unforeseen consequence of converting to Islam: instinctually and desperately checking out anything with headgear on, thinking mistakenly that it's a cute hijabi. Examples: dudes with hoodies, old ladies with scarves, hippies with assorted weird stuff on their heads.

If you try to say الصلاة احسن من النوم at 5:30 in the morning, your weaker heart makes it come out reversed.

Seriously, I woke up at 5:30 in the morning and tried to say it aloud to myself, and I was so befuddled that it came out the opposite of what it was supposed to be.

Ha. Crap. I just wrote an entry on my musings about God and death and the afterlife. (see previous entry below)

It only occurs to me now that some NSA desk jockey is totally going to find that on the internet and be like: "OMG, this guy is going Jihadi!"

lol. well.... that's pertty funny to me :)

I do not think I am afraid to die. I have tried to do my best with what has been given to me, and whatever God's judgment of my life may be, I am certain it will be no more and no less than I deserve. Although I hope He judges me kindly, and even if He does not, I hope some humble deed of mine might meet His approval, just so I could know that at least one thing I did in life was thought highly of by My Lord.

Of course, I do not know if in fact I am not afraid to die. Maybe you can't know until it happens. Certainly you cannot know very much until it draws near.

But alhamdulillah. I have been given so much in this world through no doing or merit of my own. I pray that I go to paradise, of course. But even if I do not. How can I begrudge God for taking back my life when it was always His to begin with.

you know, for all the decrying of anti-Islamic vitriol in the public sphere, we don't need the right wing nut jobs, the evangelical christians, or the sorely misguided academics to drag the name of Islam in the mud. There are plenty of Muslims in the world who do it for them.

bah. This entry is too bitter.

Last night I had this dream.

I was praying four raka'as and on the second or third one, when I went down to prostrate myself on the floor and say Allahu Akbar, my hands were taken in someone else's hands as soon as they touched the floor. It was an old friend of mine from high school, and she was kneeling in front of me, holding my hands in hers and facing toward me. Then after I had touched my forehead to the ground, she bent down and touched her forehead to the back of mine. I could feel her hair on my neck.

I have been mildly disconcerted by the dream. I don't know how to read its mixture of religious ritual and sensual, though not sexual, embrace. I worry it's somewhat blasphemous. But my instinct tells me it's not. There was just so much love, and safety, and warmth in that strange embrace, a sense of contact both human and divine.

Maybe I should consider that the richest worship of God also happens when we have each other to hold and to love.

Dear God,

Thank You for making me Muslim. I feel like... it gives me a chance to be a voice for Islam and Muslims to a lot of my non-Muslim friends. I don't know if I'm a very accurate voice for Islam, not because I think anything I believe is bid'a or whatever, but just because... I don't know if there's such a thing as an 'accurate' voice for Islam. At least not the way we (humans) have manifested Islam as a specific, direct and daily manifestation of faith, doctrine, textual interpretation and historical narrative, etc. But I think I'm an honest voice, at least I hope so, and I tell people that really this is all I can offer them: not accuracy but honesty; not definitive answering, but balanced conjecturing and questioning and a modest core of inshaallah unflagging belief.

:) Thanks.