Happy New Year...

Assalamualaikum warahmatullah wabarakatuh,

Happy New Year? Err, not yet, 10 more days inshaALLAH then I'll celebrate a new year and state my new year resolutions. So, since we have another 10 days to go, what are your new year resolutions?

Wassalam.

Eid Khutbah

Assalamualaikum warahmatullah wabarakatuh,

Really worth listening to:

http://64.246.204.2/~zaytuna/audio/khutba/011106.mp3

Wassalam.

Tagged

Assalamualaikum warahmatullah wabarakatuh,

Cakapeje tagged me. Honestly, I don't know the rule of this tagging-game but I assume that it is to try to 'stalk' a person's insides!

Anyway, this is for Cakapaje:

1. Name one person who made you laugh last night.
Maiko, my housemate. We were having a sisters Eid Dinner at home inviting a few sisters who are stuck in Cambridge on Eid Day. After the dinner, Maiko told her experience of attending an Indian royal wedding and the fairy-tale-like true-story made me, Sophia and Arwa laughed for a good 1 hour. Alhamdulillah. Have not been laughing a lot like this for a long time.

2. What were you doing at 0800?
Sleeping! Didn't sleep the whole night to write a paper that needs to be submitted today. Sleep right after fajr prayer. Only had 4 hours of sleep today. Alhamdulillah.

3. What were you doing 30 minutes ago?
Praying maghrib in one of the classrooms in my faculty. Alhamdulillah. ALLAHUakbar walillahilhamd.

4. What happened to you in 2006?
Studying, alhamdulillah.

5. What was the last thing you said out loud?
Greeting the friendly receptionist. Really hope she will come to Islam, inshaALLAH.

6. How many beverages did you have today?
1 cup of coffee early in the morning to stay awake to write my paper and then a cup of tea after woke up. Alhamdulillahiladhi ato'amana wa saqona wa ja'allana minal muslimin.

7. What colour is your hairbrush?
Orange.

8. What was the last thing you paid for?
Food for Eid Dinner yesterday bought at ASDA, mostly reduced stuff, alhamdulillah, big saving.

9. Where were you last night?
At home for Eid Dinner.

10. What colour is your front door?
White.

11. Where do you keep your change?
My coat pocket on my right.

12. What's the weather like today?
2 C.

13. What's the best ice-cream flavour?
Vanilla mint.

14. What excites you?
Can remember 1 verse of Qur'an, alhamdulillah.

15. Do you want to cut your hair?
Got 1 inch cut yesterday by my friend just to symbolise the Qurbani that I have done, alhamdulillah. May ALLAH accept it from me.

16. Are you over the age of 25?
Yes, alhamdulillah.

17. Do you talk a lot?
Depends. Probably a lot in front of sisters but very quiet in front of brothers and non-muslims.

18. Do you watch the O.C?
No.

19. Do you know anyone named Steven?
No.

20. Do you make your own words?
Yes, only my friends can understand.

21. Are you a jealous person?
Not sure, never tried before.

22. Name a friend whose name starts with the letter 'A'.
Adibah, miss her.

23. Name a friend whose name starts with the letter 'K'.
Khadijah, a convert.

24. Who's the first person on your received call list?
Arwa, she phoned yesterday to ask the way to my house.

25. What does the last text message you received say?
By a Rihla sister -
I wISH a WiSH 4U,
ItS a WiSH I Wish 4 FEW,
Da WiSH I Wish 4U
iZ DAT aLL uR wIsHeS cOMe tRue...

*wiSh u a vEry*
*HapPY eiD*

26. Do you chew on the straw?
When I have finished my food and drink while those who sitting with me are still eating or drinking.

27. Do you have curly hair?
No, typical Chinese. Alhamdulillah.

28. What's the next place you're going to?
Home after I've get my work done.

29. Who's the rudest person in your life?
Can't think of one.

30. What was the last thing you ate?
Left over from the Eid Dinner. Alhamdulillah.

31. Will you get married in the future?
Of course but bi idhnillah.

32. What was the best movie you've seen in past 2 weeks?
Didn't watch any movie in the past 2 weeks. Too busy with work.

33. Is there anyone I like right now?
Yes, my family and sisters in Islam.

34. When was the last time you did the dishes?
Just before I came to my faculty.

35. Are you currently depressed?
No, alhamdulillah.

36. Did you cry today?
Not yet.

37. Why did you answer and post this?
Cos Cakapaje tagged me and I'm damn busy to answer it!

38. Tag 5 people who would do this.
I do not wish to tag anyone cos I do not wish to know what others think.

ALLAHU'alam.

Wassalam.

Eid Mubarak!

Assalamualaikum warahmatullah wabarakatuh,

Time really flies! This is my third Eid-ul-Adha here in Cambridge. Hopefully the last one in my PhD study, inshaALLAH.

TaqabbalALLAH.

ALLAHU akbar ALLAHU akbar ALLAHU akbar
Laa ilaha illALLAHU wALLAHU akbar
ALLAHU akbar walillahilhamd

ALLAHU akbar kabira
Walhamdulillahi kathira
WasubhanALLAHI bukratan wa ashila

Laa ilaha illALLAHU
Wa laa na'budu illa iyyahu mukhlishina lahuddin
Wa lau karihalkafirun

Laa ilaha illALLAHU wahdah
Shodaqa wa'dah
Wa nashoro'abdah
Wa azzajundah
Wa hazamalahzaba wahdah

Laa ilaha illALLAHU wALLAHU akbar
ALLAHU akbar walillahilhamd

4 days of celebration!

Wassalam.

Today is Arafah Day

Assalamualaikum warahmatullah wabarakatuh,

Today is the 9th day of Dhul-Hijjah is the day of Arafah. It is this day when the pilgrims
gather on the mountain plain of Arafah, praying and supplicating to their Lord.
The day of Arafah holds great importance in Islam since this is the Day when ALLAH
completed his revelation on His Messenger (saw). On this day too, he delivered the last
sermon as a will to his ummah.
It is reported in the Sahihayn (i.e. Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim), from Umar
Ibn al-Khattab (ra) that a Jewish man said to him:
"O Amir al-Muminin (O head of the Muslims)! There is a verse in the Qur'an, which if
was revealed on us, the Jews, we would have taken that day as an Eid (festival). Umar
asked: 'Which verse?' He said:

"This day I have perfected your religion for you, completed My favor upon you, and
have chosen for you Islam as your religion." [Surah al-Maidah (5): 3]

Umar (ra) said: 'We know on which day and in which place was this verse revealed to
ALLAH's Messenger (saw). It was when he was standing in Arafah on a Friday.'

Arafah is the day on which ALLAH took the covenant from the progeny of Adam (as),
it was reported that Ibn Abbas (ra) narrated: The Messenger of ALLAH (saw) related:

"(When ALLAH created Adam (as) ALLAH took covenant from him in a place Na'man
on the day of Arafah, then HE extracted from him all the descendants who would be
born until the end of the world, generation after generation, and spread them out in
front of HIM in order to take a covenant from them also. HE spoke to them face to
face saying:

"Am I not your Lord?"

and they all replied: 'Yes, we testify to it'. ALLAH then explained why HE had all of
mankind bear witness that HE was their Creator and only true God worthy of worship.
HE said:

"That was in case you (mankind) should say on the Day of Resurrection, 'Surely, we
were unaware of this. We had no idea that YOU, ALLAH, were our Lord. No one told
us that we were only supposed to worship YOU."

[(Sahih by Shaikh al-Albani in Silsilah al-Ahadith as-Sahihah vol: 4, no: 1623]

Indeed, the day of Arafah is a blessed day and there is no other covenant greater
than this covenant! Arafah is a day of Forgiveness from sins, freedom from the
Hell-Fire for the people who are present in the plain of Arafah. A'ishah (ra) narrated
the Messenger of ALLAH (saw) saying:

"There is no day on which ALLAH frees more people from the Fire than the day of
Arafah. HE comes close and expresses HIS pride to the angels saying, 'What do
these people (the Hajis) want?'"

[Sahih Muslim]

This Hadith mentions forgiveness for the pilgrims. In addition to this, fasting on the
day of Arafah is a Sunnah and an expiation of sins for the residents. Hunaydah ibn
Khalid reported from his wife that some of the wives of the Prophet (saw) said:

"The Messenger of ALLAH (saw) used to fast on the nineth of Dhul-Hijjah, on the
day of Ashurah, on three days of each month, and on the first two Mondays and
Thursdays of each month."

[(Sahih) by Shaikh al-Albani in Sahih Abi Dawud vol: 2, no: 462]

It is reported in Sahih Muslim that when the Messenger of ALLAH (saw) was asked
about the fasting on the day of Arafah, he said:

"It expiates the sins of the previous year and that of the following year."

[Sahih Muslim]

This fasting is Mustahabb only for the non-pilgrims and not for the Hajis (the pilgrims)
because it was not the practice of ALLAH's Messenger (saw) to fast on the day of Arafah
during pilgrimage and in a narration he also forbade doing so. Imam at-Tirmidhi
(d. 275H) said:

"The People of Knowledge consider it recommended (Mustahabb) to fast on the day of
Arafah, except for those at Arafah."

[Jâmi'ut-Tirmidhi (3/377)]
Let's not let this day pass without any act of worship or good deed.

ALLAHU'alam.

Wassalam.

Don't burn the flag, wash it! - Suheir Hammad

Assalamualaikum warahmatullah wabarakatuh,

Well said!

(Poem on Crisis of Terror)

by Suheir Hammad, New York is the author of "Born Palestinian, Born Black" (Harlem River Press, 1996) and other books.

1. there have been no words.
i have not written one word.
no poetry in the ashes south of canal street.
no prose in the refrigerated trucks driving debris and dna.
not one word.

today is a week, and seven is of heavens, gods, science.
evident out my kitchen window is an abstract reality.
sky where once was steel.
smoke where once was flesh.

fire in the city air and i feared for my sister's life in a way never
before. and then, and now, i fear for the rest of us.

first, please god, let it be a mistake, the pilot's heart failed, the
plane's engine died.
then please god, let it be a nightmare, wake me now.
please god, after the second plane, please, don't let it be anyone
who looks like my brothers.

i do not know how bad a life has to break in order to kill.
i have never been so hungry that i willed hunger
i have never been so angry as to want to control a gun over a pen.
not really.
even as a woman, as a palestinian, as a broken human being.
never this broken.

more than ever, i believe there is no difference.
the most privileged nation, most americans do not know the difference
between indians, afghanis, syrians, muslims, sikhs, hindus.
more than ever, there is no difference.

2. thank you korea for kimchi and bibim bob, and corn tea and the
genteel smiles of the wait staff at wonjo the smiles never revealing
the heat of the food or how tired they must be working long midtown
shifts. thank you korea, for the belly craving that brought me into
the city late the night before and diverted my daily train ride into
the world trade center.

there are plenty of thank yous in ny right now. thank you for my
lazy procrastinating late ass. thank you to the germs that had me
call in sick. thank you, my attitude, you had me fired the week
before. thank you for the train that never came, the rude nyer who
stole my cab going downtown. thank you for the sense my mama gave me
to run. thank you for my legs, my eyes, my life.

3. the dead are called lost and their families hold up shaky
printouts in front of us through screens smoked up.

we are looking for iris, mother of three. please call with any
information. we are searching for priti, last seen on the 103rd
floor. she was talking to her husband on the phone and the line
went. please help us find george, also known as a! ! del. his family is
waiting for him with his favorite meal. i am looking for my son, who
was delivering coffee. i am looking for my sister girl, she started
her job on monday.

i am looking for peace. i am looking for mercy. i am looking for
evidence of compassion. any evidence of life. i am looking for
life.

4. ricardo on the radio said in his accent thick as yuca, "i will
feel so much better when the first bombs drop over there. and my
friends feel the same way."

on my block, a woman was crying in a car parked and stranded in hurt.
i offered comfort, extended a hand she did not see before she said,
"we"re gonna burn them so bad, i swear, so bad." my hand went to my
head and my head went to the numbers within it of the dead iraqi
children, the dead in nicaragua. the dead in rwanda who had to vie
with fake sport wrestling for america's attention.

yet when people sent emails saying, this was bound to happen, lets
! ! not forget u.s. transgressions, for half a second i felt resentful.
hold up with that, cause i live here, these are my friends and fam,
and it could have been me in those buildings, and we"re not bad
people, do not support america's bullying. can i just have a half
second to feel bad?

if i can find through this exhaust people who were left behind to
mourn and to resist mass murder, i might be alright.

thank you to the woman who saw me brinking my cool and blinking back
tears. she opened her arms before she asked "do you want a hug?" a
big white woman, and her embrace was the kind only people with the
warmth of flesh can offer. i wasn't about to say no to any comfort.
"my brother's in the navy," i said. "and we"re arabs". "wow, you
got double trouble." word.

5. one more person ask me if i knew the hijackers.
one more motherfucker ask me what navy my brother is in.
one more person assume no arabs or muslims were killed.one more person
assume they know me, or that i represent a people.
or that a people represent an evil. or that evil is as simple as a
flag and words on a page.

we did not vilify all white men when mcveigh bombed oklahoma.
america did not give out his family's addresses or where he went to
church. or blame the bible or pat robertson.

and when the networks air footage of palestinians dancing in the
street, there is no apology that hungry children are bribed with
sweets that turn their teeth brown. that correspondents edit images.
that archives are there to facilitate lazy and inaccurate
journalism.

and when we talk about holy books and hooded men and death, why do we
never mention the kkk?

if there are any people on earth who understand how new york is
feeling right now, they are in the west bank and the gaza strip.

6. today it is ten days. last night bush waged war on a man once
openly funded by the
cia. i do not know who is responsible. read too many books, know
too many people to believe what i am told. i don't give a fuck about
bin laden. his vision of the world does not include me or those i
love. and petittions have been going around for years trying to get
the u.s. sponsored taliban out of power. shit is complicated, and i
don't know what to think.

but i know for sure who will pay.

in the world, it will be women, mostly colored and poor. women will
have to bury children, and support themselves through grief. "either
you are with us, or with the terrorists" - meaning keep your people
under control and your resistance censored. meaning we got the loot
and the nukes.

in america, it will be those amongst us who refuse blanket attacks on
the shivering. those of us who work toward social justice, in
support of civil liberties, in opposition to hateful foreign
policies.

i have never felt less american and more new yorker, particularly
brooklyn, than these past days. the stars and stripes on all these
cars and apartment windows represent the dead as citizens first, not
family members, not lovers.

i feel like my skin is real thin, and that my eyes are only going to
get darker. the future holds little light.

my baby brother is a man now, and on alert, and praying five times a
day that the orders he will take in a few days time are righteous and
will not weigh his soul down from the afterlife he deserves.

both my brothers - my heart stops when i try to pray - not a beat to
disturb my fear. one a rock god, the other a sergeant, and both
palestinian, practicing muslim, gentle men. both born in brooklyn
and their faces are of the archetypal arab man, all eyelashes and
nose and beautiful color and stubborn hair.

what will their lives be like now?

over there is over here.

7. all day, across the river, the smell of burning rubber and limbs
floats through. the sirens have stopped now. the advertisers are
back on the air. the rescue workers are traumatized. the skyline is
brought back to human size. no longer taunting the gods with its
height.

i have not cried at all while writing this. i cried when i saw those
buildings collapse on themselves like a broken heart. i have never
owned pain that needs to spread like that. and i cry daily that my
brothers return to our mother safe and whole.

there is no poetry in this. there are causes and effects. there are
symbols and ideologies. mad conspiracy here, and information we will
never know. there is death here, and there are promises of more.

there is life here. anyone reading this is breathing, maybe hurting,
but breathing for sure. and if there is any light to come, it will
shine from the eyes of those who look for peace and justice after the
rubble and rhetoric are cleared and the phoenix has risen.

affirm life.
affirm life.
we got to carry each other now.
you are either with life, or against it.
affirm life.

Wassalam.

I am not a SPAM-BLOGGER!

Assalamualaikum warahmatullah wabarakatuh,

I don't know why I received this email from google-blogspot! This is ridiculous and no explanation is offered.

Dear Blogger user,

This is a message from the Blogger team.

Your blog, at http://fatinaliah.blogspot.com/, has been identified as a potential spam blog. For an explanation of what spam blogs are, please see Blogger Help: http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=42577

You will not be able to publish posts to your blog until we review your site and confirm that it is not a spam blog. To request a review, please fill out the form found here:

We will take a look at your blog and unlock it within four business days. Please note that if we do not hear from you within 20 days, we will remove your blog. If this blog does not belong to you, then you do not have to do anything. Any other blogs you may have will not be affected.

Since you are an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not spam. We find spam by using an automated classifier. Automatic spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and occasionally a blog is flagged incorrectly.

We sincerely apologize for this erroneous result. By using this kind of system, however, we can dedicate more storage, bandwidth, and engineering resources to users like you instead of to spammers. Thank you for your understanding and for your help in our spam-fighting efforts.

Sincerely,

The Blogger Team

I couldn't publish anything for a few days and tried again today, alhamdulillah it works but hey, where is the notification from THE BLOGGER TEAM??? Are you watching over my space, THE BLOGGER TEAM? Heeellooooooooo, anybody there? since you wrote to me the above email from Blogger no-reply@google.com...

Wassalam.

20-mile cycling

Assalamualaikum warahmatullah wabarakatuh,

I am thinking of joining the Darfur Charity Cycle Challenge from Cambridge to Oxford organised by ISOC. This was a random idea from the ISOC Charity Com for Darfur Week in January 2008. Yesterday, we went for a test cycle, just for 20 miles. The actual distance from Cambridge to Oxford is about 85 miles.

We cycled from Sainsbury's in the town to a little village in the south call Fowlmere. There were 6 brothers and 2 sisters including me. The journey to Fowlmere was a very challenging one because of the wind resistance. We were going against the wind the whole journey, however we still managed to complete the journey on time, alhamdulillah because the journey back was much easier and faster. Only a brother who is not feeling well, stopped before getting to the destination. And unfortunately 2 of the cyclists have punctured tyre while on the way back. They pumped up the tyre just enough for cycling and pumped again when it's flatten so that they can get back to town by cycling, not walking!

Overall, there is nothing unexpected happened alhamdulillah. I can feel the difficulty in doing it and still not quite sure if I can complete the ride or not to Oxford. Need lots of training this holiday. Should be a nice breakaway from my work. Next term, we will do another 50-mile test cycling. If I passed, then I'll go for it, inshaALLAH.

If I do, will you sponsor me to help those refugees in Darfur?

Wassalam.