TheNasheedShop.com looks very professional.  I cannot speak for the quality or service as I haven’t used it, but good to see Muslim artists supported for their art.

About every six weeks I have a faith column published in the Sunday Age. For some reason they don’t put the faith columns on the online version.  So here is my latest column:

I hope I don’t sound like too much of a wowzer but I do find the Christmas holiday season a bit tricky to navigate. Growing up, I remember pine-trees with tinsel and lights, Carols-by-Candlelight, wrestling with wrapping-paper whilst wearing pajamas, full-blown hot English dinners for Christmas lunch, visiting the extended relatives and friends and eating cold left-overs on Boxing Day. My family observed the traditional non-religious Aussie Christmas, but without the beer.

We didn’t go to church (or drink alcohol) because we were Baha’is, and strictly speaking we weren’t even supposed to celebrate Christmas. It was my earliest introduction to the issue of belonging to a non-Christian religious minority living in a relatively secularised but still Christian-majority country. My parents were pretty easy-going Baha’is, however, and felt it was important us kids didn’t feel left out, Christmas being an important Aussie holiday and all. My brother and I benefited from this by getting presents at Christmas as well as at the Baha’i New Year in March.

The family Christmas got a bit quirkier when I grew up. I got married to an Irish ex-Catholic, lapsed-Baha’i, began practising Islam seriously, and my natal family started having Christmas lunch at the home of my mum’s best friend, who happens to be Jewish. It almost sounds like a knock-knock joke: what do you have when a Jew, a Muslim and a Baha’i celebrate a Christian holiday? Whatever is the punchline, it might explain why I do well at interfaith gatherings.

After becoming Muslim, I started to seriously think about what Christmas means to me, or not as the case may be. Now I should clear something up. This whole ‘banning Christmas from kindergartens because of Muslims’ is a real furphy. While most Muslims don’t put up trees in their homes and swap presents between themselves, I have yet to meet a real-life Muslim who minds anyone else celebrating Christmas: Santa and his ho-ho-ho included. As far as I can make out, the War on Christmas is located entirely in the mad imaginings of some do-gooder public servants and bored journos looking for an easy story.

The more important issue for me is not whether a shopping centre puts up a Nativity Scene, but on the whole commercialisation of Christmas — an issue I share with many believing Christians. I would much prefer an Australia where there was a bit more spirituality and a little less debt at Christmas time. To that end, I hope this holiday season brings you extra special time with your loved ones, and the optimistic renewal of hope for good things to come in the new year.

This is old but funny.

Brave New World was a very short-lived project (three and a half issues) between myself and another author back in 2000.  It didn’t last very long as I moved on to bigger and better things, but I discovered the old directories when I was trawling through some old backup CDs. (Wave to Mooj!)

Back in 2000 I had to compose some short tunes according to specific styles as part of my final Music Techniques subject for my Bachelor of Music.  At the time I made midi files out of my compositions, but now I cannot play them - they might work as mobile phone ring tones though, let’s give it a whirl:

Boppy
Praise (this one is supposed to have the Fatiha sung as the top melody line)
Serialously (yes it’s supposed to be spelled that way)