Fascinating Fascinators! [A Giveaway]

Ocotober 28th, 2009

Hey you guys!

Did you hear of the new Etsy Store opened up by Alysha over at V.I. Couture?

Go check it out! She has an amazing blog and I love her designs :D

Come support and you might win something amazing!

-Modest Justice

Non-hijabis have more fun?

October 25th, 2009

To get straight to the point, let me ask a question.
Do muslimahs who do not wear the hijab or non-muslims, have more fun?

First of all, what is your definition of fun?

I just want to address the common misconception that

a) not wearing hijab automatically equates you to not following the five pillars

b) by not wearing hijab you can do anything that was and still is haram (i.e clubbing, having a boyfriend, e.t.c)

c) That you're much more stylish and beautiful without your hijab

This all just came up during an incident last week, and I was pretty shocked that even Muslims would think that just because one wears hijab, that automatically decreases the amount of fun she'll have in life.

But that doesn't mean that she's the perfect muslimah if she is wearing hijab.

Hijab doesn't stop anyone from doing 'bad' things. It's a constant reminder of your faith and what you should and shouldn't be doing.

Clubbing is one of them (has anyone seriously wanted to go clubbing ? I mean, the idea of gyrating against sweaty bodies in rhythm to a deafening beat is ... ew)

Besides the accepted notion that you shouldn't be doing anything bad at all whether you're a hijabi or non-hijabi, male or female, I think it's horrible that non-hijabis get a bad rap.

I mean, sure they're not easily identifiable as a muslim, but does that mean they should have pride in being able to 'get away' with morally-questionable circumstances?

Is it fair that many assume all non-hijabis do not pray or fast or have a general disregard for their religion?

Or that, when a hijabi decides to not wear hijab anymore, it's because she decided she wasn't having much 'fun' being a hijabi.

That wearing the hijab took away a lot of 'freedoms' from her.

Again, what is your definition of 'fun' and what is it that I'm missing out on whenever I put on my hijab in the morning?

Do you think non-hijabis have more fun?

Race Relations- no not NASCAR

Cliched photo of a 'post-race' world

(Note: I am not trying to cause any drama here, nor am I talking about anyone, astagfurillah, I'm just giving my own views about what I see and hear in my own real life, not the blogs)

For people who say they are colorblind:

Honestly, I can write more than a post dedicated on the ignorant idealistic few out there, but I'll try my best to shorten it.

No body is colorblind. Race and religion are a part of everyday life and it effects how we perceive and judge someone. No matter how much we try to be equal and fair to everyone else, we're still human, and judging before knowing is bound to happen. It is those few out there who extol the virtues of a 'no race' society that endanger the minorities. Now this can extend to Affirmative Action and reverse discrimination but that's another story which has its own particular beginnings.

[Excerpt from Wikipedia:

There are two general perspectives of color blindness and this schism in the term's meaning has potentially broken it down into two debated definitions. Especially among liberals, the term "color blindness" may be perceived as a technique that is either positive or negative toward racially marginalized groups: supporters of color blindness tend to perceive it as act of equality in that it involves the beneficial, deliberate avoidance of privileging any one race over others; critics tend to perceive it as an indirect act of oppression in that it involves ignoring and overlooking the privileges already bestowed upon certain races over others. From both perspectives, color blindness may be perceived as intending to help minorities even if critics claim that it may unintentionally harm them.

I'm describing the negative aspect of colorblindness that bothers me]

If everyone were equal, yes alhamdulillah it would be a perfect world, but for those toting the particular hadith of denying your race or nationality because it is rotten, remember that Allah swt made us into different nations tribes so that we may get along. If we coexisted in a total color blind society, many individuals and their experiences would be ignored due to the 'tendency to overlook things' in such a society. Because we'd all have to be fair, the racism person A experiences wouldn't matter since 'shhhhh,' race cannot be discussed.

Race relations in many countries have been damaged because of those in power, the majority of certain races, so I honestly cannot say that by denying my ethnicity, or my skin color, everything is going to be alright.

I do not have the privilege to do so.

Yes, I am definitely a muslim first and alhamdulillah -Go Ummah!-, but in a multifaceted world in which the manipulation of race has caused hatred, dividing and uniting people, I know that I will be judged for my outer appearance.

It's just those people who bug me, those who (unknowing of their privilege) talk about how society has changed and that by dropping who and what I am, I can be free from the shackles of discrimination and oppression.

Oh how wrong, I personally think they are. This is all just my own opinions of course, some people may actually agree that one should denounce their own culture and identity to adopt the muslim one.

But I prefer adapting my own previous identity to mesh with my Muslim one. I don't think my culture or race is rotten; I think those who deny the immense cruelty this world can produce are ignoring the truth.

No one's colorblind m'kay? I think even stating that shows that one is naive. I think one can be accepting of other races and religions, and we can all try to look past race to see the character of the person; but I don't think I can enter any society and not be looked down upon or hated on by at least one person because of my 'difference.' None of us can.

In order to be united as an Ummah and as human beings, we need to accept our many races and cultures and nationalities, not throw them away once we take shahadah or rediscover our faith. It's the multiculturalism that enriches a society not total assimilation to one culture, whether it be Arab or Indonesian (no specifics just random muslim populated nationalities/ethnicity)

~Modest Justice

(I'm very interested in Race Relations, Gender Studies and History which talk about all of these things, let's just say this issue is one of the many that are very important to me)

Rain, Rain, Go Away

October 13th, 2009

It's raining in California!

Alhamdulillah!

But it's been quite the storm.

Last night, I was excited about the oncoming rain, I had my coat ready, boots set to go and a new umbrella!

I was ready for a natural disaster!

Then, when I woke up and felt the cold, heard the pitter patter of the rain outside, I burrowed back under my covers and tried to think warm, happy thoughts.

I love rain in theory you guys, not in actuality.

You wanna know how wet jeans feel like?

You don't wanna know.

I mean, simply sitting in the dry confines of your home and looking at the rain is great

But actually being in the rain?

A whole 'nother story -shiver-

But thankfully, I made it home, with soaking jeans and literal water weight.

Tomorrow's plan:

Do it all over again!

Uhh sorry for you people who see that update

This may seem a little confusing, but I initially wrote this post because I thought a previous post would show on the dashboard (I had saved a nasty anon comment in a draft post, but I accidentally clicked publish, hence the panic) but seeing as it hasn't just ignore this post :D

It was a comment from an anon
that I was going to write about, or save for later, if they tried to harass me again.

-now back to our regular scheduled program-

-wait.. we don't have a program?-

-STOP WASTING OUR TIME-

(I'll write a post when life gets interesting :])

Now I don't believe in the 2012 Doomsday Theory

October 11th, 2009

But let's make a comparison between what's 'supposed' to happen on that day with a major sign of Judgement Day shall we?

Taken from this Yahoo! Article today that dispels the 2012 rumors (I'll bold what I thought was significant):

2012 isn't the end of the world, Mayans insist

By MARK STEVENSON, Associated Press Writer – Sun Oct 11, 3:58 am ET

MEXICO CITY – Apolinario Chile Pixtun is tired of being bombarded with frantic questions about the Mayan calendar supposedly "running out" on Dec. 21, 2012. After all, it's not the end of the world.

Or is it?

Definitely not, the Mayan Indian elder insists. "I came back from England last year and, man, they had me fed up with this stuff."

It can only get worse for him. Next month Hollywood's "2012" opens in cinemas, featuring earthquakes, meteor showers and a tsunami dumping an aircraft carrier on the White House.

At Cornell University, Ann Martin, who runs the "Curious? Ask an Astronomer" Web site, says people are scared.

"It's too bad that we're getting e-mails from fourth-graders who are saying that they're too young to die," Martin said. "We had a mother of two young children who was afraid she wouldn't live to see them grow up."

Chile Pixtun, a Guatemalan, says the doomsday theories spring from Western, not Mayan ideas.

A significant time period for the Mayas does end on the date, and enthusiasts have found a series of astronomical alignments they say coincide in 2012, including one that happens roughly only once every 25,800 years.

But most archaeologists, astronomers and Maya say the only thing likely to hit Earth is a meteor shower of New Age philosophy, pop astronomy, Internet doomsday rumors and TV specials such as one on the History Channel which mixes "predictions" from Nostradamus and the Mayas and asks: "Is 2012 the year the cosmic clock finally winds down to zero days, zero hope?"

It may sound all too much like other doomsday scenarios of recent decades — the 1987 Harmonic Convergence, the Jupiter Effect or "Planet X." But this one has some grains of archaeological basis.

One of them is Monument Six.

Found at an obscure ruin in southern Mexico during highway construction in the 1960s, the stone tablet almost didn't survive; the site was largely paved over and parts of the tablet were looted.

It's unique in that the remaining parts contain the equivalent of the date 2012. The inscription describes something that is supposed to occur in 2012 involving Bolon Yokte, a mysterious Mayan god associated with both war and creation.

However — shades of Indiana Jones — erosion and a crack in the stone make the end of the passage almost illegible.

Archaeologist Guillermo Bernal of Mexico's National Autonomous University interprets the last eroded glyphs as maybe saying, "He will descend from the sky."

Spooky, perhaps, but Bernal notes there are other inscriptions at Mayan sites for dates far beyond 2012 — including one that roughly translates into the year 4772.

And anyway, Mayas in the drought-stricken Yucatan peninsula have bigger worries than 2012.

"If I went to some Mayan-speaking communities and asked people what is going to happen in 2012, they wouldn't have any idea," said Jose Huchim, a Yucatan Mayan archaeologist. "That the world is going to end? They wouldn't believe you. We have real concerns these days, like rain."

The Mayan civilization, which reached its height from 300 A.D. to 900 A.D., had a talent for astronomy

Its Long Count calendar begins in 3,114 B.C., marking time in roughly 394-year periods known as Baktuns. Thirteen was a significant, sacred number for the Mayas, and the 13th Baktun ends around Dec. 21, 2012.

"It's a special anniversary of creation," said David Stuart, a specialist in Mayan epigraphy at the University of Texas at Austin. "The Maya never said the world is going to end, they never said anything bad would happen necessarily, they're just recording this future anniversary on Monument Six."

Bernal suggests that apocalypse is "a very Western, Christian" concept projected onto the Maya, perhaps because Western myths are "exhausted."

If it were all mythology, perhaps it could be written off.

But some say the Maya knew another secret: the Earth's axis wobbles, slightly changing the alignment of the stars every year. Once every 25,800 years, the sun lines up with the center of our Milky Way galaxy on awinter solstice, the sun's lowest point in the horizon.

That will happen on Dec. 21, 2012, when the sun appears to rise in the same spot where the bright center of galaxy sets. (This is the part!)

Another spooky coincidence?

"The question I would ask these guys is, so what?" says Phil Plait, an astronomer who runs the "Bad Astronomy" blog. He says the alignment doesn't fall precisely in 2012, and distant stars exert no force that could harm Earth.

"They're really super-duper trying to find anything astronomical they can to fit that date of 2012," Plait said.

But author John Major Jenkins says his two-decade study of Mayan ruins indicate the Maya were aware of the alignment and attached great importance to it.

"If we want to honor and respect how the Maya think about this, then we would say that the Maya viewed 2012, as all cycle endings, as a time of transformation and renewal," said Jenkins.

As the Internet gained popularity in the 1990s, so did word of the "fateful" date, and some began worrying about 2012 disasters the Mayas never dreamed of.

Author Lawrence Joseph says a peak in explosive storms on the surface of the sun could knock out North America's power grid for years, triggering food shortages, water scarcity — a collapse of civilization. Solar peaks occur about every 11 years, but Joseph says there's evidence the 2012 peak could be "a lulu."

While pressing governments to install protection for power grids, Joseph counsels readers not to "use 2012 as an excuse to not live in a healthy, responsible fashion. I mean, don't let the credit cards go up."

Another History Channel program titled "Decoding the Past: Doomsday 2012: End of Days" says a galactic alignment or magnetic disturbances could somehow trigger a "pole shift."

"The entire mantle of the earth would shift in a matter of days, perhaps hours, changing the position of thenorth and south poles, causing worldwide disaster," a narrator proclaims. "Earthquakes would rock every continent, massive tsunamis would inundate coastal cities. It would be the ultimate planetary catastrophe."

The idea apparently originates with a 19th century Frenchman, Charles Etienne Brasseur de Bourbourg, a priest-turned-archaeologist who got it from his study of ancient Mayan and Aztec texts.

Scientists say that, at best, the poles might change location by one degree over a million years, with no sign that it would start in 2012.

While long discredited, Brasseur de Bourbourg proves one thing: Westerners have been trying for more than a century to pin doomsday scenarios on the Maya. And while fascinated by ancient lore, advocates seldom examine more recent experiences with apocalypse predictions.

"No one who's writing in now seems to remember that the last time we thought the world was going to end, it didn't," says Martin, the astronomy webmaster. "There doesn't seem to be a lot of memory that things were fine the last time around."

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Rising of the Sun from the West

The rising of the sun from the west is also a major sign of Qiyamah proven by the Qur'an and Sunnah.
Allah says in the Qur'an, "The day when some signs of your Lord will come, no good will it do to a person to believe then, if he believed not before, nor earned good (by performing deeds of righteousness) through his faith." (Surah Al-An'aam)The verse is referring to the rising of the sun from the west, as is the opinion of the majority of the commentators. (Tabari/Ibne Kathir)Imam Tabari, after mentioning the different opinions of the commentators writes, "The most correct opinion in regards to the meaning of this verse is that what is apparent from the reports narrated from the Prophet that he said, "(lmaan will be of no benefit) when the sun rises from the west." (Tabari)Abu Huraira reported that the Holy Prophet said, "Hasten to do good deeds before six (things happen) :Rising of the sun from the west." (Mishkat)

-cough- -cough-

Anyone see a connection? Or is it just me?

What do you think of 2012 and this article?

Pirates

October 7th, 2009

You call me a pirate

Yet you steal my food

And poison my waters

I cannot feed my family

Yet you call me a terrorist

That my people are lawless

and savage

You dump your waste in my waters

And kill my people

Yet you call me a pirate

You kill those who steal and it is called justice

We defend our waters and it is called piracy

Hundreds are sick because of your dumping

And it is we who are the pirates

What is justice?

If this is justice, then we want no part of it

For we are just pirates, after all

-ModestJustice

*Written from the perspective of a 'pirate'*

"We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits (to be) those who illegally fish and dump in our seas." Sugule Ali, a pirate leader

It's that time of the year again!

Parties! :D
Finally, some excitement in between the monotonous events of school

(Not including the football game I attended last night, against our 'rival' school, even though they completely suck at football, hence our crushing win of 34-6)
A friend of mine (oh yes, I happen to go to stranger's parties, so the 'friend' part is totally a clarification between the parties' of people I know, and the random hobos who invite me)is having a PARTAY (emphasis on the party) and this time, I won't show up looking like a dork.

Or one of those missionaries who knock on your door, asking to save you.

Last year, I was invited to her party and she had called to ask that I dress 'preferably in a skirt.' Thinking there'd be male relatives over there (wouldn't be much of a party now would it? Well, it was a "birthday party") I arrived in a plain skirt and a khaki top, it's only embellishment was a metal piece in the middle.

Rather shnazzy (or grandmotherly) if I do say so myself eh?

Turns out I was dead wrong. In front of me where about a dozen pakistani (I had to point their ethnicity out because not only was I the one who was not of that nationality or of south east asian descent but it's significant to the latter part of this anecdote) girls running around in gorgeous salwar kameez, their LONG hair flapping in the .. uh.. wind?

They had makeup out, music pumping and I could smell hair burning.

Picture me standing there in my dowdy looking white hijab, khaki top and jean skirt. Oh, what a sight for sore eyes (or not.)

Apparently, there wasn't a guy in sight, and it was actually a 'get-dressed-up' party. This instance where I dress up like I'm ready to gather round a fireplace and sing nasheed songs while reflecting on hadiths has actually happened twice.

Both times- like this instance- it's really 'dress-like-you're-going-clubbing-but-not-really-because-we're-muslims' kind of thing.

My friend laughed at the whole misunderstanding and let me borrow one of her salwar kameez :D

Copy this without my permission and I'll send RABID MONKEY-SQUIRRELS ON YOU!

I gotta say I looked pretty gorgeous for a head that's replaced with a big MODESTJUSTICE sign :]]

But this time I won't be so oblivious!

Muwahahahahahahahahhahahha! *cough*

I'm going prepared ladies :D

So I will definitely be going shopping this week for a dress!

Because the only dress I have that's for ...well, dressing up, is this one dress I wore for my cousin's wedding and that also doubled up as my middle school graduation dress.
I'm not a dressing up kind of gal... at least, I haven't gotten the excuse to :D

So off to bargins and sales racks to pick out a gorgeous dress because who said you have to spend a wad of cash to look glam?

Beautiful, non?

*Okay so I really don't go to hobo parties.. they never invite me :(*

Maybe I should aim my sandals at the Queen of England

(Okay no not really, so please don't send the SIS against me, Queen of England)

But lately, there's been less talk, more shoe throwing!

It's hilarious really..

First there was the highly publicized and well-known, Bush Shoe 'attack'



We ALL remember that :D

And now, there's that very recent IMF hit and run (more like miss and got jumped)



Apparently this college protester was aiming at IMF Director Strauss-Khan

But was so far off that he hit an innocent question-asker

Which is why this is so hilarious.

I mean the poor guy is just talking into the microphone when all of a sudden

WHAM!

-wipes tears- I'm seriously gasping for air right now, it's that funny to me.

But other than my weird habit of laughing at painful and unusual thing, what's up with the shoe throwing?

And the security guards for muffling his voice?

WHAT HAPPENED TO FREEDOM OF SPEECH? (not necessarily hurting others ... tee-hee)

Repressing the man's right to hurl a Nike created, non-biodegradable, pretty heavy shoe at people is TREASON! -cough-

.....................................................................................

Watch out Queen, I got my sandal aimed!

[kidding kidding, I don't want James Bond to show up at my door!]