The Dream I Had about Maryam (Mary), Mother of Jesus

In a blog post from about a year ago, titled "Maryam, Mother of Jesus (r.), and Patience," I mentioned that my favorite Qur'anic figure is Maryam (may God be pleased with her), a reason for which is a dream I had about her when I was a kid.  And I promised my readers to share this dream in a separate blog post because it's a special and significant dream and deserves space of its own. So here, I am, finally fulfilling that promise, y'all! (Request: Please refrain from sharing any attempts at interpreting this dream. Thanks!)

Pashtuns and Blogging - Part 2: the challenges

Previously, we've discussed why Pashtuns need to blog more, and we came up with at lest 5 major reasons (besides the more common reasons like: it's fun, it feels great to write down your feelings and thoughts and all, writing/blogging is a great medicine for the soul, etc.). So, here, we'll talk about what kinds of challenges are faced by Pashtuns during their blogging experience. I am not aware of all of them, so feel free to add more.

Pashtuns and Blogging: Part 1 - 5 reasons why Pashtuns need to blog

VOA (Voice of America), Pashto, Deewa Radio recently started a series on blogging among Pashtuns, discussing reasons for why we should blog, what kinds of challenges bloggers face, what we think they should write about, what they write about, etc. And so this blog post is both to thank VOA for starting such an important program, especially considering how wide their audience is, and to encourage other Pashtuns to start blogging if they do not already. In this part, I'll only discuss some of the reasons why Pashtuns need to blog and why we need more Pashtun bloggers.

Saudi Arabia and the Destruction of Mecca and Medina

Lately, people have been tweeting and Facebooking about news articles with titles like "Medina: Saudi takes a bulldozer to Islam's history" and "Mecca for the Rich: Islam's holiest site turning into Vegas." To put it simply, Saudi Arabia is destroying Mecca and Medina for its selfish gains with absolutely no regards to Islam, Muslims, and, most importantly, the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and his family. I'll try to give a brief history of Mecca and Medina as holy sites and then explain Saudi Arabia's role and position among Muslims and why what they're doing to Mecca and Medina is dangerous, problematic, and absolutely hypocritical.

The Republican Guide to Rape: the so-many different categories of rape!

This is quite disturbing. Apparently, there are so many more different categories of rape than just "legitimate" and "non-legitimate" rapes out there. Following are just a few, I'm sure; I expect a few more from future conversations with more (Republican) politicians. If you're so shocked that you don't believe any of them, or you doubt that any human can possibly utter such comments, Google them up. Fortunately, few people take rape issues lightly, and many have made a huge deal out of anything insensitive (hah! to put it mildly!) that politicians say about rape.

Another Fantasy Fulfilled - a (love) poem

Yay! I managed to write a love poem after months! #success

Another Fantasy Fulfilled

A cloud of warm breath
In His every touch
O' forbidden passions!
Wrapped in His whispers of love
In a decade of unfulfilled desires
Now becoming insatiable needs
In unreachable grasps
He becomes me, I become Him
We become One
Resistance is no longer a virtue
This love is now sacred
What else could cause this glow
But relishing in forbidden pleasures
Ahh - We're freed from the forbidden!
Songs of love and passion
Whispered by each breath of Yours
Thrills of passion
Carving themselves on Us with every touch
And I dance to Him, slowly, slowly
As I sway my hips like this
He watches with a lustful gaze
Filling his eyes with forbidden desires
Like a gushing of the wild, wild sea
A rustling of autumn leaves
And the whistling of of the tender wind
As We recline in carpets of lush grass
And the rain pours on
Another fantasy fulfilled!
With another touch, another embrace in the rain!
Let the dove swim in the cool Spring breeze
All's well with the world again!
The heavens are calm again!
We are One again!

~ qrratugai

Dear Madonna, your strip tease for Malala was really uncool.

In a concert a couple of days ago, the American singer Madonna briefly talked to her audience about the Pashtun heroine Malala Yusufzai. She has the name MALALA tattooed on her lower back. But she gave a strip tease to a cheering crowd before her speech. She says:

In Pakistan, a 14-year-old girl was shot in the neck for writing a blog about the importance of being educated as a female. She was shot on her school bus because she wrote a blog about how passionate she was about going to school. She is in a hospital right now. Let's all pray she's gonna make it. [pause] Her name is Malala. And this is for all the girls around the world who deserve to have a voice.

And so here's a response to Madonna.

Young Malala Yusufzai Shot: praying for her safe recovery

My Facebook feed and my Twitter wall are both filled with news report about Malala Yusufzai's attack, and, really, sometimes nothing is worse than waking up to such tragic news. According to news reports, she was shot by a group of Pakistani extremist and violent organization known as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) today, Tuesday, October 9th 2012 as she left school with friends. The "reason" of her shooting was apparently that she is "a secularly-minded lady"--and the shooters intend to re-attack her if she survives this almost lethal shooting.She was hit in the head, but the bullets missed her brain, and the doctors say that she has a chance of recovery. I ask friends of peace and humanity to please pray for her safe and quick recovery because her loss, may God forbid it, will be a major loss for the whole world, not just for her race, the Pashtuns.

Sexualization of Young Women, Part 2: Dil Raj, Pashtun women, and Universal Gender-Related Double Standards

I promised I'd continue my discussion on the sexualization of (young) women, which I started here, defining the term "sexualization" or to "sexualize" someone and what is wrong with it.

"Love InshAllah" so far! Part I

I finally-- finally!-- got my hands on the "controversial" book called Love InshAllah: The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women.

Since I don't get the time to sit down and read it all the way through (though it's the kind of book that once you start it, you can't get yourself to put it down), I'm reading just a couple of stories a night before sleeping. I knew before I started the book that I'd love it, enjoy it immensely, and recommend it to others, so feel free to think I'm just being biased because I support the mere idea of "telling your story," sharing narratives that normalize you and humanize you, experiences that are shared by everyone else around you but that, because of constant shitty talks like, "Dude, move on!" you're scared of talking about your story because to still talk about it is apparently to show that you've broken apart, that you cannot move on, that you're weak, and so on.

On the contrary, each of the story in this edited volume presents the female Muslim American writer as a strong woman who has not let her heartbreaks break her; in fact, they have empowered her. I'm very much enjoying the conclusion paragraph(s) of each story, because sometimes the writer says something you might not expert her to say. There are no regrets, even though some of the stories are so heartbreaking that you wonder how these girls and women mustered the courage to share such intimate stories in public.

Discussion Questions for "Gender & Sexuality in Islam" Course - Week 3

For a previous set of questions for the same class, please click here.

Readings for the following questions are: "Yoesuf: An Islamic Idea with Dutch Quality" by Omar Nahas, and "'Yes, But Suppose Everyone Turned Gay?": The Structure of Attitudes toward Gay and Lesbian Rights among Islamic Youth in Belgium" by Marc Hooghe, Yves Dejaeghere, Ellen Claes, and Ellen Quintelier

Now, the Questions.

The Islamophobic, anti-Palestinian ad - the problems with it

The ad that is to appear in NY subways starting Monday, Sept. 24th

I condemned this ad, which is to appear in NY subways this Monday but has already been displayed in SF and other major cities at least since August 2012, on my Facebook page, and someone asked me what was racist about it or why it needed to be criticized in the first place. In case anyone else out there has a similar question, this is what I think.

I don't think that's worthy of a response, but I'll go ahead and reply anyway.
You see, every ad has a message, and to think this ad's message is just a pro-Israel stand is to choose to conveniently ignore the actual message. If this were merely a pro-Israel ad, there'd hardly be an issue--and we come across those kinds of messages all around us. This ad takes its message to a deeper level, one that sends the message that one side of this war (a human group) is the savage, the other side (also a human group) civilized. I'd deem this racist regardless of which groups the ad was referring to, be it that the Israeli side were the one being declared the savage and the Palestinian the civilized.