(Smāll) Hāts Ōn Vōwēls

This idea has lain dormant for nearly two years and I’ve finally decided that I should stick it up.

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In everyday speech a person rarely goes very far before the sound “uh” comes out of his/her mouth. It’s totally natural and basically just an audio cue that indicates they’re thinking.

I have gathered five “uh”s from five popular English-speaking callers to Islām.

Can you identify these speakers from by such a short vocal extract? It’s just a simple test to see how familiar we all are with various callers to Islām.

Let me say from the start, that I love all these speakers for the sake of Allāh and have benefited immensely from them. So I am in no way, shape or form intending to mock or degrade them by making this compilation. May accept from them all their da’wah efforts and increase them in such, amīn!

Now, I have extracted an “uh…” from each of the following speakers:

A) Salim al-Amry
B) Anwar al-Awlaki (May Allāh hasten his release)
C) Bilal Philips
D) Muhammad al-Shareef
E) Ali al-Timimi (May Allāh hasten his release)

All you have to do is to match the “uh”s to the speakers.

Firstly, here are the five “uh”s combined into one audio. Hearing them side by side might help you to distinguish them from one another:

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Next I have each individual “uh” repeated three times in a short audio clip. They are listed as “uh”s one to five:

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Here’s a list of the speakers’ names again (not in the order of the audios above):

A) Salim al-Amry
B) Anwar al-Awlaki (May Allāh hasten his release)
C) Bilal Philips
D) Muhammad al-Shareef
E) Ali al-Timimi (May Allāh hasten his release)
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How To Submit Your Answers

Post a comment below linking each of the five speakers to an “uh”.

For, example:

I think it’s: 1A, 2B, 3C, 4D & 5E.

If you have all five correct I will tell you so.

If, however, you have some correct and others incorrect, or you fail to submit five answers at a time, I will merely tell you that “This combination is incorrect.”

I will not allude to which ones (if any were) correct.

I’m doing it this way to make the game last a bit longer.

You can post comments on other people’s answers to help each other, like “I think Fulān is right about Ali al-Timimi being number 5.” However, I will not pass comment.

I realise that you may not be familiar with all the speakers but I hope you’ll recognise at least a couple of them and can then, in shā’ Allāh, guess at the rest.

It is intentionally a little bit challenging (I hope).

In order to help you solve this puzzle here are some links about the speakers and where you can listen to some of their audio lectures to help you better recognise their voices.

Feel free to post links to other sites that contain their audios:

A) Salim al-Amry - Ibrahim’s Creed
B) Anwar al-Awlaki - Some Audio Lectures here.
C) Bilal Philips - Website; Light Upon Light Video Downloads; Some Audio Lectures Here.
D) Muhammad al-Shareef - Eman Rush; al-Maghrib Institute; Some Audio Lectures Here.
E) Ali al-Timimi - Free Ali; Some Audio Lectures here

Enjoy!

Here are the answers when you’re ready to give up and check.

Yes, I understand that I’m still on crutches but if it’s all the same to you I think I’d rather walk.

Here’s a very edited version of my recent knee injury (I’m in the white suit). The clip ends very suddenly because as my kneecap pops out of place I let out a scream and my friend took his finger off the record button.

Anyway, in the clip I’m trying to stop my opponent from pushing us beyond the red line that you see below us. I’m working a choke on him at the time (off camera) and he knows that the fight will be restarted from the centre if he can just push us out of bounds. His tactic will therefore free him from the choke.

I want to keep us where we are a little longer so that I can tighten the choke and hopefully make him submit. So I try to lift his legs to prevent him from pushing us out and in the process of doing this my kneecap dislocates.

Ow!

I was trying to think of some more Classic British Comedy clips that I could post and figured I’d search YouTube to see what Only Fools and Horses clips they have up.

I can’t believe I haven’t seen this one before I laughed so hard when I saw it. Absolutely perfect timing!

However, it’s making me feel like using IE as my browser again “weeeeee!”

The only barrier to this being that IE sucks really badly.

For instance, all the tool bar options have disappeared in the latest version that I have installed and every time I open it up, on those rare occasions where Firefox isn’t compatible with a site, IE just infuriates me so much trying to find the commands that I just have to x-out.

I think I shall forever remain a Firefox man

Reading this post by iMuslim this morning about accents reminded me of this classic comedy sketch by The Two Ronnies.

I’m sorry it’s not 100% wholesome comedy but it’s still very tame by today’s standards and I figured I’d take a chance and post it.

I suppose I should preserve our team’s competition results here for posterity.

I’ll only mention the Saudi results as the full results can be found on Carlão’s site.

Overall the Saudi team came fourth in the competition.

Mohammad al-Mesfer won a silver in the over 70kg beginners’ category.

Hamad al-Menawer won a bronze in the under 75kg advanced category.

Plus our medal winners got interviewed by some Saudi sports’ channel.

I had a really great time and am especially indebted to my team for all their kind assistance and support when I got injured.

Special thanks to my coach Sameer and all the guys in the club that I train with. I didn’t post all of their pictures as I should probably ask people’s permission before I go plastering them up on the internet.

Inshā‘ Allāh, next year we’ll bring back more medals.

Abu Dhabi is certainly different to Saudi in terms of hayā‘, although I do realise that it too has its own problems. You only have to go to a mall in KSA and you’ll observe the way the youth stare longingly at each other and are constant in refreshing their Bluetooth devices to see who they can hook up with in the area.

But living here you kind of get used to not seeing scantily clad women on billboard posters 24/7 and whenever I’ve crossed over into Bahrain and spotted my first poster it hits me and I think “Oh yeah, I’d forgotten about this constant psychological bombardment.”

Anyway, Abu Dhabi in terms of general dress code is very similar to what I remember from the UK. Apart from, perhaps, I don’t recall ever seeing a female toilet sign characture wearing a short skirt in the UK.

Here’s some after the competition footage.

So I’m off to Abu Dhabi for the weekend and depending on how bad my ear looks after the hospital removes the stitches from it tomorrow (inshā’ Allāh), I might be inclined to ignore the doctor’s better advice and compete in…

To be held in…

Here’s Carlão Santos, former world champion and the man behind the event:

We’ve got teams coming from Bahrain, Saudi, India, Iran, Jordan, Brazil and of course teams from the UAE themselves. There are other countries I’m expecting but I haven’t read any confirmations for them as yet.

al-hamdu lillāh, my employer sorted my exit/entry visa out so I’m going to be set free from Saudi for the weekend.

I’ve packed my knee, wrist, ankle and elbow supports, ice packs, medication, bandages, pain spray, etc. (not sure what I’ll injure yet).

I even ironed my Gi (although I gave up halfway through and probably won’t ever try to do that again).

There’s a strong possibility that I won’t be able to compete, what with my bad ear and all, but al-hamdu lillāh at least I’m going and I guess I can always be the camera man for our team.

I’d say wish me luck but I don’t believe in the stuff; it’s Qadr all the way!

You’re only allowed to tell to break a leg if you mean by that someone else’s.

Mwahahaha!

Fight, fight, fight!