Helping Gaza: From baby steps to further actions
To members of What Is Islam? What does it teach? An invitation to Islam.
Asalaamalaikum,
One of my friends posted this and I wanted to share it with you guys. I hope this helps you guys. Remember that everything has to start off at baby steps and then lead into other things. Use these steps to build a foundation inshAllah.
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As many of you know, this past week, Israel has been bombing Gaza and has now moved in with troops. I've spoken with numerous people who want to help, who want to make it end, but are frustrated because as much as they want to do, they can't do anything to do what we all want - to stop the massacre.
Yet even if you can't stop what is happening, does that mean we abandon doing anything we can to help out? Do we simply turn our heads and say, "Well, there are wars everywhere, there's people dying everywhere, I can't do anything."
If you believe that, then you're deluding yourself for two reasons:
1. You Have More Power to Affect the Situation Than You Think: Although you cannot stop the situation, there are other ways you can provide help, help that reaches those people directly. You simply have to either learn or recognize how.
2. Something is Better than Nothing: A common mistake people make is that when they cannot accomplish something 100% to satisfaction, they abandon trying to accomplish that goal even partially. That's a huge huge mistake. The 10% - 15% of help you can provide will insha'Allah be magnified in ways you don't even realize.
So let's get to it - what can you do? MuslimMatters.org has created a post located here:
Actions You Can Do to Help the People of Gaza
This post is a one-stop shopping area for all the things you can do in 60 - 90 minutes. They include:
Du'aas you can make to Allah subhaanahu wa ta'aala for the brothers and sisters of Gaza.
Links to all relief organizations you can donate to
A Special Facebook group dedicated to DIGG'ing stories that need to get out that the mass media ignores (we've found DIGG to be useful in spreading news to 100s of thousands of people)
A How-To of how to call the people of Gaza and offer them support!
…And a whole bunch more, if you want to write congressman, sign petitions, write letters to the editor with talking points listed.
Don't wait to do it - do it now, and spread it out to anyone you know (that's another thing you can do) so that they too can learn what they can do, and insha'Allah, as an Ummah, if we build up enough resources and help, we can bring an end to this crisis and bring help to our brothers and sisters.
If you want to see change, it starts with you - here it is again:
Actions You Can Do to Help the People of Gaza
A Final Note
One thing that needs to be made clear - as much blame as we can put on the Zionist Israelis, or the US government, or the West, or corrupt Muslim governments that stand idly by, realize very clearly that nothing can harm us unless Allah allows it, and nothing can benefit us, unless Allah allows it.
If Allah has given our enemies authority and power over us, it means that as a community, our own sins, our own evil, our own heedlessness of our Lord and Creator whom we are to obey is the #1 reason and root cause for this entire mess.
I know, I know, a lot of you will say, what about technology, what about education, what about political involvement, what about this and that? I say to you, how can you be successful in raising yourself up in any fashion when your Creator, who controls everything, is disappointed with you?
Open up the Qur'aan, and read in Surat al-Baqarah about what happened to the Children of Israel, those whom Allah allowed to escape with Musa. They were the chosen people, but even after being saved, even after seeing all the miracles of Musa, they still disobeyed, and Allah punished them. And after the punishment, they sought forgiveness, and then after a while they sinned again, and were punished, and repented, and then they were given relief again.
These stories are not just to criticize the believers of Bani Israel for their own mistakes, no - it's also a reminder which can be encapsulated in a famous adage I'm sure you've all heard of - "Those Who Fail to Learn History are Doomed to Repeat It."
How bad do things have to become for Muslims worldwide before we return ourselves back to Allah subhaanahu wa ta'aala, return back to the primary purpose of our creation, to worship Him? To obey Him? Should we wait til the oppression, repression, and suppression of Muslims becomes a local phenomenon, or can we finally say, "Enough already, I'm going to change myself, not only for myself, but for the greater good of my ummah."
This is the first step of what you can do for the long-term to prevent genocides, rape camps, oppression, and petty 3rd-world dictator governments. After that, we can look at all the other means (media, education, technology, etc).
Remember, change starts with you.
Showing posts with label News. Show all posts
Showing posts with label News. Show all posts
Monday, January 5, 2009
The 'first true scientist'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7810846.stm
The 'first true scientist'
By Professor Jim Al-Khalili
University of Surrey
Artist's impression of al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham (BBC)
An artist's impression of al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham
Isaac Newton is, as most will agree, the greatest physicist of all time.
At the very least, he is the undisputed father of modern optics, or so we are told at school where our textbooks abound with his famous experiments with lenses and prisms, his study of the nature of light and its reflection, and the refraction and decomposition of light into the colours of the rainbow.
Yet, the truth is rather greyer; and I feel it important to point out that, certainly in the field of optics, Newton himself stood on the shoulders of a giant who lived 700 years earlier.
For, without doubt, another great physicist, who is worthy of ranking up alongside Newton, is a scientist born in AD 965 in what is now Iraq who went by the name of al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham.
Most people in the West will never have even heard of him.
As a physicist myself, I am quite in awe of this man's contribution to my field, but I was fortunate enough to have recently been given the opportunity to dig a little into his life and work through my recent filming of a three-part BBC Four series on medieval Islamic scientists.
Modern methods
Popular accounts of the history of science typically suggest that no major scientific advances took place in between the ancient Greeks and the European Renaissance.
But just because Western Europe languished in the Dark Ages, does not mean there was stagnation elsewhere. Indeed, the period between the 9th and 13th Centuries marked the Golden Age of Arabic science.
Great advances were made in mathematics, astronomy, medicine, physics, chemistry and philosophy. Among the many geniuses of that period Ibn al-Haytham stands taller than all the others.
Prism (BBC)
Ibn-al Haytham conducted early investigations into light
Ibn al-Haytham is regarded as the father of the modern scientific method.
As commonly defined, this is the approach to investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge, based on the gathering of data through observation and measurement, followed by the formulation and testing of hypotheses to explain the data.
This is how we do science today and is why I put my trust in the advances that have been made in science.
But it is often still claimed that the modern scientific method was not established until the early 17th Century by Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes.
There is no doubt in my mind, however, that Ibn al-Haytham arrived there first.
In fact, with his emphasis on experimental data and reproducibility of results, he is often referred to as the "world's first true scientist".
Understanding light
He was the first scientist to give a correct account of how we see objects.
Jim Al-Khalili (BBC)
It is incredible that we are only now uncovering the debt that today's physicists owe to an Arab who lived 1,000 years ago
Prof Jim Al-Khalili
He proved experimentally, for instance, that the so-called emission theory (which stated that light from our eyes shines upon the objects we see), which was believed by great thinkers such as Plato, Euclid and Ptolemy, was wrong and established the modern idea that we see because light enters our eyes.
What he also did that no other scientist had tried before was to use mathematics to describe and prove this process.
So he can be regarded as the very first theoretical physicist, too.
He is perhaps best known for his invention of the pinhole camera and should be credited with the discovery of the laws of refraction.
He also carried out the first experiments on the dispersion of light into its constituent colours and studied shadows, rainbows and eclipses; and by observing the way sunlight diffracted through the atmosphere, he was able to work out a rather good estimate for the height of the atmosphere, which he found to be around 100km.
Enforced study
In common with many modern scholars, Ibn-al Haytham badly needed the time and isolation to focus on writing his many treatises, including his great work on optics.
An unwelcome opportunity was granted him, however, when he was imprisoned in Egypt between 1011 and 1021, having failed a task set him by a caliph in Cairo to help solve the problem of regulating the flooding of the Nile.
While still in Basra, Ibn al-Haytham had claimed that the Nile's autumn flood waters could be held by a system of dykes and canals, thereby preserved as reservoirs until the summer's droughts.
But on arrival in Cairo, he soon realised that his scheme was utterly impractical from an engineering perspective.
Yet rather than admit his mistake to the dangerous and murderous caliph, Ibn-al Haytham instead decided to feign madness as a way to escape punishment.
This promptly led to him being placed under house arrest, thereby granting him 10 years of seclusion in which to work.
Planetary motion
He was only released after the caliph's death. He returned to Iraq where he composed a further 100 works on a range of subjects in physics and mathematics.
While travelling through the Middle East during my filming, I interviewed an expert in Alexandria who showed me recently discovered work by Ibn al-Haytham on astronomy.
It seems he had developed what is called celestial mechanics, explaining the orbits of the planets, which was to lead to the eventual work of Europeans like Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton.
It is incredible that we are only now uncovering the debt that today's physicists owe to an Arab who lived 1,000 years ago.
Professor Jim Al-Khalili presents Science and Islam on BBC Four at 2100GMT on Monday 5, 12 & 19 January
The 'first true scientist'
By Professor Jim Al-Khalili
University of Surrey
Artist's impression of al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham (BBC)
An artist's impression of al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham
Isaac Newton is, as most will agree, the greatest physicist of all time.
At the very least, he is the undisputed father of modern optics, or so we are told at school where our textbooks abound with his famous experiments with lenses and prisms, his study of the nature of light and its reflection, and the refraction and decomposition of light into the colours of the rainbow.
Yet, the truth is rather greyer; and I feel it important to point out that, certainly in the field of optics, Newton himself stood on the shoulders of a giant who lived 700 years earlier.
For, without doubt, another great physicist, who is worthy of ranking up alongside Newton, is a scientist born in AD 965 in what is now Iraq who went by the name of al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham.
Most people in the West will never have even heard of him.
As a physicist myself, I am quite in awe of this man's contribution to my field, but I was fortunate enough to have recently been given the opportunity to dig a little into his life and work through my recent filming of a three-part BBC Four series on medieval Islamic scientists.
Modern methods
Popular accounts of the history of science typically suggest that no major scientific advances took place in between the ancient Greeks and the European Renaissance.
But just because Western Europe languished in the Dark Ages, does not mean there was stagnation elsewhere. Indeed, the period between the 9th and 13th Centuries marked the Golden Age of Arabic science.
Great advances were made in mathematics, astronomy, medicine, physics, chemistry and philosophy. Among the many geniuses of that period Ibn al-Haytham stands taller than all the others.
Prism (BBC)
Ibn-al Haytham conducted early investigations into light
Ibn al-Haytham is regarded as the father of the modern scientific method.
As commonly defined, this is the approach to investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge, based on the gathering of data through observation and measurement, followed by the formulation and testing of hypotheses to explain the data.
This is how we do science today and is why I put my trust in the advances that have been made in science.
But it is often still claimed that the modern scientific method was not established until the early 17th Century by Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes.
There is no doubt in my mind, however, that Ibn al-Haytham arrived there first.
In fact, with his emphasis on experimental data and reproducibility of results, he is often referred to as the "world's first true scientist".
Understanding light
He was the first scientist to give a correct account of how we see objects.
Jim Al-Khalili (BBC)
It is incredible that we are only now uncovering the debt that today's physicists owe to an Arab who lived 1,000 years ago
Prof Jim Al-Khalili
He proved experimentally, for instance, that the so-called emission theory (which stated that light from our eyes shines upon the objects we see), which was believed by great thinkers such as Plato, Euclid and Ptolemy, was wrong and established the modern idea that we see because light enters our eyes.
What he also did that no other scientist had tried before was to use mathematics to describe and prove this process.
So he can be regarded as the very first theoretical physicist, too.
He is perhaps best known for his invention of the pinhole camera and should be credited with the discovery of the laws of refraction.
He also carried out the first experiments on the dispersion of light into its constituent colours and studied shadows, rainbows and eclipses; and by observing the way sunlight diffracted through the atmosphere, he was able to work out a rather good estimate for the height of the atmosphere, which he found to be around 100km.
Enforced study
In common with many modern scholars, Ibn-al Haytham badly needed the time and isolation to focus on writing his many treatises, including his great work on optics.
An unwelcome opportunity was granted him, however, when he was imprisoned in Egypt between 1011 and 1021, having failed a task set him by a caliph in Cairo to help solve the problem of regulating the flooding of the Nile.
While still in Basra, Ibn al-Haytham had claimed that the Nile's autumn flood waters could be held by a system of dykes and canals, thereby preserved as reservoirs until the summer's droughts.
But on arrival in Cairo, he soon realised that his scheme was utterly impractical from an engineering perspective.
Yet rather than admit his mistake to the dangerous and murderous caliph, Ibn-al Haytham instead decided to feign madness as a way to escape punishment.
This promptly led to him being placed under house arrest, thereby granting him 10 years of seclusion in which to work.
Planetary motion
He was only released after the caliph's death. He returned to Iraq where he composed a further 100 works on a range of subjects in physics and mathematics.
While travelling through the Middle East during my filming, I interviewed an expert in Alexandria who showed me recently discovered work by Ibn al-Haytham on astronomy.
It seems he had developed what is called celestial mechanics, explaining the orbits of the planets, which was to lead to the eventual work of Europeans like Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton.
It is incredible that we are only now uncovering the debt that today's physicists owe to an Arab who lived 1,000 years ago.
Professor Jim Al-Khalili presents Science and Islam on BBC Four at 2100GMT on Monday 5, 12 & 19 January
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