Yesterday I was eating lunch with my cousin and we got to talking about weddings and jewelry. We came to a problem that a lot of girls in our communities today are facing: to pay zakaat or not to pay zakaat, that is the question.

It seems like there is a lot confusion about whether or not jewelry that is not being used is part of wealth that needs to have zakaat paid on it. It is unclear what type of wealth it is categorized under: is unworn jewelry part of a regular collection that just isn’t worn often, or it is part of wealth that we hoard for its value?

I told my cousin I thought that if someone has a lot of jewelry, and she just doesn’t have any oppurtunities to wear it, and she does wear it as much as possible, I don’t think she has to pay zakaat on it. But my cousin thought that a lot girls are told by their parents or family members that well after you’re done wearing your jewelry, you should keep it around because it’s a good investment. So in this case, it is kept as a treasure.

Well then, I had a question: why do all these girls have so much jewelry in the first place?

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I’ve recently come across a problem in my 4th grade classroom.  My students want to put stickers on everything.

Okay, maybe not everything.  But it’s starting to feel that way.  Every few days I have a student come up to me, eyes wide open, very deer-caught-in-headlights with a concern:  they’ve seen or read something “inappropriate” in a book, and their answer is to cover whatever it is up with a sticker.   

Aside from the fact that I can’t figure out why they chose stickers to solve the problem, I don’t know how to respond to the problem.  I honestly don’t find half the things they think are inappropriate bad.  In my opinion they’re over reacting.

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Today my family and I hopped in the car and drove to the masjid for a seminar entitled The Final Journey.  The program included how to take care of the sick, what to do when approaching death, what to do at the time of death, how to perform ghusl on the deceased, how to wrap the body, how to pray salaatul Janazah, how to bury the deceased, and how to deal with grief.  It was really informative, and well organized.  The turn out was amazing, masha’Allah.  May Allah reward the organizers.

On the way back home, my family and I had an interesting discussion.  My sister and I were telling my mom and dad that the only part of the program we thought was unnecessary was the 20 minutes spent on being patient after death.  It was something worth mentioning, but I was convinced that people already *knew* all that, so what was the point on saying it over and over again?  Abu countered my statement with:

(51:55) And remind, for indeed, the reminder benefits the believers

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My family is known for making an event special by the food we eat.  Whenever anything special is on the horizon, we immediately ask ourselves, “What’s for food?”  Meaning, what will we eat to commemorate this moment in time.   For example, my sister’s birthday was only a few weeks ago.  The weekend before it came we asked her, “What do you want to do for you birthday?”  Our conversation afterward was a little slow, so I cut to the chase, “Look, what are we going to eat?”

Birthdays are one thing, and Super Bowl Sunday is another.  The Super Bowl is like our Eid for food.  Every year we try to come up with something to eat that is more spectacular and disgusting than the year before.  We’ve had home made chicken wings, twice baked potatoes, chilli, fajitas, tacos, you name it.

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