Look at this beautiful but sad poem as narrated by Imām al-Asma‘ī:

On the authority of al-Asma‘ī, that he said, “I was once walking in the village when I came across a stone. Someone had written on it:

 

أيا معشر العشاق بالله خبروا **** إذا حل عشق بالفتى كيف يصنع

O lovers! By Allah, tell me!
If a young man is overcome by love, what should he do?

 

So I wrote underneath it:

 

يداوي هواه ثم يكتم سره **** ويخشع في كل الأمور ويخضع

Let him treat his desire, then conceal his secret
And humble himself in every matter and submit (before his Lord)

 

I returned the next day and I found written underneath it:

 

فكيف يداوي والهوى قاتل الفتى **** وفي كل يوم قلبه يتقطع

There was an article in the Guardian today where it was mentioned that the government is looking into ways of providing interest free student loans to those Muslim students who wish to untilise the service.

They wouldn't be any cheaper, but they would get past the issue of forcing people to choose between getting educated and paying interest.

The surprising bit to me was the Muslim students mentioned in there who did not want such an option to exist for others to use.

A few days ago a bug was found in some common infrastructure used throughout the internet which meant that more or less no site was secure to the bug. It is known as the Heartbleed bug. (further simplified details via BBC News)

An attacker aware of the bug could more or less hack anything on the net including government/tax portals and all banks to social networks to email providers to shopping sites. From the BBC News link:

Security expert Brue Schneier described it as "catastrophic". "On the scale of one to 10, this is an 11."

The purpose of this blog is to discuss job roles where selling alcohol is required. As we are living in a Western society, we may assume that we are earning halaal earnings. But little do we realise that our job roles are slipping us into sin.

In the name of Allah most merciful, most kind. I will highlight the problems we are facing in today’s society. Many of us are employed into big companies such as Banks, supermarkets etc. this increases our chance of job prospects and further opportunities at even bigger companies with higher roles. However as Customer Service Advisor our main role is to provide the best service to customers.

With the rise of drug misuse, especially by our youngsters, I decided to write an article to highlight the dangers of smoking weed and by concluding with an Islamic perspective. Marijuana or K2 is a class B drug which is widely popular in the UK. Marijuana (weed, hash, pot, dope etc.) effects the mind.

The National Institute for Health states that, due to the misuse of drugs, there is a change in the neurotransmitters such as dopamine and serotonin. These neurotransmitters are affected by all drugs. Furthermore, the more a person smokes weed throughout their lifetime, the greater the chance of developing mental health disorders, later on in life.

The topic is hot as many homosexual Muslims openly come out to declare their sexuality. For years homosexual Muslims have been hiding their sexuality due to the fear of what family would say and simply going against the religion. So what’s changed now? People are now following a more secular view and believe that they have the freedom to do what they want without the influence of Religion. So when Religion is taken away from the equation, how can homosexual Muslims claim to be Muslims?  Furthermore, with the strong influence of media, many Muslims are accepting their sexuality and declaring it to the world. This is because the media has led them to believe that it is okay to go against the holy books and be a Muslim and a homosexual – something which god has forbidden.

I'm not sure if many people are following this, but recently there has been a civil war of sorts going in turkey, with control of the government at stake.

It's big news, especially as Turkey has recently been one of the Muslim countries in the world where Muslims have been doing well - doing the right thing and being prosperous. So much so that I am a big fan of the Turkish Prime Minister - Recep Tayyip Erdogan in my books is the finest Muslim leader of the last decade.

However, there is trouble brewing in Turkey right now with his government being accused of many crimes including corruption.

There is a lot of history to this, but the current bombshells could result in the current government falling and maybe even a return to the dark past.

Big news this weekends is that the government will not benefit from raising tuition fees by £6000 at the start of this parliament a few years ago.

The math they did was that as long as they had to write off less then around 48% of student loans, they would be better off. Now it seems already they have to write off around 45%, and that figure keeps rising.

Bigger News is that the Lib Dems, who campaigned against tuition fees and then said they had to change their mind to save the government some money are proven wrong.

So now we have a system where the student is more indebted at the end of the education cycle, all without a financial benefit to the government.

There is a story that has been doing the rounds for the last couple or so weeks about how certain segments of Muslims in Birmingham are trying to "take over" state schools in Birmingham.

This was all based on a document that was found outlining a "Trojan Horse" style conspiracy which allegedly suggested that muslims should underhandedly sabotage schools to remove their head teachers etc.

The claims ranged from exposing teacher collusion in exams in a top accademy to sabotaging ofsted inspections to discredit the school, with the aim of "regime change" so that the schools can be taken over to have a more conservative outlook.

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