The Blog

Henning Mankell is a Swedish author who has become a very well known figure in crime fiction writing with a popular police detective Kurt Wallander as the central hero. I just got introduced to these novels, some of which have been made into movies by the BBC starring Kenneth Branagh. There is obviously a Swedish film series based on these novels, but I have not got my hands on them yet. The appeal of the novels is not just the suspense and thrill of well written crime mysteries but the depiction of the Colombo like ordinary character of Kurt Wallander, who, despite his brilliance as a detective, has his own faults and makes mistakes. In other words, he is very realistic and is not made out to be some extraordinary hero who can’t do any wrong. The setting for the novels is also a small Swedish town of Ystad in southern Sweden.

Sidetracked
Price: CAD 12.78

28 used & new available from CAD 7.01

Wallander: Sidetracked/Firewall/One Step Behind
Price: CAD 35.49

9 used & new available from CAD 31.19

A graphical history of Apple. From a price of less than 2 bucks a share (when the personal computer was a mere 128K) to its current stock price of almost 200 dollars (when the MacBook Air, iPods, iPhone and the latest iPad adorn the product line), Apple’s come a long way!

Apple iPad graphic

Another gem from the Iranian movie industry. Missing this movie would be a crime.

اللهم إني أسألك العفو والعافية في الدنيا والآخرة
Oh Allah I ask you forgiveness and protection in this world and in the hereafter.
اللهم إني أسألك العفو والعافية في ديني ودنياي وأهلي ومالي
Oh Allah I ask you forgiveness and protection in my religion in my worldly life and in my family and in my finances.
اللهم استر عوراتي وآمن روعاتي
Oh Allah hide my private affairs and protect me from fear.
اللهم احفظني من بين يدي ومن خلفي وعن يميني وعن شمالي ومن فوقي وأعو بعظمتك ان أغتال من تحتي
Oh Allah protect me from around me and from behind me and from my right and from my left and from above me and I seek protection with your greatness from being taken from underneath.

The Prophet (sallallahu alahi wasallam) used to read this dua regularly.

Apple is going through vowels like there is no tomorrow. When I first read about this newest offering from Steve Jobs, I thought it was a typo or someone was trying one of them parodies.

The iPad seems to be a large screen iPhone (or the iPod Touch, to be more precise, since it’s not a phone). Looks nothing like anything in the market…maybe a cross between the Kindle from Amazon and a digital photo viewer. Apart from the thousands of apps from the Apple app store, photos, movies, music, eBooks and the good old web browser (Apple’s Safari, of course) for email and browsing the Web, there isn’t a whole lot else on this revolutionary product. Good news for iPhone developers: the same SDK can be used for iPad development! I’m hoping to see a full fledged MacBook version of this, complete with all the bells and whistles of a computer. It’s only a matter of time, I hope. Then I can forgive Apple evenif it calls that new product iAwsome.

Abu Hurayrah quotes the Prophet (peace be upon him) as saying: “Seven types shall enjoy God’s shelter on the Day when there is no shelter other than what He provides: a just ruler, a young man who is brought up as a committed worshipper, a man whose heart always inclines toward mosques, two friends whose friendship is for God’s service: it is uppermost in their minds when they meet and when they part, a man who resists seduction by a woman of power and beauty saying to her, “I fear God,” a man who gives something to charity in secret so as his left hand would not know what his right hand has given away, and a man who remembers God when alone and his eyes are tearful.” (Related by Al-Bukhari).

I just heard in the Friday sermon yesterday (which was about the earthquake in Haiti) that calamities befall individuals for two reasons (yet to be confirmed with a scholar):

1. To elevate a person’s status and to make his/her life better or
2. To punish a person for their wrong deeds.

How do you tell which is the reason in any given situation? Well, the Khateeb explained, one should examine their relationship with the Creator, Allah subhanahu wataala, prior to the calamity. If you had a good relationship – meaning you were doing good deeds and avoiding sins – then it is the first reason. When Allah loves His servant He sometimes sends a calamity – as a test of patience and as a way of drawing him/her towards Him for when hardships strike we turn toward Allah with repentance, duas, prayers and crying. If hardships were evil, why would Prophets and the righteous people get so much?

If, however, your relationship was not good – meaning you were involved in sin or were negligent in your remembrance of Allah or were not thankful of the blessings bestowed upon you prior to the calamity, then the second reason can be understood.

Every calamity is a test as is every boon; the first a test of patience and the second a test of thankfulness.

Umar ibn Al-Khattab, the second Khalifah, used to say that one should be thankful when a calamity strikes since we know it isn’t the worst calamity (which is the losing of one’s imaan).

Wallahu a’Alam…Allah knows best.

I finally got my invite from Google to the preview version of Google Wave. Google Wave is a new real-time communication and collaboration platform. Its brilliant not only because its from Google, but because it makes use of the browser like never before and kind of combines other Google products into one seamless experience. I believe its going to be as revolutionary as email must have been when it first came out. A scary thought came to my head just now: maybe Google had this vision when it first created the other products it now integrates into Wave. What if wave is only just a little piece of Google’s grand plan to take over our lives? Maybe its the cold weather talking. Google Wave is perfect for trying out on cold, nasty bad weather days such as today.