religious are gone,

the days of declaring

Qur’an as the word of God.

What is the point of wearing

a hijab if your curves can be seen?

What is the point of knowing Arabic

if the meaning doesn’t move you?

You succeeded to see your friends’ faults

and didn’t even realise what you have been upto?

Control

I’m a control freak. I like to have control over things that I care about. My readership is one thing I care about and hence I like to have full control over the experience my readers have when reading and/or engaging with my posts or just hanging about on my site. So, for this reason I decided to switch my blog from wordpress.com to wordpress.org. Basically it means I have self-hosted my blog now and am paying for a few services.

I started this blog less than a year ago in the first quarter of  2012. The purpose of this blog was to just throw out my thoughts into the world. That’s all I wanted to do. Later I discovered that my work is being appreciated, I discovered I had a following. So I decided to take my blog to the next level.

My website is an extension of me – It just makes sense for me to have full control over your experience.

My New Blog

So now my new blog is located at http://zainullabiddin.com/ I will post some of my articles and poems here but by March 2013 I will no longer post on this blog. Everything will be on my new site.

There is a slight problem. The followers of my wordpress.com blog will not receive updates from my new blog unless they sign up. So Guys drop your email address in the box on the side bar on my new site.

And Yeah Welcome!

I had listened to Steve Jobs’ biography as an audio book on my iPhone. But I knew the effect one has by reading, so I bought the book.

I bought it for two reasons: one, so I could make notes on the ideas of the artist Jobs, two, as soon as I finished this audio book I felt the urge to tell the world about the ideas of what it means to stand at the intersection of art and science, so I want to dedicate a number of blog posts to writing about this book. This post is the first in the series of blog posts unravelling Steve Jobs’ biography the way I understand it.

In the blogosphere especially for those bloggers who look to make some money blogging, it is stressed to have a proper SEO strategy. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. This process makes your blog search engine friendly so it ranks higher on search engines – mainly Google.  The process of SEO is: Find a keyword that is already being searched for on Google, Write about that keyword by using it in three or four times in the article and publish. This will make lots of people come to your blog somehow. I’m not even sure if it works.

The problem here is that you’re researching what people are already looking for and making a post of what people think they need. Jobs was totally against this philosophy. Let me illustrate in his words:

Some people say, “Give the customers what they want.” But that’s not my approach. Our job is to figure our what they’re going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, “If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, `A faster horse!` ” People don’t know what they want until you show it to them. That’s why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.

Henry Ford is the car maker guy. He saw what people want was not a faster horse but a car. Jobs did exactly that with the release of iPhone and iPad. We didn’t know we needed iPad until we held it and now we can’t figure out how did we live without it.

Forget making your blog search engine friendly, let your inner voice be heard. Write articles that people didn’t know they needed but once read make them figure out how did they live without them.

Do you not see this blog as an Apple store?

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There are two bodies who are equally involved in this attack of the sword: Charlie Hebdo and The Independent.

The independent’s article starts by making it clear that Charlie Hebdo has the right to publish this book, it’s like a comic book biography of the Holy Prophet of Islam (Peace & Blessings of God be upon him). Of course they have a right to do so. We have such a wonderful law (same in the whole western world) that allows us to take pictures of someone naked and publish them. Be it the members of the Royal family or some mediocre on the street. We (western world) are the most civilised nations that we allow people’s dignities to be slaughtered by our own sword. We even depict Jesus in the wrong way and he is our God so who is Muhammed?

Charlie Hebdo has made it seem fine to publish this book because it has been reviewed by Muslim scholars. In the past I have seen some so called muslim scholars preaching something which the Holy Prophet Muhammed (Peace & Blessings of God be upon him) totally rejected. What muslim scholars did at that time is as outrageous as this book. How can we trust which muslim scholars would review such a book?

The Independent article agrees that the book does ‘poke fun at the Prophet’. Another interesting I would like to point out is the depiction of the Holy Prophet (Peace & Blessings of God be upon him) where he is a baby and shown to have fed by multiple wet nurses. The thing is I have never seen it anywhere where parents would take pictures of their babies being fed even from their own mothers and publish it online for normal society to look at. But of course we don’t care because we have the mighty sword of free speech.

One thing I agree with the Independent is when they write:

But it does point to a wider malaise within Europe over our ability to have a decent cerebral discussion about Islam.

It does appear like how Drunks cannot help but to drink more, the press cannot help but to draw more.

Last thing I would like to point out is how much energy the western media has to publish these cartoons or anything that depicts the Holy Prophet of Islam (Peace & Blessings of God be upon him). The energy to keep on publishing one after the other is not a normal energy. This energy points to one thing only: The people who create these publications have a great love for the Holy Prophet (Peace & Blessings of God be upon him) in their sub-concious mind. It is a battle that is going on with their conscious mind which gets published every now and then.

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Poetry is a wonderful thing. You may have studied poetry in school only to pass your exams. At that time you probably had hard time understanding what a poet was trying to say. It was probably something you’d never want to do in your years to come. But let me present to you a different interface of poetry.

There are many times hard concepts of life that we already know but want to hear them from a different person for clarification. There are some hard concepts that through normal language we simply cannot understand. For those concepts to be welded into our nerves it is important to relate those concepts to some concepts we already know by a way of using metaphors. The magic of metaphors just settles the issue whenever a hard concept is bothering us.

The whole idea of the soul and the human body is not a very simple one particularly when we hear so many absurd ideas about it through media. I thought I’d have to read up a lot of material before I could come to an conclusion until I read Rumi‘s Poetry.

Maulana Jalaluddin Balkhi was a scholar, a saint of Islam. wrote some of the most beautiful poetry that the whole world has ever seen. It is said that at his era Arabic was the international language and government of that time was getting rid of other languages. Persia was under the same empire and the only reason Persian didn’t get wiped out is because Rumi had written such an amazing poetry book. This book, i.e. Masnavi is considered to be the Persian Qur’an due to its high religious poetry and beautiful poetry in its own rank.

For example:

You are a ruby encased in granite.
How long will you deceive Us with this outer show?

Ruby is the soul and granite is the actual human body. In another poem he describes the soul and body relationship as the soul being Noah and the body being the Ark. In another place he describes a married couple as one soul with two arks – one in soul but having two bodies. This kind of poetry truly gives us a glimpse of something we didn’t know.

Now let me come to my second point

Why is it that we consider our poetic heros as those who are no longer alive, who died 100s of years ago? I admit that some poets are irreplaceable in their rank but I have myself seen full-blown poets who are just not getting enough attention. I once wrote that: Poets are not born, they are manufactured by the society they choose to embrace. It seems poets are also killed by the same society. Sometimes, in fact 80% of the times we judge the work by its creator. We only say a poem is good because so and so wrote it, we simply ignore the content.

Share your opinions in the comments section below and don’t forget to share this article.

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Whenever we hear the word Physics or Maths, we get the feeling of our physics teacher writing weird equations on the board and telling us to memorise them. We get the gut feeling that ohh this subject is only for the most clever of us. We have such a wrong perception of a subject that is so beautiful in what it has to offer. It’s like we totally missed a whole iceberg let alone stand on it.

Albert Einstein during a lecture in Vienna in 1921 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’m a poet, a student of Physics and connection-finding is my norm. A few months ago as I was trying to think of a metaphor and something totally amazing came into my mind, it was that: Not only the poet influences the society in how to think, the society also influences the poet in what to write. This is a two-way relationship. Today Poetry is not too big compared to Movies. However this two-way relationship applies there just as well. The film industry tells the society what’s the new cool and the society tells the film industry what to make a movie on.

The most beautiful of Physical theories demonstrate the same two-way relationship that we find in everything. Einstein‘s Theory of General Relativity must be something that rings bells if you’re into watching documentaries or something that you’re personally in love with. This theory states, in the two-way relationship model, Mass tells Curvature of Space-time where to curve, the curvature of Space-time tells Mass where to move. See the two-way relationship.

I’ve realised that the most simplest and most minimalistic laws of nature also find themselves elsewhere where we have no intention of finding them. It’s amazing to understand that Physics does not reside on its own solar system. There is a deep connection between Physics and Psychology.

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English: Steve Jobs shows off the white iPhone 4 at the 2010 Worldwide Developers Conference Español: Presentación del iPhone 4 por Steve Jobs en la Worldwide Developers Conference del año 2010 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Dusan’s User Interface challenge (Photo credit: moggs oceanlane)

It’s amazing how amateurs can make videos and upload them to YouTube, send the link to all social networking sites and bamp! they are on the internet, their videos liked and shared by millions and by now billions. However same is not true for the artists who cast their musings in programming languages. I’m talking about those coders who, to get as famous as their YouTube counterparts, need to work much harder. It is true that Top YouTube video makers (The ones with the most subscribers) work as a team to produce great content every week. However even teams of coders do not succeed in the same way as YouTube volgers do or like us Bloggers do.

[55/365] OS X 10.7 “Lion” Beta 1 (Photo credit: Ben Dodson)

Windows Marketplace- Software & hardware for the Windows operating system (Photo credit: Daniel Semper)

Why Steve Jobs would disagree with me? He believed that an application made for all platforms risks using lack of power of the Operating System or the Hardware or both. This translates to something like: an app could run slower or have a smaller User Interface on iPhone because it was designed for a shitty processor on a shitty phone or for a small screen (I hope you get the idea). However this is certainly not true today. Mobile phones are certainly very powerful nowadays, as powerful as our computers were just two years ago. Certain mobile phones are as powerful as each other. A platform can be developed where an user can program using certain chosen languages and press publish and the app goes out to iOS, Android, Windows Phone and the same app with the same User Interface could go for publishing on the OS X Mac App Store, Windows Marketplace and other platforms. This could encourage a huge number of  born coders to exercise their skills that they never knew they had since birth.

Windows Phone Hackathon Welcome Sign (Photo credit: bobfamiliar)

“The real problem with the interface is that it is an interface. Interfaces get in the way. I don’t want to focus my energies on an interface. I want to focus on my job. I don’t want to think of myself as using a computer, I want to think of myself as doing my job” This is a description of softwares by an user. However it also applies to us coders of those softwares. We don’t want to be seen fixing bugs in our codes. We want to be seen as writing symphonies in C#. We don’t want to deal with complexities of putting an app on all mobile platforms. We want to code.

Internet Explorer Mobile 9 in Windows Phone (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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As a human brain likes linking things up or finding patterns or unifying things. So from the time I started planning my first moves I always desired to find a relationship between maths and chess.

I started playing chess when I was 15 and for the next two years I carried on saying there is no link. This was due to my incomplete understanding of maths.

However when I started Alevels, one of the subjects I chose to study was Computing. In this subject I learned about a branch of maths which was new to me. I didn’t really go deep into it but I saw glimpse of how it worked and researched the rest. The branch of maths I’m talking about is decision maths. The topic I glimpsed over was algorithms.

I didn’t really pay attention at that time. Sometime later in that week I went to play chess. So as I was planning my moves I realised that this is very similar to how algorithms work – I was flabbergasted. I just found the link between chess and maths. Something I was trying to find for 2 years.

Let me get my hands dirty & show you what I discovered.

Algorithms are like flowcharts. One can take any real life situation and make an algorithm out of it. Algorithms follow designated paths where they’re given choices, and also told which path to pick depending on the circumstances.

A game of chess has a purpose of checkmating (trapping and killing) the opponent’s king. There are more than a trillion ways this can be done. The possible moves in chess are estimated to be 10^120, that is 1 with 120 zeros after it. That’s more than the number of atoms in the universe. That shows how much possibility of moves there is in chess.

A chess game is like an algorithm. Algorithms have a start and an end and have a purpose of getting a task done in any possible way or getting it done in a distinctive way. Chess has a start and a finish similar to algorithms and has a purpose of defeating the opponent in any way possible or in some particular way (depending on the player’s mood).

At any point of the game, one can take a snap shot and analyse what is happening and explain it in terms of algorithms. Even the very first move the white pieces make can be explained by algorithms.

Since algorithms have a purpose, from the very start it will tend to take the path which leads towards that goal. It’s same in chess, if the player wants to checkmate in a particular way, he’ll make the first move which leads to a special formation and ultimately checkmates the king.

Both in chess and algorithms a decision made depends on the atmosphere (situation).

Algorithms are mostly used in programming since computers. Computers without algorithms just cannot exist.

It is absolutely magnificent to see how chess & algorithms are related.

Next time I’ll attempt to explain what are the consequences of this unification.

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In essence Al-mighty God is like an artist. He does what he pleases. He has a choice to do anything he pleases. This answer also goes with anything Al-mighty God does and in any way he does. He is not limited to do something in a particular way.

Similar question is raised about worship. I.e. why does God need our worship? If he doesn’t need our worship, why does he demand our worship?

The answer is He does not need our worship. It is us who needs Him. The worship he has commanded us to do is for our own betterment. The  worship is designed to keep us in the correct path of social, mental, physical, psychological, scientific and spiritual perspective.

What is Worship?

The Al-mighty God has taught us worship and all sorts of prayers for all sorts of occasions for our spiritual development. The very purpose of human creation was to lead them all to salvation. Yes all, every single one of us, even those who reject God on philosophical and scientific bases. There are three types of salvation: Perfect, Imperfect and Deferred. Perfect salvation is attained in this very life. A person who achieves imperfect salvation gradually perfects in the next life and deferred salvation is achieved after suffering the punishment of hell. Hell is like an hospital.

Al-mighty God has designed religion to help us achieve salvation in this life. This is why he sends prophets and communicates with them. Islam claims to be th universal religion with a universal teaching or code of life.

There are four different types of worships that come from the five pillars of Islam. Yes worship does not mean praying five times a day only, there is more to it. Al-mighty God has chosen these forms of worships to help us achieve salvation.

To understand why these types of worships, one must understand what each one requires:

1. Worship the object of which is to strengthen man’s relationship with Al-mighty God and to increase his love for him.
2. Worship which is designed to improve man’s physical condition and to incite him to make sacrifices for the sake of Al-mighty God.
3. Worship which is prescribed for the purpose of promoting concord and unity among men and to create attachment to a centre.
4. Worship the object of which is to bring about equitable economic adjustments within the community.

The first one corresponds to Prayer, Second one corresponds to Fasting, third corresponds to Pilgrimage, fourth to Zakat (charity).

You can ask any further questions in the comments section. If you like this article, share it.

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