Imam Sadiq (a.s) quoted on the authority of Imam Ali (a.s): O’ Allah! Please honor me by enabling me to be able to rely on You, and entrust You with my affairs, and be content with what You have destined for me, and submit to Your orders, so much so that I submit to your decrees and not be in a rush to obtain what you have already destined for me; and be pleased with whatever You have granted me, O’ the Kindest of the kind! (attributed in Mishkat al-Anwar ch. 3, #28)

Literature, cinema, and the colonization of American Indians.

During each phase of the genocide of American Indians, the media has played a critical role in creating easily digestible stereotypes of Indians for popular consumption. Literature about Indians was first written and published in order to provoke and sanctify warfare against them. Later, the focus changed to enlisting public support for “civilizing the savages,” stripping them of their culture and assimilating them into the dominant society. Now, in the final stages of cultural genocide, it is appropriation and stereotyping of native culture that establishes control over knowledge and truth.”

recited by Sadiq Ahangaran

Imam Sadiq (a.s) said: Allah’s Prophet never used to say: I wish something else had happened after things had happened. (Mishkat al-Anwar ch. 3, #41)

O which of your Lord’s bounties will you and you deny? (Qur’an 55:32)

What’s killing Joshua Tree National Park?

Longtime visitors to Joshua Tree have been dismayed by the parks deteriorating views, some of which have become so smog-choked that the surrounding San Gorgonios disappear in the summer. (You call that a view? one recent visitor complained up at Keys View, a 5,000-foot-high overlook from which, on a clear day, the Salton Sea should glitter in the distance.) This spring, the Environmental Protection Agency issued an interoffice communiqu? declaring that the parks air had fallen short of national standards 38 days last summer, ranking among the worst in the National Park System and rivaling the Great Smoky Mountains, which is cloaked in the discharge of coal-burning factories and industrial pollution from the cities of Atlanta and Detroit.

Save Joshua Tree

desert smog (1)

school of the americas watch

Abu Abdillah Ja’far b. Muhammad, peace be upon him, said: “When Allah combines in the heart of a believer the virtues of guarding from the forbidden evils and renouncing the world, I pray that Allah grant him paradise.”

Then he added: “I love to find a believing person from you standing for his daily prayers, with all his heart and mind set for Allah; not digressed by any worldly anxieties. And when a faithful comes to his Sustainer with all his heart and mind, then Allah turns His attention towards him; and after He has confirmed His love for him, He fills the people’s heart with His love.”