member of the human race: August 2010

well its already the 16th day of Ramadan, how fast is it going? subhanallah.

due to my pregnancy Ive not been able to fast which seems soooooooo weird, and obviously feels like my Ramadan is lacking something which it is lol.

anyway, this Ramadan I'm spending it with my little brother thabet, my husbands in Libya and my parents are in Umrah (so wish i was with them).

I'm really proud of my brother, every day without fail, he has his initial iftar at the local masjid (which is at our doorstep literally) he prays maghreb and then comes home for his dinner with me.

he then helps me clear up and will go on the computer until isha time, gets ready and goes to the masjid to pray isha and taraweeh, he has done this every day so far, and was telling me that he loves it mashallah.

yesterday he came home early from taraweeh, looking really upset and as though he has had a fright, i asked him what was wrong and he said one of the men attacked him!!!!!

you can imagine my concern, what happened was apparently a ginger bearded man (my brothers description, i explained that it was probably dyed with henna) always hassles the children, telling them of, shouting at them etc... now my brother is no longer a child in the sense that he runs around the mosque, giggling, fighting and being a child, hes 16 so he understands the etiquette's of mosque manners, this man saw thabet doing tasbeeh and the prayer had already started so he shouted at him to get up and pray.

now apparently all this man does is watch people so thabet in anger said to him 'i will pray, what about you?'

(i did tell thabet that he should not have said that as he needs to take into consideration the mans age and respect him for that at least).

the man became angry with what thabet said, and so pushed him extremely hard so that thabet fell hard against the wall, he then began to hit him, punch, grabbed him, took him outside and strangled thabet before being stopped by the other men.

as you can imagine my brother was really shaken, and i was soooooooo angry, how dare this henna bearded man do this to my brother or anyone else (apparently its a daily occurrence for other kids).

i put on my hijab gear and went to the mosque, (this mosque is a men only mosque, no women allowed, i may have blogged about it in the past, any non-Muslim readers reading this, please be aware that this no-women policy has nothing what so ever to do with Islam, its a mentality gone wrong).

i stood outside, respecting there laws, plus many Libyan men pray in this mosque so i had to bear in mind the fact that i didn't want to be the most talked about female in Manchester by barging into a mosque, so i respectfully waited until my brother brought a mosque committee member outside to speak to me.

lets just say i was diplomatic, polite but extremely to the point and my words without sounding threatening, where actually threatening if that makes sense lol.

the man confirmed that thabet was and has been and is a well behaved member of the congregation and that the henna bearded man usually goes for the disruptive children, this of course angered me more and i reminded him about the prophets dealing with children and how his grandsons used to play on his back when he was in sujud in the mosque and the blessed prophet would stay in sujood until his grandsons had stopped playing, and he never once told them off or attacked children but instead encouraged them to pray in the mosque and use its facilities, so how dare this man abuse the children's trust in mosques and Islam, how dare he?

i warned him that this might not be the end of complaints as my dad is sure to do something about this when he gets back inshallah.

it has already been 3 weeks since we broke up for the summer, my god time flys!!!!

what have i been doing i hear you shout, well not much, i moved back into my bedroom at my parents house, my husbands gone to libya for Ramadan and im staying in the UK, initially i was meant to go with him but as it happens im 5 months preganant and thought it best i stay where its much cooler as with the heat of libya i can see myself going mad as i already have central heating on in me at the moment, so the trip has been postponed till after ive had the munchkin inshallah ;).

i have been browsing the net looking at prices for prams and baby things, believe it or not the pram i had in mind costs around 5oo pounds!!! thats like a deposit on a car... so i searched on ebay for the type i want, found it made an offer much cheaper and won woooohoooo (dont u just luv ebay)

i had to collect it myself, it was near carlisle, so i thought kill a bird with 2 stones and make a day visit out of it.

so here are a few snapshots: