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!

I got married two years ago today, and I’m really happy.

Alhumdu’lillahi rabil ‘alameen.

The 1st quarter of school ended about one week ago.  And as you may have guessed it, with that time came a flood of students with a sudden concern for their grades.  These are the students who don’t do any real work all quarter, float through class without a care in the world, never ask questions, participate, or show any genuine interest.  Imagine my surprise when now I find them checking up on grades, and asking for assignments back to see how many points they had earned.

I was happy to see they were enthusiastic about improving, but at the same time very disheartened that they would wait ’til the last moment to show such enthusiasm.  Because really, how much could any student possibly improve a bad grade a week before the quarter ends?

The culminating moment of desperation came on the morning of the last Friday of the quarter.  A student approached me after I had finished teaching a new lesson asking me what in the world she could possibly do to improve her grade.  She absolutely couldn’t take home a D to her parents.  She said she would do anything:  extra credit, assignments, projects, retakes, redos, etc.  I just looked her like, “Are you kidding?”

I picked up a pile of homework that had been turned in that morning and quickly glanced through the papers.  Hers wasn’t in there.  So I asked her, “Did you do your homework?” Read the rest of this entry »

During a recent staff meeting at work, an important issue came up.  More and more girls were not adhering to the dress code by rolling up sleeves, unbuttoning buttons, unpinning hijabs, and wearing makeup.  Us teachers were asked to put our heads together and figure out a way to make all these girls stop breaking the rules.  One or more teachers suggested calling parents and reminding them of the contract they signed at the start of the year, while other teachers thought it would be best to use their class-mates against them, and have their peers remind them not to break the dress code.

As this discussion went on, one of the male staff members raised his hand quietly and simply asked, “Why can’t they wear makeup?”  Immediately an administrator answered it was the school policy.  But he asked again, “But why not?” There was silence.  I thought to myself, What do you mean why not? They shouldn’t wear makeup.  The administrator explained to him all the Islamic values the school was trying to preserve while enforcing the dress code– modesty, not being shallow and vain or competitive, etc.  He then responded with, “Do they know that’s why?  Or do we just tell them, ‘You can’t wear makeup!’?”

Since that time in the staff meeting, the wheels in my head have been turning.  In our school, do we ever explain to the students the reasons for our rules?  Or do we just enforce them and tell them they have to do it?  Do we label our rules as school rules?  Or do we say they are Islamic rules?

I’ve noticed over the course of 9 weeks that the students treat our rules as school rules.  Nothing more, nothing less.  Our rules about cheating, lying, stealing, swearing, dress code, etc, are only restrictions placed on them between 8:30 and 3:30 between our four walls.  So when the bell rings, and school is out… so are the rules.

Read the rest of this entry »

This past weekend Saqib and I hopped in our car, and headed down 94 East towards Michigan to visit my parents for the weekend.  Most of our drive was completed while there was still daylight.  And in the sunlight, I really got a chance to see all the beautiful colors of fall.  The trees on the sides of the road were gorgeous!  They were still in the process of changing colors, and the leaves were still on the trees.  Through the green there were bright splashes of red, yellow and my personal favorite, orange.  Man.. do I love the fall in Michigan.  You don’t get a scene like this everywhere in America.

Whenever I see all those colors together, I always think of something my abbu pointed out to me once a road trip.  There are so many different colors, different shades, different tints of green, red, yellow, orange and brown, yet they all look so beautiful together.  Truly, Allah creates everything perfectly.

Read the rest of this entry »