Young boy killed by Quran “teacher”

This is disgusting, hope the “teacher” gets his just deserves.  A Fatiha for the deceased, brother Atif.

Social Evils

A report published by The Joseph Rowntree Foundation lists the top 10 social evils in UK society as: decline of community; individualism and selfishness; consumerism and greed, a decline of values, the decline of the family, young people as both victims and perpetrators, drugs and alcohol, poverty and inequality, immigration and responses to it, and crime and violence.

BBC article - Report lists new ’social evils’

It will be interesting to hear what solutions they come up with to tackle these social problems. Change in a society’s ethical values happens slowly and I can’t imagine it can be reversed quickly or easily. Especially if we don’t recognise what the root causes of each problem are. For example how do you deal with the problem of consumerism and greed? A commentator on the BBC website wrote:

“The egalitarian principles of liberty, brotherhood and justice have been consumed by social Darwinist greed”.

Food for thought…

TV Dinners and Adab

“TV dinner ruin children manners” according to the Association of Schools and College Leaders.

Lack of a traditional family meal has produced a generation of kids with bad manners, head teachers have warned.
Since parents allow their children to eat while watching TV, the responsibility of teaching kids how to communicate with one another has come on the shoulders of schools.
Source

The Arabic word for manners or etiquette - “adab”, also means “feast” or “banquet”. It was traditionally understood that during meal times children learned manners and proper etiquette. How to behave with adults, elders, siblings, those younger than them. They also gained communication skills from the dinner table conversation.

People from societies closer to “fitra” find it strange that some people have meals on their own, and those even more closer to fitra find it weird people eat on separate plates!

On a holiday to Marrakesh me and my wife met an American family who have settled there (2nd generation converts i.e. their parents converted so they were born Muslim), one of the highlights of our trip was having sharing a meal with their family - one Tagine dish between 8 people, a couple and their two young kids and their grandparents. Sharing emphasised because this is one of the most important qualities you learn from this experience. It was Friday so it’s tradition to have meat, we had a delicious lamb tagine with couscous.

As we were the guests the people sitting next to us were breaking off the nice bits of the meat and placing it on our part of the bowl, doing it quite subtly as well that we didn’t always notice.

There is also more barakah in a shared meal, I didn’t think 1 tagine would be enough for 8 people but all of us ate until we were full and there were left over’s for the cats.

The Arabic language is filled with these beautiful insights, it is a miraculous language. It’s fascinating the ASC have found the link between manners and meals, while this understanding was built within the language of the Arabs since pre-Islamic times.

Leaked Pentagon Report: 2020 Britain will be like Siberia!

..Also nuclear war, drought, famine, riots and world anarchy.

Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us

It’s all in the Game

Brilliant dialogue from the TV series The Wire, between Omar Little, a rip and runner (one who robs drug dealers) and Maurice Levy, defence lawyer for a man involved with a drug gang, on trial for murdering a witness.  Omar is giving witness against the defence lawyer’s client.   Shows the moral ambiguity of defence lawyers.

Omar Little: That wasn’t no attempt murder.
Maurice ‘Maury’ Levy: What was it, Mr. Little?
Omar Little: I shot the boy Mike-Mike in his hind parts, that all.
[Jury laughs]
Omar Little: Fixed it up so he couldn’t sit right.
[Judge chuckles]
Maurice ‘Maury’ Levy:  Why’d you shoot Mike-Mike in his, um, hind parts, Mr. Little?
Omar Little: Let’s say we had a disagreement.
Maurice ‘Maury’ Levy:  A disagreement over?
Omar Little: Well, you see, Mike-Mike thought he should keep that cocaine he was slingin’ and the money he was makin’ from slingin’ it. I thought otherwise.
Maurice ‘Maury’ Levy:  Why should we believe your testimony then? Why believe anything you say?
Omar Little: That’s up to y’all, really.
Maurice ‘Maury’ Levy:  You are feeding off the violence and the despair of the drug trade. You are stealing from those who themselves are stealing the lifeblood from our city. You are a parasite who leeches off the culture of drugs…
Omar Little: Just like you, man.
Maurice ‘Maury’ Levy:  Excuse me? What?
Omar Little: I got the shotgun. You got the briefcase. It’s all in the game though, right?

Women spend nearly 3 years..

.. of their lives getting ready to leave the house.  Men spend 3 months waiting for their wives and girlfriends while out shopping.

Daily Mail 25th November 2007 

Da’wah and Building Bridges

Every other week I get an article or rant as he calls it by an Italian Priest Father Frank Gelli. I met him at an Arabic course, he’s a really nice dude this priest. He does a lot of interfaith work with Muslims and is sympathetic to the problems Muslims face around the world. Someone who is actively building bridges with the Muslim world.

He meets a lot of Muslims in his travels and comes across our good and bad characteristics. He loves how Muslims still have a daily connection to God in the prayer and in our language, always saying insha Allah, alhmadulillah etc. He loves the beautiful recitation of the Quran by our Qaris, infact one of the reasons he was learning Arabic was to be able to recite the Quran like them!

He commented on the generosity of Muslims, particularly a brother in the class who always had incredible adab and courtesy. He also got to see the ugly side of a fellow classmate who nearly got into a fight with another Muslim classmate and even made racist comments. Two of us and the Priest got between them trying to calm them down, we couldn’t help but feel embarassed at the situation, there were other non-Muslims in the class as well, this is the da’wah we were giving?

In this article the Priest tells of his experience on an Arab interfaith TV programme, he encounters another all too familiar ugly side of us - the paranoid mentality of

Loving Crap

Soon as we stop loving crap and start discriminating the World will change

Vivienne Westwood

Musings on Modern Art Scene

There was a programme on the other night about modern-art collectors and the rise in investment in modern art.

It showed how investment in Art has skyrocketed due to globalisation and the rise in number of the super wealthy (especially from the former Soviet Union). Collecting Art is the new fad with the wealthy. Investors spending millions on pieces believing the artist will be the new Picasso, but a number of art critics say a lot of these pieces may well be worthless in a few years. They say a lot of these collectors over speculate the value and pieces end up being sold off for far too much than they are worth.

I worked at the Tate Galleries for 2 years whilst studying at Uni, (a year at Tate Britain and a year at Tate Modern). It was an

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf on Interfaith Youth Work