What to do when you fall off the prayer wagon

Don't set yourself up for failure. Lower your standards to make it easier for you to get back on track. If you make it too hard by intending on praying all the prayers that you missed right away, you will essentially de-motivate yourself.

Do what you can at the moment, and if you find that any plan you make is discouraging you from getting back on track, lower the requirements for that plan.

What to do if you spend two days not praying?

Begin anew from the time you decide to go to praying by praying regularly. Don't worry about the prayers you missed, but keep them in mind. Once you pick up momentum and you get into the habit of praying again, start praying extra prayers here and there to make up for what you missed.

I look at prayer the way I look at exercise. If you haven't been exercising in a while and you want to get back into the routine, you have to be realistic and start slow if you want to make the process enjoyable and easy.

Say your routine is to exercise for an hour a day and you haven't exercised in 10 days. Exercising for 10 hours to make up for what you missed will cause fatigue and undermine your resolve.

Prayer can also be compared to brushing your teeth. Just because you didn't brush your teeth yesterday doesn't mean you shouldn't brush them today, and if you haven't brushed them in a long time, it doesn't mean that it's wrong to brush them every now and then.

The following poem was meant as a joke to make fun of ignorant Bedouins, but I see it as a practical way to stick to prayer, and an example of positive intentions toward God:

إليك اعتذاري من صلاتي جـالـسـا .. على غير طهر مومياً نحو قبلـتـي
فمالي ببـرد الـمـاء يا رب طـاقة .. ورجلاي لا تقوى على ثني ركبتـي
ولكنني أستـغـفـر الـلـه شـاتـياً .. وأقضيكها يا رب في وجه صيفتـي
وإن أنا لم أفعل فـأنـت مـحـكـم .. بما شئت من صفعي ومن نتف لحيتي

Lord, I apologize to you for praying while I am
sitting down, without taking baths when I need to. I can only make gestures
towards the direction of my prayer.

Oh Lord, I am unable to
tolerate cold water and my legs are unable to bend my knees. But I ask for your
forgiveness in the winter and I will make up for my shortcomings in the summer.
And if I don't, you have the authority, if you wish, to smack me and plunk my
beard.

What's wrong with quitting prayer?

I think the reason this is important is that many people who begin praying often do so because they feel the need for a sense of meaning, connection and belonging, perhaps the deepest human longing. If for some reason they stop praying, they might feel a sense of separation from themselves, which often causes unhappiness.

If you can achieve that sense of spiritual fulfillment in ways other than regular prayer, it might be enough to keep you inspired, happy and at peace. If you can't, it might be necessary to take the steps mentioned above to insure that a sense of connection and belonging can be held on to.

Why do people get offended when God's name is desecrated?

Do we really believe that God is bothered when someone desecrates His name? Many of us imagine God as our invisible leader, our alpha male who is the symbol of our tribe. We rally around him; he unites against other tribes. He is the strongest amongst us and protects us. Or perhaps He is imagined as a dictator like the leaders in the Arab and Muslim world who need to stifle dissenters in order to hold on to their power.

When contemplating the term "Allahu Akbar", I think the very fact that we are offended is offensive in itself. If God is greater than the universe and greater than time and existence, than how can He be offended by anyone? And why should we be offended on His behalf?

Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that we worship the sun, since all energy on earth ultimately comes from the sun. Would the sun be offended if someone said, "Damn the sun, the source of all evil"? Would the sun stop providing that person with energy?

Now, if we believe that God is the Creator of the Sun, then that should apply even more.

We should laugh when someone says things that sound "insulting" about God, just as we laugh when someone says something "insulting" about the sun.

Why do people desecrate His name?

There are people who lose their faith when faced by a traumatic event because they feel that God has abandoned them. I would think that this is a consequence of viewing God as a person up there somewhere who answers some people's prayers but doesn't answer others, therefore take it personally.

We don't take it personally when gravity causes us harm, nor do we damn gravity, because we know that damning it or losing faith in it will not do us any good. We continue to surrender to its laws.

On the other hand, people often damn religious symbols out of a need to rebel against people around them. And since Muslim societies tend to be collective, we tend to use religion to enforce unity and conformity. But taking offense only gives a rebellious person what he wants and that is attention.

Then there are people who damn life out of depression or hopelessness. In this case, the reason we would want to intervene is that people like these are harming themselves but attracting negativity and also causing harm to the universe by Propagating negativity.

This reminds me of the Hadith Qudsi, "Allâh said: 'The son of Adam hurts Me by damning Time, for I am Time; in My Hands are all things and I cause the revolution of night and day.'" (Bukhari 6/351; 9/583 and Muslim 4/5581)

قال الله عز وجل: يؤذيني ابن آدم يسب الدهر، وأنا الدهر بيدي الأمر، أقلب الليل والنهار

I think comparing our response to acts of God with our response to the laws of the universe is a good way to examine whether or not we are making progress in viewing Him as "Akbar."

Five percent is acceptable; I need all the help I can get

When I hear that something has a five percent impact on my health, I don't belittle it. I look at it this way: If I have a health problem that has no known cure, and I need to cope with the symptoms, I need all the help I can get. If I can find 20 things that have a five percent impact on my health, then perhaps the negative impact of that problem on my health and wellbeing can be diminished and possibly eliminated.

Also, often the five percent will grow exponentially when it is something that gets better over time, like breathing and mind-body interventions which have accumulative benefits.

But there is also an issue of the cost/benefit ratio. There are things we can do that don't take much time, effort or money, such as popping a vitamin pill, breathing and relaxing your muscles, positive thinking, dancing, laughing, wearing comfortable shoes, and being mindful of the things that aggravate your condition and avoiding them.

If something is going to take a lot of time, money and effort only to produce less than a five percent benefit, than I might want to put a priority for more cost effective things.

I believe that any improvement in any aspect of your life (physical, social, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, etc.) affects the other aspects because it affects your overall wellbeing.
We are integrated beings of multiple interconnected dimensions. It is interesting to hear about research that links health with unexpected aspects, such as personality type, behavior, relationships, nature, socio-cultural environments, etc.

Wudu, nail polish and our perception of God and His Prophet

Nail polish has long been considered inconsistent with wudu because the physical layer it creates over the nails prevents the penetration of water to the nails, which is a requirement for wudu. Therefore, a woman may pray while she has nail polish on but she has to take it off every time she needs to renew her wudu, which may mean taking it off and putting back on several times a day.

As much as women tried to beg for a way to put on nail polish and still pray, they couldn't find Islamic scholars to give them a break (that I know of.)

Yet, today I see more and more Muslim women who pray painting both their fingernails and toenails.

Who gave them a provision to do that? No one—many of them did it on their own.

This is my take on the matter: I could be wrong, but I pray that I will be rewarded for making an effort to help people enjoy life and enjoy their religion at the same time, and not see it as an arbitrary set of rules that make no sense.

Contemplating God as the Creator of the Universe creates a perception of God that is not as hard-headed as the "scholars" who make up rules on his behalf. I prefer to view God and His messenger differently.

I would imagine that the Prophet (PBUH) would be more flexible than these scholars. After all, if you contemplate "what would Muhammad do" based on what we know of him, we cannot imagine him preventing men and women from enjoying the beauties of life, just to apply a rigid rule that does not really have any practical benefits.

The Prophet was known to welcome objections and arguments. As far as I know, no one ever came to him asking for a provision and was denied it. If that was the case for the people who were around him at the time, why wouldn't it be the case for us today? Aren't we part of his Ummah too?

The Prophet's friends (yes they were called his friends, not his followers) didn't see him as a dictator, who dictates rigid rules. They saw him as a reasonable person with whom they could argue.

There are new things that come up everyday. Based on what we know about the Prophet, wouldn't he make accommodations for these new things? Or would he prefer that time stand still? New things came up during his lifetime and he accommodated them. Why would he expect time to stand still after his death?

Wudu, from the perspective of Maqased (purposes of Islamic law) is more of a ritual than anything else. It is meant for us to feel clean before prayer. Does making wudu without nail polish make feel cleaner than when you have it on?

We wouldn't look at issues of science and medicine in such arbitrary rules without inspecting their practical purposes. Is religion at a lower level than science and medicine to be approached with different standards?

Nail polish is not a necessity, but why deprive ourselves from it?

So why is it important for some women to put on nail polish? This is a question that many clerics would ask. They would say that nail polish is not a necessity, so provisions are not in order.

The answer simply is that nail polish makes women's nails look prettier, and women have an instinctive desire to beautify themselves. Having beautiful things on you and around you makes you happier and for that matter closer to God. Neither God nor His Prophet would desire to deprive men or women of simple beauty—not based on my perception of them.

Henna and Kohl, although artificial beauty, were considered permission in traditional Islamic Law. The reason being that they were fashions that happened to be prevalent at the time of the Prophet. But times change and fashions change. Muftis cannot expect time to freeze. They also need to accept fashion as a social custom that will continually change. An old fashion isn't more conservative than a new fashion, because that old fashion used to be new at some point in time.

Nail polish today is perhaps equivalent to henna those days. While henna is a dye and nail polish is a physical layer, it is still a prevalent fashion today that the Prophet would likely have accommodated.

Is it worth the risk?

Some of them would say, since it is not a necessity, then there is no need to risk performing Islamic rituals in the wrong way, and perhaps not have any of your prayers counted in the eyes of God (yeah God would do that).

Perhaps their thinking is that God is somewhere in the sky and there's no way to know what his intentions are. We will never know what is acceptable and unacceptable by him until we meet him after we die. If it turns out that making wudu over nail polish was unacceptable, then we are in trouble. It is as if he is a person who is hiding and there is no way to communicate with him to know what he wants. There is no way to improve life and religion by experimentation and contemplation of life and the universe. Examining the Quran and the Hadith is the only way to know if we can make provisions regarding ibadat (Islamic rituals.)

God is near, God is here, and God is now. He is "Greater" than to be confined to a far away time or place.

Can we stop the oil leak through visualization or prayer?

Chunyi Lin, a Qigong master who I am a fan of on Facebook, recently wrote about the Mexican Gulf oil spill, saying,

"This huge oil gush in the Gulf is part of Mother Earth's body and could be
compared to bleeding. Something we can all do together is to visualize the oil
leak surrounded in green light with the love and message sent to Earth to stop
the bleeding and be completely healed. There is power when many come together to
send love and healing."

This reminded me of the Islamic supplication for rain and other prayers we do.

Today, the Council on Islamic-American Relations (CAIR) issued an action alert saying,

"CAIR is calling on mosques and other houses of worship across the nation to
offer prayers for an end to the Gulf oil spill and the environmental disaster it
is causing."

I'm not sure that visualization or prayer could be very effective in stopping the oil "bleeding," but at least it will stop me from "bleeding" along with it emotionally.

I would guess that the purpose of these prayers and visualizations is to make sure that you remain in good spirits despite difficulties beyond your control.

And if we were emotionally disturbed over the oil spill, visualizing the healing can help heal this emotional disturbance.

There is a reason why Hirsi Ali has barely any Muslim admirers

I have recently been getting emails from non-Muslims praising me for my criticism of Arab and Islamic culture. The last email was from someone who sent me an article about Ayaan Hirsi Ali thinking that I might be impressed and saying that we need more people like her.

Here is my take on this woman:

I believe that respect, love and compassion are the only engines for change. Hate, bigotry and hostility will only make people more resistant to change because they are direct attacks on what people consider a core aspect of their identity.

I don't believe that encouraging people to hate their religion and culture helps much in reforming anything.

I sympathize with the ordeals that Hirsi Ali went through in her personal life, but I and most Muslim women I know, did not have it as hard as she did, therefore we are not willing to rebel against Islam and Islamic culture with such zeal, since we are not as emotionally charged.

As for non-Muslims, they have to realize that people who have been through personal traumas like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, are traumatized for life and therefore unable to use reason or think objectively. It is only an emotionally damaged person who can say things like "Islam is evil in and out." She is like a woman who has been hurt by a man and, because of it, hates all men.

I, and most Muslims I know, cherish and admire the vast majority of aspects in Islam. I cannot and should not focus on the negative only, and neglect all the great roles that Islam has had and still has in people's lives on all levels.

I'm also not sure that it is realistic to expect that it is possible for over a billion people to renounce Islam and embrace something else because Ayaan Hirsi Ali wants them to.

She does not believe in reform, but what is her alternative? Neither Christianity nor secularism seems reasonable for Muslims to embrace on a grand scale any time soon. Reform is likely a more practical option.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali might be a hero among some Westerners, but there is a reason why she has barely any Muslim admirers.

She is no different than the many Westerners who renounce their culture, convert to Islam, and are greeted like heroes when they go to the Middle East to give lectures about the evils of the West.

Islamic contribution to modern medicine: Can we do better than olives, figs and honey?

A Muslim friend of mine, who happens to be a biomedical scientist, recently explained to me how important it was for Muslims to reveal to Westerners the scientific miracles in the Quran and to turn to the Quran for guidance on health.

He gave, as examples, the fact that the Quran mentions olives, figs and honey, and that modern science has now discover the miracles of these foods, among which was a supposed research study done by Japanese scientists that found that a mixture of figs and olives by a ratio of ratio 1 to 7 provides miraculous benefits in removing the symptoms of aging.

You can find this claim in thousands of Islamic Web pages, but no reference to any names of Japanese scientists, publications, or other specifics. Is it possible that someone who is desperate for an Islamic miracle made it up?

The is no shortage of scientific studies showing the health benefits of olive oil. Why not use them instead of making up studies?

We are doing a disservice to the Quran and to Islam by providing weak or non-existing research and linking it to the Quran.

Moreover, God swears by all His Creation, but gives examples in the Quran of things that were familiar to Arabs in their environment. That doesn't mean that they are superior to plants that grow in other areas of the planet.

Modern medicine with all its achievements is now turning to religious practices which are thousands of years old, such as yoga, which has its roots in Hinduism; Qigong and acupuncture, which have roots in Taoism; mindfulness, breathing and emotional awareness, which have roots in Buddhism.

If Muslims want to contribute to modern medicine using the Quran, I think we have to do a little better than olives, figs and honey.

Kafur: A testament to Levantine racism and Egyptian tolerance

The story of al-Mutanabbi and Kafur al-Ikhshidi testifies to Levantine/Iraqi racism and Egyptian tolerance.

The notorious satirical poems in which the Iraqi/Levantine poet Abut-Tayyib al-Mutanabbi insults the ruler of Egypt Abu al-Misk Kafur Al-Ikhshidi for being a former black slave and mocks the people of Egypt for allowing him to rise to power and accepting him as their leader, is often cited as an example of Arab racism. However, I see it as an example of tolerance, particularly on behalf of the people of Egypt.

Abu al-Misk Kafur was originally a black slave from Ethiopia. Muhammad Bin Tughj, the first of the Ikhshidid princes of Egypt, purchased Abu al-Misk Kafur as a slave in 923 AD and, recognizing the slave's potential, made him a tutor to his children and a military officer, and later promoted him as minister (Vizier) of Egypt. Eventually, Kafur gained so much power that he succeeded bin Tughj after his death, becoming the de jure ruler of the Egypt and southern Syria.

For a black save to climb the power ladder to become a prince or king is quite extraordinary and it took al-Mutanabbi by surprise. Not only was this black slave able to take control of Egypt—one of the most important countries of that time—but the people of Egypt were fine with it.

This is not the only example of slaves rising to power in Egypt. The Mamluks were soldiers of slave origin who converted to Islam, and eventually became a powerful military caste in various Muslim societies, particularly in Egypt. The mamluk phenomenon lasted from the 9th to the 19th century AD.

However, Kafur was not only a slave—he was black. Also remarkable about him is the way he outsmarted and made a fool out of al-Mutanabbi (perhaps the most famous Arab poet in Arabic history).

After trying unsuccessfully to gain political power in the Levant, by praising Saif al-Daula, Prince of Aleppo, al-Mutanabbi went to Egypt and tried to get close to Kafur in hopes of being appointed governor of Sidon in reward for his poetry.

Kafur could see through al-Mutanabbi's praise poetry that he was actually a racist and ignored him. Al-Mutanabbi became furious and started mocking him instead.

Here are some verses of scathing satirical poems Al-Mutanabbi wrote about Kafur:

صارَ الخَصيُُ إمام الآبقين بهـا .. فالحُـرُّ مُستعبدٌ و العبدُ معبودُ

The neutered slave has become leader of free people (in Egypt). The free are now enslaved and the slave is worshiped.

لا تشترِ العبد إلاَّ والعصا معـه .. إنّ العبيدَ لأنجـاسُ مناكيــدُ

Never buy a slave unless the stick come comes along with him. Slaves are sleazy and belligerent.

ما كنت أحسبني أحيا إلى زمنٍ .. يُسيء بي فيه عبدُ وهو محمودُ

I never thought I would live to a time when a slave would insult me and he would be praised for doing so.

من علّم الأسود المخصي مكرمة .. أقومُــه البيضُ أو آباؤه الصيدُ

Who taught the neutered black man to become noble: his white people or his aristocratic fathers?

وتعجبني رجلاك في النعل إنني .. رأيتكَ ذا نعل إذا كنت حافيا

I am amused by how your feet look in your shoes. I would think you had shoes on even if you were barefoot.

ومثلك يؤتى من بلاد بعيدة .. ليضحك ربات الحداد البواكيا

A person like you is sought from far away places just so he can make sad, morning women laugh.

For establishing support and credibility, Kafur was more comfortable surrounding himself with religious scholars than with poets.

Al Mutanabbi mocks the people of Egypt and their religious scholars for accepting Kafur as leader by saying:

سادات كل أناس من نفوسهم .. وسادة المسلمين الأعبد القزم

The leaders of all nations are from amongst themselves, except the Muslims; their leaders are low-life slaves.

أغاية الدين أن تحفوا شواربكم .. يا أمة ضحكت من جهلها الأمم

Is shaving your mustaches the most important thing in religion? You are surely a nation that all nations have laughed at because of your ignorance.

Well, look who got the last laugh!

Why غ is better than ج for transliterating the hard G into Arabic

For a long time, Arabs have been following the Egyptian style of transliterating the hard G, by using the letter ج for it, because Egyptians pronounce the ج as a hard G.

The Arabic language does not really have a letter for the hard G, even though it is widely pronounced in colloquial Arabic instead of the letter ق or soft ج.

The current trend, particularly in the eastern Arab world, is to use the letter غ instead of ج for the hard G.

I think this is a much better practice, because ج causes ambiguity; it can be either a hard G or a soft G—there is no way to tell. By contrast, the letter غ will rarely cause ambiguity because it does not exist in English and most other foreign languages that are translated into Arabic. The typical Arab reader knows that there is no غ, and will therefore know that the غ is actually a hard G (e.g. غارث is Garth and not Gharth).

I have heard some Arabs pronounce Chicago as "Shicagho," because they see it spelled شيكاغو but they are only the uneducated. Had it been spelled شيكاجو, they would have pronounced it Shikajo, which is even worse.

Here are some cases of ambiguity that result from using ج rather than غ in transliterating the hard G:

When Arab readers read the name جوردن they have no way of telling if it is Gordon or Jordan.

When they read the name جيري they have no way of telling if it is Gary or Jerry.

When they read the name جيل they have no way of telling if it is Gill, Jill or even Gale.

When they read the name جينزفيل they have no way of telling if it is Gainesville or Janesville.

Also, using ج rather than غ results in pronouncing Peggy بيجي as Pejjy, Indigo إنديجو as Indijo, Gilmour جيلمور as Jillmore, Arlington آرلنجتون as Arlinjton, and Asperger أسبرجر as Asperjer, which all sound silly. Or if readers assume that the ج is a hard G, they will pronounce Bridgeton بريجتون as Briggton, Woodbridge وودريج as Woodbrigg, Edgewood إيجوود as Eggwood, Judson جدسون as Gudson, and names like Ranger رينجر and Geronimo جيرونيمو with a hard G.

All of these ambiguities can be avoided by designating غ for the hard G and ج for the soft G.