Vistas opening across the world:
Some hearts attacked mildly.
Noose-ropes cut just in time.
Not performing, a hundred pills, so kindly.
Sitting on the right side of a car, whose left crushed under a truck.
The downward gliding plane’s engine, suddenly regaining power,
Those aboard saying their last prayers.
Discovering cancer was misdiagnosed.
Near-Death Experiences they call them, a name apt for those prepared for death.
But for those choosing heedlessness, NDEs I’d still call them, but the acronym,
Would stand changed: Near–Doom Experience.
Prepare for death, we all must, for it’s closer to us than the strap of our sandals.
I once heard from a pious man, “Learn from the mistakes of others”.
Before death takes you unprepared, step into the ever opening vista called life,
Don’t look back, keep going…

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf on Sabr [Patience]:

“It is important to look at the life of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم and know that no one faced greater tribulation. The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم lived to see all of his children buried, except for Fatima. How many people experience that in their lifetime? Out of six children, he saw five of them perish. His father died before his birth. His mother died when he was just a boy. His guardian grandfather then died. When he received his calling, he saw his people turn against him with vehemence and brutality. People who had once honored him now slandered him, calling him a madman, liar, and sorcerer. They stalked him and threw stones at him until he bled. They boycotted him and composed stinging invectives against him. He lost his closest friends and relatives, like Hamza, who was killed on the battlefield. His beloved wife Khadija after 25 years of blissful marriage died during the Prophet’s صلى الله عليه وسلم most difficult moment. Abu Talib, his protecting uncle, also died. The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم was the target of 13 assassination attempts. How many people have faced all of that? Not once in a single hadith is there a complaint from him–except when beseeching his Lord.”

[Excerpted from Purification of the Heart by Shaykh Hamza Yusuf]

I on behalf of everyone here at Ekhlas would like to thank the following people (in no specific order) for their kind and generous support throughout the entire ordeal of having to deal with the false accusations:

And all my fellow DPrs

Sidi Mikael Pittam

Sidi ‘Umar Andrea

Sajjad Sher Afghan

Brother Hamza Isa Jennings

Brother Nebo

Brother Asif

Brother Abdul Rahiim Halim

Brother Pacter

Sidi Abd Allah

And all my fellow DPrs

I apologize if I have missed any names, you all are in my prayers, May Allah give you immense good in both worlds. May He grant us all the tawfiq to follow His beloved both inwardly and outwardly. Thank you.

Bismillah,

I would like to inform everyone who has been following this whole event that unfortunately another website called Panorama.it has mistakenly linked to ekhlas.wordpress.com:

The page can be found here

I have also sent them a similar letter to the one I sent the Il Messaggero newspaper [a copy of which was posted on ekhlas.wordpress.com earlier].

I request everyone again to continue their generous support and to remember me in your prayers.

WasSalam,

Bilal Malik

Bismillah.

Hereunder is a copy of the letter that I have emailed to the Il Messaggero Newspaper:

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Dear Foreign Editorial Unit, Il Messaggero,

Ref: “Terrorismo, Al Qaeda apre un sito in italiano”

http://www.ilmessaggero.it/articolo.php?id=22443&sez=HOME_NELMONDO

The abovementioned article which was published on April 14, 2008 on the Il Messaggero website at the link given above, mentions in the opening paragraph:

“ROMA (14 aprile) - Al-Qaeda apre un sito in lingua italiana. I suoi proseliti via Web stanno dedicando uno dei loro forum nella nostra lingua, ed è uno dei forum qaedisti più noti e frequentati, “Ekhlas”. Finora interamente in lingua araba, il forum è stato scelto dagli internauti dopo la chiusura da parte della polizia postale, il 22 febbraio scorso, del blog dell’Imam di Carmagnola, Abdul Qadir Fadlallah Mamour, e della moglie Barbara Farina.”

English Translation from Google:

“ROME (April 14) - Al-Qaeda opening a site in English. Its Web proselytes are dedicating one of their forum in our language, and is a forum qaedisti known and most popular, “Ekhlas. So far, entirely in Arabic, the forum was chosen by Internet users after the closure by the police post, on February 22 last blog dell’Imam Carmagnola, Abdul Qadir Fadlallah Mamour, and wife Barbara Farina.”

At the 3rd line above, the words “Internet users” are linked to my personal blog [ekhlas.wordpress.com]

I was shocked, dismayed, and appalled at the fact that ekhlas.wordpress.com/blog was a link provided in the said article.

I immediately wrote a response to the article as a comment on your website, after which, the link mentioned above was removed.

This is a show of utterly unscrupulous and careless “journalism” in which I have been accused because of the lack of care of the writers to get the proper information of who they are talking about.

Ekhlas.wordpress.com or any of its pages or any of its contents, or any of its authors have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with Al-Qaeda or any other terrorist organization, individual, or activity.

There has been a huge mistake on your part in linking to my blog which just happens to share its name with the site you were talking about in your article.

1. I demand that a signed apology from your website be emailed to me immediately so that I may post that on my weblog.

2. In addition to the above, I also demand that an apology be printed in both the paper and online versions of Il Messaggero immediately.

If these demands are not met, I will be forced to take legal action.

Awaiting your response,

Bilal Malik

Ekhlas.wordpress.com

Bismillah.

After seeing a sudden spike/increase in ekhlas’s visitors in the ‘Blog Stats’ section of WordPress Dashboard, I decided to take a look at where these visitors were coming from in the ‘Referrers’ section of the Dashboard.

http://www.ilmessaggero.it/articolo.php?id=22443&sez=HOME_NELMONDO

The above link was the most occurring Referrer.

When I went to this link it opened up to what looked like an Italian newspaper’s website. I immediately translated the Italian page into English via Google’s Translate option.

I was shocked, dismayed, and appauled at the fact that ekhlas.wordpress.com/blog was a link provided in the article entitled: “Terrorismo, Al Qaeda apre un sito in italiano” which translates to “Terrorism, Al Qaeda opens a site in Italian”.

The articles mentions in the opening paragraph:

“ROMA (14 aprile) - Al-Qaeda apre un sito in lingua italiana. I suoi proseliti via Web stanno dedicando uno dei loro forum nella nostra lingua, ed è uno dei forum qaedisti più noti e frequentati, “Ekhlas”. Finora interamente in lingua araba, il forum è stato scelto dagli internauti dopo la chiusura da parte della polizia postale, il 22 febbraio scorso, del blog dell’Imam di Carmagnola, Abdul Qadir Fadlallah Mamour, e della moglie Barbara Farina.”

English:

“ROME (April 14) - Al-Qaeda opening a site in English. Its Web proselytes are dedicating one of their forum in our language, and is a forum qaedisti known and most popular, “Ekhlas. So far, entirely in Arabic, the forum was chosen by Internet users after the closure by the police post, on February 22 last blog dell’Imam Carmagnola, Abdul Qadir Fadlallah Mamour, and wife Barbara Farina.”

At the 3rd line above, the words “Internet users” are linked to this blog [ekhlas.wordpress.com]!!!

Ekhlas.wordpress.com or any of its pages or any of its contents, or any of its authors have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with Al-Qaeda or any other terrorist organization or individual.

I would request all the people who know me personally, or through the internet, or those who have visited this blog and know about its contents, to comment to this post as much as possible and to negate this horried and false accusation hurled at my weblog.

I would also like to appeal to any Muslim or sane human being who can help me to to contact the ‘Il Messanggero’ newspaper’s website so I may be able to clear this mistake and get a written apology and acknowledgement of this blunder in writing from the newspaper.

I again ask all those who know me to contact me at bilal.ekhlas@gmail.com to discuss this matter further as I need your help, and mashwara [cousel].

Your Brother,

Bilal Malik

Hereunder is a copy of the comment I wrote in response to the article, this is only a comment and I personally need to contact the newpaper:

After seeing a huge spike in my blogs number of visitors for April 14, 2008, I wanted to see why so many people were coming to my blog. I followed the link that wordpress.com provided me with, and I ended up at this italian newspapers website. In the above article it says:

“”Ekhlas”. Finora interamente in lingua araba, il forum è stato scelto dagli internauti dopo la chiusura da parte della polizia postale, il 22 febbraio scorso, del blog dell’Imam di Carmagnola, Abdul Qadir Fadlallah Mamour, e della moglie Barbara Farina.”

and where it says “internauti” it is linked to my personal weblog that has nothing to do with Al-Qaeda or any other terrorist organization. This is a show of extremely unscrupulous and careless “journalism” in which I have been accused because of the carelessness of the writers to get the proper information of who they are talking about.

Bottomline:

My weblog [ekhlas.wordpress.com] has nothing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with Al-Qaeda or any other terrorist organization or individual. I am going to write a response to this on my weblog to hopefully clear things up. I demand that those responsible for this horrid mistake contact me via email ASAP!

This needs to be resovled, and unless an article is published in which these mistakes are recognized, accepted, and solved IN PRINT, I will not back down from legal litigation.

Bilal Malik

‘Reposts’ are posts of yester- day/week/year which shall be posted again, Insha Allah once a week and can be found in the ‘Reposts’ category.

Original post date: April 29, 2007.

The following has been excerpted from Allah Ke Raaste Mein Nikalnay Walon Ki Hairat-Angaiz Kar-Guzariyan by Mawlana Tariq Jamil and is translated into English by Bilal Malik.

“This time when I went for Hajj, a young man had come there from Italy. He was from the lineage of Sayyiduna Hasan رضى الله عنه and was a local of Marrakesh. Out of necessity he had been living in Italy. At the age of twenty two he got all the Muslims in Italy moving.

Three hundred mosques have been built, when there had been none. And he had brought with him seventy young men to Hajj. So immense is the power given by Allah to Muslims. He wasn’t an ‘Aalim [Scholar]. … But the way he brought there [in Italy] this effort to life, he became the means for the construction of three hundred mosques, and a means for thousands of young Muslims to make tawba [repentance].

So this is your work, your responsibility. I neither say, become a member of the Tablighi Jamat, nor am I inviting you to any other group. [What I say is]: Me and you, all of us become the servants of Allah and His Messenger صلى الله عليه وسلم, and become those who spread to others this servitude. And in spreading it whatever hardships we may face, we bear for the Pleasure of Allah. From al-Kawthar, the Beloved of Allah صلى الله عليه وسلم, with his own hands, will give to drink. All sorrows and pain will leave. There will be a call there: “Where are my last Ummatis? When the Deen was being erased, they were the ones who embraced it and conveyed my message and spread it.””

[Mawlana Tariq Jamil]

Astonishing Chronicles of Those That Go Out in the Path of Allah