Rockin' Hejabi

Fare thee Well, Rockin' Hejabi

2008-03-08T15:54:00.003-05:00

It ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe

It don't matter, anyhow

An' it ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe

If you don't know by now

When your rooster crows at the break of dawn

Look out your window and I'll be gone

You're the reason I'm trav'lin' on

Don't think twice, it's all right

It ain't no use in turnin' on your light, babe

That light I never knowed

An' it ain't no use in turnin' on your light, babe

I'm on the dark side of the road

Still I wish there was somethin' you would do or say

To try and make me change my mind and stay

We never did too much talkin' anyway

So don't think twice, it's all right

It ain't no use in callin' out my name, gal

Like you never did before

It ain't no use in callin' out my name, gal

I can't hear you any more

I'm a-thinkin' and a-wond'rin' all the way down the road

I once loved a woman, a child I'm told

I give her my heart but she wanted my soul

But don't think twice, it's all right

I'm walkin' down that long, lonesome road, babe

Where I'm bound, I can't tell

But goodbye's too good a word, gal

So I'll just say fare thee well

I ain't sayin' you treated me unkind

You could have done better but I don't mind

You just kinda wasted my precious time

But don't think twice, it's all right.

-words and music by Bob Dylan

Dilemma

2008-03-02T20:40:00.004-05:00

Hey there for all of you readers still hanging on and reading my blog. I'm facing a serious dilemma and I'd like to hear your input if possible.

I am not in fact still wearing the hejab. I removed it this last August. It was simply too much weight for me to carry, the glares, the uncomfortable silence I'd get from people...and I know too well what they were thinking. Hadn't encountered any outright comments like some other muslimah sisters have but I'm sure they were to come someday. I have been dealing with a recent bout of serious depression (lifelong cycle, just a dip recently) as well and the hejab weight/burden just isn't helping me. I don't need the "negative vibes"/energy of hatred projected at me, thank you, I hate myself enough without anybody's help.

So, I am in fact not "Rockin' Hejabi" literally, anymore. However, it is VERY tempting to put it back on, to be that person again. Except for the hudge problem that creates. Which is; it's not to please God, but for wordly gain. Doing something that gives one the appearance of "being religious" just to advance oneself in dunya (the material world), as opposed to "akhira" which is the spiritual realm, is a hudge sin and a disease of the heart. But I haven't done it. Not yet anyways. But it looms before me....hey, it worked for Matisyahu! (shut up Shaitan!)

BTW I never have stoped practicing islam....or tasawuuf for that matter. I actually feel like I'm deeper into my practice without the outward hejab, which is definitley a weird experience... but I am nevertheless grateful for it.

I am delving deeper into my music; composing more, and polishing my songs, lord knows inshallah performing them for a real audience instead of alone in my room for once! Although I am excited that I'm moving forward with this dream of mine, it is also downright scary. I am purely, rawly scared. I want to protect myself from disappointment, from failure. I want to be another person so that if I mess up there won't be much of a consequence for me.

And deep down, I hate to admit it, I long for recognition. I know it's my ego (nafs) but I do. I want to be popular. I want to be on the stage again. It feels so good to perform. It's one of the only things in life that actually does make me feel good. I'm so sick of this depression. Of feeling worthless. Of feeling like everything I do isn't good enough. And I feel like music is the one thing that has hope in it for me.

Inshallah (god-willing) this whole put-the-hejab-back-on-because-it'll -make- you -famous- because- that'll -be -your- golden -gimmick -and- without -it -you'll -just -be -another- singer -in -a -wasteland -of- indie -folk- singers -temptation- ...will pass.

My Space

2008-02-21T08:57:00.004-05:00

Please visit my Myspace page.... and also please bear with me while it's under construction.

I'm putting rough drafts of my songs on there... and I'd LOVE your feedback! You can click on "comments" under any song then PLEASE rate the song (towards the snowman being cold/bad and towards the fire meaning "hot" or fabulous/ you think it's great). I need feedback desperately, so I can polish up.

Thanks!

Peace!

-R.H.

No Homeless Shelter in White Northern Kentucky

2008-02-03T17:53:00.001-05:00

Homeless poop on the Suspension Bridge, Cincinnati, Ohio.

DSC_2048, originally uploaded by hjoew.

Let's face it, the economy is going for a nose dive right now in the United States. Times are hard. The value of the dollar is falling. The feds cut interest rates by .75%, then by another whopping .5% (they usually make more conservative moves, like .25). When the value of the dollar goes down, that's called inflation- the price for things stays the same in the rest of the world, but seems to get more expensive here. A great example of that is the increased price for barrels of oil. It's not really more expensive, our dollars just don't buy as much. We're being driven into a recession, and home mortgage foreclosures are up by 25% this year in Boone County.

But I digress. As I write this, I'm comfortably sitting at my computer in my warm, safe cozy home.

I have been haunted since I heard that there is no homeless shelter, at all, in Northern Kentucky.

Boone county, KY recently held a "point-in-time" homeless count, sponsored by the Boone County Human Services Department and the Vineyard Christian Church. The last point-in-time homeless count documented 45 homeless individuals in Boone County, 247 in Campbell County and 501 in Kenton County. Results of this year's count are expected back by the end of April.

There is the Fairhaven Rescue mission in Covington, but it apparenlty only can house men overnight, it isn't a place that routinely provides shelter to women and /or children.

There seem to be several shelters available on the Ohio side;

Drop-Inn Center Shelter House

Project Connect Homeless

Open Door Ministry

Cincinnati city Gospel Mission

Why is there such a difference? Lord knows that there are plenty of people with money living in Northern Kentucky, so the reason can't be financial. In the aftermath of Cincy's riots as well as the rising property tax situation, a lot of Cincinnati's well-off people have actually defected to NKY in recent years.

The reason can't be that there are more churches in Cincinnati. Northern KY is actually the World's cradle of Creationism, what with Ken Ham's Creation Museum and all. Many many people here are Pentecostal. A lot of people on my street are Catholic and even have the money to send their kids to private Catholic parochial schools.

I hypothesize that the cause of this disparity has to do with being biggotted, racist, ignorant, and the fact that people are just plain selfish.

For God's sakes, this is the area where people who *know they are well-to-do are asking for free Christmas presents! Yes, that's right! I went to my son's school in December to get names from the "Giving Tree", a charitable project where we take a name of kids or whole families from the tree and go buy them presents so they get something for Christmas. Well, while I was selecting names I ran into the lady who runs the project and found out very disturbing information. She said that almost all of the names on the tree were from families from our school! Now I know the economy is not doing well and consumer debt is at a record high, as well as unemployement and mortgage foreclosures- but PLEASE! These are NOT the kind of people I thought I was giving charity to! I thought I was helping REAL needy kids or the homeless or somebody who coudln't afford to buy their kids enough food... not middle class suburbanites!

Seriously, folks, this is a real disease. EVERY familiy that lives in this elementary school's boundaries is middle or upper-middle class. NONE of them are certifiably poor and the very fact that they think they need handouts so they can keep up thier glitzy, wasteful, middle or upper middle class lifestyle for Christmas makes me want to vomit.

Kudos to the black community in Cincinnati for taking care of the truly disadvantaged. You have real Christian values.

God-willing we can create something of similar heart for the homeless here in Northern Kentucky.

One Love- Matisyahu is a Dervish

2008-01-27T08:42:00.000-05:00

"Matisyahu" is a Hasidic jew who happens to be an amazingly brilliant reggae musician. I am so inspired to see someone who embraces an "ultra-religious, conservative lifestyle" succeeding in the limelight. The music world, especially, is filled with talented people who have absolutely no f*&^%$-ing clue what they really stand for- Brittney Spears comes to mind immediately, but also the slews of musicians who have committed suicide- Elliot Smith, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Elivis Presley, Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, the lead singer from INXS...the list goes on and on. Fame and fortune will chew you up and spit you out if you don't have a firm foundation, if you don't have a solid rock to cling to.

Matisyahu, to me, is living the fullest expression of a human being worshipping our Lord. He is living the true meaning of the word "Islam" which means to "surrender". He is the definition of a true "muslim" which is "one who submits himself to the will of God". The Light of God is shining through every aspect of his being. Apparently that's what being Hasidic is all about.

The Muslim community has a lot in common with the Hassidim. They have many of the same customs regarding dress code, prayer times, etc. However the most profound thing I find about the Hassidim is that the basic premise of their spirituality is that it isn't enough to follow the letter of the law, or to merely say the required prayers, to wear the correct religious clothing, etc. but you must have the correct feeling.

A person's inner state is more important than his or her outer expression of piety.

"Man," says the Besht, "must always bear in mind that God is omnipresent and is always with him; that God is the most subtle matter everywhere diffused... Let man realize that when he is looking at material things he is in reality gazing at the image of the Deity which is present in all things. With this in mind man will always serve God even in small matters."

The Quran also echoes the same message;

"To God belongs the East and the West, Wheresoever you turn, there is the face of God. " Qur'an 2:115

Between Jerusalem and Jericho

2007-12-14T10:38:00.000-05:00

40 Days in the wilderness
I hunger
I thirst
Temptation looms from
She who is cursed

Turn my stones into bread
I will be your Feast
Fill yourself with me
And so be relieved.

This burning
I faint
I'm delerious
A mirage looms before me
inside of your kiss.

If I worship you
I'll rule all the Worlds
And surely God will save me
If I jump down on your sword....

Except this isn't an accident
You here before me
the angels won't catch
the one who jumps Deliberately.

You could be my Messiah
sent to give me some Bread
A magician, a miracle worker
Who's gone to my head
You might liberate my oppresssion
If I flee into your arms.
No, you're just an apparition
of Seduction and Charms.

You're Nothing.
Just a bass player in a rock and roll band.
Everything you have offered
Is right here
In the palm
of my own Hand.

Angelic

2007-12-13T08:29:00.000-05:00

My son turned 8 the first weekend of this month. We had a big shabang party for him complete with all the classic childhood games; pin the tail on the donkey, button button who's got the button, hot potatoe, duck duck goose, and the highlight of course, pinata! A great time was had by all, and I still am a bit in shock that he's actually 8!

So the camera sat in the cabinet for a couple of weeks and then the other day I finally downloaded all of the pics onto the computer. Whoa! What a shocker to see that there are these gorgeous orbs in almost every photo from his party!

I have been told by others about orbs and I have seen quite a few pictures of them, but never have they shown up in any of my pictures until now.

1448. Abu Hurairah and Abu Sa`id Al-Khudri (May Allah be pleased with them) reported: The Messenger of Allah (PBUH) said,

"When a group of people assemble for the remembrance of Allah, the angels surround them (with their wings), (Allah's) mercy envelops them, Sakinah, or tranquillity descends upon them and Allah makes a mention of them before those who are near Him.''[Muslim].

Alhumdulillah!

new profile pic

2007-11-22T14:54:00.000-05:00

Check in

2007-11-06T07:51:00.000-05:00

...Over at my other blog, Hejabi in the Heartland.

Thanks!

-RH

Birthday Tea Party

2007-10-25T06:50:00.001-05:00

Pinata...
Button, button, who has the button?

And of course the tea party with the Barbie cake.

Yes indeed that is a real porceline tea set with real peppermint tea in one pot, and real raspberry tea in the other! They were able to pour for each other and everything!

I can't believe she's five years old!

Happy birthday sweet angel.

Depression; A Disease of the Nafs or Endogenous?

2007-10-12T07:28:00.000-05:00

I have started listening to and taking notes on The Purification of the Heart 17-cd set of lectures by sidi Sheikh Hamza Yusuf. In this series Sheikh Hamza is translating into English and teaching from the text written by a Mauritanian Sheikh who wrote it originally in Arabic.

The suffering of the world is spoken of in term of wars, starvation, hatred, competition, and the struggle of the survival of the fittest. Yet all the suffering of the world originates in the human heart. Every crime committed, every act of oppression, every callous cruelty, and every injustice to the self or others emanates from the hearts of men.The soundest of hearts was the heart of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) who, through his purity and singularity of intention, transformed the world. His teaching remains and the challenge is for each of us to take it and to transform our hearts with it, thereby, transforming the very world in which we live.

Islam has clearly defined that there are several diseases of the heart, which make the human being shrink further and further away from God (ie in a state of sinfulness, whereas being without sin makes the human being closer to God). Things like envy, fear of poverty, using religion as a means for increasing your worldly position, seeking praise from anyone or anything other than God, and miserlyness ...to name just a few.

I have been told by many muslims that depression is not an endogenous physiological "disease" over which the person afflicted by it has no control and the only hope for them would be to take medication; Rather, many folks have stated that depression is a spiritual disease, and that the cure is to get closer to God, delve deeper into Spirituality, and therein one will find the remedy.

I thought all of that was hogwash until I came across this series of Sheikh Hamza's, mashallah!

What is really really helping me, and Sheikh Hamza said it's medicine, and now I believe him, is reciting the

surah Ikhlas ("Purity"- which is said to be equal to one-third of the Quran!) from the Quran three times, three times a day;

Bismillah irahman iraheem;

Qul hol wal aho ahad

Allah hu samad

Lam yaleed wa lam yoolad

Wa lam yakool ahu kufu wan ahad.

Translation

In the name of God, Most Gracious, Ever Merciful.

Say, He is God, the One; God, the Independent and Besought of all.

He begets not, nor is He begotten.

And there is none like unto Him.

as well as the dua' Istikar (please forgive me if I have pronounced any of this Arabic wrong, my intentions are good! As far as I can tell this is the name Hamza Yusuf gave to this dua', however I can't find it online-) three times, three times a day.

Allahumma inni ma'udu bikka

wa 'ana ba'lamu

wa astafiruka min kulli ma la 'alamu. Ameen.

Translation; Oh God I seek refuge in you that I should make shirk (partners)

with you and I am aware of it, and I ask forgiveness for any (shirk that I make)

that I'm not aware of. Amen.

Jezakallah kharian, Sheikh Hamza, and may Allah the Most Gracious the Most Merciful bless you.

Waiting

2007-09-29T14:33:00.000-05:00

In my darkest hour
when the walls are closing in?

When will the healing come?

After I've lost it all
and there's nothing left?

When will the healing come?

I've tried and tried to change
and failed over and over again.

When will the healing come?

I'm such a failure
that I'm unloveable.

When will the healing come?

No chance of success,
I'm just trouble.

When will the healing come?

I can't continue
without support.

When will the healing come?

A marriage broken
All that's left is rubble.

When will the healing come?

When I'm dying Lord
and you're callin' me home?

...When will the healing come?

The Jena Six

2007-09-22T08:39:00.001-05:00

Another Truth untold. Unbelieveable!

Shame, shame, shame

2007-09-03T18:38:00.001-05:00

"...In honor of men of courage, faith and vision: investors in a glorious dream, of winning the wilderness for the white man...."

"...By that gallant band of axemen pioneers and indian fighters who at the risk and loss of life opened the doors of destiny to the white race in Kentucky and the west."

This plaque simply is mortifying.

It's shameful that things like this are still erect on Government - funded public sites! Yes indeed, payed for by American citizens' tax dollars!

It is placed in Fort Boonesborough State Park here in Kentucky, near the ruins of the original Fort of Daniel Boone, NOT at the reproduction Fort where most tourists come to sightsee.

Generally speaking, I take pride in being able to say that Kentucky is better than Ohio. For one thing, Ohio has too many rules! It seems like a few too many folks who are "guardians" on the Myers-Briggs personality spectrum live in Ohio. Ohio is also where there are just a lot of trashy people. Ohioans always like to pretend like those people are "Appalachians from Kentucky". They have a real denial prob;em, they can't seem to own the fact that trashy people are found pretty much everywhere and the great Buckeye State isn't exempt from that. Hello, can you say "Hamiltucky"???? It ain't in Kentucky my friends, it's in Ohio!

Especially here in my neck of the woods, we are a pretty International mix, with 11% Japanese in my son's elementary school, a lot of Germans and other International people living here because of so many big corporations relocating here. After all, Ohio has too many taxes! And you can't smoke in restaurants in Ohio (not that I do, it's simply the principal of being allowed to do as you wish that I am all for.) Ohio has too daggon many rules.

However, after finding this darn thing, I have to say that
it's embarassing to be living in Kentucky and know that crap like this is still around.

Shame, shame, SHAME!

What I've Been Up To

2007-07-29T08:24:00.002-05:00

Before....
And after!

My parents gifted us this lovely Thomasville dining room set. However it is over 30 years old and was desperately in need of some severe repairs! So not only did I recover it, I first had to totally rebuild the seat's strapping and cut new foam before I could even think of stapling on the new material.

I think it looks great, although I didn't redo the welting (see how in the old way each seam has a cord between it and the next piece of material?). Welting is sooo insanely difficult for this beginner sewer! I just couldn't swing it

What do y'all think?

A culture of Denial

2007-07-01T05:50:00.001-05:00

We Midwesterners (at least in the rural area north of Cincinnati where all of my family is from) come from a tradition of denial in the face of conflict. Yep, if a member of the family does something that the rest of the family doesn't relate to and/or can't understand (like convert to Islam) then they all just pretend it hasn't happened. Just sweep it under the rug so you can't see the "dirt", make everything appear pleasant so you don't have to face that dirt and actually do something about it.

Normal people with actual coping skills would let the dirt sit there in the floor and they would confront it; They would either decide they dislike it and sweep it up and get rid of it, or accept the fact that it's there and live with dirt on the floor.

But no not my family. The dirt can actually get heaping as high as Rumpke mountain and they still will refuse to acknowledge it's there. And woe to the person who points out to them that "hey, there's a pile of dirt the size of Rumpke's mountain under the rug, so what do you want to do about it?" for they will suffer the wrath of "How dare you disrespect us like that. Why the nerve of you, saying that there's a mountain of dirt under our rug."...and they explode on you, which to you is totally out of left field. After all, wouldn't any normal sane person just confront the dirt and decide what they want to do about it if it's presence in their house makes them uncomfortable??????????????????????????????????

This lovely little facet of my filial culture is starting to simply wear me out. I don't know how much more of it I can take. I'm tired of sweeping the parts of me that make them uncomfortable under the rug.They're fully aware that those parts are there, it's just that they have requested that I don't reveal these facets of myself when in their presence.

I don't think I can deal with them anymore.

I found another book (full of lies) about Unveiling Islam: An Insider's Look at Muslim Life and Beliefsby Ergun Mehmet Caner in my mother's bedroom yesterday. What a crock. I confronted her on it, because I am really hurt that she's reading, well, really any book about Islam, let alone something so hateful, instead of just sitting down and talking to me. What a fiasco.

I just read all of the tags people have suggested for this book on Amazon.com. The tags are;
anti-islam, bigoted, biased, hate, islamophobia, coulter, ann coulter, brilliance

I added these tags;

lies, one-sided, hateful, inciting violence

So now I am getting "in her face" with my beliefs because I asked her why she isn't asking a real live muslim like her daughter these questions she must have instead of reading a hateful book that's full of lies (subhanallah, the guys who wrote it are ex-muslims who claim to be Christian).

Well, I don't know any command by Jesus, peace be upon him, that teaches folks to be hateful or spread blatant un-truths about another religion.

Jesus said to love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you!

Turn the other cheek, not an eye for an eye!

Blessed are the peacemakers!!!!!!!!!

There is nothing Christian in this freakin' book.

I am devastated.

My parents are freakin' hateful Anne Coulter G. Gordon Libby Rush Limbaugh Neo-Cons.

They are everything that I feel is wrong with our Country, and I have to love them, because they are my parents.

That's freakin' difficult! As muslims, we are commanded several times in the Quran and in the hadith, which are the sayings of the prophet, to respect our parents and family. It's a major tenet of Islam to show respect to your family, no matter what the circumstances. Inshallah, God-willing, I can live up to that ideal. Ameen.

More than meets the Eye

2007-06-23T07:59:00.000-05:00

We closed on our new house May 31st! Yay! We've been settling in, praise God, but there have been a couple of little bumps we've had to go over.

For instance, the day we took posession the previous owner was *still moving stuff out of the house when we did the final walkthrough before closing. Now we know that she was really just here to try and run interference, which did work; we missed something that they had damaged since the home inspection. They cracked the mirror in the master bathroom. They had placed a fake flower arrangement in front of it, hoping we'd miss it on the final walkthrough, which we did. I called my realtor three hours after closing in tears and told him what I'd found. His response was, "Don't they know what Karma is?"??? He's taking care of it, luckily.

Then it rained three days after closing, and I found that there was water pouring into our basement. Went in the garage and saw that the dry wall was wet in a certain area, which made a trail that led to the ceiling. The roof was leaking! Those B$%$#^%& had a leaky roof and didn't disclose it! They lied on the seller disclosure and wrote that there was no leaking roof, no water coming into their basement. And our home inspector missed this! What a jerk! We were soooo angry, felt ripped off, and frustrated. If he was a good home inspector, he would have noticed the dry wall was damaged. They had hid this little gem as well, covering it with their watering hose which was hung on the wall in front of the damaged area. Thank God, water isn't coming in any more, we have had the roof repaired, $625 later!!!!!

And now for a good part of the story. My hubby decided he's building a fence around the backyard for our little ones, so he went and talked to the neighbor who borders our property on that side. They agreed on where he thought the property line was, and he even said he would go halvsies on it financially and that my husband can use his auger. Well, then my husband spends all day in the hot sun digging this fence post hole, gets it in, puts in the 2 sacks 80 pounds each of quick crete, and the guy comes back out. Says um btw I'm not the property owner I'm just renting you'd better have it surveyed I think you put that post on our property! DANG! So we dug that sucker out of the ground faster than you can say "greased lightening"!!!!!

Yesterday we had it surveyed, and lo and behold, not only were we well within our property line, but our yard is much much larger than we or the previous owner thought! And our neighbors on both sides were actually encroaching on our property line! When we were calling around and getting quotes on the survey, we were aghast at the price....but now after we see where our yard actually is, we see that it was money well spent. If you don't know where your property lines officially are, I highly recommend spending the $300-400 on the survey!

Kareem Salama, a Brilliant Country Singer

2007-06-03T08:43:00.000-05:00

I highly recommend buying a cd or 2 from Kareem Salama. The son of Egyptian immigrants, Kareem was born and raised in Ponca City, Oklahoma. He spent his childhood immersed in Western United States culture, attending Rodeos and Pow Wows, while simultaneously learning his family's roots in Islam and Arabic culture. With a degree in Chemical Engineering and recenlty finishing Law School, he's on the road promoting his new album, "Generous Peace".

His voice is robust, sexy, and All-American Country soundin'. I love him! His musical sound is open-chord guitar with a lot of grounded piano sound supporting it. His lyrics are not officially "muslim" or "nasheeds" (Islamic gospel songs), but the subject matter is definitely "Halal" (ie for you non-muslims reading this, Halal means religiously permissible, as in the subject matter is about living a good life, it's not about forbidden things and isn't leading the listener to sin - not about adultery, greed, alcohol, or other illicit/amoral activities).

You can listen to various songs from his album on his website.

I broke down and simply cried when I listened to Baby I'm A Soldier.

He was a soldier who’d only been married two or three years ago

And he put his hands on her knees that night and he said I gotta go

She said why would you leave this home and me;

I thought I was your baby girl

And he wiped away the tears from her eyes and said they’re sending me to save the world

And you know I love you and I pray to God that he’ll join us once again

But now its time for this simple man to be one of the few good men

(Chorus)

Cause baby I’m a soldier and I hear those trumpets calling again
And our kings and queens are saying this is a fight we must win
For truth and justice and for the way we live our life
And baby I’m a soldier in front of God I swore I would fight

Across the ocean and miles away there stood another man
Eighteen years, hugging his mama saying I’ll defend this land
Mama held her baby and cried and clutched him telling him not to leave
She said what will I do without my baby boy; son I’m begging you please
He said I love you mama but duty calls;
I’ll write you everyday
She said I lost your daddy like this and I don’t wanna lose you this way

(Chorus)

But Mama I’m a soldier and I hear those trumpets calling again
And our kings and queens are saying this is a fight we must win
For truth and justice and for the way we live our life
And Mama I’m a soldier in front of God I swore I would fight

Well the battle raged and shots rang out the two men fell to the ground
And they looked into the eyes of each other and were shocked at what they found
One man saw the mother of the other in that young mans eyes
And the other man saw the crying and screams of the other mans beloved wife
And the two men stared across that smoky field and whispered to each other
Maybe you weren’t the demon they said maybe you were really my brother
But I’m glad we’re passing cause I don’t think that I could forgive myself
For fighting you but maybe God will and we can live together in bliss

(Chorus)

Cause Ladies we were soldiers and we heard those trumpets calling again
And tell the kings and queens that sometimes there are fights no one wins
But we know for sure that there’s evil out there we must fight
But please be sure that this is one of those times
And please be sure to remember my mama and wife

And please be sure to think of my brother on the other side.

A Secret History of Women's Scholarship in Islam

2007-05-31T16:16:00.000-05:00

From the New York Times.
A Secret History
by Carla Powers

For Muslims and non-Muslims alike, the stock image of an Islamic scholar is a gray-bearded man. Women tend to be seen as the subjects of Islamic law rather than its shapers. And while some opportunities for religious education do exist for women — the prestigious Al-Azhar University in Cairo has a women’s college, for example, and there are girls’ madrasas and female study groups in mosques and private homes — cultural barriers prevent most women in the Islamic world from pursuing such studies. Recent findings by a scholar at the Oxford Center for Islamic Studies in Britain, however, may help lower those barriers and challenge prevalent notions of women’s roles within Islamic society. Mohammad Akram Nadwi, a 43-year-old Sunni alim, or religious scholar, has rediscovered a long-lost tradition of Muslim women teaching the Koran, transmitting hadith (deeds and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad) and even making Islamic law as jurists.
Akram embarked eight years ago on a single-volume biographical dictionary of female hadith scholars, a project that took him trawling through biographical dictionaries, classical texts, madrasa chronicles and letters for relevant citations. “I thought I’d find maybe 20 or 30 women,” he says. To date, he has found 8,000 of them, dating back 1,400 years, and his dictionary now fills 40 volumes. It’s so long that his usual publishers, in Damascus and Beirut, have balked at the project, though an English translation of his preface — itself almost 400 pages long — will come out in England this summer. (Akram has talked with Prince Turki al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia’s former ambassador to the United States, about the possibility of publishing the entire work through his Riyadh-based foundation.)
The dictionary’s diverse entries include a 10th-century Baghdad-born jurist who traveled through Syria and Egypt, teaching other women; a female scholar — or muhaddithat — in 12th-century Egypt whose male students marveled at her mastery of a “camel load” of texts; and a 15th-century woman who taught hadith at the Prophet’s grave in Medina, one of the most important spots in Islam. One seventh-century Medina woman who reached the academic rank of jurist issued key fatwas on hajj rituals and commerce; another female jurist living in medieval Aleppo not only issued fatwas but also advised her far more famous husband on how to issue his.
Not all of these women scholars were previously unknown. Many Muslims acknowledge that Islam has its learned women, particularly in the field of hadith, starting with the Prophet’s wife Aisha. And several Western academics have written on women’s religious education. About a century ago, the Hungarian Orientalist Ignaz Goldziher estimated that about 15 percent of medieval hadith scholars were women. But Akram’s dictionary is groundbreaking in its scope.
Indeed, read today, when many Muslim women still don’t dare pray in mosques, let alone lecture leaders in them, Akram’s entry for someone like Umm al-Darda, a prominent jurist in seventh-century Damascus, is startling. As a young woman, Umm al-Darda used to sit with male scholars in the mosque, talking shop. “I’ve tried to worship Allah in every way,” she wrote, “but I’ve never found a better one than sitting around, debating other scholars.” She went on to teach hadith and fiqh, or law, at the mosque, and even lectured in the men’s section; her students included the caliph of Damascus. She shocked her contemporaries by praying shoulder to shoulder with men — a nearly unknown practice, even now — and issuing a fatwa, still cited by modern scholars, that allowed women to pray in the same position as men.
It’s after the 16th century that citations of women scholars dwindle. Some historians venture that this is because Islamic education grew more formal, excluding women as it became increasingly oriented toward establishing careers in the courts and mosques. (Strangely enough, Akram found that this kind of exclusion also helped women become better scholars. Because they didn’t hold official posts, they had little reason to invent or embellish prophetic traditions.)
Akram’s work has led to accusations that he is championing free mixing between men and women, but he says that is not so. He maintains that women students should sit at a discreet distance from their male classmates or co-worshipers, or be separated by a curtain. (The practice has parallels in Orthodox Judaism.) The Muslim women who taught men “are part of our history,” he says. “It doesn’t mean you have to follow them. It’s up to people to decide.”
Neverthless, Akram says he hopes that uncovering past hadith scholars could help reform present-day Islamic culture. Many Muslims see historical precedents — particularly when they date back to the golden age of Muhammad — as blueprints for sound modern societies and look to scholars to evaluate and interpret those precedents. Muslim feminists like the Moroccan writer Fatima Mernissi and Kecia Ali, a professor at Boston University, have cast fresh light on women’s roles in Islamic law and history, but their worldview — and their audiences — are largely Western or Westernized. Akram is a working alim, lecturing in mosques and universities and dispensing fatwas on issues like inheritance and divorce. “Here you’ve got a guy who’s coming from the tradition, who knows the stuff and who’s able to give us that level of detail which is missing in the self-proclaimed progressive Muslim writers,” says James Piscatori, a professor of Islamic Studies at Oxford University.
The erosion of women’s religious education in recent times, Akram says, reflects “decline in every aspect of Islam.” Flabby leadership and a focus on politics rather than scholarship has left Muslims ignorant of their own history. Islam’s current cultural insecurity has been bad for both its scholarship and its women, Akram says. “Our traditions have grown weak, and when people are weak, they grow cautious. When they’re cautious, they don’t give their women freedoms.”
When Akram lectures, he dryly notes, women are more excited by this history than men. To persuade reluctant Muslims to educate their girls, Akram employs a potent debating strategy: he compares the status quo to the age of al jahiliya, the Arabic term for the barbaric state of pre-Islamic Arabia. (Osama Bin Laden and Sayyid Qutb, the godfather of modern Islamic extremism, have employed the comparison to very different effect.) Barring Muslim women from education and religious authority, Akram argues, is akin to the pre-Islamic custom of burying girls alive. “I tell people, ‘God has given girls qualities and potential,’ ” he says. “If they aren’t allowed to develop them, if they aren’t provided with opportunities to study and learn, it’s basically a live burial.”
When I spoke with him, Akram invoked a favorite poem, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” Thomas Gray’s 18th-century lament for dead English farmers. “Gray said that villagers could have been like Milton,” if only they’d had the chance, Akram observes. “Muslim women are in the same situation. There could have been so many Miltons.”
Carla Power is a London-based journalist who writes about Islamic issues.

Balancing the Prophet

2007-05-30T07:25:00.000-05:00

*cross posted from An American Muslim

Balancing the Prophet

By Karen Armstrong

Ever since the Crusades, people in the west have seen the prophet Muhammad as a sinister figure. During the 12th century, Christians were fighting brutal holy wars against Muslims, even though Jesus had told his followers to love their enemies, not to exterminate them. The scholar monks of Europe stigmatised Muhammad as a cruel warlord who established the false religion of Islam by the sword. They also, with ill-concealed envy, berated him as a lecher and sexual pervert at a time when the popes were attempting to impose celibacy on the reluctant clergy. Our Islamophobia became entwined with our chronic anti-Semitism; Jews and Muslims, the victims of the crusaders, became the shadow self of Europe, the enemies of decent civilisation and the opposite of ”us”.

Our suspicion of Islam is alive and well. Indeed, understandably perhaps, it has hardened as a result of terrorist atrocities apparently committed in its name. Yet despite the religious rhetoric, these terrorists are motivated by politics rather than religion. Like ”fundamentalists” in other traditions, their ideology is deliberately and defiantly unorthodox. Until the 1950s, no major Muslim thinker had made holy war a central pillar of Islam. The Muslim ideologues Abu ala Mawdudi (1903-79) and Sayyid Qutb (1906-66), among the first to do so, knew they were proposing a controversial innovation. They believed it was justified by the current political emergency.

The criminal activities of terrorists have given the old western prejudice a new lease of life. People often seem eager to believe the worst about Muhammad, are reluctant to put his life in its historical perspective and assume the Jewish and Christian traditions lack the flaws they attribute to Islam. This entrenched hostility informs Robert Spencer’s misnamed biography The Truth about Muhammad, subtitled Founder of the World’s Most Intolerant Religion.

Spencer has studied Islam for 20 years, largely, it seems, to prove that it is an evil, inherently violent religion. He is a hero of the American right and author of the US bestseller The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam. Like any book written in hatred, his new work is a depressing read. Spencer makes no attempt to explain the historical, political, economic and spiritual circumstances of 7th-century Arabia, without which it is impossible to understand the complexities of Muhammad’s life. Consequently he makes basic and bad mistakes of fact. Even more damaging, he deliberately manipulates the evidence.

The traditions of any religion are multifarious. It is easy, therefore, to quote so selectively that the main thrust of the faith is distorted. But Spencer is not interested in balance. He picks out only those aspects of Islamic tradition that support his thesis. For example, he cites only passages from the Koran that are hostile to Jews and Christians and does not mention the numerous verses that insist on the continuity of Islam with the People of the Book: ”Say to them: We believe what you believe; your God and our God is one.”

Islam has a far better record than either Christianity or Judaism of appreciating other faiths. In Muslim Spain, relations between the three religions of Abraham were uniquely harmonious in medieval Europe. The Christian Byzantines had forbidden Jews from residing in Jerusalem, but when Caliph Umar conquered the city in AD638, he invited them to return and was hailed as the precursor of the Messiah. Spencer doesn’t refer to this. Jewish-Muslim relations certainly have declined as a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict, but this departs from centuries of peaceful and often positive co-existence. When discussing Muhammad’s war with Mecca, Spencer never cites the Koran’s condemnation of all warfare as an ”awesome evil”, its prohibition of aggression or its insistence that only self-defence justifies armed conflict. He ignores the Koranic emphasis on the primacy of forgiveness and peaceful negotiation: the second the enemy asks for peace, Muslims must lay down their arms and accept any terms offered, however disadvantageous. There is no mention of Muhammad’s non-violent campaign that ended the conflict.

People would be offended by an account of Judaism that dwelled exclusively on Joshua’s massacres and never mentioned Rabbi Hillel’s Golden Rule, or a description of Christianity based on the bellicose Book of Revelation that failed to cite the Sermon on the Mount. But the widespread ignorance about Islam in the west makes many vulnerable to Spencer’s polemic; he is telling them what they are predisposed to hear. His book is a gift to extremists who can use it to ”prove” to those Muslims who have been alienated by events in Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq that the west is incurably hostile to their faith.

Eliot Weinberger is a poet whose interest in Islam began at the time of the first Gulf war. His slim volume, Muhammad, is also a selective anthology about the Prophet. His avowed aim is to ”give a small sense of the awe surrounding this historical and sacred figure, at a time of the demonisation of the Muslim world in much of the media”. Many of the passages he quotes are indeed mystical and beautiful, but others are likely to confirm some readers in their prejudice. Without knowing their provenance, how can we respond to such statements as ”He said that he who plays chess is like one who has dyed his hand in the blood of a pig” or ”Filling the stomach with pus is better than stuffing the brain with poetry”?

It is difficult to see how selecting only these dubious traditions as examples could advance mutual understanding. The second section of this anthology is devoted to anecdotes about Muhammad’s wives that smack of prurient gossip. Western readers need historical perspective to understand the significance of the Prophet’s domestic arrangements, his respect for his wives, and the free and forthright way in which they approached him. Equally eccentric are the stories cited by Weinberger to describe miracles attributed to the Prophet: the Koran makes it clear that Muhammad did not perform miracles and insists that he was an ordinary human being, with no divine powers.

It is, therefore, a relief to turn to Barnaby Rogerson’s more balanced and nuanced account of early Muslim history in The Heirs of the Prophet Muhammad. Rogerson is a travel writer by trade; his explanation of the Sunni/Shia divide is theologically simplistic, but his account of the rashidun, the first four ”rightly guided” caliphs who succeeded the Prophet, is historically sound, accessible and clears up many western misconceptions about this crucial period.

Rogerson makes it clear, for example, that the wars of conquest and the establishment of the Islamic empire after Muhammad’s death were not inspired by religious ideology but by pragmatic politics. The idea that Islam should conquer the world was alien to the Koran and there was no attempt to convert Jews or Christians. Islam was for the Arabs, the sons of Ishmael, as Judaism was for the descendants of Isaac and Christianity for the followers of Jesus.
Rogerson also shows that Muslim tradition is multi-layered and many-faceted. The early historians regularly gave two or three variant accounts of an incident in the life of the Prophet; readers were expected to make up their own minds.

Similarly, there are at least four contrasting and sometimes conflicting versions of the Exodus story in the Hebrew Bible, and in the New Testament the four evangelists interpret the life of Jesus quite differently. To choose one tradition and ignore the rest - as Weinberger and Spencer do - is distorting.

Professor Tariq Ramadan has studied Islam at the University of Geneva and al-Azhar University in Cairo and is currently senior research fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford. The Messenger is easily the most scholarly and knowledgeable of these four biographies of Muhammad, but it is also practical and relevant, drawing lessons from the Prophet’s life that are crucial for Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Ramadan makes it clear, for example, that Muhammad did not shun non-Muslims as ”unbelievers” but from the beginning co-operated with them in the pursuit of the common good. Islam was not a closed system at variance with other traditions. Muhammad insisted that relations between the different groups must be egalitarian. Even warfare must not obviate the primary duty of justice and respect.
When the Muslims were forced to leave Mecca because they were persecuted by the Meccan establishment, Ramadan shows, they had to adapt to the alien customs of their new home in Medina, where, for example, women enjoyed more freedom than in Mecca. The hijrah (”migration”) was a test of intelligence; the emigrants had to recognise that some of their customs were cultural rather than Islamic, and had to learn foreign practices.
Ramadan also makes it clear that, in the Koran, jihad was not synonymous with ”holy war”. The verb jihada should rather be translated: ”making an effort”. The first time the word is used in the Koran, it signified a ”resistance to oppression” (25:26) that was intellectual and spiritual rather than militant. Muslims were required to oppose the lies and terror of those who were motivated solely by self-interest; they had to be patient and enduring. Only after the hijrah, when they encountered the enmity of Mecca, did the word jihad take connotations of self-defence and armed resistance in the face of military aggression. Even so, in mainstream Muslim tradition, the greatest jihad was not warfare but reform of one’s own society and heart; as Muhammad explained to one of his companions, the true jihad was an inner struggle against egotism.

The Koran teaches that, while warfare must be avoided whenever possible, it is sometimes necessary to resist humanity’s natural propensity to expansionism and oppression, which all too often seeks to obliterate the diversity and religious pluralism that is God’s will. If they do wage war, Muslims must behave ethically. ”Do not kill women, children and old people,” Abu Bakr, the first caliph, commanded his troops. ”Do not commit treacherous actions. Do not burn houses and cornfields.” Muslims must be especially careful not to destroy monasteries where Christian monks served God in prayer.

Ramadan could have devoted more time to such contentious issues as the veiling of women, polygamy and Muhammad’s treatment of some (though by no means all) of the Jewish tribes of Medina. But his account restores the balance that is so often lacking in western narratives. Muhammad was not a belligerent warrior. Ramadan shows that he constantly emphasised the importance of ”gentleness” (ar-rafiq), ”tolerance” (al-ana) and clemency (al-hilm).
It will be interesting to see how The Messenger is received. Ramadan is clearly addressing issues that inspire some Muslims to distort their religion. Western people often complain that they never hear from ”moderate” Muslims, but when such Muslims do speak out they are frequently dismissed as apologists and hagiographers. Until we all learn to approach one another with generosity and respect, we cannot hope for peace.

Karen Armstrong is the author of ”Muhammad: Prophet For Our Time”

Veiled for Allah

2007-05-10T05:41:00.000-05:00

from this week's Women's issue of City Beat.

Muslim women speak about life beneath the veil

By Nur Saben

The clothes do not make the woman, but they can make an impact during a job interview. Self-expression is a typical explanation for low-riding jeans and funky shoes as much as it is for body piercings and hair color. Yet Islamic women who choose to make an unconventional statement with their attire typically encounter prejudice, unfair treatment and even fear. This is common for Muslim women who wear "hejab," a headscarf tied under their chin, and loose fitting clothing to cover everything but their face, hands and feet.

"My heart is not ready ... for the burden of interacting with people in public places with hejab on," says Paige Robbins, a Woodlawn resident and local music therapist. "I have to be ready for people looking at me like I'm a terrorist. They'll look at me like they're afraid of me. I might lose clients at work. I'll have to stand up for my beliefs -- vocally. Right now, people don't know I'm Muslim."

Robbins converted to Islam earlier this year, but her perspective isn't unique to converts. Iman Bedawi, from West Chester, was born to Egyptian parents and was educated in the American public school system. She attended Islamic religious classes on the weekends, where she learned that hejab was obligatory according to Islam, but there was never any imposition of the rules. Bedawi's mother didn't don the Islamic headscarf until Bedawi was 7 or 8 years old.

"A lot of women don't understand that, when they're interviewing, their physical appearance has a lot of bearing and that is really demeaning," Bedawi says. "It's none of their business how I dress if I have the right qualifications (for a job)."

Obedience not terrorism

In the Quran, God commands the "believing women that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty; that they should not display their beauty and ornaments except what (must ordinarily) appear thereof; that they should draw their veils over their bosoms and not display their beauty" to anyone other than immediate family members. God also commands, "O Prophet, tell your wives and your daughters and the women of the believers to draw their cloaks close round them (when they go abroad)."

Because of these two verses, Muslim women believe modesty is a highly spiritual act that's a direct command from God.

The decision to follow this direction is a personal one, Bedawi explains.

"It really has to do with the development of the person wearing it," she says. "Hejab is symbolic of a woman's devotion to God, of her deep desire to be close to him and prefer his pleasure over the judgment of everyone else.

"In high school, my parents never mentioned it in a pressuring way. Once my mother asked me if I would like to wear it. My full-hearted answer was 'Yes,' but I didn't have an idea when. Before the beginning of my last year of high school, it was my decision completely to start wearing it."

Ingrid Ascencio, who grew up Catholic in Mexico and converted to Islam six years ago, agrees that wearing the hejab is simply "being obedient to Allah."

"It really comes down to that," she says. "I didn't grow up with that. It's something that Allah wants me to do."

Concern of being feared is a big obstacle for many Islamic women. The decision to choose traditional Islamic feminine dress means dealing with the suspicion and scorn by those who don't understand the religious and personal implications of a non-Western style.

Ascencio, a mechanical engineer for GE, is not afraid. She wore hejab when she interviewed for her position three years ago and continues to do so with confidence and pride.

"The environment of the company is very professional," she explains. "There is a lot of diversity. They want to include women and minorities, and I'm triple in one. My personality repels criticism. I come across very strong, especially at work. I don't look down, I don't speak softly and I'm straight to the point. I think people can read that. If you have convictions, people don't mess with you."

That confidence took some time to develop.

"It took me two years to get the strength to put it on," Ascensio says. "I don't do things halfway. I didn't want to put it on, and then take it off. First, my wardrobe had to slowly change. I stopped wearing shorts and only (wore) pants, then (from) no sleeves to some sleeves, then full sleeves, etc. Then I went a size bigger than my fitting size. Slowly but surely I changed it.

"Finally I took off for work one morning and I just put it on. I didn't tell anyone. I just did it."

'An obstacle to what?'

The women agree that, although the primary reason they cover is spiritual, there is a secondary benefit to wearing the hejab. Robbins doesn't cover her hair, but she maintains modest dress because she feels protected. She wants to be known for her personality, not for her appearance.

"I dress more conservatively than the average American woman," she says. "I feel more comfortable with my arms, chest and legs covered. I also wear loose-fitting clothing. It gives me comfort to be able to interact with others a little more openly. We can interact with the opposite sex and not worry."

Bedawi says she's often confronted by feminists who take issue with her choice.
"Their argument is ... that this scarf is an obstacle to us," she says. "Sometimes I wonder: an obstacle to what? To my body being admired by whoever wants to admire it? An obstacle to getting boyfriends? ... Yes, it is an obstacle to preventing the woman from being susceptible to the evils that the women of western society are prone to.

"This is a very biased view that hejab is an obstacle. They think it's an obstacle to freedom. We don't believe in unrestricted freedom. Freedom has to be within the will of God."

Moving beyond the personal decision to wear a specific kind of clothing, Bedawi says American culture has a dramatic impact on the lack of equality afforded to Islamic woman in this country.

"Most Muslims the world over hold America as the hope, as a place where we can practice our religion wholly, because of the constitution and the Bill of Rights," she says. "We'd like the greater community to understand us and what we're all about, not to convert anyone but to help them respect our beliefs so we can practice.

"We'd like the freedom to practice without discrimination. American foreign policies are the main obstacle to that dream. The propaganda coming out from the current administration isn't giving a clear picture to the greater American community as to what Muslims in the U.S. and all over the world are really all about."
© E-mail the editor

Qatari Matchbus

2007-05-05T17:59:00.000-05:00

In the midst of all of this house hunting, we all started hunkering for a taste of our....well.....(former) home....

Matchbus, called Kapsa in other Gulf states, is a traditional dish...You cook the chicken first by boiling it with fried onions, tomato paste, chopped fresh whole tomatoes, garlic, bay leaves, whole cardamom pods, saffron, cloves, black (dried) onions, and cumin. After cooking the chicken for 30 minutes or so you strain the pieces out and reserve the liquid and put the chicken in the oven at 350 degrees F for another 30 minutes or so while you make the rice. You use some of the reserved liquid to cook the rice in, as deemed appropriate for the amount of rice you want to make. Although Basmati rice is traditional, we use calrose rice (sushi rice, also called "Egyptican" rice) in our house.

It's delicious! You put carmelized onions along with some raisins on top and serve it in a communal dish such as the one pictured.

We like to eat with our hands, and on the floor, as this is traditional also.

Dig in!

Which house is the right house?

2007-04-30T14:41:00.000-05:00

We really feel like we're in the midst of a quandry.

One house we love. The advantages include; It is 4 years new, it has nothing we have to do to fix it up, except perhaps paint the interior to our liking. I feel really good when I'm in this house...it's open, there is a lot of natural light, open windows, etc. It's new, it has hardwood floors, an open floor plan, a finished basement, the upstairs laundry I've wanted.... A nice storage area in the basement where we can put a freezer and have a whole lamb or side of beef in storage, frozen veggies for the winter, etc. A flat fenced back yard with a jungle jim for the kids. It's priced kinda high for us though and we'll feel pretty tight for the first 5 years or so probably in that high of a mortgage payment. My son can stay in the school he's in now, and can easily walk to school. There would be a lot of consistency for the kids in that regard. We can also walk to Krogers, the library, etc if we so choose. I could have a low-lying garden and do some landscaping, grow a couple of fruit tree or whatever. The houses around it are all selling in the 190/220,000K+ range, so we'd be walking into over 10% equity right away at the price we think they will take! It's in a newer area and it doesn't have that "Erlanger, beat-up-chewed-and-spit-out" loook. It's almost a sure thing that this house will appreciate nicely in a few years, most likely above the 3% for inflation.

The disadvantages are that the yard is small, and I'm sure the homeowner's association wouldn't let us grow a few rows of corn in the yard! I definitely couldn't hang out our laundry to dry on a clothesline. The yard is so small that I wouldn't feel comfortable getting a dog for the kids. A trampoline would fit but it would be tiiiiight. There's no privacy in the backyard; we can see the back yards (and they can see us) of over 8 neighbors! Yikes! They all just bump up next to one another. It's veeeeeery white bread though...not much diversity...everyone is upper middle class, they think that spraying the yards with chemicals is a good thing, and they protested and won against a big mosque being built in the neighborhood a few years ago. The ironic thing is that there are several well-to-do muslim doctors and their families in this neighborhood and community!

The other house we like is in an older Florence neighborhood. It has a wood burning fireplace (the more expensive home has a gas/ceramic one...how contrived!), and a finished lower level. The big allure here is really the yard. It's a full acre! There is also a deck in the back of the house whereas the other house has a cement patio but no deck . The kids would really have a ball running around . We could hang our laundry, garden to our hearts' content (corn!corn!corn!), and have a big dog (outside only) for the kids. It's in an acceptable school district, the Conner elementary of Florence, but not the one my son is currently in. I have a friend whose son is in this school, and I am trusting that her assessment of it is accurate when she says it's fine. Another big plus is that the mortgage is easier for us ($300/month less or so!). Oh and the house has a fenced back yard, and is the last house on the end of a cul-de-sac! It's about the same distance to the highway....and it's closer to Aldi, where I love to shop as much as I can, than we are now. I would definitely save more money on groceries because it would be easier for me to get there than I can now. There is a great Japanese restaurant nearby, a muslim grocery store, and an amazing German butcher (well we can't eat his meat but he has grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreat fresh bread!).

But ...the neighborhood certainly has reached it's peak. I think we'd get the 3%/year but not much more. However, to it's detriment, the area along Dixie highway outside the neighborhood seems kinda down-market (the neighborhood is near the Florence nature park). It's definitely a lower socio-economic demographic in the schools....is that good or bad? I'm not sure! I want our kids to know different kinds of kids...not just from one class of society....I think.

This house may need a lot of repairs though because it's older. Immediately we'd have to put in new carpet everywhere except the kitchen and bathrooms, which have tile/laminate floors. The current owners have a big dog and we can't live on dog carpet. EWwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!

This is a sump pump house. Since the basement is finished, this could be an issue. The house is at the bottom of a hill, and when it rains it could flood in the lower level if the pump stops working or malfunctions. We'd definitely need to buy a battery back up for it in case the electric goes out in a rain storm. It appears as though there's been some settling in the foundation as well. The house is 28 years old so that's to be expected...I'd want a thorough home inspection to rule out any of that settling being pathological. I saw some cracks in the floor on the lower level in the laundry room and that concerns me. I guess the inspector is the one who would tell us the skinny on that! These issues make me.......leary. It also has noooooo curb appeal. We can fix that, but it'll cost us some money. That and the hilly hudge yard make me worry about future resale possibilities. Would the big yard be a deterrent or an asset? I view it as an asset, but it seems like most things I like the rest of society hates!

Any thoughts or suggestions from you my dear readers are welcome!

Jim Huff Realty Inc. Complaint and Disadvantages

2007-04-27T08:01:00.000-05:00

As most of you all know, we've been house-hunting. I took the advice of a good neighbor friend and decided to ask a realtor to show me houses.Well I couldn't have made a worse decision when I chose a realtor from the Jim Huff Realty Inc. company.

I asked this Huff realtor to show me such and such houses on a Friday. This was on a Tuesday. She agreed. Then that night she called and wanted to know if me and my husband could come into her office "to look at some possible listings and for her to get to know us better" before she started showing us houses. After all, she said she didn't want to waste our time showing us houses we weren't interested in.

Well, I know my husband. There was no way he was going to sit down and talk to anyone. He's very much a do-er. So, I thought I would get this preliminary stuff out of the way on Wednesday while he was working, so I agreed to meet with her.

Come into my lair said the spider to the fly.

The bait...

I entered her office at Jim Huff Realty Inc. on Cavalier in Florence KY, and we spent about 45 minutes looking at various listings and discussing me and my husband's preferences, school districts, our price range, etc. as she had promised.

And now for the switch....

Out of nowhere and like a slap in my face she whips out this "exclusive realtor" work contract. Ya Allah! Walla! She actually had the nerve to say to me that it was actually a waste of her time to start showing me houses unless I first signed this exclusive buyer contract and promise that I would only work with her. This contract stated that if I were to buy a house in the next months, I will promise to only buy it with her and she will get the 3% commission!I couldn't believe it! I hadn't even seen one house with this woman, I had absolutely no idea what kind of work she could do, and she was demanding my loyalty to her!

This was demoralizing, demeaning, and a complete waste of me and my family's limited precious time!

What does this realtor think I am, an idiot? And who does she think she is, a lawyer or something?Lawyers perform exclusive services, and they are highly trained professionals, that require dedicated legal contracts etc. Doctors for example are also highly trained advanced professional individuals that perform exclusive services. We have a family lawyer, a family doctor, even a family veterinarian.... but a realtor is not on the same level as a Doctor or a Lawyer.

A realtor is not a highly trained professional with an advanced professional degree. She is merely a SALESMAN (well in this case a SALESWOMAN), nothing more, nothing less. She is the same as a car salesman, a furniture salesman, or the guy down the street at Buddy's Carpet Barn who sells carpets.

My parents, friends, neighbors, and clergyperson all would call me an insane fool if I signed an agreement with the salesman at Buddy's Carpet Barn promising him I'd buy some carpet from him, when he hasn't even shown me one bit of merchandise or found the right carpet in my price range!!!!!! So why should I do the same with this Huff realtor?

We are actually almost a week behind in our house hunting because of her stunt.We are currently renting and will soon go into a month-to-month fee because we will be staying past our lease period. We need to expedite the house buying process, not have ridiculous antics like this from SELFISH REALTORS like those at Jim Huff Realty Inc.

The realtor who did this to me told me that this is company policy. That means there is a serious problem with customer service and in the company vision of management at Jim Huff Realty Inc. The only conclusion I am able to make by such a selfish company policy is that this company doesn't want to help a potential home buyer; they only want to make phat cash for themselves and the buyer. That makes Jim Huff Realty Inc. by their very nature PREDATORY REALTORS when it comes to how they interact with potential buyers of homes.

Shame shame shame on you, Jim Huff Realty, Inc.!

Qatar is an AIDS trap, Iran's AIDS prevention program is a great success

2007-04-22T06:47:00.000-05:00

-Arash Alaei, Iranian visionary in Islamic HIV-AIDS prevention program.

This is a sign that (was? I'm assuming it's still there) hanging on the men's side in the health center in Madinat Khalifa in Doha, Qatar. Although I'm glad to see that the Qatari government is trying to educate the public (well, the men) about the dangers of the HIV virus and AIDS.....

WHAT THE HECK DO ISLAMIC MORALS HAVE TO DO WITH HIV??????

Oh sure, so the woman whose husband runs off to Bahrain or Thailand on an alleged "business trip" but is really there with prostitutes and brings the HIV virus back and infects HER, and their unborn child, is not a good Muslimah? She's not sticking to the Islamic values?????

C'mon!

What about if the patients at Hamad Hospital get treated by a 3rd-world idiot nurse who reuses a needle on them and they get infected by HIV? And the nurse is a fully practicing and devout muslim? ...She's sticking to the Islamic values.....she is simply UNEDUCATED and the hospital is grossly MISMANAGED in that case....and the HIV victim is just that, an innocent VICTIM....

HIV infection in Qatar has absolutley NOTHING to do with "Islamic Morals" on the part of the individual, and EVERYTHING to do with the Government of Qatar doing a very un-Islamic thing, which is that they absolutley have nothing that even resembles an HIV/AIDS prevention program.

I actually sat one day in Hamad Hospital while waiting to take an asthma breathing test and watched a nurse re-use a needle on a patient. I even called her on it and she lied to my face and denied her very own behavior that I completely witnessed in broad daylight.

I was hospitalized in Hamad hospital for 10 days in 2004. I can honestly say that I feared HIV infection very much. My nurses were trained at what we in America would consider a candy-striper level (this is a volunteer who changes the sheets in the USA). I'm talking the kind of nurse that only knows how to put banana leaves on a massive burn! VERY SCARY. Qatar would do itself a hudge favor in it's healthcare sector to modernize itself by hiring actual nurses instead of these candy stripers! They are so focused on "modernizing", building new roads, tearing down embarasssing old buildings and erecting impressive skyscrapers etc. but they still use 3-rd world unskilled nurses. This is an abomination and a real threat to everyone's health, especially when it comes to HIV infection. I had to actually quiz my nurses every time they were going to start an IV line on me or give me an injection to ensure they were using an unopened needle. For God's sakes, these nurses didn't even know how to clean a wound properly! One of them wiped my wound from the outside in, not the inside out. And another I had to always remind to wipe the outside of my IV catheter thingie with an alcohol pad before she attached the line to it.

Sure, Qatar will boast that they "screen" all guest workers for HIV and for TB upon arrival. If they test positive, they are deported and cannot work in Qatar (nevermind that HIV has up to a 6-month window upon initial infection where you might test negative but you're actually infected! DUUUUUUUUH!) That's it. That's their HIV prevention program. No public education program about how the virus is actually transmitted, no free condom distribution or clean needle distribution, nothing. Just deport the guest workers upon arrival if they test positive. Period. That's very piss-poor of an HIV control program if you ask me.

Instead of demoralizing people and telling them that if they follow the Islamic values, if they are just "good little muslims" then they'll be protected, (what hogwash), there should be an empirically validated HIV AIDS prevention program in place.

Iran is the Light of Hope when it comes to HIV AIDS prevention and treatment in the context of the Islamic world. In fact their program is so effective, that their model is set to be exported to the rest of the Islamic world.

"The main attitude in the region is that HIV is a Western disease; so we don't get HIV. So when we broke the silence of denial in Iran and we [successfully got] the support of the religious leaders, we could motivate other countries in the region."

-Aresh Alaei, co-founder of Iran's successful HIV/AIDS prevention program.

Suburbia, Real Estate and Realtor Rant

2007-04-18T06:39:00.000-05:00

Colorful and Alive vs. Brown and Dead?????

Alhumdulillah we've been approved and we're looking for houses now. Trying to stay in my son's school district but that simply may not happen. We haven't found any houses we like! Suburbia in Union Kentucky should really be called "Subversive-to-you"...because everything about it seems like it's trying to stomp out every last ounce anyone has left of individuality, creativity, or soul!

These are all new houses, but I simpy cannot call them "homes". They are cheaply built barns with holes cut in them for windows on a couple of sides (only 2 sides of the houses have windows! I NEED SUNLIGHT!), with a quickly slapped on veneer in front to give you the illusiuon of luxury - the brick or stone you see from the front is actually just a veneer, the sides and back of the houses are all cheap vinyl. It's common to see the vinyl on these homes actually bowing! I've seen it so many times in the last couple of days it's sickening. These are new houses, dang what a rip off! And the sad thing is that folks are paying $200,000 and up to live in these shacks!

All of the houses are shades of grey. Apparently this was intentional. I am assuming the builder and/or the home association decided this because they think it will foster better resale values? However I beg to differ. I understand not allowing boats and campers in the front yard...but mandating that every house be a shade of GREY or BROWN? C'mon! That is pure nonsense. Houses in the most expensive markets in the United States, like around Santa Cruz, CA, are full of colour, inside and out.

They either have a small concentration-camp yard, with no basement, or NO YARD and a "finished basement", (which really isn't a basement).. it's really a first level that is halfway burmed! Now correct me if I sound insane, but isn't a basement supposed to be totally underground on all four sides, with a little bit of the top sticking out with little crawl-through windows?

Another thing we despise about these neighborhoods is that the builders, in their money-making house-building stupor, have clear-cut all of the trees that were there to build these houses as well, so there are literally NO trees...and there is not really any landscaping to speak of.

It seems like people in these neighborhoods don't do any yardwork, it's all hired out to these "lawncare" men who come once a week and quickly mow down everything in their yards once a week in a mad money-making flurry. OMG, when did this happen? Since when was it legitimate for grown men to charge tons of money to do the job of an 11-year old boy, who should do it for five bucks?

Could someone please tell me how this insanity has happened????? And why people are willing to pay $200,000+ for no individuality, creativity or soul?

Building our Dream

2007-04-11T08:26:00.000-05:00

If you want your dream to be

Build it slow and surely.

Small beginnings, greater ends.

Heartfelt work grows purely.
If you want to live life free,

Take your time, go slowly.

Do few things, but do them well.

Simple joys are holy.
Day by day, stone by stone,

Build your secret slowly.

Day by day, you'll grow, too,

You'll know heaven's glory.
Lyrics and music by Donovan

I have this song continually playing in my mind lately. It's encouraging, no matter how cheesy! It's from the movie Brother Sun, Sister Moon, a film about Saint Francis of Asissi.

Just trying to remain calm in the midst of all of the "first-time-homebuyer" stress. Alhumdulillah, it looks promising for getting the fixed-rate mortgage. Apparently credit unions around here are fairly impotent regarding who they can lend to. So, our realtor seems to have hooked us up with some good avenues for our lending.

Inshallah kher. I'll keep y'all posted as things develop.

On a very happy note, I'm excited to announce that my sister, Brandy, is *finally engaged! She's waited for this for a long, long time, and I'm so excited for her! I'm a reunited adoptee, I found my birthfamilies (yes, both the mother and father sides!) in 2003! Yay! What a joy, to see my long-lost-sister getting engaged. I *never thought I would be able to have this opportunity!

Happiness!

In tears

2007-04-05T19:41:00.000-05:00

I am really in tears today.

We were not accepted on our mortgage pre-approval application for a 30-year fixed at CINCO.

I am devastated.

Is there anything good going to happen to us living here in Cincinnati?

My husband's job SUCKS. He is more depressed than I think I have ever seen him.

And now this.

We were *so hoping to get out of this daggone expensive rental we're in, and buy and get some equity going and move into a neighborhood of muslims where we have friends.....

If it's any consolation for myself, I don't like at all the way the mortgage broker at CINCO dealt with me. He wasn't "user friendly" shall we say. The folks down in FL at our old credit union when we were thinking of applying for a mortgage 3 years ago were SO MUCH MORE HELPFUL. They gave us this hudge packet of stuff with a checklist on "how to qualify" etc.

Granted, we are 6 years out of a bankruptcy, but we have absolutely NO DEBT, alhumdulillah and don't EVER plan on getting HARAM credit cards again, thank you very much!

CINCO approved us for a $15,000 auto loan last fall, so we thought a mortgage would be no biggie.

This guy just jotted my husband's TIN and employer's name and took one paystubb of his from me, halas that was it. Apparently the 8 months of work history was what did it. (they want 2 years). NEVERMIND that I have a work history from Qatar, he didn't want my tax papers or anything from me. They totally refused to judge us collectively, as a family unit. My hubby has to be the one the mortgage's name is in apparently b/c in the United States of America I mean jack @#$#^ because I don't have a paid job (I'm a stay-home mom). My husband took 2 years off while we were in Qatar so I could work and he could be a house husband, and this is what we get? How completely ANTI-FAMILY.

Man, as I replay this mortgage broker's actions in my mind I can't help but think that he really wasn't trying to help me get approved. He seemed quite "old school". And perhaps the fact that I was wearing a scarf on my head didn't help him relate to me very much????

Freakin' racist Cincinnati!

Why "revert" not "convert"

2007-04-03T07:51:00.000-05:00

People who formally profess to embrace islam, such as myself, commonly refer to ourselves as "reverts" not "converts.

This is because being one who is in the state of self-submission to the higher power (which is the definition of "muslim"), one who embraces islam, means that we are embracing what we call in arabic the "din-al-fitra". This translates to the "natural faith," meaning that we are in the original state as humans that God created us in.

The word "convert" is contrary to what happens when a soul consciously acknowedges that it is muslim; we aren't changing ourselves into another form (converting) - converting impies that when embracing a religion one is changing into another form, something that doesn't come naturally to the human being... when we formally embrace islam, we are going back to the way we were when we were born on this earth, completely sinless and in perfect relationship with the Creator.

Yes, that's right. There is no concept of original sin in Islam. This is consistent with our brothers and sisters in Judaism, but not with our brothers and sisters in Christianity.

Now I know this isn't the posted topic of this blog entry, but ....

How can Christianity make sense on this premise?

Jesus (Yeshua/'Isaa) was a Jew
He practiced Judaism
Judaism doesn't and never has held the idea of original sin in it's theology

YET "Christianity" as we know it today=

the idea that all of humanity cannot attain salvation without accepting Jesus Christ as it's lord and saviour. He wasn't God, he was the Son of God, who turned his son into a man and willfully allowed people to murdur him by crucifixion, but after three days of being dead, God, (the Father), raised his Son from the dead, to atone for the sins of all of mankind, which all of humanity is born with as babies by the stain of the sins of Adam.

May I humbly point out that Jews also strictly did not believe in Polytheism - they believed at the time of Jesus just as they do now in the oneness of God, just as islam teaches.

How can this possibly be the logical conclusion to Judaism?????

It just doesn't fit.

This is one of many of the early signs that led me to seek God, to think outside the box I was put into, and ultimatley led me to the din-al-fitra.

The Islamic Bill of Rights for Women in Mosques

2007-03-30T14:48:00.000-05:00

The Islamic Bill of Rights for Women in Mosques

Asra Nomani's ten principles of equality for women in mosques
By Asra Q. Nomani

1. Women have an Islamic right to enter a mosque.

2. Women have an Islamic right to enter through the main door.

3.Women have an Islamic right to visual and auditory access to the musalla (the main sanctuary).

4. Women have an Islamic right to pray in the musalla without being separated by a barrier, including in the front and in mixed-gender congregational lines.

5. Women have an Islamic right to address any and all members of the congregation.

6. Women have an Islamic right to hold leadership positions, including positions as prayer leaders and as members of the board of directors and management committees.

7. Women have an Islamic right to be full participants in all congregational activities.

8. Women have an Islamic right to lead and participate in meetings, study sessions, and other community activities without being separated by a barrier.

9. Women have an Islamic right to be greeted and addressed cordially.

10. Women have an Islamic right to receive respectful treatment and exemption from gossip and slander.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oh Allah, I pray to live to see the time when Mecca is not the only place on this earth where women have these rights in your House of Worship.
Ameen.

Rejection

2007-03-26T15:29:00.000-05:00

There's one thing this stage hog hates, and that's rejection/loss of attention. I think I was born on the stage, in the "limelight".

The "Muslimah" book ( a project that recently called for essays on what it's like being muslim in America) doesn't want to hear from any reverts. Although I understand their reasons, I am still tantruming and stomping my feet.

Must_have_attention_NOW!

WHAAAAAH.

How totally un-sufi like of me.

Ok I'll be better soon.

Bye bye. I have to go cry and eat a half gallon of ice cream while I pout this out of me.

United States, Saudi Arabia and Gender Equality

2007-03-23T16:07:00.000-05:00

I just read the World Economic Forum's report on the Gendergap.

The United States comes in a sad 23rd overall, with countries like Sri Lanka(13th), and Spain(11th) placing well above us.

It's time Americans wake up and smell the hudge lie we've been told; it's an outright myth that America is the Land of Equality for women!

The report touches on the "glass ceiling" for American women in the workplace, and that working mothers, if they're lucky, get 12 weeks of UNPAID maternity leave. In America it truly is have a family vs. have a career.

Compare that to 2 years paid maternity leave in Sweden!

I had my third child while living in Qatar. I not only had 40 days paid maternity leave, I also had one full year (beginning the day I returned to work after maternity leave) of "mother's hours".....a 2 hour leave daily from work, with the idea that the woman can return home for 2 hours and nurse the baby. I was allowed to take those 2 hours at any time I asked for them. Qatari nationals had 2 years of mother's hours.

On another note, not so unexpectedly, Saudi Arabia and Yemen placed last in the Gender Gap study for the their region (the Middle East) as well as overall, in a list of 115 countries worldwide!

Kuwait was the highest-ranking Arab country (from a total of 10 countries included in the survey).

I am sad that Qatar wasn't included in the forum, but perhaps they just don't have enough statistical data to be included. I noticed while living there that many types of data simply aren't being recorded, espeically with regards to healthcare.

...But don't get me started on that one....Alas, that's another post for another day!

He didn't ride a donkey, he rode an Apotosaurus!

2007-03-20T06:33:00.000-05:00

WTF?

Couresy of Conservapedia, which is the brainless alternative to Wikipedia.

I'm sorry, but you've got to have the IQ of a ROCK to believe that this Creationsit stuff is actually credible.

I am soo so scared of this movement, which apparenlty has it's epicenter right here in Northern Kentucky! What do you think, dear readers? Hey, don't let my bias be your bias! It's obvious how I feel...

Should we abandon all reason and embrace a literal view regarding the scriptures? Is the bible a spiritual guide which can lead you to a deep and meaningful personal relationship with God, through parables, analogies, poetry, etc. or is the bible merely a work of history? Tell me what you think!

Comments Welcome Good or Bad

2007-03-13T07:37:00.000-05:00

Hey where are all of the readers' comments?

I'm gettin' squirly waiting for comments from the 39+ people I KNOW are out there reading this blog!

Say it loud, say it proud!

Whatever you think after you read my blog or the CiN Weekly article, I'd love to hear it whatever it may be.

I've already had a private email from a concerned friend - she saw in the pic the dolls behind me and was worried those were statues of Angles - haram (religiously forbidden) items. I assured her, they are in fact not angels, are ARE faceless...in case any one is wondering.

She also said a lot of sisters she passed the article on to in Qatar are reacting negatively (whatever that may mean) but I have no idea what they are thinking because they are not making comments here there or anywhere, wah.

Making Headlines

2007-03-09T07:52:00.000-05:00

*photo courtesy of CiN WEEKLY

Rockin' Hejabi is making headlines.

No Mexican Trucks

2007-03-06T12:13:00.000-05:00

Apparently the Butler County Sheriff has been sending invoices to the United States government, and most recently to the Mexican government, for expenses his department has incurred while policing illegal (Mexican) drug trafficers in Butler county.

Well, look out Sheriff Rick Jones! Because about a week ago the Federal Department of Transportation approved a program that will allow Mexican truckers from Mexico to cross American borders and deliver goods in the United States! Yes, that's right! Mexican drivers, employed by over 100 Mexican trucking firms, will be driving 18-wheelers on American interstates with you and your family as you travel!

What the H#$^& is the Bush administration thinking? Not only does this export good jobs that hard-working Americans have (well, soon - to-be-had) and need, and it undercuts American trucking companies, it also is extremely unsafe! Who says these truckers will stick to the same safety standards as American truckers must? ...And what will be stopping them from smuggling more drugs, people, etc.? There is no way that American border patrol could possibly thoroughly screen ALL of the trucks that will be coming in from Mexico.

According to the Washington Post,

Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen, said inspections will be meaningless because the trucks won't have black boxes that record how long a driver has been behind the wheel.
"They have no way of telling how many hours these truck drivers have been driving before they get to the U.S., let alone when they get here," Claybrook said.

The following exerpt is from here;

Just two years ago, the Department of Transportation Inspector General confirmed that the Mexican government and Mexican motor carriers were not meeting congressionally mandated requirements. Another Inspector General audit report is due in the next couple of months, raising serious questions as to why President Bush is pushing this experimental program now.
Given the Bush administration’s track record on the truth, and the Mexican government’s history of corruption — and both governments’ recent history of labor relations — you surely understand why every American should be dubious of this idea.
What about national security? Will the drivers be checked against the terror watch list or will our borders be open to anyone with a Mexican driver’s license? Will the drivers be required to carry a Mexican passport, as U.S. citizens are required to present their passports when entering the country from Mexico or Canada? Would the trucks and trailers be scanned for weapons of mass destruction? The DOT is unable to say how many trucks will be participating in the experiment or whether there will be a system in place to differentiate between those trucks traveling within the 20-mile NAFTA commercial zones currently in place and those permitted to travel throughout the U.S.
What about hours-of-service regulations? Will these rules be applied to drivers in Mexico? How would we know how many hours drivers have worked before crossing our border?
And what about truck maintenance and safety? The DOT asserts that U.S. officials in Mexico will inspect all U.S.-bound trucks in Mexico. How would that affect inspections of shoddy trucking companies in the United States?

Yesp, get ready Sheriff! You're going to have a lot more work on your hands!

Dear readers, if you are outraged by the Bush Administration's plan to allow Mexican truckers to cross over our borders, then take action here.

We make plans but God knows best

2007-02-25T09:06:00.000-05:00

Have you ever read a verse of scripture over and over and thought you really knew what it meant, then something happened to you later that made you realize it's true meaning?

That's what happened to me recently, regarding the following verse of the Qa'ran;

33:59 (PICKTHAL:)

O Prophet! Tell thy wives and thy daughters and the women of the believers to draw their cloaks close round them (when they go abroad). That will be better, so that they may be recognised and not annoyed. Allah is ever Forgiving, Merciful.

This verse always seemed bizarre to me. Well, I guess I didn't really comprehend what it meant to "be recognised and not annoyed", or why this would be a good idea.

Most of the time as a muslim in America I've been terrified to "be recognised".

I always assumed that being recognised in the context of post-911 America would be a VERY BAD and dangerous thing.

So, since returing to my homeland last July, I chose not to don the muslim headscarf, and maintained modest dress otherwise.

We scheme and plan, but Allah knows best!

It all started when my neighbor, whom I met in passing in the parking lot a few times, asked me and my kids over for a play date.

Starving for friendship and yearning for the seemingly constant socializing I was involved with while in Qatar, I was elated that she invited us over.

It was really fun, the kids had a blast playing, and my neighbor and I really hit it off. She's in the healthcare profession and we have a lot in common that way, she even has given me some very sound leads on jobs. She is also athletic/works out ( she's a runner), aspires to being a stay-home mom, and we agree on matters that have religious overtones. For instance, we both dislike the "new" Disney because the stories focus too heavily on evil (why all the evil? Why can't there just be good guys?), and she and her husband don't watch television (thus the kids don't either).

However things became extremely awkward for me when one of her questions came out of left field and slugged me in the jaw. We were actually discussing childbirth when out of nowhere she suddenly asked me "So what church do you go to?"... Pangs of terror! What did she say? Well, I was stunned beyound belief. How was I supposed to just pop out and say, uh, we're muslim? She had let on earlier in the conversation that they were Baptist. AND not just Baptist, Southern Baptist! So, I just tried to start with the story of how I became catholic in college.... "Well, I was raised Methodist, and then converted to Catholic in College...." then she cuts me off and changes the subject again!

Oh cripe! I WASN'T FINISHED! THERE'S MORE! I was screaming inside my head....but couldn't continue. It was just too.....aggressive. Who just blurts out "So what church do you go to?" ....That's not a first playdate question! How could she just assume I even go to CHURCH? ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

I went home and told my husband what had happened. That essentially I hadn't told this girl the truth. He was really reassuring and felt she had been way too aggressive. She's baptist, Nur, he said. She'd be on a witch hunt if she found out you were muslim anyways. Remeber the Baptists you knew in Florida?

The Baptists in Florida. Goodness, how could I forget? I was taking a class at our local community college. Once a group of them in my class found out I was an Amerian who'd converted to Islam, they wouldn't leave me alone. They hounded me every class with this extremely false literature their church had created. It was about muslim women like me who'd married muslim men and "forced to wear the oppressive islamic dress", and were all subsequently beaten, kidnapped, and blackmailed under threat of never seeing their children again if they didn't do as their terrible muslim husbands said. Then they "found Jesus", were freed from the "oppression" they'd endured wearing the hejab, and everything was hunky dorey.

GOD, what kind of insane propaganda was this thing based on, that Sally Field movie Not Without My Daughter??????

So that had been my previous experience as a Muslimah with the Baptists. What should I expect with this neighbor?

That verse from the Qa'ran immediately popped into my head due to this incident. Recognized and not annoyed. Man, now it all makes sense, I thought. If I had been wearing the hejab, everything would have been clear to my neighbor. I wouldn't have been put on the spot in quite the same extreme way. She still could have asked about why I cover my hair...but it would have been a LOT less awkward than me sitting there with no overt signs that I'm muslim and getting asked what church I go to!

So it now is clear to me that God wants me to wear hejab. I've been mohejabiyya for about 2 weeks now and it's going very well. I've had to make minor alterations to what I wear to the Y to excercise but it really hasn't been too big of a change. I find that the Al Amira hejab are best for working out in, as they don't slip or flip up (and expose what I'm trying to cover!) while doing aerobics, in spinning class, or lifting weights.

Subhanallah and Allahu Alim.

Rumi poem

2007-02-23T04:13:00.000-05:00

There is a passion in me that doesn't long for anything fromanother human being.

I was given something else, a cap to wear in both worlds.

It fell off.

No matter.

One morning I went to a place beyond dawn, a source of sweetnessthat flows and is never less.

I have been shown a beauty that would confuse both worlds,but I won't cause that uproar.

I am nothing but a head set on the ground as a gift for Shams.

Mevlana, Jelaluddin Rumi

Eyvallah, Huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!

Qataris; Don't miss this performance!

2007-02-21T08:27:00.000-05:00

Don't miss the performance of the Julliard Jazz Orchestra at Qatar National Theater, March 4 and 5!

This performance is part of Georgetown University Qatar's American Arts Festival 2007 in Doha.

To read more and find out how to get tickets click here.

Hejabi in the Heartland

2007-02-19T09:25:00.000-05:00

I've created a new blog, Hejabi in the Heartland.

All of my (previous) and future posts regarding Cincinnati are/will be there.

I'll keep my personal posts and posts on other issues here on Rockin' Hejabi.

Peace!

Weight bearing exercise, bone density and calcium intake

2007-02-14T07:29:00.000-05:00

I just did some research on this subject. I have been taking an inhaled corticosteroid (symbicort) now for about a year for my asthma. It got exceptionally worse while I was in Qatar. We were exploring a ruined village just north of Landmark mall (maybe 10 miles?) and I went inside one of the dwellings, only to emerge having the worse asthma attack of my entire life.
So, obviously I ended up being ok, after a trip to the emergency room! They put me on this daily regiment of the inhaled corticosteroid.
Now after being back in the States for a little over six months I've noticed my allergies are not as bad. Maybe because we left the (outdoor) cat in Qatar.
So, I've decided to slowly wean myself off the corticosteroid inhaler, for the sake of my bone density. There is so much information out there regarding corticosteroids. Most of it says that inhaled versions of the drug are much less damaging to bone density than oral versions, thank god.
Nevertheless I know I probably have suffered some degree of depletion of my bone density, so I want to now be sure to do everything I can to build my bone density back up.
We all have heard in the USA a million times about how women should be sure to "get enough calcium", etc. and so forth. BUT there are a few facts that should simultaneously accompany that one.
1.Caffeine intake can aversely effect your body's ability to use any calcium you ingest.
2.Carbonated beverages totally prohibit (HELLO DIET SODA DRINKERS!) your body from being able to build bone stores from calcium, no matter how much calcium you ingest!
3.You can't build bone no matter how much calcium you ingest unless you also engage in WEIGHT-BEARING EXERCISE! Weight training increases bone density, along with balance skills and agility.

"Weight lifting, including curls and bench presses, is a beneficial activity … Dancing, stair-climbing and brisk walking are all weight-bearing exercises, which promote (good) mechanical stress in the skeletal system, contributing to the placement of calcium in bones. "

See this excellent article for more complete information.

Hello, How are you? Ahlan Ezayik, Shams from Kuwait

2007-02-08T09:56:00.000-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpKL5EVpTlU

Shams, a singer from Kuwait, offers up a great performance criticizing the Bush Regime.

You don't really have to understand Arabic to know the basics of what she's saying.... although an English version would be great!

In the end she walks into the sunset wearing a bridal gown alongside a cartoon character affiliated with the Palestinian resistance to the occupation... ie Kuwait is in solidarity with the Palestinians, against the US.

I guess this means The Bush Regime has lost the support of Kuwait too. What screw-ups!

Clutter

2007-02-08T07:51:00.000-05:00

Toys.... ...The kids' "walk-in" closet...
Laundry....
I think I'll just run away to the Y and work out!

How much worse will this look if I get a job outside my home?

It's the Haves vs. the Have-Nots at Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal

2007-01-30T09:43:00.000-05:00

The Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal is an amazing educational and family resource. Home to the Cincinnati History Museum, Cincinnati Children's Museum, an Imax Theater, and the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History and Science, along with periodic special exhibits (right now it's TITANIC ARTIFACTS), this place is certainly the public educational resource gem of the city! It used to be the city's train terminal. It was created in the 1930's art deco architectural style and is wonderful just to observe. There are lovely mosaics like the one pictured above throughout the lobby.

Now I happen to be lucky enough to have a family pass to this place (compliments of our employer). To someone out on the economy that would cost $99! Impossible for a lot of Cincinnati's families. Anyhoo, so since I am PRIVILEGED enough to have this pass I go there frequently, about 3x/month. I usually go to the Children's Museum, then we head to the Natural History Museum for the second half of our trip.

The Children's Museum is chock full of activities for small children; an amazing water play area (above); a ball room (above) where the children must use a series of ropes and pulleys and chutes to send the balls to this giant hopper in the ceiling. When it gets full, then an alarm rings and it dumps them all onto the kids! There is a toddler-only area (4 and under) that's fenced off and the preschoolers and babies can play in a sand box, or climb and run and jump on an indoor playground, there are fine-motor games, a dress up tree house with clothes to put on, a couple of different felt boards, and a "parents resource room" where a parent can go in with his/her child to unwind. There is a TON of reading materials in there along with a copy machine! There is a couch, the windows are curtained off, and a sign that says to feel free to close the door and turn off the lights and nap if you want to! How awesome! I'm not nursing a small baby anymore, but it's the perfect place for a tired nursing mom and baby to curl up for a half hour break from the hustle and bustle. Something like this totally can make a hell day out with the baby turn into a great day! "The Farm" also has a musical section, a Lego section, and a ball-rolling track. There are also several other sections in the children's museum but they are too numerous to write about them all. The Woods is the other highlight I guess. This is an indoor playground, which looks like a series of tree houses and tunnels!

The Natural History Museum's big attraction for my family is it's Ice Age exhibit, in particular, the "Ice Cave"/glacier exhibit with all of the statues of the Ice Age animals. My 7-year-old is obsessed with the last Ice Age so this is perfect for him. You can actually walk through this ice cave, and it really looks like you're walking through ice. There is running water and everything! Like every section of this museum, it's really interactive. There are tons of little cards for children to flip and discover facts about the ice age animals. This area really is perfect for 1st graders like my son.

Every time we go on our trip (which like I said is at least 3x/month) I see school buses full of kids coming on school-sponsored field trips. There's a big problem I see with this. I only see white kids at the museum center. NEVER have I seen a bus load full of little black school children!

Isn't Cincinnati a mostly black city? Why aren't there bus loads of black school children coming to the museum center every time I go? Why are there only bus loads full of white school children?

This museum is so incredibly fabulous and the kids who need it the most aren't even given proper access.

Walla, the only time I have seen more than a handful of black citizens in this place was on MLK Day when they had various artisans selling their works in the lobby!

I lived in the Tampa bay area of Florida for 7 years. Now Tampa is a city that is 1/3 white, 1/3 black, and 1/3 Hispanic. We frequented the zoo and the aquarium. There were always bus loads of Hispanic kids, bus loads of black kids, bus loads of white kids, bus loads of everybody coming to these great public educational resources!

Why isn't this happening here in Cincinnati?

Are black children (Cincinnati's "have-nots") so "scary" that their mere presence en masse could cause all of the white patrons (the "have's") not to renew their $99 passes?

There is something severely wrong with what I am seeing.

It is outrageous.

And tragic.

A Snowy Day

2007-01-21T10:17:00.000-05:00

Shockwaves

2007-01-17T15:47:00.000-05:00

I am really struggling to adapt lately.

I keep thinking I can just snap back into the person I was before I went to Qatar; I still can't find her; she's gone. There's only shadows and a faint memory of her existence that remain.

Can you believe that I don't even know my own name?

There are people to whom I have told one name (my muslim name), then the other(old American name). They must think I'm completley whacked. Maybe I am!

Not American, not Arabic, something else entirely.

My good friend called today from Qatar and we talked for a good half hour. It was great.

I miss that damn place!..but am simultaneously glad we came back....

Paranoid Control Freaks

2007-01-14T07:42:00.000-05:00

I have to say that one of the most challenging, and strangely self-transformative aspects of living in Qatar was the extreme polar opposite in parenting style there. We lived in a compound with approximately 30 families, almost all of whom had at least 2 children or more. There were only 3-4 households that weren’t Arabic families, with the majority of the families being Egyptian.

Since it was inhumanely hot outside, (I’m presuming this was the reason), the children didn’t come outside to play until after sunset. On a weekend night, they came out en masse by 8 or 9pm, and usually were playing out there until 11+pm; a totally taboo thing for Americans. At first, this was insane to me. I was putting my kids to bed while the rest of the neighborhood kids were raising holy $#!$ outside our window! It was common to see 2 and 3 year olds accompanied only by a slightly older sibling, usually a sister, and never (ok maybe 1x or twice in 2 years I saw a parent) was there a parent or “responsible adult” outside with these kids.

So many thoughts came to mind; How irresponsible, how negligent these parents are! This is savagery! How uncivilized and what an utter abomination! These kids are so deprived, they aren’t learning that their actions have consequences because a responsible adult isn’t here coaching them and proctoring them when they’re wrong! How sad!

After quite a few visits with ladies that lived outside my compound, and observing my son in his non-Western school, I soon realized that this was not specific to my compound’s environment, but in general a cultural thing for that part of the world.

I really struggled with this issue the whole time I was in Doha. I never really got used to it. After all, the behavior of the kids in our compound seemed like Lord of the Flies to me; a lot of property was destroyed in the compound by those kids and nobody enforced any consequences on them for any of it. Graffitti was all over the outside wall of the compound; a bench on the playground was melted by our neighborhood’s teenage pyromaniac; as well as the destruction of some of my childrens’ toys. The final straw for me was when they murdered our cat out of jealousy.

I’ve been back in America for 6 months now. For a while, even up until a couple of months ago, I basked in the glory of what seemed like the apparent supremecy of our fabulous American parenting style. It was great this summer to be in Disney in Orlando and actually see kids taking turns and not pushing and shoving each other. While playing on the playground in one area, they actually lined up to use the rope-swing, totally un-prompted to do so by any adults who were standing by! How fabulous, I thought! We Americans are really civilized and the third world are all still such heathens. My Ego basked in it’s all-too-Nationalistic glory at the wonder of it all.

Well, I’m emerging from my nationalistic delusion and I think I am seeing the hard cold reality of this place.

We are paranoid control freaks. We are so fearful of each other, our community, and what comes naturally to us and to our children that we have as a society become so distrustful and fearful that we are in fact evil.

I’m sure most folks have heard that American children spend too much time in front of the TV, computer, and video games. This is making them more obese, etc. I totally believe that this is partly because these electronic wonders are so compelling, but mostly because American parents are such goddamn control freaks, who are unrealistically afraid of letting them just run around outside and play! Play with EACH OTHER! For goodness’ sakes, go knock on the neighbor kid’s door and ask ‘em to come OUT and play!

Our nation is collectively brainwashed by too many crime shows on television and the corporate media’s mass delusion of fear that screams it’s absolutely unsafe for kids to play outside- that pedophiles, murderers and psychos are everywhere – and the kids will surely meet their untimely demise unless mom and/or dad or a “responsible adult” (well I say poppycock!) is hovering nastily over them. For instance, my neighbor won’t let her son come over to our house unless SHE comes too! He’s NINE for the love of God!!!! And I’m here, as well as my husband!

Omigawd, maybe I look like an axe-murderer!

Anyways…

American children are also over-programmed, overscheduled, and on their way to burnout at an astoundingly young age. Many children are so programmed (ie used to the activity coming from the outside; watching the TV, protocols on the computer, going to lessons where the teacher or coach tells them what to do next etc.) that they are losing the ability to be self-directed in their play; they actually NEED someone or something to “tell them what to do now”???

Apparently this idea is becoming institutionalized. Check out this link on the new playground systems just installed in NYC, which is also apparently “all the rage” in Japan and in Europe.

Take back our lifestyles!

I think the first thing we need to do is turn off the g$#@!d$$#@ TV. I affectionately call it the “eye of Mordor” around my household!

Secondly, we need to get our kids outside. Check out this article. So eloquently written!

Children don’t need fancy - schmancy Leap pad learning systems to stimulate their brains; they need nature! I remember when I was a kid, I could play for hours, even by myself (I was an only child) in our woods. I would make mud pies, leaf stews, play in our creek and mold a million different things from the natural blue clay, and I had secret hide-outs in certain areas of the forest. It was a kids’ utopia!

I am hoping and praying that we can buy a spot of land along with our house this spring, in a rural location. I really struggle with how to raise my kids in the suburbs. We could have goats, they could take care of them. I think that taking care of farm animals is a really meaningful life experience for kids. They can play in the woods, and do the things they were born to do instead of try to cope with living in this un-natural environment of the suburbs.

What has happened to America?

My husband says that when he as a kid, there were packs of kids that roamed and ruled his neighborhood. Where is that here?

I saw it still alive and happening in Qatar. Although it was a bit over-done (I certainly am not condoning letting kids kill each other’s pets and destroy property), it seems like the Arabic culture is a lot closer to the natural state of the human being than we are.

Cincinnati Public Schools; More Evidence of a City With No Vision

2007-01-09T14:14:00.000-05:00

I have been trying to define the perimeters of the Covedale Elementary School district in Cincinnati. We love the German-style half-timbered architecture, the neighborhood of Covedale seems quaint, there are children playing outside (gasp! Am I still in America?). The fact that most house prices are what we want to pay, in the low 100's, also makes this area seem appealing.

It seems like a war zone so to speak though, with Price Hill and Carson school district, which The State of Ohio has declared an ACADEMIC EMERGENCY, being just one neighborhood over! I also think the commercial district all along Glenway Avenue is a bit of an eyesore, and there were a few "unmentionables" along the street, not too family-friendly.

We are also apprehensive about moving to this area because it's hard to assess if Covedale is on it's way down, in maintenance, or on it's way up towards urban gentrification.

Covedale's school ratings are however very good, whereas the CPS district overall is rated very badly, with what we consider to be the kiss of death of for a school district, the "Continuous Improvement" (click here to look up any school district in the state of OHIO) rating.

I emailed the Cincinnati Public Schools customer help desk, and told them my story; that we are potential homebuyers in the city of Cincinnati, and if in fact we do decide this spring to buy in the city of Cincinnati proper, it would be in the Covedale Elementary school district. I asked them to please tell me the precise boundaries of the school district, so that we can buy inside of it if we decide this is the neighborhood for us.

This was their response;

Thank you for your email. Unfortunately we are unable to comply with your request in the manner specified. In the CPS district, not only are streets taken into consideration, but house number as well. For instance, two people living right next to each other could be assigned to different schools. If you have a list of streets and address you would like for us to confirm for you, we would be happy to help. If you would like to speak to someone please call: 513-363-0123, or simply put the street and addresses in an email and we will be happy to respond.
Thank you
Cincinnati Public Schools
Customer Help Center
(513) 363-0123

What insanity! This is utter nonsense! Hogwash and poppycock!

How is anyone ever going to move back into this city?

This is certainly not attracting me, or anyone else for that matter, to want to live in the city limits of Cincinnati.

With something like 11 households per day moving out of the city, and the lowest citizen-to-homeowner ratio of any city in the United States (I can't remember where I read this! I'll look for the citation), I would think everyone working for the city, CPS employees included, would be doing everything possible to attract folks back!

You know, the school reports are listed as public information for a reason; because potential citizens, like us, who are considering moving into a particular area, want to move to the areas with good schools, and not to areas with poorly performing schools.

Isn't this some sort of withholding of what should be public information? Aren't they breaking some sort of law by not giving me this information?

Spoiled rotten girl stomps feet and screams for her candy that she deserves.

The Whistleblower seems to confirm my recent sad conclusions. He had a lovely limerick regarding the mass exodus from Cincinnati;

Here's why everyone's leaving the city, And here's the whole nitty gritty: It's the streets full of grime, And just loaded with crime, From a clown-cil that evokes only pity. Here's why everyone's leaving the city, You don't need a fact-finding committee; Misunderstood urban yoof, Keep raising the roof, Thugs and drugs made the 'Natti un-pretty. Here's why everyone's leaving the city, All the bureaucrats have their hands in the kitty. When a drive-by re-appraisal, Leaves only scraps on your table, What you have left is just itty-bitty.

Muslim Headscarf ("Hijab") and Awakening Presence

2007-01-08T08:26:00.000-05:00

This is a recent diary entry I made on Street Prophets;

My husband and I are both converts to Islam. We lived abroad in Doha, Qatar for 2 years, and recently returned to the USA. After wearing the hijab (muslim headscarf, and modest clothing) for over 2 years (2004-2006) while living in Qatar, I decided to not wear it in America. I wore it on-again-off-again since my shahada (when I formally accepted Islam) in 2000, but I stopped wearing it publicly after September 11th ’01, because of the increase in hatred towards muslims, but more importantly because I had realized at the time that one of my Ego’s favorite things is to stand out in the crowd, to be different, to rock the boat etc. I decided that it was best for me to try and fit in to the dominant culture, which I did in America by not wearing a headscarf, and I did in Qatar by wearing the headscarf (and in both places by wearing clothing over my body that is modest).

We moved back to the states last July, and we are living in proximal vicinity to my parents for the first time since I left home for college in 1992. I was raised here in Ohio, the bible belt, in the United Methodist Church. My mother is a devout Presbyterian these days, an elder to the church and heavily involved.

I realized in 2003 that another part of me desperately wants to please my mother; I have a deep-seated, subconscious fear of rejection that at times can drive me to act totally unlike the person I really am. I have been known to do things like what my husband refers to as “the teacher dress incident”, the time I wore what I truly believe to be a ridiculously juvenile dress, which was covered with nursery-school ABC’s in applique, as an adult woman, just because it would make my mother “happy”.

Nowadays, I know that my mother definitely loathes the idea of me wearing anything that would make me look like a scary muslim (“foreigner”), and I am sure that my subconscious is terrified that her reaction will be the ultimate and final severance of our relationship.

Well, recently I tried an experiment; I wore hijab out in public, in West Chester,Ohio, for the first time since returning to the USA. My parents had left the day before for their winter lodging in Florida(6 months), so I figured it was safe to “come out of my shell”. I went to congregational Friday prayer at the mosque, then took my kids to Chick-Fil-A to eat and let them run around in the play area. I was pretty freaked out/cautious about how people would respond to me (after all Cincinnati is an extremely racist area! I know because of first-hand experience with family members). I was worried that something hateful would happen towards me (or especially towards my kids) wearing the hijab, but it also made me notice a few things.

The main thing I noticed that I did not expect is that I was really hyper-vigilant about my behavior, much more so than I am in “plainclothes” so to speak. It’s like I felt like the reputation of the entire muslim community worldwide was resting on my shoulders wearing hijab in America! …As if I made one mistake, and it would reflect negatively on the whole community…. So I was careful not to scream at my children (yes hate to admit that I do this, but I am a screamer..); didn’t let myself use any cuss words ( I also cuss badly at times); I was sure to be smiling and friendly to everyone around me, even though I was feeling fearful more than anything; and I stopped myself from angrily honking and flipping off another driver who was driving dangerously in front of me on the way home!

I guess to sum it up, as terribly afraid I am to wear the hijab in America, I have to say that wearing it makes me over 100% more “present”. I am awakened in a way that nothing else can elicit; I become deeply aware of every action I am making while I wear the hijab, whether I like it or not!

Hermit Crabs

2007-01-05T19:21:00.000-05:00

Introducing ..."Princess" (held by my 2-year old....hmm let's see how ling this thing stays alive!) and "Crusher," the hermit crabs!

They are the new residents of our house!

My children, especially my 7-year-old son, have been begging me to get a pet. Well, we settled for arthropods!

They're neat little creatures, and make cute chirping noises at night when they are most active.

Crusher jumped right off my hand when this photo was finished, and started running away under our furniture! Fast little thing, but I caught him.

Brilliant point made about Saddam Hussein's Execution

2006-12-31T00:05:00.000-05:00

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/12/30/232629/25

...WTF, they made this evil monster into a martyr, out of sheer idiocy!

Dresser drawer

2006-12-22T17:33:00.000-05:00

Do-it-yourself projects

2006-12-22T17:29:00.000-05:00

What do y'all think of our deck stain on this dresser? Tried to put 2 coats on and whoops that didn't work. It came out tacky, so had to wipe it off with a rag of mineral spirits. Now this is how it looks...."rustic", is how dervish labeled it I believe!

Personally I think he should go for one more attempt at a coating of the deck stain....I'd like the colour to be more pronounced, but I can accept it like it is now, too.

I've been tagged!

2006-12-19T07:47:00.000-05:00

Salihah tagged me, so here it is - The Code: State six weird things about yourself. Then tag 6 people and leave them a comment to let them know that they’ve been tagged.

1. I was a child theater star (locally), in numerous musical theater shows including playing "Annie" in the production of Annie.

2.I am not currently actually a Hijabi! Even though my pic online is of me in Niqaab! ...and even though I adore wearing hijab.

3. I am not a "rules" personality type on the Myers-Briggs spectrum (who would've guessed?).

4.My daughter attends a Christian-sponsored preschool, even though we are in fact muslims.

5.Most of my extended family thinks we are spies , because they can't figure out why anyone in their right mind (oh I guess they think we're still sane, that's good) would go live in Qatar. My husband's side thinks we're spies for the CIA; my side thinks we're spies for Al Qaeda!

WHAT NONSENSE!

So nice to be home!

6. I believe in and practice the 5 pillars of Islam.

Racism in Cincinnati

2006-12-14T06:22:00.000-05:00

Well, we've been here now since August and my husband and I agree that this is pretty much the most racist place we've ever seen.

The racism is so obvious in people, it's sad.

A man I casually chatted with the other day while our children were playing on the same playground exhibited some prime racist statements; he was telling me about "how much better" the city of Indianapolis is for families (WTF! there's NOTHING in Indianapolis! ..Except of course, lots of WHITE people!), and about "how safe" it is there (meaning; lots of white people)and how there is so much more to do downtown Indianapolis than there is downtown Cincinnati for families (nevermind all of the great Christmas festivities on Fountain Square! They don't count because there are black people present I guess).

He then proceeded to tell me that whatever I do, not to live in the city limits of Cincinnati; that there is conflict between the police and City Council, that there aren't enough police officers to fight crime there appropriately, etc. and so forth, and that I'll definitley be better off living in a suburb or in "any town in Northern Kentucky" because each city has it's own police force, own EMT's, own fire squads, etc. (of and there are only white people!) . He also made some sort of comment about how entitled blacks think they are and that whenever "they" have a problem "they" automatically blame it on the fact they are in fact black and are being discriminated against.

I quickly got myself away from this jerk.

My husband says that the white folks at his place of employement always refer to whomever it is they are referring to not just by his or her name, but they preface their statement with "you know that black (guy/gal) named ______...." WTF? What does the somebody's skin colour or ethnic background have to do with how you identify them? Seriously, something wicked this way comes!

But it gets even more severe. There was a patient who needed to be released. She had nothing but the clothes on her back, seeing as she was admitted as an emergent case in a fire. No house keys, no car etc. Her one relative could not come to pick her up that night, but could do so the following morning. So the social worker was going to release her anyways and send her to the homeless shelter for the night! Outlandish! Luckily for the patient, another staff member intervened, pointing out the fact that this woman was not homeless, she had a home she just didn't have transportation until the morning. 100% chance if this patient had been white the social worker would NEVER have thought to send her to the homeless shelter for the night! But she was black...when probed as to why on earth this would be an appropriate decision, the social worker replied that she "does this all of the time," . Whoa!

I wasn't here for the riots 5 years ago, but apparenlty that set off a serious case of "white flight" from the city limits. Apparenlty now Cincinnati has the lowest home ownership rate of any city in the country (yikes! I hope we don't become another Flint in 10 more years!), and the crime rate per 100,000 people has consistently gone up every year since the riots. The total number of murders is also on the rise, from 40 in the year 2000 up to 79 total murders in 2005.

Luckily for us, the city has set up a lot of programs to help people become homeowners. Let's pray that this year goes well for us, becoming homeowners in the City where Pigs Fly!

Terror has no Religion

2006-12-07T14:05:00.000-05:00

From a group of moderate Arabs apparently in Iraq. They have launched a big media campaign, with “Terror has no Religion” (in Arabic of course) as their slogan.

The red bleeding words at the end of the video say “Terror has no religion” in Arabic.

The Real Message; Islam is not the enemy! Idiodic terrorists (from any culture or creed) ARE!

Here is their mission statement;

Our Mission

Our mission is to expose the fallacy of the distorted and politicized Islamic teachings used by ungodly extremists to sanctify and justify terrorism.It has become crucial to inform the Muslim and Arab people -particularly the Iraqi people- about the deceptions terrorists employ in distorting the peaceful teachings of Islam. These terrorists, who claim to follow the Islamic Faith, are in truth only drowning in an abyss of mistaken beliefs.

Unaccompanied Minors

2006-12-06T13:55:00.000-05:00

We’ve got to help raise up the children of America today
Because they’re sick and it’s no accident
A Corporate display

They want to make us hungry ghosts and to kill our humanity

Our children are getting “dumb and dumber”
Cheetah girls with sex on display
The stupider the easier to control don’t you see

Corporations know the smart ones
aren’t easy to control
Filll them with desire to buy and conformity their every goal

We have become a Nation of Lust
Hail to Having Need
Hungry phantoms born by the Death of humanity

So I ask you what are we teaching our children
You know they learn by what they see
They run around and imitate everything they see on TV

Insatiable ghosts that can only want more
While losing their humanity

Well Hollywood feeds us crap that’s violent and just plain evil
Like “Unaccompanied Minors” and Harry P.
Then nobody understands how Columbine could happen And they say, “How could this come to be?”

Well there’s no place left for children to just be children
In our Society
Except to become Hungry ghosts
Shadows of humanity.

Thirsty

2006-12-03T00:31:00.000-05:00

Do not look at your own form, be it beautiful or ugly;

look at the true object of your love, and the goal of your search.

Do not look at your own state, which is feeble and vile;

look at the true object of your hopes and aspirations.

In whatever state you are, seek God.

Seek God as if your lips were dry and you were seeking water.

Dry lips are a sign that you will eventually reach a spring.

Dry lips are a message from the water:

'If you keep searching, you will find me.'

To seek is a blessed activity; it destroys the obstacles on the path to God.

If you seek, you will find.

-Rumi, "Mathnawi"

11 Things We miss most about Qatar

2006-11-26T01:31:00.000-05:00

* This list is in no particular order. 11 things came to my head, right off the bat.

1. Chai Halib -(Yellow label lipton tea made with RAINBOW milk - there's no Rainbow, or even any adequate substitute, in America!) WAAAAAH. How do immigrant Indians survive here without any Rainbow for their chai?

2. Eating at Bukhari in al Gharrafa. Man I could really use some "hummous with meat" right now!

3. Shopping in Souk Wakif.

4. Qatari Hospitality/ the whole visiting each other ritual.

5. Our Qatari and Qatari-American friends.

6. Having a maid, in particular, the actual maid we had to leave in Qatar. It was such a help even when we had a bad maid - just that extra pair of hands around the house makes things so much easier in a house where there are three kids under the age of 7; but Mariam was amazing!

7. People watching; the bizarre things we saw about people, in City Center, on the Corniche, and in other random places are unparalelled by the United States.

8. Being able to drive out into the Qatari outback. We loved to take little excursions and sight - see in the desert. It was great fun, but we especially miss finding and feeding carrots to camels!

9. Beep-beep chicken (we called it "crack chicken", because those guys reminded us of the drug dealers standing out on the street trying to lure you into their business!).

10. Going to the park (in particular, Dahl al Hammam over in al Markhiya near Landmark mall)and letting the kids play while we drink tea sitting in the grass watching them.

11. CHEAP GROCERIES! My gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawd it's criminal here back in the States how much they want for even a kilo of rice! Yeeks! It's minimum of 5x more and that's at the "cheap Indian grocery". It's 10x more than it was in Qatar for a kilo of rice at mainstream grocery stores.

Insatiable

2006-11-22T13:55:00.000-05:00

Hungry for something
Don’t know what it is
Something that fills me
That nourishes but still
Is comforting, familiar,
In this distant place
I yearn for soul food
To fill this space
That’s missing inside of me
A part of me hides
I don’t know how to find it
Or where it resides.
I roam in this desert
Content, but not filled,
I want total satiation
A life that’s distilled-
What is this hunger
that haunts me
And gnaws?
No satisfaction
From what crosses my jaws.
I should tell this hungry phantom
To leave me
To go
There’s no rhyme or reason
To it’s requests so low
That nothing sounds satisfying
Just a dull ache
In the pit of my stomache
That nightly awakes
Around 1 am
like an alarm clock
it comes
I get up
and search
The kitchen for some
Of whatever it is that I’m craving
But can’t articulate
So in the meantime I will ponder
And continue
to vascillate.

Turkish Delight

2006-11-19T20:20:00.000-05:00

Alhumdulillah, we just got back from an evening of socializing at some new friends' house.

They're a Turkish family, my hubby works with the man at the hospital, so he invited us over for tea. They were lovely people, it was great to hang out with people who are, well, Turkish!

The kids played soccer in their finished basement, now that's a beautiful thing. Of all surprizes, my 4 year old daughter kicked that soccer ball to kingdom come apparently! The two 9 year old soccer aficiandos were dazed and amazed by her aggressive kicking skills.

Girls rule! Go Ellie!

Friends

2006-11-07T08:21:00.000-05:00

Friends. I really long for company these days. When I start feeling lonely, it really hurts. I despise being lonely. I don’t really know what it will accomplish, just having another person around to talk to and hang out with, but that sounds like such comfort lately. However, I am now in America and having something as simple as a friend is almost impossible.

People here are downright crazy. Yup. Neurotic, paranoid, and reclusive. People are so antisocial! It’s always bothered me and I am now faced with it again since coming back to the states.

I myself have some of these neurotic American qualities. For instance, I absolutely cannot visit another person without it being planned. I can’t bring myself to just pop in on anyone unless I’ve been precisely invited to be there at that precise time on that precise day. Even after living within the Arabic culture for 2 years I can’t just pop in on anyone, as was commonplace there. I think a lot of potential friendships didn’t happen in Qatar because I was probably perceived as “antisocial”, oh well I just can’t do that to anyone!

So, I find myself trying to make friends – I talk to other women who happen to be my neighbors, I invite them to do things, but no friends yet. Oh and did I mention that I get discouraged easily? One or two “failures” and I lose steam and give up putting forth any effort again on anyone. I have told a couple of different women to pop in and visit with me any time – I am always around, no problem etc. – I even have given one neighbor extra vegetables on one occasion, then some extra fresh bread from a batch I baked – and she hasn’t visited me or asked me to do anything. The other neighbor I frequently see when I take my kids to my compound’s playground because she lives next to it and when her son hears my son outside, he runs out and she comes out too. We talk, it’s nice, I’d love to hang out with her more blah blah blah, I know that she like me, is also staying home and even has a toddler the same age as mine, in addition to the fact that my first grade son and her third grade son love each other.

I am just really in need of support, it’s just me and the 2 girls here all day most days except the few when my husband is off from the hospital. I have a four year old girl and an almost 2 year old toddler girl in addition to my almost 7 year old son who is in first grade.

I wonder, do other stay-home moms feel as lonely and in need of companionship as me? Or am I just psycho?

I keep trying to figure out what exacally it is that is so compelling about having someone around. I guess just someone over the age of 7 would be enlightening! Adult conversation, support, etc. just sounds so good.

I’m also thinking of joining the YMCA. They have babysitting . I can go there and work out, blow off some of this steam, get a bit of a break from the CONSTANT, NEVERENDING demands of childcare, do something healthy for my mind and body and soul. For God’s sakes I don’t even get to sleep by myself! My toddler is still nursing, bless her little heart, so I am hardly ever alone, not even for five blessed minutes in the freaking bathroom some days.

I really don’t know what these women do here for support. How do they EVER escape and have time for themselves? I have been searching high and low for a Mother’s Day Out/Parents’ Day Out, and apparently that simply doesn’t exist here! That was my lifeline in Florida. 2 hours to do whatever, 2 times a week, how glorious!

So, at this point the YMCA and maybe a MOPS (mothers of preschoolers) group is where I will start. Wish me luck!

Crescentwatch.org: Shawwal Moon Sighting - Monday, October 23rd 2006

2006-11-05T07:32:00.000-05:00

I am so glad that Sheikh Hamza is doing this. There is such a disparity in the mainstream leadership of the ummah (Islamic Community). Every year I was in Qatar, they claimed from S'audia that they had sighted the moon...when the next evening or 2 every time we would sight it in Qatar, at just a bare sliver. There was no way the S'audis could have sighted it when they said they had. It was clear that they were in fact not telling the truth.

Kudos to Sheikh Hamza.

It appears as though there is a new star, rising from the West, in California.

Mashallah!


Shawwal moon sighting video with Shaykh Hamza Yusuf

Inside, not outside

2006-11-04T07:54:00.000-05:00

We now live in what must be the exact opposite of Qatar; Florence, Kentucky, USA!

I have opted to "blend-in" here, ie, no outward (clothing) signs that I am muslim. Frankly, after living in the Gulf for 2 years, I have come to the conclusion that "hejab" is an inner condition of one's heart, it simply cannot and will not be created by what a person does or does not wear on her outside (ie clothing).

Contrary to what many of my muslimah sisters may be thinking, no, I am not afraid to wear hejab in America. After living in Arabia for 2 years, I am not at all afraid of what anyone thinks of me. It has made me a lot more bold and able to take a stand for myself, and for that I'm grateful for the experience.

I am not afraid of it, I don't believe in it. I have concluded that hejab is sunnah, not fardh (good/optional, not a "mandatory" tenet of our faith that is imperative to make one a faithful servant of God).

Frankly, I am really tired of my brothers and sisters in Islam. I fear that the Shaitan has overshadowed the entire ummah. Everyone is so concerned with outward behaviors, to the point now where how enforcing these nitpicky codes may effect our hearts is being totally overlooked.

For instance, a friend of mine who worked with me in Qatar, Paige El Wafi, recently converted. She was Catholic before she became muslim. She visited the mesjid recently here in Cincinnati. She made the small mistake of getting all the way up the stairwell to the women's section and to the threshold of their room's door before she remembered to take off her shoes. OF COURSE, they chided her when they saw what she had done!

Well, she was already feeling nervous and kind of ambivalent about her recent decision to convert. The way they treated her was very upsetting, and she was quite embarassed by her faux pax. She ended up feeling so bewildered that she left the mesjid right away, in tears.

THEY TURNED A SISTER AWAY FROM AN ACT OF WORSHIP OVER SHOES!

This is a sin, and things like this happen constantly in the community of muslims. I am sick of this crap.

Abū Hurairah said,

An Arab of the desert stood up and began urinating in the mosque. People were about to take hold of him but the Prophet, peace and blessings of Allāh be on him; said to:

"Leave him alone and throw a bucket of water over his urine,

for you have been

raised to deal with people gently and you have not been raised

to deal with them

harshly."

17 (B. 4:58.)

Clearly, we can see from the Prophet Mohamed's (PBUH) perfect example that it would be a sin to chide a new convert to Islam for forgetting to take off her shoes in the stairwell of the women's section. The Prophet (pbuh) didn't chide the man for URINATING in the MESJID! He didn't SAY A WORD! Why should brothers and sisters in Islam be constantly pointing out each other's nitpicky "mistakes", when that's not the prophet's example?

Don't people have a brain anymore?

We're muslims!

We have ISLAM!

We have the QURAN!

Where is the ijtihad?

I'm done with mainstream Islam. The focus is all wrong. It's all concentrated on outward sets of behaviors, to the extreme that the inward condition of the heart is actually damaged. This community has nothing to offer to me at this point in my path, sadly.

To all of my Shia' friends out there, your community in general doesn't count in the statement I just made. Although strange at times, even with the deviations so to speak, I have observed wholeheartedly that Shia' Islam still has it's center in the right place, around the condition of the believer's heart.

I am done with the outward.

I have searched the world over for a "community" in which I will become closest to God, and I cannot find it.

My conclusion is that I must look within.

Now it's time for the real work to begin.

Basic Mevlevi zhikr, 1x daily plus the 5 times prayer.

Eyvallah, huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.

At the airport

2006-07-12T10:01:00.000-05:00

This is me and my three lieblings, along with this great guy who is a driver from Shafallah, Megdi. He seemed to feel obligated to take us to the airport, and even up until the last minute he was trying to convince me to withdraw my resignation. Sorry friend, no can do.

Saying Goodbye

2006-07-12T09:57:00.000-05:00

It was 11pm, July 3, 2006. They saw us getting in the Shafallah van to go to the airport, and so all of the neighborhood kids from our compound came out to tell my kids goodbye. God bless!

Leaving Doha

2006-07-12T09:53:00.000-05:00

They made it all the way across Doha with that horse, then they came to the parking garage....

OOPS! We were carrying a horse on top of our car, weren't we?

Not anymore!

Appalachian Heritage

2006-06-16T22:55:00.000-05:00

3 summers ago I reunited with my birthparents. I found them after searching from start to finish in only three months.

I did most of the searching via the internet. Thank God, how convenient it all was. I used the adoptee’s secret weapon, the State of Ohio Birth Index. You see, every birth, even of babies that were surrendered, is registered in this index. It cost me something like $20, it came on CD-ROM. I bought every year available.

So you enter your birthdate, search the database for just your county, and pop! Up comes all of the births in that county for that date. I got more specific, and looked at the year. For my year it just so happened that there was only one birth on that day, what happened to be Thanksgiving Day; “no name baby Napier”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

“No name” babies are almost always babies that were born to mothers planning to surrender the baby. It had to be me! So that’s how I discovered my birthmother’s (probable) last name.

I had certain facts, what the social worker called “non-identifying information”, such as; the ages of my birthmother and birthfather when I was born; my birthmother’s and birthfather’s hair colour, body shape, eye colour; the fact that my birthmother has a sister 2 years younger; facts about my birth, such as that I was a breech, along with certain health facts about my birthmom; and many other non-identifying details about her parents, etc.

So, I proceeded to search the birth index again only this time for a girl with last name “Napier” in Butler county Ohio who would have been 14 in the year I was born, with one sister who is two years younger.

Only one girl came up with that specification, so I wrote her and every “Napier” I could find an address for in Bulter County Ohio (I used online public domain property records to find these addresses)!

I sent a simple story, that I was searching for my birthmother, for medical reasons, and if anyone knew of a girl who had surrendered a baby in the year I was born to please help me connect. Well, about a month later SHE wrote me ! She confirmed that she was in fact my birthmother ( I sent details about my birth that only the right woman would know). She was shocked but elated to hear from me. She said it took her a month to write me because she had had to summon up the courage to tell her three daughters (yes I have three half sisters from my mom!) that when she was 14 she had had sex and gotten pregnant the first time and had had a baby and had surrendered her for adoption, and that now that baby is grown and has contacted her and that they have a long lost sister!

So, we sent each other pictures, etc. She also supplied me with my birthfather’s name! So I searched property records for everyone with his last name of Bolden, and poof! About 2 weeks after I sent my searching letter he emailed me! Apparently everyone I had sent the letters to was his family! They had no idea he had gotten a girl pregnant when he was 13! So there he was at age 42 having to tell his family about what happened (kinda bad), while also telling them what is happening now,(kinda good), getting his daughter in his life. Insane, huh?

So about a month after I found him, I traveled back to Ohio and met both of them. I met my dad first. We spent a looooong lovely summer day picnicking at Houston’s Woods State Park. I had both of my kids (only two at the time), we pitched a tent and brought food and drinks. My birthdad had a dog, and my son just ran and chased the dog all day.

It was great to just talk to him and get to know him a little. I finally know now where I get my musical talent from! My dad! Both he and his father my Grampa are folk musicians! Yay!

I also got to meet my sister (my bdad’s daughter) Brandy and her son, Davin. Finally, I see where I get my toes from! Where I get my teeth from! And we have suuuuch similar personalities, me and my dad! In many ways looking at him is like looking in the mirror. I really do look like him. Finally, to know.

I met my mom and my other sisters a few days later (separately from my dad, of course). We had a great time looking at her old photo albums, she told me lots of stories about her mom, my Grama who passed just a couple of years before, and I got to get to know my sisters a little bit.

My birthmom was definitely more freaked out than my birth dad. I could tell she was a bit apprehensive, or perhaps it was that she was simply in shock. We all were, but I wasn’t very aware of how in shock I was until months after the fact.

The really crazy thing is that my birthdad and birthmom, as well as my adopted Dad, all were born in southeastern rural Kentucky; APPALACHIA (and so does my Adopted Dad! What a trip!). So I very well may be “my own Grampa”, even more than I ever realized.

My birthdad’s Grandmother was a pure Blackfoot Indian. My adopted dad’s Grandmother was also Indian, although they aren’t sure which tribe! So all these years I’ve been saying that I am part Native, and it has actually been true, not an adopted fabrication!

It’s so great, at last, to know.

2006-06-15T03:54:00.000-05:00

If I Were....
If I were a month, I would be: October

If I were a day of the week, I would be: Friday night!

If I were a time of day, I would be: Early morning

If I were a sea animal, I would be: a dolphin

If I were a direction, I would be: North

If I were a sin, I would be: Gluttony

If I were a historical figure I would be: Annie Oakley

If I were a planet, I would be: Earth

If I were a liquid, I would be: Sauterne

If I were a stone, I would be: Diamond

If I were a tree, I would be: a Bodhi

If I were a bird, I would be: a Falcon

If I were a flower/plant, I would be: a rose

If I were a kind of weather, I'd be: a brisk fall evening

If I were a mythical creature, I'd be: a shapeshifter

If I were a musical instrument, I would be: a viola

If I were an animal, I would be: a wild mustang

If I were an emotion, I would be: melodramatic

If I were a vegetable, I would be: butternut squash baked in butter

If I were a sound, I would be: rain

If I were an element, I would be: Fire

If I were a song, I would be: Amazing grace

If I were a movie, I would be: Cinema Paradiso

If I were a book, I'd be: Like water for Chocolate

If I were a food, I would be: Sushi

If I were a place, I would be: Lamar Valley in Yellowstone National Park

If I were a taste, I would be: sweet n sour

If I were a scent, I would be: lavender

If I were a religion, I would be: universalist

If I were a word, I would be: antidisestablishmentarianism

If I were a body part, I would be: the nape of a woman's neck

If I were a facial expression, I would be: mouth open wide laughing

If I were a subject in school, I would be: literature

If I were a cartoon character, I'd be: Mulan

If I were a shape, I would be: indescribable

If I were a number, I would be: a bajillion!

If I were a piece of jewelery, I would be: a 2-carat diamond set in platinum

If I were a piece of furniture, I would be: clawfoot bathtub

If I were a car, I would be: 1960's era VW Bus
If I were an item of clothing, I'd be: Columbia Sportswear hiking pants with those cool pockets and zippers

Chaos

2006-06-15T02:52:00.000-05:00

I have officially entered the realm of Chaos.

My husband's father is apparently dying; we are in the middle of moving out of Qatar (an international move); we are scheduled to leave in a week and three days, and still haven't sold our car; my housemaid won't accept any of the (great) people we have found to sponsor her.....AGH!

An "Open Visa" for a Housemaid in Qatar???

2006-06-06T23:59:00.000-05:00

We're supposed to leave Qatar for good in 2 weeks, plus about 4 days. Besides packing up our stuff, we have some business to settle. Gotta sell the car, as well as figure out what to do with our housemaid. We're facing a very unpleasant dilemma.

We wanted to help her immmigrate to the States, but she was denied a visa. Apparently she doesn't meet the qualifications of "being rooted" enough in Qatar to get a visit visa, nor the criteria required to officially get an immigrant visa. She hasn't worked for us long enough (at least one year) to accompany us as our housemaid from Qatar. Bummer!

SO; we have been trying to accommodate her wishes for her next job. It's her life after all! However, it's a complicated situation… She has been saying she wants to work for Westerners like us…but only if they're muslim too. No Western Christians etc. She also says she doesn't want to work for an Arabic family, even if the madam of the house is western and the man is Arabic.

So…who exacally is left? Finding a couple like my husband and myself is like finding a needle in a haystack. We are rare birds.

NOW the big idea she is proposing is that we write her a release paper from immigration and find her someone who will sponsor her on an "open visa". She says they want HER to pay THEM QR4,000 for this "open visa".

Well, contacted my little friend whose hubby works at immigration, and turns out this "open visa" thing is illegal. Yep, apparently there are folks out there accepting bribes from "khadamas" (housemaids) and letting them work illegally out on the economy.

You can't legally be sponsored by one person as a housemaid and work for other people. These folks know it too, that's why they're asking for QR4,000 as bribes.

What troubles me is;

1. That my housemaid thinks working illegally like this is a good idea. If they'll exploit one rule, what is stopping them from exploiting her in other ways. Effectively, she has no legal rights if she working illegally. She would have no legitimate channel for recourse if she is exploited.

2. That I can't give her what she wants because it's illegal (the "open visa"). I really like this girl, my kids love her like an auntie or something, leaving her here is really going to be tough.

Enneagram

2006-06-04T21:28:00.000-05:00

Main Type	Overall Self

Take Free Enneagram Personality Test

OK. let me say that this seems totally like me! Wow, one of the first of these tests that sounds right. -RH

Christians Cover their Hair too, mashallah

2006-06-02T21:43:00.000-05:00

Just found great stuff regarding Christians who cover their hair and believe in modest dress. Mashallah!

I didn't realize that this movement goes beyound the Amish/Mennonite communities.

I have a lot of anxiety about returning to the States to live. Thoughts like, "what will I wear?"..."I will be singled out as a terrorist if I wear hijab.." "How will I make any friends, (especially since it looks like we're going to live in Ohio)?"... "Everyone will think I'm a FREAK!!!".

The truth is, I love wearing hijab. Now, this includes the headscarf as well as modest clothing, ie clothes that don't reveal your figure. I love wearing the arabic "jelabiyya", a non-form-fitting dress, kinda like what nuns used to wear back when they all wore habits.

Ok, so wearing a jelabiyya would be fine. Wearing "shalwar kameez", the indian national dress which is basically just a long shirt with pants, is fine. But as soon as you cover your hair everyone suddenly is terrified of you. Heck, I could be standing on the beach in a bikini, but if I am wearing a headscarf suddenly there's a problem!

9-seater van for sale

2006-05-31T23:42:00.000-05:00

We're selling our Hyundai H-1 9-seater van, for those of you in Doha who might be interested. Less than 30, 000 kilometers, insurance and registration paid through May 2007. Still under warranty.

The insurance appraised it worth 48,000 QR, we're asking 50,000 QR as this includes the price we just paid for the insurance and registration (which are fully transferrable). Email me for further details!

Allergic to chocolate! Meh!

2006-05-27T22:24:00.000-05:00

Yes, we've confirmed it folks, my 17-month old baby is officially allergic to chocolate!

She gets itchy red spots on her abdomen and upper legs every time she eats chocolate, as well as when she steals a sip from my turkish coffee or "chai halib" (tea with milk).

Rats and phooey!

This means that we have to eradicate chocolate from our house, she can't see her big sis and/or bro eating it and they will be if it's here... poor baby!

POOR MOMMY! I LOVE CHOCOLATE!

...Chicken coop ("brudder house"), and Main Barn buildings

2006-05-27T00:36:00.000-05:00

...In the "brooder house" when I was a kid, there were not any chickens, but instead about 25 cats. My Mama had planted catnip around it...it was like the kittie crack shack!

Anticipation

2006-05-27T00:24:00.000-05:00

My family's farm in Ohio is calling...my dad said he and mom planted a vegetable garden for my kids to pick when we get there in July!

This photo is of one of our old hay fields, which now is where the garden is.

The house is where my father grew up, and my Mama and Great aunt lived there still when I was growing up. A lot of wonderful memories were made here, for sure.

It's a 300 acre+ farm, with a lot of woods. It'll be so lovely to go there, after having spent the last two years in the barren desert.

Sick

2006-05-22T22:02:00.000-05:00

Was (and still am) sick yesterday, had to go to the (government) health center to get meds as well as note from the Doc to legitimize missing work. Figured I'd go to West Bay not Madinat Khalifa, seeing as my neighbor informed me that in fact West Bay is where people living in our section of town are supposed to go to, not Madinat Khalifa.

Using the public health care system here is really the only way to go. The private clinics give the illusion of better care, and yes they do have an overall better level of service, ie Westerners feel comfortable...but if you oh say turn critical and need a rare IV antibiodic, you're up %$#@ creek without a paddle. They will still take your money and pretend to treat you, but you could end up literally dead beacuse of them! I know from first hand experience. I had MRSA infection a year and a half ago, and Doha Clinic was going to "treat me" and take my money even though they didn't have the one antibiodic in the world that could treat me proprerly! Going to Hamad hospital saved my life, for sure.

So, back to yesterday. Got there (West Bay) with wicked sore throat, chills, and slightly dizzy. Yes, I did make the mistake of not waking up the hubby, I drove myself. Well, I go to register to see the doctor. They take my health card and tell me (what I already know) that I'm not registered at this health center....then they proceed to tell me what I don't know which is that I CAN'T USE ANY OTHER HEALTH CENTER, EVER!!!!!!!!!!!! "That would be a disaster," the sister behind the counter informs me.

Well, I was so sick, and exhausted, and this frustrated me, so the tears started to roll along with the words, "Haraaam! You mean you're turning a sick person away from the Doctor? Haraam! (forbidden!)"...and I demanded to speak with the superivisor.

Well, I spoke with the supervisor, and he politely validated that this was in fact true and the way the system operates, and that Madinat Khalifa is only 5 minutes away, blah blah blah. Apparently they have no ability to create another file for me at any other health center, that's their reason for turning me away.

Man, this is like the stories I used to hear about Communist Bulgaria!

...What a shame, it's the THIRD-RICHEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD, but it doesn't function like it is.

Sometimes I tell my husband that it would have been easier to live with the headhunting cannibals in Papau New Guinea....at least there what you see, is what you get.

So Third World

2006-05-20T23:55:00.000-05:00

Well, after reading what is happening to Nzingha in Saudi, I've decided to post about my own ATM troubles here in Doha, Qatar.

Several Fridays, and Saturdays as well, I have tried to access my funds via the ATM, with no luck. I try the first ATM; ..."this ATM is temporarily out of service". I drive a couple of kilometers to the next roundabout, and find the same status of that ATM. So I think, surely the third one I try will be working, but no. Not the third one, not the fourth, nor the fifth.

I have now been driving around Doha for almost one hour, just to get money so I can buy groceries. I decide, ok, I'll try and use my debit card. Nope. Sorry madame, we can accept only cash as our computer network is down and we don't know when it will be back up and running.

I give up, and try later in the day, and sure enough the ATM's are up and running by 4pm.

I kid you not, this has happened at least 4 different times! I don't know if it's that they all run out of money, or if the computer network (which I believe is QTEL) goes down, but you would think this would be severely hurting business in the country!

I can't believe people don't rush the banks and pull all of their money out and hide it under their mattresses.

I certainly have no trust in the banking system here after all of this nonsense!

Arabic weaving, known as "Sadu".

2006-05-18T23:54:00.000-05:00

Unbelievably, this lovely weaving is not expensive. It's traditional Gulf Bedouin style, and comes in other colour patterns. Most of them are bright like this one, although one style is primarily just black and white.

There are lots of carpet shops here in Doha, selling expensive Turkish Kilms, carpets, and other such items from the region.

I deem this sadu a bargain at only QR70.00 ($19.17)!!! I got another piece that is much larger, more suitable as a wall-hanging, and it was QR150 (unbelievable $41!!!!!). It measures 2meters x 2 meters.

Head out to Souk Wakif on the main walking street area to buy this stuff. The first three shops on the left drive a hard bargain; take whatever price they ask and half it. That should be about the correct price.

Musical Discord

2006-05-15T03:40:00.000-05:00

Well, there's been so much drama at work lately. The Emir's wife, Sheikha Moza, visited my school 2 weeks ago, and I was the appointed tour guide of our department. It was nerve-racking, but great.

Then we had all sorts of guests touring the place last week, and we were blessed to be graced with a Music Therapist specializing in the Nordoff-Robbins method of music therapy, visit with us from the UK. She had a lot of great suggestions and we anticipate her return this fall to give us a training in a new method of assessment that will work well for early intervention, and kids with autism.

So, in the midst of all of this hulla-balloo, my co-worker who isn't a music therapist, but works as a music teacher (but doesn't have the equivalent of a Western degree in music education), started acting out. Now he has a history of acting out from the very beginning (since 2 years ago); uncooperative with me, undermining, defiant, etc and so forth. I don't know if it's that he's angry that I have seniority over him (by 4 days, c'mon!), that my salary is higher, if he has resentment because I am allowed (because I simply have more education and more specialization than him) to do therapy, or that I am a woman. He won't just be direct and say what is bothering him and be done with it. It's never a direct confrontation, but instead always this sideways dancing around everywhere but in the place that really counts.

For a while there I thought the dude was genuinely trying to be my friend. Man, what a sucker I am. Inviting me and my family out to eat with him and his family, blah blah blah. For a year and a half it's all been fine and dandy, now he's acting out again.

It's turf wars. He told me and the other music therapist to our faces that it was fine, he would rotate between rooms, then turned around the next day and told administration we were not letting him "have a classroom". Snake.

So, I wrote my paper, he wrote his, and Admin made the decisions. Decisions they should have made a long time ago; it's like the cart has to come before the horse here, never the horse first. Because there's an obvious problem, now they are telling everyone their roles. Sort of.

We (music therapists) go here here here and here, he (music teacher) goes there. Halas. No speaking to each other allowed at work.

Funny note; my music therapist colleauge tried to start doing groups with this music teacher. He brought along some xylophones. The music teacher asked him why. The therapist explained how they are adaptive instruments for special needs kids, and that it's easy to have the kids play (he demonstrated) and harmonize the songs they are already singing with the music teacher. The music teacher's reply was ...

"we won't need them then, because there is no harmony in Arabic Music...."

...reflective, huh?

6 weeks and counting...

My precious baggage!

2006-05-12T23:32:00.000-05:00

Impending Exodus

2006-05-12T22:53:00.000-05:00

My blog entries are going to be a lot less thought out now. I feel the need to just write, and not think so much, so here ya go.

We're beginning to undertake the enormous task of preparing to move back to the United States. Calling shipping companies, getting quotations, trying to figure out what is essential to take and what isn't.

My kids have sooooo many toys; my husband and I have sooo many books; even after the first cut we made of our books upon coming here, there are still so many of them! After paying something to the effect of $500/per cubic meter to send this stuff here, then back again, these will be some pretty daggone expensive books!

I'm thinking regarding our books, we'll narrow it down to the really rare, expensive stuff that will be a hardship to replace in the states financially; our Mohamed Assad hardback Qu'ran; our hudge collection of Ryad as Salaheen; my husband's nursing school text books; my stacks of sheet music that I have accumulated over the course of 25 years of being a musician! ...oh, and let's not forget my musical instruments themselves.....A viola, Ovation Guitar, a Remo Riq, and a Remo Djembe! ...and my husband's Bass guitar, and it's stand! It cost us over $600 just to fly via UPS the viola and the guitar from Clearwater FL to Doha (...then the guy wanted so many thousand riyals in backsheesh to get it out of customs at the Doha Airport!). These are heat-sensitive items remember, not very good candidates for surviving the cheaper, although scortching hot trans-Atlantic boat ride.

As far as the kids' toys go, we'll definitely bring home our extensive Thomas the Train Set; all of the My little Ponies and their accutrements; all of the Fullas (and shame on us, Barbies); all of our childrens' books; and any other toys that are educational and not crappos.

Crappos. I don't know how or when it happened, but somehow my kids' play room became primarily crappos! We have to wade through the junk to actually find something worth playing with. Halas, no more.

My husband and I agree that we will have to (tactfully) ditch the crappo-toys; toys that have lost the rest of their set; McDonald's crappos, Burger king crappo's, etc. Why do these toys always do just one thing? And after a couple of goes, then that one thing breaks? Then we have a stack of broken toys from the fast food chains, that my kids never play with. HOWEVER, when we approach them on discarding the broken toy, they throw fits, claim that this is their favorite toy, and scream and moan until we promise it won't go bye-bye. Ugh! That alone, besides the horribly un-nutritious food, is a great reason to never patronise fast food chains ever again!

Priorities

2006-03-20T07:32:00.000-05:00

Accoring to the Corruption Index, these are the countries that are from least-to-most corrupt;

2. New Zealand (tied with Finland!)
14.Canada
17.USA
30.United Arab Emirates
31.Slovenia
32.Botswana
33.Qatar

Breech of Trust

2006-03-18T00:58:00.000-05:00

(my husband wrote this on his blog, but since it applies to me as well, I just copied it).

As much as we have enjoyed our stay here in Qatar, it seems that we may be leaving soon. We’ve had a dispute with our employer over electricity. When we originally contracted to come to Qatar two years ago, we were promised no electric bills (that was part of our contract). It seems that they have unilaterally decided not to pay for that anymore… which is fine, but for the fact that they are breaking their agreement with us.The amount of money isn’t huge, it’s about 1000 rials per month, but the point is that it is something that they agreed to pay for, and it amounts to a pay cut for us. If they can cavalierly ignore this part of their promise to us, then likewise they can ignore any other part of the contract.

It’s a matter of honor at this point. We won’t work for those who don’t honor the contracts that they make.

Holy Qur’an, Surah Baqarah 177:

“It is not righteousness that ye turn your faces Towards east or west;
but it is righteousness- to believe in Allah and the Last Day, and the Angels, and the Book,
and the Messengers; to spend of your substance, out of love for Him, for your kin, for orphans, for the needy, for the wayfarer, for those who ask, and for the ransom of slaves;
to be steadfast in prayer, and practice regular charity; to fulfill the contracts which ye have made; and to be firm and patient, in pain (or suffering) and adversity, and throughout all periods of panic. Such are the people of truth, the God-fearing.”

We have tried to negotiate this, and we are willing to be flexible with it, ie accept a nominal pay raise that would approximate the electric bill, or receive some other benefit of comparable value, but to no avail. They refused and said that if we don’t like it, we can leave Qatar.Unlike most, we didn’t come here for the money, in fact we made quite a bit more money in the US than we make here, but that’s fine… we are quite satisfied with that, and agreed to it. We don’t really care much about money per se. What this issue brings up is more about trust than money. If an employee cannot trust his employer to honor his part of the contract (and vice versa), morale will suffer and trust erode.

As Muslims we expect those that we work for to be honorable, and failing that, we will find opportunities elsewhere.As with most things here, there is probably more to this story than we are aware of. The employer has passed it off as a decision from the Ministry, something that they have no control over… but the fact still remains that they are no longer paying for something that they agreed to pay for.

Qatar has a lot of potential. I think that His Highness the Amir in particular is a wonderful leader. He is probably the most enlightened head of state in the Islamic world, and they are doing a lot of things right here, which is one of the reasons that we chose to come here in the first place. Qatar is becoming one of the planet's greatest success stories, and could eventually become instrumental in helping to restore Islamic culture and civilization to its former heights. But on the other hand, if Qatar loses sight of the needs of the people who are helping to build this place, and if it loses their goodwill and confidence, the task of cultivating a prosperous, thriving, and enlightened society may well prove impossible.

In Islam we generally don’t speak of things that are negative unless the situation is quite serious. In keeping with this, I rarely mention things that may be bad or difficult. Yet this situation crosses the line, as a pledge has been broken.

While I have been a strong advocate of Qatar in the past, in light of this breech of trust, it is with deep regret that I say that I can no longer recommend Qatar as a place that ex-patriates should seek employment, or as a place to which Muslims should make hijrah.

In any case, we’re not sure what we’re going to do next, international moves take time, but expect (Rockin' Hejabi) to relocate in the coming months. We have short-listed the UAE, Kuwait and New Zealand so far!

Holy Qur’an, Surah Al-Mutaffifin (Defrauding, The Cheats, Cheating) 1-12:

In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful.Woe to those that deal in fraud,
Those who, when they have to receive by measure from men, exact full measure,
But when they have to give by measure or weight to men, give less than due.
Do they not think that they will be called to account?
On a Mighty Day,
A Day when (all) mankind will stand before the Lord of the Worlds?
Nay! Surely the record of the wicked is (preserved) in Sijjin*.
And what will explain to thee what Sijjin is?
There is) a Register (fully) inscribed.
Woe, that Day, to those that deny
Those that deny the Day of Judgment.
And none can deny it but the Transgressor beyond bounds, the Sinner!

* from the noun “sijn” meaning “prison”, the term Sijjin here refers to something lasting and inescapable.

Inside the cave

2006-03-02T23:51:00.000-05:00

Looking up...

2006-03-02T23:50:00.000-05:00

Cave in Dahl-al-Hamam

2006-03-02T23:48:00.000-05:00

Dahl-al-hamam Park ("House of the Dove")

2006-03-02T23:40:00.000-05:00

Here's the cave at Dahl-al-hamam park here in Doha. Apparently it was a tidal cave. They closed its entrance shortly after they first opened it last year, I am assuming because someone must have gotten hurt. We were very fortunate to be able to go inside and take these photos. Enjoy.

I love Richard Shindell

2006-02-24T01:49:00.000-05:00

Next Best Western

from Courier

It's the middle of the night

Near the Indiana line

I'm pulling in a Christian station

The signal's crystal clear

But I cannot really hear

What he says about the Revelation

I am wretched,

I am tired

But the preacher is on fire

And I wish I could believe

Whoever watches over all these truckers

Show a little mercy for a weary sinner

And deliver me - Lord, deliver me

Deliver me to the next best western

Did he who made the lamb

Put the tremble in the hand

That reaches out to take my quarter

I look him in the eye

But there isn't any time

Just time enough to pass the tender

The highway takes its toll

The green light flashes go

And it's welcome to Ohio

(chorus)

At four a.m. on 80 East

It's in the nature of the beast

To wonder if there's something missing

I am wretched, I am tired

But the preacher is on fire

And I wish I could believe

Whoever watches over all these truckers

Have a little mercy for a weary sinner

And deliver me

Lord, deliver me

Deliver me to the next Best Western.

Muslim Women's Dress Part Two - SWIMSUIT EDITION!

2006-02-22T22:50:00.000-05:00

from Dervish on Street Prophets

Silence=You Agree???

2006-02-22T22:35:00.000-05:00

copied from the blog Small Dead Animals

Moderate German Canadians

I've had several readers send me links to items referencing moderate Muslims. One offered that posting them would serve as response to "the defamers who vilify SDA as anti-Muslim racist".

While it's charitable to think that SDA critics might be influenced by actual SDA content, I've come to accept that when it comes to those who are motivated by hatred of all things conservative, it doesn't much matter what I write, or don't write - someone will find a way to misrepresent it.

But while I was mulling it over, I chanced upon this post at CJunk that that pretty much strips the argument bare;

“Very few people were true Nazis” he said, “but, many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.”

We are told again and again by “experts” and “talking heads” that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unquantified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the specter of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam. The fact is, that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars world wide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honor kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. The hard quantifiable fact is, that the “peaceful majority” is the “silent majority” and it is cowed and extraneous.During these debates, I'm often reminded* of a chapter in James Gray's The Winter Years - a series of recollections of the depression on the Canadian prairies. Gray spent many of those years at the Winnipeg Free Press. He tells the story of Paul Ausborn;

Paul Ausborn was a man who heard voices, a sea captain who had sailed the Baltic for the Kaiser in the First World War. After the war, he sold his ship and bought an apartment block in Kiel and served the Weimar Republic in a small way by teaching navigation to German youth. It was while teaching navigation in 1926 that the voices told him that Adolf Hitler was coming to power in Germany and would lead the world to war.Ausborn sold his property and moved his family to Manitoba. However, he hadn't escaped the Nazis.

Through his old connections with the Social Democrats in exile, Ausborn obtained a large collection of pictures of the atrocites being committed by the Nazis in Germany. He rented a store on Logan Avenue to show his gallery of infamy to Winnipeg. Nazi sympathizers wrecked his exhibit. He started over and put another exhibition together. at the same time, he scoured the German-Canadian community for supporters and could find only a handful. [...] Ausborn was overwhelmed again and again by the force that the Nazis were exerting on the German population of western Canada, and by the lack of interest in his work on the part of other Canadians. He was beaten up by Bundists, and harried by city policeman who saw nothing wrong in Hitler, because the only people Hitler was bothering were Jews and Communists.
As an indication of Ausborn's physical courage, he and two young friends once invaded a huge pro-Nazi picnic and distributed 6,000 anti-Nazi pamphlets and miraculously escaped unharmed. But in his efforts to rouse the city to the menace of Naziism, he lost every battle, every skirmish even. Nazi agents, on the other hand, infiltrated the university, the schools, the churches, and every other part of the German community. Ausborn was ostracized by the other Germans, most of his family deserted him and with his money gone, he was reduced to living on relief.
[...]

One day early in 1937 he came in to see me in a state of near-collapse. He had received word of the death of an old friend at the hands of the Nazis, and announced he was going to enlist in the International Brigade and fight in Spain. At fifty he was too old to fight, so he drove an ambulance on the Madrid front that summer. He came home to Winnipeg in the fall to give the organization of another anti-Nazi front a whirl. His Spanish interlude made him complete non grata with the city police, but most of us on the Free Press had read Mein Kampf by then and were taking both Ausborn and Hitler seriously. But until the very outbreak of the war, anti-Naziism was a lost cause in Winnipeg and the boisterous rejection of appeasement by the Free Press won it few plaudits.While the "vast majority" of moderate German Canadians (my mother's family among them) were peaceful, hard working citizens who held no Nazi sympathies, and would have recoiled at the notion of gassing hundreds of thousands of children in the name of racial purity - in the end, it mattered not a whit. What mattered were the extremists bent on attaining the power to transform a perverse ideology into reality, and the weaponry to export it - and the majority who just sat back and let it all happen.

Music Therapy in Arabia

2006-02-19T22:18:00.000-05:00

Here's a little sneak peek at our new building. I work in a school for children with special needs, and we will be moving to our new center over the course of the next month.

This is a view of one of our individual treatment rooms (complete with observation windows) for Music Therapy!

We have five music therapy individual rooms, 2 large group rooms, a custom-made ROMPA sensory room, and a music recording studio.

We also ordered a ton of fabulous instruments. However, to my knowledge they aren't all here yet, so I don't want to get too excited and brag about them until they are really here.

I will post more inshallah as we move in and things solidify.

The Role of Watermelon in Deep Knowledge

2006-02-13T21:36:00.000-05:00

Once upon a time there were three dervishes. they were called Yak, Do, and Se. They came from the North, the West, and the South, respectively. They had one thing in common: they were looking for the Deep Truth, and they sought a Way.

The first, Yak-Baba, sat down and contemplated until his head was sore. The second, Do-Agha, stood on his head until his feet ached. The third, Se-Kalandar, read books until his nose bled.
Finally they decided upon a common effort. They went into retirement and carried out their exercises in unison, hoping by that means to summon enough effort to produce the appearance of Truth, which they called Deep Truth.

For forty days and forty nights they persevered. At last in a whirl of white smoke the head of a very old man appeared, as if from the ground, in front of them. "Are you the mysterious Khidr, guide of men?" asked the first. "No, hie is the Qutub, the Pillar of the Universe," said the second. "I am convinced that this is none other than one of the Abdals, The Changed Ones," said the third.

"I am none of these," roared the apparition, "but I am that which you may think me to be. Now you all want the same thing, which you call the Deep Truth?"
"Yes, O master," they chorused.

"Have you never heard the saying that there are 'as many Ways as there are hearts of men'?" asked the head. "In any case, here are your ways:

"The First Dervish will travel through the country of Fools; the Second Dervish will have to find the Magic Mirror; the Third Dervish will have to call in the aid of the Jinn of the Whirlpool." So saying, he disappeared.

There was some discussion about this, not only because the dervishes wanted more information before setting out, but also because although they had all practiced different ways, each yet believed that there was only one way--his own, of course. Now none was certain that his own way was useful enough even though it had been partly responsible for summoning the apparition which they had just seen, and whose very name was unknown to them.

Yak-Baba left the cell first, and instead of asking everyone, as had been his custom, where a learned man might live in the neighborhood, he asked whoever he met if they knew the Country of Fools. At last, after many months, someone did know, and he set off there. As soon as he entered the country he saw a woman carrying a door on her back. "Woman," he asked, "why are you doing that?"

"Because this morning before my husband left for his work he said, 'Wife, there are valuables in the house. Let nobody pass this door." When I went out I took the door with me, so that nobody could pass it. Now please let me pass you.

Do you want me to tell you something which will make it unnecessary to carry that door about with you?" asked Dervish Yak-Baba. "Certainly not," she said. "The only thing that would help would be if you could tell me how to lighten the actual weight of the door."

"That I cannot do," said the Dervish. And so they parted.

A little way further on he met a group of people. They were cowering in terror before a large watermelon which had grown in a field. "We have never seen one of these monsters before," they told him, "and it will certainly grow even larger and will kill us all. But we are afraid to touch it."

"Would you like me to tell you something about it?" he asked them.

"Don't be a foot!" they replied. "Kill it and you will be rewarded, but we don't want to know anything about it." So the dervish took out a knife, advanced upon the melon and cut a slice, which he started to eat.

Amid terrible cries of alarm, the people gave him a handful of money. As he left, they said: "Please do not come back, Honoured Murderer of Monsters. Do not come and kill us likewise!"

Thus, gradually, he learned that in the country of the fools, in order to survive, one must be able to think and talk like a fool as well. After several years he managed to convert some fools to reason, and as a reward one day he attained Deep Knowledge. But although he became a saint in the Country of the Fools, they remembered him only as the Man who Cut Open the Green Monster and Drank its Blood. They tried to do the same, to gain Deep Knowledge--and they never gained it.

Meanwhile, Do-Agha, the Second Dervish, set off on his search for the Deep Knowledge. Instead of asking everywhere he went for the local sages or new exercises and postures, he just asked if anyone had heard of the Magic Mirror. Many misleading answers were given to him, but at last he realized where it might be. It was suspended in a well by a piece of string as fine as a hair, and it was itself only a fragment, because it was made up of the thoughts of men, and there were not enough thoughts to make a whole mirror.

When he had outwitted the demon who guarded it, Do-Agha gazed into the mirror and asked for the Deep Knowledge. Instantly it was his. He settled down and taught in happiness for many years. But because his disciples did not maintain the same degree of concentration needed to renew the mirror regularly, it vanished away. Yet to this day there are people who gaze into mirrors, thinking that this is the Magic Mirror of Do-Agha, the Dervish.

As for the Third Dervish, Se-Kalandar, he looked everywhere for the Jinn of the Whirlpool. This Jinn was known by many other names, but the Kalandar did not know this, and for years he criss-crossed the Jinn's tracks, always missing him because he was not there known as a Jinn or was perhaps not referred to as being connected with a whirlpool.

Finally, after many years, he came to a village and asked: "O people! has anyone here heard of the Jinn of the Whirlpool?"

"I have never heard of the Jinn," said someone, but this village is called the Whirlpool."

The Kalandar threw himself upon the ground and cried: "I will not leave this spot until the Jinn of the Whirlpool appears to me!"

The Jinn, was lurking near by, swirled up to him and said: "We do not like strangers near our village, dervish. So I have come to you. What is it you seek?"

"I seek Deep Knowledge, and I have been told under such-and-such circumstances that you can tell me how to find it."

"I can indeed," said the Jinn. "You have been through much. All that remains for you is to say such-and-such a phrase, sing such-and-such a song, do such-and-such an action; and avoid such-and-such another action. Then you will gain Deep Knowledge."

The Dervish thanked the Jinn and began his programme. Months passed, then years, until he was performing his devotions and exercises correctly. People came and watched him and then began to copy him, because of his zeal, and because he was known to be a devout and worthy man.

Eventually the Dervish attained Deep Knowledge; leaving behind him a devoted assembly of people who continued his ways. They never did attain to Deep Knowledge, of course, because they were beginning at the end of the Dervish's course of study.

Afterwards, whenever any of the adherents of these three dervishes meet, one says: "I have my mirror here. Gaze enough and you will eventually attain Deep Knowledge."

Another replies: "Sacrifice a melon, it will help you as it did Dervish Yak-Baba."

A third interrupts: "Nonsense! The only way is to persevere in the study and organizing of certain postures, of prayer and good works."

When they had in fact attained to Deep Knowledge, the Three Dervishes found that they were powerless to help those whom they had left behind: as when a man carried away on a running tide may see a landlubber pursued by a leopard, and be unable to go to his help.

Dervishes

2006-02-12T09:39:00.000-05:00

Sheikh Hamza was mobbed both nights after speaking

2006-02-12T09:31:00.000-05:00

Sheikh Hamza Yusuf

2006-02-08T22:31:00.000-05:00

Sheikh Hamza Yusuf of the Zaytuna Institute of California was here speaking, alongside Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens in a charity event to benefit the victims of the trouble in Darfur, Sudan, as well as the Kashmir crisis and tsunami victims.

He spoke about Islamic Civilization, in particular, what can the arabic world do to become civilized (whoa, he actually said that!).

He said that first, people should take care of animals (It's a common thing here for children to torture and kill pets/animals, throw rocks at dogs, kick cats, etc). Second, obey the traffic laws. Actually care about the other drivers on the road more than yourself. Third, rid the governments of the massive corruption that exists. There is an inverse relationship between the level of corruption and a country's economic success.

He sure blew me away!

An Islamic Argument in favor of Vegetarianism

2006-01-19T22:56:00.000-05:00

In doing my research for this piece, I couldn't find any information about livestock-rearing practices in the Middle East. The one page I was referred to had been blocked. Hmmm.

Dervish and I have been avoiding following what our brains know about this subject for a long time (our stomaches keep getting the best of us).

Now it seems our hearts are speaking. My six-year-old son has been commenting a lot lately about how we can't kill anything and eat it anymore. He has had 2 beloved pets (our beloved cats, Azrak, then Ringtail) tragically killed in the last three months, and I think it registers to him that death is permanent and once someone or something is dead, we can't bring them back.

I am unsure about the global situation, but in the United States, livestock-rearing practices are purely evil. I am going to prove my argument that it makes absolutely no difference if the animal was killed in the halaal (Islamically-mandated/literally, "permissable") way. Even if the animals are slaughtered according to Islamic law, the meat is still unsafe.

We need to pay attention. Things like BSE/Mad Cow disease, along with God-only –knows what else, are very real threats. We must ensure that not only is our meat slaughtered in a halaal manner, but that the way the animal was fed and raised was permissable.

Is the animal “tayyib?” Is this animal that God created as a grass-eating ruminant, being fed what God created it to be eating? Human beings are messing with the food chain in bizarre and terrifying ways. Grass-eaters have become cannibalistic carnivores.

To begin, livestock is routinely fed “protein supplements,” with the idea that this will fatten them up faster before being butchered and then eaten by humans. However, these protein supplements have evil, forbidden ingredients. Euthanized pets (complete with their insecticide-laden flea collars mind you, and their bodies are full of the poison phenyl-barbitol which doesn’t change its chemical composition after being rendered into the protein supplements!), roadkill, and body parts of cows, sheep, and chickens (cannibalism) are what make up this “protein” supplement!

Animals that are supposed to be eating grass are now eating meat. Cows, chickens, sheep etc. are now carnivores, and not only carnivores but also cannibals! Baby cows are also separated early from their mothers (they aren’t finished suckling yet) and need to be bottle-fed by the farmer. The formula they are given is composed of dried cow’s blood! Cannibalism!

The Quran directly forbids us from eating the meat of carnivores, and the meat of carrion.

Carrion, blood, swine, meat in the name of anything other than God are all forbidden except out of necessity/ignorance.

Quran

2.173
5.03
5:5
6:118
6.1450
16.115

What if...

2006-01-13T00:43:00.000-05:00

My six-year-old son is overflowing with ideas and questions. He is truly amazing, and quite a challenge to parent at times. Yesterday he came up with an interesting question;

..."what if we took all of the milk from all of the cows and grocery stores etc. on the whole planet earth and dumped it into the ocean? Then wouldn't it be a sea of milk"?

Well, at first I said of course not, there's more ocean than milk, it would still be the same ocean as it is now....

But then I thought about it some more, and realized how unscientific of me, I am just assuming that.

I need read data to answer this one properly. Anybody know the estimated volume of ocean out there? And the estimated amount of cow's milk on the planet? Thanks!

Graffiti is everywhere in this compound

2006-01-12T00:06:00.000-05:00

...and this isn't the really bad graffiti!