Why Aren't My Prayers Being Answered?   Question: Why aren’t my prayers being answered?   Answer: May Allah reward you for asking such an honest question, and may He guide us towards the truth. Ameen.   I think what happens in this type of situation is that we mix up our means and our ends. [...]

  Let's Talk About Dating   The word “dating” has long been a taboo in the Muslim community. From an early age children are reminded that Muslims don’t date and that dating is “haram” (prohibited).  I remember receiving these messages as a child from my own parents and as I became a teenager, I had [...]

   This Life: A Prison or Paradise?     I was at the airport. As I stood there, I looked over at a little girl with her mother. The girl was crying. She was clearly sick. The mother reached into a bag to give the girl some medicine. I was struck by how miserable the [...]

Being Religious Without Being a Jerk      “There is nothing that has gentleness in it except that it is beautified, and there is nothing that has harshness in it except that it makes it ugly. So be calm, O Aisha!”   The above words were spoken by our beloved Messenger ﷺ to his wife, [...]

  Three US-born scientists have been awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize for Physics after discovering that the universe is expanding at an ever-increasing rate. What is interesting though is that this scientific fact was stated in the Holy Quran over 1400 years ago where Allah (swt) states:   "…We have constructed the heaven with might, [...]

Lessons from a Medina graveyard     If we work on making every prayer count as if it's our last and set aside time from our busy schedules, to unwind the thoughts and worries entangled in our minds, we may become better humans and will indeed have a greater chance of living with peace   [...]

Why do we read Quran, even if we can’t understand a single Arabic word?   An old American Muslim lived on a farm in the mountains of eastern Kentucky with his young grandson. Each morning Grandpa was up early sitting at the kitchen table reading his Quran. His grandson wanted to be just like him [...]

Burkini vs. Bikini   Bums, buttocks, tushes. Since I am on vacation at the beach it is no surprise that they are everywhere. Big ones, baby ones and ones that I covet for my very own. Yet, as different as these bottoms may be in size and shape they are almost uniformly appareled in teensy [...]