Two things happened at school this past week that made me pretty upset.  They both had to do with the same subject.  The funny thing is, I can’t quite figure out WHY what happened made me upset.  So I’m just going to share the two stories and hope that maybe one of you can tell me why what happened was so… wrong.

1)  For my 8th grade Algebra 1 test I gave the students an extra credit question:  name at least six of the Prophet sallalahu alayhi wasalaam’s wives.  One of the boys raised his hand and said he couldn’t think of any.  Before I could say anything in response to him, a girl in my class told him to just guess by listing six girls names.  And so he did… outloud, “Kelly, Michelle, Melissa…”  Everyone began to laugh.  I told him to stop because he was being disrespectful, and that his joke wasn’t funny at all.  The thing is… when I sat down, I couldn’t figure out why that was disrespectful?

2) Walking in the hallway I overheard some girls making fun of someone’s name.  One friend said to the other, “If I ever met someone named Anas, I would totally call him… ANUS!” The other friends burst into laughter and kept walking to class.  I turned to see who it was, and gave them all a nasty look.

Anas ibn Malik has narrated one thousand two hundred eighty-six hadith, one hundred sixty-eight hadith are in Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim.  When the Prophet sallalahu alayhi wasalaam arrived in Madina, Umm Sulaym presented her son, Anas, to the Messenger and asked if he would accept him as a servant. He was ten years old at that time and served the Prophet sallalahu alayhi wasalaam until his death ten years later. Many of the descriptions of the Prophet sallalahu alyahi wasalaam were related by Anas.  His mother once asked the Prophet sallalahu alayhi wasalaam to supplicate for Anas. He, upon him be peace, said, ‘O Allah, increase him in wealth and sons, give him long life and forgive him his sins.’ Anas would recollect that he had 125 offspring in his lifetime and only two of them were girls, his garden gave fruit twice a year and had basil which smelt like musk and he had lived long and had even survived poison and he hoped for the fourth part of the supplication. He was the last companion to die in Basra in the year 93H aged 103 years old.  He was the longest living companion of the Prophet Muhammad sallalahu alayhi wasalaam.

What’s in a name?

When I was in high school we had a middle class:  those students who got Cs and would fight for a B.  Nowadays it seems like the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer.  The students I teach are either getting As or Ds!!

This, I think, is a result of the mentality that some of the students have when they come to class.  The “poor” if you will just… don’t… care!!  They come to class acting like, “Yea, go ahead, give me an F, I don’t care.”  These are the same students who don’t flinch from referrals, don’t come to class prepared with textbooks and pencils, don’t turn in homework, and don’t pay attention.  What’s their deal?

(more…)

Welcome to a new series on my blog.

What is an epic wedding?  It’s a wedding where the hosts go the extra mile to make anything and everything an “epic” moment.  From the procession, to the entertainment, clothing, dinner, seating, speeches and decorations.  Everything is made out to be a big “to-do”.

I’ve found that in the past year or so I have attended more and more epic weddings that have been nothing more than an epic fail. In the time I spent planning my wedding I kind of appreciated these weddings because they provided me with examples of what not to do.  But now that I am married, and I still have to attend these epic failures, it’s just getting old.

The interesting thing is that most of these epic weddings are failures based on the following points

1. Timeliness–guests are forced to sit and wait for the wedding to start for sometimes more than an hour
2. Program–guests are forced to sit through too many speeches
3. Seating–guests are forced to sit with or around members of the opposite gender
4. “Entertainment”–guests are forced to listen to music or live singing
5. Extravagance–guests are forced to find out just how much money you make and are willing to spend on your kids

Some weddings fail on some of the points, and some weddings fail on all of these points.  Note that all of these failures affect the guests.  When hosts think they are doing something epic, in actuality they are conjuring up ways to make guests uncomfortable and disappointed for 4 (or maybe 5 depending on how late the function runs) hours.

Through this new series I hope to share with you my thoughts on the epic weddings that I attend, one failure at a time.  But I also want to hear about experiences with epic weddings that turned out to be epic failures.  I don’t want to this become a series where I just bash on people who spend a lot of money on weddings.  I want there to be some good to come from this and come up with ways to advise the people on how to make their weddings more Islamically sound and socially acceptable.

So hold on to your ghararahs and shirwanis, because this is going to get interesting!