Alhamdulillah (Praise be to God)

Asalamualykum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuh (Peace, blessings and mercy be upon you all)

It has taken me a few weeks to return to my normal state after the loss of my father.  My family and I appreciate all the duas (prayers) and condolences offered for my father.  This is the nature of this dunya (world) that everyone has to leave some day.

My father”s main advice when asked to speak at gatherings or simply striking up conversations with others would be simple.  Dhikr (remembrance of God) is important.  Whether it’s reading the Qur’an or reciting tasbih or studying hadith, just do it.  All the time, anywhere and everywhere.  Unfortunately this is something that may sound simple but hard to do for many including myself.  With the obligations of work, school and the distractions of the dunya, many find it hard to spare time to engage in dhikr.  InshaAllah (God willing) let us all try to increase some form of dhikr in our daily lives.

May Allah forgive us all.  May Allah guide us all.  May Allah make it easy for us to remember Him.  May Allah accept our duas and grant us all jannah.  Ameen.

Ma’salaama (With peace),

MR

Alhamdulillah.  All praise is due to Allah.  There is nothing worthy of worship except Allah and Muhammad is his messenger.

My father passed away on Saturday, February 27, 2010 at around 9:10 PM.

InshaAllah the janazah will be at Masjid Darul Quran in Bayshore, New York on Monday, March 1 at 10 AM.

There will be a gathering with relatives and friends at Masjid Darul Quran Sunday, Ferbruary 28, 2010 after Salat-ul-Maghrib.

Address of the masjid:
1514 East 3rd Avenue, Bay Shore, NY‎

Not here but here.

I ask Allah to forgive me for anything wrong I have said. I ask anyone who may have been hurt by my blog to forgive me. Anything good that I have written is from Allah. Anything bad is from myself and the whispers of the shaytan.

May Allah take away any suffering from any Muslim. May Allah remove the injustice around the world. May Allah bring peace to war infested lands. May Allah forgive all the wrong doers. May Allah guide all the misguided and continue to guide the guided.

Oh Allah! Forgive the Muslim men and women. Forgive the believing men and women. Those who are alive and those who died. You are indeed the One who listens and accepts all supplications.

Servants of Allah! Indeed Allah orders us to be just and to excel in what we do. Be generous and to take care of our kin and relatives. Never do what is forbidden of all sins and not to transgress. He almighty advises you so you can remember.

Verily, Salah prevents evil deeds and misconduct.

With that said, my last and final post is done.

Asalamualykum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuh
May the peace, mercy and blessings of God be upon you

__________________

UPDATE (1/2/10): Some of you suggested a I list resources that I usually go to.  Here are my sources for news articles:

1. Reddit
   I’m on reddit on a daily basis.  It’s basically a community that votes different submissions from around the web.  I use this to get the latest news around the world and in America.  The politics and world news subreddits are very good.
2. Twitter
   I find some of the most craziest links on here.  You have to really search and follow the right people. @IslamBlog and @muslimvoices are pretty good of aggregating a lot of links around the web regarding Islam and Muslims.

List for Islamic knowledge:

1. Halal Tube
   The number one reason I made that site was for myself to organize lectures.  I basically listen to all my stuff from there.  If I find something, I add it.  I know there is a submit form for anyone to add, but I’ve been lazy with that.  Hopefully now that MR has come to an end I will be able to work on Halal Tube more often.
2. IslamQA.com
   I use it to find hadith related to questions I have, not necessarily to find a fatwa.
3. SearchTruth
   Easy way to find things from the Quran and Hadith.
4. Read!
   I read books.

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Update (1/3/2010):  If people want to continue sharing articles and link, you can start a community on ShoutReel here.  I’ll be on there adding interesting things I find as well as throughout the ShoutReel site. I’ll also still be tweeting.

In other words, I’ll still be sharing information online, just not on this blog anymore!  So follow me on twitter and join ShoutReel!

__________________

Updated (1/3/2010): The site will remain online, just not updated.  I’ll be posting here

Updated (4/9/2011): Just follow me on twitter and listen to lectures on HalalTube or listen to the Qur’an on HalalTunes.

“And hold firmly to the rope of Allah (His covenant and the Qur’an) all together and do not become divided.”
Quran 3:103

“And indeed this, your nation, is one nation (in having a unified collective way of life and course of conduct), and I am your Lord, so fear Me.”
Quran 23:52

“The Believers are but a single Brotherhood. So make peace and reconciliation between contending brothers; and fear Allah that ye may receive Mercy.”
Quran 49:10

“O you who believe! Avoid suspicion as much (as possible), for suspicion in some cases is a sin, and spy not on each other, nor speak ill of each other behind their backs. Would any of you like to eat the flesh of his dead brother? Nay, you would abhor it… But fear Allah, for Allah is Oft-Returning, Most Merciful.”
Quran 49:12

“O you who believe! Let not some men among you laugh at others for it may be that the (latter) are better then the (former); nor let some women laugh at others for it may be that the (latter) are better than the (former). And don’t defame or be sarcastic to each other. And don’t call each other by (offensive) nicknames; ill-seeming is a name connoting wickedness (to be used of one) after he has believed. And those who do not desist are (indeed) doing wrong.
Quran 49:11

PS – There are 2 others quotes that were also popular: “Music* is haraam. Pictures** are haraam.”

* Including all nasheeds even voice only ones, LOL.
** He never liked taking pictures.

‘We Did Not Have a Terrorist Attack on Our Country During President Bush’s Term’

LOL

Of course we didn’t because 9/11 was an inside job organized by the CIA and Mossad to bring America into two unnecessary wars in order to crush the economy so all the wall street executives can get free money from the government to help them “bail out” without repaying it back.

Border Guard officers of Ethiopian descent report rising number of racially motivated verbal attacks from Hebron_youths; Druze officers also suffer racist remarks

Not only do they serve long and tiring hours in the reserve forces, and not only are they forced to deal with violent clashes with settlers, but now, Border Guard officers of Ethiopian descent are also faced with rising racism.

“Niggers don’t expel Jews! This isn’t what we brought you to Israel_for!” are just some of the degrading slurs Border Guard officers reported hearing from masked settlers.

During the violent clashes between Israeli forces and settlers in Hebron_on Tuesday “a bunch of veiled people started yelling at us: Who are you to expel us from our home? An Ethiopian does not expel a Jew! A nigger does not expel a Jew!” one Border Guard officer of Ethiopian descent recounted.

“I just didn’t know what to do with myself,” he said.

Source

Arabic version:

_____________

At least 30 suspected al-Qaeda militants have been killed by an air strike in a remote mountainous area of Yemen, security officials say.

An unnamed official told reporters the strike took place as dozens of militants gathered in Shabwa province, east of the capital, Sanaa.

Two senior al-Qaeda commanders in the Arabian peninsula could be among the dead, he said.

Al-Qaeda has carried out frequent attacks in Yemen in recent months.

The Saudi government has recently expressed its concern about the resurgence of the movement in the region.

According to the BBC, a Yemeni official said that Anwar al-Awlaki was amongst the dead. Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi rajioon.

Update: Apparently other news agencies are reporting the same thing. Most likely the same one source.

Reuters news agency cited a security official saying that a radical Muslim preacher linked to the US army psychiatrist charged over the fatal shooting of 13 people at a US army base was suspected to be among those killed.

Yemen-based al-Qaeda sympathiser Anwar al-Awlaki, who was released from a Yemeni prison last year, and Maj Nidal Hasan had exchanged e-mails before the shooting at Fort Hood last month, US officials say.

Sources:BBC, Washington Post, Reuters

“This modern house Negro loves his master. He wants to live near him. He’ll pay three times as much as the house is worth just to live near his master, and then brag about ‘I’m the only Negro out here.’ ‘I’m the only one on my job.’ ‘I’m the only one in this school.’ You’re nothing but a house Negro. And if someone comes to you right now and says, ‘Let’s separate,’ you say the same thing that the house Negro said on the plantation. ‘What you mean, separate? From America? This good white man? Where you going to get a better job than you get here?’ I mean, this is what you say. ‘I ain’t left nothing in Africa,’ that’s what you say. Why, you left your mind in Africa. On that same plantation, there was the field Negro. The field Negro — those were the masses. There were always more Negroes in the field than there was Negroes in the house. The Negro in the field caught hell. He ate leftovers. In the house they ate high up on the hog. The Negro in the field didn’t get nothing but what was left of the insides of the hog. They call ’em ‘chitt’lin” nowadays. In those days they called them what they were: guts. That’s what you were — a gut-eater. And some of you all still gut-eaters. The field Negro was beaten from morning to night. He lived in a shack, in a hut; He wore old, castoff clothes. He hated his master. I say he hated his master. He was intelligent. That house Negro loved his master. But that field Negro — remember, they were in the majority, and they hated the master. When the house caught on fire, he didn’t try and put it out; that field Negro prayed for a wind, for a breeze. When the master got sick, the field Negro prayed that he’d die. If someone come to the field Negro and said, ‘Let’s separate, let’s run,’ he didn’t say ‘Where we going?’ He’d say, ‘Any place is better than here.’ You’ve got field Negroes in America today. I’m a field Negro. The masses are the field Negroes. When they see this man’s house on fire, you don’t hear these little Negroes talking about ‘our government is in trouble.’ They say, ‘The government is in trouble.’ Imagine a Negro: ‘Our government’! I even heard one say ‘our astronauts.’ They won’t even let him near the plant — and ‘our astronauts’! ‘Our Navy’ — that’s a Negro that’s out of his mind. That’s a Negro that’s out of his mind. Just as the slavemaster of that day used Tom, the house Negro, to keep the field Negroes in check, the same old slavemaster today has Negroes who are nothing but modern Uncle Toms, 20th century Uncle Toms, to keep you and me in check, keep us under control, keep us passive and peaceful and nonviolent. That’s Tom making you nonviolent. It’s like when you go to the dentist, and the man’s going to take your tooth. You’re going to fight him when he starts pulling. So he squirts some stuff in your jaw called novocaine, to make you think they’re not doing anything to you. So you sit there and ’cause you’ve got all of that novocaine in your jaw, you suffer peacefully. Blood running all down your jaw, and you don’t know what’s happening. ‘Cause someone has taught you to suffer — peacefully. The white man do the same thing to you in the street, when he want to put knots on your head and take advantage of you and don’t have to be afraid of your fighting back. To keep you from fighting back, he gets these old religious Uncle Toms to teach you and me, just like novocaine, suffer peacefully. Don’t stop suffering — just suffer peacefully. As Reverend Cleage pointed out, ‘Let your blood flow In the streets.’ This is a shame. And you know he’s a Christian preacher. If it’s a shame to him, you know what it is to me. There’s nothing in our book, the Quran — you call it ‘Ko-ran’ — that teaches us to suffer peacefully. Our religion teaches us to be intelligent. Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery. That’s a good religion.”