Tuesday 24 April 2018
Unquote
"He who opens a school, closes a prison" - Victor Hugo
“Watch carefully the magic that occurs when you give a person just enough comfort to be themselves." - Atticus Finch
“You can’t wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.” ~Navajo expression
Saturday 21 April 2018
Sex Drive: How Do Men and Women Compare?
Experts say men score higher in libido, while women's sex drive is more "fluid."
By Richard Sine
FROM THE WEBMD ARCHIVES
Birds do it, bees do it, and men do it any old time. But women will only do it if the candles are scented just right -- and their partner has done the dishes first. A stereotype, sure, but is it true? Do men really have stronger sex drives than women?
Well, yes, they do. Study after study shows that men's sex drives are not only stronger than women's, but much more straightforward. The sources of women's libidos, by contrast, are much harder to pin down.
It's common wisdom that women place more value on emotional connection as a spark of sexual desire. But women also appear to be heavily influenced by social and cultural factors as well.
"Sexual desire in women is extremely sensitive to environment and context," says Edward O. Laumann, PhD. He is a professor of sociology at the University of Chicago and lead author of a major survey of sexual practices, The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States.
Here are seven patterns of men's and women's sex drives that researchers have found. Bear in mind that people may vary from these norms.
1. Men think more about sex.
The majority of adult men under 60 think about sex at least once a day, reports Laumann. Only about one-quarter of women say they think about it that frequently. As men and women age, each fantasize less, but men still fantasize about twice as often.
In a survey of studies comparing male and female sex drives, Roy Baumeister, a social psychologist at Florida State University, found that men reported more spontaneous sexual arousal and had more frequent and varied fantasies.
2. Men seek sex more avidly.
"Men want sex more often than women at the start of a relationship, in the middle of it, and after many years of it," Baumeister concludes after reviewing several surveys of men and women. This isn't just true of heterosexuals, he says; gay men also have sex more often than lesbians at all stages of the relationship. Men also say they want more sex partners in their lifetime, and are more interested in casual sex.
Men are more likely to seek sex even when it's frowned upon or even outlawed:
About two-thirds say they masturbate, even though about half also say they feel guilty about it, Laumann says. By contrast, about 40% of women say they masturbate, and the frequency of masturbation is smaller among women.
Prostitution is still mostly a phenomenon of men seeking sex with women, rather than the other way around.
Nuns do a better job of fulfilling their vows of chastity than priests. Baumeister cites a survey of several hundred clergy in which 62% of priests admitted to sexual activity, compared to 49% of nuns. The men reported more partners on average than the women.
3. Women's sexual turn-ons are more complicated than men's.
What turns women on? Not even women always seem to know. Northwestern University researcher Meredith Chivers and colleagues showed erotic films to gay and straight men and women. They asked them about their level of sexual arousal, and also measured their actual level of arousal through devices attached to their genitals.
For men, the results were predictable: Straight men said they were more turned on by depictions of male-female sex and female-female sex, and the measuring devices backed up their claims. Gay men said they were turned on by male-male sex, and again the devices backed them up. For women, the results were more surprising. Straight women, for example, said they were more turned on by male-female sex. But genitally they showed about the same reaction to male-female, male-male, and female-female sex.
"Men are very rigid and specific about who they become aroused by, who they want to have sex with, who they fall in love with," says J. Michael Bailey. He is a Northwestern University sex researcher and co-author with Chivers on the study.
By contrast, women may be more open to same-sex relationships thanks to their less-directed sex drives, Bailey says. "Women probably have the capacity to become sexually interested in and fall in love with their own sex more than men do," Bailey says. "They won't necessarily do it, but they have the capacity."
Bailey's idea is backed up by studies showing that homosexuality is a more fluid state among women than men. In another broad review of studies, Baumeister found many more lesbians reported recent sex with men, when compared to gay men's reports of sex with women. Women were also more likely than men to call themselves bisexual, and to report their sexual orientation as a matter of choice.
4. Women's sex drives are more influenced by social and cultural factors.
In his review, Baumeister found studies showing many ways in which women's sexual attitudes, practices, and desires were more influenced by their environment than men:
Women's attitudes toward (and willingness to perform) various sexual practices are more likely than men's to change over time.
Women who regularly attend church are less likely to have permissive attitudes about sex. Men do not show this connection between church attendance and sex attitudes.
Women are more influenced by the attitudes of their peer group in their decisions about sex.
Women with higher education levels were more likely to have performed a wider variety of sexual practices (such as oral sex); education made less of a difference with men.
Women were more likely than men to show inconsistency between their expressed values about sexual activities such as premarital sex and their actual behavior.
Why are women's sex drives seemingly weaker and more vulnerable to influence? Some have theorized it's related to the greater power of men in society, or differing sexual expectations of men when compared to women. Laumann prefers an explanation more closely tied to the world of sociobiology.
Men have every incentive to have sex to pass along their genetic material, Laumann says. By contrast, women may be hard-wired to choose their partners carefully, because they are the ones who can get pregnant and wind up taking care of the baby. They are likely to be more attuned to relationship quality because they want a partner who will stay around to help take care of the child. They're also more likely to choose a man with resources because of his greater ability to support a child.
5. Women take a less direct route to sexual satisfaction.
Men and women travel slightly different paths to arrive at sexual desire. "I hear women say in my office that desire originates much more between the ears than between the legs," says Esther Perel, a New York City psychotherapist. "For women there is a need for a plot -- hence the romance novel. It is more about the anticipation, how you get there; it is the longing that is the fuel for desire," Perel says.
Women's desire "is more contextual, more subjective, more layered on a lattice of emotion," Perel adds. Men, by contrast, don't need to have nearly as much imagination, Perel says, since sex is simpler and more straightforward for them.
That doesn't mean men don't seek intimacy, love, and connection in a relationship, just as women do. They just view the role of sex differently. "Women want to talk first, connect first, then have sex," Perel explains. "For men, sex is the connection. Sex is the language men use to express their tender loving vulnerable side," Perel says. "It is their language of intimacy."
6. Women experience orgasms differently than men.
Men, on average, take 4 minutes from the point of entry until ejaculation, according to Laumann. Women usually take around 10 to 11 minutes to reach orgasm -- if they do.
That's another difference between the sexes: how often they have an orgasm during sex. Among men who are part of a couple, 75% say they always have an orgasm, as opposed to 26% of the women. And not only is there a difference in reality, there's one in perception, too. While the men's female partners reported their rate of orgasm accurately, the women's male partners said they believed their female partners had orgasms 45% of the time.
7. Women's libidos seem to be less responsive to drugs.
With men's sex drives seemingly more directly tied to biology when compared to women, it may be no surprise that low desire may be more easily treated through medication in men. Men have embraced drugs as a cure not only for erectile dysfunction but also for a shrinking libido. With women, though, the search for a drug to boost sex drive has proved more elusive.
Testosterone has been linked to sex drive in both men and women. But testosterone works much faster in men with low libidos than women, says Glenn Braunstein, MD. He is past-chair of the department of medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and a leading researcher on testosterone treatments in women. While the treatments are effective, they're not as effective in women as in men. "There is a hormonal factor in [sex drive], but it is much more important in men than women," Braunstein says.
A testosterone patch for women called Intrinsa has been approved in Europe but was rejected by the FDA due to concerns about long-term safety. But the drug has sparked a backlash from some medical and psychiatric professionals who question whether low sex drive in women should even be considered a condition best treated with drugs. They point to the results of a large survey in which about 40% of women reported some sort of sexual problem -- most commonly low sexual desire -- but only 12% said they felt distressed about it. With all the factors that go into the stew that piques sexual desire in women, some doctors say a drug should be the last ingredient to consider, rather than the first.
By Richard Sine
FROM THE WEBMD ARCHIVES
Birds do it, bees do it, and men do it any old time. But women will only do it if the candles are scented just right -- and their partner has done the dishes first. A stereotype, sure, but is it true? Do men really have stronger sex drives than women?
Well, yes, they do. Study after study shows that men's sex drives are not only stronger than women's, but much more straightforward. The sources of women's libidos, by contrast, are much harder to pin down.
It's common wisdom that women place more value on emotional connection as a spark of sexual desire. But women also appear to be heavily influenced by social and cultural factors as well.
"Sexual desire in women is extremely sensitive to environment and context," says Edward O. Laumann, PhD. He is a professor of sociology at the University of Chicago and lead author of a major survey of sexual practices, The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States.
Here are seven patterns of men's and women's sex drives that researchers have found. Bear in mind that people may vary from these norms.
1. Men think more about sex.
The majority of adult men under 60 think about sex at least once a day, reports Laumann. Only about one-quarter of women say they think about it that frequently. As men and women age, each fantasize less, but men still fantasize about twice as often.
In a survey of studies comparing male and female sex drives, Roy Baumeister, a social psychologist at Florida State University, found that men reported more spontaneous sexual arousal and had more frequent and varied fantasies.
2. Men seek sex more avidly.
"Men want sex more often than women at the start of a relationship, in the middle of it, and after many years of it," Baumeister concludes after reviewing several surveys of men and women. This isn't just true of heterosexuals, he says; gay men also have sex more often than lesbians at all stages of the relationship. Men also say they want more sex partners in their lifetime, and are more interested in casual sex.
Men are more likely to seek sex even when it's frowned upon or even outlawed:
About two-thirds say they masturbate, even though about half also say they feel guilty about it, Laumann says. By contrast, about 40% of women say they masturbate, and the frequency of masturbation is smaller among women.
Prostitution is still mostly a phenomenon of men seeking sex with women, rather than the other way around.
Nuns do a better job of fulfilling their vows of chastity than priests. Baumeister cites a survey of several hundred clergy in which 62% of priests admitted to sexual activity, compared to 49% of nuns. The men reported more partners on average than the women.
3. Women's sexual turn-ons are more complicated than men's.
What turns women on? Not even women always seem to know. Northwestern University researcher Meredith Chivers and colleagues showed erotic films to gay and straight men and women. They asked them about their level of sexual arousal, and also measured their actual level of arousal through devices attached to their genitals.
For men, the results were predictable: Straight men said they were more turned on by depictions of male-female sex and female-female sex, and the measuring devices backed up their claims. Gay men said they were turned on by male-male sex, and again the devices backed them up. For women, the results were more surprising. Straight women, for example, said they were more turned on by male-female sex. But genitally they showed about the same reaction to male-female, male-male, and female-female sex.
"Men are very rigid and specific about who they become aroused by, who they want to have sex with, who they fall in love with," says J. Michael Bailey. He is a Northwestern University sex researcher and co-author with Chivers on the study.
By contrast, women may be more open to same-sex relationships thanks to their less-directed sex drives, Bailey says. "Women probably have the capacity to become sexually interested in and fall in love with their own sex more than men do," Bailey says. "They won't necessarily do it, but they have the capacity."
Bailey's idea is backed up by studies showing that homosexuality is a more fluid state among women than men. In another broad review of studies, Baumeister found many more lesbians reported recent sex with men, when compared to gay men's reports of sex with women. Women were also more likely than men to call themselves bisexual, and to report their sexual orientation as a matter of choice.
4. Women's sex drives are more influenced by social and cultural factors.
In his review, Baumeister found studies showing many ways in which women's sexual attitudes, practices, and desires were more influenced by their environment than men:
Women's attitudes toward (and willingness to perform) various sexual practices are more likely than men's to change over time.
Women who regularly attend church are less likely to have permissive attitudes about sex. Men do not show this connection between church attendance and sex attitudes.
Women are more influenced by the attitudes of their peer group in their decisions about sex.
Women with higher education levels were more likely to have performed a wider variety of sexual practices (such as oral sex); education made less of a difference with men.
Women were more likely than men to show inconsistency between their expressed values about sexual activities such as premarital sex and their actual behavior.
Why are women's sex drives seemingly weaker and more vulnerable to influence? Some have theorized it's related to the greater power of men in society, or differing sexual expectations of men when compared to women. Laumann prefers an explanation more closely tied to the world of sociobiology.
Men have every incentive to have sex to pass along their genetic material, Laumann says. By contrast, women may be hard-wired to choose their partners carefully, because they are the ones who can get pregnant and wind up taking care of the baby. They are likely to be more attuned to relationship quality because they want a partner who will stay around to help take care of the child. They're also more likely to choose a man with resources because of his greater ability to support a child.
5. Women take a less direct route to sexual satisfaction.
Men and women travel slightly different paths to arrive at sexual desire. "I hear women say in my office that desire originates much more between the ears than between the legs," says Esther Perel, a New York City psychotherapist. "For women there is a need for a plot -- hence the romance novel. It is more about the anticipation, how you get there; it is the longing that is the fuel for desire," Perel says.
Women's desire "is more contextual, more subjective, more layered on a lattice of emotion," Perel adds. Men, by contrast, don't need to have nearly as much imagination, Perel says, since sex is simpler and more straightforward for them.
That doesn't mean men don't seek intimacy, love, and connection in a relationship, just as women do. They just view the role of sex differently. "Women want to talk first, connect first, then have sex," Perel explains. "For men, sex is the connection. Sex is the language men use to express their tender loving vulnerable side," Perel says. "It is their language of intimacy."
6. Women experience orgasms differently than men.
Men, on average, take 4 minutes from the point of entry until ejaculation, according to Laumann. Women usually take around 10 to 11 minutes to reach orgasm -- if they do.
That's another difference between the sexes: how often they have an orgasm during sex. Among men who are part of a couple, 75% say they always have an orgasm, as opposed to 26% of the women. And not only is there a difference in reality, there's one in perception, too. While the men's female partners reported their rate of orgasm accurately, the women's male partners said they believed their female partners had orgasms 45% of the time.
7. Women's libidos seem to be less responsive to drugs.
With men's sex drives seemingly more directly tied to biology when compared to women, it may be no surprise that low desire may be more easily treated through medication in men. Men have embraced drugs as a cure not only for erectile dysfunction but also for a shrinking libido. With women, though, the search for a drug to boost sex drive has proved more elusive.
Testosterone has been linked to sex drive in both men and women. But testosterone works much faster in men with low libidos than women, says Glenn Braunstein, MD. He is past-chair of the department of medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and a leading researcher on testosterone treatments in women. While the treatments are effective, they're not as effective in women as in men. "There is a hormonal factor in [sex drive], but it is much more important in men than women," Braunstein says.
A testosterone patch for women called Intrinsa has been approved in Europe but was rejected by the FDA due to concerns about long-term safety. But the drug has sparked a backlash from some medical and psychiatric professionals who question whether low sex drive in women should even be considered a condition best treated with drugs. They point to the results of a large survey in which about 40% of women reported some sort of sexual problem -- most commonly low sexual desire -- but only 12% said they felt distressed about it. With all the factors that go into the stew that piques sexual desire in women, some doctors say a drug should be the last ingredient to consider, rather than the first.
Thursday 19 April 2018
Tuesday 3 April 2018
Why Learning to Code is So Damn Hard
From: http://www.vikingcodeschool.com/posts/why-learning-to-code-is-so-damn-hard
Why Learning to Code is So Damn Hard
What every beginner absolutely needs to know about the journey ahead
Erik Trautman wrote this on Feb 4, 2015 | 170 Comments Quincy Larson was just a "guy in a suit in an office" and decided he wanted to learn how to code. So he asked around. He started by picking up a bit of Ruby then found himself skimming through other languages like Scala, Clojure and Go. He learned Emacs then Vim and even the Dvorak keyboard layout. He picked up Linux, dabbled in Lisp and coded in Python while living on the command line for more than half a year.
Like a leaf in a tornado, the advice Quincy received jerked him first one way and then another and then another until he'd finally taken "every online course program imaginable". By the end of it all, despite having ultimately landed a software development job, Quincy:
... was convinced that the seemingly normal programmers I ran into were actually sociopaths who had experienced, then repressed, the trauma of learning to code.
Ouch. Does that sound familiar?
Phase I: The Hand-Holding Honeymoon
It's really hard to blame anyone for coming into the programming industry with outrageous expectations.
On the one hand, you've heard rumors of how difficult programming is since you were young, like old wives tales meant to scare children into studying social sciences instead.
On the other, the "Learn to Code" movement has done a fantastic job of breaking down barriers and showing people that code is actually quite harmless. Tools like Codecademy and Treehouseand Code School reach out with the gentlest of touches to assure you that you too (nay, anyone!) can not just learn to code but become a full-fledged developer as well.
Suddenly the problem isn't fear, it's an overabundance of hopes and high expectations.
And, for the most part, these introductory tools do a great job of guiding you like a child in a crosswalk past the big scary variables and conditional statements and through the early phases of programming syntax. As you conquer one after another of their gamified challenges, your confidence rises. Maybe you can do this after all! How hard can it be? You're basically a developer already!
The Hand-Holding Honeymoon
Here's the problem -- you're in what I like to call the "Hand Holding Honeymoon" phase. Though you may feel like the end is around the corner, you're only a fraction of the way there. This is just the beginning...
Charting The Path Ahead
Before we dive into Phase II, let's look at the bigger picture.
In this post, I'll walk you through the four phases of the typical journey into coding and what you'll need to do to survive each of them. You'll also see how two key factors -- the density of resources and scope of required knowledge -- define this journey.
The trek towards job-readiness can be plotted in terms of how your confidence level changes as your capability increases:
The Learn-to-Code Journey -- Click to Enlarge
This is a relevant relationship because your confidence is highly correlated with your happiness and because the point where your confidence and capabilities match is the best proxy I have for the sweet spot when you're officially "job ready".
We'll look into the unique challenges of the remaining 3 phases in a moment, but this is what each of them essentially involves:
The Hand Holding Honeymoon is the joy-filled romp through highly polished resources teaching you things that seem tricky but are totally do-able with their intensive support. You will primarily learn basic syntax but feel great about your accomplishments.
The Cliff of Confusion is the painful realization that it's a lot harder when the hand-holding ends and it feels like you can't actually do anything on your own yet. Your primary challenges are constant debugging and not quite knowing how to ask the right questions as you fight your way towards any kind of momentum.
The Desert of Despair is the long and lonely journey through a pathless landscape where every new direction seems correct but you're frequently going in circles and you're starving for the resources to get you through it. Beware the "Mirages of Mania", like sirens of the desert, which will lead you astray.
The Upswing of Awesome is when you've finally found a path through the desert and pulled together an understanding of how to build applications. But your code is still siloed and brittle like a house of cards. You gain confidence because your sites appear to run, you've mastered a few useful patterns, and your friends think your interfaces are cool but you're terrified to look under the hood and you ultimately don't know how to get to "production ready" code. How do you bridge the gap to a real job?
I've interviewed hundreds of aspiring developers over the past several years and heard echoes of the same story again and again. My goal for this post is that you approach the learner's journey with both eyes open and enough of a plan that you can avoid the common pitfalls of those who have come before you.
Let's get back into Phase II...
Phase II: The Cliff of Confusion
So, you're in Phase I -- the "Hand-Holding Honeymoon" -- checking off badges and completing coding challenges while your confidence and capabilities grow. This isn't so bad... what's all the fuss about? You've arrived at the "Peak of Irrational Exuberance"...
Be careful! You’re about to overstep a precipice that’s broken many strong aspiring learners and relegated them to the “coding is too hard” camp. The precise moment this leap occurs is the first time you sit down at your keyboard, open up your text editor, and try to build a project from scratch without any of the fancy in-browser editors, scaffolded code or helpful hints.
Crap.
You might stretch this out a bit by following tutorials, but no one has ever reached the skies without leaving the ground, and, at some point, you're going to have to create magic from a blank text file. You've just entered the second phase of learning, where confidence comes crashing down to earth -- the "Cliff of Confusion":
The Cliff of Confusion
So you build. You fight and scratch your way to a barely-functional solution but there's something missing. You're at a war with bugs that makes Starship Troopers look benign. It feels like each victory was gained only by a stroke of lucky Googling and your confidence that you can ever figure this stuff out plummets.
Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuug!!!
This is a particularly frustrating phase to see as an educator and to all participants in our industry. Programming may not be perfect for everyone, but we want you to make progress because sometimes the unlikeliest of stories become the grandest successes.
When the hand-holding ends and students are pushed off the cliff and told to fly, too many potentially awesome people are spiraling onto the rocks of frustration without learning how to flap their wings.
The scary part is that you haven't even gotten to the meaty stuff yet. This second phase, the Cliff of Confusion, is still very early. Once you've finally squashed enough bugs to end the eighth plague of Egypt and actually finished a couple of projects -- thus marking the end of Phase II -- you're still just getting started.
For those who are truly ready to make a career out of this, surviving the Cliff of Confusion is often the point where you decide to go all-in with your new life. But too many are left behind. And, unfortunately, you're just about to enter the "Desert of Despair".
The Two Key Factors at Play
So what really marks the difference between one phase and the next? Why was Phase II (the Cliff of Confusion) so awful compared to Phase I (the Hand-Holding Honeymoon)? Understanding this will help you realize that it's not your fault at all if your journey looks like what we've just described.
Basically, there are two key forces at work in every phase -- Resource Density and Scope of Knowledge. Let's see what these are before exploring how they define Phase III.
Factor 1: Resource Density
As I said above, when you first start out, it feels like there are a million resources out there trying to hold your hand and pull you into coding. That's because there are!
Search for "Learn to Code" and you'll be hit with a wall of helpful and useful tools, texts, videos and tutorials. And, frankly, they're great! Never before have there been so many ways to start learning to code.
Unfortunately, in later phases the density of resources drops off fast. Anyone who's made the jump from beginner to intermediate can attest that there is a BIG difference between the amount of resources available when you first start out versus when you're first looking for help building things on your own without too much hand-holding.
This problem exacerbates as the amount of knowledge increases rapidly entering Phase III, and is one reason why we call that phase the "Desert of Despair". Once you get past this and start to become comfortable with what exactly you need to search for, the resources return and you're able to work with more technical tools like industry blogs and screencasts. Part of this is just understanding which questions to ask.
Here's what the Resource Density looks like in each phase (greater line density indicates more resources):
Density of Resources in Each Phase -- Click to Enlarge
Factor 2: Scope of Knowledge
Now let's talk about a related issue -- the Scope of Knowledge. This represents the total breadth of new topics you need to learn in each phase. Here's what it looks like:
The Scope of Knowledge that's Required in Each Phase -- Click to Enlarge
When you first start learning, the set of things you need to understand is narrow. Everyone, regardless of goals or language or background, needs to figure out what a for loop is, how to build conditional logic, and other basic structures of programming syntax. There ultimately aren't even that many of these fundamental concepts so the Scope of Knowledge during that phase is very narrow.
As soon as you get away from the basics, you see a rapid broadening of the Scope of Knowledge as you need to begin picking up things that are more difficult like understanding errors and when to use the code you know know how to use. This is different because there is no "correct" answer to a clear question... things get fuzzy.
When you progress into the third phase, the scope of knowledge balloons wider. You now need to understand what tools to use, what languages to learn, underlying CS fundamentals, how to write modular code, object-orientation, good style, and how to ask for help (to name just a few). Every trip to Google or Hacker Newstakes you down another set of rabbit holes and overwhelms you with more things you don't know but feel like you should.
You don't know what you don't know.
Only when you've finally found some traction and left the desert does the scope again begin to narrow. By that point, you've found your chosen technology and its place in the ecosystem. You finally (pretty much) know what you don't know and can plot a path through it. You will continue to increase focus as you push onward and into the beginning of your career.
Phase III: The Desert of Despair
With an understanding of these factors, you can see that the Cliff of Confusion is really just a turning point. The pain caused by the toxic combination of a rapidly increasing Scope of Knowledge and a falling Resource Density results in what I call the "Desert of Despair".
In essence, this desert is where you know there's an end somewhere but you don't know how to get there:
The Desert of Despair
The desert is long and fraught with dangers. You'll find yourself drawn to "Mirages of Mania" along the way -- dozens of tempting resources which appear to hold the solutions you're looking for but which will deposit you, once again, in a place where lonely sand extends to each horizon line.
Maybe you sign up for a couple MOOC courses from Coursera or Udacity or edX. Or you find a tutorial which purports to take you all the way. You thought you learned the lessons of the Hand Holding Honeymoon -- that there are no easy answers -- but the temptation to seek salvation is too great and you fall for the promise that this one will get you to the finish where the others did not.
You can't learn this stuff in a week or a month or a single college class no matter what anyone says so stop falling for that!
There is a LOT more to learn than you probably expected. Even if you're able to get some apps running, it's hard not to feel lost in the greater scheme of becoming a true professional. It's difficult to measure your progress. How do you know what you need to learn or if you're even learning the right things?
Even if you're pointing the right direction, it's hard to measure your progress. You might feel totally lost until the very moment when you're finally able to build something that looks and acts the way you expected it to. But, with enough perseverance and a good compass, you'll eventually get your first few "real" projects launched and you'll realize that you're finally starting to get it.
Sure it's been hard up until now, but maybe this web dev stuff isn't so bad after all... Everything's coming up Milhouse!
Phase IV: The Upswing of Awesome
You've made it through the desert and your confidence is growing. Your Google-fu is excellent and you're finally able to understand those detailed industry blog posts and screencasts. Maybe you've gone deep into a particular language or framework and you have confidence that you can build and launch a functioning application.
This is the "Upswing of Awesome":
The Upswing of Awesome
All may seem well to the outside but you know deep down that you're not there yet.
You can make that application work but what's happening beneath the surface? Your code is duct tape and string and, worst of all, you don’t even know which parts are terrible and which are actually just fine. Your periodic flashes of brilliance are countered by noob mistakes and, worse, a creeping suspicion that you still don't have a damn clue what you're doing.
This is a bipolar phase. You feel like half of you is a bulletproof developer and the other half is a thin veneer of effectiveness covering a wild-eyed newbie who is in way too deep. The further you progress, the more a gnawing sense of uncertainty grows that someone is going to "out" you as a fraud.
You feel like you should be a developer already but the distance between the code you're writing and a "professional" work environment couldn't feel further away...
Eventually, though, you'll make it. There's too much momentum not to! The Desert of Despair is behind you and the Cliff of Confusion is a distant memory. You're finally, truly, on the upswing. You're learning faster and more intelligently than ever before and, eventually, you will have absorbed enough best practices that your swiss cheese knowledge coalesces into a production-grade skill set.
The Upswing of Awesome always takes longer than you expect it to and it feels interminable because you're so close... but you will get there. If you're persistent enough in the right ways (the topic of a future post for sure), you will convince someone to pay you to keep learning. The job is yours.
What it All Looks Like
So now you've seen the road ahead and the reasons why it can be difficult. When you combine all four phases we just covered with the factors that define them, it looks something like the following chart:
The Whole Shebang -- Click to Enlarge
It's one thing to know the path and another to walk it. Let's get you started on the right foot.
How to Make it Through Alive
The journey seems intense and, frankly, it often is. It's important that you understand what you're in for, particularly if you go it alone. But you don't have to. There are ways to short-circuit most of these problems. Learning to code is rarely as easy as people make it out to be but it's also rarely as difficult as it seems in the depths of your despair.
In this section, I'll introduce the key tactics you can use to keep yourself pointed in the right direction.
Your Progression Through the Phases -- Click to Enlarge
I: Surviving the Hand-Holding Honeymoon
The plethora of available resources in the Hand-Holding Honeymoon make it a lot of fun. They do a great job easing you into the kind of logical thinking you'll need to cultivate over the coming phases. It's a great time to start learning to code so try to enjoy it and keep these two tips in mind:
Start by trying out different resources to find how you learn best and what sorts of projects are the most interesting to you. Maybe it's Khan Academy's quick challenges, Codecademy's in-browser exercises, Chris Pine's Learn to Program book or Code School's wacky try Ruby experience. Be open minded at the start and ignore anything about what you should learn... all code is the same at this phase.
Then pick one resource and stick with it once you've found your fit. Work through to the end of their introductory course arc, which should give you all the foundational knowledge you need to write basic scripts and apps. Then get ready to start building on your own.
II: Surviving the Cliff of Confusion
Almost everyone will experience the Cliff of Confusion because the only way to become a developer is to, well, develop. You can pretend to be building by signing up for tutorials (or tutorials which masquerade as "complete" courses), but you're just putting off the inevitable. Tutorials are a good way to bridge from more high-touch introductory offerings but you'll need to wean yourself off the pacifier and face the real world at some point.
Three tips for making the transition to building on your own:
Work with someone else, even another beginner. You'll be surprised how much easier it is to debug an impossible error when sharing two pairs of eyes.
Read other people's code to get comfortable with good patterns. Try to understand why the author did what they did. You wouldn't try to become a novelist without reading books as well, would you? We'll focus on this in an upcoming post but, for now, keep your eyes open for any small problems or projects that other people have written solutions for.
Start small and build constantly. You should have interesting big projects in mind for the future, but you'll need to get comfortable debugging and searching for resources with bite-sized challenges. There's really no substitute for experience.
III: Surviving the Desert of Despair
Once you've become comfortable debugging, your biggest problem becomes the fire hose of required knowledge and a total loss for how to learn it all... the Desert of Despair. In this case, what you really need is a strong path forward. The Mirages of Mania represent all the interesting side paths and rabbit holes and get-skilled-quick schemes which ultimately waste your time.
So the keys to getting out of the Desert of Despair are:
Have a strong goal for what you want to accomplish because otherwise you will end up chasing your tail learning all kinds of interesting but ultimately unproductive things. If you have the time to spare, by all means skip this...
Find a strong path which leads directly to the goal you've set and verify that it will actually get you there. This is where you need to dig deeper than the marketing slogans and smiling faces on course websites or book jackets to ask "will this help me accomplish the goal I've set or not?"
Focus and avoid distractions because, if you're the kind of person who's interested in learning to code, you're also the kind of person who gets interested by learning all kinds of other awesome things. When coding gets difficult, you need to be able to push forward instead of just trying out the next cool-looking thing.
If you're able to identify a path and stick with it, you'll eventually push forward to the next phase instead of spending months or years chasing mirages across the shifting sands of the this desert.
IV: Surviving the Upswing of Awesome
The Upswing of Awesome is one of the trickiest transitions. You can develop applications but you really want to become a web developer. Getting past this phase and into a job requires you to do three things:
Seek and follow best practices for programming. You need to understand the difference between a solution and the best solution. Best practices are a major difference between hacking on your own and building production quality code in a real job setting.
Check your assumptions because you've probably skated by with some gaping holes in your knowledge that you didn't even know you had. You need to diagnose and fix these holes.
Tackle the unsexy skills that are rarely addressed but highly important for transitioning into a professional setting. This includes things like testing, data modeling, architecture and deployment which are really easy to breeze past but which are totally fundamental to good development.
The key to accomplishing these things and pushing through the Upswing of Awesome is to get feedback. Students who have learned entirely on their own may be productive but rarely have the kind of legible, modular, and maintainable code that makes them attractive in a professional setting. You need to work with other humans who will challenge your assumptions, ask piercing followup questions, and force you to fix the leaks in your bucket of knowledge.
So... Can it be Done?
This all may sound overwhelming but I promise that many others have persevered and survived this journey before you. By understanding the road ahead, you're already in a good spot to take it on with a focused plan and access to the right kind of help.
Obviously there isn't space in this particular post to dig as deeply into each phase of the journey as we'd like or to provide the kind of granular how-to advice you deserve. That said, this is a journey with which we're quite familiar and about which we're highly passionate so we want to help in any way we can.
Our core program is specifically designed to bridge this whole process but, if you're interested in following along on your own, we'll be addressing it publicly and in depth during future blog posts as well.
Sign up below if you'd like to come along for the ride as we dig deeper into everything here -- from finding a mentor to bridging the gap to a fulltime job in web development. Because, though it's a challenging road ahead, you don't have to walk it alone.
Monday 2 April 2018
Saturday 31 March 2018
Manhunt: Unabom
"You're not saving my life Judy, you're saving my body. And you're saving my body by destroying my life's work!"
Friday 30 March 2018
Sunday 11 March 2018
Review: The Lottery
The Lottery by Shirley JacksonMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Jackson starts by telling a story that appears so slow, that the reader relaxes, and maybe brings a cup of hot chocolate to enjoy with a nice warm read. It's a village setting, warm season, total population 300, everybody knows everybody, and all are anticipating, enjoying, waiting to get back to their lives.
It's a good peak into not only village life, but human nature. The themes in this story have been critically analyzed, and those analyses have been analyzed too. There's so much in this little story that it can fill you up and leave you thinking about it for days. It's one of those books that stay with you, for a long time. Maybe, forever.
View all my reviews
Tuesday 20 February 2018
When you fetishize — as opposed to value — something, you wind up celebrating the idea of the thing rather than the thing itself.—Jonathan Mahler
Monday 19 February 2018
My weight loss - 5th attempt - Part 1
So I start again on this journey. This time, more knowledgeable, and also older, with slower metabolism, than before. Beaten a number of times.
A lot of things are different now. I have support! My wife (bless her soul!) is very supportive. In fact, all I have to do is just eat and sleep, and she can take care of cooking the mot nutritious and healthy food on which I'd automatically become healthy.
I started January 8. At around 142 Kgs. Sigh. I put on an extra 40 kgs in the last three years. They were, after all, a tough three years! But I am going back.
Today is January 19. So basically 5.5 weeks. So far the weight loss has been 9-10 kgs. I am stuck at 132 since last 1.5 weeks. I wonder what the reason is.
My goal weight is 75 kgs. Starting weight is 142 kg. So I had to lose 67 kgs. Of which now, only 58 remain.
If I continue to lose 1-2 kgs per week, it will take me from 8 to 16 months to lose it all. So far, the pace has been great. It has been 2 kg per week, but last week it's been zero. Let's see how it goes this week, then I will make some more changes.
A lot of things are different now. I have support! My wife (bless her soul!) is very supportive. In fact, all I have to do is just eat and sleep, and she can take care of cooking the mot nutritious and healthy food on which I'd automatically become healthy.
I started January 8. At around 142 Kgs. Sigh. I put on an extra 40 kgs in the last three years. They were, after all, a tough three years! But I am going back.
Today is January 19. So basically 5.5 weeks. So far the weight loss has been 9-10 kgs. I am stuck at 132 since last 1.5 weeks. I wonder what the reason is.
My goal weight is 75 kgs. Starting weight is 142 kg. So I had to lose 67 kgs. Of which now, only 58 remain.
If I continue to lose 1-2 kgs per week, it will take me from 8 to 16 months to lose it all. So far, the pace has been great. It has been 2 kg per week, but last week it's been zero. Let's see how it goes this week, then I will make some more changes.
Sunday 28 January 2018
Review: Dracula
Dracula by Bram StokerMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
As gripping as the vicious teeth of the Dracula whose story this is. Every vampire movie, book, story seems like a cheap replica compared to this original classic. Like all great fiction, this book talks about human nature, character and tells an enthralling, entertaining story. Stoker takes us slow, sometimes he takes us fast, when it times to end, it's subtle, like a soft click. Highly recommended bed time reading.
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Review: The Fasting Cure
The Fasting Cure by Upton SinclairMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This book is a very valuable read. In an age, in which the only affliction we have is caused by overeating, and in which hunger is seen as something scary and detestable, this book offers a very fresh perspective. That hunger is comfortable, and is as important for growth and health as nourishment and sustenance. It talks about an era in which people considered losing weight as a sign of weakness, and wanted to gain weight to be healthy, in which people wanted color in their cheeks and spring in their step. Mainly, this book also recounts numerous stories of people fasting, in old age too, to get rid of the diseases. The author makes no claims of scientific authority, he simply explains what he did, and what he advised others to do, and their results, good or bad. And invited the readers to do their own experiments. In an age when we're told "Do this, not that" this kind of narrative is very refreshing, to say the least. 50 pages are enough to get anyone interested in "The Fasting Cure" for all diseases, after all, Hippocrates said, "Everyone has a physician inside him or her; we just have to help it in its work. The natural healing force within each one of us is the greatest force in getting well. Our food should be our medicine. Our medicine should be our food. But to eat when you are sick is to feed your sickness."
View all my reviews
Monday 15 January 2018
Book Recommendations by Simon Sinek
This is essential reading for anyone interested in the topic of purpose. Because Frankl’s personal experience was so extreme, the lessons are that much more stark. And, most importantly, his lessons are universally applicable to all our lives.
So many leadership books are either theoretical (written by people who study it but don’t do it) or by people who look back and try to explain how they did it. Though both valuable, most leadership books are also very hard to implement as prescribed. That’s what makes Marquet’s book is so remarkable. A submarine commander, he used to obey traditional models of leadership … until they failed him. Unable to change any variables (people, technology or equipment), the only thing left for him to change in order to achieve success was how he acted as a leader. Based on real life events, Marquet presents his ideas in a superbly practical way — perfect for implementing.
I’m a fan of books that challenge our assumptions, and Diamond offers us a new and remarkably simple way of looking at our world. Learning to challenge existing assumptions is core to effective leadership for it trains us to keep an open mind.
This is another book that trains us to keep an open mind. It offers a theory of how the Chinese discovered America 70 years before Columbus. The practice of being open to new ways of seeing things makes a leader open to the ideas of others — an essential characteristic of great leadership.
I cry every time I watch this documentary by Asif Kapadia. It is the most remarkable illustration of what it means to do something for the love of it. It draws a stark contrast between someone who does something for the passion versus someone who does something for the numbers.
Though not intended to be a documentary about leadership, Vikram Gandhi’s exploration as to why we look for gurus to follow is a perfect metaphor for true leadership. Namely, when those we choose to follow encourage us to find our own strength.
Leaders needn’t be the loudest. Leadership is not about theater. It’s not about dominance. It is about putting the lives of others before any other priority. In Quiet, Cain affirms to a good many of us who are introverts by nature that we needn’t try to be extroverts if we want to lead. Simply being ourselves is more important — and more effective.
Sunday 14 January 2018
Review: 1984
1984 by George OrwellMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
It was an enjoyable and scary read.
Having read Animal Farm, as I was reading this, I couldn't stop myself from thinking why Orwell was against Socialism so much. I still don't know the answer.
But, IF, he was someone motivated to propagate for capitalism and against socialism, he did an amazing job of highlighting what can go wrong if totalitarian governments are allowed to be.
Though a lot of it we're even seeing in capitalist governemnts.
View all my reviews
Wednesday 10 January 2018
Monday 8 January 2018
Causes of Depression
We need to feel we belong.
We need to feel valued.
We need to feel we’re good at something.
We need to feel we have a secure future.
We need to feel valued.
We need to feel we’re good at something.
We need to feel we have a secure future.
Wednesday 3 January 2018
Review: The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People
The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People by Oscar WildeMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
A delightful read. Engaging enough to keep you hooked, and humorous enough to keep you laughing.
Wilde puts a bit of himself in all of his characters. His wit, his graceful, splendid, elegant ridiculousness pinches and tickles the reader at the same time. Very enjoyable read.
View all my reviews
Thursday 23 November 2017
TIL
from collections import defaultdict
a = defaultdict(int)
a[whatever] += 1 # without ever initializing for any whatever key
a = defaultdict(int)
a[whatever] += 1 # without ever initializing for any whatever key
Wednesday 15 November 2017
Sunday 5 November 2017
Tech Advice from ./
1. Get away from Gmail. Use a privacy-friendly alternative e-mail service like Startmail or ProtonMail. Yes, you will probably have to pay. You are either paying cash or paying with your data.
2. Break off Google search. Use DuckDuckGo to keep your searches private. If you want Google results, use Startpage instead; it will search Google privately on your behalf, preventing it from monetizing you.
3. Ditch Chrome. If you love the UI, then use the open source Chromium instead. Otherwise use Firefox (which is about to get a LOT better with the new overhaul debuting later this month) or Brave. Use your browser with ad blockers like Disconnect, uBlock Origin, AdBlock Plus and Privacy Badger to stop Google and others from serving you tracking ads.
4. If you use an Android, consider running CopperheadOS on your phone. It is built on Android code, but hardened for security and free of Google data mining.
5. Say no to Google cloud storage services. If you want a high security option, use SpiderOak. Otherwise, you can use Boxcryptor to locally encrypt your files before sending them to the cloud so that they cannot be data mined.
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2. Break off Google search. Use DuckDuckGo to keep your searches private. If you want Google results, use Startpage instead; it will search Google privately on your behalf, preventing it from monetizing you.
3. Ditch Chrome. If you love the UI, then use the open source Chromium instead. Otherwise use Firefox (which is about to get a LOT better with the new overhaul debuting later this month) or Brave. Use your browser with ad blockers like Disconnect, uBlock Origin, AdBlock Plus and Privacy Badger to stop Google and others from serving you tracking ads.
4. If you use an Android, consider running CopperheadOS on your phone. It is built on Android code, but hardened for security and free of Google data mining.
5. Say no to Google cloud storage services. If you want a high security option, use SpiderOak. Otherwise, you can use Boxcryptor to locally encrypt your files before sending them to the cloud so that they cannot be data mined.
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Monday 9 October 2017
Tuesday 3 October 2017
Friday 25 August 2017
Method of Divorce
Reference Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhQpuOAeAUQ
These are the steps one should follow if one thinks divorce is the best solution to one's marriage.
1. One man from the family of the woman, and one man from the family of the man should have a sit down and discuss what the issues are. And who's at fault. And council the one who's fault. Q:"And if they want to resolve an issue, then Allah will put mohabbat in their hearts." This task has to be done by men of the families.
2. Halat e hez main talaq ne di jaye
3. Paki ki halat main shart yeh hai k mubashrat se pehle chore, mubashrat kar li tou is Tuhr main bhi nahin chor sakte
4. Sirf aik talaq per iktifa kia jaye, dusri aur teesri na ki jaye, phir is aik se 3 periods k baad nikah batil hojaye
5. Aur agar wakai bezar hai, tou dosray tuhr ka intezar kare. Phir us main dobara talaq de, phir tesri talaq k liye phir teesray tuhr tak intezar kare. Aur kisi bhi tuhr main ham bistry jaiz nahin.
Thursday 10 August 2017
Imam Ghazali on time management
"Your time should not be without any structure, such that you occupy yourself arbitrarily with whatever comes along.
Rather, you must take account of yourself and order your worship during the day and the night, assigning to each period of time an activity that must not be neglected nor replaced by another activity.
By this ordering of time, the blessing in time will show itself. A person who leaves himself without a plan as animals do, not knowing what he is to do at any given moment, will spend most of his time fruitlessly.
Your time is your life, and your life is your capital: by it you make your trade, and by it you will reach the eternal bounties in the proximity of Allah.
Every single breath of yours is a priceless jewel, because it is irreplaceable; once it is gone, there is no return for it.
So do not be like fools who rejoice each day as their wealth increases while their lives decrease. What good is there in wealth that increases while one’s lifespan decreases?
Do not rejoice except in an increase of knowledge or an increase of good works. Truly they are your two friends who will accompany you in your grave, when your spouse, your wealth, your children, and your friends will remain behind.”
— Imam al-Ghazali
Thursday 3 August 2017
Summary: Why children are disobedient to their parents بچے والدین کے نافرمان کیوں
Summary of this bayan as I undderstand it:
1. Secular education is like Ghiza (food) and Religious education is like dawa (Medicine). We need both of these to live a healthy life. Where food is regular, we become sick, and need medicine. Likewise with education.
2. Everything has a taseer (nature, side effect) — water has an side-effect that it cools one down in addition to quenching the thirst. Spices have an effect the heat one up, though the primary reason is to improve the taste of the food. It's the nature of the secular sciences that they progress. They improve my criticising the previously accumulated knowledge, findings flaws in it, and improving upon it. The idea is newer is better than older. So the kids who are taking secular education subconsciously adopt this view with regards to their elders.
3. Religious education. Respect the elders, love the elders, trust the elders, associate with the elders. Rely on the elders. Religion doesn't "progress", it doesn't improve upon the previous. It only applies what was said earlier, to what's new. Religion progresses not my evolving, not by looking at older things with new perspectives, but newer things with old perspective.
4. Secular education is the science of experimentation. Experiments can be criticised in light of new experiments. Of course. But Wahi cannot be criticised in light of new "knowledge". If we challenge or criticise Wahii, we might lose Emaan.
1. Secular education is like Ghiza (food) and Religious education is like dawa (Medicine). We need both of these to live a healthy life. Where food is regular, we become sick, and need medicine. Likewise with education.
2. Everything has a taseer (nature, side effect) — water has an side-effect that it cools one down in addition to quenching the thirst. Spices have an effect the heat one up, though the primary reason is to improve the taste of the food. It's the nature of the secular sciences that they progress. They improve my criticising the previously accumulated knowledge, findings flaws in it, and improving upon it. The idea is newer is better than older. So the kids who are taking secular education subconsciously adopt this view with regards to their elders.
3. Religious education. Respect the elders, love the elders, trust the elders, associate with the elders. Rely on the elders. Religion doesn't "progress", it doesn't improve upon the previous. It only applies what was said earlier, to what's new. Religion progresses not my evolving, not by looking at older things with new perspectives, but newer things with old perspective.
4. Secular education is the science of experimentation. Experiments can be criticised in light of new experiments. Of course. But Wahi cannot be criticised in light of new "knowledge". If we challenge or criticise Wahii, we might lose Emaan.
Tuesday 25 July 2017
*args, **kwargs
Inside a function header:
* collects all the positional arguments in a tuple
** collects all the keyword arguments in a dictionary
>>> def functionA(*a, **kw):
print(a)
print(kw)
>>> functionA(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, a=2, b=3, c=5)
(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
{'a': 2, 'c': 5, 'b': 3}
In a function call:
* unpacks an list or tuple into position arguments
** unpacks an dictionary into keyword arguments
>>> lis=[1, 2, 3, 4]
>>> dic={'a': 10, 'b':20}
>>> functionA(*lis, **dic) #it is similar to functionA(1, 2, 3, 4, a=10, b=20)
(1, 2, 3, 4)
{'a': 10, 'b': 20}
Thursday 1 June 2017
Bad Big Wolf
From here: https://www.futilitycloset.com/2017/05/25/fire-and-fog/
When J.R.R. Tolkien wrote his first story, at age 7, “my mother … pointed out that one could not say ‘a green great dragon,’ but had to say ‘a great green dragon.’ I wondered why, and still do.” It turns out that there’s an unwritten rule in English that governs the order in which we string our adjectives together:
opinion
size
age
shape
color
origin
material
type
purpose
In The Elements of Eloquence, Mark Forsyth writes, “So you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that word order in the slightest you’ll sound like a maniac. It’s an odd thing that every English speaker uses that list, but almost none of us could write it out.”
Another unwritten rule concerns ablaut reduplication: In terms such as chit-chat or dilly-dally, in which a word is repeated with an altered vowel, the vowels will follow the pattern I-A-O if there are three words and I-A or I-O if there are two. So:
tip-top
clip-clop
King Kong
flip-flop
sing-song
shilly-shally
And so on. Interestingly, these rules about precedence seem to follow a precedence rule of their own: The “royal order of adjectives” would require Red Riding Hood to meet the “Bad Big Wolf” (opinion before size). But the rule of ablaut reduplication apparently trumps this, making him the Big Bad Wolf.
“Why this should be is a subject of endless debate among linguists,” Forsyth writes. “It might be to do with the movement of your tongue or an ancient language of the Caucasus. It doesn’t matter. It’s the law, and, as with the adjectives, you knew it even if you didn’t know you knew it. And the law is so important that you just can’t have a Bad Big Wolf.”
I don’t know how this applies to dragons.
(Thanks, Nick and Armin.)
When J.R.R. Tolkien wrote his first story, at age 7, “my mother … pointed out that one could not say ‘a green great dragon,’ but had to say ‘a great green dragon.’ I wondered why, and still do.” It turns out that there’s an unwritten rule in English that governs the order in which we string our adjectives together:
opinion
size
age
shape
color
origin
material
type
purpose
In The Elements of Eloquence, Mark Forsyth writes, “So you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that word order in the slightest you’ll sound like a maniac. It’s an odd thing that every English speaker uses that list, but almost none of us could write it out.”
Another unwritten rule concerns ablaut reduplication: In terms such as chit-chat or dilly-dally, in which a word is repeated with an altered vowel, the vowels will follow the pattern I-A-O if there are three words and I-A or I-O if there are two. So:
tip-top
clip-clop
King Kong
flip-flop
sing-song
shilly-shally
And so on. Interestingly, these rules about precedence seem to follow a precedence rule of their own: The “royal order of adjectives” would require Red Riding Hood to meet the “Bad Big Wolf” (opinion before size). But the rule of ablaut reduplication apparently trumps this, making him the Big Bad Wolf.
“Why this should be is a subject of endless debate among linguists,” Forsyth writes. “It might be to do with the movement of your tongue or an ancient language of the Caucasus. It doesn’t matter. It’s the law, and, as with the adjectives, you knew it even if you didn’t know you knew it. And the law is so important that you just can’t have a Bad Big Wolf.”
I don’t know how this applies to dragons.
(Thanks, Nick and Armin.)
Thursday 18 May 2017
Review: Islamic Guide To Sexual Relations
Islamic Guide To Sexual Relations by Muhammad Ibn Adam Al-KawthariMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Some non-muslims teased the companions of noble prophet saw. They said, your prophet tells you about how to wipe yourself too.
The companions, not suffering from any inferiority complex, said Indeed he does. And he tells us to do in so and so manner.
Alhamdulillah, Allah has taught us through His messenger about each and every facet of life. And one important aspect of a person's life is sex. Maslow would place it as one of the five most basic human needs. Well above self-actualisation, esteem, love, belonging, intellectual pursuits. In terms of a person's well-being's dependence on it, it's not much different from food itself. As the joke goes. Sex, like Oxygen, only becomes important when you aren't getting any.
Unfortunately, muslim world is too shy to talk about it, or to acknowledge.
May Allah give rise to more scholars in ummat, who are able and willing to talk about the relevant issues with clarity and completeness. This book is by one such scholar.
At the very least, one would learn what how the Prophet, the greatest of men of all time, loved his wives, and treated them.
At the best, it could inspire one to fall in love with Allah and His final prophet once again, for having thought about us, the ummatis to such an extent, and to provide us with a deen so complete in guidance, and so pure in its rule.
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Friday 12 May 2017
Review: The Metamorphosis
The Metamorphosis by Franz KafkaMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I cannot say anything about this book that hasn't been said before. But I must say that it is a novella that is both humorous and horror at the same. The character in it is find in a ridiculously pitiable state, yet the reader never sympathises with him, reader only thinks of himself. What if it were to happen to me? Kafka throws some satire and social commentary for additional zest.
This is timeless.
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Tuesday 9 May 2017
Review: Pride & Prejudice
Pride & Prejudice by Jane AustenMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I cannot say anything about it, that hasn't been said before.
I just feel very, very fortunate that I myself am married to a woman such as Lizzy herself.
This is an excellent book, very enjoyable, with subtle lessons, and even subtle commentary.
The characters are all so accurately depicted, one can't help but find one family member reflected in each one of them.
Austen, you live on in your books!
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Review: Jaza Ul Amaal
Jaza Ul Amaal by Ashraf Ali ThanwiMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Within fifty pages, Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi shakes you and clears all the confusions and doubts which necessarily arise as a result of living in a society that's the "singing dancing cr*p of the world".
He proves how our actions affect our this life and the next life; and both lives are, to a perfect, ideal extent, in our power.
He finishes by mentioning five high impact good deeds (1. Acquiring Ilm, 2. Namaz, 3. Socialising less, 4. Self-audit, 5. Repentence) and six high impact bad deeds (1. Backbiting, 2. Opression, 3. Inter-gender interaction, 4. Anger, 5. Conceit, 6. Impure Rizq)
A must read for any muslims who finds himself lazy in DOs and persistent in DONTs.
View all my reviews
Wednesday 19 April 2017
On Getting Married
From here.
One approach about How to get married is, first date the person and try to get to know him/her before marrying. Because, otherwise you're marrying a complete stranger. And it may not work out...
On closer inspection, we learn that, a lot of those marriages that are breaking, are not breaking because the couple didn't know one another, but because
When to marry?
As soon as you feel mature enough. Even if you're a student, but there's place for you to keep her, and your parents can feed her, then get married.
After marrying, nobody ever says I married too early, everyone says I should have married earlier.
What can we do to prepare for marriage?
Understand the laws of divorce.
Read a _few_ books on marriage.
It's about expectations. Expect that she will talk back.
There are people who are not interested in marriage.
Some guys think all women are bad, some girls think all women are bad.
Anas ra relates:
... to be continued ...
One approach about How to get married is, first date the person and try to get to know him/her before marrying. Because, otherwise you're marrying a complete stranger. And it may not work out...
On closer inspection, we learn that, a lot of those marriages that are breaking, are not breaking because the couple didn't know one another, but because
When to marry?
As soon as you feel mature enough. Even if you're a student, but there's place for you to keep her, and your parents can feed her, then get married.
After marrying, nobody ever says I married too early, everyone says I should have married earlier.
What can we do to prepare for marriage?
Understand the laws of divorce.
Read a _few_ books on marriage.
It's about expectations. Expect that she will talk back.
There are people who are not interested in marriage.
Some guys think all women are bad, some girls think all women are bad.
Anas ra relates:
Whoever Allah provides with a righteous wife, then He has assisted him in half his deen. Then he should just fear in the other half.Although it addresses men, because he (saw.) had male audience, it works for women as well.
... to be continued ...
Tuesday 18 April 2017
Review: Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin FranklinMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I set out to read this book thinking it would be inspirational and life-changing. (I owed my expectations to having read the only Autobiography of Malcolm X — a truly inspirational book!) But it tuned out to be far more interesting and reach.
It's not inspirational, true. But it is informative and instructive. It's a great of book of strategy, wisdom, history, philosophy, even politics. I learned the big Ben's antics that he used throughout his life. He shows like a loving father, how to apply yourself in this world to maximise one's potential as a citizen.
I am tempted to re-rewrite this book as a manual of strategy and power, for it covers a broad spectrum of events an ordinary person might find himself in, and shows him, how to be extra-ordinary.
View all my reviews
Wednesday 12 April 2017
Tuesday 11 April 2017
Characteristics of a Vision
Taken from a talk by Suleman Ahmer of Timelenders.
1. Attainable
2.
3.
4. Clarity
5. Simplicity
6. Scale
7.Nobility
8. Loftiness/Greatness
9. Corrctness
This post is a WIP.
1. Attainable
2.
3.
4. Clarity
5. Simplicity
6. Scale
7.Nobility
8. Loftiness/Greatness
9. Corrctness
This post is a WIP.
Tuesday 4 April 2017
Drink your food, chew your water - part II
Benefits of chewing thoroughly
1. Sunnat
2. Hadees per Amal
3. Sabar paida hoga
4. You will eat less
5. Food will be more delicious
6. People don't judge you as greedy
7. Will get rid of the dangers of eating
8. More engergy
1. Sunnat
2. Hadees per Amal
3. Sabar paida hoga
4. You will eat less
5. Food will be more delicious
6. People don't judge you as greedy
7. Will get rid of the dangers of eating
8. More engergy
Monday 27 March 2017
The story of my marriage
Alhamdulillah, summa Alhamdulillah, I got engaged. InshAllah I will be getting married.
I feel like making it a long long story, so I could come back to it, read it again and again, and cherish. But I know, I shouldn't bore the reader with excessive details.
Here's the summary:
I asked my dear friend Faryal Qasim to look for suitable matches for me in her circle. I asked her to use her strong presence on Social Media. She asked me what to post. I thought a lot about it, but in the end came up with this:
Religious guy looking for a girl who puts akhirat over dunya.
She got many responses. She told me about them, I pursed them etc etc. They had a lot of questions. A lot of the girls there wore scarf, and asked me if I was fine with them wearing scarf after marriage, or if I would force them to do niqab. I replied to each one of them, that I didn't want anyone to change for me, I didn't want to force anyone, I didn't want grievances. I just wanted someone, who was already compatible. Who already did niqab, who already wanted to live in Pakistan, etc etc. When Faryal heard my responses, she told me about her friend, who didn't wanna be forced in any way. But who did Niqab. Faryal warned me, she is feminist.
I sent her an email. I discovered, she was not a feminist. But a man hating person, whose reason for getting married was that it was Ibadat, Islamic. After a few email exchanges, and many many consultations, and istikhara, I agreed to go ahead with it. We called her mom.
Then they started doing their background search. They sent people to my village, did their recon. Finally, they came to see me (they live in ISB).
Her dad was not very pleased with a dude with beard and trousers above ankled. But he realised later on, that that's the kind of man her daughter would marry. So they agreed. And in that one phone call, I was engaged.
I haven't seen her. I haven't met her. I have talked to her on text a number of times, and I have talked to her on phone too. But we're not in touch. The Nikah is expected to be in May inshAllah. May Allah put barakaat in this union. I am looking forward to it, from the bottom of my heart.
She looks like a great person to be with :)
I feel like making it a long long story, so I could come back to it, read it again and again, and cherish. But I know, I shouldn't bore the reader with excessive details.
Here's the summary:
I asked my dear friend Faryal Qasim to look for suitable matches for me in her circle. I asked her to use her strong presence on Social Media. She asked me what to post. I thought a lot about it, but in the end came up with this:
Religious guy looking for a girl who puts akhirat over dunya.
She got many responses. She told me about them, I pursed them etc etc. They had a lot of questions. A lot of the girls there wore scarf, and asked me if I was fine with them wearing scarf after marriage, or if I would force them to do niqab. I replied to each one of them, that I didn't want anyone to change for me, I didn't want to force anyone, I didn't want grievances. I just wanted someone, who was already compatible. Who already did niqab, who already wanted to live in Pakistan, etc etc. When Faryal heard my responses, she told me about her friend, who didn't wanna be forced in any way. But who did Niqab. Faryal warned me, she is feminist.
I sent her an email. I discovered, she was not a feminist. But a man hating person, whose reason for getting married was that it was Ibadat, Islamic. After a few email exchanges, and many many consultations, and istikhara, I agreed to go ahead with it. We called her mom.
Then they started doing their background search. They sent people to my village, did their recon. Finally, they came to see me (they live in ISB).
Her dad was not very pleased with a dude with beard and trousers above ankled. But he realised later on, that that's the kind of man her daughter would marry. So they agreed. And in that one phone call, I was engaged.
I haven't seen her. I haven't met her. I have talked to her on text a number of times, and I have talked to her on phone too. But we're not in touch. The Nikah is expected to be in May inshAllah. May Allah put barakaat in this union. I am looking forward to it, from the bottom of my heart.
She looks like a great person to be with :)
Saturday 25 March 2017
Advice for Marriage
Imam Ahmed ibn Hanbal’s (rh) advice to his son on his wedding day:
Dear son, you will not attain good fortune in your home except by 10 characteristics which you show to your wife, so remember them and be enthusiastic in acting upon them.
As for the first two; women like attention and they like to be told clearly that they are loved. So don’t be stingy in expressing your love for your wife. If you become limited in expressing your love, you will create a barrier of harshness between you and her, and there will be a decrease in affection.
3, Ladies hate a strict, overcautious man, yet they seek to use the soft vulnerable one. So use each quality appropriately. This will be more appealing for love and it will bring you peace of mind.
4. Ladies like from their husbands what their husbands like from them, i.e. kind words, good looks, clean clothes and a pleasant odour. Therefore, always remain in that state.
5, Indeed, the house is under the sovereignty of the woman. While she remains therein, she feels that she is sitting upon her throne, and that she is the chief of the house . Stay clear of destroying this kingdom of hers and do not ever attempt to dethrone her, otherwise you will be trying to snatch her sovereignty. A king gets most angry at he who tries to strip him of his authority, even if he portrays to show something else.
6. A woman wants to love her husband, but at the same time she does not want to lose her family. So do not put yourself and her family in the same scale, because then her choice will be down to either you or her family. And even if she does choose you over her family, she will remain in anxiety, which will then turn into hatred towards you in your daily life.
7. Surely woman has been created from a curved rib, and this is the secret of her beauty, and the secret of the attraction towards her. And this is no defect in her, because ‘the eyebrows look beautiful due to them being curved’. So if she errs, do not rebuke her in a manner in which there is no gentleness, attempting to straighten her; otherwise you will simply break her and her breaking, is her divorce. At the same time do not let her off upon that mistake, otherwise her crookedness will increase and she will become arrogant with her ego. Thereafter, she will never soften for you and she won’t listen to you, so stay in between the two.
8. It is in the women’s nature to be ungrateful towards their husbands and to deny favours. If you were to be nice to her for her whole life but you grieved her once, she will say, “I have never seen any good from you”. So don’t let this attitude of her make you dislike her or to run away from her. If you dislike this feature of hers, you will be pleased with some other good habits within her, so create a balance.
9. Surely there are times when a woman goes through some conditions of bodily weakness and fatigue of the mind. Such that Allah has relieved her of some of her compulsory worships during that period; Allah has totally pardoned her from praying, and has postponed the days of fasting for her within this break to a later date until she regains her health and becomes normal in her temperament once more. Thus, during these days, treat her in a godly manner. Just as Allah has relieved her of the duties, you should also lessen your demands and instructions from her during those days.
10. Last but not least, know that a woman is like a captive with you. Therefore, have mercy upon her.
Dear son, you will not attain good fortune in your home except by 10 characteristics which you show to your wife, so remember them and be enthusiastic in acting upon them.
As for the first two; women like attention and they like to be told clearly that they are loved. So don’t be stingy in expressing your love for your wife. If you become limited in expressing your love, you will create a barrier of harshness between you and her, and there will be a decrease in affection.
3, Ladies hate a strict, overcautious man, yet they seek to use the soft vulnerable one. So use each quality appropriately. This will be more appealing for love and it will bring you peace of mind.
4. Ladies like from their husbands what their husbands like from them, i.e. kind words, good looks, clean clothes and a pleasant odour. Therefore, always remain in that state.
5, Indeed, the house is under the sovereignty of the woman. While she remains therein, she feels that she is sitting upon her throne, and that she is the chief of the house . Stay clear of destroying this kingdom of hers and do not ever attempt to dethrone her, otherwise you will be trying to snatch her sovereignty. A king gets most angry at he who tries to strip him of his authority, even if he portrays to show something else.
6. A woman wants to love her husband, but at the same time she does not want to lose her family. So do not put yourself and her family in the same scale, because then her choice will be down to either you or her family. And even if she does choose you over her family, she will remain in anxiety, which will then turn into hatred towards you in your daily life.
7. Surely woman has been created from a curved rib, and this is the secret of her beauty, and the secret of the attraction towards her. And this is no defect in her, because ‘the eyebrows look beautiful due to them being curved’. So if she errs, do not rebuke her in a manner in which there is no gentleness, attempting to straighten her; otherwise you will simply break her and her breaking, is her divorce. At the same time do not let her off upon that mistake, otherwise her crookedness will increase and she will become arrogant with her ego. Thereafter, she will never soften for you and she won’t listen to you, so stay in between the two.
8. It is in the women’s nature to be ungrateful towards their husbands and to deny favours. If you were to be nice to her for her whole life but you grieved her once, she will say, “I have never seen any good from you”. So don’t let this attitude of her make you dislike her or to run away from her. If you dislike this feature of hers, you will be pleased with some other good habits within her, so create a balance.
9. Surely there are times when a woman goes through some conditions of bodily weakness and fatigue of the mind. Such that Allah has relieved her of some of her compulsory worships during that period; Allah has totally pardoned her from praying, and has postponed the days of fasting for her within this break to a later date until she regains her health and becomes normal in her temperament once more. Thus, during these days, treat her in a godly manner. Just as Allah has relieved her of the duties, you should also lessen your demands and instructions from her during those days.
10. Last but not least, know that a woman is like a captive with you. Therefore, have mercy upon her.
Saturday 11 March 2017
Tablīghī Jamā῾at
The Tablīghī Jamā῾at of the Indo‐Pakistan subcontinent, also variously called the Jamā῾at (Party), Taḥrīk (Movement), Niẓam (System), Tanẓīm (Organization), and Taḥrīk‐i Īmān (Faith Movement), is one of the most important grassroots Islamic movements in the contemporary Muslim world. From a modest beginning in 1926 with da῾wah (missionary) work in Mewat near Delhi under the leadership of the Ṣūfī scholar Maulānā Muḥammad Ilyās (1885–1944), the Jamā῾at today has followers all over the Muslim world and the West. Its 1993 annual international conference in Raiwind near Lahore, Pakistan was attended by more than one million Muslims from ninety‐four countries. In fact, in recent years the Raiwind annual conference has become the second largest religious congregation of the Muslim World after the ḥajj. Its annual conference in North America normally attracts about ten thousand, probably the largest gathering of Muslims in the West.
The emergence of the Tablīghī Jamā῾at as a movement for the reawakening of faith and reaffirmation of Muslim religio‐cultural identity can be seen as a continuation of the broader trend of Islamic revival in North India in the wake of the collapse of Muslim political power and consolidation of the British rule in India in the mid‐nineteenth century. In the strictly religious sphere one manifestation of this trend was the rapid growth of the madrasahs (religious educational institutions) in North India, which sought to reassert the authority of Islamic orthodoxy and to relink the Muslim masses with Islamic institutions. The pietistic and devotional aspects of the Tablīghī Jamā῾at owe their origin to the Ṣūfī teachings and practices of Shaykh Aḥmad Sirhindī, Shāh Walī Allāh, and the founder of the Mujāhidīn movement, Sayyid Aḥmad Shahīd (1786–1831). These Ṣūfīs, who belonged to the Naqshbandīyah order, considered the observance of the sharī῾ah integral to their practices. It is in this sense that the Tablīghī Jamā῾at has been described, at least in its initial phase, both as a reinvigorated form of Islamic orthodoxy and as a reformed Sufīsm.
The emergence of the Tablīghī Jamā῾at was also a direct response to the rise of such aggressive Hindu proselytizing movements as the Shuddhi (Purification) and Sangathan (Consolidation), which launched massive efforts in the early twentieth century to “reclaim” those “fallen‐away” Hindus who had converted to Islam in the past. The special target of these revivalist movements were the so‐called “borderline” Muslims who had retained most of the religious practices and social customs of their Hindu ancestors. Maulānā Ilyās, the founder of the Tablīghī Jamā῾at, believed that only a grassroots Islamic religious movement could counter the efforts of the Shuddhi and Sangathan, purify the borderline Muslims from their Hindu accretions, and educate them about their beliefs and rituals in order to save them from becoming easy prey to the Hindu proselytizers.
The Tablīghī Jamā῾at originated in Mewat, a Gangetic plateau in North India inhabited by Rajput tribes known as Meos. Historical accounts differ as to the exact time of their conversion to Islam, but most historians place it between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the formative phase of Muslim rule in India. There is also evidence to suggest, however, that there were several Meo conversions to Islam, followed by reconversion to Hinduism whenever Muslim political power declined in the region. When Ilyās started his religious movement in Mewat, most Meos were Muslims in name only. They retained many Hindu socioreligious practices; many kept their old Hindu names and even worshiped Hindu deities in their homes and celebrated Hindu religious festivals. Most could not even correctly recite the one‐line shahādah (the Muslim profession of faith) or say their daily ritual prayers. Very few villages in Mewat had mosques of madrasahs. Their birth, marriage, and death rituals were all based on Hindu customs.
Maulānā Ilyās, an Islamic religious scholar in the tradition of the orthodox Deoband seminary in the United Province and a follower of the Naqshbandīyah, learned of the “dismal Islamic situation” in Mewat first through his disciples and later through his own several missionary trips there. His initial efforts toward reislamization of Mewati Muslims were essentially to establish a network of mosque‐based religious schools to educate local Muslims about correct Islamic beliefs and practices. Although he was able to establish more than one hundred religious schools in a short time in the Mewat region, he soon became disillusioned with his approach, realizing that these institutions were producing “religious functionaries” but not preachers who were willing to go door to door and remind people of their religious duties. Recognizing the futility of the madrasah approach as a basis for reawakening religious consciousness and educating ordinary Muslims about their religion, Maulānā Ilyās decided to quit his teaching position at Madrasah Maẓharul ῾Ulūm in Saharanpur and moved to Bastī Niẓāmuddīn in the old quarters of Delhi to begin his missionary work through itinerant preaching. The Tablīghī movement was formally launched in 1926 from this place, which later became the movement's international headquarters. After the partition of India in 1947, however, Raiwind, a small railroad town near Lahore, Pakistan, replaced Bastī Niẓāmuddīn as a major center of the Jamā῾at's organizational and missionary activities.
Physically frail and intellectually unassuming, Maulānā Ilyās possessed none of the qualities attributed to many other prominent leaders of twentieth‐century Islam. Neither an outstanding religious scholar and author nor a good public speaker nor a charismatic leader, Maulānā Ilyās was nevertheless imbued with the enormous zeal of a dedicated missionary. His singleminded devotion and determination to reach out to the Muslim masses and touch them with the message of the Qur'ān and sunnah took precedence over everything else. He was persistent, untiring, and wholeheartedly devoted to what he described as “the mission of the prophets”—to call people to the path of God. His message to his coreligionists was simple and straightforward: “Ai Musalmāno Musalmān bano” (O Muslims, become good Muslims!).
The method adopted by Maulānā Ilyās to call people to Islam was equally simple. It was to organize units of at least ten persons and send them to various villages. These tablīghī units, known as jamā῾ats (groups), would visit a village, invite the local Muslims to assemble in the mosque or some other meetingplace, and present their message in the form of the following six demands. First, every Muslim must be able to recite the shahādah (“There is no God but Allāh and Muḥammad is His Prophet”) correctly in Arabic and know its meaning; this asserts the unity of God, rejects all other deities, and emphasizes obedience to the prophet Muḥammad. Second, a Muslim must also learn how to say the ṣalāt (obligatory ritual prayer) correctly and in accordance with its prescribed rituals; this not only emphasizes the need for the ritual performance of prayer in its external form but also encourages the believer to strive for complete submission to God by bowing before him in humility and God‐consciousness.
Third, a Muslim cannot claim to be a true believer unless he is knowledgeable about the fundamental beliefs and practices of Islam; he must also perform dhikr (ritual remembrance of God) frequently. For basic religious knowledge, Tablīghī workers are required to read seven essays written by Maulānā Muḥammad Zakarīyā, a reputable scholar of ḥadīth at Saharanpur madrasah and an early supporter of the movement. These essays, now compiled in a single volume under the title Tablīghī niṣāb (Tablīghī Curriculum) deal with life stories of the companions of the Prophet, and the virtues of ṣalāt, dhikr, charity, ḥajj, ritual salutation to the Prophet, and the Qur'ān. Written in simple and lucid Urdu and based mostly on inspirational but historically suspect traditions and anecdotes, these essays also constitute, with little change, the basic source material for the formulaic speech delivered by the Tablīghī missionaries throughout the world. In addition, every Muslim is also encouraged to learn how to read the Qur'ān in Arabic, with correct pronunciation.
Fourth, every Muslim must be respectful and polite toward fellow Muslims and show deference toward them. This idea of ikrām‐i Muslim (respect for Muslims) is not only a religious obligation but also a basic prerequisite for effective da῾wah work. Included in this principle is also an obligation to recognize and respect the rights of others: the rights of elders to be treated respectfully; the rights of young ones to be treated with love, care, and affection; the rights of the poor to be helped in their needs; the rights of neighbors to be shown consideration; and the rights of those with whom we may have differences. Fifth, a Muslim must always inculcate honesty and sincerity in all endeavors. Everything is to be done for the sake of seeking the pleasure of God and serving his cause, and not for any worldly benefit.
The final demand, which constitutes the most distinctive innovative aspect of the Jamā῾at's approach to Islamic da῾wah work, deals with the formation of small groups of volunteer preachers willing to donate time and travel from place to place spreading the word of God. For Maulānā Ilyās preaching is not the work of only the professional ῾ulamā'; it is the duty of every Muslim. People are usually asked to volunteer for a chillah (forty days of itinerant preaching), which is considered the maximum stint of outdoor missionary activity for new members. Those who cannot spare forty days may undertake forty one‐day retreats in a year. Every member must preach at least four months during his lifetime. Maulānā Ilyās believed that this preaching would prepare people to endure hardships and strengthen their moral and spiritual qualities.
These six principles are the cornerstone of the Tablīghī Jamā῾at ideology and are to be strictly observed by all members. Maulānā Ilyās later added another rule asking members to abstain from wasting time in idle talk and aimless activities and protect themselves from sinful and prohibited (ḥaram) deeds.
The new movement met with spectacular success in a relatively short period. Thousands of Muslims joined Maulānā Ilyās to propagate the message of Islam throughout Mewat. Hundreds of new mosques were built and dozens of new madrasahs established for both children and adults. People began to observe obligatory rituals such as saying ṣalāt, paying zākat, fasting during Ramaḋān, and performing the ḥajj. The most visible change was in dress and in the customs associated with birth, marriage, and burial rituals. There were signs of Islamic religious revival everywhere in the area.
By the time Maulānā Ilyās died in 1944 Mewat had come to be seen as the great success of this new approach to Islamic da῾wah. The Jamā῾at now started extending its activities into other parts of India. Since the Tablīghī method of preaching did not require any degree of religious scholarship, formal training, or lengthy preparation, everyone who joined the Jamā῾at became an instant preacher on the basis of his familiarity with the six simple principles of da῾wah. Thus the number of itinerant preachers multiplied quickly, and the Jamā῾at was able to send its Tablīghī missions all over India, from Peshawar in the Northwest Frontier Province to Noakhali in East Bengal.
It is interesting that this Islamic revivalist upsurge was taking place precisely at a time when its political counterpart, the Muslim nationalist movement of the All‐India Muslim League with its demand for a separate homeland for Indian Muslims, was also gaining great momentum. The fact that the Tablīghī Jamā῾at was able to withstand the intense pressures of the Muslim politics of the 1940s and maintain its purely religious course throughout this period of turmoil, communal riots, and eventual partition of the subcontinent emphasizes not only its firm ideological commitment and methodological rigidity but also its ability to operate in isolation from its political environment.
After the death of Maulānā Ilyās, his son Maulānā Yūsuf (1917–1965) was selected as his successor by the elders of the Jamā῾at. Maulānā Yūsuf was a great organizer and an untiring worker. He spent most of his adult life traveling with preaching groups throughout the subcontinent. He extended the movement's operations beyond the northern provinces and mobilized thousands of groups to tour all over India. It was also during, his tenure that the Jamā῾at's activities spread to countries of Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and North America. Since Maulānā Yūsuf's death in 1965, Maulānā In῾āmul Ḥasan has led the Jamā῾at and has expanded its international operations enormously. Today the Jamā῾at has become a truly global Islamic movement. Its influence has grown significantly over the past two decades, especially in South and Southeast Asia but also in Africa and among Muslim communities in the West; however, it has not been able to attract any significant following among Arabic‐speaking Muslims. The majority of its followers in the Middle East are South Asian immigrant workers.
The success of the Jamā῾at owes much to the dedicated missionary work of its members and followers, its simple, noncontroversial and nonsectarian message, and its direct, personal appeal to and contacts with individual Muslims. Instead of publishing books or addressing large gatherings, Jamā῾at members go door to door and invite people to join their ranks and spread the word of God. Their program of asking Muslims to leave their families, jobs, and home towns for a time and join in a system of communal learning, worship, preaching, and other devotional activities has proved enormously effective in building a community‐type structure with close personal relationships and mutual moral‐psychological support. Because the basic message of the Jamā῾at is simple enough to be imparted by anyone willing to volunteer, it is ideally suited for ordinary Muslims with little or no previous Islamic education. The Jamā῾at's reliance on lay preachers, rather than on ῾ulamā', has helped it greatly to reach and attract the Muslim masses in rural communities and small towns.
Despite its enormous expansion over the past sixty‐eight years, the Jamā῾at remains an informal association with no written constitution, standardized organizational rules and procedures, hierarchy of leadership, network of branches and departments, or even office records and membership registry. The amīr (chief) is selected for life through informal consultation among the “elders” of the Jamā῾at; he in turn appoints a shūrā (consultative body) to advise him on important matters.
In matters of religious beliefs and practices, the Tablīghī Jamā῾at has consistently followed the orthodox Deoband tradition and has emphasized taqlīd (following the established schools of Islamic law) over ijtihād (independent reasoning). It rejects such popular expressions of religion as veneration of saints, visiting shrines, and observing the syncretic rituals associated with popular Sufism. The Jamā῾at can thus be considered an heir to the reformist‐fundamentalist tradition of Shāh Walī Allāh, with its emphasis on reformed Sufism and strict observation of the sunnah of the Prophet. Jamā῾at workers are rigid in following orthodox rituals and practices and in observing the rules of the sharī῾ah. Unlike modernists and neofundamentalists, Tablīghī workers emphasize both the form and the spirit of religious rules and practices.
From its inception the Tablīghī Jamā῾at has deliberately stayed away from politics and political controversies. Maulānā Ilyās believed that the Jamā῾at would not be able to achieve its goals if it got embroiled in partisan politics. Reforming individuals for him was more important than reforming social and political institutions—a process that, he believed, could gradually come about as more and more people joined his movement and became good Muslims. His later years coincided with a great schism in the Indian Muslim religious circles: most of the Deoband ῾ulamā' opposed the idea of a separate homeland for Muslims and supported the All‐India National Congress in calling for a united India; other ῾ulamā' joined with the Muslim League in its demand for Pakistan. Maulānā Ilyās asked his followers not to take sides with either camp and to continue their essentially nonpolitical da῾wah work among Muslims of all political persuasions.
The Jamā῾at has rigidly maintained this nonpolitical posture since. In Pakistan, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, and elsewhere in its operations, it has scrupulously observed its founder's ban on political activities and has refused to take positions on political issues. Thus, in Pakistan, the Jamā῾at remained noncommittal on major national controversies involving the relationship between Islam and the state. In India too the Jamā῾at has never been involved in so‐called “Muslim issues” such as communal riots, Muslim family laws, the Shah Bano case, and the Babri mosque. This nonpolitical stance has helped it greatly to operate freely in societies where politically oriented religious activities are viewed with suspicion and fear by the government.
In India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Turkey, and, to a certain extent in the Muslim areas of Thailand and the Philippines, the Tablīghī Jamā῾at has been an important movement in nonpolitical Islamic revivalism and has attracted a large following from rural communities and small towns. Although members do not participate in partisan politics, they do nevertheless constitute a solid vote bank for ῾ulamā'‐based religio‐political parties. In Pakistan they have consistently voted for the orthodox, Deobandī‐oriented Jam῾iyatul ῾Ulāmā'‐i Islām. In Malaysia, Tablīghī Jamā῾at followers have been a major source of support for the ῾ulamā'‐based Partai Islam Se‐Malaysia in federal and provincial elections. [See Jam῾īyatul ῾Ulamā'‐i Islām; Partai Islam Se‐Malaysia.]
In Europe and North America the Tablīghī Jamā῾at has been working among the immigrant Muslim communities, especially among Muslims of South Asian origin, for more than three decades and has established a large following among them. In addition to the propagation of its standard six‐point program, the Jamā῾at in the West has also been concerned with the preservation of the religious and cultural identity of Muslims in a non‐Islamic environment. Thus it has been active in building mosques and Islamic centers, establishing Islamic Sunday schools for Muslim children and adults, providing dhabīḥah (ritually slaughtered) meat to Muslim families, and organizing Islamic training camps and retreats for Muslim youth. In North America the Jamā῾at has also met with some success in gaining converts among African‐Americans and Caribbean immigrants. Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Atlanta, New York, and Washington, D.C., are the major centers of the Jamā῾at's activities in the United States.
Most followers of the Tablīghī Jamā῾at in South Asia come from the lower middle class with minimum exposure to modern Western education and from semiurban areas. It has also attracted a considerable following among lower‐level government employees, paraprofessionals and schoolteachers. Its influence on college and university campuses has been minimal. Because of its nonpolitical orientation it has been easy to spread its message in the armed forces of Pakistan, where it has a considerable following among noncommissioned personnel. The Jamā῾at received a great boost during the government of President Zia ul‐Haq, who was concerned to develop Islamic spirit among the Pakistani military; an active member of the Jamā῾at rose to the sensitive position of chief of Pakistan Military Intelligence during 1991–1993 and reportedly directed Pakistan's Afghan operation both through conventional intelligence techniques and through holding dhikr assemblies.
In Malaysia and Indonesia the social bases of the Jamā῾at's support are more diverse than in South Asia. Its initial followers in these countries were immigrant Muslims from South Asia, but during the past two decades it has penetrated the Malay Muslim community, especially in rural areas. Today the bulk of its support comes from urban‐based, well‐educated youth. In Indonesia, where the Jamā῾at has worked in close collaboration with such nonpolitical Islamic reform movements as the Muhammadiyah and the Nahdatul Ulama, its activities have focused on converting abangan (syncretic, Indic‐oriented) Muslims into santri (purist) Muslims. Thus the Tablīghī Jamā῾at in Indonesia, unlike India and Pakistan, has been associated both with the ῾ulamā' and with urban‐based, modern‐educated Muslim youth.