UmmSqueakster

Ramadan Kareem all

A few Ramadan linkies for you all:

Ramadan Chronicles by Tariq Ramadan

Ramadan Reminders by Sh. Faraz

Ramadan Joy crafts

A Crafty Arab

Live Streaming from the Haram

Good to see everyone

Ahhhh, Rahma! My orange-kitteh living friend! Girl, so glad to know you're

well. Congrats on your trip...how amazing for you! This wasn't your Hajj, was it? I always imagine going to Mecca is like going to Rome for us practicing Catholics. So holy, you couldn't pick a better place to be.

I'll have to check out your tumblr some day...I need an orange kitteh fix.

Peace be with you.

Hajj is the major pilgrimage, this was the minor one, umrah. People usually perform the umrah with their hajj, but it can also be done outside of the hajj season as well. Instead of being a multiple day affair that includes the movements outside of Makkah, umrah is limited to the Haram (the mosque where the kaaba, the black cube is). You circle the kaaba 7 times, drink from the well of zam zam and then make 7 circuits between the mountains (hills, mounds really) of Safa and Marwa. It can all be done in a few hours or less, so the rest of the time is spent in prayer and contemplation, and visiting of other significant and historic sites. It was an amazing experience, one that I really can't describe. It's the place we face when we pray every day, and the place where the Prophet (saws) and his companions lived. I've tried to describe it, but I really can't, other than to say there are no words.

Pictures on flickr - http://www.flickr.com/photos/76868981@N04/

More orange kitty available upon request

People! I know! I guess it is about time for that once yearly check in. Nothing much has changed since last year. Or even 3 years ago. Married going on too many years. Husband has been a US citizen for 3 years. Squeaky is still the most adorable fat cat in the world. I still work too much.

The only real exciting thing is that I went on umrah a month ago. T didn't have the necessary time off, so I jumped through a loophole that allows under 45 female converts to make umrah without a mahram. It was an amazing experience, despite the troubles. About halfway through, on our last day in Makkah, I missed a step in the Haram and fell at 3 am. Being a stubborn midwesterner, I continued on my way and sat until fajr time. When I stood up, I realized I had made a big mistake. Hobbled back to the hotel (thank God we had one literally right outside the haram) and found one of the bazillion doctors in my tour group. Rather than waste the last day in Makkah in the hospital, we decided just to watch it and re-evaluate the next day. Next day, after having half a dozen doctors poke at it, the verdict was that it couldn't be broken, since I was walking around without screaming in pain.

Fast foward to home, I go to the doctor just to be on the safe side. Um yeah, I walked all over Medina on a broken foot :/ I got a walking cast last week and alhamdulilah it was literally the best day of my life. You don't realize how wonderful it is to be able to get around until you can't.

The other downer part of my adventure was that the Saudis almost didn't let me go home since I didn't have a mahram with me. Um yeah no, you give me a visa, you let me in, now you tell the airline to issue me my freakin tickets and let me go home! I was rather undignified and reduced myself to a tearful mess at the airport. In my defense, it was 4 am, I hadn't slept in 24 hours and they pulled me out of line without letting me grab anyone from my tour group for help. Next time, I'll make sure to bring a mahram.

But despite it all, I really really miss Makkah and Medina. I wouldn't ever want to live there, but there was just so much sakina in the air in the 2 mosques that I could sit there forever.

I haven't been blogging much - no time or energy after work - but I do have a tumblr. Been doing short little things on umrah, in case anyone is interested - http://umms.tumblr.com/tagged/umrah

One of the highlights of the trip was being invited to dinner at Sh. Abdullah bin Bayyah's house. Alas, it was late at night by the time he started to talk, and my foot was killing me (having broken it earlier that day). But alhamdulilah, the talk is on youtube - at 42 seconds in, there's a head in a hot pink hijab that may or may not be UmmS.

Let's see, what else? I took a sewing class, and once my foot is better, I plan on attempting to make some costumes. Star Wars and Doctor Who. Still a geek at heart. And I've been doing cross stitch

And finally, it wouldn't be a complete post unless I put up a picture of my cat. Here she is trying to steal my dates, despite the fact she knows she doesn't like them.

And, from yesterday, sitting on clean laundry and my star wars novel. She has good taste

For the new muslims in the house, check out the last few pages of the Muslims thread for some free Ramadan courses. Fasting isn't just abstaining from food and drink during daylight - there's the fiqh (rules) of it, and the inner dimensions to consider as well. In particular, check out the Qibla/Sunnipath FREE Living Ramadan course. You can also look at posts tagged Ramadan on my blog for lectures and good reads on my blog.

As LP suggested, it's absolutely essential to prepare pre-ramadan. Especially in the summer months, fasting can run you over if you don't train first. Doing mini fasts, first through lunch, then to 1 pm, then 2 pm, until you work yourself up to sunset is a great way to train your body. If you dive in head first, your body and your attitude will suffer. And being crabby, mean and nasty because you're hungry and your head hurts kind of negates the purpose of fasting:

Some people expect very elaborate iftars (meals to break the fast), and will expect huge suhoors (meals before the fast). Some must absolutely have a certain dish or Ramadan just isn't right. But as Mithra said, no need to go crazy. If you spend 5 hours each day preparing fancy iftars, then it cuts into time for ibadah (worship). These last few years, I've emphasized fresh, raw veggies and hearty stews. That's the first and biggest course, so we make sure that we fill up on healthy food and not stuffing our stomach with 2000 calories of #######. Do make sure there is meat on the table. The first ifar I made (the 2nd day after AbuS had arrived in the US back in 2005), I made a typical iftar for me, a light soup and a tuna melt. AbuS looked at it with the saddest look on his face and was like, but where's the meal? I find, in general, that meat is a huge part of the Ramadan culture. As I joke every year, I'm a vegetarian 11 months out of the year, but in Ramadan, I'd starve if I couldn't eat meat (since every iftar we go to only has a wimpy salad for a vegetarian option).

One thing to do is to look for email lists for the local muslim community, to see if there are community iftars. Several of our local masjids have iftars throughout the month. Some are sponsored by community members (feeding fasting people is charity, so a lot of people look to do that this month), and some are fundraisers. It's a great way to get to know the local community and meet people. If one isn't arab/pakistani/indian/malaysian/african/insert majority ethnicity here, it can be a little intimidating and you may feel a bit like an outsider - but just put a huge smile on your face, offer to help set up and clean up, and try to strike up conversations and inshaAllah you'll make some friends too

Free free free course on Ramadan!

In light of the upcoming blessed month of Ramadan, Qibla for the Islamic Sciences is excited to offer an unprecedented online learning experience: Living Ramadan, a new kind of online course tailored specifically for those who want to get the best of Ramadan by learning the most practical and important points of the month under the guidance of our teachers Shaykh Hamza Karamali, Shaykh Qays Arthur, Shaykh Sohail Hanif and Shaykh Farid Dingle.

A self-paced course without exams, Living Ramadan is for those who want to master the worship and spirit of the month. It offers not just the essential knowledge of the rules of Ramadan but also addresses specific questions that are most important to our students, such as moon-sighting and Tarawih, while providing motivation with new daily content throughout Ramadan. Besides the downloadable lessons, students will also have access to live sessions.

Living Ramadan will give you lifetime access to teachers, audio and video content, as well as an expanding online community of students who gather to discuss, ask questions, and share experiences related to the course topic on the Living Ramadan Community Forum.

Due to the launch of Qibla's new website, we are offering this $60 course as a free gift to our students and online community.

Hurry up and register before Living Ramadan's official launch on Sunday, July 9th.

Further benefits:

No registration deadline;Indefinite access to recorded sessions

Get immediate questions answered before, during, and after Ramadan

Understand how to maximize your Ramadan experience with spirtual acts of devotion

Understand rules related to the validity of your fasts, I'itikaf, tarawih and almsgiving

Lifetime access to self-assessment activities

Lifetime access to Q/A services

Lifetime access to teachers, class materials, downloadable lessons & live sessions

Free fiqh of fasting courses for sisters from the Rahmah Foundation:

• Hanafi Fiqh
• Shafi'i Fiqh
• Maliki Fiqh

Plus, the inner dimensions of fasting.

I went digging around in old threads yesterday looking for something and OMgoodness, the memories. All those people, all the waits, all the pining, all the drama. Good times were had by all amidst the cat fights

Even beyond the nitty gritty of a court battle, doesn't the non custodial parent have to agree for a minor to be taken out of a country? That wouldn't happen if the dispute was bitter.

A little over a month until Ramadan. Friendly reminder to start fasting a few days now so you don't feel like a truck ran you over once you get to Ramadan.

Fiqh of fasting and a link to motivational material posted yesterday on my blog.

More Imam Zaid awesomeness

http://sheikhynotes.blogspot.com/2011/06/imam-zaid-shakir_12.html

Look, I'm going to lay this out for you:

1. You do not have a good chance of getting a visa from Casa anyways. They are being very very hard and denying a lot of petitions.

2. If you continue with the K1 while married, you will be DENIED and probably BANNED FOR LIFE!

Serious. STOP.

Also, get your wife on here, and we'll explain it to her if you don't understand.

If you don't want to get a visa, do what you are already doing.

I think the biggest similarities between Indian and Egyptian foods are they're both non american, non european cuisines. Yup, that's about it ;-)

I've told the story a million times, but I'll tell it again. AbuS came at the start of Ramadan 2005. We went to an iftar hosted by the pakistani community, and AbuS gobbled down a plate of food without thinking. 15 minutes later, he came up to me, looking like he was going to die, and said he needed to go home right that very instant. Yeah, the food did not sit well with his bland, egyptian stomach.

I tend to think of Indian food as very flavorful, very exciting, with lots of obvious spices. Egyptian food is more bland and is all about the carbs. And lots and lots of meat if you can afford it. Not a lot of dishes made in sauces.

One dish that I do still make on occasion are stuffed grape leaves, although I healthify even that. I pulled a recipe from Vegetarian Dishes from Across the Middle East that had more vegetables in the stuffing, and make it with brown rice. The mahshy (stuffed vegetables) is what AbuS misses the most. All the Egyptian ladies in the community think I can't cook, because every Ramadan he gets so excited when they have mahshy at an iftar. Bah!

This site has some decent recipes - http://members.cox.n...a/Recipnew.html

That is an excellent website When I want to cook Egyptian, that's where I turn first.

Otherwise, if AbuS wants some Egyptian food, he skypes his mom and has her dictate the recipe to him.

But for the most part, we don't eat a lot of Egyptian food. We actually eat a lot of Indian, because I find it easier to healthify by reducing the ghee, upping the veggies and making whole wheat chapati. It's kind of hard to do that with Egyptian food. It took him a few years to build up a spice tolerance, but now he drowns everything in hot sauce and can eat the pakistani iftar fare with gusto.

Here are a few, inauthentic "egyptian" healthied recipes we've done recently:

http://umms.wordpress.com/2011/05/23/food-matters-monday-11/

http://umms.wordpress.com/2011/03/21/food-matters-monday-7/

I used to be pretty good at bechamel, but I haven't made it in years. My other, favorite Egyptian dish we never eat is koshari - carbs on top of carbs on top of carbs, topped with fried onions and hot sauce. I'm drooling just thinking about it. Alas, I've never been able to make it as good as they do in Cairo.

Off topic, but just wanted to say you are very adorable! Congrats on your ongoing relationship success!

Thanks! No one can resist the adorableness that is the Squeaky. AbuS does cat dawah - invites his cat hating friends over and just watches them melt when Miss. S. introduces herself

Don't mind me, I'm just going to continue to talk to myself here.

Awesome awesome khutbah by Imam Zaid.

http://sheikhynotes.blogspot.com/2011/06/imam-zaid-shakir.html

I have been muslima for a few years. I dont know MENA culture. I don't know why one person gets to make the judgement for a couple who wants to marry. How can he know if it will be good marriage or not? Im just saying.

Assalamu alaikum,

While it sucks for ya'll who are new to this, this isn't new to the COs. They have more than a decade of experience in the internet sprung marriage based visa game and have seen literally thousands of these applications come across their desks. And unfortunately, they've seen a lot of fraud. We don't have any statistics available to us, but I'm sure they have some idea of the number of marriages that have failed, and whether or not couples with a large age gap fail at a higher rate than those that are closer in age. And they use that hindsight and the interviews they have every day to develop their fraud-o-meter.

That isn't to say that these kinds of relationships aren't genuine, or that they won't work out. It will just take more to prove that it is genuine. And honestly, at this date and after so many years of so many MENA men conning american women, I don't know what to do for that beyond visit several times. But even that isn't a fool proof method.

Rather depression, honestly, but that's the reality :/

Question on behalf of an acquaintance:

US Citizen is planning to marry an Egyptian. The Egyptian isn't sure she actually wants to live in the US. US citizen suggests that she come over on a fiance visa, they get married and decide if they want to live here or move elsewhere.

If they decide to live here, how could the Egyptian bring her 1 year old child over at that point? I seem to remember there is a derivative visa that an immigrant can use, but I would guess that is only at the time of the mother's visa petition. So it would be this - http://www.visajourney.com/content/child ? How long would that process take? And if the mother is here in the US, who would be in charge of the paperwork back in Egypt?

Thanks.

It has been narrated that the Messenger of Allah said:

“There are five nights on which dua is not rejected: the first night of Rajab, the fifteenth night of Sha’ban, Thursday night, the night before `Eid al-Fitr and the night before Eid al-Nahr (al-Adha).”

-As-Suyuti

Full article bouncing around the interwebs. Find it here.

Youssef and I are currently at the beginning of the process to adopt his nephew (new immigration headache -why oh why?!) I'm happy to say we've been married 5 years and 2 months - together for 6 1/2 years.

mashaAllah! Now I'm jealous. You'll have 3 kids and I still have none And congratulations on finding your dream job (even if it is in wisconsin )

AbuS and I were thinking of swinging through western wisconsin, if there is ever a week this summer where I'm not working 80 hours. Know anyone we could visit?

Lotsa awesome free stuff coming out today. I'll just continue to talk to myself:

http://www.mishkatmedia.com/travellinglight/broadcast/webinar/programme.html

This series of FREE online webinars will focus on Imam al-Ghazali's The Revival of the Religious Sciences (Ihya 'Ulum al-Din) and other related topics.

The webinars will be your chance to engage deeper with this wonderfully rich spiritual resource, and to ask further questions from the teachers who have contributed to the Travelling Light series.

The online broadcasts will take place each month for the next year inshaAllah. They will feature further in-depth discussion of the chosen topic for the month, and participants will be able to submit questions by email. Details of how to submit questions are included in the webinar information sent to registered participants.

Taking part in the webinars is FREE but to get the most out of them, participants are expected to have read the relevant text or listened to the original Travelling Light lesson on it.

The sessions coming up are:

Shaykh Seraj Hendricks :: Jewels from the Mawlid of Imam al-Barzanji

Sunday 12 June - 12pm PST/3pm EST/10pm GMT

More information about and recordings of the Barzanji Mawlid are available here and here.

Shaykh Seraj Hendricks :: The Courtesies of Earning a Living

Sunday 10 July - 12pm PST/3pm EST/10pm GMT

Shaykh Seraj's original lesson on this text is available as an MP3 or on DVD.

Future sessions will by led by Shaykh Seraj, Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad and Ustadh Yahya Rhodus. They will discuss and take questions on the other books covered in the series so far.

Register here for the the latest updates and programme information to benefit from this exciting series!

Awesome new resource out today

http://almadinainstitute.org/audio/

Sadly I do not think they can be downloaded, which means they can't go on my ipod

*waves*

Now I have Destinys Child Survivors running through my head.

I'm a survivor (what),

I'm not gonna give up (what),

I'm not gon' stop (what),

I'm gonna work harder (what),

I'm a survivor (what),

I'm gonna make it (what),

I will survive (what),

Keep on survivin' (what),

I'm a survivor (what),

I'm not gonna give up (what),

I'm not gon' stop (what),

I'm gonna work harder (what),

I'm a survivor (what),

I'm gonna make it (what),

I will survive (what),

Keep on survivin' (what).

It's almost Rajab! That means only 8 weeks to Ramadan. Best to start fasting a day or 2 per week now, cuz you don't want to jump into the deep end of the pool without warming up first, especially in summer.

on the recommendation to fast mondays and thursdays

So AbuS saw me on VJ recently and was like, you still read that?? Oh wait, are we the longest married MENA couple?

Anyone here from 05 and before? Still hacking it through day by day and surviving?

AbuS and UmmS still married, going on 5 and 3/4 years here in the US (I feel like I'm 5 and have to specify how many months it is until my next birthday, cuz gosh darn it, every little bit is important!). Still residing in the Twin Cities. Still no kids. Still cat parents to the fabulous feline Squeaky.

AbuS frequently talks about going back to Egypt, forming a political party, and running for president. I'd just like to make it through the end of the year. I have several trials coming up, and it looks like I'll be working crazy long hours until January. Which means, alas, no hajj for us next year. But inshaAllah next year

Can you both meet in a 3rd country? It is a red flag to marry in a first meeting. I agree, you should both plan a trip to meet somewhere else PRIOR of taking the plunge.

Good luck to you and congratulations!

I concur. Saudis and expats in Saudia frequently visit Bahrain and the UAE over the weekend or holidays. I would guess he will have some time off in Ramadan and could meet you in another gulf country.

While these experiences are new to each new member, they are unfortunately not new to the consulate in Cairo. They've seen many many many marriage based visas come through, and have seen lots of fraud. Marrying on the first meeting is one of the big ol red flags for fraud. Meeting more than once is definitely a big plus, not only for the consulate, but also for your relationship. Meeting more than once, and in different settings will help you to know him better.

But even then, those vacations don't really allow you to know your potential spouse fully. I was just saying to AbuS the other day how, although we knew each other online for 4 years before he came, I only really got to know him once we were actually living together. We spent a bazillion hours talking to each other online, met in person 3 times, and even had my parents and siblings over to Egypt to meet his family. But not until I lived with him 24/7 did I actually really know him.

Not to rain on your parade, just to be a bit of a wet blanket right off the bat, since I'm sure you'll get lots of it here. We're a battle hardened group of people who've seen it all.

Best of luck to you I do hope yours is a fairy tale. We don't see too many of those here. As I frequently say, there is no happily ever after in a visa journey. There is only omGosh this is so freakin hard during the wait for the visa, and omGosh, this is even harder once they arrive. There are happy endings, but they take lots of work for the most part.