Muslim Blues

Salaam,


Our Egyptian brethren at their best:

"Egyptians are horrified by the news that women have been assaulted by hordes of young men in the centre of the capital, Cairo."


""We saw one girl being chased by a man, her blouse torn off, she ran inside a restaurant," one eyewitness reported..."We took the girl inside and locked the door. There were four or five of us. But there were hundreds of young men outside trying to break down the door.""


"Cairo street crowds target women": http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6106500.stm

Very interesting comments: http://arabist.net/arabawy/2006/11/01/protest-sexual-assaults/



Our Lebanese brethren at their best:

"By 8 p.m., women in their 20s and early 30s are prowling in packs of five and six, casting meaningful glances at any and all passing men. In the bars the women dance for hours - often on top of the bar - and legs, midriffs, bare shoulders and barely covered bosoms are offered for public admiration."


"Ramadan over, women of Beirut prowl for mates": http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/02/news/beirut.php?page=1



Not enough tears to shed at the demise of the ummah.

Salaam

Theory of Mind

Salaams people,

Hope everyone is in good health and emaan inshaAllah,

Been a while again since i wrote something...but i think you all have got used to that right...?

Anyway 'tis been a eventful few weeks since i last wrote something..the major news was that i Finally passed my Derivatives exam...! My god, it was Such a relief..the exam itself was even harder than the previous one and once i finished i thought i had no chance so i didn't even open the envelope until i got to the tube station when i thought i might as well confirm my fail...and lo and behold it said i had passed...!!!

The feeling i had at that moment in time...! subhanAllah...!! I'm a firm believer that whatever situation you find yourself in, you can have a "religious" experience...so here i was feeling on top of the world and feeling an amazing Amazing rush all in a millisecond when i opened the envelope and saw the word "pass"...and to think of how low i would have felt if i read the word "fail" instead...just the fact that the body can do this and all the complexity of the human mind and body just astounds me. A friend of mine recently lost his phone and he was pretty down about it as he lost all his contacts etc etc but i was thinking again how from this you can have a "religious" experience in that one realises how attached we are to material things and how at one moment in time we feel powerful and strong, but in a split second it can be all taken away from you and you're back on square one. Subhanallah

The name of this entry "Theory of Mind" is related to the above discussion...in a very simple version it refers to a psychological term which looks at how people think about what other people are thinking and how this compares to what they themself know...an example of how this develops is when a kid covers their eyes and because they can't see you, they think you can't see them too, but obivously the knowledge that the other person Can see you because They haven't got their eyes covered develops with age...

Psychology is soo interesting...the way the mind works; emotions, feelings, memory, language, consciousness etc etc...memory for instance. I've read that random things like music, a smell, a taste can suddenly bring back strong memories of a distant past..i actually remember a funny incident re this. It was in my first week at Cambridge and when i came back from lectures to my room i came in and smelt the disinfectant the cleaner had used on the floor and instantly i had this flashback and it felt like i was back in primary school...!! i guess this was because this was the same disinfectant they used in my primary school but for 10 years i hadn't smelt it...it was a bizarre moment..so bizarre that i'm writing about it now...

Music too...i don't listen to much but when i do you can feel how different genres of music puts you in different moods; happy, sad, aggressive etc...all from the varying combinations of different notes. Emotions is another crazy one..the way you can be on top of the world when some good news occurs...and then as low as you think you can get when something bad happens...subhanAllah


Anyway that's enough of me talking nonsense. Alhmamdulilla the job is going well and all else seems cool.


Salaam