Bookish DIY

You have time on your hands, a brooch that's seen better times and a strip of pretty ribbon. It doesn't take much to turn the brooch and ribbon into a classy bookmark - beautiful enough to give away as a present. You can do the same with an earring that's lost its 'partner'.

What about books that you don't want to keep anymore? Other than giving them away, what else can you do with them? Well, what about a wreath of white roses? Click here to see how it's done.

Book pages can also be turned into book letters and you can learn how to do this here.

An old hardcover book becomes a vintage photo frame. Make a number of them to give out as party favours - a unique giveaway.

If all the above DIY bookish projects are a bit too much for you, then this could be just up your alley - use the book pages for gift wrapping!

Eid Mubarak

Eid ul-Fitr is celebrated by Muslims on the first day of Shawal, the tenth month in the Muslim Calendar. It marks the end of one month of fasting during Ramadan. It is a joyous day of thanksgiving. In Malaysia, this day is 19 August 2012.

Knowing my Prophet

We are in the last ten days of Ramadan, the month when Muslims around the world fast from dawn to dusk. It is a month when we refocus our attention on God and strive to purify ourselves; it is a month of self-evaluation vis-a-vis Islamic guidance through the Quran and Sunnah. The Quran was first revealed to Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) during this holy month.

I have several books on my Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him). The first one, which I bought very many years ago, was Martin Lings's Muhammad - his life based on the earliest sources. It is acclaimed worldwide as the definitive biography of the Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) in the English Language.

It was first published in 1983 and draws upon eighth- and ninth-century Arabic sources, of which some are translated in the book for the first time. Lings, whose Muslim name is Abu Bakar Siraj al-Din, uses a narrative style that makes the book extremely readable. Take this passage from Chapter Eight, for example, which describes how the fatherless infant Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) becomes a nurseling of the Bedouin woman, Halimah: "So I went and took him, for no reason save that I could find none but him.I carried him back to where our mounts were stationed, and no sooner had I put him in my bosom than my breasts overflowed with milk for him. He drank his fill, and with him his foster-brother drank likewise his fill. Then they both slept; and my husband went to that old she-camel of ours and lo! her udders were full. He milked her and drank of her milk and I drank with him until we could drink no more and our hunger was satisfied. We spent the best of nights, and in the morning my husband said to me: 'By God, Halimah, it is a blessed creature that thou hast taken.'" 

Another well-known biography of the Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) is Muhammad - a biography of the Prophet by Karen Armstrong. She is not a Muslim and was, in fact, a Roman Catholic nun for seven years. 

In her introduction, Armstrong observes that "the old hatred of Islam continues to flourish on both sides of the Atlantic and people have few scruples about attacking this religion, even if they know little about it." Indeed, the book's first chapter "traces the history of Western hatred for the Prophet of Islam". In a later chapter, she refers to Islam as "a religion of social justice". In her last paragraph, she quotes Wilfred Cantwell Smith who wrote in 1956 that "the 'fundamental weakness' of both Western civilisation and Christianity in the modern world 'is their inability to recognise that they share the planet not with inferiors but with equals.'" She then concludes, "The reality is that Islam and the West share a common tradition. From the time of the Prophet Muhammad, Muslims have recognised this, but the West cannot accept it... If Muslims need to understand our Western traditions and institutions more thoroughly today, we in the West need to divest ourselves of some of our old prejudice. Perhaps one place to start is with the figure of Muhammad: a complex, passionate man who sometimes did things difficult for us to accept, but who had genius of a profound order and founded a religion and a cultural tradition that was not based on the sword - despite the Western myth - and whose name 'Islam' signifies peace and reconciliation".  

An earlier publication in my collection is Muhammad - A Mercy to all the Nations by Al-Hajj Qassim Ali Jairazbhoy, first published in 1937. 

In his preface, the author states, "To raise a people sunk in the lowest depths of degradation and vice, and to have the rare fortune of achieving success in his mission in his own lifetime, is decidedly the monumental work of a highly successful character, one to inspire mankind with action, perseverance, patience, and faith. Any other would have despaired of success, would have yielded to the pressure of utterly hostile circumstances, but the Prophet gloriously outlived all struggles, persecutions, temptations, and failures; he was confident of his mission, confident of success, and so he succeeded at last in the very place of persecution, and could confidently say, 'Verily, I have fulfilled my mission.'" The last chapter of the book is of special interest, where the author advances his claim that "all the prophets had prophesied the advent of a world Prophet who should verify the truth of all the prophets who had appeared in the World". 

I bought my copy of Rafiq Zakaria's Muhammad and the Quran in 1997 at the London British Museum. Published in 1991, he reveals in his preface that "the idea of writing this book came to me after reading Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses. Its acclaim by a large number of non-Muslim intellectuals and its popularity, especially after the fatwa by the late Ayatollah Khomeini, convinced me that a fair picture of Islam needed to be presented once again in order to remove much of the distortion that has crept into its perception".

He further states, "The book is not the life story of Muhammad, nor does it give a translation of the whole text of the Quran. It is an attempt to bring out the essentials of what Allah has pronounced and what his Messenger preached and practised... Instead of giving my personal views, I have quoted the studied observations of highly respected persons, both Muslims and non-Muslims; their testimony lends authority to the assessment of the various issues under dispute". 

In this book, Rafiq Zakaria has selected 1,111 Quranic verses (out of a total of 6,666) to "reveal the nature and spirit of Islam and bring out clearly its message of monotheism and the consequences of good or bad deeds for this life and the life hereafter". He also covers "the stories of the prophets from Adam to Jesus, as narrated in the Quran... (to) give an illustrative insight into the values that the faithful are asked to emulate". 

'Abd al-Rahman 'Azzam, the first secretary-general of the Arab League, first published The Eternal Message of Muhammad in 1954 in the Arabic language. It is deemed a classic study in the Muslim world of the Prophet's (Peace Be Upon Him) Message. Written for a Muslim audience, the author points out in his preface, "My intention in writing the original essays was to clarify for Muslims some of the principles and origins of their society, faith, and revealed Law, and to speak of the life of their Prophet. It was not my intention to apologise or preach to non-Muslims". 

'Abd al-Rahman is saddened by the materialism of the West, the idol he terms as 'a high standard of living' to which many, including Muslims, appear to be attracted to. His book is "a serious attempt to point out the Muslim answers to today's world" and focuses on the fundamentals of Muhammad's (Peace Be Upon Him) Message, i.e. faith (Iman) and right-doing (Ihsan). The chapters explore social reform, the Islamic State and international relations, as well as what the author believes to be the causes of world disturbance. On the latter, he states that "extremism in patriotism or national loyalty has been a basic cause of the increase of world disturbances and the gradual expansions of wars from local struggles to universal  holocausts". 

He asks, in his last chapter, "Why not teach people, therefore, to loathe war as they loathe murder?", and calls upon mankind to return to "the (righteous) way of the prophets, who directed instincts in a manner satisfactory to the standards of virtue and the common welfare". 

Hare, heir and air

The English language is a quirky language. No-one probably knows, not even those born to speak the language, why 'heir' is not pronounced with a hard 'h' sound, like in the word 'hare', but instead sounds like the word 'air'. If the pronunciation rules (or non-rules?) are hard enough for non-native speakers to understand, what about the many meanings of a word?

Let's take a short simple word, for example, 'fast'. In my English dictionary for advanced learners, the word can mean 'happening, moving or doing something at great speed', 'holding something tightly or firmly', 'colours or dyes that do not come out of the fabric', 'living a life that's expensive or dangerous', or 'not eating food for a period of time'. And then there's usage. Do you get down, get off or get out of a vehicle? Is it 'compare to' or 'compare with'? Does the murderer get hanged or hung?

Fortunately, there are books to help us in getting to grips with the language. So, continuing with my English theme and following up on an earlier post about writing-related books, I'm sharing below three of the books that I often refer to.

The Good Word Guide, edited by Martin H Manser, is a starting point to understanding the use of the English language. It explains the difference, for example, between 'stationary' and 'stationery'; it shows how certain words are pronounced, such as 'foyer' and 'nougat'; it also points out incorrect usage.

Touted as "a writer's best friend" on its cover, the Merriam-Webster's Concise Dictionary of English Usage is a more advanced guide than the above. It not only provides current usage of commonly confused words and phrases, but also explores their historical background. It may interest you to know that the words 'envious' and 'enviable' both meant 'highly desirable' at one time. Along the way, 'envious' lost the meaning while 'enviable' retained it.

Having these two books for reference would be sufficient. Nonetheless, it may be useful to have one more on your bookshelf - The Wordsworth Dictionary of Foreign Words in English by John Ayto. While this book provides thousands of foreign words that have become part of the English Language, it also gives accounts of their origins and backgrounds. A familiar word is 'cul-de-sac', a French word which literally means 'bottom of the bag'. When it became used in the English language in the early 18th century, it referred to a cavity or tube in the body that is open at one end only. Today, the word is used for a road that is closed off at one end.

I'm sure we all share the sentiments of Vivian Buchan, whose lines below were published in the Spelling Progress Bulletin (Spring 1966): 

One reason why I cannot spell,

Although I learned the rules quite well

Is that some words like coup and through

Sound just like threw and flue and who;

When oo is never spelled the same,

The duice becomes a guessing game;

And then I ponder over through,

Is it spelled sow, or throw, or beau?

And bough is never bow, it's bow,

I mean the bow that sounds like plow, 

And not the bow that sounds like row -

The row that sounds like roe.

I wonder, too, why rough and tough,

That sound the same as gruff and muff,

Are spelled like bough and though, for they

Are both pronounced a different way.

And why can't I spell trough and cough

The same as I do scoff and golf?

Why isn't drought spelled like route,

Or doubt or pout or sauerkraut?

When words all sound so much the same

To change the spelling seems a shame.

There is no sense - see, sounds like cents

In making such a difference

Between the sight and sound of words,

Each spelling rule that undergirds

The way a word should look will fail

And often prove to no avail

Because exceptions will negate

The truth of what the rule may state.

So though I try, I still despair

And moan and mutter, "It's not fair

That I'm held up to ridicule

And made to look like such a fool,

When it's the spelling that's at fault.

Let's call this nonsense to a halt."