Fahad X Fahad X

The Amish.

Back in my jahiliyah days, I would consider the Amish as weird and nonconforming.

"Why do they isolate themselves and not want to be like everyone else?"

"Why do they restrict themselves and make life harder for themselves?”

I don't believe in their religious beliefs, but I have much respect for them standing up for what they believe in, and there's many lessons we as Muslims can learn from their ability to establish thriving communities among themselves who hold onto their values.

Back in my jahiliyah days, I would consider the Amish as weird and nonconforming.

"Why do they isolate themselves and not want to be like everyone else?"

"Why do they restrict themselves and make life harder for themselves?”

I don't believe in their religious beliefs, but I have much respect for them standing up for what they believe in, and there's many lessons we as Muslims can learn from their ability to establish thriving communities among themselves who hold onto their values.

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Who needs people when you can have pets?

Bentley’s new concept vehicle:

Bentley’s new concept vehicle:

Within its cabin, the design approach is just as forward-thinking. Created using virtual reality (VR) software to enable customers to see and experience a wider variety of possible configurations, it mixes familiar contemporary physical car interior features like luxury seating, wing-shaped dashboard, steering wheel, dials and switches with spellbindingly futuristic digital elements that can be brought to the fore or melt away into the background as driver mood or functional need requires.

The package is unusual for featuring three seats and three doors – rather than four or five of both – to afford greater luxury in transit for the special few and includes innovative in-cabin storage for treasured pets and/or hand luggage as well. When stationary even the boot space can take on a dual role as upmarket picnic seating.

Even if this concept doesn’t make it to production, the signs are clear:

Why have kids when you can have treasured pets?

Birth rates are declining all over the world, and one of those reasons is because of materialism.

“More for me and less to spend on someone else.”

Muslims of course are not immune to this trend, with women for some reason requiring a higher education costing hundreds of thousands of dollars that would require years to pay off before she can even think of having children - aka, true wealth.

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Bad Therapy Step 6: Dispense Diagnoses Liberally

This one really irks me:

Your five-year-old son wanders around his kindergarten classroom distracting other kids. The teacher complains: he can't sit through her scintillating lessons on the two sounds made by the letter e. When the teacher invites all the kids to sit with her on the rug for a song, he stares out the window, watching a squirrel dance along a branch. She'd like you to take him to be evaluated.

And so you do. It's a good school, and you want the teacher and the administration to like you. You take him to a pediatrician, who tells you it sounds like ADHD. You feel relief. At least you finally know what's wrong. Commence the interventions, which will transform your son into the attentive student the teacher wants him to be.

The crazy thing is, this is normal behavior for a 5-year old, especially boys who mature later than girls, and are just more hyperactive compared to girls. To turn him into a docile robot is to do injustice to him if you ask me, especially when you consider the side effects of these drugs because once you have ADHD, you will be medicated.

The classroom has goals to meet, and if kids are making the teacher lose progress because they’re just being normal, they have to be “taken care of.”

It’s like kindergarten mafia, expect you don’t get whacked, you get drugged.

I remember a similar situation reading “The Collapse of Parenting,” where the author (Dr. Leonard Sax), would be surprised by how often parents were trying to find a fix for their teenager with medication, when the problem was the teen had a TV in his room and unlimited access to video games, making him play through the night and consequentially, sleepy and inattentive at school. The medicine did make him more attentive, but he lost that “glint in his eye.” Essentially, what the parents were saying was he lost that thing that made him human.

Sometimes people do have real issues like dyslexia, but don’t go shopping for diagnoses till you get the answer you want. Sounds a lot like fatwa shopping.

But l've also talked to parents who went diagnosis shopping-in one case, for a perfectly normal preschooler who wouldn't listen to his mother. Sometimes, the boy would lash out or hit her. It took him forever to put on his shoes. Several neuropsychologists conducted evaluations and decided he was "within normal range." But the parents kept searching, believing there must be some name for the child's recalcitrance. They never suspected that, by purchasing a diagnosis, they might also be saddling their son with a new, negative understanding of himself.

Quotes from Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up

This one really irks me:

Your five-year-old son wanders around his kindergarten classroom distracting other kids. The teacher complains: he can't sit through her scintillating lessons on the two sounds made by the letter e. When the teacher invites all the kids to sit with her on the rug for a song, he stares out the window, watching a squirrel dance along a branch. She'd like you to take him to be evaluated.

And so you do. It's a good school, and you want the teacher and the administration to like you. You take him to a pediatrician, who tells you it sounds like ADHD. You feel relief. At least you finally know what's wrong. Commence the interventions, which will transform your son into the attentive student the teacher wants him to be.

The crazy thing is, this is normal behavior for a 5-year old, especially boys who mature later than girls, and are just more hyperactive compared to girls. To turn him into a docile robot is to do injustice to him if you ask me, especially when you consider the side effects of these drugs because once you have ADHD, you will be medicated.

The classroom has goals to meet, and if kids are making the teacher lose progress because they’re just being normal, they have to be “taken care of.”

It’s like kindergarten mafia, expect you don’t get whacked, you get drugged.

I remember a similar situation reading “The Collapse of Parenting,” where the author (Dr. Leonard Sax), would be surprised by how often parents were trying to find a fix for their teenager with medication, when the problem was the teen had a TV in his room and unlimited access to video games, making him play through the night and consequentially, sleepy and inattentive at school. The medicine did make him more attentive, but he lost that “glint in his eye.” Essentially, what the parents were saying was he lost that thing that made him human.

Sometimes people do have real issues like dyslexia, but don’t go shopping for diagnoses till you get the answer you want. Sounds a lot like fatwa shopping.

But l've also talked to parents who went diagnosis shopping-in one case, for a perfectly normal preschooler who wouldn't listen to his mother. Sometimes, the boy would lash out or hit her. It took him forever to put on his shoes. Several neuropsychologists conducted evaluations and decided he was "within normal range." But the parents kept searching, believing there must be some name for the child's recalcitrance. They never suspected that, by purchasing a diagno-sis, they might also be saddling their son with a new, negative understanding of himself.


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