My wife has an old friend visiting today. In my lunch break, I was charged with taking two of her children to jummah. “I’m sorry,” I told the eldest boy, intent on managing expectations, “it’s not what you’re used to in London. There will be a long bayaan in Punjurdu… then a short one in …
I will always stand with and up for those who are mocked and derided by society. However shy and timid people may think I am, this is the natural reflex of one likewise ridiculed by others. In that instant, I don’t feel cowed to speak my mind, coming to another’s defence. It has always been …
A new generation of vocal agitators — themselves graduates — petition us: “Don’t send your daughters to university!” Why? “Because they will lose their deen!” If that were a legitimate argument against the permissibility of education, why focus on female students alone? After all — anecdotally, for that’s all we’re dealing with here — it …
There’s no need for zealotry. We’re no longer over-excited teenagers, easily convinced by simple binaries. We’re middle-aged folk, who have long established that diversity of opinion is a good thing, and have embraced the flexibility inherent in the path. That’s why we pay no heed to the social media agitators playing dressing-up as little scholars. …
What do we do when others take credit for our work, and use it to gain promotions? I suppose some would say you have to step on others to climb that ladder. Others would call it focussed ambition. One thing is clear: it ruins workplace relationships. The good news: that springboard has helped them get …
Only illiterates would deny access to education to women and girls. Education is the foundation upon which successful families, communities and nations are built. Whatever these illiterates are striving for, it is not the vision of our deen, which consistently prioritises learning for all — male and female, young and old — as a communal …
A note on sloppy mistakes and typos which increasingly appear in my posts. This is mainly down to me composing articles one-handed on my phone, rather than sitting to type properly at my computer. It’s not a very fluent way to set down my thoughts, but I have grown lazy this past year, inclined to …
So another way to think of the deficits caused by that chromosome disorder is to think of them not as a curse, but as blessings. No calamity occurs on earth or in yourselves without it being in a record before We bring it into being. This is certainly easy for God. Quran 57:22 My adolescence …
It’s so easy to become unduly despondent as a result of comparing yourself to others, and so be knocked off course. Here we understand the wisdom of that saying: Look at those below you and not those above you, for it’s the best way not to belittle the favours of God. Hadith How true. If …
Remember when we were first married, we’d shop for groceries at Cudi’s on the broadway. We’d return home with bags bursting at the seams, filled with fruit and veg. Luscious red tomatoes on the vine. Turkish cucumbers. Dolma peppers. Fresh coriander and parsley. The smell would be heavenly. I used to shop there before we …
To phone home, you used to have to use a special access code to get cheap international calls, but still you’d keep them short. Then came that era conversing via MSN Messenger, firing up the dial-up internet. Later, attempting to video call, only to spend hours faffing about trying to help the other end get …
That’s probably how I’d be recorded this evening. Our lad is feeling playful, but I’m not in the mood. Actually, my mood crashed at about midday, and nothing could restore it. The source? Unknown. Certainly it was a miserable day out there, the sky dark, rain pelting it down. But is that sufficient to account …
Maybe I just have to content myself with my place in the ecosystem. That was their rizq (provision / livelihood), and this was mine. Perhaps we all had different ambitions. Here I remind myself that my own were always more esoteric. So better to focus on that, and not get knocked off course, trying to …
If I were to explain to others how I have been feeling the past year, it would be as if I am emerging from a tunnel, deep underground, only now discovering that the landscape on the surface has completely changed. This the effect of reacquainting myself with peers after a quarter of a century apart. …
For the seeker and convert alike, it is imperative that they understand that Muslims are just people like anyone else, as diverse as humanity at large. They are buffeted by the same forces that affect all people, influenced by histories, culture, politics, wealth, power and their personal circumstances. Amongst the Muslim there are those who …
