially identical to the account given in al-Mufid’s Irshad.
So on this day and on all days, may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon the sweet basil flower of the Messenger of Allah, the grandson of the Last Prophet, the son of the Commander of the Faithful and the Leader of all believing women, one of the two leaders of the youths in Paradise, the chief of martyrs and nephew of the chief of martyrs, the standard bearer of justice and freedom, the pillar of excellence, the one for whom Allah is forever pleased, the love of our hearts, Imam al-Husayn ibn Ali ibn Abi Talib. As-salaamu ‘alayka Yabna Muhammad-al-Mustafa! As-salaamu ‘alayka yabna Ali-al-Murtadha. As-salaamu ‘alayka yabna Fatimat-az-Zahra`! As-salaamu ‘alayka ya Aba Abdallah!
Another Hajj (pilgrimage) will soon be upon us, insha`Allah. I pray that all hajjis will have a safe journey, a blessed Hajj, and a safe return.
This also means that Eid al-adha will soon be upon us. It will be close to Christmas, and I’m sure that many non-Muslims will confusingly assume that Muslims have a “December” holiday every year like Christians and Jews. This, of course, is not the case, and we should try to clarify the nature of our lunar calendar for them.
It has been a while since the issue of women wearing niqab in a driver’s license photo has been in the news, but a co-worker of mine recently brought it up to me. He, of course, was in favor of the Florida ruling that a particular woman was not allowed to keep her license because she refused to retake her photo without her veil after 9/11 .
For those unaware, niqab is a complete covering where only the eyes are visible. My co-worker’s argument and the argument of the state of Florida, is that, after 9/11, police need to be able to quickly and easily identify “terrorists?” The word terrorists is in quotes because I have serious doubts about their line of reasoning.
It is flimsy at best. First, there is no law on the books in Florida preventing a person from getting a license without a photo at all, let alone a veiled photo. Revoking the woman’s license was illegal, but they got away with it for the same reason Bush got away with illegal wire-tapping: fear. Americans are afraid, and nothing represents their fear more than a Muslim woman wearing a veil. She is mysterious, shady, and probably a terrorist in the making (if not one already). Right?
I, like most Muslims, do not believe that the niqab is required by shari’ah, but a minority of Muslims do. And is not this a country that upholds the religious rights of all, even a minority of a minority?
There are really two questions:
1. Are photos truly a reliable form of identification?
2. Will having photo identification in any way curb terrorist activity?
The answer to both is no, and here’s why:
1. People have the ability to change the way they look very easily. Women do it all the time. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a woman after a year or so and could hardly recognize her. Different hair, different make-up, even a little plastic surgery, and a tiny little driver’s license photo is useless. The truth is that a photo is completely unreliable and there is no way of knowing that the person who took the photo was indeed the person the license claims to be. Why? The BMV does not require photo identification. As long as you can produce a social security card or even a piece of paper saying you once had a social security card, you can claim to be anyone.
More reliable identification methods include fingerprints and, guess what, eyes. Yes, iris and retinas are very hard to fake. Unlike faces and hair, you can definitely ID someone based on their eyes. In order to accommodate niqab, all the BMV would have to do would be to take a zoomed-in picture of the woman’s eyes. She’d have no way to fake her identity. In fact, it would be more reliable than photos. The flaw is not in the claim against taking the photos but in the concept of photo identification itself. It is unreliable, and my second point further illustrates this.
2. You’re a criminal on the run. The police are after you. You’re in disguise. You’re carrying photo identification? Uh, no. Criminals don’t do this, and trust me, terrorists definitely don’t do this. Even after 9/11, the authorities still couldn’t identify the terrorists. They had names and photos, but the names were as common in the arab world as “John Smith” in America and the photos could have easily been forged.
Furthermore, if a niqabi was really prepared to commit a terrorist attack, why would the lack of a driver’s license stand in her way? She could hop on the next bus downtown and blow herself up.
The truth is that the objections of the state of Florida, of my co-worker, and of anyone else claiming that if a woman fails to show all of her face for a driver’s license photo, “the terrorists win,” are just spreading FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt). It is not based on anything credible, relevant to criminal justice, the war on terror, or the first amendment. It is simply another way the government is taking away our freedoms. Today it is the freedom of a young veiled Muslim woman, but tomorrow it might be blue-eyed, blond-haired, Christian Sally from Newport, Indiana. Then, we’ll see if people are so quick to dismiss the First Amendment we all claim to hold dearly but very rarely defend when it comes to the “other.”
