Assalamu alaykum everyone!

As we all know it’s getting harder and harder for our Muslim youth to maintain their Islamic faith in this western society, especially when the subject of relationships & Marriage comes along. It often helps when our children are able to communicate in honesty with their parents and when parents are not so ‘restrictive’ in their children’s choice of spouse.

Well we have some VERY good news for Muslim parents & youth that have reached this understanding and who are looking for a different & simpler solution to complete their deen.

Our much loved & respected brother Baba Ali, after having gone through the internet marriage process himself many years ago has now launched a new Muslim Matrimonial site called HalfOurDeen.com. Although our brother Ali maybe better known as our hilariously funny Muslim comedian, the mastermind behind Ummah Films reminder videos and the star of the popular internet series of ‘Ask Baba Ali’ he has also come to serve as an important voice for the American Muslim community and the whole Ummah in general altogether forming a strong bond of trust & respect for his no nonsense straight to the point image.

His new Matrimonial site HalfOurDeen.com is exactly that, straight to the point and no nonsense and here are just some of the points that distinguishes it from your average Muslim Matrimonial site:

1.  The site is completely private.  Isn’t that great! This means no more worrying about your friends, family or local community viewing your details on the web.

2.  The cost to register is peanuts compared to your average matrimonial site – HalfOurDeen.com and you’re not forced to register before finding out the fees, they have a link to the price page to prevent any waste of time.

3.  They have this cool compatibility % thing; you take a series of tests that let them know more about you and the person you’re looking for.  Thus, when you view someone’s profile, you see a % match you have with that person.  The questions are divided into categories so you can see how much you have in common in things like religion, family, personality, etc…

4.  Marriage videos – I think this was a fantastic idea and it’s so unique mashallah, and as Baba Ali himself quotes “ The divorce rate for Muslims here in the west has reached 31%.Unfortunately we rarely hear advice or tips about marriage during Jummah or from our parents so I decided to make a series of videos explaining what to expect when you get married.  My goal with Half Our Deen isn’t just to help people find each other but more importantly stay together InshAllah.  Whatever I gain from this project, I cannot take to my grave and therefore, I hope there is hasanat in this project.”

Well Alhamdulillah I’m happily married but I’d love to get my hands on the marriage videos, I get the feeling their just as entertaining as they are beneficial

Here is the link to the new site:  http://www.halfourdeen.com

I would urge everybody to watch  this video explaining some of the sites original & unique features in more detail:

If you have any comments please share them with us. Jazakallahu khayran.

Wassalamu alaykum.

The Ummah-Design.com Team would like to take this opportunity to wish all the Ummah across the world a very blessed & productive Ramadan Inshallah.

As we all know, Ramadan is a very special month and only one of its kind, it only comes by once a year and we never come to the end of it one year certain weather we will live to experience it & benefit from it again the next year, so we ask for your patience & understanding through this sacred and precious month as of course most of our Team will not be working during this time and the few that will be will only be part time. This is in the hope of us gaining as many benefits, blessings & rewards as possible & we urge everyone else to do the same Inshallah amin.

We celebrate this with a small collection of Ramadan wallpaper, all available in 1024×768 and 1280×800 sizes.

Please don’t forget to make du’ah for our brothers & sisters in Palestine, Pakistan & other areas of the world who are suffering daily fisabillah, may Allah SWT give them sabr, keep them steadfast upon the deen, purify them through their hardship & elevate their status in Dunya & Akhirah amin.

We look forward to your feedback & thoughts

Wa aleikum salam

Adopt Islam (www.adoptislam.co.uk) is a fantastic site that is very few of its kind Mashallah, the team at Adopt Islam have managed to successfully attain the knowledge and means to bring together this website in the English language, catering not only for Muslims but also enabling people of other faiths to gain a better understanding of adoption in Islam.

It was a great pleasure for the Ummah-Design team to assist them in their goal to accomplish an all new look & feel to their already, virtuous & beneficial site by agreeing to re-design & revamp it for them; we tried to establish a fresh, modern and light look that would be simple and easy to navigate through.

We wish them all the best in their aims and objectives of their mission and pray Allah SWT rewards them for their intentions and efforts Inshallah Amin. Please visit their website at www.adoptislam.co.uk and share your comments with us.

Wassalamu alaykum.

Productive Ramandan.com is a Productive Muslim.com Project, a new website launched specifically dedicated to help the Ummah make their Ramadan more productive and a fantastic way of sharing & finding solutions to your Ramadan problems Inshallah.

Ummah-Design was extremely delighted & honoured to have been approached by Productive Muslim and given the opportunity to design & develop this website and be part of this great Ramadan productivity.

We urge you to visit & benefit from this website by clicking the following link : http://productiveramadan.com/

We look forward to your comments & suggestions Inshallah.

Wa aleikum salam

Alhamdulillah the dahwa site Alxikmaonline.com has now gone live after a revamp and re-design.

Alxikmaonline.com is a dawah organisation which aims to promote awareness and understanding of Islam. They provide material covering topics such as Tafseer, Aqeedah, Hadith, Tajweed, Seerah & Islamic history. The Somali website also broadcasts live lectures & lessons and in addition to this is an ‘ask the scholar’ facility Inshallah for anyone eager to ask any questions.

Please feel free to visit their site Alxikmaonline.com and give us your feedback and thoughts Inshallah.

Tadamun Social Society (TASS) is a non-profit and non-political organisation striving to develop Somalia into a prosperous and educated nation. It was set up as a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) in 1992 and has since built up a wealth of experience in social development projects to enhance literacy, health, infrastructure, social morals and emergency relief.

We were honoured to be approached by their team to revamp and redesign their website; here is a screenshot of the old website:

And here is a screenshot of their new more user-friendly CMS facilitated site, allowing them to upload and update their latest news & events and maintain their new site all by themselves where ever and whenever they please Alhamdulilah:

What are your views and comments on the designs? Which one do you prefer? Please leave your comments & share your thoughts with us Inshallah.

Wassalamu alaykum.

Sobhanallah & Alhamdulillah we have been extremely busy here at Ummah Design so much so we are looking to expand our team even further IA. By the will & grace of Allah the Almighty and Most Beneficent we have been overwhelmed with the projects from clients all over the world and here is a showcase of our recently launched websites:

We start our showcase with ZahrasPainting.com. This site was a pleasure and so much fun to design. It belongs to our sister Zahra Bilal all the way in Pakistan, she’s an artist who specialises in Pastels & water colour so we wanted to represent this as much as we could in the design by using the soft pastel colours & texture. We can see she is very passionate for art and so wanted to highlight her work & unique style of painting as much as possible.

Next we have Ghamkolsharif.com, the Central Jamia mosque, this is one of our local, very well known & popular masjids situated in the heart of Birmingham. The Mosque is open to all visitors regardless of their faith and beliefs throughout the year, whether it’s to find out about the Mosque and its services or to discover more about the teachings and practices of the Islamic faith. The mosque wanted to keep their green colour scheme so we chose to enhance this with a softer green & orange and added some texture to create a warm authentic look.

Then we have Muslimknoxville.org, the Muslim Community of Knoxville (USA) are a small but very well established & organised organisation, family friendly with much to offer their community, they are one of our American clients who were a pleasure to work with and an Inspiration to all communities. I think it’s fair to say anyone who was to browse through their work & photo Gallery is sure to find themselves wanting to be part of the fun & loving family.

Greengatesproperties.co.uk. Greengates Properties are another one of our local family run businesses here in Birmingham who pride themselves on their good customer service and expert knowledge in real estate, they offer great deals on properties to let, sell or buy. We wish them every success with their new CMS website that we were more than happy to provide them with IA.

And last but not least we have Budget-vehicle-hire.com, Budget Vehicle Hire LTD specialise in the supply of quality rental cars, vans, people carriers and mini buses to domestic and corporate businesses at extremely competitive rates. We were happy to provide them with a new  CMS website & Logo on their request & wish them well in all that they do IA.

So please feel free to visit & browse the presented sites and leave your much valued views & comments IA.

Jazakallahu khayran.

Wassalamu alaykum.

Alhamdulillah we have completed and launched another new dawah website for one of our customers, As-Siratal Al-Mustaqeem.

As-Siraat al-Mustaqeem (1:5); is from the very first chapter of the Qur’an and as the name suggests, it means “to guide us to the straight path”.  The first chapter and verse 5 holds a very special place in the eyes of Allah . It is ‘the opening chapter of seven verses’.

Siratalmustaqeem.com is a da’wah website who like the chapter of the quran hope to guide people to the straight path by compiling and updating information on their website such as verses of the quran & their transliterations (in Mp3 formats), information on islamic legal issues, quranic topics, news & updates & a Q&A page.

It is a bespoke content managed website (CMS) where the client can update the content himself inshallah.  Very wonderful client to have – understanding, appreciative and patient. Mashallah.

We wish them all the best of success in their website and pray Allah rewards them for their good works & intentions Inshallah amin.

Please visit the website and share your comments with us.

Jazakallahu khayran.

Assalama Aleikum,

In continuation with our respected brother & Sheikh Tawfique Chowdhury’s  Real Deal series, we carry on the topic with Wealth & it’s types. Although the notes are pretty straight forward Alhamdulillah, this bit may need reading through a 2^nd time just for further clarification Inshallah.

Wealth and its types

Legal definition of wealth:

Anything to which people have an inclination towards, and is permitted in the Shariah.

Note:

Anything that is not permissible to benefit from, such as alcohol or dead meat or pork or interest money, then they are not considered a valid commodity in Islam.

There can be many types of rights upon any valid wealth:

1. The right of the owner: Thus it is not permissible to take the commodity away except by his or her will. It is also for this reason that the punishment for stealing is so severe.
2. The right of Allah: In effect, all wealth is from the property of Allah . When Allah has allowed us to use his property, then it can only be within the guidelines specified in the Shariah.
3. The right of the community: This entails putting the greater benefit of the community above individual benefit.

We can look at the types of wealth by way of:

1. Its nature.
2. Possibility of ownership of the property.
3. Its specificity.

1. A. By way of its nature

Wealth can be either

• Price or money, this is of two types: Gold & Silver
• The item that is priced or valued. This of two types: Non-transferable commodity (properties and estates) & transferrable commodity (other than properties)

Benefits of knowing this division

There are numerous benefits from knowing this division:

• The transferable commodities should be sold off before the non-transferable ones at the time of bankruptcy.
• The rights of neighbours are to be catered for in non-transferable commodities rather than transferable ones.
• The scholars have complete consensus about the permissibility of giving a non-transferable commodity as an endowment, however they differed about the permissibility of giving a transferable commodity as an endowment.
• Pre-emption is to ne respected as far as non-transferable commodities are concerned. There is no such thing for transferable commodities, except if they are jointly owned.

Exchange of wealth

Money for money = Monetary exchange

Money for an item of value = General sale

Item of value for another item of value = Barter

1. B. By way of possibility of ownership of the property

That which cannot be owned

Such as those properties that have general benefit for all, such as roads, alley paths between properties, wells, bridges etc… as long as the benefit is for all.

That which shouldn’t be owned except by an express reason from the shariah

Such as properties that are endowments for the poor.

That which can be owned

These are all commodities that do not fit into the above two types.

1. C. By way of its specificity

A commodity that is bought or sold, may be either:

• Specific
• Non-specific and remains in one’s liability

Specific commodity

The deal was contracted on a specific commodity. (For example, I will sell you this copy of Sahih Al-Bukhari that I have in my hand.)

Non-specific commodity

The deal was contracted on a commodity that is non-specific that remains a person’s debt or liability. (For example, I will sell you a copy of Sahih Al-Bukhari printed by ….. in the year ….. available in colour…..

What is the benefit of knowing whether the deal has been contracted upon a specific or a non-specific commodity?

The benefit of knowing this, is working out what the solution should be if a defect is found in the product. So, if the defect is found in a product where the deal was contracted on:

• A specific commodity: Then the seller must return the price that was paid and take back his product from the buyer.
• A non- specific commodity: Then the seller has the option of either returning the price or giving him another product similar to it in description (that is free of the defect). The buyer cannot force the seller to give his money back. Rather, if the seller wishes to give him another copy of the book, then he is obliged to take it.

Exchange of commodities by way of specificity

A commodity that is specific or non-specific may be bought and sold either one of the two ways:

• Transfer of the commodity is finalized immediately
• Transfer of the commodity is finalized at a future time. Until then, it remains on credit.

Inshallah we will posting more notes, so please keep checking our website.

Wassalamu alaykum.

Assalam Aleikum brothers and sisters.

Alhamdulillah we can now present you with the April 2010 spring wallpaper with East London Mosque’s prayer timetable.

As we mentioned before please feel free to make requests for certain screen size, girly designs, mixing & matching or even just updating the timetable on one particular favourite, whatever it may be we want to hear from you, so please leave your comments & suggestions Inshallah.

Wassalamu alaykum.