For the sake of Allah?

They say “fisabil Allah, we’re getting married”,
When I hear that, I wonder what they mean.
To me that phrase has a certain sound
As if they only do it because they’re duty-bound.
It’s true we have certain obligations to meet
And doing this will help make our diin complete
But, does Allah want us to go into this thing
Like it’s a job devoid of all, or most, human feeling?
Or are we to act with high levels of compassion
Moved by respect, love, and mutually growing attraction?
When we become engaged, get married for Allah’s sake,
We should continue treating one another in the same way
Remembering that our actions be colored for Allah’s sake.
Allah is The Source of Mercy and The Source of Peace,
Shouldn’t our homes have touches of these at the least?
Fisabil Allah requires work with genuine effort,
It shouldn’t be dry like a dead-zoned desert
Looked upon with anguish and increasing dread,
Every color bleached, every sound mute, every feeling dead.
Irrigating rivers to feed yielding trees,
Relaxing the earth so it gives the best and takes the least
This is how it should be.
We have our niqahs and look at our mates,
We don’t use the word but they become our slaves
Spewing out money like they’re ATM machines
And at the other end we have the same thing.
At home we work them near to death
In a few years patterns become set.
Before we were beings so alive,
After, we’re ghosts, living, but many times we’ve died…
They say “fisabil Allah we got married”,
I wonder what it meant and what it means.
Because when we do for Allah shouldn’t hearts be free of distress
And our minds free and easily at rest?
Shouldn’t we feel that our unions are sincerely Allah blessed?
Something that’s done fisabil Allah isn’t restricted and locked in a box,
It’s loosened, freed, ever expanding and having nothing to make it stop

Mistaken perception

Once upon a time I had hope
But that was a hallucination gone up in smoke;
Powdery dreams like lines of coke.
Once when I would look in from the outside
I thought everything was so dignified,
I thought everything was done with pride.
Little did I expect the rude awakening,
The feeling of most of my world forsaking me
Or at least the method of how my thoughts were processing.
I used to dream with energy and vigor
Ready to take all the world’s rigors
If it meant raising us to something bigger.
Dreams filled with color and clarity
Every single detail covered unsparingly;
None of it could be touched by HDTV.
In the sunlight I could see the glow of fireflies,
Smell the slightest scent of the softest spice
But eventually my dream reached twilight,
Dreams are now nothingness. Night to day
I’m hit and I’m plagued
By nightmares that won’t go away,
I’ve become an insomniac
Afraid of sudden attacks
From left, right, front and back.
Demons of my optimism are haunting,
Pointing their fingers and they’re taunting me.
Their rotted faces leave me in a mess
I’m sprouting whites and grays by living frustrated distress.
These are the zombies of what I wanted to be part of,
They’re laughing and pointing,
Following and stalking,
Watching and waiting.
Once upon a time I dreamed of wonderful things
But now it seems
That I was just being naïve.
Sometimes I fall into this trap of mistaken perception
Often easily successful at self-deception,
Any touches of pessimism quickly going into recession.
My eyes see, my heart feels, my thoughts are clouded
Numbing my senses, regardless of how often alarms are sounded

untitled

this thing's constricting my throat
death gripping its hold
my heart and being have been sold
no one notices unless they're told.

from sunrise to sunset, dusk to dawn
every inspiration in me is totally gone
because every attempt goes totally wrong.

i've tried and tried and continue to try
but what's been the result besides the fact my inner being has died?
and that doubt of self has grown wide.

what's wrong with me that i'm not good enough?
why does this situation have to be perpetually tough
especially for a person, who is beyond nafs and lust?

i try to give what i can, put out my best
differentiate myself from all the rest,
yet time after time being good is a test.

so many times you find yourself losing out
i find myself to be without
one person for me to care about.

some wives cling tight to wife beaters
others want to trust their consistent cheaters.
they can be such fervent believers
in those who are the greatest deceivers.

yet when i or someone like me comes by
they're so quick to say goodbye
judging superficially what they see with their physical eye.
knowing this and with a sense of fear, i try
always to be given that bad surprise...

so i wear a beard
which seems to make some of the sisters scared
who 'pre-judge' based on how one appears

probably spend their time in assuming
that i'm some kind of Saudi salafi,
but i couldn't be farther from that thing.

others judge because Allah's given me a darker tone
that's supposedly worse than their own,
one that'd make me unwelcome in their homes.

i'm a pollution of a "pure" bloodline,
a being that corrupts what was once benign,
that turns gold bars into miserable dimes...
at least that's how it is in their eyes.
-unfinished-

The Art of DJing from the Female Perspective

Today I went to a female DJ workshop taught by DJ EarthOne and DJ Soyo. Even though I’ve come across DJ’s in the past, it still is amazing how much DJ’s impact music and yet are barely known. The MCs are the ones everyone knows by name and the ones who are recognized and the ones given the credit for having sparked hip-hop’s existence. But without the DJ, what could an MC do? They could go acapella of course but then could that be hip-hop? They could use instruments but again, would that be hip-hop? Probably not. Hip-hop has a special signature, a specialized voice and the DJ gives that voice to it.
The workshop was a lot of fun and informative. Some people think that being a DJ is simply putting on some vinyl on a turntable and just moving the vinyl around. It’s more than that, there is an art behind it as the EarthOne and Soyo showed. The talents of DJs makes a difficult art form look ridiculously easy but looks can be deceiving. EarthOne gave us an example of a typical set up for a gig. Four or Five vinyls for a party? Ha, yeh right, think again. For a four-hour party you’d need at the very least 2 full milk crates of vinyl records to keep the party going. And then on top of that you’d need your equipment. Two turn tables (at least $400 each!), a mixer, cords, cords and more cords, mic cords, connector cords, extension cords, and then of course there are the needles. Vinyl doesn’t play without needles. And needles cost around $70. The price of being a DJ is expensive. But, as Soyo said, “if you have a love for something just do it…whatever you want to do, just go for it”.
The unique part of this workshop was that it was taught by two women. Just like DJs are many times overlooked by hip-hop fans, women are also overlooked and sometimes not taken seriously. When the women are overlooked, history begins to give the impression that women did not play much of a role in the music or in the culture itself. This thought is incorrect though, “women have always had a lot of influence”. As DJ Soyo pointed out, one of the first DJs in the hip-hop scene got his start thanks to his sister who helped to organize parties for him or to get him gigs at parties. She paid for much of his equipment and financed his DJ career. Other women have been instrumental in the scene but unfortunately have been placed in the dustbins of history.
I’m hoping that there will be more workshop’s or programs like these in the future because not only do they tell a story, but they give the chance to hear the progression and evolution of hip-hop through time. Especially when the younger people come out, it becomes an even better event. They get to hear what they might not normally be exposed to due to the saturation of garbage playing on the airwaves in the entire country. A wide range of people are pulled to this hip-hop culture, the true hip-hop culture because so many different people can identify with it. Hip-hop voices us as a community. I saw kids at the event probably three years old, saw mostly black people but also saw Latinas, and some white people as well. Hip-hop does that, it can bring much to people and it can open people up. Soyo pointed out that she wasn’t really an English speaker when she first heard hip-hop but she loved it so much that she began to learn more of it so she could understand what was being said, what was being spoken, what they were spitting and it opened her up to a different culture. This is true hip-hop. This workshop covered a lot of material within a less than two hour time frame, and though there was a pretty solid group, it would have been nice to have seen a larger number of people come out for something like this.