Eid Mubarak!

Eid is a time of festivities, especially for children, and to express our gratitude for what Allah has blessed us with. We hope for everyone a blessed Eid.

It’s also important, as we focus on gratitude to Allah, to continue our efforts in behalf of Palestinians in Gaza and Palestine who are under not only a siege of bombing and sniper attacks on whole families and children in particular, but also literally being starved to death by Israel deliberately preventing food, water, medicine, and other aid to enter Gaza, as well as continuously attacking Palestinians in the West Bank and elsewhere.

Despite the horrors, Palestinians are working to keep the Eid festival a moment of relief and kindness for children. (This photo in Rafah)

There are many actions we can take to help, from bringing awareness by protesting and calling our government leaders wherever we live, to donating to some of the Palestinians themselves who have accounts with PayPal or GoFundMe, and other means one can find on social media, and much more. Israel doesn’t care about humanity, let alone their holidays, so we must always be alert to times like this not to become complacent. Enjoy, but also remember.

Light and Darknesses in the Quran

This is a huge and meaningful subject, so we will touch on some basic ideas as well the locations of these mentions in the Quran, whose binary theme it graphically illustrates.

LIGHT نور is associated with: day, illumination, truth, eternity, wholeness, healing, goodness, the Quran, guidance, opening, peace, straight path (note that light rays follow a straight path), love, hope, trust, faith, sincerity, guarding the sacred, eternal values vision بصير (inner light which is a separate word).

DARKNESSES ٱلظُّلُمَـٰتِ is associated with ignorance, concealment, hiding, closure, sickness of the soul, evil, tearing apart, falsehood, crooked path, crime, loss and misleading, oppression and injustice, misery, hopelessness, despair, hate, hypocrisy, betrayal, violence, violating what is sacred, worldly values.

Why is light mentioned as singular but darknesses plural? Because light, as used in the Quran, is One and Whole, but darknesses are scattered and plural, dispersing and separating.

Tahajjud: Prayer of/for the Oppressed

Even though I have published a du’a for the oppressed, this is also a collective recitation in Arabic that itself is very beautiful and moving, and also an English version. As the genocide ongoing in Palestine by Zionist forces aided by the U.S. and some European forces and armaments continues unabated to the shock of people the world over, many of the most sympathetic people are unable to offer much help for them, increasing the pain and sorrow. Public protests have sprung up worldwide. But we can also offer du’a, prayer, this being one example. Even those unable to go out and protest can listen to and participate in this du’a at home. And pray to Allah in your own language. The beauty and power of collective recitation is the soul and meaning of Tahajjud.

In Arabic

In English

In Dark Times, There Can Be Light

Now we face the dark powers of the Zionist-Oppressor Alliance between genocidal Israel and their European & American toadies, both vassals of one another in shared criminality, especially mass murder and atrocities, as the inheritors of the Nazis’ evil, against whom many brave people of conscience fought and often died in WWII. War profiteers are rejoicing, IDF Nazi invertebrates are indiscriminately bombing children from their sterilized cubicles in the air where they don’t have to face their victims. They now turned off power and internet to hide the atrocity. But they can’t hide. Everybody already knows this is genocide and those who did it and their supporters are already on a massive downward slide to hell in this world and the next. But there’s something important we can do in whatever capacity we have. Listen to this visionary Friday khutba.