Bilal’s Boulder

“Wisdom does not settle in a stomach filled with food.” —Dhū al-Nūn al-Miṣrī

Before you decided to envy someone (something you should never ever do), remember each person is a whole package. That guy that is successful in business? Maybe he didn’t know his father and you did. That guy that looks good for his age? Maybe he has a health condition that you don’t. That guy who found true love? Maybe he has no savings. Everyone is like that. we all have some enviable qualities, and we all have some qualities that you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. We aren’t controlled experiments — our lives are made up millions of moving variables. And that’s just our lives. How will our hereafters look like? What if some of your enviable qualities were a test or a burden? So the best thing to do is to just be grateful for what you have, be patient in what you don’t have, and ask God to increase you in what is good for you and what you can handle.

Israel is denying prosthetic limbs for children in Gaza https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2026/11/4/israel-restricting-treatment-for-1100-child-amputees-in-gaza-ngo

In 1933, six African American followers of Master Fard Muhammad traveled to Egypt, where their arrival attracted considerable attention among Egyptian Muslims and provoked alarm in at least one American observer. Pierre Crabites, a white American Christian residing in Cairo, documented the encounter in The Catholic World, expressing apprehension over the growing appeal of Islam among Black Americans and its potential consequences for the racial and religious order of the United States. His account, characterized by racial prejudice and anxieties over the international spread of Islam, offers a revealing glimpse into white American perceptions of an emerging Black Muslim movement. A contrasting account appeared in the Nation of Islam's The Final Call to Islam in August 1934, which celebrated the Egyptian reception of these travelers as a demonstration of international Muslim brotherhood and solidarity against American racial oppression. A research paper by Alam Khan https://bliis.org/research/islam-was-carrying-america-by-storm-pierre-crabites-and-the-rise-of-black-american-islam/

Aipac wins once again

The famous Nation of Islam bean pie 🥧

Regarding Vivek Ramaswamy

“Instill mercy in your heart toward your subjects, love for them, and kindness in dealing with them. Do not be toward them like a ravenous beast that seeks to devour them, for they are of two kinds: either your brother in religion or your equal in creation. They are prone to making mistakes, shortcomings befall them, and they commit wrongs, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Therefore, extend to them your forgiveness and pardon, just as you would wish God to extend His forgiveness and pardon to you. For you are above them in authority, while (I) the one who appointed you is above you, and God is above the one who appointed you! Surely, God has entrusted you with responsibility for their affairs and has put you to the test through them.” وَأَشْعِرْ قَلْبَكَ الرَّحْمَةَ لِلرَّعِيَّةِ، وَالْـمَحَبَّةَ لَهُمْ، وَاللُّطْفَ بِهِمْ، وَلاَ تَكُونَنَّ عَلَيْهِمْ سَبُعاً ضَارِياً تَغْتَنِمُ أَكْلَهُمْ، فَإِنَّهُمْ صِنْفَانِ: إِمَّا أَخٌ لَكَ فِي الدِّينِ، وَإمّا نَظِيرٌ لَكَ فِي الْخَلْقِ، يَفْرُطُ مِنْهُمُ الزَّلَلُ، وَتَعْرِضُ لَهُمُ الْعِلَلُ،يُؤْتَى عَلَى أَيْدِيهِمْ فِي الَعَمْدِ وَالْخَطَاَ، فَأَعْطِهِمْ مِنْ عَفْوِكَ وَصَفْحِكَ مِثْلَ الَّذِي تُحِبُّ أَنْ يُعْطِيَكَ اللهُ مِنْ عَفْوِهِ وَصَفْحِهِ، فَإِنَّكَ فَوْقَهُمْ، وَ وَالِي الاْمْرِ عَلَيْكَ فَوْقَكَ، وَاللهُ فَوْقَ مَنْ وَلاَّكَ! وَقَدِ اسْتَكْفَاكَ أَمْرَهُمْ، وَابْتَلاَكَ بِهِمْ. — Imam ʿAlī, Nahj al-Balāghah, Letter 53 (to Mālik al-Ashtar) https://fxtwitter.com/bhr20315203/status/2117927422968394149?a=8Aon8_eTW6FJdwCYiJQ&

I’m not religiously against voting - sometimes a monster needs to be stopped; and sometimes the ballot is the way to do it. But let me give you an analogy: The Iranian anti-regime crowd doesn’t care very much about Iranian elections. Why? Because, regardless of who wins, they know that the Supreme Leader, the Guardian Council, and the IRGC will remain. Sure, they will vote sometimes to elect “moderates” or “reformists” (Pezeshkian, Rouhani, Mousavi) to slow things down or lighten certain burdens or encourage diplomacy — but they are against the system as a whole, and they see elections as sandbox revolutions that happen within a controlled environment and a confined ecosystem. Now, many Muslims too have this understanding when it comes to Muslim governments. They don’t need a ton of evidence to develop this attitude. But they sometimes still believe that the U.S. is a transparent meritocracy, without realizing that there are things that are more powerful than elections. Elections are a fluid front on a vast and static backend: the donor class, billionaires, Super PACs, mainstream media, the RNC and DNC, the bureaucracy, the military-industrial complex, big tech, bribery, blackmail, and of course constitutional mechanisms. They all fight over a few swing states/ridings, and sometimes team blue gets a slim majority, which also has its ethical trade-offs. Sometimes, the choice is between Satan, and a plain-old devil. So consider me a “diasporoid”: a critic of power, and namely a critic of the system as a whole, who understands that some things just aren’t on the ballot, and that things that are always come at a price.

Israel claims that Iran is planning on using chemical weapons, according to the New York Times. So they don’t actually care if Iran is close or far from attaining nuclear weapons — they’ll just invent any excuse to warmonger further. Plus, haven’t we seen this episode before?

This essay challenges Stephen Shoemaker’s interpretation of the two descriptions of Paradise in Q 55:46-76 as oral variants of a single tradition later combined by qurʾānic editors. Contra Shoemaker, it argues that the cumulative weight of the internal evidence indicates both portrayals are original to the surah itself. Through close thematic, stylistic, and philological analysis, this study maintains that Q 55 is best understood as a unitary composition rather than the result of the combination of originally independent textual units. It is hoped that this essay will contribute to the ongoing discussions and debates surrounding the origin of the Qur’ān in general, and those relative to Q 55 in particular. A research article by Nuri Sunnah: https://bliis.org/research/the-gardens-of-q-55-stephen-shoemakers-reading-revisited/

Tucker Carlson’s source suggests that the U.S. is considering nuking Pickaxe Mountain in Iran, where they think Iran is storing nuclear material or covertly enriching uranium. I don’t think a nuke is necessary per se - but there have been reports of something big about to happen after the elections. Governments (in Europe and Asia) are urging citizens to stockpile food. Senator Chris Murphy said that the coming plan against Iran is “insane”. People from Sheldon Adelson to Mark Levin to Sam Harris have been manufacturing consent for a preemptive nuclear attack on Iran for years. I still think there are other steps in the escalation ladder before the nuclear threshold is crossed. A nuke would give Russia an opening to using tactical nukes in the Ukraine. B2 bombers may not may not be able to destroy a Pickaxe facility, but they can make it unusable for the time being; and maybe America just wants to continually set Iran back. I think what is more likely is an attack on Iranian energy and infrastructure. Trump was threatening to attack Iranian power plants and bridges in the last phase of the war - maybe that would be the next step. Iran has also been on high alert, doing drills in preparation, and leaders are reportedly meeting with Sayyid Khamanei. We’ve had a few false alarms already, and all of this might just be a way to bring Iran back to the negotiating table. But with Netanyahu desperate after his recent election, there may be some bite to this bark.

Probably an unpopular opinion, but when folks ask me about candidates like Mamdani, Abdul Sayed, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, etc. I'm not very enthusiastic about Muslim diaspora candidates running for American office. As we can see in Michigan now, it paints a huge target on all of our backs. It brings latent hatred and division to the surface. And for what? For a Democratic Party or a politics that doesn't do us much good. This is despite our comparative loyalty and support for them. A Muslim Democrat is still going to vote with his party most of the time, and they often have to bend over backwards to prove that they are not antisemitic, and loyal to American values first and foremost. Politics is the art of compromise, and in the case the United States, you are compromising not just with a country that is 99% non-Muslim, but a system that is heavily compromised by the military-industrial complex, big tech, megacorps, billionaires, and Zionists. Some things are more powerful than elections. And any failures of a diaspora Muslim in office will reflect on us all - that is just the nature of beast at this point. What I personally would like for our community is kinda the Chinese American model. There are about as many Chinese Americans as there are Muslim Americans. And Chinese Americans aren't desperate to see themselves in office or on American television. They know that it is "not for them". Yet they are one of the highest earning communities in America, and one of the most well-educated communities, with some of the fewest social problems. They have a firm idea of who they are, without the inferiority complex that we often have. They are a relatively self-sufficient community that have quietly made it to the top. There is anti-Asian hate, but it's no where near as visceral or as toxic as anti-Muslim hate; and on the contrary, there are people lining up to be part of their communities, businesses, families, etc. Anyway that's my two cents, feel free to agree or disagree or fight me or whatever

The most racially diverse religious groups in America: Muslims Jehovah's Witnesses Nothing in particular Buddhists Catholics The least: Black Protestants (of course) Jews Hindus Mainline Protestants