An increased love for the Prophet ﷺ through a lived experience.
Recently went on a Muslim Alpha trip with some brothers, and it really gave me a sense of deeper love and respect for not only the Prophet ﷺ and the Sahaba, but also for people who lived before us:
Our parents.
Our grandparents.
Our ancestors.
Life has undoubtedly become more convenient with all its advancements, but at the same time it has made us weaker.
Even just a camping trip for two days taught me so much about how comfortable our day to day lives are, and how people generations before used to live with struggle, day in and day out. It was also a stark reminder that Allah tells us in the Qur’an:
لَقَدْ خَلَقْنَا ٱلْإِنسَـٰنَ فِى كَبَدٍ ٤
Indeed, We have created mankind in ˹constant˺ struggle.
Surah Balad (90:4)
We are to take our share from this world and enjoy it, but it was never meant to be jannah. Trying to turn this world into jannah is one of the biggest deceptions we see all around us. If you notice the beginning of the ayah when Allah says ( لَقَدْ ), that is a double emphasis, meaning “absolutely without a doubt, We have created mankind in (constant) struggle.”
The Sahaba would be out in the fields tending their crops, tending their animals, and manually having to do all the work. They would travel long distances in brutal conditions with minimal food and drink…and then have to fight the enemy.
Subhan Allah.
This lifestyle naturally gave people more grit, endurance, and strength, and small, petty issues didn't fluster them like our modern, “first world problems” do:
“Oh my God! My dad only bought me an iPhone 18 and not an iPhone 18 Pro!”
“Ughh! What do you mean you ran out of oat milk for my coffee?!”
“Oh man! I missed the cut-off for same-day delivery! Now my 6th pair of shoes will come tomorrow instead!”
What is even more amazing is the residents of Madinah would consider themselves to be the more “soft” and civilized society and they would call the Bedouins rough and harsh! For our purposes, even the civilized, more well-spoken society of Madinah would be harsh for us, and the nomadic, Bedouin lifestyle would be unsustainable.
Making things too easy makes one weak, and doesn’t prepare one for tougher times. Too much convenience becomes a deception, turning minds and bodies into a rotten lump of neurons and flesh that gets wasted away. Just look at the smartphone epidemic and now the increasingly acceptable and rampant drug epidemic where everything is allowed.
How do you combat the bombardment of convenience that is shoved down our throats? You need to exercise your mind, body, and soul. Trying new activities exposes your body to new movements - movements that will exercise muscles you never knew you had. Challenging yourself and taking calculated risks become a recipe for success, because you will have one of two outcomes:
You will succeed
You will learn lessons (what people call “failure”)
The real failure - is not trying at all.
We have to remember that curating difficulty for ourselves, our families, and our communities is a form of love. You do it because you love and care for them. You want them to grow and flourish, but in order to grow and flourish, difficulty is a requirement. A seed can stay small and comfortable inside its shell, or it can go through harshness starting with a crack in its shell, get exposed to the elements, and flourish beyond its constraints, expanding far and wide.
Camping in the woods, bonding and riding on horses, doing archery, sparring with the brothers - all with the intention of reviving the Sunnah, pleasing Allah, and hanging out with righteous company, are all part of growing and maturing. Not only did we push ourselves and worked to revive the Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ, we also reminded one another of what our purpose is in this life - to make sure the word of Allah is the highest, and the character of the Prophet ﷺ is followed to the best of our ability.
In order to accomplish this mission, it requires one to be uncomfortable, for it was this discomfort that allowed Islam to spread, and allowed Islam to reach us.
Don’t get too comfortable in this dunya, because remember, your life and my life are a test, and tests are always full of challenges and surprises.
Will you have this regret when you are gone?
We have all seemingly missed out on so much.
We didn’t give any importance to cryptocurrency and especially bitcoin, and we were not able to capitalize on it as much as we would have liked, when it was only literally pennies for bitcoin.
How about the housing market? Maybe we were tempted to buy a house with a riba based loan, but we said NO, and now that opportunity to save in cash for a house keeps dwindling away since the prices are out of control. We “missed out” on that opportunity.
We could have bought a car for much cheaper before the pandemic, but now car prices are just ridiculous. We missed out on that opportunity.
There are just so many opportunities that we have seemingly missed out on, but we have to remember one thing:
When we are in our graves, the only opportunity that we will care about at that time is:
Did we miss out on our Islam?
Did we miss out on our religion?
Did we miss out on our real purpose in life?
We as Muslims already have the best thing that no dollar, no house, no bitcoin, no exotic car can buy.
We have la ilaha il Allah.
We have Allah on our side!
We have the truth!
We have guidance to Paradise!
There will be so many people who would have wished they had Islam, crying to the point where they would be willing to sacrifice everyone they know and all the people in the world in order to save themselves.
“To save himself from the torment of that Day, the culprit shall wish to give his children, his wife, his brother, his kinsfolk who gave him shelter, and all the people of the earth, just to save themselves.”
(Surah Ma’arij 70:11-14)
They will be crying with so much regret that they didn’t invest in their REAL life!
They will cry, “I wish I had sent forth ˹something good˺ for my ˹true˺ life.”
(Surah Fajr: 89:24)
Whenever you feel like you’ve missed out on something, or an opportunity has passed you buy, then always remember that you still have the best gift of all.
Islam!
Taylor Swift’s sweat.
Did I get your attention with the title?
Good.
About a month ago, I was watching a clip on YouTube, where a lady was asking whether or not it was worth spending $2,500 for Taylor Swift tickets.
These were not front row seats, but they were nosebleed seats, essentially the furthest seats away from Taylor Swift.
You would need binoculars to see her.
The host of the show was outraged that these nosebleed seats cost $2,500.
She said for that kind of money, I want some of the “Swifty sweat” to hit me.
(I need to be so close to her that her sweat hits me in the face.)
That same evening, we reached a point in the Seerah where an incident occurred, and the sahaba were gathering the leftover wudu water of the Prophet ﷺ to use for themselves. This went down a tangent where we discussed how the hair, the sweat, and even the saliva of the Prophet ﷺ was considered blessed.
So blessed to the point that they would take some of the sweat and put it in their perfume.
And it was narrated from Anas that Umm Sulaym used to put out a mat of leather for the Prophet ﷺ and he would take a nap in her house. When the Prophet ﷺ fell asleep, she took some of his sweat and hair and kept it in a bottle, then she put it in some sukk (perfume made of musk). He [Thumaamah ibn ‘Abd-Allah ibn Anas] said: When Anas ibn Maalik was dying, he left instructions that some of the sukk should be put in his hunoot (perfumes used in preparation of dead for burial).
Narrated by al-Bukhaari (6281)
The sahaba would take these things and seek blessings from them, and there was nothing weird or wrong about it.
Naturally the kids thought it was kind of strange, but that is because they’re still kids, and don’t understand how the adult mind and body work…
And that is where we as parents have to bridge the gap, educate, and defend.
So what if the Sahaba sought blessings from the Prophet ﷺ’s sweat? This is something unanimously agreed upon, and the Prophet ﷺ himself approved of it.
As we can see from the Taylor Swift example, people seek some sort of “high" or blessings from other people’s bodily fluids to this day.
It sounds strange when you say it like that, but it’s the truth!
The “Swiftie sweat” is just one example, but it can be applied to many celebrities whose teeth, leftover tissues, and even used underwear sold for thousands of dollars. Let’s not forget game-worn jerseys that are worth hundreds if not thousands more than an unused jersey by an athlete.
I remember watching TV shows where during certain episodes, the main character would meet their favorite celebrity and after shaking their hand, they would say:
“I’m never washing this hand again.”
It is because now they have a residual “part” of that celebrity on them, making them feel special. There is a deeper connection with that celebrity just because of their bodily fluids on your body.
Of course no man's sweat or saliva is worth anything today, and the only sweat or saliva that was blessed was that of the Prophet ﷺ.
The point here is to educate yourselves, and to educate those who are under your responsibility. Start there, and continue to educate your communities and in sha Allah, the whole world.
How boys and girls think differently about money.
From the archives - original date August 6, 2024.
The other day, my daughter comes up to me, very nonchalantly, and just tells me,
“Papa, I think I lost my money.”
There was no emotion or panic in her tone whatsoever. I was more in shock of how calm she was because I knew she had a decent chunk of change for a 12 year old (about $500 from gifts and Eid money).
So naturally I asked her, “how much money? Do you mean your purse?” Her purse usually has like $20-$40.
I was like there was no way she lost ALL her money.
She replies again in her casual voice, “No. I lost all my money.”
So now I’m a bit concerned and freaking out a bit inside, and we go on a mission to backtrack her steps and search her room, and eventually she finds it fairly quickly.
Once she finds it, it’s just a, “Oh there it is.” and there’s just the tiniest sign of relief on her face.
After this ordeal, I was just taken aback by her attitude and how losing the money didn’t make her freak out. When I thought about it more, it didn't really surprise me.
We have been homeschooling them since the beginning, and we have been teaching them proper Islamic principles, including how a household is run, who is in charge of what, and who brings home the “dough,” and who cooks the dough.
It’s a system that Alhumdulilah works amazingly well, and brings benefit to everyone.
My wife doesn’t have to worry about money, and naturally, my daughter has picked that up from her. Having a lot of money isn’t a priority for my daughter, and being thrifty with money is one of her qualities.
Frankly, it should be a quality for all of us.
Her carelessness with money isn’t spending too much, but just misplacing it in her room 😂.
My son, on the other hand, is the opposite. He is much more meticulous with money, always trying to find ways to earn money, mainly because he tends to spend more money. If he had lost his wad of cash, he would have turned the whole house upside down trying to find it. He would definitely have been in a more panicked state.
The way my son and daughter react emotionally to money is part of their fitra that is inside all of us as Muslims, and something that our house has reinforced:
Men are the providers of the household and have to worry about money and providing, while women are the maintainers of the household and have to worry about caretaking and maintaining. They are different roles for men and women, but in the eyes of Allah, they are noble and equitable positions that can take you to Jannah.
Someone who stays home isn’t a worse person because they take care of the home vs the one who has to go out and work.
If your kids grow up without the influence of social media, and without the influence of anti-Islamic lifestyles that they see all day and are fed through the school systems, they are more likely to grow up on the fitra and you will have to spend less time trying to detox their minds.
You will see the fitra flourish in the actions of your kids, from the obvious to the more subtle, like finances.
Hack your brain and think positive.
From the archives - original date July 24, 2024.
So there I was, driving down the road through some twisty turns, and I noticed that the neighborhood I was going through was a very wealthy neighborhood. It was the American dream in real life: big houses, big green landscaped yards, and 2 or 3 cars in each driveway, all secluded and distant from each other.
I remember a similar scene but it was in a different scenario. I was at the Smoky Mountains and I took a helicopter ride, and I was able to see the beautiful scenery of the green mountains and the giant homes in that area.
All of this made me feel happy for a reason, even though I don’t own a house and am not a fan of taking a mortgage for obvious Islamic reasons.
Seeing all these beautiful things that I wanted made me realize that in Jannah, I can have all of this plus much more!
Forget about just one huge house, how about huge palaces that would make these houses look like monopoly homes in size?
2 or 3 family cars in the driveway? How about the most exotic sports cars that I can summon my way into at just the thought of it happening!
Green landscaped backyards? How about a yard as far as the eye can see, with rivers, fruits, and your family and friends nearby? No landscaping costs involved!
When we see what others have, let us remind ourselves that even if we can’t get those things in this life, we still have an opportunity to get them in the next life.
Not only that, but this life is only an infinitely small fraction of our total existence!
Don’t put all your eggs in the dunya basket.
Remember the Hadith Qudsi:
Narrated Abu Huraira:
The Prophet (ﷺ) said, "Allah said, ‘I have prepared for My righteous slaves (such excellent things) as no eye has ever seen, nor an ear has ever heard nor a human heart can ever think of.’ ”
Doing the bare bones consistently, can lead to Jannah?
From the archives - original date August 2, 2024.
The Prophet ﷺ said:
وَمَنْ سَلَكَ طَرِيقًا يَلْتَمِسُ فِيهِ عِلْمًا سَهَّلَ اللَّهُ لَهُ بِهِ طَرِيقًا إِلَى الْجَنَّةِ
Whoever travels a path in search of knowledge, Allah will make easy for him a path to Paradise.
This translation doesn’t do justice to the word that is used for “seeking,” which is “iltimas.”
I’m no Arabic scholar, but I was watching a Righteous and Rich episode, and Br. Imran explained the word “iltimas.” It is commonly translated as “seeking,” but it actually means someone who does less than that.
How much less? It is one of the lowest levels of seeking knowledge, where someone might spend once a week, or even once every two weeks, trying to seek just a little tiny bit of knowledge.
No rigorous studying, but very passive knowledge.
Even for THIS person, the one who isn’t trying hard at all to seek knowledge, but if he is consistent, Allah will make a path to Paradise easy for him.
Allah hu Akbar!
After hearing this, there really isn’t any excuse for us not to seek knowledge. Even if it means reading a post on social media (that is authentic), or watching a few short videos (dare I say reels or shorts!), this could be your ticket to Jannah.
Consistency is key though!
Of course we should always strive higher than the bare minimum, and the benefit you will get from seeking knowledge will literally change your life.
Not only your life, but the lives of those you are responsible for.
Your children, and your spouse.
Imagine spending just 5 minutes a day teaching your children about something you learned. It doesn’t even have to be directly related to Islamic knowledge, but maybe something happened in your day, and you can relate it to your kids by showing them how such and such a situation was a blessing, how that incident was a trial, how this situation reminded me of the Prophet ﷺ during this phase, etc.
These 5 minutes will add up over time, and they will organically lengthen the conversations you have with your children. They will ask you questions, and the conversation will keep going while you bond with them.
The knowledge discussions will be something they will actually look forward to, and before you know it, these discussions will become longer without seeming like a drag.
And best of yet by Allah’s will, your path to Paradise will be easy!
Check out the video clip here.
Friday sermon 8/8/26 - A Father's role in the family.
A bit late getting this ready, but you can listen to it on YouTube, or read the transcript.
Still working on my delivery but getting there in sha Allah.
What will you tell your kids on your deathbed?
Originally published on November 23, 2023 on my previous website.
———
This verse gets me every time.
It’s a stark reminder that we will eventually leave this world, and our children will be left without us.
The question that goes through every Muslim parent’s mind, who worries for their children, should be this question that is in Surah Baqara, Verse 133:
Or did you witness when death came to Jacob? He asked his children, “Who will you worship after my passing?” They replied, “We will ˹continue to˺ worship your God, the God of your forefathers—Abraham, Ishmael, and Isaac—the One God. And to Him we ˹all˺ submit.” (2:133)
Jacob or Yaqub (AS) didn’t talk about the worldly worries:
“Do you have enough money to survive?”
“Is your job stable enough so you can support yourself?”
“Here are all my passwords to my accounts so you can calculate the inheritance.”
On his deathbed, Yaqub AS only had one worry for his children. Something much more precious than the luxuries of this world. He wanted to make sure his kids knew what their real purpose was.
“Are you going to worship Allah, or will you forget about your Lord when I am gone?”
A magnificent question from Yaqub AS, and a question we need to be asking our children before we reach our deathbeds because one day, we will be gone, and they won’t have us as a fallback for life’s concerns. Plus we have no guarantee that they will be around when we are on our deathbeds.
If we train our kids properly and bring them up in a house of Islam, then in sha Allah they will have an answer that is just as amazing as the question. Look at how Yaqub’s children respond:
“We will ˹continue to˺ worship your God, the God of your forefathers—Abraham, Ishmael, and Isaac—the One God. And to Him we ˹all˺ submit.” (2:133)
Subhan Allah, look at that beautiful answer. They didn’t just respond by saying, “We will worship Allah.” They responded by saying that we will worship your God, the one true God, the God of your forefathers, AND to Him we will all submit.
Let’s break this down for a bit.
This comprehensive answer means that Yaqub (AS) didn’t just teach his kids that Allah is one and call it a day.
He taught his children about Allah, he taught his children about the Prophets who were alive before him (who were his ancestors), and he taught his children that the main goal in life is to submit to Allah.
In essence, he would teach them the “Qur’an and Seerah” of his time. The Qur’an being the Scrolls of Abraham, and the Seerah being the lives of Abraham, Ishmael, and Isaac.
He taught them the formula for success, which is to learn first and foremost who Allah is, and then to follow the teachings and examples of the Prophets in terms of how to worship Allah.
We have the same formula in Islam. We teach our kids about who Allah is, and we also have to teach our kids the Qur’an and Seerah of our Prophet ﷺ. The Seerah is linked with the Qur’an directly. You can’t possibly study the life of the Prophet and not encounter the Qur’an in it.
Now let’s also look at it even deeper. When someone asks you a question, whether you know the answer or not, you will reply as simply as you can. When Yaqub AS asks his kids this question, they reply back in such an impressive manner that it makes you think, “Did Yaqub ask them this question even before he was dying,” because no one can answer in such an impressive manner unless you were already reminded and coached about this constantly throughout your life.
And the answer to that is YES, they were coached throughout their lives about the purpose of their life. If we look back at the verse right before this one, we will see what Yaqub tells his children:
And Abraham instructed his sons [to do the same] and [so did] Jacob, [saying], "O my sons, indeed Allāh has chosen for you this religion, so do not die except while you are Muslims." (2:132)
Quranic rendering for the digital age.
A few decades ago, navigation meant paper maps stored in your glove compartment. When GPS devices and smartphones emerged, the obvious next step might have been to digitize those maps; to scan them, store them as images or PDFs, and allow users to pan and zoom.
Instead, modern navigation tools look nothing like paper maps. They automatically detect your location, incorporate live traffic data, provide contextual insights, and reroute you dynamically. You can travel from point A to point B without ever touching the device.
Now consider how we engage with the Quran digitally. We moved from physical mushafs to images of their pages on a screen, still flipping page by page. Some enhancements such as search and audio playback have been layered on, but fundamentally, the experience has barely progressed. We are still changing the medium, not rethinking the experience.
At Tarteel, we are reimagining how Muslims engage with the Quran from the ground up. Doing this well requires solving a problem that most digital products never face: rendering a sacred text with absolute textual fidelity, deep interactivity, and strict spatial consistency, all at once. This post explains why existing digital approaches fall short and how we built a new rendering system to overcome those constraints.
Very nerdy but cool process for bringing the Qur’an into the digital age with more functionality, while keeping spatial consistency. A must read for design and font enthusiasts.
A Psychiatrist talks about meds he would never give his kids.
Enough about what I think, just listen to the expert. He holds very conservative values, and a lot of what he says falls in line with what Islam has to say.
One of the key points he mentions is the effect our diet has on our bodies. Eating and drinking well plays a huge part in how we feel, and we can all attest to that. We all like to eat junk every now and then, and that’s how it should be - every now and then, not the bulk of our diet which is true for many if not most Americans.
It makes you ponder the verse in the Qur’an that talks about food, and how it leads down a Satanic path:
يَـٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلنَّاسُ كُلُوا۟ مِمَّا فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ حَلَـٰلًۭا طَيِّبًۭا وَلَا تَتَّبِعُوا۟ خُطُوَٰتِ ٱلشَّيْطَـٰنِ ۚ إِنَّهُۥ لَكُمْ عَدُوٌّۭ مُّبِينٌ ١٦٨
O humanity! Eat from what is lawful and good on the earth and do not follow Satan’s footsteps. He is truly your sworn enemy.
The Cow (2:168)
Lawful and good, or lawful and pure.
How much of what we eat is actually pure? To think that there isn’t a connection between diet and mental health is ludicrous. Even just a few decades ago, the connection between your oral health and heart disease was popularized, and we don’t question that at all.
So now ponder over this verse - if we don’t eat pure food and nourish our bodies the right way, we could be following Satan’s footsteps. We indulge in what is bad with little to no self-restraint, which is exactly the Satanic path. Compound the bad food with bad health, leading to poor medical choices such as brain-altering antidepressants, and you wonder why children on psychiatric drugs start acting out of character, become dangerous, and even suicidal. Children’s brains are still underdeveloped, and now you’re altering them with drugs that consistently show bad outcomes.
Having a deeper connection with Allah, with your daily prayers, with the Qur’an, with the Sunnah, and eating right are all part of the process that will lead to 99% of people being free from psychiatric drugs, but it’s the answer that doesn’t generate record-breaking profits.
Dry January? More like high January.
Many Americans enthusiastically partake in Dry January, but it is rarely pitched as fun. After the holiday stretch of office parties and family gatherings, Americans have come to use the start of every year to abstain from alcohol in the name of health and auspicious beginnings. It’s a time of discipline, of cleansing, of embodying your mood board, even if it makes you a drag at parties. And it is also, as weed companies have learned, a marketing opportunity.
In recent years, weed companies have started to lean into the argument that taking the edge off sobriety with a low-dose gummy or THC drink still counts as dry. My social-media feeds are flooded with posts from cannabis companies pitching their products as fun and approachable tools to get through an alcohol-free month. Mary and Jane, an edibles company, makes a tantalizing proposition: “Dry January made easy.” Artet, which specializes in beverages, sells a “High & Dry January” bundle that includes a bottle of its THC-laced aperitif. Some products are conspicuously health-coded: North Canna describes its cannabis drinks as “functional,” and Feals highlights its edibles’ low calorie count. Above all, the ads emphasize how little booze you drink when you get high instead.
This push for a weed-filled January is, of course, a blatant (and somewhat silly) attempt by cannabis companies to get more customers. But as restrictions on marijuana loosen, and more Americans find themselves able and willing to fit the drug into their lives, Dry January does appear to be offering an opportunity for experimentation. In fact, cannabis sales surged in January 2024, and 21 percent of Dry January participants who responded to a 2023 survey swapped booze for weed that month.
This type of liberalistic, “have what you want as long as it doesn’t affect anyone else,” mindset is what will eventually destroy civilizations, including ours. You can’t walk out of anywhere these days except you smell weed. Even right outside the hospital for God’s sake.
So much for starting the new year with optimism and healthier choices:
The shaky logic of replacing one drug with another during a month dedicated to sobriety is hard to ignore. If the point of Dry January is to improve health, replacing alcohol with cannabis—which is not a benign substance—seems counterproductive. Far less is known about the long-term use of cannabis compared with alcohol, but both can be abused, cause dependence, and interfere with daily function and productivity, Ryan Vandrey, who helps run Johns Hopkins’s Cannabis Science Laboratory, told me. Some people are predisposed to react negatively to cannabis, experiencing anxiety, paranoia, or even cyclical vomiting. Over time, long-term heavy cannabis use can exacerbate mental-health conditions such as schizophrenia and depression.
The cycle will continue, as increased schizophrenia and depression means prescribing more antidepressants and antipsychotics that people once again shouldn’t need, but it fuels the money circle fresh with even more cash. One of the reasons why I left traditional pharmacy is because you become a bonafide, legal drug dealer, depending on what city you work in.
That was over a decade ago, so I can’t even imagine how insane it must be today.
Just think - almost every area of healthcare that has increased treatment leads to better outcomes, except mental health.
One of the reasons why it’s true is because people aren’t living with purpose anymore. Many people don’t even think about the question:
“Why am I here?”
They’re always connected to a device, listening to something 24/7, are on some sort of drug cocktail, binge watching a new series, and so on.
They’ve never unplugged and detoxed their mind to really think about, “Why am I here?”
The Islamic concept of Barakah present in Apple Product Design.
In a YouTube video with Muslim Founder, Peter Gould discusses how he talked to Apple Product Designers about Barakah (transcription below):
Yeah great question Well um I was once teaching teaching some Apple product designers in Cupertino in um in San Francisco head office and uh I remember kind of speaking to the audience like okay you’re familiar with things like Feng shui or Zen design or Wabi-sabi like Japanese like non-western design philosophy and they're like yeah like we're all cool designers - then I said, "Well how about Barakah?" And they're like "What?" It's like "Isn't that like a movie or something?"
And you know I'm just kind of paraphrasing but you know Barakah is such an essential part to you know maybe a quarter of the world's population in terms of how we think how we live our life how we aspire for this intangible divine goodness in a thing, Barakah, and uh you know as my my friend Muhammed Faris he wrote a book called The Barakah Effect And he once he kind of said "Peter we should think about ROI as return on intention rather than return on investment."
And so in these places and some of the places I've taught I intentionally use the language of the heart I don't call it Islamic design or like Muslim, you know in every human there is a heart. Every heart has a spiritual state, and someone designing an iPhone or designing you know really popular software, they can appreciate that, on the spiritual path like Alhamdulillah as as Muslims we are given a much richer understanding of what is the heart what is the ruh, what is the how, and then your amanah, your kind of responsibility, if you're designing for that, becomes much more serious, like you've got to be careful like, “am I just pulling people to distract them and addict them and whatever or am I trying to find ways to be uh very aware of my responsibility in design?”
A little deeper dive into Barakah can be found with an interview between Peter Gould and Muhammed Faris himself:
“Most definitions come down to things like ‘abundant, flowing, positive, divine energy that enters a thing’ — a tangible intangible that works in mysterious ways beyond logic to create an effect.
“Some scholars describe it as a hidden soldier of the soul. Meaning Allah sends Barakah into something like one of his soldiers. So it might enter your time, or your family, or your laptop, or your sleep, or your food. And it does some kind of spiritual chemical reaction there that leads to a benefit of abundance or goodness that’s hard to describe.
“One example that many of us have experienced is when you invite friends over for dinner and you’ve prepared food for 10 people. But then one of your friends brings his whole family, and you look at the food and think it’s not going to be enough. But the Barakah is that it’s always enough. Sometimes there’s even leftovers as well. That’s a manifestation of Barakah as a result of your good intention to bring people over and feed them. […]
It’s not unusual, for example, for good things to happen with our work and for us to consider it as either luck, coincidence, or the results of our own hard work. But as Mohammed says, if we were to really take the time to look at how events have led to that ‘good thing’ happening, we would surely see something bigger at play.
“This is Barakah,” he says. “It’s Allah aligning things so perfectly that you look back and think ‘I could not have planned this’. Things had to align so perfectly to get to this exact point — you can’t just see it as cause and effect any more; it’s beyond that.
“And the danger — especially for entrepreneurs and start-ups — is that we tend to say it’s from our hard work. Because we do experience all of the hard work. We show up early every day, go into the office, do all this stuff, and we want to attribute that success to ourselves. You almost don’t want to recognise that there’s a spiritual invisible hand at work. But it’s the Barakah effect that moves things and arranges things for you.”
We need the concept of Barakah to also hit the field of AI and other technologies in order to help build humanity instead of trying to destroying it.
Five “Fahadx” observations I made when at the hospital.
Baby girl got sick again this past week, making a total of 8 days at the hospital over a one month period. A few observations I noticed:
Almost every healthcare worker wears an Apple Watch.
This particular Modular Compact configuration with no bottom widget is more common than I would like.
The chapel is occupied by Muslims 99% of the time.
Sushi is great, and cheap. You can literally park at the hospital and get cheaper sushi at the cafeteria than the grocery store.
Masimo blood oxygen sensors are a real thing. A wrap-around for the foot, using the big toe as the sensing point. Thank you Masimo - now please (Apple and Masimo), make a deal and give us proper Apple Watch blood oxygen capability.
Grok makes nearly nude photos of women without their permission - future implications.
The Guardian (pdf file of article):
Grok has come under fire from lawmakers and regulators worldwide after it emerged it had been used to virtually undress images of women and children, and show them in compromising sexualised positions. The widespread sexual abuse consists of X users asking Grok to manipulate pictures of fully clothed women to put them in bikinis, on their knees, and cover them in what looks like semen.
“I felt horrified, I felt violated, especially seeing my toddler’s backpack in the back of it,” St Clair said of an image in which she has been put into a bikini, turned around and bent over.
“It’s another tool of harassment. Consent is the whole issue. People are saying, well, it’s just a bikini, it’s not explicit. But it is a sexual offence to non-consensually undress a child.”
I wonder if this is the first time 1st generation Muslim parents in the West are aware of this issue? Unfortunately, this is nothing compared to some of the more vulgar apps and websites out there. The worst part? The more this type of behavior becomes normalized, the more likely it is for women (yes, even Muslim women) to say, “well if people are going to nudify me, I might as well get paid for it.”
Haramblur.
Cool extension a family member referred me to. Works for a majority of browsers and Android devices. Blurs Islamically inappropriate content.
Love the innovation in the Muslim AI space. Check it out.
The drug cascade that is becoming the norm in children.
From The Wall Street Journal (paywalled link; Apple News+link):
“The best scientific evidence suggests that it is very rare for two or more medications in kids to be helpful and there are concerns about safety, because there can be additive adverse effects of different types of medications,” said Dr. Javeed Sukhera, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and chair of psychiatry at the Institute of Living at Hartford Hospital in Connecticut.
A child on several medications at once often hasn’t had a comprehensive evaluation by a child psychiatrist, Sukhera said. Stimulants can cause side effects that can be mistaken for an additional disorder. “When a young person shows up with anxiety after starting a stimulant, that doesn’t mean that they have an anxiety disorder,” he said.
Many adults say that ADHD medications vastly improved their lives, and some scientific studies show that medicating reduces risk of other potential problems such as juvenile delinquency and subsequent mental-health disorders.
Still, side effects of the ADHD medications on young children can be severe and unpredictable, sometimes pushing parents to accept additional pills to address them.
All too often, under pressure from preschools and elementary schools, many parents seek help from pediatricians or psychiatric nurse practitioners—who frequently lack in-depth training in pediatric mental health—rather than wait months or even years for appointments with behavioral specialists or child psychiatrists.
Alexandra Perez, a clinical psychologist at Emory University School of Medicine who works with young children on Medicaid and private insurance, said she has seen children as young as 4 on multiple psychiatric medications. Many have experienced adversity or trauma and have behavioral problems as a result that get labeled as ADHD, said Perez, who practices Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), a method that has been proven to reduce behavioral difficulties associated with ADHD.
“Children are quickly diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed medication,” she said. “That doesn’t tackle the root causes. We are putting the Band-Aid of medication on, a temporary fix.”
So much more to unpack here, but the best form of therapy really is more time spent with parents who take an active role in being present with their children. This is especially true for mothers who have been tricked into thinking that parenting and being a stay-at-home mom isn’t worth anything, when Islamically and even from other religious perspectives, it is the most important and honorable act a woman can do - raising future generations of humanity.