City of Churches as they say. I’m off to do more police training, which is always hard but rewarding work. This time, fingers crossed, my video snippits will work please God.

I’ll be off for a couple of days, and not sure if I’ll have internet.  See you on the other side.

Baquia posts on how the US NSA (that’s the head honchos for most of the Baha’is in the States) lost trying to sue Orthodox Baha’is (tiny alternative denomination of Baha’is in the States) for trademark infringement on the name… Baha’i!!!

Yes, folks.. the US Baha’is trademarked the word “Baha’i” and the Greatest Name in its most commonly recognised calligraphic rendition. It’s kinda like the Catholics suing the Episcopalians for trademark infringement on the term “Christian”. Yuppers.

You can’t make this stuff up. Truly, this is not the same religion I grew up in (or maybe it was in America, them Yanks are a weird lot). As Baquia writes:

is the irony lost on everyone that here we have an institution which is charged with the duty to establish and encourage unity… and they spend their time and the money donated, to pursue an inane litigatious process against a small group of people who believe something slightly different from them?

A wonderful blogger has written a glowing tribute to one of my dearest friends in the whole world. (She’s not passed away or anything, thank goodness). I have been in awe of her for the longest time. She is beautiful, funny, intelligent and a great mum. She even let me learn how to change nappies on her gorgeous daughter.

She is also on the telly and the award winning panel show she co-presents on, Salam Cafe, starts back up again on Wednesday 7th May at 10pm on SBS.

I’ve some new blogs for the trusty ‘ole blogroll:

Talk Islam | Browngurl’s Web Rant | Blessed Muslimah | Digital Niqabi | Just Another Angry Black Muslim Woman | Knowledge Seeker | Labyrinth Walk | Stuff White People Like | Tru3woman | That Darn Mozlem | Zeusbox Studio

Disclaimer: That’s not me on the left there, but a lovely image from Flickr.

I have a bit of a guilty pleasure to report. I went out in niqab “face-veil” today, and a black one at that! I’ve quite a collection now, as I had bought some outfits from an Indian store that gave you a complimentary matching niqab with every outfit LOL. So I even have one that is royal blue and see-through!! Orientalists eat your heart out.

Whilst I always wear a headscarf, I don’t often wear a face-veil. Mostly because I don’t believe it is obligatory for Muslim women to wear it, it’s not that common among the women of the madhhab “school of sacred law” I follow (least not these days), and people in Australia don’t often cope that well with seeing Muslim women in niqab.

I’m not quite sure what possessed me today, except I’ve been reading a cognitive behavioural therapy book recommended to me, and one of the activities described to help overcome the ‘disease-to-please’, is to do something that takes you out of your comfort zone, something of which other people might ‘disapprove’.

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