Miracle of Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin (TUS) - 2 - Personal Experience

My experiences might not apear like miracles, but the way these events have occured in my life they are certainly miracles for me. This is what happened:

My family and I had come to know that my wife was pregnant; as with any parent there was a great deal of excitement, tension and preparation going on...

But sadly, our happiness was short lived. We had gone to the doctor for a check up and we came to know that the baby had moved down and was close to being aborted. My wife was advised to be admitted to hospital and we had the following options:
 1. My wife had to undergo an operation to prevent the child from moving further down, or
 2. Abort the child.

The doctor had said that even after the operation my wife would have to be on complete bed rest until the delivery. And all this also did not guarantee that the child will be born safe and chances of abortion were still very high. The greatest risk was that the child might have to be aborted during the operation if something should go wrong.

We did araz of the same in Huzurala (TUS), Moula bestowed benediction and gave raza to undergo operation and not abort the child.

The operation was performed the next day. It went on for around 45 minutes (which appeared to be longer than forever). I was outside the operation theatre for some time but later went for ziyarat of Syedna Taher Saifuddin. No sooner had I stepped out of the roza complex that I got a call from my father-in-law that the operation was successful. I was happy but this was just the first step.

It is difficult for a person to take complete bed rest even when they are suffering from some physical disability, imagine a bed rest for 7 months by choice!

But, it was surely the dua mubarak of Aqa Moula (TUS) that my wife was positive and patient throughout her bed rest. She could only get up from bed when she had to go to the doctor for her check-up.

The doctor had called us 5 weeks after the operation for the first check-up. As scheduled we took an appointment and met with our doctor after 5 weeks. She examined my wife and said that "It is truly a miracle that your baby has survived. I did not expect this. I thought that you will come after 2-3 weeks to abort the baby as there were very minimal chances of survival."

After hearing this we, as well as the doctor, expected that the baby might be born a little premature in the 7th month. We repeatedly did araz in Huzurala (TUS). It was only due to the dua of Aqa Moula (TUS)  that I was gifted with a son. He was born in the 9th month, though he was underweight at birth, but healthy.

I along with my family araz sajadat of shukr in the hazrat of Aqa Moula Mohammed Burhanuddin (TUS) for this very dearest of blessings. And guess what my son's name is - Burhanuddin!

And finally, I thank my wife for having the patience and courage to go through those tough times. She just gave a demonstration of how strong women can be!

Also, I would like to thank Shaikh Shabbir Najmi for doing all our araz.

May Allah ta'ala  grant a long, healthy and prosperous life to Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin till the end of time. Ameen!

Moving documents from one document library to another maintaining versions - SharePoint 2010

Here is a simple task - Move documents from one library to another in SharePoint 2010 Document Library. Sounds simple! You can use "send to another location", "explorer view" etc. etc. But let me slightly complicate things here -

Move documents from one library to another in SharePoint 2010 maintaining all versions of the document in the new library.

Now, there is an understood pre-condition associated with this task that both libraries should have versioning enabled to the same level (minor or major).

What I found was that, when we use "send to another location" or any other OOB method to transfer the document from one location to another, versions are not maintained. They are simply forgotten. Reason for this is simple - at the new location, even though versioning is enabled, the transferred (moved) document is the very first version. In simple words, versioning is initiated at the new location only after the document is created there.

But as usual this was something I did not expect, because all my client asked is to move documents from location A to B and I very confidently agreed to do it in a few minutes time. And as a P.S. the client added that documents have versions and versions will be required at the new location. I thought - "That should not be a problem??"

Turned out I was wrong. I panicked and the first thing came to my mind was "custom code" and the pain it would cause to write all those lines, build, debug, test; build, debug, test; build, debug, test... you get the point.

But then, a little bit of researching gave me this quick solution -

All you need to do is open both locations (document libraries) in explorer view and cut and paste the files to the new location. Note that -

1. Copy and paste will not carry your versions,
2. Both location should have versioning enabled and
3. Both libraries should have the same template i.e. document library --> document library or form library --> form libary and so on.

Really neat trick and saved a lot of my time. Huh! Can spend some time playing angry birds now!

Miracle of Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin (TUS) - 1 - Personal Experience

I am a member of the Dawoodi Bohra community.

The following incident happened in July-August 2010 (just before Ramazan 1431) and I am writing it today to araz shukr (offer thanks) in the hazrat (holy presence) of Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin (TUS):

I am a software engineer, residing in Mumbai, and during the period of January - August of 2010 I was working for a prestigious multi-national IT company (name withheld for obvious reasons). They had delegated me to their manufacturing unit  in Mumbai to provide support for the manufacturing unit's software division.

I was not very comfortable in this position and was trying to convince my managers for quite some time to bring  me back to our main IT office. Reasons for this were:

1. The culture of the manufacturing department was not very helpful for gaining IT expertise and the software division was a very neglected division.
2. The work was endless and laborious and I did not find any understanding from my managers at the manufacturing unit.
3. And, the most important reason was that they did not let me offer namaz (in their premise or outside) mainly during zohar-asr (afternoon) time.

I had experience prior to joining this multi-national company but nowhere had I faced opposition for offering namaz. This was the first such instance and I was pretty shocked to see their blunt attitude. It should also be noted that while I was at my main IT office there was no such opposition and there were a handful of people praying regularly at a secluded place.

Initially when I was warned not to pray namaz during office hours I ignored it; it used to take me hardly 5-7 minutes to offer prayers and I thought I will sneak out during lunch hours and no one will come to know. I had tried my best not to come in anyone's way and quietly follow my religion. But later they pressurized me by complaining to my IT office managers, who equally supported them.

I argued with my managers that in our head office people do offer namaz and I am just taking 5 minutes of lunch time  to perform my religious duties but the blankly opposed. Their argument was that office time is for office only and no personal work can be done at that time. But, my office time was also never ending and honestly there was much more office time wasted by people in chatting, tea and snacks and other such activities.

And all this happened just before the month of Ramazan. I was distressed, I just remembered the words of Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin and how He stressed on the importance of namaz and I decided to quit my job.

On July 21, 2010 I resigned from my job. I was very worried as my family's financial position was not very great and I was about to get married in December that same year. But my entire family, including my now wife and in-laws supported my decision. I started giving interviews to any company that came my way, irrespective of its status and the position they were giving me. 

I had a 3 month notice period and I thought may be I will find something by then. But I did not know that my fortune was about to turn.

I got a chance to visit Burhanpur, Dargah-e-Hakimi and I was at the gates of Hakimuddin Moula's dargah when I got a call for an interview in Pune. I had not planned to leave Mumbai, and I had got a call from the same company earlier but I had ignored it since I wanted to stay in Mumbai. But right now I was going for everything, so I agreed to attend the interview in Pune.

I went from Burhanpur directly to Pune and attended the interview, I got selected. And astonishingly got twice the salary of my current company. So, I went from Burhanpur to my home with a job in hand. "Hakimuddin moula koi na khaali haath pacha nathi walta."

The first thing I sought after that was raza and dua mubarak of Burhanuddin Moula (TUS) to do a job in this company in Pune. I did not have many contacts and did not know how could I get my arzi done quickly as I had to reply back to the company for acceptance of the offer. But Burhanuddin Moula had everything planned for me.

My wife's friend had very good contact in Huzurala (TUS) and he got our arzi done. Within 1 day I got raza from Moula (TUS) to take the job if I find it suitable. So, in fifteen days time I had gone from no job to double salaried job. But this was not all, Moula (TUS) had one final surprise for me.

My company was based in Pune, but they had an open position at one of their clients in Mumbai, that too close to my home. Instead of serving 3 months notice I quit the job in 40 days. And, yes  my new managers did not have any problems with me offering namaz. In fact, they used to see to it that I did not have any problems during that period.

All this happened so fast that it was difficult to believe for me. More than just a co-incidence of events this seemed a planned sequence of events in my life, planned by my Moula (TUS).

One last aspect I want to point out here is that there was a masjid tameer fund scheme going on in our tanzeem committee and our aamil saheb had greatly enforced everyone to pay their masjid tameer dues (as any aamil saheb would do). But I was deeply touched by his words. He used to say that - "Khuda nu ghar aabaad karso to tamaro pan ghar aabaad thase".  I had paid our masjid tameer dues as soon as I had collected enough money and co-incidently that was in the same month of July 2010. Aamil saheb was right!

It is true that Moula (TUS) apna har amal par nazar rakhe chhe. Ane aap Moula ne saccha dil si yaad karo to Moula madad par aawe chhe.

I offer my humblest and most sincere thanks to Allah ta'ala, Hakimuddin Moula and Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin Aqa (TUS). May Allah grant our beloved moula a long, prosperous and healthy life till the day of judgement. Ameen!

The Dawoodi Bohra community

I am a member of the Dawoodi Bohra community and in this blog I would like to highlight certain points about the community for those interested in knowing more about us:

• Dawoodi Bohras are a section of the Shiite-Ismaili-Mustaali sect, who believe in the progeny of the Prophet Mohammed (SAW), the Fatimid Imams as the highest authority in all matters. In the absence of the Imams (seclusion) the Dai-al -Mutlaq are the representative of the Imam of the time and have the authority of the Imam. Our current Dai-al-Mutlaq, the 53rd in the office is Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin (TUS), whom we refer to as Aqa Moula.
• Dawoodi Bohras are a trading community with a large number of its members involved in business - ranging from general stores to high end industry machinery.
• We have a hierarchical governance system, where in local jamaats are established for governance of everyday affairs of the members. These jamaats are collectively under a jamiat (group of jamaats) which finally report to Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin (TUS)'s office.
• We are a close knit community and have frequent religious gatherings in our localities, which binds all members together. Most Dawoodi Bohras are easily identified - men wearing topi and beard and women wearing ridas (similar to a burqa but multi-coloured).
• Dawoodi Bohras are a peace-loving community having a global presence. A major part of the population resides in India, but  a large number of Dawoodi Bohras also reside in Africa, USA, UK and Pakistan.
• We have an annual 9-day gathering during Ashara Mubaraka, to commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Hussain (A.S.), grandson of Prophet Mohammed (SAW). Our religious head, Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin (TUS) delivers religious sermons during this period. This event is attended by a large number of community members every year, at the location specified by Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin (TUS). Though members can also attend sermons at their local jamaat, which are delivered by people appointed by Syedna Saheb (TUS).

This is a very brief overview of our community. Readers are free to offer comments and suggestions for anything I might have missed or misinterpreted. And finally, I end this blog with a prayer to the Almighty to offer a long, prosperous and healthy life to our Aqa Moula Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin till the day of judgement. Ameen!

"I cannot delete this column from my list??" - Well that must be a SharePoint 2010 Peristent column

If  you are viewing this blog post I assume you have not had a very good day at work today! Here's a look at what happened to me -

I recently ran into a problem where one of my users added a site column called "Target Folder" to their SharePoint list and later realized that that column was not required. So the user wanted to delete the "Target Folder" column. That is the most basic SharePoint task that is there to be done and so I wondered that why is this user coming to me for something so trivial.

Alas! Everything in SharePoint is not what it seems. I went to the list settings clicked on the column and I could not find the delete button in fact I could not find any means to edit that column. What happened here? I checked some other columns (Had my farm gone crazy?) No! Every other column in that list (or for that matter in the site) seemed absolutely fine.

After a few hours of digging here and there I turned to Master Google and I was enlightened!

There are a set of site columns which are Persistent site columns and once added to a list these columns cannot be modified or deleted (through the SharePoint UI). Also, if you add these site columns to a custom site content type you will not be able to delete the site content type as well. On attempting to delete the site content type you will get an error stating - "The content type is in use and cannot be deleted" even though you have not used the content type anywhere.

Here is a list of site columns which are persistent:

1. Active
2. Aliases
3. Article Date
4. Byline
5. Contact
6. Contact E-Mail Address
7. Contact Name
8. Contact Picture
9. Custom Router
10. Image Caption
11. Page Content
12. Page Icon
13. Page Image
14. Priority
15. Properties used in Conditions
16. Property for Automatic Folder Creation
17. Rollup Image
18. Route To External Location
19. Rule Name
20. Scheduling End Date
21. Scheduling Start Date
22. Submission Content Type
23. Summary Links
24. Summary Links 2
25. Target Audiences
26. Target Folder
27. Target Library
28. Target Path

Be very sure before adding these columns to your list or content type.

To delete these site columns from your list you will need to do so by using PowerShell commands as follows:

$web = Get-SPWeb (Your site URL)
$list = $web.Lists[(Your List Name)]
$field = $list.Fields[(Your Column Name)]
$field.AllowDeletion = “true”
$field.Sealed = “false”
$field.Delete()
$list.Update()
$web.Dispose()

And.. I hope the rest of your day (if left) is nice!

 - Huzefa Mala

I am Back... to Blogging

I am back to blogging and hope I last longer this time.

Many things have changed in life since my last stint with blogging.

So, lets talk professional here : I have started with SharePoint 2010 and it's great (Wait! But that's old news. SharePoint 2010 has been here for almost 2 years now!) Yeah, I know, but I came back to blogging after a long time.

Though I have a huge number of things to explore yet I am still very happy with the improvements provided and honestly I don't know how to work without the ribbon now.

So, planning to keep a record of all my struggles with SharePoint 2010 here.