As a celebration to welcoming the Islamic month of Ramadan, @MUSLIMNESS has put together this list of Ramadan 2011 messages from Twitter users across the world.

We're also sharing health and motivational advice through the Twitter hashtag #RamadanTip. Submit your own #RamadanTip tweet, share with your friends and help our faith grow this blessed month insha'Allah, God willing.

A huge greeting of Ramadan Mubarak to the following individuals and organisations:

→ https://twitter.com/#!/AmirKingKhan

How do you get your nasheed fix?

Hip-hop Muslim group Native Deen from America introduce a mobile app that is a cool new way to listen to Muslim music on the go.

Traditionally, nasheed is a song inspired by Islamic vocals that is either sung a cappella or accompanied by percussion instruments such as the duff. For Muslims, the nasheed genre ranges from pop style songs to spiritual songs of hamd, a remembrance and praise of God.

YouTube, Islamic websites and CD stores are the usual places to check out what's hot in nasheed music. But Native Deen are the first nasheed group to launch a mobile app.

The app was announced in June allowing Native Deen's international fanbase to get their music, videos and follow the group as they tour internationally. The iPhone application is free to download and available on iTunes.

Native Deen's single 'Ramadan Is Here' was a hit in 2009. Masha'Allah.

With two albums under their kufis, including 'Deen You Know' (2005) and 'Not Afraid To Stand Alone' (2007), the respected Muslim artists are filling a niche in the 'halal' market: Muslim technology.

Their latest album The Remedy was introduced at an ISNA conference to a great reception. And having also introduced a Android app on July 1st, MUSLIMNESS wishes Native Deen the best of success, insha'Allah.

Reposted from {Blessed Islam}


Stay updated {www.nativedeen.com}
Facebook page to "LIKE" {www.facebook.com/NativeDeen}

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the launch of TechGirls, an educational initiative for girls from Muslim countries interested in technology.


"It will bring teenage girls from the Middle East and North Africa for an intensive month of educational activities here in the United States," Clinton said Wednesday.

Clinton made the announcement at the closing luncheon honoring the first class of participants from TechWomen, a public-private partnership that brought emerging female leaders in technical fields from predominately Muslim countries to the United States for one month.

The women were paired with 24 leading, U.S. technology companies in Silicon Valley and the greater San Francisco area, including giants Google, Facebook and Intel, for a project-based professional mentorship.

"Being a woman in the field of technology is not always easy. Being a woman in any field is not always easy, but there are so many opportunities in technology that we just have to forge ahead," Clinton told the group of 37 Muslim women and their U.S. mentors.

The participants were from Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Jordan and the Palestinian Territories. TechWomen will expand next year to include Tunisia and Yemen.

Select U.S. mentors will complete the professional exchange program and travel to Lebanon and Morocco this year to conduct workshops for women in the technology sector as well as for young girls who have expressed an interest in tech-based careers.

TechWomen, a State Department initiative, was introduced by Clinton at the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship last spring.

The U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs awarded a $1 million grant to the Institute of International Education. The IIE, in partnership with the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, implemented both the exchange in the United States and the exchange in Lebanon and Morocco, a State Department spokeswoman said.

Clinton encouraged the first class of TechWomen to help other women in their home countries, stressing that the work between TechWomen and the United States is just beginning.

"We will continue to work with you, we will continue to support you and we will continue to look for ways that we can empower women and girls through technology," Clinton said.


From: UPI | 6th July 2011 | Hannah G Vickers

Quraishi's app, 365muslim, is available free on 4G iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches and soon will be available for Android phones.

Amanda Quraishi wants to assure you that downloading 365muslim, her new smart phone application, will not cause you to be "converted, indoctrinated, hypnotized, browbeat, jihad-ed, or added to an FBI watch list."

Well, she might not be able to guarantee the last one, but Quraishi's disclaimer on the Web site promoting the app captures both her relentless humor and some people's troubling perceptions of Islam.

That's part of the reason the Austin social media maven designed the app, which provides daily facts about Islam, including passages from the Quran, sayings from the prophet Muhammad, explanations of Muslim words, traditions and beliefs and historical anecdotes.

An example: "Prophet Muhammad said, ‘There is no man who kills even a sparrow or anything smaller without its deserving it, but Allah will question him about it on the judgment day.' Yes that means the spider on your windshield, too!"

Users of 365muslim, available for free on 4G iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches and in the works for Android phones, can mark and save favorite facts and share them on Facebook.

Quraishi is all too familiar with the Web sites and emails that disseminate skewed information about her religion. (Most of us have received warnings in our inbox about the Muslim plot to take over the world.) It seems nearly everything related to the planet's second-largest faith is somehow tainted by suspicion.

The 37-year-old Web administrator can't help but chuckle when she hears the conspiracy theories. Muslims, she likes to joke, are far too disorganized to hatch such a scheme.

Amanda Quraishi converted to Islam in 1999

But she knows these ideas can do real damage. Most people, she says, are willing to give Muslims the benefit of the doubt, but they are understandably concerned by what they hear and often don't have accurate information about Islam.

She scoured the App Store on her iPhone for Muslim content. She found Islamic quizzes and a prayer time app, complete with a compass that orients the user toward Mecca, but she found nothing in the way of educating non-Muslims about Islam.

"For a lot of Westerners, Islam can seem really intimidating," she says.

Because there's no central authority in Islam, many people don't know where to go for information. And often, Quraishi says, they are afraid of asking Muslims questions for fear of offending them.

Though the app speaks for itself, any attempt to describe Quraishi, an irreverent, wickedly funny mother of 8-year-old twins, is sure to fall short.

In a conciliatory letter to conservative women on one of her blogs, Quraishi labeled herself as a "Flaming Liberal Progressive Muslim-American Feminist." But that's just a sliver of "The Q," as she's known online. She's helped start companies and nonprofits and participated in a documentary about Muslim women.

A passionate supporter of interfaith dialogue, she contributes to a Jewish blog and last month took a job as Web and database administrator at the Catholic-founded charity Mobile Loaves & Fishes, which delivers food, clothing and comfort to people on the streets.

"Why would I not want to spend my time doing something worthwhile with people who have the same kind of vision for the world?" she said.

"So rather than argue with people who simply want to believe that Muslims are all violent, misogynistic, religious lunatics I thought the best thing to do would be to communicate genuinely with with moderate, intelligent folks who really want to get to know more about us. That’s when I came up with the idea of a smartphone app that serves up a daily fact about Muslims and Islam in an engaging and entertaining way." - 365Muslim.com

Her Facebook page is jammed with links to news stories, amusing photos and her own sardonic commentary on everything from motherhood to world affairs. As of this week, she has 1,201 friends. Her Twitter persona, @ImtheQ, draws 8,000 followers. She was one of 25 winners of the American-Statesman's Texas Social Media Awards this year.

She loves talking about religion but says she doesn't have an agenda.

Raised a Jehovah's Witness, she understands the implications of spreading the word. That's not her thing. She's a student of the world's religions and sees truth and wisdom in all expressions of faith. Some people cry at weddings. Quraishi cries at church services. Religion, she says, moves her.

She said she chose Islam in 1999 because the Quran made sense and helped her to focus on family, community and charity. In Islam she found a progressive, social justice-centered religion — quite the opposite of its current image. She regrets that with all the talk of terrorism and politics, the deeply spiritual aspects of Islam are overlooked.

"(People) always want to know what you're wearin' and whether you want to blow something up," she says with a half-grin.

This is why Adam Black, Web strategist and Jewish studies doctoral student who got to know Quraishi through Twitter, is happy his friend created 365muslim.

The app, he told me in an email, "helps combat the very human tendency to mistrust the Other."

Or, as Quraishi writes on her site,

"After using 365muslim, you may even be able to rest easy at night, knowing that that Muslim family who lives on your block isn't building WMDs or planning to subjugate you into wearing burkas and stone your adulterous relatives." - 365Muslim.com

But underneath the veil of humor lies Quraishi's sincere desire for interfaith understanding, the motivation for developing an app on Islam for non-Muslims.

"It may not inspire them," she said, "but at least they will see why it inspires someone else."

Download the 365Muslim app from iTunes
Follow The Q: http://amandaquraishi.com

Images: Amanda Quraishi

From The Statesman | June 3rd 2011 | Eileen Flynn, commentary. Eileen blogs at eileenflynn.wordpress.com.

★ www.Muslimness.com

In the name of God, compassionate & merciful بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمنِ الرَّحِيمِ | Peace be with you السلام عليكم

In the name of God, compassionate & merciful بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمنِ الرَّحِيمِ | Peace be with you السلام عليكم

I’ve noticed how elderly Muslims try to guide the Muslim youth with a time in history known as the ‘Golden Age of Islam’ and with talks about some kind of ‘Super Awesome Muslim Civilisation’.

They always say that there was a time when the Muslim Society was on top of the world while the Western societies were still living in the Dark Ages. They interrupt conversations to proudly claim that Muslims invented and developed great things, like algebra, medicine, architecture and even the square! But why is it that after boasting about those past inventions or discoveries, they never continue the conversation in further detail? What about today's inventions? Are Muslims active for tomorrow? If you ever ask them for further information they would start to mumble or even go silent.

Shocking Fact: 1000 years of history has mysteriously been lost in the curriculum of education today. It’s almost as if pages in history books have literally been ripped out. The information about Muslim greatness which we’re somewhat told about is missing! It’s strange how all the missing pages in history books are all related to Muslims and their past discoveries or inventions.

"The remarkable jump of one thousand and six hundred years from the time of Archimedes to Johannes Guttenberg was marvelling but troubling. Further reading of other books revealed that the whole period, 450-1492 CE, in fact is passed over as 'The Dark Ages'". [Professor Salim T S Al-Hassani - 1000 inventions – Muslim Heritage in Our World]

The Western world ignores Muslim History despite a great deal of its society being influenced by the amazing Muslims of those times. But the ignorant are not my main concern right now, trying to help anyone interested in learning, is.

Everyone lives life accordingly. They wake up, survive and then go back to bed, but for once just picture the little things that happen in your life. For example: turning your tap on, drinking coffee or even studying chemistry at school. Did you know it was thanks to the Muslim inventors of the past that you don’t have to travel miles just to collect water in a bucket for your daily necessities?

So ‘anyone’ if you’re interested, I recommend the book, 1001 inventions – Muslim Heritage in Our World [1000 Inventions link]. It was a real eye opener for me when I first read it and whenever I asked another person’s opinion about the book they all told me the same positive response. It is £25 in the UK (don’t let that scare you), it’s totally, absolutely, definitely worth it.

Plus, the London Science Museum is hosting a new EXHIBITION from January 21^st to April 25^th and this time it’s free! Oh and please note that between February 25 – March 12 2010, the exhibition will be closed to the public. I haven’t been there yet but Insha’Allah I want to go soon. :) ‘Featuring a diverse range of exhibits, interactive displays and dramatisation, the exhibition shows how many modern inventions, spanning fields such as engineering, medicine and design, can trace their roots back to Muslim civilisation...’ 1001 Inventions

‘This glorious book overflows with the great ideas of the Muslim middle ages. From al-Jazari and his elegant clocks and al-Kindi and Ibn al-Haitham with their revolutionary optical theories, experiments, and books, to the astronomers who navigated across the dessert by the stars, and the map-makers who put north at the bottom, every page is a mine of joyous information. There are even recipes to try out, and everything is beautifully illustrated. I wish I had this book fifty years ago.’ [Adam Hart-Davis – Photographer, Writer and TV Science Presenter of BBC series ‘What the Ancients Did for Us’]

By reading about Muslim history you’ll discover even more interesting inventions and developments that these Super Muslims from the past succeeded in and even better, you’ll find out who those Super Muslims actually were. Get inspired and Insha’Allah do something beneficial with that inspiration to help us, today.

By: The Littlest | Peace & respect ★ | www.Muslimness.com

First came Yahoo Geocities, the recently deceased (on Oct 26th) website space for nerds to express their erm, personalities through the medium of uploads! Myspace, Facebook and Twitter and a bunch of other networks followed. And hurray for YouTube's stupid talentless channels. Yayyyyy.

In the name of God, compassionate & merciful بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمنِ الرَّحِيمِ | Peace be with you السلام عليكم

In the name of God, compassionate & merciful بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمنِ الرَّحِيمِ | Peace be with you السلام عليكم