Bin Gregory Productions

Doa Taubat

One famous prayer of repentence, or dua taubat, could be roughly transliterated as follow:

Ilahi lestu lil-firdawsi a’la

wa la akhwa ala nar il-jaheemi

Allah fa habli tawbata wa-ghfir dhunubi

fa innaka ghaafiru dhanb il-adzimi

This doa has been put to song, together with a lovely malay translation, by Junied, a nasheed group from Singapore associated with the Madrasah Aljunied Al-Islamiah. Madrasah Aljunied is a famous madrasah, having produced many notable scholars over the course of its

Posted at 3pm on 04/05/08 | 13 comments | Filed Under: Islam, Language read on

Stunning Election Results in Malaysia

The ruling coalition, Barisan Nasional, lost four more states to the opposition, for a total of five, and fell to below two-thirds in the national parliament for the first time in the country’s fifty years of existence. As an outsider, I don’t have a stake in the outcome either way. I can only applaud the country for having a political environment that sustains such lively contests, with over a dozen distinct parties to

Posted at 9pm on 03/10/08 | 5 comments | Filed Under: Malaysia read on

Briefly

Collapse Preparedness: The transition from the USSR to the republic of Russia was a catastrophic event for the people who lived through it. The eventual (imminent?) collapse of the US will be much much worse, warns Dmitry Orlov. The USA has a Collapse Gap. Orlov realizes

that some people will react rather badly to having their country compared to the USSR. I would like to assure you that the Soviet people would have reacted similarly, had the United States collapsed first. Feelings aside, here are two 20th century superpowers, who wanted more or less the same things – things like technological progress, economic growth, full employment, and world domination – but they disagreed about the methods. And they obtained similar results – each had a good run, intimidated the whole planet, and kept the other scared. Each eventually went bankrupt.

Valuable lessons on what to expect and how to prepare follow. Read it yourself, but the condensed advice is this: Live on the margins of society. One encouraging sign that Americans are picking up the skills they will need to survive: haggling at the mall.

Brass Crescent: Nominations are open for the annual Brass Crescent blog awards organized by AltMuslim and City of Brass. Hurry on down and nominate your favorites. There's even a brand new category for Best South/Southeast Asia Blog! *cough cough*

Plan Your Defense Now: O Muslims! Have too many bins and abduls in your name? Afraid you may be on a watch list? Worried you may get classified as an enemy combatant by mistake? Plan your defense now! You can't be framed, railroaded or wrongly convicted if you've got more documentary evidence on yourself than they do. Rutgers Professor Hasan Elahi has been recording his every move and his every meal for three years and broadcasting it on the internet. It's a brilliant bit of performance art, utterly believable and eerie at the same time. Found via metafilter