HAhmed.com

Salaam
A quick post/return to explain my prolonged period of absence and why I no longer post as much, as many have inquired.

Aside from being extremely busy, I don’t feel a need to post/share links or events because popular social media have long filled that void for the majority of people. I’m also no longer as passionate about posting my opinion on various issues as I used to be.

While I’m not officially ending this blog with this note because I could potentially start posting actively once more in the future, I just thought a clarification was necessary for those few readers from all those years!

Source: Suhaib Webb

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A GREAT inspirational talk by Ustadh Usama Canon – especially for young Muslims. Ustadh Usama talks about the fake intra-muslim pettiness (salafi/sufi, etc.), among other issues – and how we must reconnect ourselves with the Quran, and our communities!

Recently on the morning drive to school my 8-year-old son asked me a question I’ve been dreading since he was a baby, “Mom, what happened on 9/11?”

Mass murder is impossible to explain to yourself, let alone a child. But how do I, as a parent, explain the slaughter of innocent people in the name of a religion that I am trying to pass on to my boy?

More here

SOURCE: NYT Parenting Blog

Click here to learn more about and donate to this cause.

This project provides solar lights to earthquake-affected homes with school-aged children by a group of women. The lights replace unhealthy, expensive options with affordable and healthy indoor air.

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Potential Long Term Impact

The project impacts 3,000 people, mostly women and children through a systematic outreach of 30 community workers who engage 300 women to effect social, environmental and micro-economic improvement in each home.

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Project Needs and Beneficiaries

Each family sacrifices 20% of income on environmentally harmful solutions such as candles, forest wood, or kerosene lamps in rural Pakistan. The night brings crippling effects: children and young girls are unable to study, and women are powerless to continue small-home based businesses, furthering illiteracy and poverty in this mountainous region. Our project provides light in homes to improve literary, women’s home-based small business, and care for the environment in underserved rural areas.

May Allah swt reward those who work for selfless causes such as this one.

CLICK: Photographer Ziyah Gafic provides an intimate portrait of America’s Islamic community

Includes Khalid Latif, the Muslim Chaplain at New York University (click here for his blog)

And more..

The Young Leader
Khaled Latif, New York University’s Muslim chaplain, is one of the youngest and most prominent imams in the New York Muslim community. In this photo, he prepares himself on graduation day at NYU where he will march alongside the university’s rabbi and priest.

Source: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/21899#

Chinese authorities in Xinjiang Province have issued a notice that any Uyghur cadres or workers found not eating lunch during Ramadan could lose their jobs.

It is part of the campaign of local authorities in Xinjiang, home to the Muslim Uyghur ethnic group, to force the Uyghur people to give up their religious rituals during the fasting month of Ramadan.

Ramadan is a holy month in the Islamic calendar, which begun this year on Aug. 22. It requires not eating during the daytime.

“Free lunches, tea, and coffee—that authorities are calling ‘Care from the government’ or ‘Living allowance’—are being offered in government departments and companies. But it is actually a ploy used to find out who is fasting,” said Dilxat Raxit, World Uyghur Congress spokesman, speaking to The Epoch Times.

According to Dilxat, Uyghur Communist Party cadres throughout Xinjiang had been forced to sign “letters of responsibility” promising to avoid fasting and other religious activities. They are also responsible for enforcing the policy in their assigned areas, and face punishment if anyone in these areas fasts.

For the first time, Dilxat said, the crackdown has extended to retired Communist Party members. Current cadres are required to visit them to prevent them from participating in the fast. If anyone violates the ban, local leaders will be held responsible and severely punished, he said.

Muslim restaurant owners are forced to sign a document to remain open and continue selling alcohol during Ramadan or have their licenses revoked, he said.

Uyghurs arrested during the July riots in Urumqi are also prohibited from fasting; those who insist on fasting will be force fed food and water while enduring insults for their misbehavior, he said in the interview.

Monks in mosques are forced to preach to others that fasting is a “feudal activity” and harmful to health, said Dilxat. Otherwise, their religious certification will be cancelled.

When asked about Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Hu Jintao’s recent visit to Xinjiang, Dilxat said: “Xinjiang’s situation has not yet returned to normal. Rather than asking the local Han people to respect the religion and culture of Uyghur people, Hu encouraged the use of military troops to suppress and further restrict our religious freedom. The communist regime often talks about ‘maintaining stability,’ but what they do is always different from what they say. They are actually the ones who are destroying stability.”

An Epoch Times reporter contacted the CCP’s State Ethnic Affairs Commission to see whether the restrictions claimed by Dilxat were official, or what the official stance on Ramadan was. The media contact wouldn’t speak on the subject, instead giving two numbers in Xinjiang that he said the reporter would be able to call to find out more. Both numbers were continually busy, and when the reporter called the State Ethnic Affairs Commission back, the man hung up.

The directives are communicated on official Web sites in the region, however.

Additional reporting by Matthew Robertson

Narrated by Abu Huraira:

The Prophet, may peace and blessings be upon him said, “Seven people will be shaded by Allah under His shade on the day when there will be no shade except His. They are:

[1] a just ruler;

[2] a young man who has been brought up in the worship of Allah ,

[3] a person whose heart is attached to the mosque,

[4] two men or two women who love each other only for Allah ’s sake and they meet and part in Allah ’s cause only;

[5] a man who refuses the call of a charming woman and says: I am afraid of Allah ;

[6] a person who practices charity so secretly that his left hand does not know what his right hand has given.

[7] a person who remembers Allah in seclusion and his eyes get flooded with tears.”

Sahih Muslim & Sahih Bukhari

30 Mosques in 30 Days

Aman Ali and Bassam Tariq are visiting 30 different Masjids in New York City this Ramadan. Check out their journey at http://30mosques.tumblr.com/!

These are some loooooong days… !!!

May Allah make our fasts easy for us, and may He allow us to make the most of this blessed month so that we all have regretless Ramadans!

City Muslims Prepare For Heat-Filled Fast

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1R4KfYuDrvU

Over the years, ive posted many articles about Music and Islam, but in addition to Yusuf Islam’s Music: A Question of Faith or Dawah?, and Umar Faruq Abdallah’s articles, the following article by Brother Ahmad James is one of the best. This article is a must read.

Source: Suhaibwebb.com

Dear my brother Imam Suhaib and all other individuals who reflect deeply on this issue

Bismillah

By the grace of Allah , I entered Islam at the age of 20. It is no exaggeration to say that Hip-Hop was my religion before Islam. I was blessed to be brought up in a local underground scene that taught me to love myself and all others as creatures of God, reject blind materialism, respect women, and different cultures, and religious traditions. It also taught me to live naturally and refuse drugs. Often people who didn’t grow up in the culture mistake it for what they see on MTV, which is nothing but the corporate thievery of a culture to serve the interests of the outsider. This is quite similar to how those who aren’t Muslim will definitely be led to think that Islam is a horrible faith if they watch the corporate news which is similarly spun to serve the interests of an outsider. That’s why I was shocked when you completely affirmed the Shaykh who compared Hip-Hop to “Satanism”. And added statements like, “Since the 1970’s hip hop has done nothing to help the hood except throw its women on BET while some self styled Uncle Tom runs a credit card through their cleavage, served to degenerate basic language skills; create a culture of hyper masculinity based on a feeling that one is greater than God!” First of all, you know that isn’t true. That’s not the whole picture. Excluding what is put on corporate controlled television and radio Hip-hop artists have carried the message of Malcolm and the Black Panthers to our generation like no one else. They have also taught people about alternative narratives to history in contrast to the whitewashed versions in our standard textbooks. They have taught not to follow the global monoculture but to think outside the box and rebel against injustice and oppression. I have seen so much beauty from Hip-Hop driven grassroots campaigns, from “stop the violence” to working to free political prisoners, to raising money for breast cancer research. Hip-Hop after school programs have kept kids off the streets and away from crime in neighborhoods where there are few other options. No one is pretending Hip Hop is all positive and it reflects the sometimes “unislamic” realities of poor inner city America but we both know it is far from satanism. It was created by inner city kids who had no artistic outlets – so they created their own. At the very least, Hip-Hop has always been the voice of the voiceless. The Shaykh from overseas probably doesn’t know this because he didn’t grow up in the culture and he only gets the MTV/BET version. But you know better. Would you nod with approval if one of your non-Muslim relatives compared Islam to satanism citing all the evil they see on the TV about it? Of course not!!! But you emphatically support someone describing Hip-Hop based on misinformation. The metaphor is imperfect but the similarities are undeniable.

To me your writing, shows more than anything, that you have not been living in America for quite some time and are out of touch with the realities on the ground.

Continue reading Islam and Hip Hop by Brother Ahmad James

Muslims United For Change is dedicated to increasing the awareness of and sympathy for issues requiring the attention and action of the Muslim community. United For Change will raise the level of consciousness within the Muslim community while simultaneously developing resolutions and creating an action oriented partnership between the public andUnited For Change.

United For Change is historic; the maiden voyage is a unique convention entitled: United For Change Presents: United Against Malaria, One Goal, One Body during Labor Day weekend at the Gaylord Hotel, just outside of Washington, D.C.

Rarely have so many Muslim speakers committed themselves to this day, and collectively found agreement in a cause of this nature.

Amongst the many confirmed speakers to attend the convention will be:

Shaykh Muhammad Ninowy, Imam Mohamed Majid, Shaykh Yasir Qadhi, Shaykh Faraz Rabbani, Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, Imam Suhaib Webb, Imam Siraj Wahhaj, Imam Zaid Shakir and Imam Syed Naqvi.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K09SGLjntPo

Click here to view the poster: http://www.muslimsunitedforchange.com/events/

Main Event Tickets:

Iftar Event Tickets:

Source
A federal appeals court in Manhattan on Friday reversed a lower court ruling that had allowed the government to bar a prominent Muslim scholar from entering the United States in 2004 on grounds he had contributed to a charity that had connections to terrorism.

The scholar, Tariq Ramadan, 46, a Swiss academic, had lined up a position to be a tenured professor at the University of Notre Dame, but the Bush administration revoked his visa. The government cited evidence that from 1998 to 2002, he donated about $1,300 to a Swiss-based charity which the Treasury Department later categorized as a terrorist organization.

Professor Ramadan had said in an affidavit that he was not aware of any connections between the charity, Association de Secours Palestinien, and terrorism, and that he believed the organization was involved in legitimate humanitarian projects.

More herehttp://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/court-reverses-decision-to-bar-swiss-muslim-scholar/

Imam Zaid Shakir: The Life of a Muslim “Rock Star”

An article by Imam Zaid Shakir addressing one of his critics questioning why he (and other scholars) have recently addressed Michael Jackson’s death instead of apparently more important topics.

Please read the article, and keep Imam Zaid and our other scholars in your duas!

Earlier this week, Rep. Peter King put out the following youtube video, in which he called Michael Jackson a “low-life”, a “pervert”, a “child molester” and a “pedophile” among other slanderous words.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-gH2gAXjAw

For the record, Michael Jackson was acquitted of all accounts of child molestation.

A group of Michael Jackson fans have put together a fund helping raise money in support of Peter King’s opponent for his political seat in the next election.

I am posting this because Rep. Peter King has also had a not-so-friendly history with Muslims. He has publicly complained that there are too many Mosques in this country, and has proclaimed that 85 percent of the mosques in this country are controlled by “extremist leadership” [Politico]. He also believes that the Department of Homeland Security needs to target Mosques [MSNBC].

Even more recently Peter King was vocal about ICNA’s You Deserve to Know Campaign, in which they posted ads on over 1,000 Subway cars about Islam. Imam Siraj Wahaj was listed as one of its supporters, yet Rep. Peter King accused him of being involved in the 1993 WTC attempted bombings. (Which Azeem Khan did a great job defending!)

ICNA, CAIR, and other groups have put out many statements over the years condemning Rep. Peter Kings’ islamophobic rhetoric.

I think now is a perfect time for Muslims, especially in New York, to unite with Michael Jackson fans with the common goal of defeating Peter King.

Michael Jackson Fans against Peter King

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqQVll-MP3I

Source: Muslim Matters

Bismillah

After seeing Food, Inc. this week, my friends and I had a collective “Alhamdulillah we are Muslim” moment.

In this culture of “what we don’t know can’t hurt us” mentality, I found this movie to be enormously eye-opening, particularly for one who is not familiar with the food industry and the impact it has on the world economy.

Food, Inc. has brought to light many issues that the average American not only doesn’t think about, but probably has no idea even occurs. Before this film, the food industry in my eyes, seemed like a simple one: make food on farms, process it in a factory and ship it to grocery stores. Simple, right? Wrong. The food industry in the United States is not only one of corruption, but it is meant to deceive and warp the mind of the consumer.

In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation’s food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that’s been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government’s regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation’s food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, insecticide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won’t go bad, but we also have new strains of e coli – the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.

The film discussed many aspects of the food industry which I cannot go over – I feel like I need to watch it again to digest all the information – so I will highlight a few points that resonated with me:

Read the rest of this excellent post at Muslim Matters