The Surprising Origin of Birthdays

Source: triumphpro.com

By: William F. Dankenbring (Christian)

Almost everybody, today, celebrates birthdays. Around the world, friends and relatives hold birthday parties, give gifts to the one being honored, and wish “Happy birthday!” to the one whosebirthday is being celebrated.

But why?

US singer Jennifer Grout converts to Islam (Video)

Source: gulfnews.com

By: Jumana Al Tamimi

Though Jennifer Grout, the 23-year-old American singer, doesn’t speak a word of Arabic, she has a rare talent: singing Arabic songs, including Arabic traditional ones, so fluently, so softly and so beautifully.

When Grout participated in Arabs Got Talent last year, she was among the top three finalists, with thousands viewing her spine-tingling performances of songs by Umm Kulthoum on YouTube. More recently, a video of a different kind has been drawing attention to Grout — one showing her announcing her conversion to Islam, which was posted online last month.

While she has actually converted to Islam, though “unofficially”, Grout told tabloid!the posted video is not real.

“Actually the video that everyone has seen is part of a Moroccan film I made before my performance aired on Arabs Got Talent.”

“And I originally was upset, and mostly scared, that it ended up on the internet, because I hadn’t even gotten the chance to tell my family and closest friends about Islam before there were headlines everywhere saying I’d converted. However, now that it’s out there, maybe it’s a positive thing — I am not ashamed of what I believe in,” she added in an email interview.

The posted video shows her declaring, in the presence of two men, the shahada, the declaration of faith that is one of the five pillars of Islam. In the shahada, the person states that “there is no God but Allah and Mohammad [PBUH] is His prophet”.

Grout, who lives in Morocco, explained that she has not gone to the mosque to “confirm her conversion with an Imam or get it on paper”.

“But I say the shahada from my heart. I have recently started to perform the [five] daily prayers.”

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Learn Surah Al-Fatihah (The Opening)

By: Mount Hira

Link: http://www.mounthira.com/learning/surah/001-al-fatihah/

 Al-Fatihah in itself is a prayer at the very beginning of the Quran, which acts as a preface of the Quran and implies that the book is for a person with a mental attitude of the seeker of truth – a reader who is asking the only deity who is worthy of all praise, (and is the creator, owner, sustainer of the worlds etc.) to guide him to the straight path.

 Human beings are born with a combination of two things: soul and body. As per the Quran, a soul is a command of Allah, therefore it naturally recognizes the existence of its Lord and also has the love of its creator. It is the nature on which every child is born as Allah says: “and be steadfast on the Nature whereupon Allah has created mankind” (30:30).

China: Islam still on the rise despite crackdown

By: Hannah Beech

Source: http://time.com/

The road to Linxia, in China’s vast, sere northwest, is known locally as the Quran Belt, with a profusion of newly built mosques and Sufi shrines lining the motorway. Some are built in a traditional Chinese style, with pagoda-like eaves; others, with their green tiled domes, echo Middle Eastern architecture.