Yusuf’s blog supplemental

In my opinion, the whole halaal gelatine issue is a sad reflection of how divided we are as Muslims. At the moment, there are 3 major Halaal “authorities” in South Africa, SANHA, MJC and NIHT.

SANHA approves only gelatine derived from Halaal animals as Halaal, while the other two certify gelatine derived from haraam animals as halaal. The reason given by MJC is that the gelatine undergoes significant change from its original state (bones) to make it irreversible.

My opinion is that this reason is dodgy and I seem to be in the minority on this one.

I have one question that no one at MJC / NIHT seem to have been asked. Why don’t they then certify gelatine derived from Pigs as halaal? Surely it undergoes the same process? Is there a difference between consuming a haraam cow and a pig? The hadith used to justify “significantly metamorphosed animals” mentions a donkey that dissolved into a salt-pan. Would NIHT/MJC certify gelatine derived from donkies halaal? (ok, that was more than one question)

Sounds dodgey to me.

Calculating Islamic prayer times can be simple, if you are outside and have stick (where you can check if its sunrise, sunset, mid-day etc.) or quite complex if you want to calculate whether it’s sunrise, sunset, mid-day etc. Thankfully, there are people who have done the complex calculations and others that have pulled these into software.

Unfortunately however, the geniuses at http://www.arabeyes.org/ decided to use c as their preferred language for the iTools project. iTools is available as a package on Ubuntu, as well as libitl, the library where all the smart stuff happens. The guys at arabeyes were kind enough to also include with the libitl source code an example perl wrapper and the SWIG configuration files thereof!

A few hours of tinkering with SWIG got me to the point where I can succesfully calculate Salaah times using a decent programming language (Python).

Here is the wrapper library, compiled object and example code for anyone that wants it. I will explain the process in making the attached when I have more time (InshaAllah).

For anyone wishing to roll their own, download the SWIG interface file and Makefile and place these in the swig folder of the libitl source package. Build the itl source before running “make python” in the swig directory.

The missing Ninja turtle

mshini-wam ringtone

MTN had a parental control service that, like man of its other services is not advertised.

In order to activate it, you need to dial *101# from your kids phone. Then select option 4 to set yourself up as the guardian. Once you have setup a pin and the guardians cell number, you may then setup the blocking options, which allows you to block access to adult content, gambling or chat services.

Nokia N800 running VMware from Eric Sloof NTPRO.NL on Vimeo.

Not sure which models this applies to, but it works on my DSD 910 and has got me out of trouble at least twice so far.

• Press standby and tv/music bottom together (In other words Reset)
• As soon as”dl” is displayed, press the standby button, then the program up, then the program down button and the standby button again.
• When the DL goes away  “ed” should come up and hopefully it will download the newest firmware.

After reading this hadith, I’ve been wondering if this stuff is available in South Africa? :

Sahih Bukhari, Book 60

Volume 6, Book 60, Number 5:

Narrated Said bin Zaid:

Allah’s Apostle said, “The Kam’a (i.e. a kind of edible fungus) is like the Manna (in that it is obtained without effort) and its water is a (medicine) cure for eye trouble.”

http://sandgetsinmyeyes.blogspot.com/2007/03/truffle-kama-hunting-in-saudi-arabia.html

http://botit.botany.wisc.edu/toms_fungi/jan2007.html