Hiatus

السلام عليكم و رحمة الله و بركاته

Peace and blessing to all

I need a break from the Internet, in a sort of anti-www mode.  Don’t know when I’ll be back. 

Remember us in your du’as.

و السلام

Back to Work/Back to Blog

A belated happy new year to all. 

The dreaded first day back to work has not been that bad, even with the boss still on holiday which means I’ve got to cover for him so I gots crazy amount of work to do, alhamdulillah it’s preparation for things to come.  This year is going to be hella busy for me, with starting my professional qualification and continuing Arabic studies, I won’t have as much time to spend on the blogs.  May Allah grant us barakah in our time, amin.

It’s been just over 6 months since I started this blog, some thoughts on blogging so far…

Blogland

It’s a big bloggy world but also a very small world.  Yes there are a zillion blogs out there but you always seem to bump into the same faces, even when randomly blog surfing.  Like brother Darvish, dude is everywhere!  I have a theory… I thinks he is one of those mystics that wot can be in several places at the same time, the ‘Abdal or People of the Step as they are known :o)

Bloggers

Most blogs I’ve come across I have found, surprisingly, the bloggers and people commenting to be nice people, intelligent, tolerant and sincere.  I was surprised because from past experience on various forums I got the picture most people like to vent their anger and hatred on the net, with the safety of anonymity and the ease in expressing whatever we want, there are extremely contemptuous comments being made on discussion forums (eg The Guardian Comment is Free section)

This is not the case with most bloggers, most of us don’t like to be hosts for ugly argumentation.  Call it fitra or whatever, but most people are sick of all the hatred that floods the net and there is a rising trend for discussion with manners, hurrah!

Writing

A self discovery I made since blogging is how bad I write, I knew I wasn’t no Shakespeare but I didn’t think I was this bad!  Another thing is I sound like a different person in my writing, like when you hear your voice recorded, do I really sound like that?!  I’ve not written like this in years, need to get re-accustomed to expressing my thoughts coherently and with a bit of eloquence, insha Allah!   This was one of the reasons I started the Poetry blog, at least in Poetry you can pretend to be eloquent :o)

Intentions for Blogging

I keep coming back to this, I’ve read many seasoned bloggers who say they regret a lot of what they wrote.  Speaking on subjects they are not qualified to, writing egotistically like their opinion deserves special attention.  Shukran to all those brothers and sisters who warned of this, I have loads of stuff thats sitting in draft, or was deleted.  Because they were too long and badly written and also a lot of it I had to admit was egotistical writing, my unqualified opinion on matters (I wrote long pieces on the row over race and intelligence sparked by Dr Watson and a review of the film American Gangster).  The world does not need to hear everything that goes on inside my head, I have a patient wife who listens to my mad theories.

My intention when starting this was to mostly pass on khayr, any sort of goodness I come across if I could share it somehow through this blog I would.  Something that will benefit me and others for eternity, a salawat, something that increases iman, taqwa of Allah, love for Rasul Allah (sal Allahu ‘alayhi wasallam). 

A specific du’a I made was for Allah to make this blog a means for my happiness on Yawmal Qiyamah.  That someone finds something here that guides them, that makes them from the awliya and then on That Day that person remembers this sinner.

PR (post Ramadan) Initiative

It was inevitable this time would come, the dreaded drop after Ramadan. The wind of the blessed month carries us to such high heights and for a while into the month of Shawwal we’re still riding high, still waking up an hour before fajr, still reading a Juz of Quran a day, still going to the Masjid for Salah… Then slowly you feel the wind leave you, like a glider gradually coming back down to the ground. Waking up for Tahajjud is Mission Impossible now, and if I do wake up I’m more like a character from Dawn of the Dead, straight up Zombie.

Cult of the Amateur

This book looks like an interesting read, thinking of pur- chasing next. Can read extracts here.

The author, Richard Keen, is referring predominantly to the blogging community when he talks of the cult of the amateur. As a newbie blogger myself I often have to check my intention for writing. It’s easy sometimes to write egotistically, as if our layman opinion is always of value or what we do in our daily lives would be of interest to the world. Some of my own posts are cringe inducing when I read them now.

Although there are interesting and valuable views expressed in many blogs, the overwhelming majority of stuff out there belongs in a recycle bin, which then needs to be emptied, then software like CC Cleaner needs to be used to purge the recycle bin of any remnants! (Hidden insinuation from this statement being my stuff is not like this, astaghfirullah, woe to my nafs!)

He has a point about the mindless nonsense that floods the net. It can be argued it’s up to the individual to decide what they deem mindless nonsense or not and they can always avoid it if they want to. However the problem is when there is so much ‘amateurish’ material out there the voices worth listening to are drowned out. Keen writes:

…let’s use technology in a way that encourages innovation, open communication, and progress, while simultaneously preserving professional standards of truth, decency, and creativity. That’s our moral obligation. It’s our debt to both the past and the future.

Very ambiguous I know, someone probably said the same thing in the early days of Television programming; about which people like Jerry Mander and Neil Postman have commented that overall TV has had a severe negative effect on society.

Is the Internet similarly having an overall negative effect on society? Is it not only adding but creating more problems also? Such as the rise in pornography consumption, I recently heard a Scholar say pornography literally consumes the user, he said it’s a huge problem with Muslim men causing marriage break ups. The popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook and My Space is also troubling - another useful tool (to keep in contact with friends you are not able to see, and for networking at work) but more often than not it’s just a place where people spend hours chatting bottom breeze and wasting their time.

What to do then? Advice I heard from a Spiritual Guide - UNPLUG.

The internet is undoubtedly a useful, even essential tool for us; the ‘Internet’ is not the problem per se. The problem is ‘us’. We aren’t always using it appropriately.

One of my teachers once told us after he had spent 2 years studying in Mauritania he went to Syria. He met a student there from the UK who said to him it must have been amazing studying in the desert where people are closer to the fitra state, no fitna like there is in Damascus (apparently spandex is popular attire for some ladies in Syria). Our teacher said this guy is a fool. The problem isn’t rooted ‘out there’; the problem is within the person. If those diseases were not present in the person’s heart in the first place they would not manifest outwardly no matter where Allah placed His slave.

Of course those who are able to effect any degree of change should do so; policy makers, community leaders, spandex manufacturers. But as individuals we are also responsible for what we consume. If we spend our time surfing sites lending our eyes and ears to questionable content we will take on a state of the person who produced the content. A person who eats junk, watches junk, reads junk, plays junk is most likely to be junk. If all we read is poorly written, ill informed opinions then our language and insight will undoubtedly suffer.

Not wanting to sound like a grumpy old man (I’m still in my 20’s!) but kids these days are butchering language with their text speak. I got an email from my 11 year old niece the other day and I still haven’t deciphered all of it. Every other word is an abbreviation, even short words are shortened further e.g. ‘hs’ for ‘has’, it’s just one more letter! Stop being lazy! I’m sure communicating like this all the time will stunt development of the child’s grammar and syntax.

The most precious commodity at risk of being wasted on the World Wide Web is time. The opportunity cost of spending time on the web when we could have gained more expending our energy on something else. On that note I won’t take up anymore of your time and leave you with a quote by Imam al-Shafi’, may Allah be pleased with him, two things he said he learned from keeping the company of the Sufi’s:

“Time is like a sword, cut it before it cuts you and secondly watch your self (nafs), if you don’t keep it busy with good it will occupy you with evil”

By Time! Verily Man is at loss…. (Surah al-Asr)