dehog. this is me.

I had been looking forward to this event as soon as I heard about it.  The last I saw something like this was in Singapore, and I didn’t have anything at hand to capture it.. so anyways..

Any how, lately I had been pushed down by a number of events which had set me back financially.. so this sorta helped me come back up.

The show put up by the riders was super, nothing less of it. It was way more amazing specially with the desi crowd. It’s always more awesome with a desi crowd man.

The following concert, finally blew it away. Ali Azmat is an amazing performer, with brilliant showmanship skills.

All in all it was awesome, and for that I’d like to thank Fizza & Angel for the passes, without which I would not have been able to get in that place ♥

Let me start off by saying I apologize for putting this aside for a day, in which I could have maybe conveyed this message to maybe a few more people. I also want you to know this blog post comes in response to a recent conversation I had with a few people on twitter. Since 140 characters is sometimes a lot less space to convey everything, I’ll use this space to answer as much as I can.

Whats the issue

Two weeks back me and my friends made a trip to Do Dariya (a location if you head west of Sea View, Karachi), only to realize that this place has pages of the Holy Qura’an and other religious documents scattered on and under the stones like it was garbage. Needless to say we were shocked at how religious and pious we may seem yet we look the other way when actual religious matters are brought to our attention. People walked around these pages, over the stones.. Minding their own business and pretending this issue didn’t exist, all they cared for was their picnic and catching fish.

We found complete set of Qura’an Shareef’s not only on the rocks and underneath it, but in bags and sacks near the water, we also found a huge dump of the sacred pages on the very end of Do Dariya, where usually the gutter lines open up in the sea, it’s not only immoral, disrespectful but also a view into how much we value our very own religion. We also found a huge load of Praying mats (Ja’a Namaz), Prayer beads (Tasbih), Praying caps, religious flags (with Ayah’s printed on them) and alot of stuff from Mazaa’rs.

Our prediction

We’re suspecting we’ll be finding alot more of these right after 12th Rabi-ul-Awal. It’s sad to see all these religious items going into the trash instead of being used again, or recycled.

Who does this sort of stuff?

There are actually two main characters to this. Us the general public, and small madarsas.

It’s a general opinion that Shaheed Qura’an Pages should be fed to the sea, and that is one way of taking care of it.. What people donot know is that it is one of the few ways, and each method has it’s requirement. People generally throw these off the “Neti Jeti” Bridge & fly overs.. Except these pages end up floating around places like Do dariya and sea view.

On the other hand, we’ve been told truck loads of these Shaheed Qura’an Shareef pages have been dumped near Do dariya and other such places, without any proper checks or laws.. It’s actually not even the madarsa’s fault sometimes, these low budget madarsa’s give their load of Shaheed Qura’an Shareef to truck drivers, who in the end dump it in the sea, needless to say it’s not the deep sea, where it actually should be.

Whats the proper method?

1. If a page or part of a page of the Qura’an Shareef or any other religious document is considered Shaheed, the best way is to bury it, this way the page decomposes naturally.
2. If you find a Shaheed page or part of a page of the Qura’an Shareef that is barely readable and not in a condition that it could be restored, it’s supposed to be dropped into the deep sea, my focus here is the deep sea, so that the paper either decomposes or is consumed by the creatures of Allah, as the Almighty wishes.
3. The third and the last resort is burning the Shaheed pages, this is mind you the very last resort and should only be practiced if the Shaheed pages are beyond the stage where they could be restored or in a state that they would scatter even more if dropped in the sea.

How can I help?

First of all, try to use the methods I’ve mentioned above to take care of a Shaheed Qura’an Shareef or its pages. Secondly if you can, please do volunteer to help clean the shores, or any other places possible that you find may contain Shaheed Qura’an or it’s pages/parts. Form a team and clean this up. Indeed Allah as our witness we would be trying to do the best in our ability to prevent any azaab or the wrath of Allah.

Try to educate people about disrespectful behavior and tell them of their responsibility.

There’s a whole bunch of contact methods you can use to know more of what we found there, and if you’d like to join me and my friends on our next trip to this cleaning, you can find all of them below.

We’re planning to visit Do Dariya or sea view or any other location we might come to know of, every first and last Sunday of the month, Inshallah.

Jazak Allah for taking the time to read through this, drop me a line if you have any more question, I’ll answer them to the best of my knowledge and ability.

If you find any errors in this post, please do let me know so I can fix them, I m only a human and it’s only natural that I might make a mistake.

So the new year has come and we’re now in it.. feels quite stale already.. Besides it’s supposedly the “end of the world” or such..

The new year has been quite a thing or two for me.. I started dating again.. and well.. it didn’t last long.. better to get over with it than to sob for the rest of my life.

And then I burned some parts of my face.. that of course is under treatment.. The rest has been much to tell.

So for everyone out there.. Have a safe year – that is till the world comes to an end (;

A couple of days late, but Happy New year nonetheless

I had another version of this artwork, which I would still keep personal, and would never release publicly, only a few have seen that one.. Any how, I put this version out, since it doesn’t carry the disturbing graphics of the other one, and I think I some how convey a message through this one.

The words are different parts of the song “For whom the bell tolls” by Metallica from “Ride the lightning”.

If you figure out what I m trying to say here, do share in the comments.