Have you met Kiva yet??

I loaned, a single mother of two, $25 dollars which helped her to grow her business. She's paid all my money back and now i'm loaning it to another woman. As altrusitic as sounds, it really is not. it is actually quite selfish, as i experience great PLEASURE everytime i see the measly $25 dollars make a small change in someones life.

I thought, i offer you a chance to feel great as well. Check out Kiva.org, help a person, and see what i mean.

woohoo!

Kiva
What We DoWe let you loan to the working poor
Kiva lets you connect with and loan money to unique small businesses in the developing world. By choosing a business on Kiva.org, you can "sponsor a business" and help the world's working poor make great strides towards economic independence. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates from the business you've sponsored. As loans are repaid, you get your loan money back.

Memory

I complained to Waki of my bad memory
So he directed me to cease from evil doing;
For indeed memory is a favor from God
And a favor of God is not given to he who sins.

pg 51, Instruction of the Student, Imam Al-Zarnuji

Snap!

Abu Hanifa: “The purpose of learning is to act by it, while the purpose of action is to abandon the fleeting [things of life] for what lasts forever.”

The Water Cycle

It is entirely possible that the water you drank for lunch was once used by a Prophet to wash his feet! Isn't the water cycle just amazing? Isn't water just magical?

Did you know, the same water that's nourished dinosaurs, quenched prophets, and satisfied millions of plants will also help you sustain your short life?

Yes, this might very well be common kowledge but i havent made the connection until today, so there. The earth is a closed system. wow. same waters been recylcing for so long. double wow. ok, i'll stop now.

Hadith Practice

I need to buy this book!

Hadiths 1-60 of Zad al-Talibin
PDF File

Hadiths 1-60 of Zad al-Talibin “Provisions for the Seekers”
Published by White Thread Press (www.whitethreadpress.com)
Zamzam Academy summer Hadith Program

Sample Excerpt
PDF file

Prayer is the Commitment to Remember

The great Spanish Muslim, Ibn Hazm, once wrote that the most consistent feature of human life is anxiety. Anxiety, he argued, traversed race, gender and social status, all religions, cultures and philosophical commitments.

In every society, those who are privileged are anxious about preserving, and perhaps augmenting what they have, be it wealth, health, good relationships or spiritual fulfillment. Those who are dispossessed, sickly, lonely or unfulfilled, on the other hand, are anxious about obtaining what they do not have.

All humans, however, instinctively recognize that something beyond their intelligence, good looks and social station will determine all of this. For all are aware that there are powerful people who have frail bodies or horrible relationships and that the unintelligent often acquire many times the riches of the intelligent.

Most of my private prayers and supplications (du'a) are part of my personal response to this cosmic anxiety, my way of tendering a cosmic "Thank You," on the one hand, and a cosmic "Please" on the other.

Beyond this, however, there is a canonical prayer (salah) that I offer at least seventeen times a day. This prayer reinforces the essence of my Islamic religiosity by reminding me that cosmic human anxiety is neither an accident nor an epiphenomenon, and that this basic feature of the human condition can never be overcome, but only prudently managed through a sincere relationship with God. This prayer also is the first chapter of the Qu'ran and it goes like this:

* Praise be to God, the Lord of being and becoming.
I recognize my contingency; every creature has a creator. And I recognize the grandeur of my Creator.
* The All-Merciful, the Mercy-Giving.
I have been given much that I have not earned. How do I repay this cosmic debt? There is still more that can be earned. What will I do to earn it?
*Master of the Day of Judgment.
It matters how I live my life and how I respond to my cosmic anxiety and my cosmic debt; for I shall have to account for it all. Have I repaid my cosmic debt?
* Only You do we worship and only Your ultimate aid do we seek.I seek Your favor, even in fulfilling my debt to You. For I know that by myself I am not always selfless, courageous, wise or even strong enough to do the right thing. I seek Your aid, however, not through my own designs but by trying to live up to Your expectations, by worshiping You.
* Show us the straight path.
Guide me to the right responses to my cosmic anxiety and my cosmic debt. And inspire me to live by these right responses.
*The path of those upon whom You have bestowed Your favor.
I recognize that it is a bounty to be guided. And I recognize that granting me this recognition is among Your greatest bounties.
* Not the path of those who incur Your wrath.
Those who seek to cover rather than confront their cosmic anxiety or their cosmic debt, who believe themselves to be self-sufficient, either out of ignorance or simply because they want to remain self-serving.
* Nor those who go astray.
Who recognize their cosmic anxiety and their cosmic debt but who delude themselves with the idea that they, rather than You, can define what will earn Your pleasure.

At least seventeen times a day, at intervals spreading from dawn to night, I offer this prayer, as mandated by my religion. In the midst of all the daily threats and boosts to my ego, perhaps the point of this repetition is to keep me from 'forgetting' my contingency and my cosmic debt.

Forgetfulness, however, will always be with me, lurking behind every little accomplishment and every failure. This is why I must ever seek refuge in the remembrance supplied by prayer.
And God knows best.

Sherman Jackson

The hikam...

The branches of abasement only grow from the seeds of greed.

Nothing leads you on like illusion.
You are free when you despair of it.
You are a slave when you are eager for it.

Whoever does not advance to Allah by the tenderness of His goodness
is chained to Him by the fetters of trial.

Whoever is not grateful for blessings is asking for them to vanish.
Whoever is grateful for them ties them up with their own tether.

I Love This Man!