Muslim Apple

Please do not contact me if you are mentally unstable or just immature and want to talk to someone to make yourself feel significant because I’m not the one for that, I’m going to tell you like it is or just ignore you and then you may feel worse.

Please do not contact me if you want me to make salaatul istikhara for you or someone in your family that is looking to get married. A bit of advice, do it yourself and watch this lecture by Abdulbary Yahya on istikhara called Divine GPS: The Inner Dimension of Salaatul Istikhara.

Please do not contact me if Islam to you is about laypeople seeking out the faults of the people of knowledge so that you can boycott them except for a few select people that you claim to have access to only through translations of a tele-link and hurt only yourself and those that listen to you by your actions.

Please do not contact me if you have some crazy 419 scheme where you think you need my help to obtain a bazillion dollars.

The comedian Dave Chappelle a DC native has been seen recently in and around the Dar al Hijrah Islamic Center in Virginia with increasing regularity which has created a buzz in some Muslim circles.

We live in a culture that values celebrity so for some Muslims this idea that a famous person with what I suppose is mainstream attraction although I’m not really sure what group forms the core fan base of support for Chappelle is an exciting development.

From Wikipedia: In 1998, Chappelle converted to Islam. He told Time Magazine in a May 2005 interview, “I don’t normally talk about my religion publicly because I don’t want people to associate me and my flaws with this beautiful thing. And I believe it is beautiful if you learn it the right way.”^[11]

I remember a statement from one of our teachers, Br. Muhammad Alshareef in which he mentioned that when a person converts to Islam, Islam is not in need of that person, Islam does not gain or increase in honor from that single person entering into the religion, all izza (honor, glory, nobility) is for that person that has now been blessed with the religion of Islam. Read more »

Thanks to Jinnzaman for highlighting this site and whose  new blog is rated NC-17.

Ok, just for the record I’ve come around to liking IKEA not because they have a corporate IKEA hijab for female Muslim employees but because I’ve come to appreciate the design of the store.

Showrooms on the second floor and the large furniture items warehoused in well marked aisles on the first floor. And just in case you forget what item you are looking for, they have a customer service desk and self-help computers available to help you find the location of your item.

And their furniture carts are fun to navigate through the aisles and are designed to carry large flat-packed boxes. And the “fun” (I recognize that it is only fun for some of us) does not end there. Read more »

Nigerians particularly those from the Ibo tribe at least in my experience have this way of saying nonsense as a phrase at the end of sentence or a sentence by itself as a means of showing their disdain or displeasure for something.

For example, he has a good job but he got caught stealing a t-shirt. Nonsense.

Or, she went to the airport without her passport expecting that they would let her fly. Nonsense.

Or in an discussion after the person you disagree with finishes speaking or presenting their argument. You reply: Nonsense… and then you proceed with your argument.

And even if the person is speaking in Ibo, the word nonsense is always said in English.

The short answer is yes, of course, although with the 419 scam it seems that the main targets are now abroad, but I’m sure there are those in Nigeria that have fallen into this trap especially in the early days.

I thought the 419 scam was well known both in Nigeria and abroad but apparently there are still gullible and greedy people unaware of this deception. Current trends in the scam were mentioned on Blogistan and SAFspace so there is no need to rehash it here.

I received my very first scam letter in my email spam just this past September. I was amused that the writer claimed to be affiliated with some prominent and wealthy Nigerian family and then proceeded to outline the scam of how their were funds locked and how much money I should contribute to help unlock the funds and for this I would be generously rewarded with a dent in my bank statement. Read more »

A man in Washington state has refused to shave since 2001. He says he was so engrossed in following news reports in the week after the attacks that he forgot to shave. He then vowed to not shave until Osama bin Laden was captured. His beard length now resembles that of bin Laden and he says he is prepared to take his vow to the grave.

1823 days and counting…

On a side note, a popular joke says that if the Bush administration was really serious about locating Osama bin Laden then they would have enlisted the AARP to find him.

Another take on the Department of Homeland Security’s warning system from the CS Monitor’s Clay Bennett:

Ryan Singel from Wired News has compiled a color-coded chart of the most dangerous threats to Americans resembling the alert system from the Department of Homeland Security and as it turns out Al Qaeda is at the bottom of the list.

Comparing official mortality data with the number of Americans who have been killed inside the United States by terrorism since the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma reveals that scores of threats are far more likely to kill an American than any terrorist — at least, statistically speaking.

In fact, your appendix is more likely to kill you than al-Qaida is.

Have a look at the chart

Good news out of Michigan that a judge has thrown out the supposed “terrorism case” of three Muslim businessmen.

The men aroused suspicion by purchasing a large amount of cell phones and by taking photos of the picturesque Mackinac Bridge.

The message from small-time wannabe hero terrorism plot uncoverer law enforcement types is that Muslims and those who “look Muslim” should avoid certain forms of entrepreneurship and taking photos while sightseeing or risk being terrorized by local police departments and prosecutors.

Five years on from 9/11, do you feel safer?

Report Suspicious Behavior: 1-800-492-TIPS (digital sign on highway in Maryland). I wonder if I can report on law enforcement officials acting suspiciously irrational.