Notes

Despite progress in recent years, girls continue to suffer severe disadvantage and exclusion in education systems throughout their lives. An estimated 31 million girls of primary school age and 32 million girls of lower secondary school age were out of school in 2013

Education (of the heart) is important, knowledge on its own is useless and dangerous

How much screen time is healthy for kids? Parents who are unsure of the answer can turn to a new set of guidelines put forth by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).

Of the world’s 2.3 billion children 14 percent — or 320 million — are living in single-parent households, most often headed by single mothers.

1335 years ago, on Ashura; the tenth day of the new Islamic year, in the early hours of the afternoon, on a sand-dune at Karbala, south of the current Iraqi capital, a convoy of men, women, and children was savagely massacred and 110 were killed by an army of over 30,000. It took the monstrous military force little more than four hours to completely and utterly annihilate the small group.The small camp led by Imam Hussein, though mythically defiant, suffered a crushing defeat. All the men were killed, as well as a dozen children and infants. The remaining women and children were taken into custody. The caravan along with the severed heads of the martyrs was paraded around the nation in a humiliating spectacle amidst demented festivities and celebrations and then, everything was over.. Everything.

Regarding Imam Hussain (AS), in fact the human being cries for the oppression of justice and wisdom. If justice wants to come out in a shape, it will be drawn in the most beautiful shape; if wisdom wants to come into a shape, it will appear as an angel. Things which have been drawn in paradise are images of justice and wisdom; are the same faces of justice and wisdom. In here, the fruits of the tree of wisdom are justice, and fruits of the tree of justice are wisdom.

We should now like to quote some traditions relating to Imam Husayn from Ibn Athir’s book entitled Usudul Ghabah. A man asked Abdullah bin Umar: “What will be the position if the blood of a mosquito touches the dress of a man?” Abdullah bin Umar said: “Look here! This Iraqi enquires about the blood of a mosquito, although these very Iraqis killed the son of the Prophet of Allah and I myself have heard the Holy Prophet saying: “Hasan and Husayn are my two fragrant flowers in the world”.

The villain of our story, our Muharram series would not be complete if we were to fail in giving Yazid the ink his actions bought him. A grand criminal of war, Yazid let holy blood flow …

I must say that I always find particularly telling how eager some members of the Muslim community have been to dismiss Imam Hussain’s sacrifice to remember of Muharram only the deeds of prophets’ past: Adam, Moses, Noah … the list goes on.