The Symbol

Hah! So I have succesfully downloaded the first picture in my first ever blogspot in the posting before this, eveything done within the space of a few hours after I made the decision to start blogging myself. Hmm... I'm getting to be rather proud of myself for having figured that out soon enough... As they say necessity is the mother of invention. Just like when I produced my first book "Berpetualang ke Aceh"... Apart from writing the text using WordPad and later Microsoft Word, I learnt by heart and looking at other people's work how to lay the whole thing properly in book form using Adobe Pagemaker and designing the cover with Photoshop... And when I found out in order to print the book, it's better and much safer to change the format to PDF File, I spent the next 24 hours learning just that by trial and error.

However using the PDF Converter on Pagemaker turns out to be quite troublesome as the graphics placed alongside the text tends to run away from the positions intended... So I learned how to use the in-thing, Adobe InDesign to get the job done and wallah... The rest is history... Given all that experience, making a blogspot should be way way much easier isn't it? But just when I thought everything was smooth sailing, it turns out the format of my old articles from the NST (posted as my 2nd and 3rd articles ever here) was a bit jumbled in the outcome... So had to clear that up first before I can proceed with this...

And so here we are, you are reading the 5th article in my first day of postings as a blossoming blogger n soon to be rabid biter of the establishment? He! He!... Anyway, as mentioned earlier two postings down there, I have this superstitious habit of doing things in odd numbers... Since my first attempt at posting a picture here means I ended up having 4 articles as part of my first day of postings, might as well make it 5 then isn't it?... It happens that what comes into mind then was this - I should also post a particular picture of a symbol which I proudly created sometime ago by editing something else I got over the Web using Photoshop to be pasted on the cover of the book "Berpetualang ke Aceh"... So here goes nothing...

So... What does the symbol stands for you asked? Well, in the middle is the name Allah in Jawi or Arabic writing... Anyone with a semblance of knowledge of Islam should know that it is the name of God... The five names circling the inner one starting from the above moving clockwise are Muhammad, the name of the last and seal of the prophets in Islam followed by the names of his closest family members... Ali (his cousin and son-in-law), Hassan (eldest grandchild) Hussin (Hassan's younger brother) and of course, Fatimah, the daughter of the prophet and wife to Ali....

The five name are also known as the main names of the Ahlul Bait, the family of the prophet... The Ahlul Bait also comprise the prophet's descendants through the children of Hassan and Hussein. History has shown, quite plenty of them featured prominently as saints, dervishes and learned scholars of Islam who brought and fought for the faith all over the world.

Allahuma sali ala Muhammad wa ala ali Muhammad... May God grant peace to Muhammad and the family of Muhammad. Amin!