Math joke on limits
I received this joke a while ago, but wanted to share it with you all….
I found it really funny, let me know what you think
Quilt of Humanity – Picture of the Egyptian Protest Movement
I love this picture. I found it in Al-Jazeera English and they own this picture
To me this picture represents humanity, who by working and supporting each other can accomplish impossible deeds. This fact that this was taken while all were praying is extremely symbolic to me as it signifies that Islam can and should act as a unifying element amongst people and should never be accepted as a tool for division. Finally seeing the Egyptian flag in the middle, represents gives me hope that the focus is upon improving the nation as a whole, by the people for the people, and not just helping a few. In the quote area, I placed a quote that describes my fears and hopes for Egypt very well.
What Happened to last week? Plus my hope for Egypt
Many are wondering, why did Salah not publish last week? Didn’t he say he will publish last week, what happened? Did he fall into a well?
No, I did not fall into a well. What happened was pure and simple; I experienced a terrible case of writers block. Usually I write my posts based on what is currently running in my head. It could be food thoughts or thoughts for food, it call be about the most mundane or life shattering (to me at least) concept. At the end of the day, I usually publish whatever is on my mind that instance regardless of what I was thinking or planning to write yesterday. Last week was an exception. A dear friend of mine told me you better write about Egypt and I mistakenly said okay I will. Immediately the writer’s block kicked in. Should I write about how I feel about the protests or the government, should I write about my fears or dreams, should I write about what going on in the news or how the news is being analyzed. You see the hint, I basically got paralyzed with all these half developed ideas and I ended up not being to be able to write anything!!!
So I made a promise to myself never to promise to write any article. What comes, comes I guess.
With regards to Egypt, I am so proud of th
e protestors. Living in the western world one has no idea how much each of these protestors had to sacrifice to come and protest. My God bless them and increase their patience and resolve. At the same time there is a deep sense of fear in me that the protest will fail to change the situation in Egypt. While I am confident that Mubarak will leave, I am afraid that they are currently trying to build a system to get Suleiman or other USA/Israel approved candidate to fill this top job. Seeing the USA meddle in Egypt is making me even more suspicious. I honestly do not trust the words of the US government because I know the only thing they care about is a stable country that can protect their interests and Israel interests as well. They do not care about democracies or want the people want (unless it also happens to be what they want)
In conclusion I am extremely hopeful, yet fearful for Egypt sake. On that note, I want to make a special request for all my friends on this blog. I know most of you 
are not capable of participating directly in supporting the Egyptian people and even more do not believe in the purpose or concept of demonstrations; or are just too lazy. However, I must ask that each one of you to take time of your day and pray for the people of Egypt. Pray that God raises the cloak of tyranny off the backs of the Egyptians and that he gives them their freedom and prosperity that every nation in this earth deserves. Pray that God will make the next few weeks and month an easy transition for the people of Egypt and well worth it. Pray that this sense of revolution and demand for freedom strikes the hearts of every Egyptian soul and that they are all given the strength to get out and demonstrate for their God given rights. Pray that the future new governments of Egypt will not be another tyranny and pray that the USA and other countries will try not to wipe out this new government due to different foreign and domestic policy.
Ameen
Questions about Love
In this society we are inundated with message
s of love. Whether it the love of Jesus, valentine, romance, girlfriend/boyfriend we see it everywhere. But what does love really mean, why did God create love? And how does our capacity to love relate to worship of God.
In the Islamic tradition we are required to love Allah the most, followed by his Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) and then our parents. If you ask most Muslims about who they love most, they will recite the order given above, but do they truly love in that order? Sometimes we deceive our brains in thinking that this is the order we love our creator and his creation, but our hearts tell a different story.
Why am I suddenly asking all these questions? I am finally going through the process of marriage and I have finally found my significant other who means a lot to me. Since I am already going through an expansion of heart and gaining a deeper understanding of what love is I decided to tackle all the assumptions I have about my love to my Creator and his Prophet and to truly deepen my love to my Allah and Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him).
To help me in this quest, I decided to buy a book called the Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman. In this book the author tells us that there are five languages of love that we communicate with others (he directs at one spouse) and that each person has their own language of love. To have a successful marriage we must master the love language of our spouse and express to her/him our love in her/his language.
I found it fascinating that the five languages of love actually reminded me of the five pillars of Islam and other acts of worship in Islam. Chapman’s first language of love was Words of Affirmation, which reminded me of our first pillar of Islam, declaration of faith and worship in God and his Messenger. Also, all the praises to God that we should do constantly go under this category. The second language was Quality Time, which reminded me of our five daily prayers plus the recommended nightly prayers. Gifts were the third language and that reminded me of Zakat and charity; the Prophet taught us that even a smile to a stranger is charity. Number four was Physical Touch and that reminded me of fasting where we stop eating, drinking and intimate relations with our spouse for a whole month (when the sun is up). Lastly Acts of Service, reminded me of the pilgrimage we all have to do at least once in our lifetime and the many smaller Umrah that we try to do in between.
I have just started reading the book and I am not sure if each of the languages will fit each of the pillars of worship, but I guess we will all have to find out 🙂
My intentions for reading the book is to become a better husband and partner. It is also to become better at worshipping my Creator who has blessed me in so many ways.
The Birth and Evolution of One Voice
Here is an article I wrote for MYN/One Voice. This time I am writing about the history of the newspaper and next week I will write about why it is significant to me
The Birth and Evolution of One Voice
One Voice is a rapidly growing newspaper established by Muslim Youth initially in NJ for Muslim Youth across the states. It is published on quarterly bases with 3000 copies distributed to over 50 locations, throughout the tri-state area. Youth from as far locations as South Brunswick, Paterson, Newark and the many small towns in the tri-state area all contribute in each issue to make this newsletter a success and a true representative of the Muslim Youth.. However where did such a successful enterprise originate from and where did the concept of Muslim Youth Newsletter (MYN) originate from?
The concept of MYN began in the fall of 2007 by three youth who spent about 3-6 month discussing how to establish a youth newspaper, who is the target audience and what are the vision and goals of such an enterprise. From these discussions, they concluded that the vision of the project was to unify the Muslim community in NJ. This was accomplished by giving the youth a chance to know each other, find out what going on in each other institutions, and give youth an opportunity to share their ideas and to reach out to the Muslims in public Schools. The target audience were be highschoolers and they hoped that by making this a youth only project they will help the Muslim youth develop communication, leadership and management skills necessary to succeed in college and life afterwards. These ideas are still core to MYN/One Voice, except that was expanded it to include college as well. The only main principle that changed from those early discussions was the fact that it was initially planned that highschoolers will lead the organization, something that turned out to be almost impossible to sustain and maintain.
In spring of 2008 the organizers of MYN started outreaching to different communities about MYN. They initially had a target of reaching out to about 4-5 communities, but then scaled it down to two communities, ICPC in Paterson and IIS near Trenton and held seminars/workshops and launched the organization. Initially MYN was established it as clubs, where each location had a managing editor, and their own section editors. The managing editors worked together and combined had the role of editor-in-chief. The organizers took the positions of advisors and were responsible in distribution of MYN newsletters. To support the writers, they organized a group of adult mentors/copy editors that where in charge of editing each article and giving out suggestions to the readers on how they can improve. The youth chose Shabab as their newspaper name (which means Youth in Arabic) and the managing editors were able to successfully work together to develop the first issues of the newsletter. The concept of section editors was not yet fully developed and the content and theme of the newspaper was determined by the managing editors. The newspapers at this time did not follow any particular theme and it articles range was extremely diverse covering topics such as Ramadan, election of Obama, Highschool Musical 3 and sports. While each article was viewed for grammar and other writing issues, as long as each article did not directly violate one of the tenants of Muslim belief it was approved for publication.
Under the high-school students two issues were successfully published under the name of Shabab. However, the process of smoothly transitioning the knowledge to the next generation of high-school turned to be extremely difficult. To add to the situation, the initial originators of the idea were no longer able to commit the time needed for the newspaper success. To resolve these issues the responsibility of MYN was transferred to Emad Hamdeh as the new advisor/director of MYN.
In the fall of 2009, Emad was able to reorganize the organization, selected 
new managing editors and took the role of Editor In Chief. He moved away from the model of giving highschoolers total control of the organization to more mixed and balanced structure. He instituted section heads and successfully made them responsible for their sections. To address major issues the newspaper will face he established a core team and made them in-charge of major decisions for the paper. He took advantage of the contacts and links that were established earlier and was able to successfully expand the organization to more masajid and introduced it into MSAs. The MYN team also discussed in detail how to rebrand the newspaper and they decided on naming it One Voice. The decision was based on making sure that the newspaper becomes a symbol of the youth here in America and make sure that it name feels local and not a foreign name that most youth cannot relate to. The MYN team published their first issue of One Voice in January of 2010 and since January of 2010, they have been successful in publishing issues on a quarterly basis and in expanding the base of readership for the newspaper and in increasing the quality of the newspaper overall. Also, the newspaper incorporated themes in each of its issues that focus on the needs of the youth such as time management and gender interactions. The newspaper focused on the concerns of Muslim youth and moved away from the earlier model in Shabab where the articles covered a wide variety of articles. This gave the newspaper a special edge in reaching out to Muslim youth and gave it the capacity to be a platform to raise and address these issues.
The future of the newspaper appears very bright as it continues to grow and expand into Masajid, schools and MSAs all over NJ. Insha’Allah I hope that Allah will give us all the reward of this endeavor and make it among the good deeds that we continue to receive long after we all leave this earth.
2010 in review
The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is on fire!.
Crunchy numbers
A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 2,700 times in 2010. That’s about 6 full 747s.
In 2010, there were 18 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 31 posts. There were 42 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 3mb. That’s about 4 pictures per month.
The busiest day of the year was December 22nd with 118 views. The most popular post that day was About Me.
Where did they come from?
The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, mail.yahoo.com, linkedin.com, en.wordpress.com, and ayahsthoughtson.blogspot.com.
Some visitors came searching, mostly for macaroni and cheese, mac and cheese, bike path, mac & cheese, and fractal snowflake.
Attractions in 2010
These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.
About Me August 2009
2 comments
Mac and Yogurt… January 2010
2 comments
The Straight Path October 2009
4 comments
How Many Faces Can You See? January 2010
8 comments
My first Khutbah September 2010
2 comments
Updates
Before I start, I would like to send my condolences to the family of my great Uncle; I have never had the chance to meet him, yet I have always heard great things about him. He was a man that always placed the family first. My God rest his soul. Second, I would like to congragulate my sister on her beautiful daughter, Raghad, pictures will be posted.
It funny, one can see how I am managing my time based on the time span between two posts.
Well, this not a blog article but more of an update of the last month and all the different things that I wanted to talk about but can no longer write them since the thoughts are all scrambled now.
1) Pasta conquered? Definitely. After that first successful event, I made pasta with white sauce (I made the sauce just how my mom makes gravy for the biscuits& gravy for breakfast; fry flour and slowly mix it with milk) and tuna; delicious. I then made pasta with yogurt, where I fried (or boiled?) the yogurt and then added it to the pasta, another success. It turned out to be delicious, but ironically the process made me realize how they make Mansuf. I then made 3 pounds of pasta for a major dinner, and it was all gone (sadly I did not get to taste it, but I did take pictures 🙂
2) Yearning to God is hard but well worth the effort. I failed my Ramadan objective, yet I succeeded in gaining one of the nights.
3) Life is so confusing and contradictory. Some days I feel like I can conquer the world, others I just want to lay down and just watch the world. Some days I want to lead my community, others I just want to lay in bed and be a distant observer. [This is all figurative examples of how I feel]
4) Marriage, I decided I will love my wife tremendously just because she picked me :); Whenever that day comes
5) Wrestling is a lot of fun and I happy to have found a wrestling partner. Sadly, I shocked another person in the process.
6) Imam Abdulmalik: It was amazing having him here with us for three days in a row. He made a difference in our community, I am so happy that he agreed to come. As a community we need to do everything we can to support his Islam on Capital hill campaign (www.islamoncapitalhill.com) by spreading the word, sponsoring him and attending the jumaa prayer in Washington, DC to make a statement.
7) Influences…. I few years ago I like most youth felt as though I was a separate entity from my parents and that I was creating my own path without influence of my parents. Now I know that whether you deny it or not, 85-95% of your actions (everyday actions), thoughts and ideas originate from your parents. It does not matter what field you pick, what path you take or what religion you choose. Parents have tremendous influence upon you. For that I would like to sincerely thank my parents for raising me and taking care of me and giving me all the tools I need to succeed in the world and the next. In the same instance, I wonder is babysitting worth the risk of your child getting influenced by others?
I have now removed all of these ramblings from my head and can now go ahead and write an coherent article next week. God willing of course
Pasta….Conqueror or Conquered?
If you just want a recipe to make pasta, I would suggest you skip to the ingredient list below, otherwise read at your own risk
While I have forayed into the realm of pasta before, (especially macaroni), I could never claim that I have entered it until before yesterday; I went in with my guns blazing.
It was about 10pm and I had nothing to eat all day, (ie I was starving, that probably how I always start my food blogs 🙂 ). Initially I thought that I did not have anything in the fridge, I was out of bread, most vegetables, cheese and so on. I knew that I had pasta and rice, and that was a building block I could start on.
Before I continue on, let me talk about what I constitute as a meal. For a meal to be fulfilling, nutritious and enjoyable it must consist of three items. First every meal must have what I call a building block, which means that every meal needs to consist of either rice, bread or pasta (note cereal is an interesting case). Second, each meal must have some sort of sauce that maintains the water level of the food (so it’s not too dry), and gives flavor to the food. Lastly each meal must have vegetables and meat (if possible), these items give the meal its texture, color, aroma, support the sauce and add flavor to the meal. Where and how did I come with the above, I just made it up based on what I consider experience but my father calls meddling with food too much. Actually if you noticed the above construct is missing a major food type; beans/peas which I have not had a chance to explore yet. Also, you will find many dishes that are exceptions to the above meal construct, but many more follow it whether bread (sandwiches) pasta or rice.
Back to the kitchen, I start by trying to think of the easiest way to feed myself. Sadly I considered making eggs to much of an effort and end up constructing a meal from scratch. The way I construct a meal, is that I try to decide what base do I want to build it on (rice, pasta or bread), Then I ask what flavor/sauce I want (spicy, tomato sauce, creamy sauce, etc) and based on the information above I start narrowing down the vegetables and the meats I will be using based on what color, texture and complementary flavor I want to make.
Before I go on to make the meal, I have just one more principle that I follow regarding meals. A dish can only be made with the ingredients currently available in the kitchen; I will never go to the store just to buy ingredients for the dish I want make today. This means I have to make my meal under the constraints of what I have in the kitchen (this is actually very fun to do and leads to creativity and innovation) and if I want a particular dish, then I just have to plan ahead. Of course, this also meant that I got my sister angry on many occasions.
Okay back to the kitchen, I had a raging debate between pasta and rice with rice having the upper hand until I chose pasta (Conchiglie or seashell shaped pasta). As I started the pasta on the stove and then focused my attention to my sauce. I wanted something with tomato sauce, slightly spicy but not overwhelming and something that utilizes any remaining vegetables. Initially I was very conflicted about meat, because I only had canned tuna and that did not sound appetizing, but luckily I remembered that I had two frozen breaded chicken patties, which I promptly defrosted and diced. I also found a lonely half onion in the fridge, which I also diced and threw it with the meat in a pan with olive oil to fry and added some minced garlic, Italian dressing, salt and pepper for flavor. The only other vegetables I had were celery and sweet peppers (a gift from someone’s garden) and I had a lot of them. I decided I might as well utilize both and used the celery for texture (crunchy) and the sweet peppers for color (green and red ones). 
Both were diced and I added them after the onions and meats were properly fried. I let them fry for a bit longer and then added hot sauce (liquid crushed pepper), and mixed some more. I then found a used can tomato paste with only a third left and that made my day. I added it to the mixture and then added a cup of water. I boiled the sauce for a few minutes and then let it simmer for a few more minutes until the pasta was ready. After draining the water from the pasta, I mixed the sauce with it and to top it off I added the remains of grated cheese used for spaghetti a couple of days earlier and finally I served it and ended up eating a bit too much. The whole meal took about 15 minutes.
While, I might be biased when I tell you that it was delicious, at least I can also tell you that a roommate of mine who beforehand told me he was not very hungry ended up eating three plates of pasta!
To recap here is the ingredient list and a more straight-forward set of directions if you ever plan on making it.
½ onion
2 sweet peppers (each about 5inches long)
2 celery stalks
2 table spoons of liquid crushed red peppers
1 tea spoon of minced garlic
Salt and pepper
1/3 can of tomato paste
1 box of pasta (1 pound)
2 patties of chicken
Olive oil
1 cup of water
½ cup of grated cheese
Italian Dressing
- Prepare pasta according to instructions on box (boil water, add pasta, mix occasionally for 8-10 minutes and drain)
- Dice onion, sweet peppers, celery stalks and chicken
- Fry diced chicken, onion and minced garlic in olive oil and add Italian dressing, salt and pepper to taste
- After chicken cooks and onion appear sautéed add sweet peppers and celery stalks, mix and fry for a couple more minutes
- Add hot sauce and let it mix for one more minute then add tomato paste, mix and add water.
- Let sauce boil for a couple of minutes and then let it simmer until pasta is done.
- After pasta is drained, place pasta in serving bowl and add the sauce on top of the pasta and mix until all pasta is covered with sauce
- Sprinkle grated cheese on top of pasta and serve.
Enjoy and make sure to utilize ingredients you have in your kitchen.
Sun Storm
AP Photo/NASA
All praise due to Allah, if you are reading this on Tuesday/Wednesday night (August 4/5) then I strongly suggest that you turn off your monitor, your room lights (might as well turn of all the house lights and save electricity) and then go outside and watch the light show from the sun. You will see it in the northern part of the sky.
It is beautiful, Subhan’Allah and well worth your time. It might at first look like lightening, but then realize that there is no storm around you, nor any sound. It just a light show worth seeing and it is much more beautiful than any firework display I have ever seen.
If you are watching it or saw it, then kudos to you.
For more information and what it is caused by , here is a yahoo article : http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20100803/sc_space/spectacularnorthernlightsshowsignalssuniswakingup
Salad Digest 