The Hajj & Eid al-Adha
Today is the 2nd day of “Eid al-Adha (Arabic: عيد الأضحى)” for the year 1430 according to the lunar ‘Islamic Hijri calender (Arabic: التقويم الهجرى)’ which coped with the year 2009 according to the ‘Georgian calender (Arabic: التقويم الميلادي)’.
Eid al-Adha falls at the 10th day of ‘Dhu al-Hijja (Arabic: ذو الحجة)’ which is the 12th month of the Islamic calender. It is significant for Muslims worldwide to celebrate commemoration of willingness of Prophet Ibrahim [Abraham (Arabic: إبراهيم)] to sacrifice his son, Prophet Ismail [Ishmael (Arabic: إسماعيل)], for the Almighty Allah [God (Arabic: الله)].
It lasts for 3 days at the end of “The Hajj (Arabic: الحج)”, which is the fifth pillar of Islam that annually takes place between 7th - 13th of Dhu al-Hijja. Couple of years ago, I wrote an article about Hajj that was published over I-MAG Magazine and here I am sharing it with you in those blessed days.
Finally, I want to place my greeting to Muslims everywhere and my prayers for a better world than what we see now, hopefully!
“Eid Mubarak (Happy Eid) | عيد أضحى مبارك وسعيد”
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Underneath the Shooting
Few days passed since the tragedian shooting took place in Fort Hood and it is clear that ignorance by ‘Islam’ and ‘Muslims’ is the theme of this period. Nevertheless, I am not going to participate in the “attacking/defending” scenario which I described in my previous post.
I am rather concerned by going behind Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's action without any intention for legitimating since what happened is labelled under crime and betrayal from someone that requires punishment by the corresponding authorities regardless his faith and his race.
Analyse That
Let me start by highlighting that despite we still know nothing about what is really inside the shooter's head till investigation show up, I have three points to ponder with you and welcome your insights if you wish, which are:
- his citizenship status;
- his ranking position;
- his linking to radicals.
Point One: He is an American citizen with high education, good job and was raised on the soil of the states not just an immigrant which means that this has nothing to do with hating America because of his roots or religion but rather something else went with him.
Point Two: Initial reports told about problems he had because of the pressure applied on his shoulder either for being anti-war or harassment. In fact, I do not fully buy this not only because many people are anti-war who will have other ways to express this but mainly because of his career as a physician in army who is supposed to be trained for facing this and cure people from non-physical troubles. Nevertheless, even if he had mental troubles that let him went to the end like this, how come that his leaders did not notice any kind of symptoms in any ‘follow-up report’ since he is not a civilian but an army officer?
Point Three: Initial reports also mentioned that FBI was investigating his suspicious internet activity as an army officer so why do not this lit a red alarm? I do not know whether he is following the ideology of radicals or the worst that he has been in touch with them, however again I wonder about the ‘follow-up reports’ since he is an army officer not a civilian!
The Division Bell
I think this tragedy is an evidence for error(s) that happened; something that need more investigations to understand and thus to prevent in the future by fixing the error(s), not just braking at both his roots and religion. What happened with all tragedian aspects of the shooting cannot be a way to condemn and portray millions of Arab and/or Muslims American citizens who are living on the soil of the states either being civilians or serving the army of their country.
On the other hand, if people want to educate themselves away from stereotyping, do not just rely on the media and go for resources either books, Islamic centres, or trustworthy sites about Islam. No problem if you know nothing since nobody knows everything about whatever subject(s) but the worst is when you just follow the wave of generalising.
Finally, I am placing these ramblings in a loud voice since our dear folks on different media-outles have not spent good effort for analysing what happened in a rational way but rather their efforts and enthusiasm were targeting to ring the fake bells of stereotyping which I elaborated in the previous post entitled “Tragedy and Stereotype”.
“There is nothing to fear except the persistent refusal to find out the truth, the persistent refusal to analyze the causes of happenings.” ~ Dorothy Thompson
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Me, Myself and Websites
One of the nice coincidences for people who live at the beginning of any century is passing by unique Georgian dates like today's 09-09-09 so I dedicate this post to some techi reflections that shall deal with creating websites.
Development Phases
As of writing this, I passed by 3 main phases that shaped my journey while dealing with this process for my own discovery however I wonder what other phases I might go through in the future? Anyway let us deal with what we have.
Phase I
I started to discover this world around the age of 17. I recall how I used to self-educate myself about such process via legacy ‘HTML’ pages after spending many hours of my spare time just to figure out what is going on, and working in creating virtual spaces for myself over free-hosting like ‘GeoCities’ - remember?
I enjoyed using the ‘man-made’ style which means writing down the HTML code manually then testing on the legacy beloved Netscape Navigator which was my favourite browser druing the 1990s. You can categorise this under the concept of ‘Static Websites’ depending on HTML coding only.
Phase II
It started at the turning point of the new century by switching to PHP/MySQL duet which was fascinating for me; the idea of having ‘Dynamic Website’ was very interesting, so I used to check with software like PHPNuke, ArabPortal and others. The theme of this phase was checking free hosting that supports this duet in order to work with my stuff.
Phase III
Later on, phase three started when I discovered WordPress in 2004. I love it as my blogging software but since I did not have my domain till 2006 so I used to try it on local server till I got it self-hosted in this beloved blog.
In parallel, I started looking for a good ‘Content Management System (CMS)’ to operate my official website(s), so I ran into testing different Open Source software to choose among before officially launching the site.
My watch list included Drupal, Mambo and Joomla! in 2005/2006. I however found the later very promising so I picked the stable release at this time ‘J1.0’ to manage my website(s) since 2006 and have been impressed by the flexibility of the software. Consequently it was nice that ‘Nashiri’ and I-MAG Magazine’ where I publish articles also implementing Joomla! as the default CMS.
Happy Birthday
Joomla! turned 4 years old few days ago. I am neither developer nor software programmer yet it is like watching your baby grow up. Same goes too for WordPress as it is turning 6 years old. Hereby, I want to thank the core team developers for making life easier for end-users like us as both software are free under GPL license.
I however think that nothing is 100% free because developers spent time in creating, managing, developing this for us. Same goes for plugins, extensions add-ons, and themes developers.
Thank you guys! [ 
]
Tech Notes
I want to end this post with mentioning that despite I am enjoying the process of managing my websites + blog, it sometimes make me confused when I log into "Joomla" and wonder where the heck is the "WordPress" dashboard or vice-versa. [ 
] Anyway, this is the tax you pay for multi-tasking since nothing is free as I mentioned up. [ 
]
Nevertheless, I have one final note for end-users like me: keep in your mind the following regardless the CMS:
- BackUP, BackUP and BackUP your files and database;
- Download your copies of core/plugings/themes from the official websites only;
- Keep your software updated to the most recent version to avoid hacking. Laziness might kill your site!
“In any case, whenever technical progress opened a new window into the surrounding world, I felt the urge to look through this window, hoping to see something unexpected.” ~ [Bruno Rossi]
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- Happy 4th Birthday to Joomla! J! Community Blog
Related Sites
- Hicham Maged Website [English]
- Hicham Maged Website [Arabic]
- I-MAG Magazine [English]
- Nashiri E-Publishing House [Arabic]
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