I have been somewhat negligent with my blog, but I have an excuse: Ramaḍān. Who blogs during Ramaḍān? Well, I guess if you have something Ramaḍān-related, or something incredibly important to say, you might blog during Ramaḍān — but most of my posts aren’t that important. I did however hear a khutbah during Ramaḍān that I thought was worth mentioning here. The khatīb began by discussing how, when people are curious about Islam, we as Muslims tend to refer them to some of the later chapters of the Qur’ān that we think provide illustrious displays of Allāh’s power — yet we fail to think about the fact that each surah of the Qur’ān was put in a specific order by Allāh for a reason.

Considering that the Qur’ān is meant to be a handbook, if you will, for the whole of humanity, it makes sense to start at the beginning. Surat Al-Fatihah (The Opening), of course, is a preface; it carries the foreword — the essential message of the Qur’ān. It praises Allah for His Lordship, His Mercy and Grace, His power over all things, and is a prayer for His guidance.

The second chapter, Surat Al-Baqarah (The Cow), makes it clear from the second verse, that this book is a guide for mankind (Qur’ān 2:2). It continues by confirming all that has come before Islam that was found in the books of the Torah and the Bible (Qur’ān 2:4). Then it gives a brief history of the origin of man, Adam’s (peace be upon him) role on the earth as a viceroy of Allāh (Qur’ān 2:30), and reminds the Jews that they had made a covenant with Him (Qur’ān 2:40). The entire chapter is mostly a historical account of religion and man’s obligations to Allāh as well as his fellow man. It makes sense for a person interested in understanding Islam to learn about its relationship to the history of man.

While the next chapter, Surat Ali `Imrān (The Family of `Imrān), gives us the accounts of Mary (may Allāh be pleased with her), Mother of Jesus (peace be upon him), and how she and her offspring were protected by Allāh (Qur’ān 3:36), it gives us many laws governing society (Qur’ān 3:110, and Qur’ān 3:130). The chapter gives more historical narrations about the messengers, similar to Surat Al-Baqarah.

The bulk of the khutbah, however, focused about the meaning of Surat Al-Nisā’ (The Women), and was talking about how the surah was meant to explain laws of society and correcting the corruption the was running rampant at the time. The name of the surah, “The Women,” is in reference to how the very first ayah emphasizes the importance of women — our very mothers (Qur’ān 4:1) — in society, and the surah explains the protection they are guaranteed through Allāh’s dīn.

The surah continues covering society and the Islamic laws defining our duties towards it — such as protecting orphans and giving to the poor (Qur’ān 4:6, Qur’ān 4:10, and Qur’ān 4:162). But the key point in mentioning the surah was to illustrate the thread between the different laws governing society — and that thread is taqwā (God-consciousness). Each item mentioned reminds us that by performing our duties to society, we are being mindful of our duty to Allāh and are warding off evil (Qur’ān 4:1, Qur’ān 4:9, Qur’ān 4:77, and Qur’ān 4:128). It all comes back to the whole point of fasting during the month of Ramaḍān: to attain taqwā (Qur’ān 2:183).

Now, this whole blog post has been an aside to the point that hit me the hardest from this khutbah; but I felt it would be a disservice to discuss just this point and not include the aforementioned details. What I really wanted to mention was the message that the khatīb gave regarding the verse in Surat Al-Baqarah (Qur’ān 2:186) that says, in a rough translation:

“And when My servants question thee concerning Me, then surely I am near. I answer the prayer of the supplicant when he crieth unto Me. So let them hear My call and let them trust in Me, in order that they may be led aright.”

Allāh is speaking here, and is reminding us that He is very near to us, and that He answers our prayers and supplication. But a very critical and important point that may be missed is the ordering of the words in the verse. It all goes back to the importance of the ordering in which Allāh says things (just as the order of the chapters of the Qur’ān are important).

The verse says, “I answer the prayer of the supplicant,” then he says “if he crieth (or supplicates) unto Me.” In other words, the default state is that Allāh answers the prayers of the supplicant… that’s the default state. All we have to do is simply ask. That means all our prayers are automatically answered. This is a very powerful statement, and one that may be confusing if we feel that there are du`ā’ that we have made that have gone unanswered. As the khatīb mentioned, du`ā’ are answered in more than just one way. It may be that a particular request you make may in fact be for something that is harmful for you, without you realizing it. Just as the Muslims who were averse to fighting, even at a time when the Muslims were being persecuted, were made to understand that at the time it was ordained for them because it was better for them. Allāh explains, “…it may happen that you hate a thing which is good for you, and it may happen that you love a thing which is bad for you. Allāh knoweth, and you know not” (Qur’an 2:213-219). There are times when something we want will be bad for us, but Allāh protects us from it by denying our request for it; however, it is not that the request goes unanswered, because it is in fact replaced with something that is good for us — whether it be the expiation of sins and the granting of rewards in the hereafter, or simply the aversion of a calamity that had been ordained for us in this life, or any other way that Allāh sees fit to reward us with asking Him for something.

Sometimes, Allāh delays responding to a du`ā’ just so that the asker may repeatedly call upon Him. Allāh loves to hear His servants call upon Him for His assistance, and repeated du`ā’ is also a means to bring the servant closer to Him. A dear brother of mine sent me the following video that goes into a bit more detail on that idea and some of what I mentioned above. It is definitely worth listening to. I hope that this is something that we can all keep in mind as we continue to make du`ā’ and try to implement the lessons of Ramaḍān, in shā’ Allāh (God willing).

Recently, a dear friend of mine gave me an incredibly thoughtful gift. For my graduation, he bought me a copy of Adobe CS4, which (if you were not aware) happens to be the greatest suite of products ever put together in life!

In my undergrad days, I used to work with pretty much all the big programs in the suite, working on various designs for newsmagazines, posters, flyers, websites, what-have-you. So I’ve been fiddling with the programs a lot since my friend got it for me — seeing what’s new, getting used to the menus, etc. I actually get that warm, fuzzy feeling you get when you come back home after a long trip — or when you’re in a familiar place you haven’t been in a long time. Now I’ll just start up Photoshop and just leave it on even if I’m not using it just so I can feel at home.

Anyway, I decided that since I have Illustrator now, I may as well put it to good use. I created a t-shirt design based on (what I think) is one of the funniest lines from my favorite show, 30 Rock. In the Cutbacks episode [Season 3; Episode 17], Jack Donaghy tells Liz Lemon that her writer’s room has become the headquarters for Telemundo coverage of World Soccer’s qualifying. In response, she turns to him and exclaims, “What the what?!” I mostly like the phrase because it’s a PG alternative to other “what the…” phrases, so I want to propagate it.

You can buy all sorts of merchandise with the above design at my CafePress Shop. Enjoy!

You know those annoying emails you get from random listserves that you don’t know how you got on in the first place? Well Gmail just made it easier for you to unsubscribe from them — asumming the senders make the effort and comply. Gmail now incorporates an unsubscribe option when you hit “spam” or  ”show details” in the top right corner of the message (when you don’t want to mark it as spam as well). The senders have to be a registered, legitimate sender with the service in order for the unsubscribe service to work.

I think the service would be slightly more useful if it would search through the email and look for what seems like an “unsubscribe” link or email address, and just automate the process completely that way — rather than require the individual senders to register. I understand the concern with making sure that the sender isn’t a spammer — but leave that up to the users to make that decision. Or pop up a message to remind the user that it may be possible the sender is just phishing for emails. Give the user some credit — when he knows the sender is legitimate, let him unsubscribe. Just my two cents, anyway.

I’ve made a lot more changes to the website. I finally decided on a Wordpress theme I like. I’ve also added Google Friend Connect, so people can easily add comments and stay up to date with any new posts. I have integrated my Google Reader Blogroll in the sidebar to the right, in case people are wondering what blogs I like to read.  My Good Reads shelf is off to the right as well, for more on what I’m reading (or have read).

Finally, you’ll also see some advertising on the website. I hate to add it, but I’m currently looking for work. So any income, is welcome-income. On that note, I should mention that books on my Good Reads shelf will link directly to Amazon, and that also allows me to generate revenue as an affiliate. The message here is, if you see something on here you like — click it!

I decided to try out the new Wordpress Blackberry app. This is my first official post using the app. It can be downloaded over the air, here: http://blackberry.wordpress.org/install. It was pretty easy to setup and install, but you have to make sure to “enable the WordPress, Movable Type, MetaWeblog and Blogger XML-RPC publishing protocols” from the wp-admin/options-writing.php page. We’ll see how often I get to use it. I’ll update this post with more details once I’ve had more time to play with it.

No, ehaab.com is not under new ownership by some imposter Ehaab; but it does have a new look (which may still change), and will be, henceforth, a new kind of website. What sort of site it becomes remains to be seen.

Now that I’ve completed my formal education — starting a new chapter in my life — it seemed appropriate that I give the website an overhaul. I just installed Wordpress, so it will still have a blog component. I plan to continue posting my random rants on everything under the sun, but I will be incoporating a bit more serious material. Thus, all my old posts are gone. I have them backed up somewhere for myself, but you won’t find them here.