billet-doux: collection of self reminders.
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live sincerely: thalamtnafsee: themindislimitless: I know a lot of (especially white)...

thalamtnafsee:

themindislimitless:

I know a lot of (especially white) non-Muslims need to be reminded that Islam isn’t Arab culture, but sometimes I think Muslims need to be reminded of this too. The Arabization of other cultures that consist of a large Muslim population is a Very Real Thing and circles largely around a lot of supremacy attached with Arab culture. It’s kinda disturbing and seriously needs addressing within our communities.

Islam celebrates diversities. We don’t need to sacrifice our cultures, our history, our roots to be Muslims. A single tree species cannot survive everywhere; all trees have over time evolved and adapted to their environment to survive. It would not do well to try replacing those trees with one ill-suited to a particular environment.

this is extremely important, and I’m glad people are able to recognize this. i would argue that it is unnecessary to shed one’s culture in order to be muslim, so long as the customs and rituals practiced by these number of cultures are not contrary to that which islam considers taboo (like mutilation, forced marriages, etc).

also, the amount of islamic teachers I have heard make BLUNT statements about the Arab culture and how everyone should consider assimilating to is wretched (examples including, but not limited to Nouman Ali Khan, Yasir Qadhi, and others).

You don’t need to be Arab to be a Muslim that is a learnt scholar of the Arab language; celebrate your cultures. Be proud of who you are and where you come from, and also be proud of being Muslim 

❝ I had trouble graduating from Berkeley, not because of this inability to deal with ideas — I was majoring in English, and I could locate the house-and-garden imagery in The Portrait of a Lady as well as the next person, “imagery” being by definition the kind of specific that got my attention – but simply because I had neglected to take a course in Milton. I did this. For reasons which now sound baroque I needed a degree by the end of that summer, and the English department finally agreed, if I would come down from Sacramento every Friday and talk about the cosmology of Paradise Lost, to certify me proficient in Milton. I did this. Some Fridays I took the Greyhound bus, other Fridays I caught the Southern Pacific’s City of San Francisco on the last leg of its transcontinental trip. I can no longer tell you whether Milton put the sun or the earth at the center of his universe in Paradise Lost, the central question of at least one century and a topic about which I wrote 10,000 words that summer, but I can still recall the exact rancidity of the butter in the City of San Francisco’s dining car, and the way the tinted windows on the Greyhound bus cast the oil refineries around Carquinez Straits into a grayed and obscure sinister light. In short my attention was always on the periphery, on what I could see and taste and touch, on the butter, and the Greyhound bus. During those years I was traveling on what I knew to be a very shaky passport, forged paper: I knew that I was no legitimate resident in any world of ideas. I knew I couldn’t think. All I knew then was what I couldn’t do. All I knew then was what I wasn’t, and it took me some years to discover what I was.

Which was a writer.

By which I mean not a “good” writer or a “bad” writer but simply a writer, a person whose most absorbed and passionate hours are spent arranging words on pieces of paper. Had my credentials been in order I would never have become a writer. Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear. Why did the oil refineries around Carquinez Straits seem sinister to me in the summer of 1956? Why have the night lights in the bevatron burned in my mind for twenty years? What is going on in these pictures in my mind

— “Why I Write,” Joan Didion (via commovente)

aseaofquotes:

— Ray Bradbury

aseaofquotes: — Ray Bradbury

unmaskedsorrows:

Reminder: You are nothing but a number of days.

(Source: distantriver)

❝ Do you have doubts about life? Are you unsure if it is really worth the trouble? Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each person’s face as you pass them on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground under the street, and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you. They are as much for you as they are for other people. Remember this when you wake up in the morning and think you have nothing. Stand up and face the east. Now praise the sky and praise the light within each person under the sky. It’s okay to be unsure. But praise, praise, praise.

— Miranda July (via abir-ibrahim)

❝ You can’t find intimacy—you can’t find home—when you’re always hiding behind masks. Intimacy requires a certain level of vulnerability. It requires a certain level of you exposing your fragmented, contradictory self to someone else. You running the risk of having your core self rejected and hurt and misunderstood.

— Junot Diaz (via wordsthat-speak)

pathtoeloquence:

I believe there is a quiet, hidden, beauty in everything. Beauty does not always need to be witnessed in full bloom, sometimes it’s the subtleties that are most breathtaking.

❝ Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.

— Khalil Gibran (via 9and9)

Life in words!: What if I could speak every language in the world? What if I could...

9and9:

What if I could speak every language in the world?

What if I could share an entire world with anyone, everyone? The idea fills me up faster than I can process. What if I could write poetry in Urdu and in Spanish? What if I could write haiku in Japanese, perhaps like it was originally designed? Oh the possibilities, can you just imagine the possibilities? No one could ever be a stranger. I could listen to the most beautiful Italian, or Samoan, or Arabic songs and understand the lyrics as they were meant to be understood. I could understand Tolstoy as originally written in Russian, or the French Revolution as experienced by the French? I could cry German tears and smile South African smiles. Chinese and Korean symbols would speak to me as would Tamil and Telegu. Words, palavras, слова, maneno, words everywhere and I could love every single one of them ever invented. What if, just what if, I could speak every language in the world. 

my thoughts exactyyy!

9and9:

I wish to be as tireless as the waves.

9and9:

Sometimes I just stand in the rain and let my soul quench its thirst.

9and9:

Who are we.

We are sunrises and sunsets. The blooming of a flower in a single night. The shiver of a leaf. We are the tremor of each footstep. We are the distance between each raindrop. Each teardrop. Each smile. We are lost in a blink of eye. We are the space between heartbeats, between breaths, between thoughts.

We are time.

Life in words!: Finished Aleph by Paulo Coelho. I find the author really intriguing as...

9and9:

Finished Aleph by Paulo Coelho. I find the author really intriguing as he seems to really bare his soul in this book so I hope to read more of his work. Until then, enjoy these:

    • “I have learned and unlearned how to live hundreds of times.”
    • “Anyone truly committed to life never stops walking.”
    • “I love you because all the loves in the world are like different rivers flowing into the same lake, where they meet and are transformed into a single love that becomes rain and blesses the earth.”

And my absolute favourite:
“I can only speak to my soul when the two of us are off exploring deserts or cities or mountains or roads.”

9and9:

I don’t love you (unless of course you love me, in which case I love you with all the might that this poor heart can muster). No, I don’t love you (unless of course you want me to). I have never (un)loved you. Every day I do (not) think of you and of course I do (not) miss you (not unless of course you miss me too). I do (not) wonder though sometimes, whether you too do (not) love me.

(What a pity we spend so much of our time living in parentheses).

How does one lose their smile?

9and9:

You don’t. You can’t ever lose your smile, it is ingrained within you. But sometimes you forget how to smile. Life can do that sometimes.

The trick to finding your smile is not to look for it. Smiles can be elusive, especially when life has been hiding it from you. No, the trick is to look for the person who will bring your smile back to you. That person will look in the places that you had never thought of, never heard of. Search for that person and they will always find your smile.