Al-Nur: Volume 13 | Issue 2

al-Nur THE NEWSLETTER OF

THE MUSLIM STUDENTS ’ ASSOCIATION AND

THE MUSLIM WOMEN OF MARYLAND

by Tubah Sultan

Looking Forward: Into the Semester and Life The life of this world is temporary, the life of the

hereafter is Forever. Sometimes we can’t even fathom that the Hereafter is a life that will last For-ever. What is Forever? This seems like a simple question. But can we truly define it?

Everyday we contemplate about the future. Ques-tions such as: “What will happen to us after college? Who will we marry? Where will we live? Where will we work?” come across our mind. But are we actu-ally preparing for the future? And is it only the fu-ture of this life on earth that is on our mind, or are we also thinking about our futures in the Hereafter — the place where we will reside Forever.

Many people are so obsessed and distracted by this life that they don’t see that death is an inevita-ble part of the picture. We will all pass away one day. There’s no question about it. And may Allah (swt), inshallah, grant us all a place in Jannat. Ameen.

I am not writing on this topic to make you feel down or ruin your day. Instead I am really curious about this topic — the Hereafter — because I know

so very little about it. And I am not alone, many of us are in the same boat. We know that there is a Judgment Day, but what we don’t know is what will happen before, during, and after that Day. We are unaware of the incredible series of events that will

(Continued on page 2)

Inside this Issue

HistoryHistoryHistory

Founded in 1969, the Muslim Students' Association

is an organization dedicated to serving the Muslim

students on campus and educating the campus com-munity about Islam and Muslims. We carry out Is-

lamic activities, sponsor social, community service,

and charity events, and strengthens relations and

understanding between Muslims and non-Muslims.

Personal Experiences Page 3

Hadith/Duaa of the Week Page 3

Creative Writing Pages 7 & 8

How-to Column Page 6 Political Action

& Current Events Page 2

Sisters’ Book Corner Page 4

VOLUME 13 SHAWWAL 17, 1429 - OCTOBER 17, 2008

“...Light upon light! Allah guides to his light whomsoever he pleases, and Allah sets forth parables for men, and Allah knows all things full well.” [Holy Qur’an]

Contact Us! Please send your creative submissions, comments, and suggest ions to msa.nur@gmail .com or v is it www.msaumd.org

ISSUE 2

the Light the Lightthe Lightthe Light

Election 2008

It looks like there's a presidential election coming up soon. The can-didates are: an old veteran who’s chosen a young woman as his running mate (who seems to have no clue as to what she’s gotten herself into), and a young African American dude who’s chosen an

old guy as his running mate. Why do you care anyway? By the time you read this, you won't be able to register to vote anymore. So, just make du’aa that eve-rything goes alright, and smile because it's sadaqa. Pirates in Somalia

Looks like the Pirates of the Caribbean tril-ogy has helped some people out in the world. It's been a while since boats have

gotten hijacked on the Somali coast. I don't know how they do it, but you gotta give it to them. They’re straight up gangsta. I mean, who can get away with hi-jacking a Russian boat full of weaponry, and not even have it found? Not even Jack Sparrow can beat that! But seriously bros,

that's not cool at all. Please con-vey the message if you read this.

Battle of the Phones Recently, Google released a

phone called the “G1.” I think the G1 came out after an egotistical phone called the “iPhone.” I don't know how the battle is going to turn out; but one thing’s for sure: phones are not made to talk and listen anymore. I just pray to Allah that the battle doesn't turn into World War III, Insha’Allah. Questions or comments? Contact [email protected]

by Mouhamad Diabate

Unnecessary News

political action & current events

take place the second one passes away. It is absolutely mind blow-ing. Islam is the only religion in this world that gives us the most vivid depiction of the events that will occur in the Hereafter. And as Muslims, we should feel privileged to have this information given to us by Allah (swt) through the Quran and the teachings of the Prophet (saws).

The knowledge of the Hereafter is not just for a few Muslims to know about. It is like public infor-

mation for every Muslim and all mankind.

I’m not going to go into further details. However I do want to en-courage everyone to attend the “Hereafter Series,” an Islamic Lec-ture led by our Muslim Chaplain on campus, brother Tarif Shraim.

The first part, which consisted mainly of an introduction to the series, began on October 8th. Br. Tarif went over an outline of top-ics that will be covered. This in-cludes specific events that will take place from the moment of

death until Judgment day, and then to the Final Destination. What is exciting about the lecture is that it is both informative and engaging. If you have ever had questions on your mind such as, “What happens to someone when they pass away? What happens in the grave? What will judgment day be like?” then join your Mus-lim brothers and sisters at the Hereafter Lecture series every other Wednesday in Jiménez Building, room 0105.

(Continued from page 1)

Looking Forward: Into the Semester and Life

al-Nur Volume 13, Issue 2


by Mouhamad Diabate

Iqbal Fly As a Muslim

hadith / duaa of the week Submitted by Susan J. Shatila

A lot of us have already experi-enced "Flying while Muslim." If you don't know what it is let me paint you a picture. Here it is... a Muslim man with a beard, wear-ing a thobe, and sporting a heavy Arabic name goes to the airport (Okay so I didn't really paint you a picture, but you get what I mean, right?). So most of us do not really enjoy that experience. But here's what one of our beloved brothers, Iqbal Mumtazul Haqq Sahih Bukhari Shah Siddiqi Khan the III, has to say whenever he’s asked about his time at the airport: "Everybody is upset with the airport security, but alhamdulil-lah, I find them really welcom-ing and nice. I always get all these free services, including:

* 2 policemen escorting me from the parking lot to the gates

* A 'flash pass' appearance... I don't have to wait in line because everyone clears the way when they see me

* VIP cleaning services... at the security scan, a security guy uses

this machine that makes weird noises to get lint off my thobe while another one checks my 13-fist long beard

* Bodyguards and free per-sonal lounge area... when the plane is delayed, my body-guards (the policemen from the parking lots), put me in this special room where two nice men come to keep me com-pany. They ask about my fam-

ily, my childhood, and why I am going to the motherland (not Africa, but my mother's land).

* First class seating and cus-tomer service at the price of economy... in the plane I get to have my own section, with two security guys at my side. So you see guys, they think I'm a superstar, but I'm not. So here's what you can do to have the same experi-

ence as me: Smile because it's sadaqa." :-D Credits: Omar ElNabawi for his funny inspirations and Ridwanur Rahman for Iqbal's name correc-tion. May Allah reward them with… good grades. Ameen.

personal experiences

Allah (swt) has given us time to repent before the honorable scribes (kiraaman kaatibeen — recording an-gels) record our deeds. The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: "The (scribe) on the left hand raises his pen (i.e., delays writing) for six hours before he records the sinful deed of a Muslim. If he regrets it and seeks Allah's forgiveness, the deed is not recorded, otherwise it is recorded as one deed." (Reported by al-Tabaraani in al-Kabeer and al-Bayhaqi in Shu'ab al-Eemaan (The Branches of Faith); classed as hasan by al-Albaani in Silsilat al-Ahaadeeth al-Saheehah, 1209).

book corner

Masterpiece of the Month by Lazerdeen


Hijaab Wali by Ikram Abidi is one of the best books I have read. Not only did it bring tears to my eyes, but it changed me. The story fits to everyday life and provides solutions for some of the problems we go through with friendship, marriage, and love. One part of

the story explains what love really means. It is about a really good Muslim girl who changed a young man's life; she made him a better Muslim. Unfortunately he did not realize her value until he lost her, and then did everything he could to get her back. The story also focuses on the purpose of women wearing Hijaab, how im-portant parents are in our life, and how they can guide us. I enjoyed every part of the book and would recom-mend this book to all my brothers, and especially my sisters in Islam. I rate it 5 stars!!!

MSA/MWM Office Hours!

Have any questions, comments, or concerns?

We would love to hear from you!! MSA OFFICE HOURS Monday: 11AM-1PM Tuesday: 3-4PM Wednesday: 11AM-1PM

If none of these times work for you, drop Brother Ridwan an email at [email protected]

MWM OFFICE HOURS Monday: 10-11AM Shabnom Khan Tuesday: 2-3PM Manaar Zuhurudeen Tuesday: 11:30-12:30PM Nadia El-Hillal Wednesday: 9:30-10:30AM Sanjana Quasem Thursday: 2-3PM Reem Dughly

Thursday: 4:30-5:30 Nadia El-Hillal

If none of these times work for you, email Sister Eman at [email protected]

**WE ARE BOTH LOCATED IN 0207H STUDENT INVOLVEMENT SUITE**

by Alia H. Mahgoub

Book Review

Your Best You!


The Muslim Women of Mary-land (MWM) cordially invites the sisters to join us for a day of sis-terhood, empower-ment, and character building. Please join us in our first ever sisters' leadership workshop entitled Your Best You: Strengthening

Your Mind and Your

Heart Now for the Future.

Your company is re-quested on October 19th, 2008 from 11am to 5:30pm as we em-bark upon this new and exciting initiative. As a coalition of college Muslim women, the MWM believes that it is incumbent upon all Muslimahs to work to-gether and establish ourselves as leaders both in our community and on our campus. As ambassadors of Islam, it is imperative that Muslim women have a solid understanding of who they are and what they have to offer.

By participating in "Your Best You" we hope for sisters to come away with a greater awareness about their capabilities, spiritual-ity, and potential for growth. The workshop will consist of four smaller workshops. The first work-shop, Your Best Now, will focus on how Muslim sisters in college can assert themselves and make the most out of their MSA experi-

ence. The next workshop, Your Best Mind, will take an in depth look at the different leadership

qualities that each Muslimah pos-sesses and how they can utilize these qualities to fit their own unique leadership paradigm. The third workshop, Your Best

Heart, aims to examine our per-sonal relationship with Allah(SWT) and to outline how a strong iman

is linked to a firm leader. The last workshop, Your Best Future, will equip sisters with a better under-

standing of how they can use their heart, mind, and present experiences to pre-pare themselves for whichever path they follow after graduat-ing college. All the workshops will be lead by guest speak-ers including past MWM presidents, the current MSA Na-tional President, and various outstanding sisters from the local community. Insha'Allah we hope that after embarking upon this journey of self development together we can come away with a stronger bond that will cross university lines and will be worthy of the title "sisterhood." We hope to see you

there. We would

like all of the sis-ters to attend, so

please come an

invite all your sis-ters in college.

Please RSVP for this event by emailing Eman Haggag:

[email protected] Jazakum Allah Khair.

UMCP's Muslim Women of Maryland (MWM)

.:advertisement:.

how-to column

Pay Attention When Reading As a youngin' in elementary school I decided to make brown-ies from scratch. (Aww how pre-cious...yeah, sure.) The recipe asked for 1/4 tsp. (teaspoon) of salt. So the genius that I was added 1/4 cup of salt! Only Allah knows how I confused tsp with cup. The brownies looked delicious, but tasted terrible. That was when I realized my blun-der. I should have crumbled them up, put the crumbs in a shaker and called it "Chocolate Salt." Follow Directions I attempted to make Lemon Pop-pyseed Muffins (keyword: lemon). When they were finished I took my first bite, and from the taste, I realized that I left out the lemon.

Don't Make Assumptions For some reason I thought that 1 gallon of milk equaled 8 cups. I needed 8 cups of milk for a recipe so I figured, "I don't need to measure anything since I need 8 cups and 1 gallon is 8 cups." Man, I felt so smart for thinking of that. So I started pouring an entire gallon of milk into the pot. It was filling up and I became confused as to why this was hap-pening. Then under the nutrition facts of the milk it said that 1 gal-lon has 16 one cup servings. Al-hamdulilah I didn't transfer such poor practices into organic chem-istry lab.

Multitasking Leads to Fire Note: I am not saying that multi-tasking is an innovation and that every innovation is a misguidance and that every misguidance leads to the hell fire. Got it? Good. I wanted to make something that required boiling water. Instead of watching the water boiling I de-

cided to pray (mashaAllah). After I was done praying I noticed small particles with glowing edges floating in the air. I look at the stove and it is on fire! AHHHHHHHHHH! Which leads to my next point. Learn How to Deal with Fire When you are in stressful

situations you should be calm and think. That is what you should do. This is what I did. One should never fight fire with fire, i.e. your breath. But I panicked and start-ing blowing on the flames like a mad person. If you would have seen me I think you would have been dying from laughter or help-ing me blow out the fire. Blow out candles, not fires. Moral of the story: Think. Know where the fire extin-guisher is and know how to use it.

Don’t Be Lazy For one reason or an-other we do certain tasks so many times that we become lazy. "I've been driving all of my life with a seatbelt (only when I see cops). It doesn't do anything

(except save me from getting a ticket... actually that's a pretty good reason to wear a seatbelt)." So that person stops wearing a seatbelt. Sure a seatbelt seems to not do anything in normal situations, but in an accident it can be the difference between life and death. So I've been baking for years and I decided not to wear oven gloves. When I put a tray of mac n' cheese in the oven. As I was taking my hands out of the oven my hand some-how touched the coil at the top of the oven. (Ouch!!!! I wonder how many sins that removed.) Can you say instant third degree burn? I had to learn the hard and painful way that underneath it all, we are all — white. In plain terms the heating element in the oven removed the skin from my finger so that the white meat showed. (In reality I do have white ances-tors, but that is another story). Cooking is really fun. Master small things and then move on to

gourmet stuff if you like. I hope you learned something or at least got a laugh or two. Pay attention or you will end up getting fried, baked or boiled along with your food like me. Fried and boiled?! Yes, I have managed to get hot oil and boiling water on myself... and even af-ter all of that I keep coming back to the kitchen.

by Parise Henry

How to Cook


The Ceramic Miswak: Satirical Articles


creative writing

Muslim Congregations Harm-less, Reports Say

by Mehreen Rasheed

Last week, authorities investi-gated several reports of large groups of hijabis meeting after hours in the Stamp Student Union. These meetings were deemed a non-threatening, despite civilian concerns.

"It made me kind of nervous to see so many Moslems in one place outside of Cole Field House," said one Stamp frequenter who wished to remain anonymous.

An inside source revealed vari-ous hijabi activity during the night: studying on the second floor, frequenting Union Shop, and sometimes leaving through the side door to return with unmarked packages they would only say be-longed to a certain alias "Roma". The exact nature of "Roma's" items remains uncertain.

"You can't really blame people for being worried," says the source, "There's some pretty sus-picious activity going on, but we believe the threat is contained." Local Mosque Launches Face-book Alternative

by Mehreen Rasheed

After many objections to the

social-networking website Face-book at an area girls' Islamic school, educators developed an alternative site, Niqabbook.

"We are very proud to unveil our brand new website, Niqab-book," says Imam Basboosa Mithai, "We're hoping our more

Islamic social site will keep our kids away from all the haraam that's on Facebook."

Facebook (or 'Fitnabook' as it has been christened by locals) de-clined to comment on the spinoff site, though reassured reporters that they had attempted to reach out to Muslim users via various Islam Applications.

"Fitnabook is no good for our girls!" says parent Mirch Masala, "Even the name, Facebook... how can I teach my daughter to lower her gaze? And don't get me started on the poking..."

The success of Niqabbook has led the board to approve a coun-terpart site for boys, Beardface-book.

MSA Members Call for

Tolerance

by Nour Al-Muhtasib and

Mehreen Rasheed

The recent insecticide applica-

tion at Maryland's MSA Prayer Hall has sparked some controversy among the members.

"You realize they are applying noxious gas in order to wipe out

an entire society of living beings?" says a protester, "We've seen this before in history, and it's not

right!" Another sister feels that the MSA has an Islamic duty to allow the presence of ants and cockroaches, "They're Muslim too, and they need a place to pray. I feel the MSA's actions were completely un-warranted, especially given all I've heard about how wel-coming and open-armed this community is." Proponents of the insecticides

argue that the "pests" lost their right to the prayer hall, accusing them of stealing food and entering the musallah without verified ID Access.

Opponents make the case of southern Spain between AD 711 and 1492, in which Muslims, Christians, and Jews were able to coexist peacefully with Ants, Cock-roaches, and other denominations of insects.

While proponents concede that coexistence is possible, they maintain their position, citing the fact that transgression of a soci-ety's rules should not be toler-ated.

"It makes sense that they should pay for their crimes," says an anonymous insecticide sup-porter, "You can't exactly stone or lash a cockroach, but bug spray's the next best thing, right?"

Unconfirmed sources report that some protesters are harbor-ing insecticide survivors, even hid-ing them in the storage area on the sisters' side of the musallah.

Fake News Briefs


T H E M U S L I M S T U D E N T S ’

A S S O C I A T I O N

University of Maryland, College Park

Box 44, Stamp Student Union

College Park, MD 20742

[ [email protected] ]

[ www.msaumd.org ]

President: Ridwanur Rahman VP: Abdul Saboor Khan VP Sis’ Aff.: Nadia El-Hillal Masjid Aff.: Mouhamad Diabate

PR: Sana Javed

Secretary: Tubah Sultan

Treasurer: Adam Stephenson

President: Eman Haggag VP: Sanjana Quasem Secretary: Manaar Zuhurudeen Treasurer: Kadiatu Bah PR: Reem Dughly SGA Liaison: Shabnom Khan

. Newsletter Staff

Editor-in-Chief Zeynep Özer Co-Editors Shayma M. Al-Hanooti Nour Al-Muhtasib Eman Haggag Parise Henry Rana Sharaf Susan J. Shatila Anam Tariq Sumayyah Taufique Manaar Zuhurudeen Staff Writers: Nour Al-Muhtasib Mouhamad Diabate Sara Haneef Parise Henry Alia H. Mahgoub Mehreen Rasheed Susan J. Shatila Tubah Sultan Lazerdeen

The views and opinions expressed in al-Nur

are solely those of the writers and do not

necessarily reflect the views and opinions of

the editing staff or of the MSA.

by Sara Haneef

me and you

creative writing

me and you on an island found a treasure box in the ground a simple box, but printed on the case "proof of God (for the human race)" oh I yelp, and yes, you squeal from this box all doubt will heal! open one box there's another there surely within this case there is something rare

what magic will we find? should we share it with the rest? perhaps we'll give a small portion and save for us the best! open the next box yet another do we find I can't wait to see the Proof and leave my uncertainty behind box after box here's the final one use all your strength friend - finally – it's undone and out bursts a shimmering hue and a reflection of me and you

This is more or less how the stock market works:

Once upon a time in a village, a man ap-peared and announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10 each.

The villagers seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the Forest, and started catching them. The man bought thou-sands at $10 and as supply started to dimin-ish, the villagers stopped their effort. He further announced that he would now buy at $20. This renewed the

efforts of the villagers and they started catch-ing monkeys again.

Soon the supply di-minished even further and people started go-ing back to their farms. The offer increased to $25 each and the sup-ply of monkeys became so little that it was an effort to even see a monkey, let alone catch it!

The man now an-nounced that he would buy monkeys at $50! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his as-sistant would now buy on behalf of him.

In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers. “Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has collected. I will sell them to you at $35 and when the man re-turns from the city, you can sell them to him for $50 each.”

The villagers rounded up with all their savings and bought all the mon-keys. Then they never saw the man nor his assistant, only monkeys everywhere!

Now you have a bet-ter understanding of how the stock market works...

Submitted by Anonymous

How the Stock Market Works

Al-Nur: Volume 13 | Issue 2

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