These days, you cannot watch a single video on YouTube without reading some ludicrous comments at the bottom. Somehow: a music video, a video of a dog with its owner, and a speech from a university valedictorian all devolve into nasty -usually racist- battles between net bloggers.

KIH has seen its fair share of net debate. And it got us thinking about the anonymity that the internet provides. Are we really all just saying what we want to say but are too afraid to say? Or is it just fun to get a rise out of someone clearly taking their role as custodian of the internet just a little too seriously? Anas and I had a deep conversation about this. We thought we'd share it with you all.

Anas:  so we got people commenting eh
Me:  oh MAN, do we ever.
Anas: it was a little saddening.
Me: The issue of article lengths in my Iran Politics article and the issue of shisha and sin took a decidedly mean and divisive turn
But it looks like they are both "resolved", if you check out the latest comments
Anas: Thank god Fareedah's amazing article on Afghanistan got comments
Me: I know!!! I was like come one ppl... and "reader" had a good comment too – I’m interested to hear her response
Anas:  The entire week, I was thinking, stop taking swipes at me and comment on the article that is actually good!
Me: me too :) But I was talking to my sister and she was like a) this is to be expected and b) this is to be encouraged
 Anas:  I hope Fareedah wasn’t disheartened by the comments we got
 Me:  though its painful to read sometimes, it’s what we asked for
 Anas:  yeah I knew it was coming
 Me:  we asked for traffic, and we sure got it lol
 Anas:  but really i nvr expected to be personally attacked... that girl "Maria" under my shisha article doesn’t even know me. I know khaleeq was attacked before, too.
Me:  no, Inshallah Fareedah will see that she is getting intelligent comments
Anas:  Then u had the bout with "Lawyer" and "Mark".
 Me:  No, that was intelligent, in my opinion. Painful, but still intelligent. But with maria - lol now you know how I was feeling before when I got those comments under my Che article and my Immigration politics article.
Anas:  Ahhhhh that. That was harsh. It’s cuz ppl cant read. They see words that don’t exist in the article
Me:  But the person who fought with you – we can’t discount them altogether. It’s fair to assume that it’s clearly someone who has had a bad experience with MSA. They were irrational but it has to be understood.
Anas:  Yup us MSA Freaks who center events on judging ppl... exactly what we do
 Me: Hey, maybe not you personally – but she might have had a bad experience with someone else at the MSA. It doesn’t justify it, but it might explain it. You handled it with class, though.
Anas: It comes with the job
Me: remember what Spiderman's dead uncle said
Anas: his dead uncle said something? but if he is dead how does he talk?
 Me:  his uncle said something before dying: "peter... with great power comes great responsibility."
Anas: ahh. Ok.
Me: well, on the plus side, someone thinks you are adorable! Did you see that comment?
Anas:  *blushes*
 Me:  hahaha! lol I think one of the issues is that our high school readers have a blunt, angry way of talking and our college readers don’t. So it causes a lot of mistaken strife
That’s just my very rough kind of estimate. Like in the length of article issue. I think Asma wasn’t necessarily attempting to be mean either, but she came off short.
Me:  And on the other hand, Safeeah's tone of speaking was very polite, though arguably it was kind of harsh of her to make public a criticism that she could have expressed to us personally by email, if it was indeed a criticism of writing style and not a debate on the content of the article.
 Anas:  And same with zainab... she got into the heat of the debate and didn’t realize what she was inferring in her comments
 Me:  All in all, it's a positive learning thing
 Anas:  except Zainab will nvr comment on an article again
Me:  I hope Zainab is not discouraged. Essentially this is a lesson you and I have had to learn the hard way - when you write something that is so personal and so intimate you have to wary of how its going to look from all million angles
Anas:  but I'm happy we got people talking.. it's good. Like how boring wld it b if every1 was like awesome! You’re right!
Me: I’m pleased with my article... I wldnt change it
Anas: Same. But yes, it is a learning experience for everyone esp. on how to portray ur argument and how to portray yourself.
Me:  There are only winners here, I think. We've all been the winner of a debate, and we've all been burned.

Just stay classy lol

A 35-year-old shopkeeper and two of his employees were arrested for having allegedly chased down and tied up a shoplifter, keeping him captive in a delivery truck until police arrived. Chen, Jie Chen, 21, and Qing Li, 40, were charged with assault, forcible confinement, carrying a concealed weapon and kidnapping. The kidnapping charge has been dropped.

On Aug. 17, Anthony Bennett was sentenced to 30 days in prison after having pleaded guilty to stealing 10 plants from Chen's Lucky Moose Food Mart and. It’s shocking to hear, however, that the store owner is put in the position of committing the crime, when, in reality, he was merely trying to protect himself and his business.

Islam imposes that a thief’s hand should be cut, but such punishment is never inflicted when there is the slightest doubt that the thief was impelled to crime by hunger. It can only be applied if goods stolen are over a set value and consideration is given to whether this is a first offence or the person is a habitual thief. And what exactly did the thief steal? Ten plants. That’s right folks, he stole plants. Not food, not brand name clothes, not an LCD TV, but plants.

Apparently, under the criminal code, a property owner can only arrest someone if they're caught committing a crime, Peter Lindsay, Chen’s lawyer, explained. Chen didn't catch Bennett red-handed, but the theft was captured on surveillance camera and Chen caught Bennett nearly an hour later when he returned to Lucky Moose.

"In China, if this happened, a lot of people in the area would help, plus the police would arrive immediately," Chen said in Mandarin.

"The thief would be on trial, not the store owner."

What do you think?

SOURCE: Toronto Star --http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/crime/article/720812--put-thief-not-me-on-trial-grocer-says

  The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: “any word of wisdom is the stray of the believer, who has the better right to it wherever it may be found.”

The pursuit of knowledge and words of wisdom,  as well as the pursuit of future financial success are reasons why many choose to attend university. However, that pursuit can come up against unexpected obstacles, especially at the mammoth university of Toronto.   

The University of Toronto is a big place. With a $ 1.4 billion operating budget, over 60 000 undergraduate students and over 10 000 faculty members, it is sometimes referred to as a city within a city. That city feeling is the result of not only the vastness of the campus but also the very energized mood of the campus; UofT is a place, it seems, where something is always going on.

However, is the vastness of the campus a positive characteristic? It’s a common complaint that the St. George (downtown) campus of the University is an intimidating and isolating place, a place where it is very difficult to feel like part of a community.

The classes don’t help either. Some first year classes, notoriously those held in convocation hall, can exceed 1 000 students. With such large class sizes it’s very difficult to feel like an active participant in learning.

To remedy that sense of alienation some students feel, and for attendance purposes, some classes have introduced the i-clicker. The i-clicker is an electronic polling device that a student can purchase in order to participate in limited multiple choice or true/false questions during a class.
 
I remember a phrase my Sociology Professor used in the first few weeks of class. He seemed just as appalled at the situation at UofT- especially for first year students. He was giving a lecture about culture in which he referred to the detrimental affects of rationalization in contemporary post-modern culture.

He used the University of Toronto and his course SOC 101 as an example. According to figures he presented during the lecture, there has been a significant change in the operation of  the same introductory sociology class between 1993 and 2009. The figures are below.

The information in the chart shows some cold truths. By increasing the number of students, reducing the number of classes and support (TA’s) students need, the University makes a killing in profit. This information provokes an obvious question: is The University of Toronto  a learning institution or a money-making enterprise?
 
It seems that the University has increased it’s focus on earning profits. And that focus is not only detrimental to students in terms of servicing and learning, it might also have been a factor in a strike of the University’s sessional workers that was just avoided on October 9. 

It is doubtless that the University has a long and distinguished history of academic excellence. However, it is also doubtless that the University has been steadily increasing in the number of students that it services, but with questionable student support.

During his lecture, the Professor remarked on how during his time in University he was able to have coffee and actually share his thoughts with his Professors. Contrastingly, today, for most students in first year, contact between students and professors is limited to pressing a button on a gadget that transmits a student’s “opinion” to a device that turns that opinion into a depersonalized statistic. Today, in first year classes at least, we have as he put it “clickers instead of coffee” to connect us to our educators.

That detachment doesn’t exactly help one develop a personal connection to one’s education, especially in first year.

A University is a place to acquire knowledge and a place to possibly learn how to use that knowledge to benefit others. It should not be a place that one feels like a product being robotically assembled, as in a factory. From personal experience, the sheer size and impersonal nature of some of my first year classes makes me feel exactly like I’m in a “knowledge factory,” where the results are meant to be uniform and cheaply produced.

However, the good news is that I’ve been reassured by many that the upper years at the University are a lot more engaging and that there are a lot more chances to interact with professors. I look forward to those years. I look forward to personal interaction and actual engagement in my own education, insha‘Allah.

As most of us know, there are 12 months in the Islamic Lunar Calendar, just as there are in the Christian calendar, the one we use on a day to day basis. How many of us know the current month of the Islamic Calendar?

Currently, it is Dhul Qadah, the eleventh month of the Islamic Calendar. It is a month amongst the months of Hajj and it is also the first of the four sacred months, also known as Ash’hurul Hurum in Arabic. The literal meaning of Qadah means to rest. The Arabs used to stop fighting during this month and stayed at home, thus giving the month the name. This is the second last month of the Islamic Calendar, followed by Dhul Hijjah.

I feel that it important we know what month it is in regards to Islam. Speaking from experience, it is hard to keep track because of the difference in days it has with the Christian calendar. However, what I find helps is keeping an Islamic Calendar pinned either next to or under the more commonly used calendar.

Recently, I got an e-vite to a Facebook group called "Free Tarek (Tariq) Mehanna"; a group dedicated to the plight of a 27-year-old Egyptian American who is currently being held on charges of "conspiring to materially support terrorist groups."

Immediately after, I got the heads up about a note written by an eloquent sister named Aisha Chaudhry. In her piece, she stands in full support of Mehanna, claiming that "Tariq holds a doctorate in pharmacy from the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy. He is a devout and tolerant Muslim who is not only respected in the local Islamic and interfaith communities, but who also gives back to his Islamic community by fulfilling the roles of brother, educator, mentor, scholar, and friend. Tariq is described by those who know him well as humble, reserved, warm, peaceful, intelligent, knowledgeable, reflective, pragmatic, dedicated, and straightforward."

Apparently, he was targeted by the FBI because of his influence in the community. They wanted him to be an informant. "Their objective was to secure Tariq as a tool to corroborate any FBI claims or accusations against members of the community that might arise, at the discretion of the FBI. Of course, Tariq flat out refused to backstab his fellow Muslim brothers and sisters, a decision that did not sit well at all with the FBI."

According to this Facebook Group and this note, when Mehanna refused, his family became the target of a smear campaign. It was with almost maniacal stubbornness that they came at him, in an effort to implicate him. "Tariq was told that unless he consented to cooperating with the FBI, they would continue finding new ways to disrupt his life and to deprive him of a sense of security. He was told outright by interrogators that they knew he was innocent, but that they would not be satisfied with his refusal to cooperate."

"Tariq is currently incarcerated at the Plymouth Correctional Facility, where he is expected to remain for the several year duration of a new trial based on outright FALSE AND LUDICROUS accusations of aiding and abetting terrorism. He currently faces LIFE IN PRISON if convicted guilty in a trial by grand jury."

We all know we should be standing up for the rights of the oppressed. So why are people finding it so difficult to join the group and take a stand? Perhaps it's difficult to take a stand on this issue and demand Mehanna's release when you feel you are lacking all the evidence in the case. I fully respect all those who are bringing attention to his case. And yet, here I am, unable to accept the e-vite, but also unwilling to ignore the issue.

Stuck.

Let me clarify.

1) Fact - Mehanna is seen as normal guy; a dedicated Muslim brother.

2) Fact - Governments have shown the ability - and the willingness -to falsify evidence, ignore the truth and hold innocent people illegally. Just think about the Maher Arar case in Canada. It revealed the ineptitude, the hypocrisy and the abuse that sometimes exists in the governmental responses to "The War on Terror."

But...

3) Fact - Western, home-grown terrorism is real and thriving. It's real; not just a government ploy to trap Muslims. Olivier Roy, a renowned French political scientist who has written on terrorist issues, has written about the neo-fundamentalist terrorists - who are bred in the West and export their views to the Middle East. Not the other way around, as is commonly assumed. This new form terrorism - often called Salafi jihadism - is based on a more violent understanding of Salafi ideology. This interpretation rejects cultural interpretations of Islam, sees society in moral decay and advocates suicide jihad as a means of returning Islam to its glory days.

4) Saying that Mehanna is "normal" actually means very little. Louise Richardson is another thinker who has done extensive work on terrorist activities. She has discovered that profiling is largely a huge flaw; a game. There is no such thing as a "normal" person and a "typical terrorist." There are no physical markings, personal beliefs or countries of origin that are more highly linked to terrorism than another. All governments have to go by is that they are usually Muslim. This is why anybody with a Pak/Arab last name is stopped at the airport. And what is Border Services looking for when they rummage through your bag? They really have no clue - they're just hoping they see something obvious, like a ticking bomb. Other than that, it's all random guess work. No one passenger is more likely to be a terrorist than another.

Case in point: the infamous 07/07 bombings in London: 30-year-old Mohammad Sidique Khan was born and raised in Leeds. He was a kind, well-respected teacher for children who have learning disabilities, and he was the father of a one-year-old daughter, Maryam. His mother in law was also a renowned and celebrated educator.

22-year-old Shehzad Tanweer was a young, social, sporty man; also born and raised in the UK. He drove a Benz, and studied sports science at Leeds Metropolitan University. He loved cricket and martial arts and he was the wealthy son of a successful business man. Everybody who knew him said he was completely uninterested in politics as "sound as a pound." (Louise Richardson, Chapter 5, pages 133-135).

And yet, on July 07, 2005, they both met up with friends at King's Cross Station in London, took four separate tubes and went "kaboom" during morning rush hour, at 8:50 am; killin themselves, 56 other innocent people, and injuring 700 more.

it's a wonder what "normal" people can do.

Based on this, I am incredibly confused about where to stand on the Mehanna issue. On the one hand, if he IS a terrorist, then he should be in jail, right? Despite whatever effect this will have on Muslims and the bad Western case of "Islamophobia". On the other hand, if he's innocent - do we have any chance of proving it? The government is adept at winning trials like this. There is no reason to believe that his trial will actually be fair.

So all I can do is pray and hope that Allah Ta'alla will give him, his family - and the rest of us - exactly what is coming to us; exactly what we deserve. And I stand and support all those demanding that he get an open and fair trial, and I hope he actually gets this. Without popular support standing by his side, governments won't be pressured to actually treat him well.

And perhaps this is an indication that we need people like Maher Arar to get involved and develop some ideas, best practices or lessons learned about how people can get themselves out of these traps. Once you get targeted by the FBI - you're done for, whether you're innocent or not. How can this change. How can we ensure trials are not circuses? 

For example, prosecutors are claiming that Mehanna's plan to gun down a shopping mall was abandoned because he could not get the guns to do it. I am certain that getting guns in the United States is no difficult task. Get them online, get them on the streets - damn, get them at Walmart. Is this "evidence" just BS?

Just as Osgoode Hall Law has an "Innocence Project" that focuses on people who have been wrongly arrested, perhaps this can grow and expand to act as some kind of oversight body for cases related to terrorism. Is this feasible? is this already happening?

I'd like to hear your point of view. And I'd also like to ask - on a side note - : is there anything wrong with being an informant? Would you ever snitch if you knew your neighbour was planning to go jihad on the CN Tower? Or is all snitching seen as backstabbing?

All we can really say in times like this is Astaghfirullah, Inshallah and Subhanallah.

One of our readers - who chooses to remain anonymous - has informed us that she is one of the lucky recipients of the 2009 Medina School Foundation Scholarship - and this was an award she discovered exclusively on keepingithalal.com.

She is excited to use the $1000 scholarship towards her future education, and she thanks the KIH team for their dedication, their hard work, and their generosity. By posting the award up on the Scholarships Page, she learned something she had never known before.

Note from KIH: August - October is by far the most popular time of year for scholarships. Please make sure you're on the lookout all year round - but this time of year is especially important! You don't want to miss out!

Saying what we want to hear… That’s the way to win an election.

Overly ambitious and unrealistic concepts are the motto for winners. Not saying I would vote for someone whose campaign is based on staying the course with no changes but a keen ear is needed to realize which campaign promise can actually be fulfilled.

The Canadian Muslim community is recently becoming heavily politicized too. But, it’s not because Muslims are beginning to understand Canadian politics but, rather because some of the local leaders are using their pull for the momentum of the parties they are affiliated with.

One comment made by such a leader deeply disappointed me, the remark in question was; “They may not be the best party for our interests but, they will win and if we support them they will help us out. We have to be realistic and not waste our vote”.  

Canadian Muslims 0 from what I've seen -  tend to know little about party platforms or even how the Canadian governing system works.

So, instead of telling a congregation who to vote for; all candidates should be given an open invite.

And for the better understanding of the local immigrant population in the neighbourhood, speeches should be translated into the language that is best understood by those in the audience.

How the Canadian government works should also be explained to these people.

Yes, I know Canadians should understand English but those who are not eligible for voting should still be accommodated so they may further understand how our great nation works.

Yes, politics might be more important to me than it is to others but we need a change in how we are currently dealing with political situations.

Voting for aparty that you don’t believe in simply because your Masjid is tied to them is not what democracy is about.

Vote for the candidate that best represents you.

 

P.S. the party that was "going to win", didn’t...

Don’t be afraid of repentance. We all make mistakes. In day to day living we all slip and commit sin, whether privately or publicly, whether intentionally or accidentally. No one is exempt from this. However, Allah says in the Qur’an, “Say: O ‘Ibaadi (My slaves) who have transgressed against themselves (by committing evil deeds and sins)! Despair not of the Mercy of Allaah, verily, Allaah forgives all sins. Truly, He is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful” [al-Zumar 39:53]. 

Allah, by His Mercy, has made the possibilities of forgiveness abundant and He has ordered us to seek His forgiveness through repentance. He says in the Qur’an, “O you who believe! Turn to Allaah with sincere repentance!” [al-Tahreem 66:8]. Without His Mercy and Forgiveness, human beings would not be able to live meaningful lives, striving to please Him.

This injunction to seek forgiveness is on all kinds of people in this ummah. They are: those who are foremost in good deeds, those who follow a middle course, and those who wrong their own selves by doing haraam things (cf. Faatir 35:32).

As is clear from the above, we should never ever become self righteous when seeking Allah’s forgiveness, as even the righteous people are told to seek forgiveness. The best of creation, Prophet Mohammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him), said “O people, seek repentance from Allah. Verily, I seek repentance from Him a hundred times a day” [Muslim]*. 

So how does one go about repenting to Allah? The scholars say that there are three condition for repentance which ,when fulfilled, there is the hope that [the one seeking forgiveness] his repentance will be accepted, by Allaah’s leave. The three conditions are:

I) You should give up the sin
II) You should regret having done it
III) You should resolve never to go back to it

But we should not be daunted. in a hadith Qudsi*, Allah has said: “O son of Adam, so long as you call upon Me and ask of Me, I shall forgive you for what you have done, and I shall not mind. O son of Adam, were your sins to reach the clouds of the sky and were you then to ask forgiveness of Me, I would forgive you. O son of Adam, were you to come to Me with sins nearly as great as the earth and were you then to face Me, ascribing no partner to Me, I would bring you forgiveness nearly as great as it.” 

What more can we hope for, other than that? And Allah make us amongst those who repent sincerely, and who are forgiven. Ameen.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
- I am not a scholar. My knowledge is extremely limited so my ability to speak on religious topics is miniscule and my authority in these matters in non existent.

- Therefore, most of the information in this article was taken directly from the website islamqa.com, especially these two articles: http://islamqa.com/en/ref/46683 and http://www.islam-qa.com/en/ref/135707 . This website is a collection of articles and Fatwas by recognized scholars.

- the italicized portion are taken word-for-word from the above website.

Have you ever felt like you didn’t fit in or didn’t belong based on the way you dressed and where you came from? Have you ever felt so insecure that you always did what everyone else was doing, just so you could feel like part of the group? Sometimes you give in to all the pressures that surround you, and sometimes, you realize that being yourself is much more important.

In Randa Abdel-Fattah’s wonderfully written debut novel, “Does My Head Look Big in this?” a teenager struggles to tear herself away from the cultural and religious stereotypes she faces. Amal, an Australian-Muslim-Palestinian, feels she got "whacked with some seriously confusing identity hyphens." She faces bullies, racists and even herself throughout the book after she decides to wear the hijab in an attempt to practice her religion. She shows great courage and passion as she realizes the obstacles that in her decision to wear the hijab - she is often her own worst enemy. 

“High school is tough enough without throwing a hijab into the mix…” as is stated at the back of the book. Within the novel, there are those who are skeptical of her choice, those who are against it, and those who try to convince her to remove it.

Although the novel downplays some religious acts (for example, at one point in Ramadan, the characters go to a theatre and break their fast with popcorn), it is still a largely true picture. We need to keep in mind that this book was post 9/11, and the author mentions this in the novel as well. Other than a couple of lightly-treated religious concepts, I’d have to say that overall, Abdel-Fattah does a good job trying to get the idea of Islam across to readers.

Amal faces high school crushes and drama that never seems to end, just as any other typical high school girl would. Abdel-Fattah seems to be trying to make the point that Amal is just the same as any other teenager…which she is.

The author of this riveting book has done a great job of portraying this issue and making it known that it doesn’t matter what you look like from the outside, it matters  who you are in the inside. Cliché, I know, but nonetheless, a well written book and an even better outlook on the issue at hand.

“…This [novel] should speak to anyone who has felt like an outsider for any reason,” critics say. I highly recommend this novel, as it is witty and sensitive at the same time, providing Muslims and non-Muslims alike with the thoughts of a struggling teenager, trying to get through life without falling into the clutches of societal stereotypes. She tries to make herself heard, and prove to not only others, but herself as well, that the barriers society has placed on her won’t change a thing.