Blog

  • Who am I?

    Ask me any question you’ve ever wondered about me. I’ll publish all answers (unless specifically requested not to). In my efforts to understand others, I sometimes fail to see myself clearly. It’s only through meaningful engagement with others, especially those that have no vested interest or natural bias in my life, that I am able to get a view of how I appear to others versus how I perceive myself.

    I’ve been contemplating a career change by becoming a life/career coach as an option. But in the back of my mind I’ve also been entertaining the idea of moving into the holistic health industry. Alternate healing methods have always fascinated me, and my research and personal experience in tracing back physical ailments to emotional triggers further cements my views that most modern medicine practitioners focus on symptoms rather than root causes. Worse still is that often enough they use a broad sword approach to remedies where the finesse of the scalpel is called for. 

    So go ahead. Entertain my pathetic attempt at crowd sourcing and tell me what you think of me, or ask me what you may have always wondered about me, my sanity, my dysfunction, or anything else. I’m morbidly curious to know what you think of me. What image does my blog conjure in your mind about its owner?

    P.S. This is honestly not a fishing expedition for compliments. 

  • Muslims and Diana, Goddess of the Hunt

    Here’s a classic article to demonstrate the ignorance of Muslims today. The article discusses one of my pet peeves, which is the adoption of the moon and star as symbols of Islam. It confirms my previous statements about its unsavoury origins and also confirms that it is directly adopted from Diana, goddess of the hunt. 

    Here’s the part that proves the ignorance I’m talking about. Further down the page, after the facts are presented around the origins of these symbols in Islam, and after confirming the use of flags and no symbols during the time of Rasulullah (SAW) and many centuries thereafter, they provide a poll to allow people to vote for their preferred symbol of Islam. 

    The results indicate an overwhelming majority still selecting the symbol of Diana as the symbol of Islam. This is just sad.

    To further demonstrate how far gone we are, take a look at the live video feed from Makkah during the prayer times, especially Taraweeh. Notice the people that walk nonchalantly through the rows of people praying without any concern at all. Notice how many are walking between Saffa and Marwa as part of their Umrah, and instead of focusing on the deed at hand, they’re jumping up and down with cell phones in their hands waving at the fixed cameras mounted along the route. 

    I guess it’s not as bad as the guy I saw having a good old chat on his cell phone while making tawaaf in his designer sunglasses at night, but it’s still quite disturbing.

    Sorry for the rant, but it’s disheartening to see Muslims behave this way, and then we wonder why we’re trodden over throughout the world? Why we can’t even take care of our own in our own back yard? Why we’re constantly reaching out to the UN and US to assist us instead of turning to Allah and rectifying our ways? We’ve lost the plot. But one thing that’s never in short supply is our criticism of each other’s performance of the rituals of Islam, because that is all we have the intellectual capacity to focus on. 

    We’re as pretentiously pious as the non-Muslims are materialistically distracted. 

  • roxygen replied to your post: The ‘inspiration’ tag on Tumblr is really…

    I can’t cosign on the career bit, but I tend to get sad whenever commercial jingles scrawled on paint samples become sources of inspiration. It makes me feel as if a little part of all of us has died.

    I know what you mean…it’s like that deflated feeling I get after watching a really inspiring commercial hoping it’s some message of goodwill from a charity organisation or some NGO interested in quality of life, and it turns out to be a commercial for life insurance. 🙁

  • Uninspired

    The ‘inspiration’ tag on Tumblr is really un-inspirational. I guess that’s a sure sign that I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel looking for something that will flirt with my imagination this evening. Work is becoming tedious, not because there isn’t enough to challenge me creatively, but because I work with people that fail to see potential, and only see solutions being possible from external consultants.

    It’s the same old thing about life, isn’t it? We can hear the same advice from a million people, but until we hear it from someone we’re willing to listen to, it will never hit home. That’s the frustration of what I do. The industry insists on following frameworks and methodologies, while I insist on taking a logical approach that allows an organic growth of skill in the organisation. But most fail to see that logic because they lack the real world experience to approach any problem without a text book in their hands. 

    I hate people who study theory for a hundred years and then pretend to know it all. All they know is what someone force-fed into their empty skulls. The day they can apply a fraction of what they learnt parrot-fashion is the day they stand a chance of making a meaningful contribution to good governance. Until then they’ll just tediously regurgitate buzz words and bullshit until they have a room full of morons nodding their heads in unison with a vacant stare and a pathetic smile that reveals the vacuous nature of the space between their ears. 

    The worst part of this post is that there’s probably no one on Tumblr that even knows what the hell I’m ranting about. Yet another frustration with choosing a career in an obscure field. 🙁

  • Ducks

    (Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fuzzball/3999894928/)

  • Plight of the Rohingya Muslims

    taarrad7in:

    Bangladesh bans foreign charities helping Rohingya


    DHAKA: Bangladesh has ordered three international charities to stop providing aid to Rohingya refugees who cross the border to flee persecution and violence in Myanmar, an official said Thursday.

    France’s Doctors without Borders (MSF) and Action Against Hunger (ACF) as well as Britain’s Muslim Aid UK have been told to suspend their services in the Cox’s Bazaar district bordering Myanmar, local administrator Joynul Bari said.

    “The charities have been providing aid to tens of thousands of undocumented Rohingya refugees illegally. We asked them to stop all their projects in Cox’s Bazaar following directive from the NGO Affairs Bureau,” he told AFP.

    To all those who were arguing that Bangladesh does indeed have its own problems, hence the ‘justification’ behind their PM’s remarks, I’d like to hear what the excuse for this despicable act is, since the aid agencies are providing the relief and support so it has no impact on the resources of Bangladesh.

    (Source: http://tribune.com.pk/story/416444/bangladesh-bans-foreign-charities-helping-rohingya/)

  • To those who follow/read Gossip Muslimah

    pearlsfromthepath:

    Gossip Muslimah first appeared a few months ago and introduced itself as a gossip source for Muslims …on Muslims. Everyone was invited to submit – anonymously or not – anything they knew about other Tumblrers. According to the unnamed people behind Gossip Muslimah, a little more than 500 people followed them within a few days. However, after an outcry the blog was deactivated.

    Ironically enough it was relaunched today, right in the middle of Ramadan – a month of fasting with the senses and mind. Considering the massive number of people online on their site, I suppose they would have never taken the risk to come back if there wasn’t an audience to expect. 

    Regardless, there are bigger problems at hand here. Back-biting, gossip, and lies among many other acts clearly are forbidden so allow me to pass over reminders on the gravity of evil deeds. If you followed Gossip Muslimah in the past, or if you were looking forward to reading their posts, you were equally at fault. That is why the Prophet ﷺ said: “The backbiter and his listener are co-partners in sin.” So here’s a friendly tip: don’t break your fast on human flesh.

    I’m trying to figure out what’s worse. The fact that idiots would have the arrogance to create such a portal for Muslims, or the fact that Muslims would be stupid enough to follow and/or contribute to it. 

  • Student Debt in the USA

    Simple truth