This is a line in one of my favourite chapters of The Quran, surah Inshirah.
SURAH 94: AL SHARH or AL INSHIRAH (The Expansion of the Breast).
 In the name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful
 1 Have we not expanded your breast?
2 And removed from you your burden
3 Which galled your back?
4 And raised high the [...]

Everyone should watch a movie in a cramped airline seat, with a six or four inch monitor, however big it is, and with lousy ear plugs. That way, they can really tell if a movie is any good.
I always tend to watch movies after the hype has died down somewhat.
I wasn’t very curious about Avatar. [...]

Just found out that the illustrator of one of my books, Coming to Canada/A New Life  died.
Never met her, but her work really moved me.
She was an Iranian immigrant, came to Canada and lived here with her beloved husband for a while. He was an architect and died in a tragic accident a while ago. [...]

I had an interesting exchange on the internet the other day, on that politics forum that I frequent.
Basically this elderly man from Winnipeg suggested that Muslim women wear hijab basically to stand out. To distinguish themselves, and if all the women in Canada started wearing the hijab, then we would instead go bare-headed.
I’m not sure [...]

I’m starting to prepare for the pilgrimage to Mecca this year. I’ve made my intention to go in November and join the over two million pilgrims from all over the world to perform the sacred rites that Abraham and his wife Hagar first inspired.
It’s based on the Quranic and Biblical story of the sacrifice, where, [...]

Well I guess I must be getting more tech savvy because I did indeed figure out how to unhide my spider solitaire and freecell.
And since I’d done my work, I was itching for something to do, and I did go in and ‘unhide’ them.
Well, I was too embarrassed to blog about it, but tonight, when [...]

And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again  at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
This is the first half of the third stanza of Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘If’. And I’ve always thought that if gambling or drinking were at all allowed in Islam, I’d be addicted to [...]

I’m going to be interviewed on Shelagh Rogers radio show The Next Chapter tomorrow. It’s on CBC, which stands for Canadian Broadcasting Company and is national.
It’s not the first time I’ve been on her show.
But the first time was a different show. Years ago, when she was host of Sounds like Canada she was doing a piece [...]

twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your live to,
broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:
This stanza of the poem If by Rudyard Kipling, always reminds me of the Prophet (peace be upon him)
Sometimes I wonder what he would say if he saw what people do [...]

I admit I approached my education in a very strange way. I decided to go to college (community college) before going to university.
I went two years to Seneca college and studied, of all things, biology and chemistry. Eventually graduating as a biological chemical technician, not even a technologist, for goodness sakes.
I wonder if it wasn’t [...]