I've been suffering from writer's block. Ideas for blog posts come to me out of the blue, but for whatever reason, I couldn't flesh these ideas out. I had some interesting thoughts that I wrote down that pertain to Islam, but since they have little to do with one another, it wouldn't make sense to put all of them into a single post. What I've done is seperate them into small chunks. I doubt that a non-muslim will get anything out of these chunks, but feel free to read, regardless. :P

Chunk #1: After Satan rebelled against God, Satan said, in surah 7:16-17 of the Qur'an, "Because thou has thrown me out of the way, lo! I will lie in wait for them on thy Straight Way: then I will assault them from before them and behind them, from their right and their left: nor wilt thou find, in most of them, graititude (for thy mercies)". Day in and day out, Satan is trying to make us crack. Because our personalities are different, not everyone falls to the same sin. In fact, I'll go one step further and say that not everyone is tempted [to the same degree] by the same things; the biggest ones for me are lust and discouragement, but Joe Schmoe down the street may be tempted heavily by gossip or mouthing off to his parents.

Chunk #2: The good news of Islam is not "Follow God and your life will get better"-- it's "God is so awesome that He's worth following regardless of what happens to you". You see, that's what Satan and other disbelievers don't understand-- they don't understand that sense of serenity and surrender that comes from saying "It's not about me". Surah 13:28 says "..in the rememberance of Allah do hearts find satisfaction".

Chunk #3: It doesn't matter how many times you're given a dirty look for wearing a hijab/thobe, nor does it matter how many times our Prophet [p.b.u.h] is accused of saying things he never said or doing things he never did. These evil tricks are like the chihuahua on your street that growls and barks at everyone that walks by. It thinks it's so big and bad, but it couldn't do any damage to you if it tried (barring a minor annoyance). I urge myself first, and then my brothers/sisters; keep running down the Straight Path and don't look back. :)