I should be the last person on earth to be asked this question, but people always message me asking, “what is your take on arranged marriages in Islam?”

All I can say, it still happens and it will never change. Do I agree with it? It all depends on your personality and the way you were raised. Not everyone follows it. The world changed so much, that parents or families in general don’t necessary force it at all. They prefer that their sons and daughters find their other half through a process of love. The reason such liberalism in thinking regarding such a sensitive topic in our modern times is more common, is due to the fact that the previous generation, or our parent’s generation, has suffered from these arranged marriages.

Life came to a point that it was rushing so fast. More women were educated, becoming more liberated, and are working and helping out with the family’s income. So, their “role” in the family changed drastically, but the mentality of the way many people perceive it till now has not. That’s how problems arise from these arranged marriages and the overall perception of it.

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Do I think Muslims ever marry out of love then if they go through the process of arranged marriages? Umm…

Many people, especially Muslims, till now believe arranged marriages are better. The groom and bride are forced to believe that love develops after marriage. It should never be before that. That’s fine. The way Muslims perceive it, love can easily fool someone’s emotions, and the devil will occupy those two people and cause them to commit sinful actions. Which is true, it happens a lot, and God does not forgive such actions. It is even a sin in other religions, not just Islam. But I believe that people who end up in such a position because they are very weak. They are weak in personality and faith. If all Muslims followed only the basics of their religion, then no one would have to worry about arranged marriages or forcing a girl to marry too young, or any other weird story that many people hear about every day. However, there is always evil in this world that messes up people’s judgments.

Do I believe in arranged marriages in general? Umm…

If we want to base this on the great method of keeping up with damn statistics, and personal experiences from you, yes you the reader, then, ah, I hear about breakups and divorces more than anything in our world. In Canada, the divorce rate is hovering around 38% yearly, and in the United States, around 45%. Isn’t that a bit too high? Seriously, if the majority of those people married out of love, spent so much money on a wedding, home, furniture, appliances, and even procreating, then why in the world did it end in divorce? Wasn’t it a marriage based on love? So what would be the odds that an arranged marriage is better or worse than that?

For arranged marriages, I don’t know what the statistics are, but I got many people telling me, the odds of marrying out of love or arranged marriage is almost the same, and most likely the same number of people will end up in divorce. Therefore, don’t think arranged marriages are such a bad thing. Like I said, you are asking me, Mona, if I think it is ok. I think marriage in general is not ok! I am anti-marriage and anti-love. Happy? No, I am just joking I swear, but many of you already know my take on this whole marriage business. It ain’t easy, and I am old enough to know that a person needs to control their emotions and think before signing their life away, and be part of someone else’s life. I like things to last forever, and I am not willing to jump into the band wagon because everyone else is. And I believe that resorting to an arranged marriage is like accepting vanilla over chocolate, and I damn love my chocolates!!

For the final time, marriage is different people. Arranged or out of love, married life is SO different. So, this question that people keep asking me, and thinking that it is so backwards and our religion is so oppressing for women, and life, etc, need to really stop. There is no right answer. It is all based on experience, and I experienced neither to really come up with a really really good answer. All I know that love is over rated. Life is a lot more than that, and we should never let our emotions take over logical life choices.

I keep hearing Syrians or even Lebanese saying this regarding marriage, “Marriage is like a watermelon. You don’t know how it tastes like till you open it. It could be sweet or sour. You never know.”

HOWEVER! I can sense the odd few anal people right now that will counter argue that phrase! They will say that you can pick the exact sweet type of watermelon. Science changed things. . . Blah blah blah .. spare me .. spare me this argument. It is pointless!

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Now this is an expected but fairly interesting comment I got on Twitter:

For those that are witnessing the daily trend, I apologize. For those that haven’t, don’t bother. It’s rather crazy. I have to delete, comment, reply back, whatever a blog owner does, to clarify my points and correct people’s thoughts all day long, because some people don’t get it!

It’s giving me a migraine, I need a drink.

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[This is me, Mona, with a frustrated facial reaction every time I read ridiculous emails and comments.]

My normal day:

1. I wake up, do my morning duties, eat breakfast, drink coffee, and check my emails.
2. As I am reading emails, I laugh, cry, cringe from disgust, and answer people’s questions.
3. I ignore half the emails I get because people are so persistent to piss me off.
4. I read every single email, unless the person keeps emailing me because I ignore them 10 times, and they still will never understand. You are spam to me now!
5. People read my old posts and wonder, what? And email me or message me with utter confusion and hatred.
6. People judge me because of the title of the site, and think the only way to comment or email me is by being disrespectful, negative and ridiculing.
7. I get really peculiar emails from Arab girls with their problems, and expect me to give them the advice they want to hear. Yet, I am a very conservative person when it comes to many Arab life issues.
8. I watch TV, read news, and check out latest blog technologies and cool new web applications.
9. I drop 300 Entrecard cards on 300 websites a day. I read some of those blogs, and I am frustrated by the same design that people use. STOP USING BLOGGER.com!
10. If I answered any emails, I get replies back with the following tone: angry, thankful, pissed off, or happy.
11. If I ignored someone’s email or deleted their comments, I get 4 or 5 pissed off emails that I skim through or completely ignore.
12. I have a web server running on my machine, and I test new things throughout the day, and see what is appropriate.
13. I am currently planning a couple of new ideas, and I haven’t been sitting on the computer for more than an hour so I can actually work on them.
14. I end up drinking 3 or 4 cups of coffee, and become too jittery to think anymore.
15. I spend an hour reading and watching girlie videos about makeup, hair, etc.
16. I count the minutes, hours, and days till my wish of getting a real nice and good job where I can meet new people and share my skills and persona.
17. I go to bed, and sleep by 11:30 pm and repeat it all again the next day.

That’s my day.

Now a few RANTS.

I am sick and tired of people judging me by my site’s title. I am sick and tired of people giving me religious advice thinking they can cure me from my rebellious ways. I am sick and tired of people trying to analyze me by focusing on the word rebellious and not anything else that I write. I am sick and tired of people thinking that if I don’t listen to them or agree with them, that I am a very horrible person and should be ridiculed some more.

Honestly, I did everything I could. I automatically got the comments on each post to close after 7 days. I tried to give people some freedom in writing comments without me moderating. I tried to be as democratic as possible when dealing with people’s comments and emails. I feel like I am a president of a country and I am trying to please everyone. However, I am not ANYONE and I am a very stubborn opinionated person. When I say something, I will not go back and change it or change my opinion to match yours. If you don’t like it, then find someone else that will worship your worthless advice. That’s my rebellious thinking! I will not agree that easily, and God gave me the will power and brain power to make my own decisions and formulate my own opinions.

What puzzles me is people’s persistence in me agreeing with them, or forcing me to read their opinion. I am not interested in anything that is forced to my face. I am a human being. I decided to have a blog to share my life, my thoughts on certain cultural and worldly issues, to have some fun writing and enhancing the skill of writing, to be creative in web design, and try to formulate a community of readers that I enjoy reading their opinions of what I say. I love people! However, I dislike morons and closed minded individuals.

Another thing, I am sick and tired of people giving me religious advice. It’s only Arabs I swear to God. And 90% of those Arabs are male. First off, how can you be 100% sure I am a Muslim? 20% of Arabs are Christians. I am not saying I am denying my Islamic faith, but don’t give advice to a person that you know nothing about or bothered to research. My faith is for me to live by, for me to follow, and for me only as a human being. I cannot spread religion, and I don’t want people to force it on me. I know how to read Arabic. I know the Islamic laws and rules. I follow my faith 100%, and I never sway from it. I am more Arabic and more religious and conservative than half the Muslims that I ever met in my life. Yet, I never judge anyone. I don’t care. It’s not my problem. It’s between that person and God.

Lastly, I am very Arabic. My way of life is very conservative. I don’t go out much. I never been to clubs, bars, dancing, etc. I don’t do anything. I am more quiet and more to my self than anyone you met. I continue writing on this blog and I am proud of it because I can write rebellious thoughts of the ridiculous new Arabic traditions or messed up traditions that have no bases, and I question them. I talk about life of an normal Arabic girl. In the end of the day, I view my self as a really good person, and I never in a million years thought of doing anything that opposes my religion or culture as a whole. I am just another girl, who has rebellious thoughts against certain issues. THAT’S ALL!

I am going to make this post as a warning post from now on before another idiot emails me. Ay.. what a day.

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I was thinking of making another website to start a custom WordPress template business. However, I was too lazy to do that right now and I need people’s opinions first. I know some of you wanted to know how I made this template, or want your own custom template. Sure. Ok. Since I am super duper bored, and I need to work for at least 7 hours a day on something, I have decided to start making custom WordPress templates.

However, before I begin or buy a domain or do anything, I want to see what people will roughly pay for one, because I don’t know how much to sell it for, and what options to sell with the template.

I decided that if you pay $500, I will make you one custom WordPress template, one year free domain name that you choose and must be available, I will host it forever for free, I will upgrade it for you, and do any technical tweaks you need. Great deal eh?

So, what do you think, and if anyone’s 100% interested then email me to rebelliousarabgirl@gmail.com.

Why am I doing this? I told you I am bored, and I am also frustrated from many bloggers that use the same free templates. I can’t even tell the difference anymore in people’s blogs. This is also a good opportunity for people that use blogger.com to move to WordPress, get free hosting, and an awesome looking site. I also think this is a great opportunity for people who never had a blog before to start with a great looking site! I just want the blogging world to be eccentric and stand out.

I can make templates look cute, funky, business like, etc.

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No no, not a Visa to another country, but the blasphemous credit card! I am trying not to use my savings at all, and only use my credit card. OSAP is killing me, so I try to only use credit card for emergencies. It sucks not having an income and paying bills. I see my savings slowly decreasing and it is giving me a bad migraine. Thank God I am going to get a cheque from the government soon for the taxes they owe me. That’s like a month’s salary worth.

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Anyways, if you see some weird posts advertising something, then yes, I am advertising something. Like duh! I have finally decided that it is about time to make money from writing reviews. It is a lot more profitable than selling ads on my site. Can you imagine that I get over 1200 unique visitors a day, and over 3000 page views, but I have been getting barely a dollar for it a day?

Ad network companies are going broke! I think advertisers are not paying them much of anything, and they end up paying publishers pennies a day. It is sad, but the horrible economy is effecting internet marketing. So, what can I do? I write!

Reviewing other websites is not so bad. Writing a 200 word post for some hefty change that can buy me some electronic device that I have been craving for lately, (yes, I am a nerd) is a lot easier and profitable. I don’t know how many of you have done it before, but I had to really think about it, because I didn’t want my site to be an advertising site. I worked too hard for it to gain an audience to turn it into such a thing. Therefore, I came up with a solution. I write reviews and relate them to myself. I think it makes a lot more sense than making some gibberish up. That’s my tip for the day, and I think it will help out a lot of bloggers out there. Especially the unemployed type ones like my self.

Lately, many people have been emailing me to tell me that they were searching for something totally irrelevant to my site, but ended up on my site because it was on the first page on Google, and they congratulated me for being on the top. When I read those emails, I rose up from my chair, did a funky Arabic belly dance, held my hands up high, and shouted, “Greatness! That’s what I want.” I guess when you are writing for over 3 years about anything and everything, then you slowly reach the top of things. :up:

Therefore, you can easily pinpoint out the advertisement posts that I have written. Whispering: They are categorized as advertisement. Shssh.. Also, if anyone wants me to review their site, and give an honest well written opinion, then tell me. I don’t know if you want to be ripped apart, but any publicity is good publicity! I promise I won’t be evil or a horrible conceited arrogant person like some of you have voted the other day.

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