This summer my mom and sisters planned to visit our home country without me as someone had to stay back to look after my father and every one voted for me. Even though I was quite hoping and willing to accompany them yet I decided not to languish my next 4 weeks in despondency and instead avail it to spiritually revive myself thus gaining closeness to the Mighty Lord.
In the next 4 weeks my only major responsibilities were to cook and serve food to my father. Hence with so much time at hand and no “cable T.V” I got into the practice of offering 5 prayers daily on time, with concentration and focus. Moreover I spent time learning about Islam, its basic principles and pondering over the fact why human beings were created in the first place.
The entire experience helped me gain patience, inner peace and an understanding of the purpose of my life and all the puzzles of life seemed to fall right into place. Practicing religion became so easy that I often used to say to myself “Why didn’t I get into this habit before?”……well I soon got my answer once my mom and sisters got back from Pakistan.
From the very next day of their arrival I started delaying my prayers because I was either in some interesting conversation with them or going through cds/dvds/gifts they had got me. My routine became so contrasting to what I was doing previously that I was gravely struck with guilt. Therefore in order to rid myself of the shame I decided to revitalize my devout routine and in the process of doing so I realized the challenge of leading a life in total submission to Allah(SWT) despite all the distractions, diversions, commotions, interruptions, responsibilities and duties that constitute our lives. People who abandon the world and then remember God choose a very easy path because the real test lies in practicing the religion amidst the people and not away from them.
Allah(SWT) prefers that people accommodate religion in their day to day lives instead of confining its application in certain places. Had it not been so the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) would have been ordered to lead a solitary life, whereas on the contrary (mashAllah ) he lived a multi-faceted life in which he married, had children, straighten the affairs of his people, lead armies, taught students, fought wars and so on and so forth. Therefore my brothers and sisters, Islam is not just a religion which teaches us about the prophets and God but it is a code of conduct which has to be incorporated in to our lives. Now at this point I’d like to discuss a very serious ailment affecting our society but I’d prefer to cover it in another post as the subject requires space and time. Until I’m inspired to write the sequel to this post …. Take care and tata!!

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This post is in response to an excerpt from a book posted at London Review of Books ....and heres the link http://www.lrb.co.uk/v24/n03/ali_01_.html.

My Response:

After going through the article I had a feeling the writer was some distant relative of Nadeem F Paracha (a writer from Dawn Newspapers)…the likes of whom criticize and question the basic tenets of religion specifically Islam without any formal knowledge or in-depth study of it.
If I were to sum up the article in three points it would be the following:
1- Mullahs and Heretics have a history to date where the former has always suppressed the latter and furthermore mullahs are not a very impressive lot in muslim population.
2- “Islam” is the basis of a political movement started by the prophet(pbuh) and Quran was not the word of God but merely a creation of the prophet(pbuh)
3- Logic and critical thinking should dominate all affairs and be accepted as the ultimate criteria for analyzing the truth (i.e if sumthing can’t be proved logically it is false)
My views on each point:

1: Unfortunately nowadays people tend to judge everything (Celebrities, Politicians, Religion) by face value and the face of Islam have become the corrupt, hardliner Mullahs / Maulvis. According to me judging by face value is a sign of racist mentality, because this is exactly what racists do. They look at a stereotype and at once assume it to be an ultimate and a wholesome representative of a community without bothering to probe further into their subjects.

Once I googled websites created by Christians themselves that disclosed immoral acts of their own priests by names. Now does that make every priest immoral ?….NO…We have to understand (for the millionth time) that there are black sheep in every community.
If you truly want to learn about Islam at face then please refer to learned Scholars and Sheikhs like Ahmed Deedat, Dr Zakir Naik, Hamza Yusuf and the list goes on. Don’t insult your intelligence by falling for the corrupt Mullahs. There is a plethora of truly learned and educated Islamic scholars that are available online (use technology ..forget Qari sahib)

2: Over here the writer took one aspect of the prophet’s life and built his case on it. Alas he fails to see that Islam is not merely a political movement but a way of life (Deen). It does not only teach how to play politics fairly but a lot more. It is the only religion that not only teaches morality but the way to establish morality itself.
The writer claims to believe that Quran is not the word of God and in fact seems to admire heretics who [“questioned the Revelation, rejected predestination, insisted that the Koran was a created and not a revealed book, and criticised the quality of its composition, its lack of eloquence and the impurity of its language. Only Reason dictated obligation to God.”]. In fact he went as far as historically citing that the Quran was compiled thirty yeas after the prophet’s death hence its authenticity is questionable (OMG).
There are billions of people who believe it to be the word of God and it’s the only book which has not been changed over the years or even over different regions. If you take a copy of Quran from another time and compare it with a current copy they will be IDENTICAL. Even if you take copies of the Quran from different regions and then compare they will still be IDENTICAL. It’s promised by Allah (SW) in the Quran that the Lord himself has taken responsibility to preserve its content and therefore it is preserved …..such perfection only comes from the true God. And if still one wants to believe that the Quran is the creation of the Prophet(pbuh), then how does one explain established scientific facts quoted in the Quran which could definitely not be known by the people at the time of its revelation.
I find this so objectionable that such self-proclaimed pseudo intellects and cynics criticize a book without reading it (so affects their credibility). They speak of criticism and reason and yet not a single reason from the Quran itself has been given by the writer as to why he thinks it is not the word of God. He practically summarized the entire religious history (by the ways the article was a drag, especially for people who don’t like history) and not a verse from the Quran which he finds flaw in.

3: There’s only one person that comes to my mind at this point…. “Edward De Bono”. This gentle man is a Jew, a leading authority in the field of creative thinking and thinking techniques. His methods are used world-over in schools and in leading corporations such as IBM, Microsoft, Nokia , Siemens ….and where not.
He has actually pointed out the flaws of logical thinking or rather the argumentative mode of probing a subject and considers it primitive but not obsolete. Mr De bono has proposed techniques for parallel and lateral thinking and according to him the modern way of thinking should be a combination of the logical and parallel.
There are many flaws that he points out with logical thinking in his books I however will only speak of one which is that logic can be applied in a single paradigm at a time therefore a logic that works in one situation might fail in another.
The parallel thinking has more to do with probing a subject completely from all aspects and instead of going sequentially as in logic where the beginning point is considered to be the truth….in this method we stay at the beginning and don’t move on until we have all the information on the subject and we are certain it is the truth. Only then we move on logically.
I’ve noticed from the various interviews of converts that before converting they actually use the parallel mode of thinking where they probe into different religions in search of the truth.

I can go on and on about these thinking techniques but I don’t want to start a lecture here.
In the end all I’d like to say is that please update your knowledge and seek the truth. Don’t just criticize for the sake of it….this method is now outdated. Try to probe into the subject, the reality and then use as much logic as you want to put your point across.
Also I recommend that people read Edward De Bono he’s a great thinker and his books are very enlightening.

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This post is provoked by the recent video of the flogging of a 17 year old girl in swat. Greatly hyped-up by the media which banks in on every opportunity to malign Islam, the video shows two men holding down the girl on a street while the third one flogs her with a whip. The men are alleged to be the so-called implementors and the protectors of the sharia-law recently enforced in the region by the Talibans. Whether the video was actually shot prior to the enforcement of the sharia law or after or if it was even shot in the region of swat, is a question that will perhaps drown in the commotion created by the media, sadly what will remain in the minds of the people is the fact that a crime was committed against a girl under the sharia law. The media and the so-called taliban regime in swat maybe at war against each other in idealogoies but they are both conspirators in defaming the most peaceful religion on earth. It is not a loss of the religion or its followers but the loss of those who have yet not learned to admire the beauty of Islam.
Therefore for those naive minds who will buy this image as the face of Islam I would like to advice you to please study this religion instead of judging it by this video. Nowhere does Islam suggest that women should be flogged,beaten or abused in public/private. Infact Islam gives them the freedom and liberation they rightly deserve. Here I would like to list a few of the rights enjoyed by women of Islam.
1. It is said in the Quran that "Paradise lies at the feet of your mother", therefore one should respect and obey their mothers to gain access to paradise.
2. Wives have the right to be fed, clothed and supported financially by their husbands whereas the husbands have no right to their wife's property. In fact whatever belongs to a woman is hers to own, and no one else not even her father can claim the right to it.
3. Islam gives both men and women equal right to education.
4. Islam gives women the right to choose their own husband, not even the parents can enforce their choice upon the woman.
5. Islam gives women the right to safe guard their modesty by covering themselves so that people don't judge them by their physical appearance but rather by their character, personality and intelligence.
6. Both muslim men and women will be rewared/punished equally for their good/bad deeds.
7. If a man and a woman commit adultery both are subjected to the same punishment which is quite different from the popular view where muslim women solely are believed to bear the brunt for such sins.
8. In Islam child birth is not considered a punishment bestowed on women for the dis-obedience of eve, in fact it is considered an honour to bear children so much so that the paradise is said to lie at the feet of the mother. Moreover if a woman passes away during labour she dies a martyr.

Exploring further in to the religion you will learn that only Islam gives women their due respect, position and honour in society.
Islam condemns violence of any kind and towards any one even non-muslims. In the Quran it is said that the " killing one human being is like killing humanity". Therefore, before you start associating the video with Islam go to the source and get your truth from the Quran.

InshAllah in my next post I shall try to compile a number of very useful Islamic websites which can guide you in your study on Islam.

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I have observed nowadays that people are unhappy. The poor and the rich both have their own miseries and problems in life which they lament and grieve over. In fact some whine over the false notions of being poor, needy and deprived while enjoying all basic necessities of life.

    The reason behind such a depressed, pessimist and negative feeling amongst people is their concept of happiness. In the present world happiness is defined in terms of power, wealth and luxury. People can never have enough of it, if they have achieved one of these they lust for the other. Often they are so desperate that they resort to short cuts and immoral ways to satisfy their greed. They are so focused on their material goals and aspirations that they forget that power, wealth and luxury are man made standards of happiness.

 There is a much better and a more divine standard of happiness described by God in our “Quran” which is the true purpose of our lives, if only we had the time to read it. Very few people I know of truly understand this divine concept of happiness. In my understanding: happiness does not lie in reaching the destination but rather in the routes we choose to reach that destination. Many people have attained power, wealth and luxury, its possession is not unattainable for mankind, some attained these through patience, perseverance, honesty and faith while others took a big leap by being impatient, dishonest, unfaithful and intolerant. In the end the latter one who took one step at a time matures and strengthens his faith in and understanding of God. On the other hand the person who takes the giant leap misses out on the entire experience that enlightens the mind and the soul. His example is like that of a man who is promoted to the post of a CEO from a small desk clerk. He misses out on the entire process of growth and development which is required to nurture and mature him for such a high level post. In the end he may be the CEO but as he lacks the skills and knowledge of being one he is basically a complete failure for he does not acquire the ability to be useful in his position.

 

Daphne Du Maurier wrote in one of her novels that “Happiness is not a possession to be prized it is the quality of thought, a state of mind”

 

Therefore happiness does not lie in possessing the goal but in the state of mind that we reach after going through the entire process of struggling for the goal; which not only develops in us the understanding of God and his laws but elevates our status amongst fellow beings. This is the reason why Allah (SW) says in the Quran that it is but one’s piety that makes him superior to his fellow human beings.

God wants us to be happy that is why he has taught us the universal moral values of truth, justice and humanity. The hardship that we go through in order to reach our destination is his way of testing how well we have adapted to these moral values. In the end the ones who pass the test are gifted and enlightened with peace, contentment and happiness.

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Resolves the Issue: Sharepoint Designer 2007 Workflow Does not start after pause action (in technical terminology: Workflow does not hydrate(wake up) after dehydrating(sleeping) to the Database)

1. Installation of the .NET 3.0 Fix for the Windows Workflow Timer: the fix is available at the following site : http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=6096ce0f-d21e-47ac-afe2-d4e1c2fce670&displaylang=en 

2. Or go to command prompt: and type the following command 

stsadm –o –getproperty –propertyname “job-workflow” –url http://localhost 

     Then set the property to “yes” using the following command 

stsadm -o setproperty -propertyname "job-worfklow" -propertyvalue "every 1 minutes between 0 and 59" -url http://localhost

3. The Third solution is to check the account under which the “sharepoint timer service” is running it should be similar to the account under which the “MS SQL server 2005 Embedded Edition Service” is running. If its different then change it accordingly, then restart the “Sharepoint timer Service”.Next find the” Windows Sharepoint Services Timer “ service And double click on it. Check the account 

4. Once you’ve checked the account for Windows Sharepoint  Services Timer. Then check the account for the “MS SQL server 2005 Embedded Edition Service” the same way . 

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