So I went to cali and got to meet all my mexican in laws. It was interesting. The food was great. So good in fact that I think authentic mexican food has surpassed my love for subcontinental cuisine. The visit made me want to learn spanish, so I have enrolled and insha’Allah will learn the language soon. My father in law loves me, shockingly. He has this weird habit of feeding everyone the way he wants to feed them. I had an awesome dish: Cow tongue tacos - they were fabulous! Some of my wife’s uncles liked me, particularly the one who loves guns Others despise me for not being “their” type I suppose: Mexican and catholic. In fact, one got drunk and started harassing my wife while I was out in the car. Hopefully the next time I see him he and I will have a nice conversation on not being a saying what you really want to say to people’s faces. Overall, my experience was cool. I was amazed at how submissive mexican wives are! In fact, I would venture to say that they may be as submissive as the bedouin women of the levant!

Visited Spots and other things

We went to San Francisco and walked on the very cold and wet golden gate bridge. We travelled to Fremont and visited the Rumi Bookstore - one of the few stores I have ever felt barakah in. We went to Anaheim and ate at Al-Andaluz, a very authentic arab restaraunt that had just opened. While there we also went to Jarir bookstore - the largest selection of arabic books in america! Awesome it was! I never wanted to leave. Jarir is a nice brother as well!

I had the pleasure of getting to chill with Abu Usaama and br. Ammar in LA. In fact we ate halal chinese - it was “ok”. The brothers are very quiet- as I suspected! Unfortunately I didn’t get to spend the entire day with them because for some reason my wife drove to LA with her brother to pick me up thinking that Abu Usaama wasn’t going to pick me up at the airport - while I clearly told them that I was being picked up by Abu Usaama lol. Abu Usaama drives horribly masha’Allah . May Allah rectify his driving skills and give him a happy life amin! It was great meeting the bros though and spending some quality time with them barak Allahu lahumaa.

I went with my mother in law, who thinks I am an awesome husband and father for some reason, my sister in law and my brother in law - though he drove to tijuana - to the San Diego zoo. It was awesome! It is the biggest and coolest zoo I have ever been to, and I have been to many! The kids loved it as well.

My trip to Mexico

After we went to the zoo we decided to go to Tijuana and taste the cuisine as well as visit my brother in law’s girlfriend whose mother is my mother in laws good friend. At first we ate tacos - mexican style. !Dios Mio! They were fabulous. I believe I ate about 5 or 6 of them. We went to the store and bought some medicines that cost a fortune in the US - you don’t even need a prescription! Then we visited the girlfriend and family.

They live in a horridly poor neighborhood. I truly hadn’t seen poverty like that before. It was horrible. It definitely made me thank Allah ta’alaa for what I had. I honestly don’t know how they survive in Tijuana. The cost of everything equals the American costs, yet the salaries there are ridiculously low.  

So, as we left, we were detained for 5 hours by the imperialist American government. I was handcuffed, yelled at, harassed etc. My children were scared, my wife searched, you get the picture. It was very traumatic. Basically the officer told me that we had no rights and he could hold us for 72 hours without explanation. In fact, they released us without explanation! Nothing! Nada!

So I am working on sueing them for not giving my son the medical attention he needed, as well as mental anguish. We’ll see how that works out though. I ended up missing my flight, having to reschedule and spending 8 hours in the hospital due to my son being sick. Alhamdulilah!

School has started and I will be taking finite math - sucks, Espanol - awesome, History - cool. Insha’Allah the semester will go smoothly.

What I Have Learned

I have learned in the past few weeks that I connect my spirituality to my relationship with my wife. If my relationship with her is sound, my eemaan is sound. If it sucks, them my level of eeman sucks. It shocks, as well as scares, me that we are so interconnected.  ”They are a garment for you” has meaning for those who reflect.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7547148.stm

This is neat!

The MSNBC interview with these guys: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22425001/vp/25928755#25928755

This is just cool!

I was telling him about “Rafa’ Yadayn”  today. He didn’t seem to amused, though he listened attentively. I now understand why some intellectual women prefer birds to their husbands. They listen attentively - and I’m referring to the birds.

As I was washing the dishes, clearly a job for women, my green-cheek conure came up and attacked my foot. OUCH! My big toe is still swollen! The next time he tried, I decided to play the game with him. He was fast, but I overcame him speed - for I am faster than lightening, quicker than Batman, and slower than my green cheek conure Habibi who nailed my foot once more! So, why does he attack my foot? I’m not sure but I think he likes the game and attention. We played 10 times at least - it was fun! If I had my camera I would tape it, but my wife in her overzelousness to take pictures of California, stole my only digital camera! So for now you will have to imagine Abul Layth being chased by a little green cheek conure around the kitchen.

They are my friends. Beautiful and oh so full of energy!

I love take-off!

In other personal news, I have been reviewing issues of taharah according to the shafi’i school. This time around I will be memorizing proofs and utilizing Al-Bayhaqi’s Khilafiyyat. 

I am going to be rather lonely for the next month, so keep me in your ad’iyah!

Zimbabwe: Least happiest in the world!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/7487143.stm

It is with this feeling and objective analysis by myself, that I have decided to leave this hunk of junk for 2 weeks. Upon returning, insha’Allah , I shall re-assess my situation and see the effect abandoning these wires left upon me!

I know, I know, it is great idea!

The following article is science at its most obvious.

My thoughts before hand:

A) The power of lowering the gaze.

B) The effects of not doing so can be severe, especially in decision making.

C) Men’s liberation. When men succumb to the plots of women, they lose their mental capacity to subdue their nafs and defeat their hawaa. The solution to solving the problem of men being idiots: Islam!

Science proves that bikinis turn men into boobs

You may have known this all along, but now it has been demonstrated scientifically: bikinis make men stupid.

This month’s issue of the Journal of Consumer Research features a paper titled “Bikinis Instigate Generalized Impatience in Intertemporal Choice,” which is a neuroeconomist’s (definition in a moment) way of saying that men don’t make good decisions while checking out pretty girls in bikinis.

Hence automakers’ penchant for placing leggy models in front of absurdly priced cars at auto shows, and the casting of three scantily clad women on that “Republica Deportiva” show on Univision which I find myself watching though I don’t care whether Chivas defeated Rayados del Monterey.

Virgil wrote of the phenomenon 2,000 years ago when he created the epic poem “The Aeneid.” When Venus convinces Vulcan to make some special armor, she

…threw her snow-white arms around him
As he held back, caressing him here and there,
And suddenly he caught fire — the same old story,
The flame he knew by heart went running through him,
Melting him to the marrow of his bones…
She knew her beauty’s power.

But though we might recognize this intuitively, there is some very important insight about sex and relationships, not to mention economics, to be gained from this latest research.

In the “bikini” experiments, Belgian researchers conducted a series of tests on 358 young men. In one test, the men looked at images of women in bikinis or lingerie and at images of landscapes. In another, some men were given T-shirts to handle and assess while others were given bras. Another batch of men was assigned to watch a commercial featuring men running over landscapes while other guys watched a video of “hundreds of young women, dressed in bikinis running across hills, fields and beaches.” (No word on whether they used “Baywatch” slo-mo).

In each test, the researchers offered the men the choice between being paid 15 euros immediately or bargaining for a larger sum that they’d be willing to wait a week or a month for. In all the tests, the men exposed to the sexy imagery or bras cited delayed reward amounts that were lower than the amounts cited by the men who saw sex-neutral imagery. For example, while a man who looked at landscapes might have demanded an extra payment of 10 euros a month later (totaling 25), the bikini-gazer might have been willing to settle for five extra (totaling 20). The sexy imagery did not work on all men all the time, but, as a group, men with sex on their brains settled for a less lucrative bargain, suggesting they were more impulsive and valued immediate gratification more than the controls.

“I observed in my studies that men are more likely to pick a smaller immediate reward over a larger later reward,” Bram van den Bergh, the study’s lead author, tells me. “Hence I do think that men might spend money on something they might otherwise not purchase. Men would become more impulsive in any domain after exposure to sexual cues.”

Sexy ‘tunnel vision’
This jibes with the findings of a 2006 paper, “Heat of the Moment: The Effect of Sexual Arousal on Sexual Decision Making.” George Loewenstein of Carnegie Mellon University and Dan Ariely of MIT, found that sexually aroused men would do all sorts of things they might not otherwise do.

To study this effect, they asked men to masturbate while answering a series of questions on a computer. (They helpfully created a system that could be operated with one hand.) For example, 42 percent of non-aroused men thought women’s shoes were erotic. But 65 percent of aroused men thought so. Nineteen percent of non-aroused men said they would agree to sex in a threesome with another man and a woman, while 34 percent of aroused men said so. Less than half, 46 percent, of non-aroused men said they would encourage a date to drink to increase the chance she would have sex with them, but 63 percent of aroused men said so.

Loewenstein, one of the founders of the field of neuroeconomics, which links the workings of our brains to economic and other human interactions, sometimes using machines like functional magnetic resonance imaging to literally watch brain regions light up, says that sex and other strong drives “produce a kind of tunnel vision.”

“Drives are designed to motivate you to focus on specific goals; they have evolved for that purpose, to focus on the goal to the exclusion of other goals or considerations,” he says.

So a man who is aroused literally narrows his view of the world. When we’re thinking about sex, pretty much all we can think about is sex. So a man might do things he would not otherwise do (spending an hour surfing a Jennifer Love Hewitt fan site), or may behave in a seemingly irresponsible manner (skipping the condom).

In fact, studies have shown that sexy ads don’t really make men remember the product. We’re so lasered in on the sexy stuff, we don’t care what brand of beer it is, or how long it takes the car to go from zero to 60.

What about a Beckham effect?
None of this excuses bad boy behavior, but it may help women understand why even a choir boy is tough to dissuade once he’s built up a head of steam.

Whether or not women are as blinded by sex as men remains an open question. Would a picture of David Beckham in briefs influence a woman to pass up a bigger payout? Maybe, but the studies on sexual arousal and decision-making have mostly been done on men, so the verdict is out.

In general, though, all our brains, Loewenstein believes, can be thought of as being of “two minds,” there is the “affective system,” (“Dude! Who cares what it costs! She’s hot!”) which answers to our basic drives, and the deliberative system (“That’s your IRA contribution!”). To think of this another way, picture an angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other. Even in the heat of the moment, there is still that little voice that says “You know you are making a mistake” — the trouble is it gets drowned out by the volume of the affective system.

We are constantly negotiating between these two systems, which is why economists are so interested; it’s how we make purchasing decisions. It may also explain the morning-after walk of shame, the overcharged credit card — and “don’t worry, I’ll pull out in time.”

So bikinis ring our affective bells and those things make a lot of noise. Just remember this when you go to the beach, or the pool, or the lake this summer. She may look amazing in that tiny bikini, but try to listen to that little voice that’s whispering “SPF 30,” no matter how uncool you’ll look slathering it on.

You’ve been warned.

Brian Alexander is the author of the new book “America Unzipped: In Search of Sex and Satisfaction.”

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25197962/

When he was released, he was totally different man. I remember very clearly that his demeanor changed, he became ‘inward’. He would stay with his father in the masjid, but something wasn’t right. I tried several times to talk to him, only to be avoided. I was puzzled. What happened to the young man who was so kind, had great akhlaaq, and was part of a family that was very loving? I recall one day I had just missed the jama’ah in the masjid, as did khadir, and we made Salah together. After Salah I saw an opportunity to converse. ‘So how are you?’ I asked. ‘Ok’. Khadir says as if he doesn’t want to talk. Khadir, you remember those times we shot some hoops and so and so got schooled? *He smiles* - and without saying a word, walks off with salams. Just like that! Nothing more!

It wasn’t but a few months later he killed a security officer at a local university here.

You can read the story here: http://www.theindychannel.com/news/3758076/detail.html#

I admit that I go to that site sometimes just to look at his picture, just to see his face again. The picture does not do him justice however. He always smiled. This man was not close to me by any means. It is his story, however, that has penetrated my innermost. I simply can not move on from this incident. It has been four years, yet, at random moments I still see him sitting in the corner of the masjid, looking ‘out of place’, as if he were not even there at all. This was a young man who attended an Islamic school, started by his very own mother. His family upstanding, as was he. Yet, in only a wink into time, everything about him changed. Gone!

Some may be reading this and asking why did he do what he did…Well I know why! His mind and spirit were broken. He could no longer think rationally, for his mind felt betrayed, abandoned for so long as he stay in prison without the company he previously had. His mind felt out of place as it entered the “real” realm again.

Or maybe something happened to him in prison that he never told anyone about - which I think is the most possible reason. Maybe he had PTSD…

I’m not certain how to get the rest of my thoughts and feelings expressed in this post. There is so much I want to say, so many theories my mind has concocted over these years since it occured. Though there is a principle I draw from all of this: The mind is incredibly fragile. All of us think we are sane - even if we jokingly say we aren’t. What I saw, in a matter of months, was a man wanting to become a doctor, turning into a paranoid, out of place, traumitised man - a beaten Muslim - broken by the ’system’.

In truth, I am not certain his story will ever stop haunting my mind. In every attempt I make to rationalise this incident, I only find myself affirming the fact that Allah is truly the only one in control. It is His decision to do with us what he wants. You think you are rational, stable in mind and faith, yet in moments all that you work so hard for, all that you ‘are’ is stripped from you…

That’s it. Its over…Just like that!

A patient I was with today who has cancer was hallucinating. They took their hand and began reaching for the ceiling. I asked them what they were reaching for, they didn’t answer…Again I asked…then they said, ‘I am reaching for life’.

For life I am reaching

clinging, hoping

yet the more I reach for it

the more it keeps slipping away

Realizing its all not worth it

Realizing “life” is only worth living for The Eternal

Not Worth Living for the mundane!

My wife was looking at this the other day. It simply amazes me that an entire tribe could have gone untouched for so long. I am certain that its ancestors, or even the tribe, may have had contact at some time or another with other cultures. I wouldn’t be suprised if these natives will be shot, or forced by the brazilian government to modernize or something.

The fact is, there are some intelligent people out there who do want to return to the simple way our fore-fathers lived. I know I am one of them!