Our society is filled with hurt and despair. The sad part is that we, as Muslim youth, don’t make it any better. Unfortunately, many people do not realize that any statement or action of hurt will hurt, regardless of what one may say. We may call it gentle teasing or good-natured ribbing, but at the end of the day, they are all mere attempts to explain the several shades of hurt that we may inflict on others. When this is being done on a continuous basis, we become immune...
All too often, we see individuals being raised up by their communities and then just leaving when they’re old enough. When they were younger, they used to attend the full-time/weekend school, spend hours at the playground with other children, attend the after-school Karate or sports program, participate in the community festivals, get scolded by their wizened elders, and get loved and spoiled by their uncles and aunties…They were being raised by the whole village, by the whole community. What do they decide to do? They turn their heads in...
When Imam Nawawi was young, he used to be pursued by the children of his town as they continually asked him to join them in their games. They used to sneer, jeer, and try every conceivable method to get him to join, but he used to break away from them crying while saying, “Allah did not create me to play” 1 This was Imam An-Nawawi’s outlook on life from a very young age. Yes, in our times, we would consider it to be bizarre and unusual if a kid...
New E-Book for all Alhamdulillah, ProductiveMuslim.com has released an eBook entitled Mission: Ramadan. It basically comprises of 30 bloggers each writing on one theme, this year being Qur’an, for the month of Ramadan. Go ahead and click the cover image to view the eBook! In the book itself, there are two articles written by MYM staff writers – Day 2 has been written by Jawaad Ahmad Khan (personal website) and Day 28 by Arif Kabir (also published on MYM). Behind The Scenes This project was launched a few days...
There was once a politician who was gearing up to give the speech of his life. He spent countless months writing and reciting his speech, he spent thousands of dollars to rent the largest stadium in town, and spent even more in mass advertising through flyers, posters postcards, billboards, online social networks, television commercials, and every other conceivable method of attracting people. The long-awaited day came, and the politician soon made his way to the stage, trembling with anticipation. He put on his carefully crafted smile and slowly turned...
Many years ago, while waiting for my father to pick me up from school, I sat in front of the Masjid playground, mesmerized by the sand all around me. It was a sunny day, and the sand glittered in the sun like gold. As I picked the shimmering golden beads of sand up and let them slip through my fingers, I felt like I was the richest man in the world… A few years later a close friend of mine, was shooting a documentary for Al-Huda School and had...
Just a few days ago, Algeria and Egypt had a neck-to-neck competition to see who would qualify for the 2010 World Cup. Players were stoned, people were held hostage, and there was general pandemonium…over a soccer game. What was most striking about this game was that these teams were both representing Muslim-majority Arab countries but yet, we saw so much enmity. Even putting all the hatred and enmity aside, it is amazing just to see the millions of Muslims that tuned in to watch the show. Shaykh Muhammad AlShareef...
It is interesting that we mainly tend to venerate somebody only after that person has passed away. That is when the tears stream down, the words come out choked, and the hearts ache. Magnificent memorials are conducted, grand accolades are read, and heartfelt obituaries are written. Now, what if we were to express our gratitude and love to one before their death? Better yet, why not make the love for only the sake of Allah? For example, let’s say you get married. If you love your wife only for...
While on Google, I was typing in “Muslims Can” and was surprised with the search suggestions that I received: Whatever happened to being optimistic? It seems that whenever people think or write about Islam, especially when it comes to culinary matters, they concentrate on what is not allowed: “I can’t eat hamburgers, I can’t drink alcohol, I can’t etc, etc, etc.” Shaykh Magdy Warda, a prolific speaker in the United States, once discussed this in a Khutbah at PGMA and said that we start to think that everything is...
“OMG, my coffee spilled!” A few weeks ago, I had written about how my Gmail got hacked into and how you really don’t know what you got until it’s gone. Jawaad (another MYM blogger) commented, “MashaAllah a very insightful post indeed. I’m smiling at how you take such an irrelevant issue and relate it to your Deen.” For me, I wrote of that incident without much thought. Why? Because Islam is literally a way of life for all Muslims. The idea of ‘separation of and state’ is something...
