The Al-Ansaar organisation holds this event every year, in which they take prospective Haji’s through the ins-and-outs of Hajj and and all the nitty gritty’s in between.
Anyhow from the picture above you can see that I decided to be useful and Insha-Allah gain some reward through feeding the prospective Haji’s… :) So there I was dishing out Deg’s (that big silver pot in the pic) of Chicken Biryani (Lunch) and Chicken Kalya (Supper). Like a hero, I decided to wear my best jeans and shoes for Lunch… bad move, spent an hour in the afternoon removing the accumulated dirt from it all and then pitched up to serve supper in torn jeans and old sneakers (got taught a good lesson! Deg’s of food and Skecher shoes don’t go too well.)
So was chatting with MJ (the guy with the grey hooded sweater on the right of the pic) after the seminar on all his little meanderings around the Islamic Broadcasting Council he’s a part of (representing the youth! but they ask him to bring the tea and take minutes :P) and also other stuff like.. “should we go watch a movie?” and the latest PS2 games in and around… I think he wanted some recently released in London Soccer game or some such thing (I know I look like an ignoramus, but I don’t have a PS2, a travesty for a guy my age… I know…but I’ll kick your ass on Mario Bros. Word.)
Right… so then afterward we did go catch a movie… “Click”, not a bad movie I must say, I always expect the worse from Adam Sandler, but the movie’s got a great message… Word. As MJ put it… it makes you wanna go home and hug your wife. Don’t know why he would say that since he’s not married… but I’d have to agree :)
Sunday was usual domesticity in action with the Monthly Shopping! and ofcourse running around trying to find Levis Jeans which actually fit me… everybody’s running out of sizes. And No, I don’t subscribe to brands because I like their imagery.. I don’t like Levi’s Jeans imagery… I like the way their jeans fit and no matter how revolutionary I like to think I am, Mr Price Jeans just don’t cut it. Anyhow, this part of the post reminds me… I need Slim Slice bread and Stork Coulinesse (disgustingly domestic, but hey, a brother’s gotta eat, right?)
To do List: Groceries, Learn how the hell WordPress works, Get Munich on DVD.
Peace,
M.
Ferrari @ Umhlanga Mosque
Originally uploaded by Muhammad.
This was a test post… so make of “The Ferrari” what you will :)
The day with the most lack of sleep… well at least for the morning.. wake up at 3am then it’s non-stop… Fajr, Qabrastaan (Grave Yard), Eid Salaah… finally home a second but have to move to Inlaws for Breakfast (finally! notice how we never get hungry in Ramadaan, but suddenly on Eid we’re ravenous?)) anyhow, finally I get a point where people are undecided what to do next, so before they figured it out I caught at least an hour of shut-eye.
Was looking pretty spiffy too, if I may say so myself :) I have to mention I got a facial the night before, now before your mind goes on a tangent akin to MJ’s post on the Metrosexual Muslim and Eid, you should know that my Mum-in-law is a very Qualified Beautician and the service was on offer to “her favourite son-in-law” (read ONLY son-in-law), so I figured.. what the hell…
Anyhow I ended up looking good with skin all smooth and Matt (for once not oily as my wife complains), I also noticed the whiteness… and then I got a bit angry with thoughts filling my head about our brain-washing thinking that White is Beautiful, then my mind skipped to something Ebrahim Fakude (He is/was the president of the Muslim Youth Movement) once discussed with me regarding Fazlul Karim’s translation of Imam Al-Ghazzali’s Ihya Ulum-id-Deen where the translator quoted a hadith by Nabi (SAW) saying something similar to “There is no difference between a black woman and a pretty woman.” What? So the logiacl conclusion from that would be that Black women are Ugly? Now that made me very angry (and made him angry as well), because I certainly can never imagine our Prophet (SAW) ever mentioning anything so racist and Never Imam Al-Ghazzali mis-quoting a Hadith in( Arabic no less).
Okay i’m off the topic. Right, on Eid day I wore a Black Kurtah, Black Pants, Shoes, Everything, so was really hard core (like something out of a Muslim Matrix). But I regretted the dress because on the day it was 34°C and I have a tendency to overheat, not very comfortable. It was A/C the whole day and just my luck, My aunt’s Place for Lunch didn’t have an A/C so I had to suffer through heat although there was some really really good Biryani :) and also dealing with my year younger cousins who were doing car upgrades (yes on Eid Day) to remove airfilters so the car can sound “Louder”… maybe I’m too grown up now, but I couldn’t see the point. Anyway as I pretended to know more about cars than I actually do, I managed to find out my cousin has a ton of DVD’s I really want… so another contact in my media collectors portfolio. Word.
The rest was arb visits to family all over the place, My wife looking absolutely Gorgeous (Damn, I am so lucky) and the finalè was a supper at the in-laws inclusive of Gifts, and Laughter and trying to convince the brother of Mufti AH Elias (SA’s BIGGEST Mufti) that Music was NOT Haraam amongst some other discussion about three Talaq’s vs. one Talaq and Apostasty in Islam (yeah.. hectic :P) but it was really fun.
I have one gripe though… after getting married I never get personal gifts.. I get these cop-out household gifts addressed to My wife AND Me… like I’m a second thought… and as if I’ll have any use for yet another Serving Tray or fruit basket…
But I’ll end this post with saying that I had such a great day Alhamdulillah :) it was Brilliant :)
Sometimes we take the things we have for granted too often.
Word.
Peace,
M.
P.S. I got pics so I’ll be putting up a Flickr Feed soon :)
I’ve realised that Ramadaan and Fasting in general forces a person to realise their humanity.
First, let me clarify that… What is it that makes us human? OUR CHOICE. Unlike animals which react instinctively to any stimulus, human beings have the option of choosing how to react or even if they want to react at all to any particular stimuli (obviously this is not the case to every particular stimuli e.g. you get burned.. you jump… you don’t think about it).
But generally, between stimulus and response, we have a choice.
Now with the bombardment of western culture and philosophy through the media, has come modernity’s will to limit our ability to make that choice. Branding and inculcating brand loyalty is taking away our God-given right to choose. Let me illustrate this point… Marketing’s objective is to make us aware of products, induce trial and increase repeat-purchases of the products.
Now in order to achieve “getting consumers to repeat purchase”, Marketer’s have to affect behaviour by making consumers like the product enough to include it in their lives long enough for it to become a habit. For example, if you like a certain type of deodorant (for whatever reason), and you buy and use it often enough, after a while you don’t even notice it, it just becomes part of the the routine… a Marketer’s dream. Basically, your choice disappears… unless you get persuaded by another product’s marketing.
So what I’m saying here is that we get conditioned into…
Stimulus –> Response
Hunger –> McDonald’s/Steers/Wimpy/Spur, etc.
Thirst –> Sprite
etc, etc.
What Ramadaan and fasting does in this case is make you realise this choice we have whenever we are hit with stimuli. It widens our gap between stimulus and response. So apart from all the other benefits which fasting gives you, it makes us aware of the one thing which makes us different from all of the other creation in this world… Choice, our ability to choose.
Now take this thinking just a little bit further… if eating and drinking , something generally lawful, is made unlawful in Ramdaan due to fasting and it makes us realise our ability to choose at such a basic level regarding items which are critical to our survival. Then what of the things greater than that? our ideologies, our philosophies on Life, how we deal with people, who we have relationships with and dozens of other aspects which make up our lives… all of these are also subject to our ability to choose. If I know one thing it’s that brands are idea’s, the moment you choose one of them you are choosing everything associated with it, whether its the Glamour and Cutting edge of Diesel, the Affluence of Polo and Ralph Lauren, etc. You are buying into that idea, and now think if you really made that choice consciously, or was it all marketing?
The only question which again remains is… are we using our power of choice to manoeuvre all of these facets of our lives in order to achieve the ultimate goals which we have set in our lives? or are we just going with the flow and letting marketing make the choices for us? Will it go so far as to finally affect your choice of who you worship? How do you know?
If you don’t exercise your choice, then what’s the point of your existence?
Peace,
M.
This is my first time using Word Press and it is one HUGE Change from Blogger’s HTML nightmare. the functionality is FAR better for one, there’s millions of little gadgets and options and now I can finally get started blogging about Marketing, Philosophy, Islam, Tech Stuff and all the other wonderful things I’m interested in:)
Peace!
M.
P.S. Tried Blogger Beta… it Sucks.
