Just curious.

Brian: “You are all individuals”
Crowd: “We are all individuals”
Lone voice in the crowd: “I’m not”

Sorry but I’ve got all these pop culture references whizzing through my brain.

I’m currently doing reading on measuring dimensions of religiosity / religious commitment, and one of the must-reads in the field is Stark & Glock’s American Piety. In a section looking at what defined Christian belief (at least in the 1960s) they include a table breaking down assent to various statements of belief in God.

Scanning through the numbers the Southern Baptists stuck out like a sore thumb. Whilst other Christian denominations had various levels of strength in belief in God, 99% of Southern Baptists (78 out of 79) agreed with the statement: “I know God really exists and I have no doubts about it.” Only one poor soul had an inkling of doubt and had chosen the statement: “While I have doubts, I feel that I do believe in God.”

I started to laugh because I had a picture of this lone chap sitting in a pew, looking at all the believers around him, wondering if they were really sure of all this stuff… and apparently they are!

I’m not sure why these are any better than Debit cards, but it is nice to be pandered to by multinationals at anyrate.

The problem as I see it, is if you have a religious objection to interest as prohibited riba (not all Muslims believe the modern banking instrument of interest is the same as riba) then surely it is hypocritical to have a credit card (even a non-interest bearing, pre-paid one) with a multinational, whose main objective is providing credit to be repaid with interest to millions and millions of people around the world?

I am not being judgment on people who have credit cards. I have one, and make sure that it is completely paid off each month because I object to throwing money down the toilet (i.e. paying interest for items bought on a credit card). I am just trying to figure out how one can logically support a ’shari’a complient’ Mastercard and object to interest as riba at the same time?

Tabish Khair writes a very interesting op-ed in Comment is Free on the objectification of even Muslims’ protests at denigration by non-Muslim Westerners of our religious icons.

As well, Sunny Hundal points out:

The reputation of “terrorists” precedes so much that these days you can pull a book, blame them and watch Muslims become the target of hate mail without even much effort

Well it’s official - I am not long for the world, as my Irish hubby says. I have been diagnosed with diabetes *sigh*. It’s not like it’s much surprise given my PCOS, history of gestational diabetes, already diagnosed insulin resistance and impaired glucose tolerance.

I kinda figured something was wrong a few weeks ago when I just started to feel like the food I am eating is killing me. So I started to clean up my act (eat healthily) when out of the blue I got the idea to do a blood glucose reading. I have a meter but I haven’t used it for years. It was Sunday evening and I hadn’t eaten that much all day (just a few spring rolls, a Big M and a couple of slices of cold pizza - heyyy… I didn’t go completely nuts and eat the WHOLE pizza). My blood reading 2 hours post prandial (after din-dins) was 11.6 So the following morning I did a fasting reading and it was 8.2 :( I was hoping that because I was using testing strips two years out of date, that there might be some chance it was wrong hehe. So I booked myself into the doctors and after a couple of tests (including that horrible OGTT one with the flat lemonade that tastes just awful) my doc rang me to confirm the big D diagnosis.

I spent most of last week feeling absolutely down in the dumps, particularly on the Monday morning when I went to the doctors. I just knew in my bones that I had crossed over the threshold from intolerance to diabetes and I got really depressed. It was the same reaction I had when I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes. But I am hoping that this will kick me into line.

Blech, bum, blech, bum bum bum bum.

Oh well… c’est la vie. Something I haven’t written about on this blog (mostly because you know - it’s a bit naff discussing your medical history in public) but I’ve started off the process to have lapband surgery (hopefully for January inshallah). My poor old body just can’t cope with being this overweight, and God help me I have *tried* over the better part of my teen and adult life, to lose the fat every which way from Sunday. So, there is a glimmer of hope that with the lapband surgery and losing weight, the diabetes might disappear into thin air. (It’s been known to happen with type 2 diabetics who lose weight thru the surgery).

Luckily for me, the brother of one of my closest friends happens to be a well-regarded bariatric surgeon. It’s taken me a good few years to get to a point where I would consider surgery, but now I’m keen to have it done. I used to want to lose weight to look thin and gorgeous. Now I just want to lose weight so inshallah I will see my daughter grow up and get married.

Anyway, this is a bit of a self-indulgent rant, but it is nice to be able to spill my guts out all over the internet hahaha.

You know, the funny thing is when I was about seventeen I had an inkling there might be something wrong with my insulin/glucose system and I asked the doctor to do a test to find out. He referred me to this awful test where they took blood samples every half hour for about four hours. Apparently nada. But back then they didn’t know much about PCOS and I am sure that things were a bit loopy with my body even back then.