Tips for a successful marriage.
Sr. Na’ima Robert talks about an important discussion that was very beneficial not only for prospective Muslims who want to get married, but also for those who have been married for years.
A good listen, especially the first 10-15 minutes where she talks about her personal story of marriage, loss, and shukr (thankfulness).
If there’s one thing I can say about this video, it is to watch the first 10-15 minutes about shukr and what to do when you go through a tragic loss. The formula that she was told by a friend was nothing short of genius and total submission to Allah.
Generative AI and “nudify” apps
Matt Burgess, from Wired.com (on arstechnica):
Major technology companies, including Google, Apple, and Discord, have been enabling people to quickly sign up to harmful “undress” websites, which use AI to remove clothes from real photos to make victims appear to be “nude” without their consent. More than a dozen of these deepfake websites have been using login buttons from the tech companies for months.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.