what does the ant know about the pattern on the Persian carpet.

The third part of a speech about the problems of pornography; Shaykh Hamza mentions Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point! (I love how he always happens to be connected or to mention some of my favourite people!) :D I sometimes wonder if I've become way too biased about this man but hello, if you can find someone else who speaks as well, please tell me.



If we haven't thanked people, we haven't thanked God, right? I'm so thankful to have discovered such good and inspiring people. Every time I finish listening to an amazing lecture, I swear I'm just always so amazed (going sugoi sugoi sugoi endlessly, eheh) and so thankful. And also, today, I was in Noor Sarah's car on the way back from APEX and Farhana was talking about her Arabic Intensive experience again and I found out that she apparently scrimped on food there -- like seriously, SHE HAD NO FOOD TO EAT because her bank account was zero! At one point she was surviving on a single sandwich for four days (and refused to ask her parents for money) -- and as she recounted this as an amazing experience in which she entirely relied on God to provide her, I realise that, ohmygoodness, she still bought me my book when she had no money to eat?!?!?! I was like, "Farhana, I don't believe you!!! You went hungry because of my book???" Seriously, crazy girl!!! Of course, we all started joking that it's all my fault she almost died or something -- but my goodness. Then I thought of this:

It is astonishing how people can influence others simply by being in each other's company. Imam al-Haddad said, "The company one keeps has major effects. It may lead to either benefit and improvement or harm and corruption, depending on whether the company is that of pure and eminent people or those who are immoral and evil. This effect does not appear suddenly, but is a gradual process that unfolds with time."

~ Purification of the Heart

I feel like I am benefiting so much just being around these people I have come to know and love, and when I was talking to someone last week who had only decided to join APEX, I said, "Sometimes I feel like I gain more than the kids." Kak Dora said the same thing, I think, some time last year, in a speech. So true.

I've finally gotten hooked onto Maher Zain, a little later than most people, and this one's my favourite! I have to refrain myself from letting the same six songs play on repeat every morning while on the bus.



---

I have this horrible habit of dog-earing my books because there are wonderful stuff I want to store here or somewhere else, but I somehow never get around to doing it. So my books sit with the pages all folded and I have pieces of paper littered in various places, with long lost anecdotes. So anyway, here's one I've been meaning to post for weeks now -- I was relieving a Secondary 1 class back at Irsyad, and I was flipping through a newspaper stashed in the teacher's drawer, and read one of the NUS commencement speeches, in which was quoted:

I slept and dreamt that life was joy.
I awoke and saw that life was duty.
I acted, and beheld that duty was joy.

~ Rabindranath Tagore

:) This fills me with a warm glow, because I think (and hope) I might be realising this too.

I actually feel so knackered tonight, but I have to say something because tonight was a wonderful night. I went for APEX Iftar, and although that in itself was wonderful, talking to Farhana who just came back from Zaytuna College was what made it absolutely memorable. Her face, even before she started rattling off about how awesome everything was, said it best --  it's like, I could see it in her face that she'd fallen in love with the place. I suppose I may be romanticising this: but I think if you actually see someone who's fallen in love, for real, you can tell just by their face. There's a yearning there, written in their features, and their hearts are quite obviously somewhere else. Needless to say, I am beyond envious. Envious in a good way though -- because I was happily basking in her radiance (and devouring everything she described), and hoping some day, when I've treaded on the path I'm meant to, I'll feel like this too.

And I walked home thinking about just how wonderful everything is and feeling so inexplicably happy, because just knowing that such good people exist, such as those at Zaytuna (Shaykh Hamza and friends as I like to call them), it's like a beacon of light, you know. I felt so happy, I could cry. That Rasulullah s.a.w.'s legacy can live on so tangibly, and that there's a very real and present hope in the world. At moments like this, all one can do is say thank you.

Had a horrid dream last night, where the results of the SLP application were released via letters, and I kept bumping into people who exclaimed, "I got it!" and that Raihan (I don't know how she ended up in my dream even though she is not even remotely associated with this, ahak.) got in too and was being so insanely happy in front of me and there I was growing more horrified by the second, because where was my letter??? Then I rushed around and saw Syamim (again, I don't know why, haha!) who was about to be insanely happy too for being able to get a place except she saw me and was trying to contain herself and not upset me -- but of course, that made me even more inordinately upset. Worse, I realised they'd already given away 19 places. And then, I just remember feeling the fear and crushing disappointment creep in at the edges of my mind.

Next thing I knew, I was sitting in front of an old block of a computer, in an extremely packed and suffocating office, directing some blur blob Chinese dude who had asked to talk to a professor. And I gave him a -___- face and said flatly while pointing very rudely, "Professors are there and there." He shuffled off and I looked around the office which seemed like a never-ending array of tables with computers and stacks of documents. My brain was becoming a flatline, my face was set perpetually in a zonked expression -___-, and the last thing I remember is seeing the word QSAR in big bold print on the side of a file.

Nightmare. :s

This just proves how much I want this SLP thingy and I am feeling the fear creep in. Oh dang it, why must we want things. It makes for heartbreak, I tell you. But I suppose in this, as in everything else, I must trust God.

---

Feel so exhausted; who knew helping out with kuih-making could be this draining? Kak Waty is a one-woman company and I'm her flailing assistant. I feel like I've been steamrollered at the end of every day -- seriously, the body aches. I feel like if there was a pillow by the roadside, I could easily lay down my head and sleep immediately, ahahah.

After iftar tonight, I read this out to my dad to annoy him:

The Prophet said that woman prevails exceedingly over the wise and intelligent, while, on the other hand, ignorant men prevail over women for in them the fierceness of the animal is imprisoned.

~ Rumi: Mathnawi

Sometimes, the world can be so tiny, it boggles me. I'm sure you've all had that experience -- like, what, these two are friends??? how on earth??? or what, I have so-and-so as a common friend with so-and-so on fb??? The internet only shrinks the world to a tiny screen.

I'm recalling the time when we were on the plane home from holiday and we were flying over Singapore, and I was looking out the window -- and kinda just marveled -- because I realised that from where I was sitting, the Singapore flyer was less than a hand span from Changi. At that point, it felt like I'd been hit on the head with a big slab of metal. Singapore is just so unbelievably tiny. And I remember thinking, my gosh, there's no way to get far away enough from anything. Not unless I were to jump into a space shuttle or stg.

And I really don't know why I'm talking about this.

---

And because I am still rereading the Draco Trilogy (and ignoring the voices in my head: Eunice, going, "Why aren't you reading The Game of Thrones instead???" or my dad, "It is Ramadhan, have you touched the Qura'an yet???" -- oh, woe to my horrible impulses), here's something from Draco Sinister, which reminded me how much I love Ginny in DT. Without her, I think my affection for DT would be significantly different. Ginny is that necessary female character in a story; the one who I want to root for because she is real and flawed but she has her heart in the right place and tries hard and feels deeply and makes mistakes. Love her.


Ginny shook her head. "It's not what you are that matters. It's what you do, what you've done. Haven't you done enough - haven't you proved you aren't like your father? Didn't you stand up to him, didn't you save Hermione's life, just like Harry would have--"


"Oh bloody Harry!" he yelled suddenly. He was paper-white with rage, his eyes blazing with a gray and stellar fire that was frightening to see. He so rarely yelled that this was in fact, alarming as well. "I'm not Harry! I will never be Harry! If I ever acted like him, it was only because of a spell. Can't you get that through your head?"


"Listen to me. Every bit of goodness in you does not come from Harry. If you don't believe yourself, believe me. I can feel evil in people. I felt it in Slytherin when he came into our house. I never felt it from you. You've often been a hateful, miserable git, but you were never evil. So you can just... stop. Stop with this whole "I'm the Dark Prince of Evil" business. Because you aren't. You're just a person, Draco Malfoy, just a person like anyone else. And your problem isn't that you're evil. It's that you're scared. You're always running away. You ran away from the Manor when you thought Harry and the rest of them didn't trust you anymore, and then you ran away from me when I told you to go home. You even ran away from Snape. You kept the sword because it gave you a reason to run away from Harry and Hermione and all the things in your life you can't face, and then you tried to run away from the darkness it conjured up but you can't, and all you're doing is running away from yourself and falling farther and farther away from anyone who could help you. You had what you wanted, you know? A family, people who cared about you, And you ran away from it! 'Oh, I've got to go. I'm a danger to everyone else, I'm so evil, somebody smash me in the head already, blah blah blah.' What a bunch of self-indulgent crap!" She poked him hard in the chest with her finger, and he actually goggled at her in astonishment. "Who says you have to sit here while these huge events you're so excited about blow up all around you? Why don't you fight? Because I don't know about you, but I'd rather make a mistake and do something than be frightened into doing nothing!"

Ramadhan Mubarak! :)



Mostly, I love the quote from Imam Malik, said near the beginning: Real knowledge is a light God puts in the hearts of the believers. And it is this that makes me comforted, because especially in today's world where confusion and misinformation reign, one cannot rely only on one's limited intellect to discern truth or goodness from everything else. So we should seek for divine guidance in whatever matter.

Like, a few days ago, I came across some video of this young guy, presumably an imam, speaking in front of an audience, denouncing Sufism; I mean, like, seriously, denouncing it entirely! I was horrified. And he black-listed a series of prominent western Imams one of which is Hamza Yusuf and also T.J. Winters and Zaid Shakir (all of whom I regard highly, and who aren't even Sufi shaykhs in the first place! O.O) and he also mentioned the Naqshibandi tareeqah and my jaw dropped closer and closer to the ground. And he dissed the entirety of Imam Busairi's Qasida Burda??? I mean, seriously! Nutso! And the scariest thing is, he spoke very rationally and should I have not been so heavily exposed by my own family to the ideas of Sufi and Salafi, rituals and spirituality, and how they all work hand-in-hand, I might have been swayed by what he said.

Sufism isn't wrong! To think it's wrong is so misinformed, I don't know what to say. To say the whole of Sufism is wrong is to condemn some of the greatest people, some of the best Muslims to have ever been born -- and that's just plain stupid. This kind of behaviour is similar to the demolition of sacred mosques and tombs just because of a fear that people would worship graves instead; or not putting the name of the Prophet s.a.w. anywhere in Saudi for fear of... what, exactly? Shirk? Utterly ridiculous! In that case, is our syahadah shirk, since we have to mention the Prophet s.a.w.??? We have to say it all the time, you know. Where is your brain, people! Or rather, where is your heart.

:( I was always against the idea that people could be deliberately evil. Why would you want to choose evil? But things like this make me wonder, because it seems insidious, and like a deliberate attempt to stamp down on any sort of love for the Prophet s.a.w. (which is in fact part of our aqidah, isn't it?), on any sort of reverence for our great scholars, without whom we would be utterly lost, and on any sort of struggling unity that our ummah is trying to forge again today. I went to track down the video and found a site with more videos all of that same one person, whose name and qualification aren't really clarified. Also, all the resources come from Saudi; and I'm sorry, but that's one of the places I don't really trust. I was thinking, Ah, sounds dubious already!

Haiyah, I don't know, but it turns out Ami Ali is right. :( May Allah and Rasul s.a.w. guide us.

And one of my all-time favourites:

Warning: this post contains some raving about HP fandom.

I just finished rereading Draco Dormiens - yes, that piece of fanfiction from The Draco Trilogy (abbreviated as DT), and god, I still love it. I still do. To pieces. No matter that I know the author filches stuff from other people to make her own story better; some people say that since it's fanfiction, it's okay anyway. No matter that I can read it in a more detached manner such that I can see certain incongruities in her style. No matter that certain parts of it are obviously at loggerheads with canon. It's like, Draco and Harry and all of the characters are so ingrained in my brain as their own lovable selves, separate from the reality of fandom and canon, such that rereading is only a matter of recalling them to me. Whatever horrible things that Cassie actually did or didn't do, or how much ugly fan behaviour ensued because of the controversy it sparked, has no bearing on the characters in my mind. They are blameless and pure to me, haha. And I still love them. I still love the unbelievably natural and plausible way Draco and Harry seemed to befriend each other, and the tangled, complicated friendships, relationships and histories. And the amazingly funny scenes; no other fanfic can make me laugh like DT can. And nobody can agonize me like DT!Hermione can. Whatever wrong Cassie might have done, I think, credit has to be given for her success (however it might have been done) in creating characters that can stand as their own, separate even from their canon selves.

Also, I recognise the fact that because DT happened in my late teen years, it left an indelible mark on me, and this is why they will always be lovable to me. Even though I love Richard/Lymond or Sam/Dean or Kyuu/Ryuu or Kirk/Spock and recognise that Draco/Harry fall into the same category of appeal, nothing will compare to Harry/Draco to me; Draco and Harry stand apart. Because they were first. And I suppose this is why people always say first loves are forever. Maybe love really is about who got to you first. And I didn't mean for this to become my philosophizing about the nature of love so I shall stop.

So, yes, Draco/Harry shall always have a special place. And the trilogy, of course. And I will go on to Draco Sinister now. And the reason I started reading anyway is cause my sister has bounded both Draco Dormiens and Draco Sinister in hard copy; there is this guilty, awesome feeling when one gets to hold the trilogy in one's hands, haha. My sister has bugged me to go get Draco Veritas bounded too.

---

And I found this; it's not bad. :P

Source

I like the quote on this one; something heartbreaking from Draco Veritas. 

Why do I find sad things beautiful?

Also, I found this: boozah beat! ahahaha. Cute or what. And uh oh, I forgot where I took this from but it's so cuute! :S

Yamapi in Buzzer Beat!

---

I have no energy to be truly expressive these days. So there.

And because I think I won't be coming here tomorrow: Happy 45th Birthday, Singapore! You and I are getting old.

I came across this article about psychiatrists sparking controversy for attempting to classify grief of loss (if it extends beyond two weeks -.-) as depression -- it's called Is Emotional Pain Necessary?. How is it that one doesn't allude the modern world to an Orwellian state when things like this happen??? Cause, seriously! We're not even aware, I think, how much we try to numb ourselves - if physical pain is a symptom of a physical disease, then emotional pain is a symptom too. Giving drugs for depression is not treating the disease, you're just attempting to ignore the symptom. I can't help but think of Brave New World, of soma -- the people in the story just down some soma when they get off work and they feel genki and a-okay; so nobody questions that there's something wrong in their lives.

"Over the course of time, we've become looser in applying the term 'mental disorder' to the expectable aches and pains and sufferings of everyday life," Frances says. "And always, we think about a medication treatment for each and every problem."

From Frances' perspective, if you can't feel intense emotional pain in the wake of the death of your child without it being categorized as a mental disorder, then when in the course of human experience are you allowed to feel intense emotional pain for more than two weeks?

Father Anthony de Mello, a Jesuit teacher with a taste for Zen-like parables, published a series of books in which he emphasized how much of our pervasive sense of unhappiness in the world arises from our attachments. For a Catholic priest he sometimes sounds positively Buddhist in his insistence that the source of emotional anguish is a "state of clinging caused by belief that without some particular thing or some person you cannot be happy." He explains  in The Way to Love that "the tragedy of an attachment is that if its object is not attained it causes unhappiness. But if it is attained, it does not cause happiness - it merely causes a flash of pleasure followed by weariness, and it is always accompanied, of course, by the anxiety that you may lose the object of your attachment."

~ Book by Book, Michael Dirda

:)))

This is from Mariam's (my constant companion whilst I'm teaching at Irsyad) current read; and she bugged me to read this bit. I'm glad that she always bugs me. Eheheh.

That's why, Nabi s.a.w. always used to say: "Ya Allah, as long as you are not angry with me, I don't care what you do with me."

:)