The one who remembers Allah versus, “one of the swearers.”
We were stopped at a traffic light, and all of a sudden, we got struck in the rear by another vehicle.
There was a sudden moment of panic between me and the other brother next to me, and there were 2 different reactions to this accident.
With the power of A.I. how can you verify your loved ones are alive?
Sarah Jeong from The Verge:
The persistent cry of “Fake News!” from Trumpist quarters presaged the beginning of this era of unmitigated bullshit, in which the impact of the truth will be deadened by the firehose of lies. The next Abu Ghraib will be buried under a sea of AI-generated war crime snuff. The next George Floyd will go unnoticed and unvindicated….
Less than 1 percent of what you say can change people’s lives forever…
Last weekend, I was driving and watching a YouTube video, and I got a notification from my substack app.
I don’t remember exactly what the notification was, but all I remember was that the notification banner mentioned something about...istighfar.
You’re not wasting time if you’re doing stuff with your kids.
Yesterday, I had a plan.
I was going to workout after work, no matter what.
I just had to.
It has been a few days and I knew I needed the workout.
Did I want to do it? Of course not.
But it has to be done..
Reaching the delegation point in your family life.
You need to prepare for your kids Islamic lesson, but you also need to buy groceries.
What do you do??
The earlier you start, the better.
The earlier you start something, the quicker you will get better at it.
This is especially true with homeschooling.
When you have just one child, it is very easy to homeschool them, and you can accelerate their learning since the teacher to student ratio is 1:1.
Or even 2:1 if both parents get involved!
Just like you adjusted your time and priorities when you got married, and again after having your first child, you can adjust once again by homeschooling them.
When child #2 comes along, you can adjust again, and prioritize your time differently.
It is a gradual process and you will notice how much you can actually accomplish.
You will even look back at when you only had one child, and how “busy” you thought you were with just one brain to feed 😅.
If you already have 3 kids that are in public schools, and now decide to start homeschooling them, it can still be done, no doubt about it, but the challenges and initial shock will be much more difficult.
This is what keeps people from even getting started, until it gets far too long in the tooth and the opportunity has passed you by.
[T] How boys and girls think differently about money.
The other day, my daughter comes up to me, very nonchalantly, and just tells me,
“Papa, I think I lost my money.”
There was no emotion or panic in her tone whatsoever. I was more in shock of how calm she was because I knew she had a decent chunk of change for a 12 year old (about $500 from gifts and Eid money).
So naturally I asked her, “how much money? Do you mean your purse?” Her purse usually has like $20-$40.
I was like there was no way she lost ALL her money.
She replies again in her casual voice, “No. I lost all my money.”
So now I’m a bit concerned and freaking out a bit inside, and we go on a mission to backtrack her steps and search her room, and eventually she finds it fairly quickly.
Once she finds it, it’s just a, “Oh there it is.” and there’s just the tiniest sign of relief on her face.
After this ordeal, I was just taken aback by her attitude and how losing the money didn’t make her freak out. When I thought about it more, it didn't really surprise me.
We have been homeschooling them since the beginning, and we have been teaching them proper Islamic principles, including how a household is run, who is in charge of what, and who brings home the “dough,” and who cooks the dough.
It’s a system that Alhumdulilah works amazingly well, and brings benefit to everyone.
My wife doesn’t have to worry about money, and naturally, my daughter has picked that up from her. Having a lot of money isn’t a priority for my daughter, and being thrifty with money is one of her qualities.
Frankly, it should be a quality for all of us.
Her carelessness with money isn’t spending too much, but just misplacing it in her room 😂.
My son, on the other hand, is the opposite. He is much more meticulous with money, always trying to find ways to earn money, mainly because he tends to spend more money. If he had lost his wad of cash, he would have turned the whole house upside down trying to find it. He would definitely have been in a more panicked state.
The way my son and daughter react emotionally to money is part of their fitra that is inside all of us as Muslims, and something that our house has reinforced:
Men are the providers of the household and have to worry about money and providing, while women are the maintainers of the household and have to worry about caretaking and maintaining. They are different roles for men and women, but in the eyes of Allah, they are noble and equitable positions that can take you to Jannah.
Someone who stays home isn’t a worse person because they take care of the home vs the one who has to go out and work.
If your kids grow up without the influence of social media, and without the influence of anti-Islamic lifestyles that they see all day and are fed through the school systems, they are more likely to grow up on the fitra and you will have to spend less time trying to detox their minds.
You will see the fitra flourish in the actions of your kids, from the obvious to the more subtle, like finances.
Good news for New Yorker bound international flyers.
Gaby Del Valle from The Verge:
"A federal judge in New York ruled that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) can’t search travelers’ phones without a warrant. The ruling theoretically applies to land borders, seaports, and airports — but in practice, it only applies to New York’s Eastern District.
That’s not nothing, though, since the district includes John F. Kennedy Airport in Queens, the sixth-busiest airport in the country. Nationwide, CBP has conducted more than 230,000 searches of electronic devices between the 2018 and 2023 fiscal years at land borders, seaports, and airports, according to its publicly available enforcement statistics."
The Headline is a bit misleading, but for now this only applies to New York's Eastern District, which includes JFK and I would assume LaGuardia.
Of course if you're Muslim, this is good knowledge to know, unfortunately.
[T] Doing the bare bones consistently, can lead to Jannah?
The Prophet ﷺ said:
وَمَنْ سَلَكَ طَرِيقًا يَلْتَمِسُ فِيهِ عِلْمًا سَهَّلَ اللَّهُ لَهُ بِهِ طَرِيقًا إِلَى الْجَنَّةِ
Whoever travels a path in search of knowledge, Allah will make easy for him a path to Paradise.
This translation doesn’t do justice to the word that is used for “seeking,” which is “iltimas.”
A Sunnah we can all do and need.
One of the easiest Sunnahs that we can all do today is also one of the Sunnahs that we all need today, arguably more than ever:
Authoritarian vs Authoritative Parenting
I discussed Permissive parenting in a previous post, but now I want to talk about Authoritarian Parenting. This is probably something many Muslims are familiar with, since it has the qualities that we grew up with, and by consequence, we have now inherited those same tactics for our own kids.
[T] Hack your brain and think positive.
So there I was, driving down the road through some twisty turns, and I noticed that the neighborhood I was going through was a very wealthy neighborhood. It was the American dream in real life: big houses, big green landscaped yards, and 2 or 3 cars in each driveway, all secluded and distant from each other.
[T] What is the best parenting style?
Abigail Shrier from her book, “Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren't Growing Up,” regarding parenting styles:
“After studying the ways parents attempt to control the behavior of children, Baumrind discerned three general approaches: permissive, authoritative, and authoritarian.”
Pleasing Allah through Cars and Coffee.
My son and I enjoy cars.
He might be a bit more obsessed than I am. Probably because he doesn’t have to worry about costs and maintenance like his dad does.
It is a great way for us to bond together in our shared hobby, and we went to our first cars and coffee yesterday. We had a great time, and we saw some cars we were not expecting to see in our small town:
Too many medical diagnoses in children?
Too many kids get a medical diagnosis for something that isn’t worthy of a medical diagnosis: ADHD, depression, anxiety, etc.
Too many kids then believe that something is wrong with them when in reality, we all go through anxious moments and depressive times.
Too many kids are then constantly reminded in the schooling system about their diagnosis, and they are coddled through the years.
How will this child grow up to deal with the realities of life? They never experienced the fact that tough times and how we handle them are what makes us stronger.
What will you tell your kids on your deathbed?
This verse gets me every time.
It’s a stark reminder that we will eventually leave this world, and our children will be left without us.
The question that goes through every Muslim parent’s mind, who worries for their children, should be this question that is in Surah Baqara, Verse 133:
Or did you witness when death came to Jacob? He asked his children, “Who will you worship after my passing?” They replied, “We will ˹continue to˺ worship your God, the God of your forefathers—Abraham, Ishmael, and Isaac—the One God. And to Him we ˹all˺ submit.” (2:133)
Jacob or Yaqub (AS) didn’t talk about the worldly worries:
“Do you have enough money to survive?”
“Is your job stable enough so you can support yourself?”
“Here are all my passwords to my accounts so you can calculate the inheritance.”
On his deathbed, Yaqub AS only had one worry for his children. Something much more precious than the luxuries of this world. He wanted to make sure his kids knew what their real purpose was.
“Are you going to worship Allah, or will you forget about your Lord when I am gone?”
A magnificent question from Yaqub AS, and a question we need to be asking our children before we reach our deathbeds because one day, we will be gone, and they won’t have us as a fallback for life’s concerns. Plus we have no guarantee that they will be around when we are on our deathbeds.
If we train our kids properly and bring them up in a house of Islam, then in sha Allah they will have an answer that is just as amazing as the question. Look at how Yaqub’s children respond:
“We will ˹continue to˺ worship your God, the God of your forefathers—Abraham, Ishmael, and Isaac—the One God. And to Him we ˹all˺ submit.” (2:133)
Subhan Allah, look at that beautiful answer. They didn’t just respond by saying, “We will worship Allah.” They responded by saying that we will worship your God, the one true God, the God of your forefathers, AND to Him we will all submit.
Let’s break this down for a bit.
This comprehensive answer means that Yaqub (AS) didn’t just teach his kids that Allah is one and call it a day.
He taught his children about Allah, he taught his children about the Prophets who were alive before him (who were his ancestors), and he taught his children that the main goal in life is to submit to Allah.
In essence, he would teach them the “Qur’an and Seerah” of his time. The Qur’an being the Scrolls of Abraham, and the Seerah being the lives of Abraham, Ishmael, and Isaac.
He taught them the formula for success, which is to learn first and foremost who Allah is, and then to follow the teachings and examples of the Prophets in terms of how to worship Allah.
We have the same formula in Islam. We teach our kids about who Allah is, and we also have to teach our kids the Qur’an and Seerah of our Prophet ﷺ. The Seerah is linked with the Qur’an directly. You can’t possibly study the life of the Prophet and not encounter the Qur’an in it.
Now let’s also look at it even deeper. When someone asks you a question, whether you know the answer or not, you will reply as simply as you can. When Yaqub AS asks his kids this question, they reply back in such an impressive manner that it makes you think, “Did Yaqub ask them this question even before he was dying,” because no one can answer in such an impressive manner unless you were already reminded and coached about this constantly throughout your life.
And the answer to that is YES, they were coached throughout their lives about the purpose of their life. If we look back at the verse right before this one, we will see what Yaqub tells his children:
And Abraham instructed his sons [to do the same] and [so did] Jacob, [saying], "O my sons, indeed Allāh has chosen for you this religion, so do not die except while you are Muslims." (2:132)