The Burnt Biscuits

When I was a kid, my mom would prepare special breakfast every now and then. And I remember one night in particular, after a long, hard day at work. On that evening so long ago, my mom placed a plate of eggs, sausage and extremely burned biscuits in front of my dad. I remember waiting to see if anyone noticed! Yet all my dad did was reach for his biscuit, smile at my mom and ask me how my day was at school. I don't remember what I told him that night, but I do remember watching him smear butter and jelly on that biscuit and eat every bite!

When I got up from the table that evening, I remember hearing my mom apologize to my dad for burning the biscuits. And I'll never forget what he said: Honey, I love burned biscuits.

Later that night, I went to kiss Daddy good night and I asked him if he really liked his biscuits burned.

He wrapped me in his arms and said, Your Momma put in a hard day at work today and she's real tired. And besides - a little burnt biscuit never hurt anyone! You know, life is full of imperfect things.....and imperfect people. I'm not the best at hardly anything, and I forget birthdays and anniversaries just like everyone else.

What I've learned over the years is that learning to accept each other’s faults - and choosing to celebrate each other’s differences - is one of the most important keys to creating a healthy, growing, and lasting relationship.

And that's my prayer for you today. That you will learn to take the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of your life and lay them at the feet of God. Because in the end, He's the only One who will be able to give you a relationship where a burnt biscuit isn't a deal-breaker!

We could extend this to any relationship. In fact, understanding is the base of any relationship, be it a husband-wife or parent-child or friendship!

Don't put the key to your happiness in someone else's pocket - keep it in your own.

God Bless You..... now, and always....

Last Sermon of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)

Last Sermon of Muhammad (PBUH), the Messenger of Allah (Sall'Allahu Alaihi Wasallam)

This Sermon was delivered on the Ninth Day of Dhul Hijjah 10 A.H in the Uranah Valley of mount Arafat

"O People, lend me an attentive ear, for I don't know whether, after this year, I shall ever be amongst you again. Therefore listen to what I am saying to you carefully and take these words to those who could not be present here today.

O People, just as you regard this month, this day, this city as Sacred, so regard the life and property of every Muslim as a sacred trust. Return the goods entrusted to you to their rightful owners. Hurt no one so that no one may hurt you. Remember that you will indeed meet your Lord, and that He will indeed reckon your deeds. Allah has forbidden you to take usury (Interest), therefore all interest obligation shall henceforth be waived...

Beware of Satan, for your safety of your religion. He has lost all hope that he will ever be able to lead you astray in big things, so beware of following him in small things.

O People, it is true that you have certain rights with regard to your women, but they also have right over you. If they abide by your right then to them belongs the right to be fed and clothed in kindness. Do treat your women well and be kind to them for they are your partners and committed helpers. And it is your right that they do not make friends with any one of whom you do not approve, as well as never to commit adultery.

O People, listen to me in earnest, worship Allah, say your five daily prayers (Salah), fast during the month of Ramadan, and give your wealth in Zakat. Perform Hajj if you can afford to. You know that every Muslim is the brother of another Muslim. You are all equal. Nobody has superiority over other except by piety and good action.

Remember, one day you will appear before Allah and answer for your deeds. So beware, do not astray from the path of righteousness after I am gone.

O People, no prophet or apostle will come after me and no new faith will be born. Reason well, therefore, O People, and understand my words which I convey to you. I leave behind me two things, the Qur'an and my example, the Sunnah and if you follow these you will never go astray.

All those who listen to me shall pass on my words to others and those to others again; and may the last ones understand my words better than those who listen to me directly.

Be my witness oh Allah that I have conveyed your message to your people.

A Mother's Prayer

A poor couple lived in a small village in Pakistan. They had only one son. They gave him the best education. Son graduated as an Engineer in the nearby city.

Eventually, got married to a rich girl. Initially, they lived with his parents in the village. Soon the wife got tired of village life and persuaded the husband to move to the city leaving the old parents in the village.

As time went the husband saw an ad in the newspaper about a vacancy in Jeddah. He was successful and lived in Jeddah for years with his wife.

Regularly he used to send money to parents. Eventually with time he stopped and forgot about his parents whether they ever existed.

Every year he performed haj and immediately after each haj, he used to see someone telling him in a dream that his haj is not accepted.

One day he related this story to a pious Aalim who advised him to go back to Pakistan to visit his parents.

The man flew to Pakistan and reached the boundary of the village. Everything had changed. He could not find his house.

He asked a small boy about the whereabouts of so and so. The little boy directed the man to a house and said :

"In this house lives an old blind lady who lost her husband a few months ago. She has a son who migrated to Saudi Arabia years back and never came back again.

What an unfortunate man ? "

Son enters the home and finds his mother on the bed. He tip-toed as not to wake her up. He hears the mother whispering or mumbling something.

He gets closer to hear her voice. This is what the mother was saying :

"Ya Allah ! I am now very old and blind. My husband just died.

There is no mahram to lower me in my grave when I die. So please send my son to fullfill my last wish. "

This is the ending of a story where the DUA of a mother is accepted.

A human body can bear only 45 del (units) of pain. But at the time of giving birth, a mother feels upto 57 del (units) of pain...

This is similar to 20 bones getting fractured, all at the same time!!

This is just to tell you the extent to which a mother loves her child!

'Love your mom till the end of your life.

The lady with whom you fight almost everyday, suffered so much pain just to give you a beautiful life!

How many people will you forward this to? I won't mind if I get it again..

Stop Violance

Dear Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and Jews,

 You're living in the age of the Internet. Your religion will be mocked, and the mockery will find its way to you. Get over it.

If you don't, what's happening this week will happen again and again. A couple of idiots with a video camera and an Internet connection will trigger riots across the globe. They'll bait you into killing one another.

Stop it. Stop following their script.

Today, fury, violence, and bloodshed are consuming the Muslim world. Why?
Because a bank fraud artist in California offered people $75 a day to come to his house and act out scenes that ostensibly had nothing to do with Islam. Then he replaced the audio, putting words in the actors' mouths, and stitched
together the scenes to make an absurdly bad movie ridiculing the Prophet Mohammed.
He put out flyers to promote the movie. Nobody -literally nobody-came to watch it.

He posted a 14-minute video excerpt of the movie on YouTube, but hardly anyone noticed. Then, a week ago, an anti-Muslim activist in Virginia reposted the video with an Arabic translation and sent the link to activists and journalists in Egypt. An Egyptian TV show aired part of the video. An Egyptian politician denounced it. Clerics sounded the alarm. Through Facebook and Twitter, protesters were mobilized to descend on the U.S. embassy in Cairo. The uprising spread. The U.S. ambassador to Libya has been killed, and violence has engulfed other countries.

When the protests broke out, the guy who made the movie claimed to be an Israeli Jew funded by other Jews. That turned out be a lie. Now he says he's a Coptic Christian, even though Coptic Christian leaders in Egypt and the United States despise the movie and want nothing to do with him. Another guy who helped make the movie claims to be a Buddhist. The movie was made in the United States, yet Sudanese mobs have attacked British and German embassies. Some Egyptians targeted the Dutch embassy, mistakenly thinking the Netherlands was behind the movie. Everyone's looking for a group to blame and attack.

The men behind the movie said it would expose Islam as a violent religion. Now they're pointing to the riots as proof. Muslims are "pre-programmed" to rage and kill, says the movie's promoter. "Islam is a cancer," says the director.
According to the distributor, "The violence that it caused in Egypt is further evidence of how violent the religion and people are and it is evidence that everything in the film is factual."

Congratulations, rioters. You followed the script perfectly. You did the propagandists' work for them.

And the provocations won't end here. Laws and censors won't protect you from them. Liberal democracies allow freedom of expression. Our leaders and people condemn garbage like this video, but we don't censor it. Even if we did, the diffusion of media technology makes suppression impossible. The director of this movie was forbidden, under his bank-fraud probation rules, from using computers or the Internet without approval. That didn't stop him. Nor did it stop the Arabic-language distributor from reposting the video and disseminating it abroad.

Online propaganda is speech. But it's also part of the global rise of lethal empowerment. It's easier than ever to kill people. In Muslim countries, mass murderers favor bombs. In the United States, they prefer guns. In Japan, they've tried sarin nerve gas. The Oklahoma City bomber used fertilizer. The Sept. 11 hijackers used box cutters and passenger planes. Then came the letters filled with anthrax.

Derision is that much harder to control. The spread of digital technology and Internet bandwidth makes it possible to reach every corner of the globe almost instantly with homemade video defaming any faith tradition. It can become an incendiary weapon. But it has a weakness: It depends on you. You're the detonator. If you don't cooperate, the bomb doesn't explode.

This isn't just a Muslim problem, though that's been the pattern lately. On YouTube, you can find videos insulting every religion on the planet: Jews,Christians, Hindus, Catholics, Mormons, Buddhists, and more. Some clips are ironic. Others are simply disgusting. Many were posted to bait one group into
fighting another. The baiters are indiscriminate. The promoter of the Mohammed movie founded a group that also protests at Mormon temples.

The hatred and bloodshed will go on until you stop taking the bait. Mockery of your prophet on a computer with an Internet address somewhere in the world can no longer be your master. Nor can the puppet clerics who tell you to respond with violence. Lay down your stones and your anger. Go home and pray. God is too great to be troubled by the insults of fools. Follow Him.

What You don't Suffer for, You don't Enjoy

Once there was a rich man named Tugba, who dressed in fine and fashionable robes. Every day he strolled through the village, arm-in-arm with his elegant wife. The villagers held their breath as the two passed: Never before had they seen such a handsome couple.

But Tugba wasn't admired only for his good looks and pretty wife. Farmers would travel many miles to Tugba's village just to catch a glimpse of his fields. Tugba's corn was more golden, his tomatoes more plump, and his cassava more abundant than any in the land. His animals, too, were fat and strong. He had two cows, five chickens, two roosters, three donkeys, and four goats.

Now Tugba's fortune wasn't just a matter of luck. He was a good and hard-working man who always remembered to thank the seeds for growing and the sky for raining. And Tugba took extra care to ensure that his animals were well fed and content. He kept his eye on one goat in particular, and always brought a special bundle of hay for her to chew on. This goat was Tugba's favorite. He had found her when she was just a kid, lost and wounded in the jungle.

One year, little rain fell. Throughout the land, crops wilted and animals died of thirst. Tugba's fields alone remained fertile. But Tugba no longer strolled through the village each day, since the villagers now rushed upon him, begging for food. Although Tugba always gave the villagers whatever cassava or corn he could spare, his wife was not so generous. Angered by his inability to say "no" to the villagers' pleas, she left Tugba, taking with her all the gold she could carry.

Meanwhile the hungry villagers devoured Tugba's crops and, one-by-one, they ate his animals, too.

Except for his favorite goat. Tugba refused to let the villagers eat the goat that he had found in the jungle many years before.

One day, when his fields were completely wasted and his stockroom empty, Tugba threw a cloak across his shoulders and walked out of his house. With only his favorite goat as a companion, Tugba left the village and journeyed into the jungle.

After traveling many miles, Tugba and the goat found a home for themselves inside a cave. During the day, Tugba gathered berries and nuts for the two to eat; at nightfall, he would lie beside a mountain stream, staring up at the sky to admire the stars.

Seven years passed. From time to time, Tugba would remember the life he had known in the village. Once he wore elegant robes; now he wore a rotting sheepskin. Once he slept each night with his beautiful wife at his side; now his only companion was a goat. Once he harvested the most delicious crops in the land; now he survived on little more than nuts. Still Tugba remained a good and hard-working man, who always made sure that his favorite goat had the choicest leaves to chew on.

One day, as he was gathering nuts, the goat spoke. "Thank you for saving me, Tugba," said the goat in a clear, deep voice. "You are a good man."

Tugba turned around in surprise. Even in the jungle, goats didn't talk. "Did you just say something?" Tugba asked the goat.

"I said that you are a good man," the goat repeated. "And I thanked you for saving me."

"But a goat ... talking?" Tugba asked incredulously.

"It is so," the goat replied calmly. "Again, thank you." With this, the goat turned her attention to a pile of leaves.

Tugba could not contain his excitement. "My luck is changing!" he shouted as he danced through the jungle. "A talking goat!" he laughed.

Sitting down next to a tree, he sketched out a plan. "If I take the goat to the village, I will be rich again," he reasoned."The villagers will certainly pay to hear my goat talk. Soon I will have enough money to buy a house and field once more."

The next morning, Tugba tied the talking goat to a tree and hastened to the village that he had left behind seven years before.

When Tugba arrived in the village square, he discovered that all of the villagers he had once known had died in the drought. A different tribe had settled there—none of whom remembered hearing any stories about a rich man named Tugba. Although disappointed that no memory of him had survived, Tugba remained in good humor and asked to speak with the village chief and elders.

Within the hour, the chief and elders, dressed in richly textured ceremonial robes, entered the village square to greet the stranger. Overlooking the rotted sheepskin draped across his waist, the elders offered Tugba a cool drink of water. As soon as Tugba finished the water, he joyfully announced, "My goat can talk!"

The chief and the village elders listened carefully as Tugba told them of his talking goat, and his seven years in the jungle. When Tugba finished, the chief deliberated with the elders for a few moments. Then, he stood up to deliver his verdict.

"If your story is true, this is a great fortune," said the chief. "But if it is not true, you have wasted our time and have made us fools for listening to you." The village elders nodded in agreement.

"If your goat can talk," the chief continued, "we will give you half of everything in the village. If your story is false, we will arrest you, tie you, and beat you until you are dead." Looking Tugba in the eyes, the chief announced, "Bring your goat to the square!"

Tugba promptly returned to the jungle and, as quickly as could, ran back to the village center, carrying the talking goat in his arms. The entire village was waiting for him.

"Speak to them, sweet goat," Tugba urged. But the goat was silent. The chief and elders raised their brows skeptically.

"Please, goat, speak!" Tugba asked again. The goat, however, was busy chewing on the chief's robe.

Tearing his robe from the goat's teeth, the chief roared, "You have made us all fools for listening to your story. Now you must die."

Immediately, the elders tied Tugba's arms and feet, and beat him with a whip. They then dragged his body up a mountain where a large tree grew. Along the way, everyone who saw him spit at him and threw stones. But just before they were about to tie a lasso around Tugba's head and hang him from the tree, the goat ran up the mountain and, at the foot of the tree, said in a loud and clear voice, "You must not kill him. Let him go."

The villagers were stunned. It was true! The goat could talk.

The elders released Tugba, and carried him back to the village center. There, the chief lay a carpet on the ground for Tugba to rest on, and ordered the women to attend to Tugba's bloody wounds.

"Gather up half the goods in the village," the chief further declared, "and bring them here as an offering to Tugba."

As Tugba lay on a carpet, he fell into a dazed sleep. When he finally opened his eyes, the goat was standing beside him, watching him.

"How could you act that way?" Tugba said to the goat as he slowly rose to his feet. "Look at me. They beat me. They almost killed me. What took you so long to speak?"

"What you do not suffer for," the goat replied, "you do not enjoy."