Link Love: Are You A Productive Muslim?
Posted by Muslimness downloadables, link love, Link-Love, muslim blogs, reviews, videos Friday, October 30, 2009
What: Productive Muslim, a new 'Muslim life coaching' site created by "Abu Productive" and marketed by our own MUSLIMNESSAim: To utilise the internet, technology and time to develop a Muslim Ummah that is very productive throughout the day. "A ProductiveMuslim/Muslimah is a Muslim who’s active both in this life and is actively prepared for the HereAfter, they use all the technology given to him/her today in serving His Lord and being a better person."

Resources: Product Muslim provides a number of unique time management, charting and nasiha - advice - sources that can be downloaded and used easily, daily.
In conjunction with Productive Muslim, Productive Muslimah covers interviews from Iconic Muslim Women and advice.

Productive Muslim also provides dua' (supplications) that can be printed and memorised. We like that the Arabic phonetics and translations are provided too: Remember the dua for entering a vehicle:
بِسْمِ اللّهِ ، الْحَمْد’ للّهِ ، سُبْحانَ الَّذِي سَخَّرَ لَنَا هَذَا وَمَا كُنَّا لَهُ مُقْرِنِينَ وَإِنَّا إِلَى رَبِّنَا لَمُنقَلِبُونَ
Bismillah. Alhamdulilah. SubhanAll-ladhi, sakh-khara lana, haatha, wa-ma kunna lahu mukrineen. Wa inna ila Rubbina lamunqalibuun.
‘In the name of Allaah and all praise if for Allaah. How perfect He is, the One Who has place this (Transport) at our service and we ourselves would not have been capable of that, and to our Lord if our final destiny.'
Other ideas on how to become more productive include:
- Investing in a good MP3 player, either one with A-B functionality or an iPod Touch/iPhone with Qur'an apps installed (here’s a guide on how to “Islamize your iPod Touch/iPhone)".
- And watching an original Productive Muslim video:
Link to video {http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQpKixJDDyk}
New Muslimness Contact Details
Posted by Muslimness contact muslimness Friday, October 30, 2009
We have a new email address, fully functioning and not as easy to spam!We will insha'Allah respond soon!
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By: The M Team
Peace & respect ★
Thursday Waves: Salah, Sadaqah and Cops
Posted by Muslimness fundraising, muslim diaries, radio shows, the radiowave, university life Friday, October 30, 2009Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakhatuh! =)
I pray you’re all in the best of health and imaan as always.
What a day! Right let’s give you an update as to what happened in Rehman’s life today haha!
My day started at an extremely early 2.30 am! Yes 2.30! Why? Allah knows best, can you believe I got up at that time thinking it was half 6?! I mean okay that’s the time I get up for uni but why did it take me half an hour to realise it wasn’t half 6? My head must have been fuzzy, and that is beyond me, have any of you ever experienced that? It’s a first for me.
So university at 9.. I didn’t understand any of it, yet another first! I think today was a day of firsts!
Uni finished and then I was off to do some charity collecting! I wanted to go back to my home town to do a masjid appeal which is a student-led initiative from all the universities around the UK, it's for this week only and it's for the orphans around the world on behalf of Islamic Relief. I'm glad I'm part of this important cause masha'allah.
Okay so I was ready to make two appeals in the masjid today, yet another first for me (a recurring theme I say? :P) The time came for dhuhr (noon prayer) and after the fardh salah (obligatory prayers), I got up ready to make my appeal all confident and prepared but… the imam didn’t wait for me, made dua and my chance was gone! I can’t say how upset I felt because of it. So then I had to wait for Asr to get in the appeal too. Don’t you think time goes really slow when you’re waiting for something important like salah (or in a boring lecture hehe!) yet it's really quick when you’re enjoying something?
Anyway so Asr finally came somehow and I got my buckets ready for collecting time to save the orphans! I was going through my little speech over and over for the appeal as being a shy person, preparation tends to go out of the window due to nerves so I had to be extra careful. Alhamdulillah I made the appeal and then stood outside the prayer hall waiting... Wow talk about being pessimistic! I only thought that I’d get a handful amount of money but I received loads! How generous were people?! Allah bless them all for their generosity.
After the appeal I had to run for my radio show as it started at 3pm but as Asr was at 3.30pm that obviously meant that I was going to be late. Havining introduced myself at 3.50pm (yeah 50 minutes late but all for a good cause!), I then carried on with my show as normal.
So 4.45pm approached (time for maghrib) and so I dashed back to masjid and made one final appeal. Masha’Allah more donations came through so it was worth all the effort =) The maghrib appeal was done and dusted, now time to head back to radio and complete my show! I arrived at the radio station only to find the police there! Don’t worry we have an agreement with them to do interviews fortnightly on the radio. Talk about conducting an interview without a script or notes! I don’t know how I managed to do it but it went well in the end.
I learnt something new today, I know the difference between a sergeant and a PC, a sergeant is higher in rank. Lol, okay so my show finished at 6pm and then I went home tired, went to the masjid to pray Isha and then planned for Friday’s event as I am hosting it Insha’Allah.
All in all this was ONE busy day, I don’t think I even had a rest. I've just been stressing, walking and talking all day lol. The extra charity appeal was for a good cause so I don’t mind and people are generous, once they know where the cash it going.
Just a snippet into the life of I, The ‘Radiowave’ Man! (and no I did’t make that excellent name up, Zaufishan The Misanthrope did...)
Allah bless you and remember me and my brother in your duas. Take care.
Wa alaikum us salam wa rahmatullahi wa barakhatuh! =)

By: The Radiowave
Peace & respect ★
Death is Better than the Punishment of Allah
Posted by Shahraiz Allah God Thursday, October 29, 2009Are Homeschooled Children Clever Enough?
Posted by Muslimness education and knowledge, faith school, parenting Wednesday, October 28, 2009Too Many Muslim Networks?!
Posted by Muslimness muslim blogs, online networking, Social-Media, Social-Networking, technology, websites Wednesday, October 28, 2009
First came Yahoo Geocities, the recently deceased (on Oct 26th) website space for nerds to express their erm, personalities through the medium of uploads! Myspace, Facebook and Twitter and a bunch of other networks followed. And hurray for YouTube's stupid talentless channels. Yayyyyy.OMG HIJABIS! Well, what happened was...
Posted by Muslimness hijab, sister bloggers, videos Wednesday, October 28, 2009Musicians (Finally) Say No To Music Torture
Posted by Muslimness detainees, guantanamo, islamic music, music Tuesday, October 27, 2009As was reported widely yesterday, REM, Pearl Jam, Trent Reznor, Tom Morello, and other artists including Jackson Browne, Billy Bragg, Michelle Branch, T-Bone Burnett, David Byrne, Rosanne Cash, Marc Cohn, Steve Earle, the Entrance Band, Joe Henry, Bonnie Raitt, Rise Against, and The Roots launched a formal protest against the use of music as torture.
In a statement, Tom Morello said, “Guantánamo is known around the world as one of the places where human beings have been tortured — from water boarding, to stripping, hooding and forcing detainees into humiliating sexual acts — playing music for 72 hours in a row at volumes just below that to shatter the eardrums. Guantánamo may be Dick Cheney’s idea of America, but it’s not mine. The fact that music I helped create was used as a tactic against humanity sickens me — we need to end torture and close Guantánamo now.”
REM added, “We signed onto the campaign in complete support of President Obama and the military leaders who have called for an end to torture and to close Guantánamo. As long as Guantánamo stays open, America’s legacy around the world will continue to be the torture that went on there. We have spent the past 30 years supporting causes related to peace and justice — to now learn that some of our friends’ music may have been used as part of the torture tactics without their consent or knowledge, is horrific. It’s anti-American, period.”
In a phone call, Rosanne Cash told the Washington Post, “I think every musician should be involved. It seems so obvious. Music should never be used as torture.” Cash said she reacted with “absolute disgust” when she heard about it, adding, “It’s beyond the pale. It’s hard to even think about.”
The protest was timed to coincide with a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the National Security Archive, an independent research institute in Washington D.C., which is seeking the declassification of all records related to the use of music in interrogation practices. It also coincided with a recent call by veterans and retired Army generals to shut Guantánamo, and TV and radio ads, which were launched this week by the National Campaign to Close Guantánamo, led by Tom Andrews, a former congressman from Maine.
Nevertheless, with the exception of Tom Morello (of Rage Against The Machine), whose music was used for torture, and who has been complaining about it since 2004, and Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails), whose music was also used, and who expressed his outrage last year when he first heard about it, few musicians have taken the issue on board before now.
Last July, when David Gray spoke out about his disgust that his music was used for torture, and the British-based legal charity Reprieve began campaigning about it, there was little interest. Christopher Cerf, who wrote the music for Sesame Street, (a music torture favorite) complained, but last December, when I wrote a detailed article about it, “A History of Music Torture in the ‘War on Terror,’” I surveyed a generally indifferent industry, in which some of those whose music had been used were indifferent (Bob Singleton, for example, who wrote the theme tune to Barney the Purple Dinosaur, another music torture favorite), others (Metallica) were ambivalent, and others (Drowning Pool, for example) were positively gleeful about it.
From many others (including AC/DC, Aerosmith, Christina Aguilera, the Bee Gees, Neil Diamond, Don McLean, James Taylor, Limp Bizkit, Marilyn Manson, Meatloaf, Pink, Prince, Queen, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Britney Spears and Bruce Springsteen) there came nothing but an inappropriate silence, and even Eminem, whose anti-Bush credentials were clear from his songs “Mosh” and “White America,” remained quiet, even though, as the British torture victim Binyam Mohamed explained about his time in the CIA’s “Dark Prison” in Kabul in early 2004:
"It was pitch black, and no lights on in the rooms for most of the time … They hung me up for two days. My legs had swollen. My wrists and hands had gone numb … There was loud music, Slim Shady and Dr. Dre for 20 days. I heard this non-stop over and over, I memorized the music, all of it, when they changed the sounds to horrible ghost laughter and Halloween sounds. It got really spooky in this black hole … Interrogation was right from the start, and went on until the day I left there. The CIA worked on people, including me, day and night. Plenty lost their minds. I could hear people knocking their heads against the walls and the doors, screaming their heads off … Throughout my time I had all kinds of music, and irritating sounds, mentally disturbing. I call it brainwashing."
Don’t get me wrong: it’s good that so many diverse groups and individuals are now making their voices heard, as part of a push to close Guantánamo as soon as possible (and to try to hold President Obama to his promise to close the prison by January 22, 2010), but it would have had more impact before last November, when the torturers were still in the White House.

Andy Worthington, a regular contributor to The Public Record, is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison and the definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, published in March 2009.
He maintains a blog at andyworthington.co.uk.
GREENING INDONESIA - PLANT A TREE FOR CHARITY
Posted by Muslimness Eco-Islam, events, Islam-Environment Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Charity dinner with 3 course buffet Indonesian meal
With:
- Fachruddin Mangunjaya (Conservation International)
- H.E. Yuri Octavian Thamrin, UK Indonesian Ambassador
- Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad (Cambridge)
Date: Friday 6th November 2009
Time: 6.15pm - 9pm
Venue: Toynbee Hall, 28 Commercial St, London E1 6LS (map)
Indonesia is one of the most bio diverse regions in the world. It is facing a massive threat from logging operations which could destroy the habitat of endangered Sumatran tigers, orang-utans, elephants and a myriad other species mostly unknown to the outside world.
IFEES is part of the Green Indonesia movement in Indonesia and the proceeds and pledges of this dinner will go towards a tree planting programme at the base of which will be the huge network of madrasas (over 10,00) spread throughout the length and breath of the country. Working with them known as pesantrens, Ulema (Scholars) and local Government and the support of UK schools, we hope to plant as many trees as possible in denuded forest areas and nurtured them for years.
All welcome but limited spaces only!
To BOOK or for more information please contact:
Tel: 0779 160 2107 / 07957 776 4767
E-mail: events@ifees.org.uk
Website: www.ifees.org.uk
Donate: www.justgiving.com/GreenIndonesia
Radiowave Man Introduces His Freak'uencies
Posted by Muslimness community, radio shows, the radiowave, uk Tuesday, October 27, 2009
I pray you’re all in the best of health and imaan as always.
Wow, I’ve got my own page on MUSLIMNESS! Okay I think I should stop with all the smilies now if you know me! Oh, and this is my first post on MUSLIMNESS! (calm down Rehman, ahem).
About The Radiowave
On MUSLIMNESS I’ll be discussing about my exclusive shows on the radio, life at university as well as the English experiences I may have in Muslimness land - in the United Kingdom. Sound interesting much? Yeah? Well read on to find out more people!
Muslims in Radio
To start off with, you may want to know how I got into radio in the first place. It was early 2007 and I had been attending college for a few months. I wanted to do something extra in my spare time and due to being a fairly quiet person (like, ultra quiet), which had affected my confidence during my high school years, I wanted to change my ways and become more confident. At the same time I wanted to put something back into the community as I had reached an age where I was doing nothing progressive apart from college, I wanted to do something that would benefit people. Cure mad diseases or something.
However, I remembered that Crescent Radio in Rochdale had been broadcasting full time since September ’06 and I thought it was a great platform to present on there, as my ex classmates had done in the early days. Confidence was an issue but I gave it a go and after shadowing a few presenters I got my big break in April 2007 and have not looked back since!
Let’s give you an update on the shows that I currently do then:
For Wednesday’s Drive which I present from 3-6pm, the Rochdale police department will be joining me fortnightly from 5pm to discuss issues in the community ranging from drugs to burglary - very exciting! As it is an open forum this means that it is YOU who has the chance to shape the interview by asking (or badgering) the police directly on the phones, texts or emails!
Every Friday you can join me and others on the Youth Show from 7-9pm where we will be discussing issues affecting the youth in Rochdale. Recently we have discussed eating disorders, Islam and politics and we even had a 3-part special on marriage early on in the summer.
The Light Upon Light show every Saturdays from 3-6pm is my long-standing programme, it is now into its third year, wow, Masha’Allah! Yeah so many things will be happening on the show insha’Allah in weeks to come. The return of Anwar al Awlaki’s Al Akhira series is one to savour as well as the regular Qur’an segment with Shiekh Abdullah Basfur. I’ll also have more of our Islamic dictionary and the usual riddles that I provide. As well as that I’ll be discussing more topics so watch this space!
So that’s it from me at the moment. Just thought I’d give you a sneak preview as to what to expect from me in the coming posts Insha’Allah.
If you want to contact me for any of my shows or for feedback then post a comment underneath or drop me an email on rehman@crescentradio.net.
Our radio station is: www.crescentradio.net
Allah bless you and remember the crescent radio team in your duas. Take care.
Wa alaikum us salam wa rahmatullahi wa barakhatuh.

Read more by The Radiowave
Naked Scanner at Manchester Airport
Posted by Shahraiz Monday, October 26, 2009Hijab Art
Posted by Muslimness hijab, hijab fashion, islamic arts, muslim fashion Monday, October 26, 2009

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By: The Misanthrope
Peace & respect ★
Islam at Guantánamo - Brother Mustafa's interview by the Guardian
Posted by Muslimness activists, Current-Affairs, guantanamo, interviews, terry holdbrooks, the brother mustafa Monday, October 26, 2009
- Sarfraz Manzoor
- The Guardian, Wednesday 7 October 2009
- Article history
Terry Holdbrooks arrived at Guantánamo detention camp in the summer of 2003 as a godless 19-year-old with a love of drinking, hard rock music and tattoos. By the time he left cuba the following year, he had alienated his army colleagues, won the respect of the detainees and, most astonishingly, converted to Islam in a midnight ceremony in the presence of one of the detainees, who had become his mentor.
When I meet Holdbrooks, now 26 and named Mustafa Abdullah, he is wearing a black Muslim cap, a thick beard and long-sleeved traditional robes that almost obscure the tattoo on his right arm that reads "by demons be driven".
Holdbrooks grew up in Arizona, the only son of junkie parents who split up when he was seven years old. He was raised by his ex-hippie grandparents. Tired of being poor, determined not to follow in his parents' footsteps and keen to see the world, Holdbrooks signed up for the military. He was stationed with the 253rd Military Police Company, mostly doing administrative support work, when he was told he was to be deployed to Guantánamo.

Terry Holdbrooks, now named Mustafa Abdullah. Photograph: Graeme Robertson
During a two-week training course, the new guards took it in turns to act as detainees, and were also taken to Ground Zero. "We were not taught anything about Islam," he says. "We were shown videos of 11 September and all we kept being told was that the detainees were the worst of the worst – they were Bin Laden's drivers, Bin Laden's cooks, and these people will kill you the first chance they get."
Holdbrooks skims over the words, as if he is quoting from his forthcoming memoir, Traitor? "I was questioning things from day one," he says. "The first thing I saw was a kid who is all of 16 who had never seen the ocean, didn't know the world was round. I am sitting there thinking, what can he possibly know about the war on terror, what could he possibly know?"
Holdbrooks' duties at Guantánamo including cleaning, collecting rubbish, walking up and down the block to ensure detainees weren't passing anything between cells and ferrying them to and from interrogations. There were plenty of opportunities for communication. Holdbrooks's friendliness towards the detainees – they called him "the nice guard" – earned him unwelcome attention from his fellow guards.
"I didn't have a very high impression of my colleagues," he says. Many of them were "ridiculous Budweiser-drinking, cornbread-fed, tobacco-chewing drunks, racists and bigots" who blindly followed orders, and within months he had stopped talking to them altogether. There were frequent physical altercations: "One time one of them said to me, 'Hey, Holdbrooks, you know what we are going to do today? We are going to skull-f*** the Taliban out of you – you're a sympathiser and we don't like that." That led to another fist fight."
While the guards indulged in alcohol, porn and sports, Holdbrooks says he needed to learn how the detainees could endure abuse and still smile, while he was utterly miserable.
"I knew nothing about Islam prior to Guantánamo," he says, "so this was a complete culture shock to me. I wanted to learn as much I could, so I started talking to the detainees about politics, ethics and morals, and about their lives and cultural differences – we would talk all the time." What began as curiosity turned to disciplined study, with Holdbrooks spending at least an hour a day learning about Islam and talking in chatrooms online. Among those he talked to were the Tipton trio of British Muslims who featured in Michael Winterbottom's docudrama, The Road to Guantánamo; another was a man the other detainees referred to as the General – Moroccan-born Ahmed Errachidi, who had lived in Britain for 18 years, working as a chef, and spent five and a half years in Guantánamo accused of attending al-Qaida training camps. (He was later released and cleared of any wrongdoing.)
"We'd talk for hours and hours," Holdbrooks says. "We'd talk about books, about music, about philosophy: we would stay up all night and talk about religion."
Finally, six months into his time at Guantánamo, Holdbrooks was ready. On 29 December 2003, in the presence of Errachidi, he repeated the shahada, the statement of faith that is the sole requirement for converting to Islam: "There is no God but God and Muhammad is his prophet". The Guantánamo guard was now a Muslim.
He stopped drinking and even gave up music, because his interpretation of Islam suggested that this, too, was unacceptable. "It was not easy praying five times a day without my colleagues finding out," he says. "I told them I had to go the bathroom a lot."
Converting to Islam made Holdbrooks even more unhappy about his work – he felt he was worse off than the detainees. "They were having a lot more fun than I was. The Tipton trio were always playing tricks on the guards and the interrogators. The detainees had a lot of freedom in their confinement: I had all the freedoms they didn't have, but I was a slave to what the army wanted me to do."
This claim sounds implausible, but Holdbrooks says he is referring to their freedom of thought: he was impressed by the independence he saw in the detainees, compared to his fellow guards. This still seems a rather self-pitying analysis, particularly when he goes on to describe how he had seen detainees being tortured. "It was my job to take prisoners to interrogations, so sometimes I would sit and watch," he says. "I would see detainees who would be locked up for hours in horrible positions – for hours upon hours upon hours, in a room that might be 50 degrees or 60 degrees.
"There was one man who had defecated on himself and this ogre of an interrogator would douse water on him and then ask him if he was going to talk, and he would say he had nothing to talk about, and I remember thinking, what good is this going to accomplish? You cannot abuse and torture people and expect to get results that are accurate and credible."
In the summer of 2004, Holdbrooks left Guantánamo and was later discharged from the army on the grounds of a "general personality disorder". The alcohol problem that had plagued him before enlisting returned, and when his marriage dissolved, he sought solace in the old comforts of drinking, casual sex and music. "I was having nightmares about my time in Guantánamo," he says, "and I spent the best part of three years just trying to drink Guantánamo out of my mind."
Today, Holdbrooks is a practising Muslim again, but he does not seem to be at peace. There is a blankness in his gaze that hints at the scars his childhood and Guantánamo have left on him.
Why had this hard-living Arizona boy embraced Islam? The question needles me throughout our conversation. It is only when, towards the end, Holdbrooks reveals that his favourite words are "structure", "order" and "discipline" that the pieces fall into place. Holdbrooks's life had been a search for order: the regimentation of army life had appeared to offer structure, and when it let him down, he turned to religion.
Holdbrooks has more in common with his former colleagues than he realises: their allegiance to the army is matched by his adherence to faith. "Islam is a very disciplined, regimented faith and it requires a great deal of effort and conviction," he says. "I've had an unbelievable fascination with structure and order for as long as I can remember: structure, order and discipline – I just love them."
An exposing interview to say the least. Your thoughts?

By: The Brother Mustafa
Peace & respect ★

























