"Best of Men":

Please visit BestofMen.org and vote for our beloved Nabi Muhammad salAllahu alayhi wasallam as the best man of all time... because he is!

Also, pass the link around to as many brothers and sisters you can so they can vote as well inshaAllah!

Help for Homeless, Refugee, Widowed, & Orphan Muslims

Currently HalfDate.com has a drive going on to collect money for families in Texas. These families come from different walks in life - single women, widows, orphans, homeless, needy... subhanAllah, I didn't think there was such a great need from Muslims in the US.

Please take the time to donate even a small amount of money inshaAllah. Let them know their brothers and sisters haven't turned their backs on them. People from all over the globe have donated mashaAllah, yet not that many donations have come fro

Go here to check out some videos and more info on the families. Please leave a comment and give whatever you can. There is some info on even sending clothes and household items inshaAllah. The group working directly with these families is Al Amaanah

I'm begging you... please don't be lazy. I noticed when messages like these get around people become lazy and wait to give and most of the time end up not giving anything. Please don't do that. Log onto paypal NOW, get your checkbook out NOW and make a contribution.

This is an investment in your hereafter inshaAllah, and sadaqah NEVER decreases your wealth... never!

May Allah grant these families ease, ameen!

I hate bugs!!!!

I came home after maghrib, as I usually do after teaching. My son went to play in the living room and I decided to get some cleaning done, oddly I was in a cleaning mood.

I went to the kitchen and started washing dishes and for some reason I turned around. That's when I saw it. I flipped outttttttt! Right behind me was a roach!! I scurried to the other end of the kitchen and realized it didn't move. It had to have been dead, what roach runs out and chills in the middle of a room with the light on and someone nearby? A dead one of course. A breathed a sigh of relief. I freakin haaaate bugs astaghfirAllah. Roaches are sooo ugly and they move so fast!

After 10 minutes of freaking out and venting to my husband on the phone while he was at work, I saw Yusuf looking tired. Thank Allah he sat in the living room flipping through his Dr. Suess books. I can't imagine if he'd waddled into the kitchen. He probably would have seen it and been like, "Cookie?" *crunch crunch* AHHHH.

Anyway, my cleaning mood was long gone and I decided to put Yusuf to sleep. I figured by then I would have congered up the courage to get the roach onto the dustpan and dump him out the window into the bushes outside - as my husband suggested. However, I kept having images in my head of it coming back to life and eating my son and I, so I decided to scoop him up right away.

I put Yusuf into his crib and went to get the dustpan. Then I saw that idiot roach twitching! Aw heck no!! I ran for the Raid and doused that sucka. Man, I was like... in jihad mode for real, I was spraying it from all angles while whimpering Allahu akbar lol. I think I used way to much Raid, but I swear, the more I sprayed it, it looked like it was ABSORBING the liquid! That thing is NOT the same size it was when I first saw it in the kitchen. Gahh, I hate bugs! Although I must admit it's not as bad as when I was in madrasah and we'd find maggots chillin in the musallah... THAT was nasty.

I'm assuming the roach is long gone, laying in the puddle of Raid. I'll probably leave it as a treat for my husband when he comes home =) I can't even look at that thing. I swear I'm about to slowly walk down the hall and see if he's still there. He probably faked his death. He was being so dramatic, flailing his arms and legs all over... maybe I'll just leave him there as a lesson for any of his friends who may be lurking in the corners.

And for your viewing pleasure...
Okay kidding.
But seriously, I was about to put a pic up cuz I was in an evil mood *muahaha* but then I couldn't even get myself to look at the images haha, so this will have to do!



=)

"Allah's Pharmacy"

A friend forwarded this to me, isn't it awesome? MashaAllah!
(for some reason one minute the pictures work, the next they dont...)

A sliced Carrot looks like the human eye The pupil, iris and radiating lines look just like the human eye...and YES science now shows that carrots greatly enhance blood flow to and function of the eyes.



A Tomato has four chambers and is red. The heart is red and has four chambers. All of the research shows tomatoes are indeed pure heart and blood food.




Grapes hang in a cluster that has the shape of the heart. Each grape looks like a blood cell and all of the research today shows that grapes are also profound heart and blood vitalizing food .




A Walnut looks like a little brain, a left and right hemisphere, upper cerebrums and lower cerebellums. Even the wrinkles or folds are on the nut just like the neo-cortex. We now know that walnuts help develop over 3 dozen neuron-transmitters for brain function.



Kidney Beans actually heal and help maintain kidney function and yes, they look exactly like the human kidneys .




Celery, Bok Choy, Rhubarb and more look just like bones. These foods specifically target bone strength. Bones are 23% sodium and these foods are 23% sodium. If you don't have enough sodium in your diet the body pulls it from the bones, making them weak. These foods replenish the skeletal needs of the body.




Eggplant, Avocadoes and Pears target the health and function of the womb and cervix of the female - they look just like these organs. Today's research shows that when a woman eats 1 avocado a week, it balances hormones, sheds unwanted birth weight and prevents cervical cancers. And how profound is this? .... It takes exactly 9 months to grow an avocado from blossom to ripened fruit. There are over 14,000 photolytic chemical constituents of nutrition in each one of these foods (modern science has only studied and named about 141 of them).



Figs are full of seeds and hang in twos when they grow. Figs increase the motility of male sperm and increase the numbers of Sperm cells to overcome male sterility.





Grapefruits, Oranges, and other Citrus fruits look just like the mammary glands of the female and actually assist the health of the breasts and the movement of lymph in and out of the breasts .



Onions look like body cells. Today's research shows that onions help clear waste materials from all of the body cells They even produce tears which wash the epithelial layers of the eyes.



Sweet Potatoes look like the pancreas and actually balance the glycemic index of diabetics.



Olives assist the health and function of the ovaries


Then which of the favours of your Allah will ye deny? - [Quran 55:13]

Eww, why do you have facial hair??????

My brother is 6 years younger than me... he's almost 15.

A couple of years ago after graduating high school I went and attended a girls madrasah in Canada for a few months. After 2 or 3 months we returned home for 6 weeks for our Ramadan break. It was so good to be home.

Awkwardly, I was met by a dude almost as tall as me, if not, taller. There were tiny hairs over his lip. His voice squeaked on and off and when he hugged me I felt a hand the size of a basketball pat my back *shutters* I couldn't believe the changes my brother had gone through in just a couple months! Had I been around, surely I wouldn't have really noticed.

As a teen, I enjoyed teasing my brothers tiny friends. They were probably 8-10 years old at the time. They were so cute and fun to make fun of and annoy.

However, that Ramadan when I came back from Canada I was weirded out to hear some of them with bellowing voices and with loads of facial hair. Facial hair? Whaaat? Ewww, they're just kidsssss why's that stuff on their faces? I had to get those thoughts outta my head... They were no longer little kids I could be around, they were hitting the age of maturity. I started having to hide for cover when I heard them rounding the corner in the hall. I had to get used to wearing niqaab when they came over or just lounge in my room until they left. It was just so awkward to me, I'd never given thought to the fact that one day these kids would grow up and I couldn't really be friends with them anymore.

It's weird watching them grow up over the years. In one way I feel like they're my little brothers too and I still have a special love or care for them, and then I realize that they tower over me and are in high school and I have to refrain from making corky jokes whenever one passes by or calls my parents house haha.

SubhanAllah I was happy, amazed, and highly entertained when the Sunday School at the masjid had a speech competiton and 2 of my brothers friends were the 'MC's. I wanted to laugh cuz in my head I was like 'Okay, they're just kids, why are they running the speech compitition??!' But then they'd speak with such poise and narrate ahadeeth I was like, 'Aww, theyre all grown up! MashaAllah!'

MashaAllah some of these kids are like driving now, they teach classes, have jobs, and some have memorized the entire Quran (mashaAllah, mashaAllah!) and have lost their stank attitude and have become respectful young brothers mashaAllah. I really hope they stay on the right path and can make a difference in our community. It makes me really happy and proud to see them making something of themselves, but sometimes I still wish they were little chitlins I could beat up.

The funny thing is, most of my brothers friends are Bangladeshi, and no disrespect to Desis, but it's like a known fact that Desi boys start getting facial hair at like 5 haha.. so even when they were young kids making fart jokes I'd still feel kinda strange around them cuz some of them really looked like mini men but were just 10 years old lol.

Even my mom feels awkward around them, they're like her sons but she knows she has to wear hijab in front of them when they come over because it's not like she's THAT old.

Does anyone else find this situation funny/odd to cope with?

Punishing Kids in Public

Though I haven't been a mother for too long, I can certainly say that anytime I'm out and my son does something he shouldn't, I'm not going to be one of those parents who just ignores what he's doing and puts a fake smile on and gives that nervous giggle. No way! I'm going to let him know what he did was wrong, even if I have to speak sternly. But for the sake of being in public, I will not raise my voice.

What do you think about reprimanding kids outside the home?

It wasn't until last week that I actually saw a parent really reprimanding their kid in public. Usually I see kids laying on the supermarket floor throwing a fit, in toy stores telling off their parents, or in the masjid running around like monkeys while their mothers sit in groups chatting and giggling. Well, Thursday I saw something completely different, but totally out of line.

Asr salah began and the students and teachers in the masjids afternoon class prayed upstairs, while most of the mothers who stay behind with their kids prayed downstairs with their babies and toddlers... so it was only myself and 2 other adults upstairs. The first raka'ah had just began and I heard a girl break out in loud, and very fake, coughing. Soon a boy on the other side of the curtain "responded back" coughing out of control. This "conversation" went on a few times and then I heard some girls bust out giggling. It was really distracting. These girls were still kids, but old enough to know that they shouldn't behave that way in salah.

What really confused me was that this girl was praying next to her mom and doing this. After salah the drama began.

"Come, sit here.." the mother told her daughter, pointing to the spot in front of her where she had made sujood in during salah. The girl obeyed and sat in front of her mother. The mother started going off in Urdu. I don't know exactly what she said, but I got the jist of it, she was asking her if that's how she's supposed to behave in salah and what person is so stupid as to behave that way in salah. The other kids sat there making dhikr upon the request of one of the elder teachers, and were peering over at their friend from the corner of their eyes. The mother started getting louder and louder.

A sister who teaches Qur'an and was sitting next to me, 2 people away from the mother, turned to me and said, "Lazeena, please.. ask her to stop.. this is not appropriate..." she begged me.

"Me? I'm a kid to her. You know people don't take it well when younger girls give them advice.."

"Yes, but.."

"Okay.."

As I leaned over to get the aunty's attention, everything went so fast it took me some time to realize what happened. I was just about to open my mouth when this woman's hand cocked back and went flying into her daughters face - Slap 1. My eye's bulged, everyone stopped breathing. Even the daughter looked stunned. Her milky white cheek turned blazing red. Her mother continued to scream at her. "Aunty.." I said cowardly. The arm swung back again - Slap 2. The girls glasses flew off and hit the floor a few feet away, and the lens popped out. The girl was sobbing. The mother took her finger and poked the girl in the chest repeatedly as she asked her rhetorical questions. "Aunty please, not now.."

The sister who'd asked me to speak up had her hand to her chest. She started to tear, "Lazeena stop her, I've never... I've never seen something like this.." she seriously couldn't speak.. this sister was like.. in a state of shock. The girls watched in fear, and some backed away and hid behind the curtain. The mother continued screaming and shoved the daughter by the shoulder over and over, she made a fist and pounded her arm continuously. "Aunty, please!! Please, stop it!" I asked her.

This time the sister next to me tried to talk to her, the mother snarled at us and gave us the hand. Finally the girl managed to get up and run downstairs. My head was spinning, I wanted to barf. Sure she misbehaved... but she's a kid. How can you do that RIGHT after making salah? ..In the masjid, in front of all these kids, in front of all your daughters friends?

She sat there looking strangely proud for how she handled her daughters disruptiveness. She made a 2 minute du'a and then stood up and went after the girl she THOUGHT was praying next to her daughter... "AND YOU!!" she pointed at the girl and scrunched her face. "DON'T YOU EVER PRAY NEXT TO HER AGAIN!!" she screamed. "THIS IS YOUR FAULT. YOU DIRTY, BAD GIRL YOU. DON'T BEHAVE LIKE THAT DURING NAMAZ EVER AGAIN, YOU HEAR ME? YOU GIRLS ARE ALL BATAMESE, BESHARAM GIRLS..." her finger was all up in this girls face and she cornered her into the wall. "IF YOU EVER.. EVER.. DO THIS AGAIN, YOU SEE.."

There was commotion all around, kids were switching to their 3rd period classes and it seems that no one noticed this poor girl being told off by an older woman. A student of mine popped out of no where and wouldn't stop talking about how he liked staplers (...? okay..?! lol!!)

I turned around and the woman was gone, so was the girl. I spoke to a sister who I love sooo much for the sake of Allah and told her that we should really speak to the Imam about what happened and that he should tell them not to behave this way with their kids in the masjid. Also, that if they have a problem with someone elses child, find their mom, get their home number, or tell the Imam... they have no right to speak to someone elses child in that manner. If my son was bigger and at the masjid I would be so mad if some woman I don't even know was having such a nasty attitude with Yusuf, and I would be upset to hear that he had to watch someone get a beatdown from their parent.

As I went downstairs to get my shoes on to leave, I heard someone sobbing in the closet. It was the girls friend sitting in there in tears. She could barely speak. "She.. she yelled at me.. and it wasn't me. I did not even pray next to her daughter," the girl sobbed. I hugged her, "It's okay. You know the truth. Don't worry about it, don't worry about what she said. You saw how psycho she went right? Don't cry okay?" The girl nodded and went to her mom to tell her what happened.

The whole incident was just so crazy to me. It happened so fast and unexpectedly. I know for sure if she were in the supermarket, the mall, the park, or her daughters school she would have never even yelled at her. What makes it okay to do in the masjid? How far is too far? Did her laughter learn anything from that punishment? Well.. actually she did. She learned to stop praying next to her mom and to pray far away from her, where she can giggle and chew gum and bump her friends arm without her mom knowing. Had her mother explained to her that in salah you are presenting yourself before Allah and worshiping him and should be on your best behavior, maybe she would have stopped. Had she told her that Kiramun Katibeen are on her shoulders writing her every action, thought, and intention down, which will be presented to everyone on the Day of Judgment.. maybe... just maybe... she would have grasped the importance of focus and behavior in salah.

**New Hijabs, Pins, Gummies and Other Candies!**

I've finally gotten the new items for my little online souq

They include:

• New hijabs! (pashminas, shaylas, amiras, and square hijabs)
• New hijab pins
• Candies: Halal Starburst (Original and Strawberry Mixed flavors) Halal gummies (variety of flavors)
• Chocolates: I've added a few chocolates which are not native to the US, so it's something sweet to treat yourself to! ;)

Check out http://souq.shutterfly.com for the products, information, pricing, and how to order.

Keep checking on and off too, I'll be adding items periodically over the next week. If you want me to hold something for you (at a negotiated and reasonable amount of time) then I am willing to do that too.



Now this brings me to something else. On my page where my hijabs are, I don't really have product numbers or anything... so when someone emails asking about/wanting a hijab, it usually goes like this:

Sister: I love that purple hijab! Can I have it? Please get back to me with the total cost with shipping, this is my postal code *****
Me: Oh.. uh.. which purple one?
Sister: The one with the fringes
Me: There are 3 with fringes
Sister: It has sequins also
Me: There are 2 with sequins...

Okay so maybe I need to add product numbers or... ohhhhhhh! I should name them! Isn't that what other sites do? I'm not good at that stuff... I'll probably just name the hijabs with the little Arabic I know... LAHM (meat), MIL'AQAH (spoon), MA HADHA (what is this?), MUSTASHFA (hospital), and a whole bunch of grammar terms like mudaf/mudaf ilayi, jumlah ismiyyah, mubtada/khabr, fi'l/ism...

Orrrrr, I can give them really awesome names that I wouldn't be able to give to my future kids... like Shaniqua, Xavier, Gwendolyn (really not awesome actually), Lorenzo... aw how I'd love to name a hijab Lorenzo!!

Okay so maybe finding a way to better differenciate the hijabs isn't that hard. Please don't feel ashamed to email me and say that you'd like to purchase 'The Meat Hijab', 'The Lint Hijab', or
'The Hairy Hijab'... they're just creative names.. that's all! ;)

Honey Straws

I first discovered these maybe 4 or 5 years ago in the Dar-us-Salam bookstore in Brooklyn, New York. Since then, I try to always have them somewhere in the house because they're so handy!

All it is, is an enclosed straw filled with honey. Oh and mixed with the honey is some black seed alhamdulillah, the two best cures for anything as stated by our beloved Prophet (SAW). You just bite open one side and the plastic sealing pops open and you push the honey out.

Whenever I feel a cold coming on I can just go about cleaning and cooking while sucking on one of these. They're perfect to stick in my purse too, so I can take them anywhere I go! What I love best about these straws is that it's not as messy and sticky as taking a teaspoon of honey. I always get honey on the counter and on the side of the bottle, a headache to clean up and it makes me just not want to use the honey. Even if you're not sick, honey and black seed are both ridiculously good for the body and the straw contains probably a tablespoon's amount, so you don't have to worry about it being to much and not finishing it... most likely if anything, you'll grab another one.

You can find these honey straws here. They have them in 3 different flavors, I usually use 'Immune Boost'. Now, oddly enough they're 30 flippin' dollars (for a container of 100 sicks) on the manufacturers website but whenever I go to Brooklyn and buy it I get it for $20 haha. But they are worth the money!

They also carry Black Seed Lozenges in a variety of flavors which I like as well. Some flavors do have a strong black seed taste to it, but hey, it naturally has a strong taste anyway, so not much can be done about that.

"And the lord inspired the bee, saying: Take your habitations in the mountains and in the trees ad in what they erect. Then, eat of all fruits and follow the ways of your Lord made easy (for you)'. There comes forth from their bellies a drink of varying color wherein is healing for men. Verily in this is indeed a sign for people who think." [16:68-69]

Tirmithi, Ibn Majah and Baihaqi also reported that the Prophet (SAWS) said, "Make use of the two remedies: honey and the Quran."

He was also reported to have said, "There is within the black seed a cure for every disease except death" Sahih al-Bukhari.