My Story
My father has six children including my half-sister (she is the eldest). I am the third eldest, I have a sister older than me and my half-sister older than her, I then have two sisters younger and a brother 9 years my junior. We are all married except my brother who will be getting married this summer insha’Allah. My half-sister has a clothes shop next door to my father’s grocery and halal meat shop. One of my sisters is a qualified solicitor and my younger brother is working for the Police as a civilian. Career wise I have been in the IT industry for 14 years as a Unix Consultant and systems administrator. One of my sisters is a Solicitor, the other a housewife the sister just older than me is disabled. My sister who is disabled was born a healthy child and my parents suspect that a polio jab was to blame but they never really pursued the matter. . .

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Currently

Just got news that my friend Sidi Moez Masoud, from the shows Parables in the Qur’an and Stairway to Paradise on ART-Iqra, has become a father for the first time, mabruk! His wife gave birth to a baby boy in the early hours of this morning. May Allah answer his duas for his child and make his child one of the upright and an example for the Ummah. Amin.

The Web Site
Insha’Allah I am hoping to redevelop my website and am looking for ideas and suggestions to make the site more useful, beneficial and dynamic. Many of you may have noticed that the Bazzar section is not fully functional and has not been fully functional for a while. I am currently in talks with a Muslim company who will redevelop this section. One feature that I hope to have is for people to open up their own online shops in the Masud Bazzar. Will let you know as soon as this happens. I was looking through the stats for my site in the last two weeks and I get a hit every 1 minute, so far this month my site has had 9317 hits in two weeks.

Football
I am a fan of Arsenal Football Club , I have been since I was six or seven, not sure why, as my father wasn’t exactly a sports fan. I suppose it was a combination of school friends and my liking for the red shirt with white sleeves that always appealed to me. Anyway, the way they are playing football at the moment is out of this world, even Manchester United at their best were never this good and Manchester United were very good and as a fan I am over the moon. BTW did you know the word “arsenal” comes from Arabic – “Italian arsenale, from obsolete arzanale, darsena, from Arabic a in?a, manufacture, industry, and dr-a-in?a, place of manufacture : dr, house (from dra, to turn, revolve. See dwr in Semitic Roots) + al-, the + in?a, manufacture (from ana?a, to make. See n in Semitic Roots)”. Good excuse as any to support Arsenal and the fact that they have a couple of Muslim players: Habib Kolo Toure and Rami Shabaan both practising Muslims.

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Books
I finally finished the Lord of the Rings series and I must say that these books were just totally outstanding. Tolkein has created a fantasy world in great detail, he has developed histories, literature, poetry, language and folklore of all the races in the books. He describes scenery and plants in vivid detail. Whilst reading it I have often wondered whether he has visited the world of the jinn and then described what he saw. As far as language goes Tolkein really is as great as his comtemporaries like C. S. Lewis author of the The Chronicles of Narnia another classic series. Having seen the film adaptation of the Lord of the Rings Series I thought that they were as close to books as can be without each film lasting a week! The films were great family entertainment which my children both enjoyed and good family films are hard to come by these days.

If you think that there is something un-Islamic about reading works of fiction think again Some guidelines for children books on the Sunni Path website.