PhilAsify 101

Alhamdulilah I've been married for 6 years to the woman I was crazy about since I was in High School. When I did marry her, I was met with resistance from family and friends saying that I was too young--I hadn't finished college yet, had barely any money, and was still living with my mom and dad--but I wasn't going to budge. I had found the one I wanted to spend the rest of my life with and didn't want to waste any time making it official. Marriages, I have learned, are not easy. (A collective "duh!" from everyone reading, I know.) A piece of advice I received recently is that marriage is a 24/7 Job. That is not a bad thing at all. It just means that it's something that always requires work and is always a work in progress. There is a deception that when you have finally snagged the person you're in love with, everything will be effortlessly perfect and easy; problems and arguments will be either small or non-existent. Every year things will get even...

What a terrible, terrible movie. Though I haven't blogged much during my hiatus from PhilAsify 101, I did keep up with the activity the blog had gotten over the 6 months I was inactive. I was surprised to see that I would have on average 100 page views daily of people clicking on PhilAsify from all over the world. A modest amount sure, but for me it's pretty huge that at least 100 pairs of eyes read my blog or come across it everyday which is humbling to say the least cause I can't even get my close friends to even read a Facebook status I put up much less my blog. For strangers who don't know me to click on an article of mine they found interesting and check it out is really astonishing to me. Also despite not having new content up during the timespan, I noticed I would get comments for my different blogposts. Most of them would be comments on what I've learned has been my most popular blog post to date: Dating In Islam: Why Muslims shouldn't date a...

The Internet was going nuts today after tragic news broke of three young Muslim students who were gunned down by a older white man over what the news glossed over as a "parking dispute".  You can read the full story at the link below. LINK:  http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/chapel-hill-shooting-three-young-muslims-gunned-down-in-north-carolina-at-their-family-home-10037734.html Police say a dispute over a parking space spurred the murder Tuesday of three North Carolina college students, but the Muslim father of two of the victims insisted Wednesday that his daughters' neighbor and alleged killer had menaced them before and was driven by hate. Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, was charged with three counts of first-degree murder after turning himself in to police in Chapel Hill overnight. Although a Facebook page in Hicks' name that described him as a supporter of “Atheists for Equality” and blasted “radical Christians and radical Muslims" for ca...

Back from an extended sabaatical once again is your favorite PhilAsifer. It's been six months since I've posted new content on PhilAsify and I can explain, if you'd just let me! My time away from writing was a mixture of several factors: 1) My job. I've been working longer hours lately to pay the bills and it's been eating away at my free time. 2) Fatherhood. Being a dad is great and all but it's tough when you're a writer because you need peace and quiet and a block of time to get cookin' and that usually isn't going down when there is a toddler amongst needing to be entertained and put to bed. 3) I've just been in a general slump that I had to work on. I wasn't feeling productive. I wasn't managing my time. I felt I was stuck in this hamster wheel and getting nowhere. SO I needed to re-evaluate myself and my goals and start taking steps to get out of that debilliating rut I was in. I didn't want to come back to churning o...

Note: I actually wrote this poem about 5 years ago in my college poetry class. With all the continuing bloodshed and relentless violence and the fact that a ceasefire in Gaza only lasted 90 minutes, it's every bit as relevant now as it was then. #freepalestine Ceasefire by Asif Balouch Across my TV screen the evening news invites me to a world where smiles do not exist. Where all that lies is images of horror, devastation that knows no bounds. Gaza , where blood flows more than water. Sad story follows tragedy repeatedly in a torturous cycle. I’ve seen enough and am not the only one that cries out for those liable to bring forth a ceasefire. To city halls we go and march, embassies and consulates. The demand of a resolution we sought an end to the conflict. Cardboard signs with words big and bold spell out our disapproval. A clear message to those in power: "How much more lives must be lost before you’ve had your fill?" That would g...

A sad start to the month of April. One of my favorite childhood wrestling hero's has passed away. The Ultimate Warrior died at the age of 54 from heart failure while walking with his wife to his car at a hotel. This was just 24 hours after he was on Monday Night RAW for the first time in 18 years and more than 48 hours removed from being honored at the 2014 Hall of Fame. Ultimate Warrior was my gateway drug into wrestling when I was a little tyke. My dad liked watching wrestling and I think when I was around 2 or 3 I got my first glimpse of wrestling either on a Saturday morning or Saturday night when my dad had just got home from work and was relaxing. Who was on the screen? The Ultimate Warrior. The long hair, the crazy promos, the colorful facepaint and tassles the big muscles I thought he was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. Sure a lot of the times you didn't understand a word he was saying but the dude was a ball of energy running to the ring and that music was a...

A trend that is starting to catch fire on the interwebs are viral video pranksters going off the beaten path and showing off their charitable side by recording a video of them either helping out the homeless with a makeover, some money, groceries etc.  Popular Youtubers like Vitalyzd, FouseyTube, MagicofRahat are just a few of those folks. Look at this recent video just released of MagicofRahat giving a homeless man a fake lottery ticket and following him to go cash his winnings. The heartwarming video above I must admit brought tears to my eyes. These videos are usually very inspirational and emotional. It's no surprise videos like these go viral because it's not common for charitable acts to be seen up close and personal from a third person perspective. The majority of folks appreciate the random acts of kindness but others expose a different side, one that is usually disliked or overlooked. I'm talking about comments such as these: Emotional porn?...