I think too many of us (Muslim and non-Muslim) underestimate the importance of Love in our lives. Many single people stay single because they see marriage as binding and boring. They shun love as they would shun a disease.

No doubt, love is an illness, and “falling in love” is a very dangerous adventure. True love, however, is much deeper than the trifles of heart-shaped chocolates and rose pedals. True love is the foundation of all life. All that exists continues to do so out of its divine, unconditional love for the Ultimate Source.

The one who is spiritually capable of sight can gaze upon the divine attributes in created things and people. When I look at my wife, I do not see the flesh but rather the manifestation of divine Will, the archetype of pure Love. Ya Wadud, Ya Wadud, Ya Wadud.

“The sea of love is a sea that has no shore,
There you can only give up your soul.
Each time you give your heart to love is a joyous moment
For auspicious deeds there is no need for diviniation”

– Hafiz

The other day, some friends of my wife’s mother came to visit. Masha’Allah, they are lively, pious intellectuals, and I enjoyed their company.

What I love most, however, is just listening to older people talk about their travels and experiences. They always have such a tremendous amount of wisdom to convey to us. I think it is a shame that western civilizations disrespect their elders so much. They push them aside and hide them from public view. It’s not “cool” to be old.

It is nice, however, to know that some civilized African-Americans are trying to preserve the wealth of wisdom of elder generations.

I've become completely reliant on Konqueror (I can just hear the KDE (http://www.kde.org)
developers cackling in the background, muhahahahahaha ). Yes, I know I
know. I am like Mr. Firefox (http://www.spreadfirefox.com). I'm even typing this on Firefox (http://www.spreadfirefox.com) as we
speak. But that's not the point.
I now do most of my web browing on Konqueror, mainly because it is the
only Linux (http://www.linux.org) browser that displays Windows Arabic correctly (that's
windows-1256 enconding).

Unfortunately, most Arabic sites (even some of
my own) don't seem to know squat about Unicode Arabic, which works in
Firefox (http://www.spreadfirefox.com). So, Konqueror is my best friend now.

Aside from that, Konqueror is king of the desktop, with file
management, remote acces, etc. Well, remote access is the reason I'm
typing this.
I need to connect to my server, and I connect to my other computers.
Well, sometimes, I need a graphical interface (or at least WANT one).
Normally, SSH from the console is more secure than FTP or the dreaded
Telnet. I have a graphical FTP program in Gftp, and it can also do
SSH2. But let's face it, it's less than stellar.

To make a secure connection with Konqueror using sftp protocol, do the
following:

1. Open Konqueror (duh!)

2. In the address bar, type in sftp://remoteaddress.net where
remoteaddress.net should be replaced with the name of the SSH server
to which you are connecting (Side note: most Linux (http://www.linux.org) distros come with
SSH2 enabled and FTP and Telnet disabled).  So, even if you think
you don't have an SSH sever, you probably do.

3. Konqueror, being the smart genius that it is, will then prompt you
for your username and password.  Enter them.  If you're
really feeling ambitious, tell it to save your password (but I'd never
do that).

4. Now, voila!  You're connected!  But who wants to have to
type that stuff in everytime?  Not I.  So, Click y our
bookmarks menu and add it to your bookmarks.  Next time, all you
have to do is click the bookmark.

5. Now you can drag and drop files from remote locations to your hearts
content, securely and quickly.  I now do this back and forth from
my laptop and desktop, sometimes forgetting that I'm using two remote
computers.  It's just like managing files on your own system.

I can think of many other uses for this, but you get the idea.

I’ve installed Drivel on my desktop…still have BloGTK on my laptop. This is getting pretty cool. There are a couple of things that have been brought to my attention over the past week, from reading and from the Friday khutbah:

1. Our future depends upon Allah’s favor that He has granted to us (Islam), and not the other way around. It is not Allah who must conform to man’s vision but rather man who must conform to Allah.

2. Unity is certainly achievable, but Muslims must move beyond the obsession with uniformity. People are not ever going to be completely the same, even in their ideologies. If we are to bring peace to the world, it must be through acceptance rather than complete assimilation.

3. People who wish for “progressive Islam” do not understand Islam. They are attempting to reinvent the religion, seemingly unaware of the religion’s adaptive nature. They are forcing something that should come naturally. As a result, they reject anything traditional and accept anything perverse (such as homosexuality, etc.) Their claim is one of tolerance, yet they are not tolerant of us. They label us extremists and turn the media and non-Muslim populace against us.

6th graders.

Two big announcements in two different directions:

1. Novell has announced OpenSuSE (http://www.suse.com), a plan to make SuSE (http://www.suse.com) Linux (http://www.linux.org) open source and community driven. It will be similar to the Fedora (http://fedora.redhat.com/) model, a spin-off of the old Redhat (http://www.redhat.com) Linux (http://www.linux.org), which pushes code back into Redhat (http://www.redhat.com) Enterprise Linux (http://www.linux.org).

OpenSuSE (http://www.suse.com) will push mature code back into SuSE (http://www.suse.com) Linux (http://www.linux.org) Enterprise Server and Novell Linux (http://www.linux.org) Desktop.

Interestingly, however, Novell wants to get this distro to everyone, not just Linux (http://www.linux.org) “enthusiasts,” so they will continue to sell a boxed version of SuSE (http://www.suse.com) Linux (http://www.linux.org) with manuals and tech support to non-technical users. Techie users, of course, can freely download the ISO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_9660) online and also distribute it to their non-technie friends.

2.Mozilla (http://www.mozilla.org/) Foundation has announced that they are spinning off a commercial subsidiary called Mozilla (http://www.mozilla.org/) Corporation. It will now be in charge of all Mozilla Firefox (http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/) and Thunderbird distribution, while making a little cash for the project.

They say they don’t intend to make serious revenue, but I say, if it happens, more power to them. The old rules still apply. It will continue to be open source, and community developers are still welcome. The only question is, will they still feel welcome?