Ramadhan

Ramadhan, The Month of Fasting


The Meaning of Ramadhan
Ramadhan is a special month of the year for over one billion Muslims throughout the world. It is a time for inner reflection, devotion to God, and self-control. Muslims think of it as a kind of tune-up for their spiritual lives. For Muslims, Ramadhan is a "month of blessings" marked by prayer, fasting and charity.

Fasting is one of the five pillars of Islam. The others are: belief & testimony in The One God (Shahaadah); prayer (Salah) - five times a day at its appointed times; alms -giving (Zakat) – approx. 2.5% of fixed assets annually; and pilgrimage (Hajj) to Makkah (also spelled Mecca) at least once in a lifetime.

The third "pillar" or religious obligation of Islam, fasting has many special benefits. Among these, the most important is that it is a means of learning self-control. Due to the lack of preoccupation with the satisfaction of bodily appetites during the daylight hours of fasting, a measure of ascendancy is given to one's spiritual nature, which becomes a means of coming closer to God. Ramadhan is also a time of intensive worship, reading of the Qur'an, giving charity, purifying one's behavior, and doing good deeds.

As a secondary goal, fasting is a way of experiencing hunger and developing sympathy for the less fortunate and learning thankfulness & appreciation for all of God's bounties. Fasting is also beneficial to the health and provides a break in the cycle of rigid habits or overindulgence.

When the fast ends (the first day of the tenth month of the Islamic calendar –Shawwal) it is celebrated for three days in a holiday called 'Eid-ul-Fitr (the Feast of Fast Breaking). Gifts are exchanged. Friends and family gather to pray in congregation and for large (in the number of attendees) meals. In some cities fairs are held to celebrate the end of the Fast of Ramadhan.

Who Fasts in Ramadhan?
While voluntary fasting is recommended for Muslims, during Ramadhan fasting becomes obligatory. Sick people, travelers, and women in certain conditions are exempted from the fast but must make it up as they are able. Perhaps fasting in Ramadhan is the most widely practiced of all the Muslim forms of worship.

The Sighting of the Moon
Ramadhan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar. The much-anticipated start of the month is based on a combination of physical sightings of the moon and astronomical calculations. The practice varies from place to place, some places relying heavily on sighting reports and others totally on calculations. In the United States, most communities follow the decision of the Islamic Society of North America, which accepts bonafide sightings of the new moon anywhere in the United States as the start of the new month. The end of the month, marked by the celebration of 'Eid-ul-Fitr (also called just “ ‘Eid “), is similarly determined.

From Dawn to Sunset
The daily period of fasting starts at the breaking of dawn and ends at the setting of the sun. In between -- that is, during the daylight hours -- Muslims totally abstain from food, drink, smoking, and sexual relations. The usual practice is to have a pre-fast meal (suhoor) before dawn and a post/break-fast meal (iftar) after sunset.

Islam follows a lunar calendar which means that the months of the year are measured according to the revolutions of the moon around the earth (each month begins with the sighting of the new moon).

Because the Islamic lunar calendar (hijri) is approximately 11 days shorter than the solar or Gregorian calendar, Islamic holidays "move" each year.
This lunar calendar gives every month an opportunity of rotating through every season completing a cycle in which every month does not exceed 29 or 30 days.

Thus, since Ramadhan begins on October 4th or 5th one year, the next year it will begin on September 24th or so. The entire cycle takes around 35 years. In this way, the length of the day, and thus the fasting period, varies in length from place to place over the years. Every Muslim, no matter where he or she lives, will see an average Ramadhan day of approximately 13.5 hours.

One may eat and drink at any time during the night "until you can plainly distinguish a white thread from a black thread by the daylight: then keep the fast until night." [2:187]

The good that is acquired through the fast can be destroyed by five things –the telling of a lie, slander, denouncing someone behind their back, a false oath, greed or covetousness.

These are considered offensive at all times, but are most offensive during the Fast of Ramadhan.

Devotion to God
The last ten days of Ramadhan are a time of special spiritual power as everyone tries to come closer to God through devotions and good deeds. The night on which the first verses of the Qur'an were revealed to the Prophet, known as the Night of Power (Lailat ul-Qadr), is generally taken to be the 27th night of the month. The Qur'an states that this night is better than a thousand months. Therefore many Muslims spend the entire night in prayer.
During the month, Muslims try to read as much of the Qur'an as they can. Most try to read the whole book at least once. Some spend part of their day listening to the recitation of the Qur'an in a Mosque (Masjid).

Preservation of Qur’an
During this month Huffath (Muslims who have memorised the entire Holy Qur’an) recite a thirtieth of the Qur’an, word for word and accent for accent in congregational prayers on a daily basis after the night prayer, which is approximately an hour and a half after sunset, for the duration of the month (approx. 30 consecutive days), until they have completed the whole Qur’an.

Muslims believe this is one of the ways in which the Qur’an has remained intact since revelation more than 1400 years ago.


Food in Ramadhan
Since Ramadhan is a special time; Muslims in many parts of the world prepare certain favorite foods during this month.
It is a common practice for Muslims to break their fast at sunset with dates (from a palm tree), following the custom of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). This is followed by the sunset prayer, which is followed by iftar –The actual break-fast meal. Since Ramadhan emphasizes community aspects and since everyone eats iftar at the same time, Muslims often invite one another to share in the Ramadhan evening meal, the breaking of the fast “break-fast.”
Some Muslims find that they eat less when breaking their fast during Ramadhan than at other times due to stomach contraction. However, as a rule, most Muslims experience little fatigue during the day since the body becomes used to the altered routine during the first week of Ramadhan.

The Spirit of Ramadhan
Muslims use many phrases in various languages to congratulate one another for the completion of the obligation of fasting and the 'Eid-ul-Fitr festival. Here is a sampling of them:
"Kullu am wa antum bi-khair" (May you be well throughout the year) - Arabic
"Elveda, ey Ramazan" (Farewell, O Ramadhan) - Turkish
"'Eid mubarak (A Blessed 'Eid)" - universal

Bad news about delete

It's always fun to write about research that you can actually try out for yourself.

Try this: Take a photo and upload it to Facebook, then after a day or so, note what the URL to the picture is (the actual photo, not the page on which the photo resides), and then delete it. Come back a month later and see if the link works. Chances are: It will.

Facebook isn't alone here. Researchers at Cambridge University (so you know this is legit, people!) have found that nearly half of the social networking sites don't immediately delete pictures when a user requests they be removed. In general, photo-centric websites like Flickr were found to be better at quickly removing deleted photos upon request.

Why do "deleted" photos stick around so long? The problem relates to the way data is stored on large websites: While your personal computer only keeps one copy of a file, large-scale services like Facebook rely on what are called content delivery networks to manage data and distribution. It's a complex system wherein data is copied to multiple intermediate devices, usually to speed up access to files when millions of people are trying to access the service simultaneously. (Yahoo! Tech is served by dozens of servers, for example.) But because changes aren't reflected across the CDN immediately, ghost copies of files tend to linger for days or weeks.

In the case of Facebook, the company says data may hang around until the URL in question is reused, which is usually "after a short period of time." Though obviously that time can vary considerably.

Of course, once a photo escapes from the walled garden of a social network like Facebook, the chances of deleting it permanently fall even further. Google's caching system is remarkably efficient at archiving copies of web content, long after it's removed from the web. Anyone who's ever used Google Image Search can likely tell you a story about clicking on a thumbnail image, only to find that the image has been deleted from the website in question -- yet the thumbnail remains on Google for months. And then there are services like the Wayback Machine, which copy entire websites for posterity, archiving data and pictures forever.

The lesson: Those drunken party photos you don't want people to see? Simply don't upload them to the web, ever, because trying to delete them after you sober up is a tough proposition.

Earth Hour

March 28, 2009, 8:30-9:30PM is the day. The whole Philippines was totally black out! For sure everyone is campaigning on it! Saving the world is our first ever goal! Good Luck Philippines and World...!

LeBron for DPOY

Brian Windhorst, Cleveland Plain Dealer: "There's a good chance LeBron James will claim his first Most Valuable Player award this season. Winning that honor is no doubt an extreme accomplishment, but it may not be the only individual trophy James will be chasing during his career. As he has matured over the last two seasons, he's continued to become more of a force at the defensive end and now some are wondering whether he could ever get his hands on a Defensive Player of the Year Award. 'There's no doubt he can,' said Blazers coach Nate McMillan, who worked on James with his defense over the last three summers with Team USA. 'He's as quick and as strong as anyone at his position, he's going to have to continue to work at it but he has the ability to be the best.'"

Personality Test

If you have the time, you may want to try this. For me, it is 88% accurate. 8 out of 9 questions.

http://www.quizbox.com/personality/test82.aspx


Your view on yourself:

You are down-to-earth and people like you because you are so straightforward. You are an efficient problem solver because you will listen to both sides of an argument before making a decision that usually appeals to both parties.
The type of girlfriend/boyfriend you are looking for:

You like serious, smart and determined people. You don't judge a book by its cover, so good-looking people aren't necessarily your style. This makes you an attractive person in many people's eyes.
Your readiness to commit to a relationship:

You are ready to commit as soon as you meet the right person. And you believe you will pretty much know as soon as you might that person.
The seriousness of your love:

You like to flirt and behave seductively. The opposite sex finds this very attractive, and that's why you'll always have admirers hanging off your arms. But how serious are you about choosing someone to be in a relationship with?
Your views on education

Education is less important than the real world out there, away from the classroom. Deep inside you want to start working, earning money and living on your own.
The right job for you:

You're a practical person and will choose a secure job with a steady income. Knowing what you like to do is important. Find a regular job doing just that and you'll be set for life.
How do you view success:

You are confident that you will be successful in your chosen career and nothing will stop you from trying.
What are you most afraid of:

You are afraid of having no one to rely on in times of trouble. You don't ever want to be unable to take care of yourself. Independence is important to you.
Who is your true self:

You like privacy very much because you enjoy spending time with your own thoughts. You like to disappear when you cannot find solutions to your own problems, but you would feel better if you learned to share your thoughts with a person you trust.

Top 100 Love Quotes

Top Love Quotes & Sayings of All Time

The following is our collection of Quotes about love or Romance that we feel are the top quoted quotes of all time. We have not placed these quotes in any particular order. Make sure to check them all out, they are great! (See what users like yourself ranked as the top Love Quotes.)



1. "A kiss is a lovely trick, designed by nature, to stop words when speech becomes superfluous."
--Ingrid Bergmen


2. Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which any of us can convince ourselves we are.

Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.
- Captain Corelli's Mandolin6. "Love is the beauty of the soul."
--St. Augustine


3. "My night has become a sunny dawn because of you."
--Ibn Abbad


4. "In real love you want the other person's good. In romantic love you want the other person."
--Margaret Anderson


5. "In dreams and in love there are no impossibilities."
--Janos Arnay

7. "Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies."
--Aristotle


8. "Each moment of a happy lover's hour is worth an age of dull and common life."
--Aphra Behn


9. "Your words are my food, your breath my wine. You are everything to me."
--Sarah Bernhardt


10. "In my wildest dreams, you always play the hero. In my darkest hour of night, you rescue me, you save my life."
--Bliss and Cerney


11. "Come live with me and be my love, and we will some new pleasures prove, of golden sands, and crystal beaches, with silken lines and silver hooks..."
--John Dunne



12. "What I do and what I dream include thee, as the wine must taste of its own grapes..."
--Elizabeth Barret Browning


13. "I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach..."
--Elizabeth Barrett Browning


14. "Take away love, and our earth is a tomb."
--Robert Browning
15. "But to see her was to love her, love but her, and love her forever."
--Robert Burns


16. "She walks in Beauty, like the night
Of cloudness climes and starry skies,
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes..."
--Lord Byron


17. "Like music on the waters is they sweet voice to me."
--Lord Byron


18. "I love you, not only for what you are, But for what I am when I am with you."
--Roy Croft

19. "You're nothing short of my everything."
--Ralph Block


20. "The only true gift is a portion of yourself."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson


21. "Thou art to me a delicious torment."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson


22. "Love distills desire upon the eyes, love brings bewitching grace into the heart."
--Euripides


23. "I love her and that's the beginning of everything."
--F. Scott Fitzgerald


24. "I wished for nothing beyond her smile, and to walk with her thus, hand in hand, along a sun-warmed, flower-bordered path."
--Andre Gide


25. "Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own."
--Robert Heinlein


26. "Where we love is home, home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts."
--Oliver Wendell Holmes


27. "What I feel for you seems less of earth and more of a cloudless heaven."
--Victor Hugo


28. "It's so easy, To think about Love, To Talk about Love, To wish for Love, But it's not always easy, To recognize Love, Even when we hold it.... In our hands."
--Jaka


29. "Two souls with but a single thought, two hearts that beat as one."
--John Keats


30. "The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart."
--Helen Keller


31. "... See there's this place in me where your fingerprints still rest, your kisses still linger, and your whispers softly echo. It's the place where a part of you will forever be a part of me."
--Gretchen Kemp


32. "When you came, you were like red wine and honey, and the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness."
--Amy Lowell


33. "Make me immortal with a kiss."
--Christopher Marlowe


34. "Oh, thou art fairer than the evening air Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars."
--Christopher Marlowe


35. "Love is the enchanted dawn of every heart."
--Alphonse Marie de la Martine


36. "In the arithmetic of love, one plus one equals everything, and two minus one equals nothing."
--Mignon McLaughlin


37. "We came by night to the Fortunate Isles, And lay like fish Under the net of our kisses."
--Pablo Neruda


38. "The hours I spend with you I look upon as sort of a perfumed garden, a dim twilight, and a fountain signing to it...you and you alone make me feel that I am alive...Other men, it is said, have seen angels, but I have seen thee and thou art enough."
--George Moore


39. "In love there are two things: bodies and words."
--Joyce Carol Oates


40. "I become a waterwheel, turning and tasting you, as long as water moves."
--Rumi


41. "I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal."
--Vita Sackville-West


42. "Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery


43. "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery


44. "There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved."
--George Sand


45. "Sometimes your nearness takes my breath away; and all the things I want to say can find no voice. Then, in silence, I can only hope my eyes will speak my heart."
--Robert Sexton


46. "My heart is ever at your service."
--William Shakespeare


47. "The more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite."
--William Shakespeare


48. "Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition."
--Alexander Smith


49. "I am my beloved, and my beloved is me."
--Song of Solomon


50. "Her breath is like honey spiced with cloves, Her mouth delicious as a ripened mango."
--Srzgarakarika


51. "To love is to receive a glimpse of heaven."
--Karen Sunde


52. "Love, till dawn sunder night from day with fire Dividing my delight and my desire..."
--A. C. Swinburne


53. "Love is friendship set on fire."
--Jeremy Taylor


54. "Within you I lose myself. Without you I find myself wanting to become lost again."
--Unknown


55. "Somewhere there's someone who dreams of your smile..."
--Unknown


56. "I see my fated stars in your eyes. They melt me like the sun does snow."
--Unknown


57. "The rose speaks of love silently, in a language known only to the heart."
--Unknown


58. "To be your friend was all I ever wanted; to be your lover was all I ever dreamed."
--Unknown


59. "If I could reach up and hold a star for every time you made me smile, I would have the whole night sky in the palm of my hand."
--Unknown


60. "If you love me only in my dreams, let me be asleep forever."
--Unknown


61. "Kiss me and you will see stars; love me and I will give them to you."
--Unknown


62. "Love is a dream that comes alive when we meet."
--Unknown


63. "The soul that can speak with its eyes can also kiss with a gaze."
--Unknown


64. "Love is something eternal; the aspect may change, but not the essense."
--Vincent van Gogh


65. "Harmony is pure love, for love is a concerto."
--Lope de Vega


66. "Here are fruits, flowers, leaves, and branches, And here is my heart which beats only for you."
--Paul Verlaine


67. "When a heart finds another, what's a cloud more or less in the sky?"
--Wolf and Page


68. "The most precious possession that ever comes to a man in this world is a woman's heart.
--Josiah G. Holland


69. "From every human being there rises a light that reaches straight to heaven. And when two souls that are destined to be together find each other, their streams of light flow together, and a single brighter light goes forth from their united being."
--Unknown


70. "The most wonderful of all things in life is the discovery of another human being with whom one's relationship has a growing depth, beauty and joy as the years increase. This inner progressiveness of love between two human beings is a most marvelous thing; it cannot be found by looking for it or by passionately wishing for it. It is a sort of divine accident, and the most wonderful of all things in life."
--Sir Hugh Walpole


71. "Love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself completely in the hope that our love will produce love in the loved person. Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love."
--Erich Fromm


72. "You come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by seeing an imperfect person perfectly."
--Sam Keen


73. "The most powerful symptom of love is a tenderness which becomes at times almost insupportable."
--Victor Hugo


74. "True love begins when nothing is looked for in return."
--Antoine De Saint-Exupery


75. "Love is the emblem of eternity: it confounds all notion of time: effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end."
--Germaine De Stael


76. "The life and love we create is the life and love we live."
--Leo Buscaglia


77. "For every beauty there is an eye somewhere to see it. For every truth there is an ear somewhere to hear it. For every love there is a heart somewhere to receive it."
--Ivan Panin


78. "Listening is an attitude of the heart, a genuine desire to be with another which both attracts and heals."
--J. Isham


79. "Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage."
--Lao Tzu


80. "The most eloquent silence; that of two mouths meeting in a kiss."
--Unknown


81. "Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul."
--St. Augustine


82. "Absence sharpens love, presence strengthens it."
--Thomas Fuller


83. "Paradise is always where love dwells."
--Jean Paul F. Richter


84. "True love is eternal, infinite, and always like itself. It is equal and pure, without violent demonstrations: it is seen with white hairs and is always young in the heart."
--Honore de Balzac


85. "We are all born for love... it is the principle existence and it's only end."
--Benjamin Disraeli


86. "Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness."
--Oliver Wendell Holmes


87. "Love doesn't make the world go round, love is what makes the ride worthwhile."
--Elizabeth Browning


88. "To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with."
--Mark Twain


89. "If I know what love is, it is because of you."
--Herman Hesse


90. "So dear I love him that with him,
All deaths I could endure.
Without him, live no life."
-- William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet


91. "Love is like a friendship caught on fire: In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable."
--Bruce Lee


92. "She walks in beauty,
Like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes."
--Byron


93. "....A simple I love you means more than money...."
--Frank Sinatra


94. "How delicious is the winning of a kiss at love's beginning."
--Thomas Campbell


95. "One word frees us of all the weight and pain in life. That word is Love."
--Sophocles


96. "Love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired."
--Mark Twain


97. "Come, let us make love deathless."
--Herbert Trench


98. "There is no remedy for love but to love more."
--Henry David Thoreau


99. "If I had a flower for every time I thought of you, I could walk in my garden forever."
--Alfred Lord Tennyson


100. "All love is sweet, given or returned."
--Percy Bysshe Shelley

Why some people try to hurt others?

When someone does something to you to intentionally hurt you, it can make it much worse than if they were to do the same thing accidentally. When speaking of mental wounds, part of the reason for this is that you feel like there must have been something about you that made them want to hurt you.

That is almost never, quite possibly actually never, the real cause. The real cause is nearly certain to be the internal pain that they feel from something in their own life... it could be something from early childhood, or it could be something from earlier today, but the desire to inflict pain on someone almost always originates from your own pain.

Think back to the last time you did something to intentionally hurt someone, even if it was very small. What were you feeling at the time? It wasn't sweet, sugary feelings of happiness and love, was it?

You may not have thought directly of pain... you may have been angry, or jealous, or some similar emotion. Those feelings only come from pain, however... you don't get angry, for instance, without feeling that someone has done something wrong to you.

The same is true of others... no one truly does things just because they enjoy inflicting pain. Even if it seems that way to them, THAT feeling in turn is caused by some pain from their past.

That doesn't mean that their actions are justified, by any means... it's still wrong to hurt someone intentionally, regardless of how badly you've been hurt in the past. Your own pain isn't a valid excuse for inflicting pain on others.

On the other hand, once you realize that the harm comes from the pain of another, it does make it far easier to forgive them, and somewhat easier to not take hurt from the actions in the first place, even when they are intended to cause pain. It takes away their power, because you realize that they are attacking from a place of weakness, not a place of strength.

And it's amazing the amount of relief that you feel when you truly forgive someone... it takes a lot of energy to hold a grudge.

Try this, when you have a chance: Think back to one of your hurts that you carry with you... it doesn't have to be a big one, but it could be if you choose. Now think about the person who caused that hurt, and picture them as having done it because they were lashing out from their own pain (a feeling the vast majority of us are familiar with). Let yourself feel that feeling, the conscious knowledge that you are saying or doing something you don't really mean because of your own hurt, and then understand that whatever they did came from a similar place, that they had just as hard a time controlling it.

It changes the way you feel about it a lot when you look at it that way, doesn't it?

Wont let you go

Baby I know you understand
Im doing the best I can
Im just trying to be your man
Ill always watch your back for you
For many reasons things have changed
and nothing even feels the same
Tell me how we got this way
How did we get to this place

I never in my life thought that we'd end up this way
Cause I was just so in love with you
And Now it feels so different
Like everything has changed
Shorty why cant we talk about it
I don’t know what to do
Cause we don’t even talk anymore (no we don’t)
And im feeling so much different than before
And it feels like my whole life is crashing down
But you know (I still love you) I wont let you go

I never know what to expect
How bad we gon let this get
You haven’t listen to me yet
I tried to talk this out with you
You sorta just gave up on us
But relationships are built from trust
I don’t trust you anyway
How did we get to this place

I never in my life thought that we'd end up this way
Cause I was just so in love with you
And now it feels so different
Like everything has changed
Shorty why cant we talk about it
I don’t know what to do
Cause we don’t even talk anymore (no we don’t)
And im feeling so much different than before
And it feels like my whole life is crashing down
But you know (I still love you) I wont let you go

If we stop for a minute
Just to talk for a minute
Baby you and I
Can somehow try to get where we used to be
Change are unneeded
Can you be more understanding
Don’t you cry
All of this is killing me
Cause we don’t even talk anymore (no we don’t)
And im feeling so much different than before
And it feels like my whole life is crashing down
But you know, I wont let you go
Cause we don’t even talk anymore
And im feeling so much different than before
And it feels like my whole life is crashing down
But you know, I wont let you go

I never in my life thought that we'd end up this way
Cause I was so in love with you..