I think it is 8th of Rabbi ul Awwal tonight, tomorrow being the 9th.

While it is popular that the Prophet was born on the morning of the 12th, this does not have to be the date to celebrate the greatest mercy bestowed upon us. The date isnt important and Mawlid celebrations can and do take place all year around.

For those that do not take part in formal celebrations and even those that do, the link to the time of the year can be used as a reminder and a chance to learn more about Islam, the life and ways of the Prophet and use this as an excuse to try and improve our connection with God, the Prophet and Islam.

I just came across this article in the Guardian comment is free section.

I enjoy the free time voer christmas as much as the next person, but its important to not forget our faith and that Christmas - as indicated by the name - is a Christian festival.

You don't see people of other faiths falling over themselves for the need to fit in, so why do Muslims have this inferiority complex?

Have some backbone!

(PS Santa was Turkish)

Since I have this year focussed on Zionism (which is not the same as Judaism), I think it is prudent to also focus on some good work carried out by a Jewish organisation.

Islamophobia Watch has this article on the Jewish Student's Union suing a French Mangazine for incitement of racial hatred.

When I give in to a wrong desire – whether it be a sin or not bothering to fulfil one of my chores for the day I feel disabled to do anything else meaningful. I feel this way because I regret the wrong I have done but I fear the thing I need to will be tainted as a way of punishment for the wrong thing that I did. I believe doing wrong will affect my life so it’s almost a self fulfilling prophecy. It’s debilitating and has meant I have wasted days where I could have got things done yet doing something wrong meant I thought “I’ll do it tomorrow with a fresh start”. 

I know fearing the consequences isn’t a bad thing but then if I feared them so much I wouldn’t have given into my desires in the first place, right?

But everyone errs, right?

The story is from a Turkish english news website, Daily Sabah, refering to an investigotary piece in the Financial Times.

It states that ISIS has carried out house to house raids to arrest those foreigners who have not reported for duty and has executed around a hundred.

If you find that you made a mistake by going to Syria and ended up joining the wrong group (or joined the right group but after its defeat to ISIS you were given the choice of joining ISIS or death), you now have the options to either stay and die, try leaving and die or succeed in leaving and end up in prison.

Ok, after you put away your sunglasses, you will be able to take in the new colour scheme for The Revival website. (EDIT - ive changed it to more muted colours - nothing like the screenshot attached to this page.)

If you are reading this blog, this page may or may not be a different colour to the rest of the website.

Firstly, a new layer of paint has been applied to this website, making it all ... shiny. or radioactive.

On the plus side its big and bright, unlike the last iteration.

I have also added an option for members to choose from different colour schemes for their personal blog posts (and maybe in the future for other content too). To show off the feature I have chosen a non default colour scheme for my blog.

Today in the news there is the story of the mother of 6, Runa Khan, who has been  jailed for 5 years and 3 months after pleading guilty to promoting terrorism online.

This is the same legal system where Michael Piggin, who was "...planning to carry out a murderous attack on his former school, a cinema, a mosque and a council office near his home in the Midlands..." walked free from court when the jury at a second trial failed to reach a verdict.

Justice?

There is a story on BBC News today: a mother who cooperated with the police when she found out about her son, Yusuf Sarwar, had traveled to Syria to fight felt betrayed by his arrest and subsequent 12 years and 8 months sentence under the anti terrorism laws.

His mother Majida told the BBC she believed the sentence would discourage other Muslims from helping the police.

There is a question of how these returnees should be treated. Should they be incarcerated and seen as a problem? Surely they cannot be left alone, after coming back from carrying out "terrorist activities" abroad?

This site has moved to new servers.

There were a few problems on the day - for over 24 hours there wre login problems and then about an hour ago I managed to corrupt the database meaning that any posts in the 24 hours prior to this have been lost.

A few posts may be missing that were posted in the time between the previous backup and the database corruption.

Other than that I consider this to be a successful update to the server - it is way way way faster, and costs less.

On the bright side, I have set up automatic updates, so if anything happens we dont have to lose data all the way back to my last manual update (which this time was days, but in the past has been months).

Salam
We are holding the next single muslims marriage event on Sunday 28th December 2014 at Tipu Sultan, 43 Alcester Road, Birmingham, B13 8AA.

Over 25's

The event is acting as an intermediary for people who are seeking marriage partners. The setting is very much open to all individuals to speak with each other. However, we will have advisors that will support individuals who feel shy or need an intermediary between their discussions. Inshallah we will also be supporting women who feel they need to be in a segregated environment.

The age group that has currently shown a high interest in coming to the event has been between 25-45.

Please bear in mind these events are going to be conducted in a professional manner.

FORMAT OF THE DAY