blog upgraded to wp1.5

i upgraded the blog to wp1.5. and, as a result, my old theme needs to be ported over.. but i think i am just going to stick to the default for now since it looks really slick… that is all.

broken palm pilot

so i turn on my palm pilot this morning to see this:

i have no idea how this happened…

a moving story of tawbah

pieces. so i was listening to a lecture about tawbah [repentance] by amr khaled [http://www.amrkhaled.net] from the series of “isla7 al quloob,” or fixing/purifying of the heart… and in one of those lectures was, what i felt, was a really moving story.

the story was that of malik ibn dinar, who is one of the imams or leaders of the tabi3een who was known to be very pious.

but malik ibn dinar didn’t start off as a pious man. malik ibn dinar tells his story. he says that he began his life as a drunk person, as a disobedient person, as a person who would eat other people’s rights, as a person who was so bad that people would avoid him because of how bad he was.

he says, “this was the way my life was, until one day, i really wanted to settle down, get married, and have a daughter that i could play with and spend time with. and so i got married and i had a daughter. i named her fatima. i loved her a lot, and the older she got, the stronger in my heart my iman grew, and disobedience became less in my heart. and one day fatima saw me holding a cup of alcohol, and she came close to me and pushed it away even though she was only 2 years old. and it was as though Allah made her do that. and the older she got, the more my iman increased, and i kept leaving the disobediences.”

“this continued until fatima reached 3 years of age. once she reached 3 years old, she died. so i became worse and worse than i used to be before. and shaytan kept messing with me, until one day, my shaytan told me, ’tonight you will get drunk to such an extent that you’ve never gotten ever before’ - so i drank, and drank, and drank all night until i fell. and then i saw myself going through dream after dream until i came to this particular dream.”

“i found myself in the day of judgement, and the sun had darkened, and the seas had turned into fire, and the earth had split asunder, and the people were all gathered for the day of judgement, and the people were all gathered groups and groups and i am between the people. and i hear a caller calling, ‘so and so son of so and so, come to be presented in front of the Compeller’ - and i see that person’s face turn totally black.”

“until i heard the caller call, ‘malik ibn dinar, come to be presented in front of the Compeller’ – and then all the people disappeared from around me, and as if there was no one else in the land except me - and then i saw a huge snake that looked really strong and large, with its mouth open rushing towards me. so i began to run in a state of great fear. so i saw an old, weak man, so i ran up to him and said, ‘save me from this snake,’ and he said, ‘i am weak, i can’t do anything to help you, but run in that direction and maybe you’ll be saved.’ - so i ran towards the direction that he pointed in while in great fear, until i saw the fire in front of me. so i wondered to myself, ‘shall i flee from the snake to end up in the fire?’ - so i returned running and the snake was coming closer, and i returned to the old man and said, ‘by God, help me, save me!’ – so he cried feeling sorry for my condition, and then said, ‘i am weak as you see, i can’t do anything for you, but run towards this mountain and you might be saved.’”

he says, “so i ran towards the mountain with the snake just about to get me, and i saw little kids on the mountain. and i heard the kids screaming, ‘oh fatima, save your father, save your father’ – so i knew it was my daughter, and i was happy that i had a daughter that died when she was young so she could save me in such a situation. so she took me by her right hand and pushed the snake away with her left hand, and i am like a dead person from how scared i was.”

and he continues saying what happened in the dream, saying, “then she sat in my lap like she used to in the world, and said to me, ‘oh my father, “has not the time arrived for the believers that their hearts in all humility should engage in the remembrance of Allah…”’ (57:16)”

“so i said oh my daughter, tell me about this snake.” she said, “that is your bad deeds, you fed it and made it grow until it was about to eat you. did you not know oh my father that deeds from the world come back in a body shape/form on the day of judgement?” so i asked, “what about the weak man?” she said, “that is your good deeds. you made it weak and feeble, until it cried out of feeling sorry for your situation and couldn’t do anything for you. and if it weren’t for the fact that you had me, and if it weren’t for the fact that i died while i was young, there would have been nothing to have helped you.”

he says, “so i woke up from my sleep while i was screaming, saying, ’the time has indeed come, the time has indeed come’ (in response to the question asked by his daughter which came from the ayah, “has not the time arrived for the believers that their hearts in all humility should engage in the remembrance of Allah…”’ (57:16)”)."

he says, “then i made ghusul and went to salat al-fajr at the masjid, intending repentance and returning to Allah, and i walked in the masjid and found the imam reading the same ayah, “has not the time arrived for the believers that their hearts in all humility should engage in the remembrance of Allah…”’ (57:16),” and he repented.

so that’s the story. i thought it was amazing, although i think i butchered it by my attempted translation. but the meaning is still there.

peace outs.

the weblog is back!

hellos ladies and gentlemens, the websites is back ups. indeeds. that is all.

sixers and nuggets, etc

greets. i went to my first real nba basketball game today. it was pretty boring at first, but the last 2 quarters were pretty interesting because the 76ers made an insane comeback against the nuggets.

my keyboard is… bleh. so the first keyboard stopped being very responsive with some of the keys, and so i bought a cheap one. the geniuses who designed it put a hibernate, sleep, and off buttons right on top of the plus key. so naturally, while you are playing games and stuff, its really easy to hit the key and shut the system off or put it to sleep, which is very frustrating.

but i started adapting to that… but then those keys on the new (one or two months old?) keyboard stopped responding altogether. so i went back to the first keyboard. bleh.

i drove to dc this past weekend. it was pretty fun. and i guess that’s all for now. peace out.

urdu poetry, arabic analysis, and the mufti's comments

peace. oh yeah, if you’re looking for the important [time worthy] summary of this blog post, then here it is – “this post is a total waste of time – but best of luck to my friends who are taking finals!”

anyway (for those of you who have time to waste), so one of my friends had this as an away message:

“Pyar huwa ikraar hua hai, pyar se phir kyoon darta hai dil? kehta hai dil, rasta mushkil, pyar ki hai kahaan manzil?”

being the honorary desi i am, and knowing a few urdu words, i tried to make some sense of this. pyar and dil were obvious ones that i already know. arabs will recognize mushkil as short for mushkila (problem), and manzil as home or place a person resides…

ikraar could come from taqreer, so basically as a statement or expression.

the first person i interviewed on this topic was our beloved mufti, sheikh “not-a-mufti” (those who know him, know him hehe, those who don’t, well… i’m protecting the innocent :)).

and first i asked him about the meaning of ikraar and he said, “i believe it means ’to utter’ or to say.” – he then asked me, “context?” – and at that time, i didn’t have the full away message (because my friend had come back from away mode) – so i told him that it was gone and that i’d find out. and he said a very beautiful statement in the form of a mathematical expression:

P(away msg is mushy | contains ‘ikraar’) > .9

so anyway, i then proceeded to get the full away message. and i asked our beloved mufti for a translation and he said, “love happened and it has been said, then why is the heart scared of love? the heart says, the path is tough, where does the path of love lead to?”

trying to map it back to the original message, the only thing i was able to notice is that “phir” probably maps onto “fear,” so i guess urdu got some influence from l337 h4x0r talk too (ph34r 7h3 31337 h4x0rs!)

yeah, i just wanted to post. nothing meaningful today, maybe tomorrow. peace out everyone.

gt rap

changing topics from the previous umm… interesting comments to the previous post, here was something i wrote up. i was gonna record it too but then i didn’t feel like it. but yeah. peace outs.

a few years ago in senior year i had a confusion and a bit of fear where should i go to university would it be emory umich or GT

not sure and having no real clue i chose GT as the thing to do and as a cs major i began my school thinking coding is fun and cool

and at tech i was to soon meet people among the truly elite friends whom i can’t equate to anyone i’ve met till this date

and there i got my first real feel of desi culture and the whole fob ordeal saw all these dudes come up to me and say, yaar, for shadi, doctor is the way

so i thought the solution would be to persue a degree in biology and take the mcats when time comes and go to emory with my chums

but after ochem, out of my brain the ideas went out the drain and even at the cost of a biwi there’d be no bio degree for me

and i got involved in MSA and was invited to meetings of PSA and all i got from all that stuff is great friends and that’s enough

and while i could rap all day i am running out of things to say so peace out to all of you especially those in my GT crew

its going to be a long week...

peaces. came back from the trip yesterday (sunday nite around 9ish). the traffic coming back was insane for part of the way (130 miles in 4 hours…). but al7amdulillah we made it back in ~14 hours.

the sky was really beautiful. i was driving around the close of 3asr and entrance of maghrib time, and man it was beautiful. it was like there were all these shades of blue that were coming together in some places. in other places, you could see what looked like a rainbow, but it was just because of how the different colors merged in layers and stuff. too bad i left my camera here though.

i saw the incredibles with my siblings on thanksgiving, it was a nice movie, i liked it (and so did they).

i guess that’s about all. i did a tiny bit of code after work today, played some kingdom hearts too.

the only bad thing though is that i broke down and bought WoW (the normal one, not the collector’s one). haha, OK is gonna kill me, and he has good reason to do so too… but i will insha’Allah not play too much. as a matter of fact, i haven’t even opened it yet.

anyhow, time for bed, peace outs.

going home!

peaces. insha’Allah am leaving for home in a few hours - not too excited about the 12 hour drive, but its worth it :) hope everyone has a wonderful break insha’Allah!

national [egyptian] treasure

i saw national treasure today. it was pretty okay, not amazing, but fun and entertaining. i guess i should say i saw it yesterday since today is not today anymore and today is now yesterday. err, something like that, i am going to sleeps.

peaces.