make us not from among them

Narrated by Abdullah ibn Amr

“There are four characteristics, whoever has them all is a pure hypocrite, and whoever has one of its characteristics, he has one of the characteristics of hypocrisy, until he gives it up: When he speaks he lies, when he makes a covenant he betrays it, when he makes a promise he breaks it, and when he disputes he resorts to obscene speech.”

‏ أَرْبَعٌ مَنْ كُنَّ فِيهِ كَانَ مُنَافِقًا خَالِصًا وَمَنْ كَانَتْ فِيهِ خَلَّةٌ مِنْهُنَّ كَانَتْ فِيهِ خَلَّةٌ مِنْ نِفَاقٍ حَتَّى يَدَعَهَا إِذَا حَدَّثَ كَذَبَ وَإِذَا عَاهَدَ غَدَرَ وَإِذَا وَعَدَ أَخْلَفَ وَإِذَا خَاصَمَ فَجَرَ ‏‏

May Allah protect us and make us steadfast, especially in this age of mass communication and comment threads on the internets. Can’t we just agree to disagree and go out for ice cream or something?

Count your blessings

In the category of trying to increase myself in Taqwa, I’ve taken to writing down three things that I’m grateful for, every day in my RantBook™. It’s sometimes hard to list 3 things, believe it or not, and I forget or get too busy to scribble on some days, and when I do, I’m reminded of just how ungrateful I am, and how far I have to go. Continue reading “Count your blessings”

Unboxing Dev Samaddar’s ‘Twice Around the Sun’

It’s definitely 27Zine…

I’m swimming in zines right now, to my absolute glee. One of the newest arrivals is Dev Samaddar’s Twice Around the Sun: a two-year photo journal. It’s a collection his favorite mobile phone photographs from, well, the two trips around the sun he enjoyed during the period between December 28, 2014 and December 26, 2016.

https://youtu.be/nW0m-pbOK6w

Continue reading “Unboxing Dev Samaddar’s ‘Twice Around the Sun’”

Unboxing Nate Matos’s ‘Blandscapes’ and Littlefields #15

The Blandscapes are a series of 4 (at time of writing) small, economical, easily reproducible and open editioned, quarter-fold zines from Nate Matos. They’re quite different from his Serif & Silver  series and Compendium, but no less inspiring.

Littlefields is, for me, a beautifully strange sort of photo magazine from Jim Clinefelter. Each ‘issue’ consists of a random selection of 10 C-Prints from a series of 20 or more photographs and a couple of text panels in a handmade wrapper/sleeve thing. I’ve never seen anything like it.

They should really be in two separate videos, but since they came in one box together, there’s just this one…

https://youtu.be/YA8SvK02TYs

Continue reading “Unboxing Nate Matos’s ‘Blandscapes’ and Littlefields #15”