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has added a new journalas-salamualaikum,
Since I came across this story I never stop reading it.
I am impressed by Abu Bakr's determination, loyalty, achievements, life...
I'd like to share his biography with you all. Many of you already know it but reading his story over and over again is worthy.
Biography - By Latiefa Achmat
(A) Abu Bakr was the dearest friend of the Prophet Muhammad. The Prophet (peace be upon him) used to speak about Abu Bakr, remarking on how he was the only person who never hesitated to accept Islam once he heard about it. Other people who embraced Islam in the early days would think for some time and consider, but Abu Bakr declared his faith immediately (Al-Mubarakpuri, 77).
Before he declared his Islam, Abu Bakr was known as a pious man; he had an essentially good character, and only good was expected from him. He and the Prophet were good friends before the Prophet's mission (Nadawi, 33).
Abu Bakr was a wealthy man and was in the habit of using his wealth to benefit others. One of the evil pre-Islamic traditions was the practice of burying baby girls alive. This practice was stopped when the Prophet Muhammad came with the message of Islam. This pre-Islamic time is commonly known as the era of ignorance because the people lived without the knowledge of the values and principles of Islam.
For this reason, the birth of a baby girl was something for a man to be ashamed of. Men thought that sons would bring more honor on them, their families, and their tribes while girls could potentially bring them and their tribes dishonor; therefore, many men buried their daughters alive. Whenever Abu Bakr heard that a baby girl was to be buried alive, he would go and negotiate with the father and he started something that could be called a boarding house in today?s terms, a place where he put these little girls in the care of women who would look after them while he paid for their maintenance. (Witness ? Pioneer.org; nzmuslim.net).
Muslims believe that, every human being is born with an innate nature; an ability to tell the difference between good and evil and the knowledge that there is a Creator and a desire to know Him. This nature remains strong in some people and weakens over time with others. Abu Bakr remained firm in his human nature, so that even before the advent of Islam and the sure knowledge and system that came with it, he knew that such things as burying baby girls alive were essentially evil. He knew this in a society that largely accepted this practice.
(A) Goodness is attracted to goodness and comprehends it, so it is not surprising that Abu Bakr befriended the Prophet Muhammad as he perceived his innate piety and, thereafter, never even hesitated to follow the Prophet until his last breath.
The final days of the Muslims before they emigrated to Madinah, witnessed two kinds of extremes: the Muslims' gradual sense of success and the continual torment and persecution at the hands of the non-Muslims of Quraish. The Prophet and the believers were hopeful that better days would soon come and that the migration to Madinah would soon occur. About one year before the migration, God (Allah) blessed the Prophet (peace be upon him) with something miraculous. This was the event of the Prophet's Night Journey to Jerusalem and then his Ascension to the heavens.
The Qur'an tells us about this event:
(An-Najm 53:1-18)
The following day, after this miraculous event, the Prophet (peace be upon him) spoke about it. This was a test for the Muslims because, from the earthly point of view, such an event cannot be explained by human reason and so those who were weak in their faith doubted. The true and strong Muslims found nothing unusual in Allah granting His prophet a miracle as they believed that He is All Powerful and created all there is by an act of His will. Needless to say, the non-Muslims ridiculed and questioned the truth of this event. They went to Abu Bakr to see his response to this event. When Abu Bakr was asked about it, he asked if the Prophet Muhammad had said this happened. When they answered in the affirmative, Abu Bakr simply declared that he did indeed verify it. It was due to his response on this most important day that Abu Bakr earned the title of As-Siddiq which means the verifier of truth (Al-Mubarakpuri, 150-51).
Abu Bakr knew that prophets received Allah?s signs to establish their faith. He knew that they were eligible for this in consequence of divine privilege because of the heavy burdens they had to bear, as messengers of Allah. Abu Bakr did all he could to help his friend the Prophet (peace be upon him) carry out his mission in the service of Allah.
The Night Journey, together with other revelations around that time, showed the Muslims the greatness of the civilization which they were in the process of constructing. A coherent society was soon to be established and the call of Islam was soon to be heard throughout the world. Abu Bakr was a significant part of the call and spread of Islam.
Not long after the Night Journey, the Muslims prepared to migrate to Madinah. The people of Madinah welcomed the Prophet Muhammad and his followers and eagerly awaited his blessed arrival. One by one, the Muslims left the distress and persecution of Makkah and settled in Madinah (Lings, 113-15). Abu Bakr, still in Makkah, wished that he would be the one to travel with the Prophet (peace be upon him), but the Prophet did not answer Abu Bakr until he received guidance from Allah to do so.
Extracted without alterations
Sources:
~ Al-Mubarakpuri, Safi-ur-Rahman. Ar-Raheeq Al-Makhtum (The Sealed Nectar). Riyadh: Dar-us-Salam Publications, 1996.
~ ?Before and After Conversion to Islam?Witness ? Pioneer Organization, 2002.
Lings, Martin. Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources. A.S. Noordeen, 1983.
~ Nadwi, Abul Hasan. Muhammad the Last Prophet ? a model for all time. UK: Islamic Academy, 1993.
?The First Caliph-Abu Bakr ? nzmuslim.net. netmastan. May 2003.
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has added a new journal/
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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates
Just a year after the global downturn derailed Dubai's explosive growth, the city is now so swamped in debt.
VIDEOS
~ V1 - Dubai debt crisis/ the party is over www.youtube.com
~ V2 - Dubai disaster www.youtube.com
The Dark Side of Dubai
The following report has been written by Johann Hari. It encompasses 10 parts.
1. An adult Disneyland
2. Tumble Weed
3. Hidden in plain view
4. Mauled by the Maul
5. The Dunkin Donuts dissidents
6. Dubai pride
7. The Lifestyle
8. The End of the World
9. Taking on the Desert
10. Fake plastic trees
Source: www.independent.co.uk
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has added a new journalJUST when you think Uncle Sam's war has no more surprises to spring on an unsuspecting world, he comes up with yet another gem.
Take the case of Dr Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist who grew up in the US and went to top universities including the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The woman who had been a star student and a topper throughout a remarkable career had to leave the US when the authorities began harassing her and her husband for their charity activities in the wake of September 11 upheavals.
The family settled down in Karachi and was never involved in any illegal activities. One day in March 2003, this talented young woman went missing with her three children when she was on her way to Karachi airport.
Dr Siddiqui resurfaced this week after five years in a New York court as a 'top Al Qaeda terrorist'. She was barely able to walk and speak, which was not surprising given the fact she had been recently involved in a 'gun fight with FBI agents' in Afghanistan. The US authorities claim Dr Siddiqui was captured near the governor's offices in Ghazni, Afghanistan last month with a bag full of 'suspicious liquids in tubes.'
If you think this is an incredible yarn, here's some more food for thought. We are told Siddiqui assaulted a team of US troops and FBI officials with a highly sophisticated weapon when they went to quiz her in Afghanistan.
And where did she get the weapon? Somebody had of course placed it near her rather conveniently. She is said to have fired several rounds with the hi-tech weapon.
Interestingly, while all those alleged rounds of firing with the alleged weapon failed to wound or injure America's brave soldiers, Siddiqui herself has ended up with a bullet wound in her chest.
Even though one has never been enamoured of the Bushies' extraordinary intellectual powers, this cock and bull tale is an insult to the intelligence of American people as well as the rest of the world.
I mean they could have at least employed more ingenuity of thought and imagination in cooking up this incredibly bizarre case against a lone, defenceless, half-dead woman who seems to have no clue where she is or what she is accused of.
There are some basic questions that an ordinary mind like mine just can't seem to figure out.
First, where was Aafia Siddiqui hiding or hidden all these years ? since she went missing in Karachi in March 2003? How did she turn up in the remote Ghazni province in Afghanistan, of all the God-forsaken places? And what happened to her three children?
Second, if the MIT-educated neuroscientist was indeed an Al Qaeda mastermind, why wasn't she presented in a court of law all this while? Even today when she is facing the US law, she is not being tried on terrorism charges but for allegedly assaulting the US officials. So what's her original crime, if she has indeed committed a crime?
Third, why wasn't the Pakistani government informed about her detention in Afghanistan and her subsequent deportation to the US? Or are Pakistan's Enlightened and Moderate leaders also involved in this international enterprise against a 31-year old mom of three?
There are so many gaping holes in this 'case' that the US constitution, Magna Carta and the UN human rights charter can all go through them at the same time.
You abduct a completely innocent, married woman with a family and put her away for five years to conveniently discover her now as a terrorist in the lawless Afghanistan.
Elaine Whitfield Sharp, Siddiqui's lawyer, believes she has been put on trial now because she has 'become a terrible embarrassment' to the US and Afghan authorities.
The question is why has she been reinvented now? It is quite possible that Siddiqui has been FOUND now because of a relentless campaign by British journalist Yvonne Ridley. Ridley herself had been a prisoner of the Taleban regime for 11 days just before the US invasion in 2001 and converted to Islam after her strange experience in Afghanistan.
Ridley has been running a campaign called Cage Prisoner for the release of a mysterious female prisoner who has been held at the Bagram airbase in Afghanistan in total isolation and regularly tortured for five years.
The unknown female prisoner, known as the Prisoner No. 650 or the Grey Lady of Bagram, was brought to the world attention after Ridley read about the woman in a book by fellow Briton Moazzam Begg, a former Gitmo and Bagram prisoner. In his book, Enemy Combatant, Beg talks of a woman's endless screams for help as she was tortured. Beg first thought he was imagining his wife's screams.
'We now know the screams came from a woman who has been held in Bagram for some years. And she is Prisoner No. 650,' Ridley disclosed at a recent Press conference in Pakistan.
And I strongly suspect that Prisoner No. 650 is none other than Dr Aafia Siddiqui. It is quite possible that her captors decided to end her isolation after the Pakistani Press and activists like Yvonne Ridley began increasingly talking about the Prisoner No. 650 and how she was tortured and abused physically, mentally and sexually for the past four years.
I find it hard to believe all this can happen in this age and time. When one read Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel laureate who died last week, years ago and his first person account of the Soviet gulag and how they turned living human beings into humanity's refuse, one thought it could never happen in our age and time. But one is not so sure now.
If they could do this to a gifted, US-educated and trained scientist, I shudder to think of the fate of illiterate and impoverished men and women summarily picked up in Pakistan, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
The Aafia Siddiqui case may have come to the world's attention because of some conscientious activists. But what about all those innocent individuals, who have just vanished down the black hole called the Guantanamo Bay, without a trial and without anyone looking for them? And who knows how many such gulags are out there and how many innocents they have sucked into their belly?
This war has turned the whole world into a big gulag where there are no borders, no rule of law, no courts, no justice and no rights whatsoever. But, the neocons reassure us, all this is necessary to promote Democracy and Human Freedom of course.
Whatever happened to the America of Jefferson and Lincoln, the country that we all loved once and turned to for inspiration?
Aijaz Zaka Syed is a senior editor and columnist of Khaleej Times. Write to him at [email protected]
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has added a new journalIslamify.com www.islamify.com allows Muslims to share articles, videos, images or anything else of interest with other Muslims. It's a way to see what's on the Ummah's mind and share what's on yours.
What is Islamify.com
Islamify.com represents a cutting edge revolution in Islamic Media. The concept combines Muslims, Democracy and Media in order to concentrate the best of what's going on with the Ummah in one place. The best thing is, it's FREE.
How does it work?
Whenever you find anything that you think would be great for other Muslims to know about, whether it's news, an event, a product, video, image, blog post or anything else you can submit it to Islamify.com where other Muslims will be able to vote on it. Those submissions that get a lot of votes are put up on the front page so they get the most exposure. That way all the best stuff going on in the Ummah is in one place for everyone to discover.
Who should use Islamify.com?
Everyone should use it! If you want to publicize an event, your new site or blog you can submit it to Islamify. If you want to market a product that you think is perfect for Muslims or share a video you made then post it on Islamify. It's that easy.
Why Islamify?
Islamify.com has a mission and that is to connect Muslims with what's going on with the Ummah from all over the WORLD on our own site dedicated to those things that are important to Muslims. The world moves fast and this is one way that Muslims can keep up to speed with everything that's going on.
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has added a new journal3/20/08
Reminder:
Please register soon if you have not done so already.
dashtprofessionalevents.com
***Single Muslim professionals from all over the United States are encouraged to attend!***
The Mughal Era was one of the most fascinating and culturally rich periods of South Asian history. The elegance, grace and exquisite creativity of the Mughal culture permeated every facet of society and brought new perspective to existing culture of the time. Influences from that era persist even today.
With the Mughal theme in mind, Dasht Professional Events has organized a Single Muslim Professionals Matrimonial Event to take place in Central New Jersey on Friday, April 18, 2008. All Muslim professionals (single or divorced) who are looking for that "special someone" for matrimonial purposes are encouraged to attend.
VENUE:
Hilton Garden Inn Edison/Raritan Center
50 Raritan Center Parkway
Edison, NJ 08837
(Longwood Hall)
Visit hiltongardeninn.com for location information and directions.
DATE:
Friday, April 18, 2008
TIME:
6:30PM sharp to 10:30PM
AGE RANGE:
25 to 42
COST:
$95 per person (see dashtprofessionalevents.com for details)
EVENT DRESS CODE: *Semi formal or formal attire required* (see dasprofessionalevents.com for details)
There will be a thorough screening process of candidates prior to the event and unique ideas will be utilized at the event to ensure maximum communication between the sexes. All effort will be made to ensure that you get your money?s worth.
The event will include light ambience music, halal appetizers, instrumental performance, dance performance, Urdu/Farsi poetry reading, live raffle, prizes and more.
You will be required to bring your photo ID to the event. The Organizing Team reserves the right to determine candidate eligibility for this event. The Organizing Team is only responsible for the event cost; you must make your own arrangements if you plan to stay overnight at this or another location. Registration fee strictly covers cost of the event itself and excludes transportation/overnight stay, outfit, etc. All payments (including special discounts and rates) are non-refundable unless the event is cancelled for any reason.
Plan ahead and RSVP soon! Limited seating. RSVP deadline is April 5, 2008.
Please contact [email protected] if you have questions.
DISCLAIMER AND CODE OF CONDUCT: Participation in this event is strictly on a voluntary basis. Event organizers and representatives are in no way legally responsible for the behavior and actions of event attendees. This is a Muslim singles? matrimonial event and, as such, all attendees are expected to conduct themselves in a professional, courteous and respectful manner. Event organizers and representatives have the authority and reserve the right, at their discretion, to ask any attendee to leave the event if the attendee is disruptive or conducts himself/herself in a manner that is deemed inappropriate; event organizers and representatives will determine what constitutes ?inappropriate? behavior/action. Any contact information exchanged between attendees is the sole responsibility of the attendees; event organizers and representatives are in no way legally responsible for the outcome of any social, professional and/or any type of interpersonal exchanges at or after the event. Event organizers and representatives wish everyone the best and hope that the attendees find their respective matches insh?allah.
Sophisty
***Make this an EXTRA special event! The more single Muslim professionals at the event, the merrier!******Single Muslim professionals from all over the United States are encouraged to attend!***
***This is a unique opportunity to meet your potential soulmate!***
**Over 90% sold out! Please don?t miss your chance to meet your potential soulmate! RSVP now!***
Dasht Professional Events and Services presents:
Mughal-E-Azam: A Night to Remember - April 18, 2008
Single Muslim Professionals Matrimonial Event
Friday, April 18, 2008
Hilton Garden Inn Edison/Raritan Center
50 Raritan Center Parkway
Edison, NJ 08837
6:30PM to 10:30PM
Age range: 25 to 42
Cost: $95 per person
Please visit dashtprofessionalevents.com for complete details including pre-payment information and/or e-mail [email protected] with questions.
***This is your night to remember! RSVP no later than the evening of April 16, 2008!***
Sophisty
Mughal-E-Azam's epic hit "Pyar Kiya To Darna Kya"...Check out the magic on YouTube...
www.youtube.com