An Online Muslim Youth Literary Journal
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…
By Ikhlas Hassen
Got to give the Khutbah? Want to start a Halaqah? Use these tips to increase your speech delivery skills!
1) Thikr- Remembrance of Allah (subhanahu wa tala)
Malik related to me that he heard that Isa ibn Maryam used to say, “Do not speak much without the mention of Allah for you will harden your hearts. A hard heart is far from Allah, but you do not know. Do not look at the wrong actions of people as if you were lords. Look at your wrong actions as if you were slaves. Some people are afflicted by wrong action and some people are protected from it. Be merciful to the people of affliction and praise Allah for His protection.” 56.3.8 Malik’s Muwatta.
Have you ever gone through hundreds of Google pages trying to find a certain hadith or ayah, and have only been left with “Izlam is a violent religion” and other inaccurate information?
I posed my thought and Alhamdulillah got some great responses.
Continue reading ‘iTech: Your Search is Over! Islamic Search Engines’
It’s time to bring some Ihsaan to our productions.
For part 1 of this two-part article, which speaks about video taping, see here.
As Muslims, we always have to try to do our best in anything we do. For, as stated by the Messenger of Allah (Salallahu ‘Alayhi Wasallam), “Verily, Allah has prescribed proficiency in all things.” (Hadith #17, An-Nawawi 40 Hadith). Therefore, whatever we produce, we must produce it with Ihsaan (translated as excellence or proficiency). Therefore, we can’t have those videos with boring titles, horrible audio and video quality, and a straight, one-angle shot of a speaker from forty-feet away (There’s actually a Masjid that used a security camera to tape a lecture). We have to be the best of the best, as we are conveying a message that is the best from the best Messenger who received the best book from the lord of all the worlds. We have a standard to uphold. In this post, I will go over some basic editing techniques that will hopefully improve your videos.
By Jawaad Ahmad Khan
No doubt the medium of video is spreading like wild-fire all through the internet. The real question is: How can this medium be used for the sake of Allah?
In the past years, many Muslim video productions have been done Alhamdulillah (DVDs, VHS, etc.). However, quite a few failed in engaging its Muslim viewers, and the effect of the message was lost. In this iTech post, we will discuss a few techniques on video taping a production that will bi-ithnillah (with Allah’s permission) improve your video and draw interest to it.
The first thing that needs to be deciphered is, what type of video are you making? Is it a live lecture, speech, or a planned video?
Let’s define these.
1. Live Lecture/Speech
2. Planned Video
Depending on what video you’re doing, here’s a few principles to follow.
Lighting
Lighting is one of the most important elements to photography and video. The ideal set-up would be a 3-point lighting system. What this is, is three lights to light your subject.
You use three lights, a key light, which should be the brightest and main source of light, a fill light, less intense and used to eliminate the shadows that may show from the other side, and the backlight, which lights up the overall scene.
Try to use this for when you’re taping a planned video. Use the key and fill lights if that’s all you have. And use any natural light (sunlight, room lamp, etc.) when taping something. You don’t necessarily need professional work lights or all that. In many of my videos, I’ve used flashlights, lamps, torch lights, and even a chandelier’s lights. Here’s a video showing all the lights I’d used for a Ramadan Message I made. As you see, I have a lamp in the back, some light from the ceiling fan, and a bright flashlight hung unto a lampshade.
When you’re taping a live video, you don’t have that much leeway all the time. My advice – use the lighting already available to you. If you’re taping a speaker, ask him to move based on where the light’s best (a little to the left or right, but don’t move them to the other side of the room or something!). Use lights when you can and always look at your shot before you start taping, making sure that the camera’s settings make the quality look good.
Audio
Some say that audio is 51% of the production. People will look at a bad quality video, but they will not tolerate something that hurts their ears with all the noise. If you can, try to record your audio separate from the camera, with a microphone or a voice recorder. In many khutbaat (sermons) that I’ve taped, I used an mp3 player with a built-in mic to record the audio straight from the podium. If you don’t have the privilege of separate audio, then look at the settings on your camera for noise reduction (but don’t overdo it). Also, move closer to your subject, as opposed to zooming in. It’s better for the video quality and the audio quality if you’re camera is 9 or 10 feet away as opposed to the back of a 100 foot masjid. As a final point, never talk or even whisper when taping. Anything behind the camera gets caught, and it’s clearer than the speaker that’s farther away. I’ve gotten caught with a whispery “Salallahu ‘Alayhi Wasallam” a few times and it sounds unprofessional. Just mouth whatever you have to say.
Frame The Shot
Compare these two shots:
This is Gyasi McKinzie (I found this while searching for Islamic speaker on Google, check out their video). The first one doesn’t look very 
visually pleasant. It’s far away, the speaker is smack dab in the middle, and there’s so much space above his head, it’s so hard to focus on him. In the second picture, the speaker is right there, and you can easily focus on him. The rule applied here is called the Rule of Thirds. (By the way, in the same video, the brother/sister who edited it did apply this technique in other parts, I’m not bashing their video.)
The Rule of thirds basically makes you divide your video into a tic-tac-toe board. Three lines across and three lines vertically. Then, you basically place your subject along one of those lines or at the intersection of two points (never in the center). Because the human eye usually would move from the top of the screen down, or from the left of the screen to the right. Think about any T.V. shows where they show interviews. Is the person ever in the middle of the shot? No, they’re always in the right or left side. This just makes it a bit more interesting. Here’s some more detailed info on the rule of thirds. Also, another technique used in the second picture is the elimination of head room. Headroom is all the open space above the speaker’s head. Usually, you want to eliminate that so the viewers’ eyes don’t wander.
Finally, the CONTENT!
Know that no matter what equipment you have, how many lights or microphones you possess, how much money you have to invest, it’s a filmmaker that makes the movie, it’s a creative person that creates beautiful video. As long as your intention is clear, and you’re trying to spread a message with the video, then Allah will bless your efforts and make it easy for you. Even if the video doesn’t come out 100% professionally, at least you can reap some rewards from it, and that’s what’s most important.
May Allah help us to perfect our skills in all areas and may He bless our intentions and allow us to use any medium we can to spread the message of Islam.
Comment with an “Ameen” if you agree.
Wasalaamu ‘Alaikum Wa Rahmatullah
Coming up soon: Video Editing & Audio Fixing!
By Arif Kabir
[Editor's Note: This is the beginning of an Islamic Technology series (iTech in short) that will be dealing with different technologies and how we can use them for Islam. This particular one is rather technical, but it should prove to be useful for all online writers and bloggers Insha'Allah]
UPDATE: If you would like an alternate (and perhaps easier) way of referencing your Qur’anic Ayahs, you can use Quran.com, click on a verse, and you’d get your personalized page. However, we recommend you use the following for Ahadith or any other type of resource.)
While compiling Shaykh Muhammad AlShareef’s Heart Wheel Journals into a list for easier viewing for MYM, I wanted to have all the videos on the same page. However, since there were more than 20 videos, I wanted to have a hyperlinked table of contents so that one could just click on one of the contents and go to that specific video on the page instead of having to continuously scroll to find the desired video.
Page Jumping
Alhamdulillah, I found the perfect tool for the job once I learned about Page Jumps. They basically allow one to instantly go to another page section with just one click. The interesting part about it is that it will not only take you to that section, but it will also have an added value in the address bar. For example, to watch the tenth episode of the Heart Wheel Journal, it’d be
(Original post url) + #day-10 = http://muslimyouthmusings.com/2009/08/26/the-heart-wheel-journal-videos/#day-10
(Coincidentally, the video’s title is “To go up, you must go down”, which is what page jumps are all about:) If you want the twentieth episode, just delete #day-10, add #day-20, and you’re set!
Now, you may be wondering, “why is this tech tidbit being shared with me?” Well, it’s to bore you to death as we tech junkies love to do! (lol)
Seriously though, it was so that we can take our referencing to a new level. Basically, I was checking out University of Southern California’s database of the Qur’an and Sunnah and with my newfound knowledge on page jumps, I noticed that this website was also using page jumps for every single Ayah and Hadith, which I found to be amazing, given how much code needs to be written to have so many page jumps (they probably have some top-notch coding/programmers/software). I then realized that we can really utilize this for Islamic reference purpose, in a method that I like to call, “Sahih Page Jumping” :)
Sahih Page Jumping
Let’s say you’re on the chapter of knowledge in Sahih Bukhari at the USC database. You see the Hadith,
Volume 1, Book 3, Number 106:
Narrated ‘Ali:
The Prophet said, “Do not tell a lie against me for whoever tells a lie against me (intentionally) then he will surely enter the Hell-fire.”
This Hadith inspires you so much that you want to share it with others (as a sidenote, this Hadith tells us the importance of why we should be referencing all our works so we that this won’t lead us to the Hell-Fire – may Allah protect us). You could 1) share the Hadith by just mentioning it’s in Sahih Bukhari. You could take it a step further and 2) mention which volume and book it is. However, it has been seen in the past that many of these references have been faulty because some people would actually make up numbers. The best way is 3) to take them back to the original text and to do it in a manner that would be easiest for them.
Each title on the USC database is a page jump. You can tell because if you scroll over it, it becomes underlined (a characteristic of a hyperlink) but if you try clicking it, you won’t be able to: it seems like a dead link. If you need more proof, then look at the source code for that Hadith and you will see that it says:
a name="001.003.106"
Volume 1, Book 3, Number 106:
You will see that it says <a name=”001.003.106″> above the title and this confirms that it is is a page jump (the numbers also confirm the hadith chapter, book, and number). Now, as an example, if you are typing in example.com + # + 001.003.106 (number), it would equal example.com/page.html#001.003.106. Let’s add it to the real url and we get: http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/bukhari/003.sbt.html#001.003.106, which takes you to the Hadith that we are currently looking at.
So for your next blog post, if you want to post a Hadith, I strongly recommend you use the ‘Sahih page jumping’ method and add the hyperlink for the Hadith with the necessary page-jump hashtag (#) so that both you and your reader can be rest assured it’s an authentic statement. Furthermore, for those WordPress bloggers, if you want to use Page Jumps to organize some of your own writings, please visit this WordPress support page and follow the instructions to set up your Page Jumps.
May Allah (subhanahu wa ta’ala) keep us away from relaying inauthentic statements and keep us on the Straight Path. Ameen…
By the way, need a ride back to the top? :)
To help us to stay consistent throughout Ramadan, here is a collection of videos for every single day in Ramadan, presented by Shaykh Muhammad AlShareef. The series is entitled “Heart Wheel Journal” and is based off of a 30-day Ramadan journal that one can use throughout the month. Alhamdulillah, it has become digitized into an online software.
MYM has compiled the following available videos from YouTube into an organized collection to make it easier for one to find each day’s videos. We pray that these videos prove to be useful for all. Ameen… Continue reading ‘The Heart Wheel Journal Videos’
MYM Discussion