Category — Personal

 Mona UmIbrahim on the pulpit.

The keys to successfully managing your home lies in creating Master Lists. Read about the importance of managing your home in this previous entry: Benefits of Scheduling. You can create these on paper first, then copy onto the computer so you can print them out as needed, or start off from the beginning on the computer, but don’t forget to print it and put it where you’ll notice it. I wanted to post my files but my blog is not showing the files properly. I can send you some or all the files by email if you need more help than what i’ve explained below.

1. Master Meal List: a list of all possible dinner meals. Group by meat, chicken, fish, vegetarian etc. If you also cook for breakfast and or lunch, you may need a meal list for those meals as well. For me i only cook breakfast on the weekends, during the week it’s cereal and milk. For lunch, i have a weekly schedule where every monday is mac & cheese, every tuesday is pizza, every wed is sandwiches etc. Refer to the Master Meal List when making the menu for the week.

Via Manrilla Blog:

It is my pleasure to present a most erudite article regarding not only the passing of Imam WD Mohammed [may Allah grant him Paradise] but a clarion call to entire America Muslim community as to the milestone we’ve reached and where we ought to be heading. Enjoy.

Imâm W. D. Mohammed and The Third Resurrection
by Sherman Abd al-Hakim Jackson

A recent Ijtema post linked to a story of a Muslimah in her quest to secure education. On the other side of the world, Asmaa ponders over a seemingly Catch-22 situation involving education and societal expectations and raises a lot of questions in the process:

In university, I was indoctrinated with the notion of individuality, empowerment and self-determination. I was taught that what and who I wanted to be, was completely in my hands. So I made myself in those four years, out of a combination of valuable personal relationships and classroom education.

For example, if a woman of education reaches her late 20’s and is still unmarried, it seems there is suddenly a “too-empowered” stigma attached to her name. It’s as though marriage defines women, and without it we are unnatural. I do not deny there is a natural desire for partnership, but I question our community’s perception of what a woman is without it.

I often feel frustrated being in a Muslim family. I’m not proud of these frustrations of mine. Believe me, it’s a conflicting and negative feeling to have. (Perhaps the phenomenon is also found in non-Muslim families, but I speak from experience only.)

Though we’ve been taught to make decisions on our own, I find that being female and Muslim sometimes means some of our decision are made for us, and not by us. And thus there can only be one product of that: an ever-increasing frustration with the situations we find ourselves in.

A simple post from Yosra about waking up at Fajr time. Somehow, I find this simple post to be quite inspirational, not sure why.

What happens when an African-American, Muslim woman travels abroad? Turns out there’s more to it than you think – this Muslimah has some surprises in store for you!

At airports and security checkpoints, guards take extra time examining my passport, in disbelief that I was really American. In fact, most people find it hard to believe that I am just plain ole Black. Also traveling abroad you may get anti-African sentiment due to illegal immigration from Sub-Saharan Africa to North Africa. And if you’re flying in Europe, and share any similarities with North Africans, you may get profiled at airports and held in detention for no particular reason except you look like a possible terrorist.

Ginny, a revert Muslimah, shares her thoughts and feelings on how people sometimes end up doing the opposite of helping a blind person like herself, in an uncommon situation.

All I kept thinking to myself was, if I were sighted, I could have gotten lost and no one would have batted an eye, and I guess to some, I should feel lucky that people “cared” enough to make sure I got home OK. But there is a difference between caring, and treating someone like they’re a complete imbicile, which I’m quite sure I’m not. I guess blind people aren’t supposed to get lost, if we want to avoid drawing attention to ourselves.

When it comes to ‘reviving the Islamic spirit’ & ‘journey of faith’ says Gabriel G, and he writes about his experiences during the first two years as a Muslim:

The purpose of this post is to give everyone a heads up so that they can be fully aware of the ‘intellectual/theological’ debates that are actively raging in Islam amongst scholars (at least those that carry much clout within the Muslim community – far from the fringe) and the ‘political/socio-economic’ conclusions that they can lead to. In other words, I will argue that, all intellectual and theological interpretations of Islam follow the same trajectory in that they all will eventually lead to particular political/socio-economic conclusions – therefore, no Muslim can avoid treating them as pre-cursors to a particular political argument. I will try to be impartial in opening up this discussion but I highly doubt it would be to everyone’s satisfaction — just keep that in mind.

Masha’Allah, a very funny, beautiful and awe-inspiring story. Part one above – make sure to catch part 2 here. It’ll knock your socks off!

Hat-tip to Islamify.com.