Long for the Prophet (sw)

AA

This is really beautiful, mashaAllah:
http://www.sunniport.com/audio/owais/yaa%20sahib%20al%20jamal.mp3

The website [www.sunniport.com] is a nice website itself, too.

While there, you can also check this out which will be of benefit as it it about Shaykh al Hadith, Imam Suyuti (rh):
http://www.sunniport.com/books/imam_jalaluddin_suyuti_v1.0.pdf


Remember me in your duas

I am an idiot

Cheers

I mean, what else can I say about myself? After reading this forward sent to me (thanks, Farooq) I can't help but to question my business sense (or lack thereof), ambition, and realization in life that the stupid things are always the most important things.

Confused?

Here, read and see what I'm talking about:

Selling pixels to advertisers

Have you heard about the The Million Dollar Homepage, created by a college student in England who wants to sell off his homepage real estate to advertisers for a dollar a pixel in 100-pixel blocks until he made a million dollars? What a stupid idea . . .

Or is it? An article in the WSJ claims he has made $623,800 so far.

WTF?! I think of stupid things all the time! Why can't I think of the right stupid things, man!

< .. sigh .. >


Thanks

Tom Cruise vs Oprah

Hi

Yes, the epic battle between good and evil was captured on Oprah of all places. I mean, there's acting and then there's real life. In this video clip, I cannot honestly discern the difference...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8530918890580805143&pr=goog-sl



;)

Dil, Dil Pakistan

AA

Link below taken from Shaykh Faraz Rabbani's blog :: http://www.seekersdigest.org/

Cricket and Religion
So Pakistan beat England yesterday in a closely fought game. Whats very interesting is the change thats happening within the Pakistan team these days. From Inzamam's ( Pakistan Cricket team captain) Bismillahs before the post match interviews to all the beards popping up on the players' faces.Here is an article which gives more details about the cricket team and how the role of Islam is growing within the team....

"The growing influence of Islamic teachings on the Pakistani cricketers is becoming more apparent day by day.
And it’s a big shift in the habits of the team members from the last few decades..."

For full article see: http://hammadin.blogspot.com/2005/11/cricket-and-religion.html


Cheers

Du`a that brought an angel...

AA,

I've shared this one before, but read it again so I thought I'd post it here:

There was a man in the time of the Prophet (sw) who traded between Syria and Madinah, who used to go alone on his journeys without the caravans, trusting inAllah. One time on his way back to Madina, a thief came up to him and told him to stop and the merchant said, 'take my goods, and leave me alone,' and the thief replied, 'the goods are easily taken, I want you.' The merchant said, 'wait until I make ablution and pray to my Lord,' and the thief let him. So the merchant prayed four rak'as, then raised his hands and made this du'a:

O Loving One! O Loving One! (YaWadud) O Lord of the Glorious Throne, O One from Whom all begins and to Whom all returns, O One Who does what He wishes, I ask You by the Light of Your Countenance that fills the corners of Your Throne, I
ask You by Your Power by which You command Your creation, and by Your Mercy that encompasses all things, there is no God but You! O Helper, come to my aid

...and he said this three times. When he finished making his du'a, a rider on a gray horse wearing green garments came with a lance of light, and when the thief saw the rider, he left the merchant and started towards the rider, but when he came near, the rider charged him and dealt him a blow that knocked him off his horse. Then the rider told the merchant to kill the thief, but the merchant declined, so the rider killed him instead.? The hadith goes on to say that this rider was an angel from the third heaven, whom Allah sent to aid the merchant, and that the angel told the merchant: "Know, O servant ofAllah, that Allah will relieve and help one who makes this prayer of yours in any moment of distress, calamity, or desperation." The merchant went on safely into Madina and when he arrived, told the Prophet (sw) of all that had happened, and of the prayer he had made. The Prophet (sw) replied to him, "Allah has inspired you (laqqanaka) with His most beautiful Names into which, when invoked by them, He responds, and when asked for something by them, He bestows it.

A. Narrated from Anas with the difference that (1) the traveller prayed four rak`as before his du`a and (b) without mention of the Holy Prophet, upon him blessings and peace, or the words reported from him at the end, by al-Lalika in _Karamaat al-Awliyaa (ed. Ahmad Sa`d al-Hamman. Ryadh: Dar Tayba, 1992, p. 154-155 §111) cf. Ibn Hajar, Isaba, under the name of the Companion to whom this karama happened: Abu Mu`allaq al-Ansari.


FiAmanAllah

Ode to Nathan Vasher (Da Bears)

Da Bears, baby...

As the Bears have a comfortable 14-9 lead over the hopeless 49ers, I thought that I should comment and officially note Vasher's (aka "The Interceptor" -- at least back in college fball) amazing, heroic, beautiful poetry-in-motion 108 yard field goal TD return.

What's best is that Vasher aside, this NFL record belongs to the Chicago Bears. SubhanAllah. MashaAllah. Seriously, it was amazing...

2 seconds left in the first half. 49ers can't do anything against the best defense in the league and so they take what should be a risk-free 52 yard field goal. Fools! And so Vasher caught the missed field goal attempt in the middle of the end zone and ran it up to about the 15/20 and made a killer cut and just took off from there. Urlacher was side-by-side with him most of the way ensuring that no one would touch (hell, even look) in Vasher's way. And the rest is, as they say, history...

I mean, you can say that we played one of the worst teams out there, but pulling off that feat in against any NFL team regardless of record is so fricken impossible and amazing. Alas! Da Bears defy convention and expectations.

Here's to all the real Bears fans! (Sorry, Umar, I know you can't relate in our joy)

Cheers

Nadia's Engagement

Asma, Omar, Nadia

A couple weeks ago, we were fortunate enough to see our lifelong friend and cousin Nadia make a step towards one of the most important milestones in her life: her engagement.

Her engagement was to a very fine gentleman, Omar. Alhamdullilah, they make a beautiful couple and inshaAllah we wish them nothing but unparalleled love and happiness.

Here are some pics of the joyous event (held in the middle-of-nowhere-but-a-truly-magical-place-nonetheless Beaver Dam, WI):

Omar, Nadia, Rosina: Inside the tent, engagement ceremony underway...

The heart, soul and love of our family. Nani Ammi (Nadia's Dadi Ammi): Smiling with pure joy :)

Omar and his cousin: Waiting in eager anticipation to see Nadia.

Umar, Ali: Holla!!

Nani Ammi, Mom, Rayyan

Me

Classic sunset view from the Samadani home.

InshaAllah, we can't wait until the wedding!

Allah'hafiz

Meeri Jaan (Josh)

Fobs'R'Us

Ever since hearing this one song (actually, wathcing it on Geo) last weekend, I've been hardcore in love with it. The group/guy (Josh) sings really well in English with some Urdu and I just think that it's a really nice, relaxing, chill song...

Check it out:
http://www.muziq.net/songs/Josh/Kabhi/


Holla @ me

Da Bears, Baby

:)

After many, many tears of happiness, it brings me a tremendous amount of pleasure to say the following:

The Bears are Number 1 in the division with a commanding, imposing, daunting, beautiful, playoff-bound record of 5-3.

And in other news, the GB Packers have won just 1 (single, aik, uno, etc.) game the entire season.


And Allah Alone Gives Success.

Oh Sh**! Did I just do that?

Hi

Okay, so we have this process where we submit things (ie, prompts) to a vendor of ours here at work for translation. While doing this, we can include comments like "Please translate asap" etc. for each request, which is what I did.

But for each language we require translations of, we have to submit this request/order individually (kind of a pain) and so to save time, I naturally copied and pasted the "Please translate asap" comment over and over again.

While doing this, I took a quick break to reply to someone's personal email (personal meaning Gmail, not personal work email). In my response to that personal email, I copied and pasted a sentence of the friend's email so I could address it in the reply b/c it was funny. After sending the email, I continued back to work and continued submitting the request and corresponding comment ("Please translate asap") for translation.

This is a mechanical process and so I did this rather quickly. A couple minutes into it, I realized that the comment I was copying and pasting for our vendor was not the "Please translate asap" comment I originally assumed (for some reason) that I was copying & pasting. It was the comment from my personal email. I quickly cancelled and took a look at the two previous requests I sent to ensure that I did not include the personal comment in my request. Much to my dismay and utter carelessness, I found that I submitted those two requests with the personal comment from my email...

Now, may be you're thinking that, "Oh, that's not too bad. I mean, how bad or stupid could that comment be, Imran?" Well, let me finish...

And so the personal comment from my email that I accidentally copied and pasted into the work request reads as follows, "I'm going to bitch-slap you..."

I freaked out when I realized that I copied this into my professionally requested order. I was thinking, "Okay, ppl get fired for this type of thing." And then I thought, "Why do I suddenly feel like I'm in Office Space?"

I immediately sent an email to the vendor to 1) discuss my request and 2) apologize and clarify what happened. Then I ran around the office to see if anyone in mgmnt happened to be around, but no one was because it was 8pm. So I called my mgr and told him that I accidentally sent a comment that I shouldn't have. He was like as long as it's not sexually, religiously, or racially offensive, you're okay. And I thought to myself, okay...this could be sexually offensive. So I told him the comment and he was of course like, "Well, obviously you shouldn't have done that." (No kidding!) But he was totally cool and was like "Nothing will happen, it's a good thing this is a vendor and not the client otherwise we'd be doing months of clean-up work on this, I'll talk to the HR person about this who will probably laugh it off, and the vendor shouldn't mind so long as no one high-strung works there." Then I was like, "Yeah, I'm hoping that UK mentality (they're a lot more laid back about being PC) kicks in." Then we kinda laughed about it.

That was last night.

This morning...nothing major happened, mashaAllah! Vendor replied back to my email, but only the business portion.

Later today, I received an email from the Associate Director of Operations in the Chicago Office that stated, "PLEASE SEE ME ASAP." It was at that point that I realized that one's heart can beat approximately 1,000,000 times/second. So I stopped by her office and she's like, "I bet you know what this is about." And I was like "Yeah, the prompts, right?" And she's like, "Yes. This is to let you know that it has been escalated to mgmnt." OMG! I wanted to cry, but her talk continues..."But we totally understand b/c you wouldn't do something like that, it was from a personal email and nothing company-related, and you've been under a lot of pressure/stress lately." Heart beat drops to 100,000 beats/second. She then tried her best to be serious and was like, "Not to make fun of the situation, but it was a good laugh." Salvation! And then we basically just laughed about it the rest of time. Like hardcore LOL-ing, which was cool.

At the end she's like, "Yeah, no worries. I know you wouldn't put a request like that. Just use asterisks if you're using that type language of language" (she said that last part laughingly). And then I joked, "Yeah, i'm generally not really in the habit of telling clients/vendors to do something otherwise i'll bitch-slap them..."

So now the issue is done with (iA/mA). Whew! :)

Of course, a couple of the guys at work will make fun of me and make sure I never forget this......(sigh)......what craziness, dude...

Could you imagine receiving, "I'm going to bitch-slap you" from your client?! I'm still LOL-ing, actually...

Cheers