Quotations: I went to the root of things…

I went to the root of things, and found nothing but Him alone. - Mira Bai

Slave Labour that Shames US

From Information Clearing House

Migrant workers chained beaten and forced into debt, exposing the human cost of producing cheap food

By Leonard Doyle

12/19/07 “The Independent” — – Three Florida fruit-pickers, held captive and brutalised by their employer for more than a year, finally broke free of their bonds by punching their way through the ventilator hatch of the van in which they were imprisoned. Once outside, they dashed for freedom.

When they found sanctuary one recent Sunday morning, all bore the marks of heavy beatings to the head and body. One of the pickers had a nasty, untreated knife wound on his arm. Police would learn later that another man had his hands chained behind his back every night to prevent him escaping, leaving his wrists swollen.

The migrants were not only forced to work in sub-human conditions but mistreated and forced into debt. They were locked up at night and had to pay for sub-standard food. If they took a shower with a garden hose or bucket, it cost them $5.

Islamic Quotations: If you love Allah…

If you love Allah and spread the love of Him, all things in heaven and Earth will love you. Obey Allah, and all those in heaven and Earth will obey you.
Ibrahim Dassuki

Through Love She Found Her Way to Islam: Fatima’s Ultimate Journey

From Reading Islam

By  Mahmood Sanglay

Writer and researcher

Fatima Mali is a domestic worker from the squatter camp of Crossroads located on the outskirts of Cape Town (South Africa), who embraced Islam in 2005. Born in 1955 in the Transkei, she came to Cape Town in 1991 in search of work.

 

Sixteen years later Fatima is one of ten recipients of the Gifted Hajj program, that presents at least ten deserving Muslims with the opportunity of fulfilling the requirements of the fifth pillar of Islam, the pilgrimage to the cities of Makkah and Madinah. Fatima departed for Saudi Arabia on November 12.

 

This is Fatima’s ultimate journey. Not because it is the first time she will set foot outside her country. Not because it is the first time she will set foot on an aircraft. Not even because the hajj is the ultimate journey for every Muslim.

 

Fatima’s Hajj is the ultimate journey because her journey begins before she receives the good news of the Gifted Hajj. Her journey begins with the first steps she takes towards consciously embracing the life of a Muslim.

 

Quotations: Not being able…

Not being able to govern events, I govern myself. - Michel de Montaigne

Ummah Films: Arrogant People

Made by ummahfilms

Quotations: Ours is an excessively conscious…

Ours is an excessively conscious age. We know so much, we feel so little. - D. H. Lawrence

Quotations: I think of a hero…

I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom. - Bob Dylan

Ummah Films: Fisibilillah Discount

Made by ummahfilms

Quotations: I find television very educating…

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book. - Groucho Marx

Poetry by Marianne Moore

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all
this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one
discovers in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a

high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because
they are
useful. When they become so derivative as to become
unintelligible,
the same thing may be said for all of us, that we
do not admire what
we cannot understand: the bat
holding on upside down or in quest of something to

eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf
under
a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse that
feels a
flea, the base-
ball fan, the statistician–
nor is it valid
to discriminate against ‘business documents and

school-books’; all these phenomena are important. One must
make a distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the
result is not poetry,
nor till the poets among us can be
‘literalists of
the imagination’–above
insolence and triviality and can present

for inspection, ‘imaginary gardens with real toads in them’, shall
we have
it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness and
that which is on the other hand
genuine, you are interested in poetry.

Selections from Hadiths: Be in the world as if you were a stranger…

Narrated ‘Abdullah bin ‘Umar: The Prophet took hold of my shoulders and said, “Be in the world as if you were a stranger or a wayfarer.” Ibn ‘Umar used to say: “When you survive till the evening, do not expect to be alive till the morning; and when you survive till the morning do not except to be alive till the evening; (Do good deeds) when your are in good health before you fall sick, and (do good deeds) as long as you are alive before death strikes.” (Al-Bukhari)

Quote of the Day

Life is a long lesson in humility.- James M. Barrie