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December 5, 2007
Quotations: Time is too slow for those who wait…
Time is too slow for those who wait; Too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love time is eternity. – Henry Van Dyke
December 3, 2007
The Words Under the Words by Naomi Shihab Nye
for Sitti Khadra, north of Jerusalem
My grandmother’s hands recognize grapes,
the damp shine of a goat’s new skin.
When I was sick they followed me,
I woke from the long fever to find them
covering my head like cool prayers.
My grandmother’s days are made of bread,
a round pat-pat and the slow baking.
She waits by the oven watching a strange car
circle the streets. Maybe it holds her son,
lost to America. More often, tourists,
who kneel and weep at mysterious shrines.
She knows how often mail arrives,
how rarely there is a letter.
When one comes, she announces it, a miracle,
listening to it read again and again
in the dim evening light.
My grandmother’s voice says nothing can surprise her.
Take her the shotgun wound and the crippled baby.
She knows the spaces we travel through,
the messages we cannot send—our voices are short
and would get lost on the journey.
Farewell to the husband’s coat,
the ones she has loved and nourished,
who fly from her like seeds into a deep sky.
They will plant themselves. We will all die.
My grandmother’s eyes say Allah is everywhere, even in death.
When she talks of the orchard and the new olive press,
when she tells the stories of Joha and his foolish wisdoms,
He is her first thought, what she really thinks of is His name.
“Answer, if you hear the words under the words—
otherwise it is just a world with a lot of rough edges,
difficult to get through, and our pockets full of stones.”
December 2, 2007
Selections from Hadiths: The heaviest thing…
Narrated Abud-Darda: Allah’s Messenger said, “The heaviest thing to be placed in the balance of a believing slave on the Day of Judgement will be good behaviour.” (At-Tirmidhi)
December 1, 2007
Mauritania’s Manuscripts
From Saudi Aramco World
By Louis Werner
One could easily lose something precious in Mauritania’s million square kilometers (398,000 sq mi) of dune fields and rocky steppes, stretching north from the Senegal River and east from the Atlantic into the Sahara’s most desolate corners. Nomadic encampments are few, villages are far between, and the wind blows inexorably from the west, scattering all that comes before it.
But Ahmad Ould Mohamed Yahya, director of manuscripts at the Institut Mauritanien de Recherche Scientifique (IRMS) in Nouakchott, believes it is not a fluke that something precious should recently have been found in the small town of Boutilimit, some 150 kilometers (95 mi) east of the capital city of Nouakchott: the world’s only known complete manuscript of a work on grammar by the great Spanish-Arab physician and philosopher Ibn Rushd, known in the West as Averroës. This find, so far from the Mediterranean basin, means that historians must rethink just how far Ibn Rushd’s writings and influence extended into the Arab hinterland.
November 30, 2007
Quotations: You never find…
You never find yourself until you face the truth. – Pearl Bailey
November 29, 2007
Islamic Quotations: Who is a hypocrite?
Who is a hypocrite? Those who talk of Islam but does not labor.
Huzaifa (ra)
November 27, 2007
The Muslim World’s Hope and Ours
From Townhall
By Mona Charen
Friday, September 7, 2007
He’s handsome, young and a devout Muslim. He is also his country’s leading pop star. But would it surprise you to learn that one of his songs, a tune that topped the charts, is called “Warriors of Love”?
Ahmad Dhani, Indonesia’s counterpart to Justin Timberlake, has called his song a “musical fatwa against religious extremism and violence.” The lyrics are derived from the Koran and Hadith. (Sample: “If hatred has already poisoned you/Against those . . . who worship differently/ Then evil has already gripped your soul/ Then evil’s got you in its damning embrace.”)
Dhani is a soldier in the culture war within Islam. With 190 million people, Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim country — but its religious culture is far more tolerant and humane than that of Saudi Arabia and many other Muslim lands.
November 25, 2007
Selections from Hadiths: On the Day of Resurrection…
Narrated Abu Hurairah: Allah’s Messenger said, “On the Day of Resurrection, Allah the Exalted will say: ‘Where are those who have mutual love for the sake of My Glory? Today I shall shelter them in My Shade when there is no shade but Mine.”’ ( Muslim )
