I suggest you do your research first and find out what the lady would like the most.

Surely the parent's have a say if their children will be in ESL classes? I know a lot of kids in the UK have the option but most Somali parents I knwo of feel that their kids learn better & faster in the normal classroom, that's usually the case. Instead of ESL they should encourage reading programmes and writing competitions.

Somalis have been through hell, and they are still standing and breathing and surviving.

^^Explain pls. I think it's sad. Speaking broken Somali isn't any better than speaking English or whatever language. Standard Somali needs to be thought. There are huge misunderstanding between parents and children, not to mention cousins who have grown up in other parts.

Hey Nur, dikir and running, never tried that. Actually I only run when my head is about to explode with thoughts. Unfortunatley I tend to remember my dreams with vivid photgraphic memory, this is good when it's a nice dream but horrible when it's a nightmare because it ruins your morning. One of the worst dreams I had was one with about praying salat and it was also the shortest dream I had. I have religious dreams sometimes so far had 3 dreams of them stuck with me. Last summer I has a warning dream about prayer. In my dream I was making wedges chips (wedges with herbs and just the right amount of salt) don't ask, I must have slept thinking of food/hungry. Anyway, in the dream I am watching tv in the living room, I can smell the chips in the oven and I get up to get them after a while. I am watching Sky News, I remember it so vividly, and a blond woman is telling the news. I go to the kitchen, I open the oven, and my face gets so hot. SO I get a cloth to get the tray out, my whole face gets so heated by the oven-air and the chips says to me 'Just like I am being fried in here so will you in hell for not praying'. Just like that, in man's voice, and the voice was very well spoken. I dropped the tray and woke up so fast ( I rarely wake up from dreams in the middle of the night, they fizzle out and I remember them in the morning). I already knew what it meant because I was being lazy and worried about missing prayers in the morning, getting up at 3 in the summer, so it was really my consciouness warning me. Another dream was several years ago when I was 17 and I was just getting interested in Islam. I used to read the translation before I slept and so one night I dream we were in the local shopping centre, and all of a suddden there was a huge trumpet sound and everyone started screaming and running. This centre has huge escelators , and wheerever pppl ran to fire would come out of it, then I woke up. I also know why I had that dream because at that time I was reading about judgment day and the final hour. The third dream was just plain weird. My mum says Allah warns those he loves. Dreams are just dreams though right? If they help good, if not forget it?

^^Not to solve problems, to put pressure on certain ppl. How much longer do we need to wait? It might not even come in our life time. Now that's depressing.

lol you nasty people stop the grins. Don't pollute idead of love with physical stuff.

Well the blaming of Warlords, whilst it may be correct, is getting tiresome. You can sit here for the next 15 years and blame warlords. Call Somalis savages, speak and speak until you get tired. I’m sick of people contemplating the state of Somalia, do something about it or shut up. If you want to speak out there are constructive ways to do it. None of us as far as I know is attracting the world to the plight of Somalis. Yes reality sucks but scepticism & cynicism coupled with helplessness will get us no where.

So basically out of the million or so possible murderers roaming Mogadishu this one was selected for special treatment? I for one would support any army restoring order in Mogadishu, whether Ethiopean /other Africans/Americans/Europeans or dogs if this is the alternative.

The information is incorrect, but then again I always thought ppl wastedd precious brain cells on that women and her doings.

We can all agree it was a disgusting and inhumane way in which this man was killed. I mean, like Naden said, couldn't they have shot him? You are not even allowed to kill ANIMALS this way but its ok for a human? I DO feel sorry for the man regardless of the fact that he was a murderer because I am a human being and it bothers me to see others in pain, something that these large crowds lack. No matter how we try to explain it away our instinct tells us it’s wrong. It's very distaseful for Shabbelle or any other Somali website for that matter to show pictures and details of the killing, where was that photographer's humanity? Who sanctioned these courts? Did they inform the citizens of Mogadishu publicly of the punishment of crimes? Who can guarantee that these so called Sheiks haven't murdered anyone in the past themselves? And why was 'justice' carried out by family members and not the court itself? Will this become another Saudi Arabia, where only the poor will be used to extract full measures? There are too many dubious holes in this and you can’t expect us to accept it as legitimate. Yes our religion says kill the one who has killed another, but does it say that this is the only way to deal with it? What happens to the part where Allah says if you truly repent than he can forgive anything & everything unless it's Shirk? And even shirk is forgiven if you repent with sincerity before your death. When Allah Himself does not take full justice, (eg. He forgives sinners despite their mountains worth of sin) then why can't we forgive? Don’t you think if this man had repented with sincerity he would have been forgiven? Or had a chance at being forgiven? What will stop this youngster from killing again now that he has already killed? Will this 'scare' a population who has seen rape/murder/mutilation for 15 years? NO, it will only serve to make them immune to graphic violence. p.s. To the person who was saying that there was no child molestation in among Taliban members, you would be shocked to find there is just as much child abuse in Muslim conservative countries than in western countries.

'In a situation' could mean a million things, like financially not ready or having personal problems or the brother might actually have another sister in mind.

Faith and religion are different. The way I see it faith is a conviction of absolute certainty & religion (although cannot be valued without faith), is the practice that accompanies it? The whole point of faith from a religious point of view is to have faith without explicit proof. You cannot proof it 100% now & here but neither can you disprove it either. To jam God into a theory, no matter how comforting, is just not appropriate. God shows his signs to those who seek Him out, and for some unfortunately nothing less than his appearance with an entourage of Angels will proof his existence. It is difficult to rationalize God away in the rhetoric & discourse prepared by those who deny his existence, you wouldn’t get far, going around a circle. Not that I can think of a better way to do it, when I do figure it out…

Love is not to blame, it's how ppl respond to it, some are grateful regardless of how their heart might break, others reject it out right for fear of rejection, some imagine it to be all roses and clouds, some might be lucky or unfortunate depending on what side you are standing, to ever experience it. Either way you cant deny it exists and it certainly isn't for weaklings . There are those who hide from the storm and those who ride on the ship's deck. p.s. I have just found out about this Cilmi Bhodari character, someone care to fill me in?

Very touching indeed, the first thing I always think of is Mercy when I hear the name Allah. It's a shame laakin that not enough Islamic teachers are stressing the Mercy of Allah but are super quick to point out the slightest sin to hell fire. Hell fire is huge deterrant for many of us but not all ppl are made the same, pointing out the mercy of ALLAH will serve to equally deter us from committing sins & yearing to be close to him.

^^looooooool

We shouldnt waste our precious brain cells on issues such as this.

^^

People mainly gain weight more not because of what they eat but because of lack of excersize, no amount of healthy eating will help if you dont move around. For example, they say a healthy women needs 2000 calories a day, but to sit on the train and sit at work all day and sit infront of tv in the evening, where does the 2000 calories go? Now a woman who works on the field in Africa all day, might need 2000 calories and more. Best stop, hate this talk of calories.

Ahura, that woman sounds like she would fit in beautifully in this office. Here you would feel like you should be on death-row if you even discuss delicious food. Sounds like you have a mature office. It is getting to the extend that eating junk food ‘interferes with spirit of team work’ and ‘lacks support’. They all go to spinning classes, Ti Chai or whatever it’s called, and deviate between yoga & Pilates, depending on which is more fashionable that week. About Glamour, I like it too (and Marie Claire) but I was buying a drink on my way home yesterday, feeling frustrated with s*lly women from the office and LO and Behold! Glamour tells you what to ‘eat, do and wear’; I just wanted to smash the whole stand . I love their clothes section, Cosmopolitan has an excellent fashion section, laakin, shame about the rest, and their whole universe is cantered around men & sex. ‘How to please your man’, ‘Is he thinking of popping the Q?’ ‘Tips from Gay men’ have seriously put me off from ever buying it again. It’s in our interest to eat healthy, but not to obsess over weight, that itself is form of illness. From where I am standing it is glamorized starvation. (relieved laughter and applause)" LoL thats halarious, I know people like that.

You can talk to children about sex but it will be a lot harder to talk to teens about sex. Schools do a good job of teaching the biology side of it, I knew all about intercourse, child birth etc at 8. It's up to parents to talk about the social, moral and religious responsibilities of sex. Discussing sex with children also can help with preventing child abuse, if they know the basic rules of sex in terms of what is wrong and what is right.

Just yesterday at work I went to the local Fish & Chip shop, purely because I was gripped by urge to eat chips. Anyone who has tasted chips from F&C shops knows that the tastes of those chips are incomparable to other chips elsewhere. Non F&C chips fail to make them as tasty, fat and juicy. So I make my way back to the office and it is as if a disaster has befallen the workplace. I could mentally hear all conversations seizing as the fragrance of freshly fried chips filled the air. My colleague, who lives on a daily dose of rabbit food (salad) with minimum dressing, looked in horror at the chips. I offered her some, she refused. She couldn’t sit next to me so as to not tempt her any further I went to the kitchen. Another colleague walked by while I waited for the chips to cool down. She looked on in a mixture of distain and delight. She tells me how unhealthy they are (Oh really, I didn't know that!) and says now I have tempted her beyond resistance. I offer her one and she takes it grudgingly. Later she says she has had her chips for the week, one. Another college declared that it has been 2 years since she last ate a biscuit. My manager walks by, a late 40-50 something stunning woman who looks 20 years younger than her age (apparently it's a must to look at least a decade younger than you are, no matter what the cost). She says, 'Oh I smell chips, whose chips are they?' I smile nicely and offer her some, she refuses, her excuse 'When you get to my age dear, it takes a lot more to shift one pound' . Only the IT girl, who is a slightly normal human being like me, ate a chip without comment or guilt. She was a healthy size 12. The strange thing is that all the skinny girls/women in the office were the ones who constantly talked about dieting and food. This isn't the first time this has happened. It's an office culture, where every break and lunchtime is wasted on comparing calories, even teas and coffees have been changed to 'healthier' brands. Now it's one thing to eat healthy but another to discuss food at every eating opportunity. You would think that dieting is prevailing at this time of year, with summer coming up and magazine's urging to 'Get that bikini body NOW! ’ This month's Glamour issue, which featured a skeletal Nichole Ritchie, actually had the nerve to tell you 'What to DO, EAT, BUY and WEAR' , why don't they give you a manual on how to breathe as well? No, this is an all year trend. I for one am sick of hearing about food and dieting in one breath and using ‘healthy eating’ as an excuse to 'diet'. Healthy eating is a life choice, it is not dieting. Somebody needs to drum that in. It is truly distasteful to be talking about how many calories is in the food you are eating, especially when you are sitting down and eating with people, regardless if they are WOMEN and not men. This is extremely annoying (& insulting to those starving) when they should really be grateful to the Lord they have that meal to begin with. So basically, if you are on a diet, get on with it quietly. No the world isn’t interested in how many calories you lost this week or how many times you ‘slipped up’ or about the latest fat- free-sugar-free-salt-free-energy free-nothingness that’s available to you, that you have to grimace through and pretend it tastes as lovely as the original. It's also unnerving how women judge other women solely on their weight, I mean she could be a company Director, a Professor, an excellent mum of two, if she isn't skinny, it's ‘Oh great, but too bad about the weight’ or ‘If only she were to loose a few kilos/pounds, she would be ''perfect'' ' . It's sickening. My philosophy is, you want to be healthy, exercise, and stuff your face. Or enjoy an obeasity in bliss.

JZK, interesting, if not a little creepy! These stand out: 9.The nations of the earth will gather against the Muslims like hungry people going to sit down to a table full of food. This will occur when the Muslims are large in number, but "like the foam of the sea". 36.People will claim to follow the Qur'an but will reject hadith & sunnah (Abu Dawood) 39.Time will pass rapidly (Bukhari, Muslim, & Ahmad)

^^^ Leaving S'Barre aside, are you saying when ppl come into your house and steal from you, torture you and kill your family members, you can't blame anyone? You cant blame them and those who encouraged them, ordered them to do these acts? What about all the innocent Somalis who have been maimed and killed from the beginning of the war to today? Are they to blame?

I think it all depends on what you take as a hero. No one would deny that S’Barre did a lot for Somalia as a country, he made the region develop etc etc. We are not downplaying his political achievement. However, a hero is a person with integrity & much humanity. I doubt those things can be said about any political leader. I have to go with Ahura’s line of thinking. My hero is my grandmother who at the beginning of the war saved 15 young local guys from getting killed just because they were from the wrong tribe. They stayed on her roof for a week, then she walked with them in the middle of the night for miles and miles to take them to an area where their people lived. I don’t think she was the only one, there must be hundreds of other Somalis like her and they are our true heroes.