Activity

Assalamu alaikum

Jazakallah Khair for visiting my blog. As you can probably tell by the spider webs, this thing has gone A.W.O.L. in recent times. To see my latest cyber activity, you can visit my YouTube channel. Feel free to explore old posts. Categories ("labels") are on the right.

Salaam

Welcome

Assalamu Alaikum

Welcome to my blog. Though it hasn't seen much life the past few months, you can visit my YouTube channel to see my latest viral activity. Jazakallah Khair.

Some Ayat

Assalamu alaikum

These are from the end of Surah Waqiah:

The Translation:

83. Then why do you not (intervene) when (the soul of a dying person) reaches the throat?

84. And you at the moment are looking on,

85. But We are nearer to him than you, but you see not,

86. Then why do you not, if you are exempt from the reckoning and recompense (punishment, etc.)

87. Bring back the soul (to its body), if you are truthful?

88. Then, if he (the dying person) is of the Muqarrabun (those brought near to Allah),

89. (There is for him) rest and provision, and a Garden of delights (Paradise).

90. And if he is of those on the Right Hand,

91. Then there is safety and peace (from the Punishment of Allah) for (you as you are from) those on the Right Hand.

92. But if he (the dying person) be of the denying (of the Resurrection), the erring (away from the Right Path of Islamic Monotheism),

93. Then for him is entertainment with boiling water.

94. And burning in Hell-fire.

95. Verily, this! This is an absolute Truth with certainty.

96. So glorify with praises the Name of your Lord, the Most Great.

There are some weak Ahadith that say reciting Surah Waqiah at night saves one from poverty.

Anyway, I'll keep the updates coming.

Salaam

Likes and dislikes about (World Cup) soccer

Assalamu alaikum

It's been a while, but it's the summer and I'm back and my period of, uh, hibernation seems to be over. Anyway, with all the World Cup hype (unfortunately no successful Muslim teams) I decided to make a list of things I like and dislike about World Cup soccer. It might surprise, or annoy, you that most of the things that I like are about soccer in general and many of the things I don't like are about the World Cup. Here we go....

LIKES

1. Easy, fun, accessible game
2. Most popular sport in the world
3. No advertising breaks, no timeouts
4. Indiscriminate selection of World Cup host countries (Europe, East Asia, Africa, Americas, etc. It could be argued that Europe gets a lot though)
5. No need for certain climates in host selection. For example, the Winter Olympics are always in cold climates and the Superbowl is always played in a warm city in the south. But the World Cup is played in all climates. Some 2010 South Africa games were played in freezing temperatures, as it is winter in the Southern Hemisphere.
6. Many different leagues. This can be a good thing or a bad thing- see below for the bad. The good is that we get a variety of different players from a variety of different leagues and there's a league for every skill level (Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, et cetera). In other sports, like ice hockey, one league has a monopoly as the top league in the world - the NHL.

DISLIKES

1. The continuous clock. Why can't they just pause the clock if there's a delay and end the game at 90:00 sharp instead of having to worry about "stoppage time" in which the game ends abruptly at, say, 92:48? It makes it much more convenient.
2. Terrible refereeing at the 2010 World Cup - they should have more referees (the field is huge, they need to cover it) and video review. If the technology is available, why not use it? Besides, humans are humans and humans make mistakes. There have been too many so far in this World Cup and video review is necessary. Bad offside calls, disallowed goals, the list goes on.
   
3. Overtime - "golden goal" vs "silver goal." A silver goal (used in the World Cup) means a goal in OT is just a goal - it changes the score but the game goes on and the other team can still come back and win. A golden goal means sudden death - if you score, you win, and if no one does after a certain amount of allotted time, you go into a shootout. I like this because it adds drama and excitement to the game and makes a goal more, uh, what's the word.... epic. Scenario one: Rodriguez Fernando (made-up name) scores in OT of the World Cup final and goes crazy, knowing his team won. Scenario two: Rodriguez Fernando scores in OT of the World Cup final, but has to wait another 22 minutes until he realizes his team won. Even then the "stoppage time" dilemma creates more confusion. Scenario three: Rodriguez Fernando scores in OT of the World Cup final, but the celebration is dampened when the opposing team scores four minutes later. They score again and win the Cup (or win in a shootout). See what I mean? Scenario one would be the most wildly celebrated, and as soon as he found the back of the net he would know he just scored the biggest goal of his life.
4. Too many players on the field. This leads to difficulty penetrating the defense and low-scoring games (despite the 24 ft by 8 ft goal) that can be boring at times. "Argentina passes the ball around... they try to get it deep but a German defender steals it and passes it up the field.... Germany passes the ball around... they try to get it deep but an Argentine defender steals it and passes it up the field.... Argentina passes the ball..." I think you get the point. If it was 7 on 7 or even as radically low as 5 on 5, there would be a lot more scoring chances and the game would be more fast-paced, exciting and high-scoring (8-7 instead of 1-0?). This is probably why Americans don't like soccer much, because they're used to scores like 33-27 (American football), 112-105 (basketball), et cetera.
5. Too many leagues. I already said this adds variety to the sport, but it's a little too much sometimes. Too much going on, too many teams, and too many players to follow. And fans would like to see big teams from different leagues face each other more. I believe the top teams (i.e. league champions) from the top leagues only face each other once in a UEFA tournament.
6. Dominance of certain teams in their respective leagues. Manchester dominates the Premier League, Madrid & Barcelona dominate La Liga, and this gets boring as they win the championship year after year. Maybe a draft would help even things out.
7. The strange, irregular balls they use in the 2010 World Cup. Why can't they just use normal ones instead of ones that have different and unpredictable paths?
8. Ending matches in a draw. Come on, let's go to overtime and decide who wins!
9. Expensive tickets that are hard to get. This leads to a considerable amount of empty seats in World Cup games. If they lowered the price they would sell more (it's Africa, not Luxembourg).
10. Those annoying vuvuzelas! I can't get the noise out of my head! Like a swarm of bees!

I'm done complaining now! It may look like I don't like soccer much (10 dislikes to 6 likes) but I do. It's just that I think it needs to be tweaked a bit. If you have anything to say, you know what to do - leave a comment.

Assalamu Alaikum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuh

Muslims getting...

...fatter. Yeah, it's true.

Yesterday (or was it the day before?) I was reading Taraweeh in a local Masjid, and I noticed that Muslims in America are a bit.... uh.... overweight. I'm serious. We eat too much. I wonder if they eat that much in Muslim countries.
Well, back to what I was talking about. I was reading Taraweeh, and who would have thought, there was a fat guy next to me. And a REALLY fat guy on the left. I was sandwiched, and my arms were really tight and pressed against the sides of my body, I had to lean back with my feet still lined up with their's just to get some relief (putting pressure on my heels which was not comfortable at ALL), my arms were being pushed in during Sujood, and the list goes on and on and on and on....
The average per capita calorie consumption in America (according to 2007 data) is 4000 (it's actually 3990, but what difference does 10 calories make? I probably burned 10 calories writing this post). Now, two years later, it's probably well over that. And I have a feeling that this country's 7,000,000 million Muslims (mainly the immigrants - 5,000,000 are immigrants or descended from immigrants, the rest are converted) are contributing a LOT to that number. Among Muslims, it's probably 5,000. Or maybe 6 or 7,000. See ya later, Mr. 8000-calorie-diet Michael Phelps. Your days are over. An American Muslim could beat that any day. Even in Ramadan.
Kareem, trade in the burger for a salad. Not to mention you got it at McDonald's, so it's HARAAM. Habeeb, drink an orange juice instead of a soda. Fatima, lose the french fries. Start eating healthy foods, people! Your future depends on it! Haven't you heard of cholesterol? But that's not the point. The point is, when you eat fatty foods, or large amounts of food, or both (the most popular choice), you get REALLY fat and your going to end up bothering the person next to you in Salaah or Taraweeh or something else like that. Then he/she will go to his/her blog which gets 3 views a day (more like a week. Possibly even a year!) and right an article similar to this one. So throw out that hot dog you're chowing down on (you got ketchup on the computer) and go eat an apple. NOW. Unless you're fasting. I assume you're not, because you wouldn't have been eating a hot dog.

Salaam

Some stuff

Assalamu alaikum!!!

I'm planning to do some stuff on this blog for the summer. Here is some of it:

1. "Advertise" this blog a little bit more. I have a handful of viewers on Youtube, but barely any readers on Blogger.
2. Upload Surah Yousuf with English translation onto Youtube
3. Celebrate this blog's 1st anniversary, on July 22nd, 2009!

Salaam!

Quran Flash

Assalamu Alaikum

I just got a link to a really cool website called Quran Flash from www.shuraim.net. They have an online Quran, and you can literally flip through the pages, magnify text, etc. Here's the link. If that doesn't work Copy and Paste this:
http://www.quranflash.com
I will have a link on the right-hand side of this blog. Note: The website is in Arabic, but they have English, too. Here's the English one link:
http://www.quranflash.com/en/index.html

Assalamu Alaikum

Phatwa Factory

Salaam

I found this pretty funny website on our brother Ismaeel's blog. Just click on the banner and it'll take you there:



Thanks and Assalamu Alaikum,
Yousuf