The DLR, as photograhed by The Evening Standard, when it was first launched in 2008

Yesterday I decided to skip the daily frustration and hassle of buses. I opted for the alternative

to London public bus inconvenience – the underground. A few tube and DLR stops later, I returned unscathed, and with a whole 30minutes to spare! Highlight of the journey? Woman sitting next to me on the DLR was reading – reading – a copy of the English dictionary. She was shaking her head, not happy with the definition of “already”, brandished a pencil and started making notes.

If tube fares weren’t so expensive I’d be on it everyday. But alas….

You can now get Mobile Holy Qur'an for iPad from zoosware

1. I use the free www.zoosware.com Mobile Holy Quran app on my iPhone that lets me download sura by sura, and include recitations by either Sheikh Ghamdi or Sheikh Husairy, or neither. This app is built specifically for the smaller mobile screen, allowing space for each ayat only. Recitation is synced with each ayat as it appears and you can read the Yusuf Ali English translation as you go along. You can choose to repeat ayat by ayat with their controls. Being Malay, I like that it also offers Malay translation! It also has ‘Notes’ that allows you to add your own notes for each ayat.

Zoosware have apps for everything – iPhones, Android phones, iPads, Palm Webos, as well as for non-mobile PCs and Macs. You can choose to donate to the company. I’ve never used it but their iPad Quran app looks fantastic. Do click on the image to check it out for yourself.

2. Paid apps – There are a lot of other Quran apps available, and if you search ‘Quran’, the iPhone apps store comes up with:

a. Quran Reader by Batoul Apps – £1.79 (as far as I can see the interface is more elaborate than my free zoosware ap)

b. YaSeen by Condetsoft – £1.19

c. Quran Urdu by Shaheen Soft – £1.19

d. Quran: Reading Plan for non-Muslims by Ian Vink – £1.19

e. AIMulk – The Sovereignty by Condetsoft – £1.19 (for the surah al-Mulk)

3. You can download the freeware Quran Cast Podcast Widget by Khaled Mohammad straight to your desktop/dashboard. I find it particularly useful as it’s handy if you want specific sura recitations and not the entire Qur’an. For some reason, though, the list of suras is reversed, so you have to scroll all the way down for Al-fateha. This is a podcast that you can subscribe to.

I like this Electronic Quran widget for Mac OS X Dashboard

4. A more complete widget for your dashboard is the freeware Electronic Quran by Mohammad Umairi. It offers an endless list of reciters and you can pause it as well. My only grouse about it is that its scroll doesn’t work and you have to click on the arrows to move up and down the lists.

Give some of them a try and stick with the ones that suit you best! Ramadhan is the month of the Holy Qur’an – read, listen, think and in sha’ Allah act accordingly. Thank you to all the developers for your generosity and work. Blessings of the good month from my family to yours!

I got my (Tunisian) dates for Iftaar!

I have just realised that I have different sets of fajr, imsaak, iftaar and prayer times for Derby for Ramadhan 1431. The London Central Mosque website is quite possibly in meltdown due to high traffic and I haven’t been able to access it this evening. Will try ringing the nearest mosque here to get prayer times for Ramadhan. Makes me ask myself why I didn’t bag the prayer times I was reading at PAK Foods last week! I don’t remember it being quite this difficult last year. Must remember to start coordinating these things MUCH sooner for next Ramadhan in sha’ Allah!

Last year I had the privilege of interviewing Radio Ramadhan Glasgow about their broadcast for Ramadhan and I’m very happy to see that Radio Ramadhan is still on air. Radio Ramadhan covers a few major cities around the country so check out their website for all details. I could get to their Edinburgh, Glasgow and Luton pages but not the Birmingham one. Since Birmingham is the nearest city to me I’ll keep on trying! Would be nice to hear some ramadhan radio at 2am! I also had the privilege of speaking with the Islamic Relief people last Ramadhan about their Ramadhan campaigns and it’s on again this year. Islamic Relief was recently named runner-up at the The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales’ charity finance award. Islamic Relief do very good work and they’re an incredibly well-run organisation. Do help with their Ramadhan campaign any way you can.

It’s been many years since I’ve spent Ramadhan with family. This year is the same. My parents are at Umrah and may Allah keep them well. My mother, who is the most stubborn woman on earth, was left dehydrated and sick when they were at Ramadhan Umrah last year but insists that this year she’ll be fine “except for her dodgy knee”. Well mum and dad, God keep you both well and Ramadhan Kareem!

Don't fuel the oppression - boycott Israeli products

In a week we welcome the holy month of Ramadhan, God Willing. Following the practice of our Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon Him) most Muslims break our fast with dates and water. For now, a simple reminder – Don’t break your fast with Israeli dates. For more information, visit the Check the Label website. The month of Ramadhan is also the good month when the first verses of the Holy Qur’an were revealed to the Prophet (pbuh). Take this opportunity, if you can, to read as much of the Qur’an . It is difficult to complete the reading of the book in a month, but as they say – practice makes perfect. I’m looking forward to Ramadhan. May Allah bless you and family in the coming good month! Ramadhan Kareem!

4 young Muslim girls leading the crowd chanting "Free free Palestine Israil terrorist"

moving out of London in late 2008 I had not participated in any public demonstrations or protests and was glad to be back amidst the crowds. As the approximately 20,000 protesters descended upon High St Ken I was struck by two observations. Firstly by how many young teenaged Muslims were in the crowd. Perhaps I never particularly noticed from past demonstrations the sheer numbers of such young protesters. Perhaps it is specifically the Free Gaza protests that have attracted so many young protesters who may have followed the unfolding of the massacre online. I don’t know the answers. I re-watched the 3-minute video I took just before the 20,000 crowd gathered round and was again struck by the boldness and forwardness of young Muslim girls running up the stage, taking hold of the microphone and leading the early-gathered crowds in anti-Israeli chants. It could well be just the difference in physical layout -  the last time I attended a mass protest it ended in Trafalgar Square where there is no chance of random protesters running onto the stage and grabbing the microphone. Regardless of the physical or logistic design of these protests, it was clear to me that there really has been an upswell of increasing popular support.

I support the Free Gaza movement and am uplifted by the increasing international attention, with the spotlight on the Israeli IDF’s massacre of civilians on the Mavi Marmara. The question of Palestine has long been very complicatedly entangled with religion and politics. For me it is not fundamentally a question of Jews against Muslims. Growing up, though, I was fed on anti-Jewish prejudice and whenever any matters on Palestine and Israel popped up in the news on tele I would be reminded of how oppressive the Jews are and that they are not to be trusted, and that we as Muslims will prevail and Palestine will be rightfully returned to the Palestinians. The Palestinian cause became a Muslim one. So it was not surprising to me to stand amidst the 20,000 crowd on June 5th, them shouting ‘Takbir’ ever so often. It was no surprise, (and I don’t want to make this blog post into a study of The Question of Palestine and Muslims and Jews), but it is alarming if our young Muslim men and women in the crowd are not led to see that if truly international and popular mass support is to be rightly offered in support of the freeing of Gaza and a peaceful solution to the question of Palestine, we have to rise above brandishing the cause as simply Muslims vs Jews, and defend the rights of Palestinians not only because they are fellow Muslims but because it is the socially just thing to do.

In a recent YouGov poll released 7th June 2010 (but conducted late May 2010) 58% of Britons associate Islam with extremism, and 50% associate Islam with terrorism. 42% disagreed (only 15% agreed) that Islam is a religion concerned with social justice (i.e. promoting fairness and equality). As a Muslim these figures are, frankly, heartbreaking. Only 19% agree that Muslims have a positive impact on British society. With most of the news and information about Islam being accessed from TV news and newspapers, it is clear that the media have a role and responsibility towards the way they represent Islam and Muslims. But for the most part, we as Muslims can control how we are viewed and perceived if we act and behave as close to ‘beyond reproach’ as our Prophet (pbuh) recommends. Much much easier said than done, of course.

But consider approaching the issue of freeing Gaza from the explicit standpoint of social justice, considered closest to Godliness. [see al-Qur'an 5:8 - "O you who have attained to faith! Be ever steadfast in your devotion to God, bearing witness to the truth in all equity; and never let hatred of anyone lead you into the sin of deviating from justice. Be just: this is closest to being God-conscious. And remain conscious of God: verily, God is aware of all that you do."] Yes 62 years of oppression has made many very angry, very frustrated and helpless. But if we do not “deviate from justice” and stand unswerving in this conviction, we could stand up against sweatshop work, paedophilia, human smuggling, widespread poverty, unequal distribution of income and wealth, help Sumatran orangutans losing their homes to cash crops, support equal pay for equal work etc. We lose sight when all we can think about is how oppressive and unjust the Jews are. Our fellow Muslims in Malaysia and Indonesia aren’t being so just with each tree in the rainforests they cut down to profit from palm plantations. Our fellow Muslims in Egypt aren’t being so just when a majority of their Muslim population live in poverty. Our fellow Muslims aren’t so just when they build air-conditioned beaches and soaring tall buildings on the backs of mistreated foreign labour. Muslims are being unjust to more Muslims around the world than the Zionists are to the Muslims in Palestine (of course there are Christian Palestinians whom we hear little about in the news).

Humans are put on earth as God’s vicegerent, or steward. In al-Baqara 2:30 we read that the angels asked God “Wilt Thou place in it such as shall make mischief in it and shed blood, and we celebrate Thy praise and extol Thy holiness?” to which God answered “Surely I know what you do not know“. As God’s vicegerent on earth we are to keep the harmony and balance of all life forms and elements on earth, and fight for the justice of those who are oppressed, mistreated, and who cannot fight for themselves. At the heart of the jihad of the Muslim is social justice and the deviation from justice is a sin. Our Islamic value of social justice is a universal one. We have many wrongs that we should be putting right. If we are to be God-conscious to our cores then let us fight on the God-mandated stand of justice for all so that our friends and foes can look to us as champions of social justice, fairness and equality. We are right to fight for the rights of Palestinians, and more urgently to lift the despicable blockade on Gaza. But if we re-position our anger, frustration and helplessness away from the perhaps unproductive Muslims vs Jews shout, to answering God’s call for justice for all, then we may one day live in a much-improved world for all on earth. Till that day arrives we have a long way to go before we can be considered upstanding citizens of this world God gave to us to safekeep.