Photos: Private Pool House – A Cheap Getaway

As salaamu ‘alaikum. There are many private pool houses in and around Jeddah. Some are cheap….others are more expensive. This particular one runs just under 400 SAR per night. It’s like a home away from home. It was rather clean which made overlooking a few flaws easy. It has everything you need to be relatively comfortable, just bring towels, eating utensils, toilet paper, and related essentials. There’s a masjid nearby, small shops and a few eateries. I’ll give details about our stay another time In Shaa Allaah. Here are a few photos…enjoy!

Daily Q/A Session with Shaykh Mohammad al Malki

As salaamu ‘alaikum. There will be an open Q/A session with Shaykh Mohammad al Malki (hafithahullaah) everyday @ 4:30 PM EST – 11:30 PM Saudi Standard Time.

 

Location: Pal Talk – in the room “Towards Understanding Islaam.”

 

Join the Shaykh’s E-Group to receive updates via E-mail: IlmForAll_KnowIslam-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

 

Haneefah

Schools for Children

As salaamu ‘alaikum wa rahmatullaahi wa barakaatuh. Many sisters want to know about schools in Jeddah for children covering subjects like reading, math, science, etc. Wallaahi I don’t have any info to give you right now. ‘Afwaan. My daughter was only 1 and 1/2 years old when we made hijrah so, I did not look into these things. Alhamdulillaah, now she’s old enough to attend school and finding a good one for her is a concern of mine. I’ll keep you updated on my findings In Shaa Allaah.

 

I do know that children 3 and up can attend tahfeeth schools. Some will take them at 2 and 1/2 if they are potty trained. They are taught to read and write ‘Arabic, short suwar, short ahaadeeth, basic English like A, B, C, 1, 2, 3 and do activities for their age level. They even have Tawheed classes, Maa Shaa Allaah. It’s beautiful to hear the babies say” Ar Rahmaanu ‘alal ‘Arsh Istawaa.”

 

Here’s some info on the school I attended some time ago: Daarul Haafithaat al ‘Ishreen – Quraan Memorization School for Women & Children

 

Sisters living in Jeddah – You are very much welcome to share your experiences, give advice related to living here and whatever else you have of benefit.

 

Haneefah

Ministry Bans Advertising Breast-Milk Substitutes

Ministry Bans Advertising Breast-Milk Substitutes Arab News

JEDDAH, 25 May 2008 — Hospitals and clinics will no longer be allowed to offer new mothers promotional samples of baby milk powder starting Tuesday, following a new law issued by Minister of Health Dr. Hamad Al-Manie. “The initiative aims to promote breastfeeding,” said Dr. Manal Khorshid, coordinator of the breastfeeding program at the Jeddah Directorate of Health. The law includes 28 articles regarding the marketing of baby milk, food substitutes, baby bottles and pacifiers. It also bans the advertising and the promotion of baby milk and food substitutes, including the offering of free samples at hospitals and clinics. “Even TV advertisements must be stopped,” said Khorshid. “Mothers should breastfeed their newborns the moment they deliver them. It is not true that the colostrum milk that the mother produces when she delivers is not enough for the baby. Newborns cannot have more than five to seven milliliters. Their stomach then grows to hold from 27 to 30 milliliters,” she added. Mothers begin to produce prolactin hormones when they enter their seventh month of pregnancy. “All mothers have these changes but some of them lose their milk because of the wrong methods they use to nurse their babies,” she said. Hospitals, manufacturers, importers and distributors who break the law would face fines of between SR5,000 and SR150,000, and closure for 180 days. Some hospitals that are baby-friendly do not allow the distribution of such promotional products. But others, including government hospitals, hand out free samples and feed babies ready-to-drink milk as soon as they are born, rather than giving mothers the chance to breastfeed. Some mothers lack knowledge of the importance of breastfeeding and the immunity this provides their babies. The Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Commerce and other related bodies will oversee the implementation of the new law. Baby products will also be checked to see if they meet standards set by the Saudi Arabian Standards Organization. The ministry issued an executive bylaw last February for implementing the new law by the end of this month.

An Easy Way to Access Web Sites of the Scholars & More

As salaamu ‘alaikum wa rahmatullaahi wa barakaatuh. May Allaah give us tawfeeq (success) with learning ‘Arabic.

 

You can practice with these tools In Shaa Allaah. Read a small risaalah from a scholar, try to understand it, then check it with the gadgets below. They are not perfect…but they help.  

 

In business? You can place a translation gadget on your web site which will encourage non-English speaking customers to visit and possibly make a purchase In Shaa Allaah, Wallaahu Aa’lam.

 

This may also help spread the da’wah. So, if you have a deen related page, put up the translation gadget In Shaa Allaah.

 

Haneefah

 

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Google Translate adds 10 new languages…

5/15/2008 02:06:00 PM

Posted by Jeff Chin, Product Manager

…and that’s great news any way you say it. Language is one of the biggest challenges we have in making information universally accessible. As part of the machine translation team within Google Research, I’m happy to report we’ve been hard at work to overcome this challenge. We’ve recently added translation capabilities for 10 new languages to Google Translate, bringing the total to 23 languages. The newly featured languages include Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hindi, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian and Swedish.

In addition, you can now translate text and web pages as well as perform cross-language searches between any two languages that we offer. For example, we now support Chinese translation to/from any of our languages (e.g., Chinese to French). So for those of you who will be following or attending the Olympics in Beijing this fall, you’ll be able to more easily find and access content from local sources.

We’ve also added a “Detect Language” option to help you automatically identify the language of the text you’re trying to translate. Keep in mind that the longer the text, the more accurate it will be. And for those of you who have embedded the Google Translate My Page gadget in your website to give it global reach, these new languages will automatically appear. Developers can also take advantage of these new languages in our AJAX language API.

While our system is quite good, we know it’s not perfect. Machine translation is a hard problem, but it plays an important role in helping people access content they might otherwise be unable to read. We’re constantly working to improve the quality, so if you find a translation that’s not quite right, let us know by using our “Suggest a better translation” feature.