Neighbourhood fruit banditry and a supermoon

We picked the last of the apples on the bear tree this evening, before the crows could peck holes in the rest of them. (Jesse helped by crouching under the porch watching and yowling at me to come pet him. I obliged. He’s currently sprawled on my lap purring while I pet him with one hand and type  with my other hand).

Every time my brother opened the upstairs window, a huge flock of crows took flight from the tree; the sound of deer chomping on apples in the middle of the night was creeping out his girlfriend; and the fruit was attracting bears. My brother saw a bear wander around the yard and then climb the poor tree again. They're eventually going to totally break it.

The crows sit in the tree and peck at the apples.  They got pretty much all of them, but they're still edible.

My brother had to pick most of the apples, me and his girlfriend are both too short.

I thought the guys had borrowed a ladder and picked the other trees last month, but it turns out the next door neighbour called my brother and asked if he could come over with his kids and pick some fruit. My brother went out the next day, and all four full sized apple and pear trees and the old crabapple tree were completely stripped, the neighbour must have gotten a 30 foot fruit picking ladder from somewhere and spent a lot of time at it. He even picked up every single windfall from the ground and took them, too. Rude.

What is he even going to do with all that fruit? Maybe he’s extremely fond of applesauce, I have no idea. We're not even mad, that's the sort of thing the guy does. Too bad about all that fruit though, we were looking forward to that.

The tree after we picked it.  We left some apples on the ground for the deer.  That furry black blob on the right hand edge under the porch is Jesse.

So the only fruit we got this year was the few crow-pecked apples from the bear tree that the wildlife didn’t completely eat. My brother and his girlfriend are going to cut them up and make a crumble. She’s trying to convince him that it’ll be fine without butter or much sugar, but he’s not buying it.

The apples on September 16th, untouched by crows.  We should have picked them then.  Oh well.

Tonight was the harvest moon and also a combination supermoon (when the moon is full and at its closest point to the earth, so it appears much larger than usual), and lunar eclipse, which colours the moon red.  (Watch the NASA video explaining it).  That coincidence hasn't happened since 1982, and won't happen again until 2033.  But we are as far west as it gets, so the moon didn't make it over the horizon before the eclipse ended, much less over the trees.  That's okay though, I have seen supermoons and lunar eclipses before, and there are lots of great photos of the event on the internet.

A flock of birds fly by as the supermoon rises in Mir, Belarus, 95 kilometers west of capital Minsk (Telegraph)

I imagine the moon would have looked like this in Canada. It was a clear, sunny day today and there were a lot of birds flying around.

The supermoon rises near the minaret of a mosque in Wadi El-Rayan Lake in Fayoum Governorate, southwest of Cairo (Sources: O Globo; Telegraph).

Muslims see eclipses as a reminder of the Day of Judgement, when the sun, moon, and stars will all lose their light.

  فَإِذَا بَرِقَ الْبَصَرُ ﴿٧﴾ وَخَسَفَ الْقَمَرُ ﴿٨﴾ وَجُمِعَ الشَّمْسُ وَالْقَمَرُ ﴿٩﴾ يَقُولُ الْإِنسَانُ يَوْمَئِذٍ أَيْنَ الْمَفَرُّ

So when vision is dazzled, and the moon darkens, and the sun and moon are joined together: Man will say on that Day, "Where is the [place of] escape?" (Al-Qiyamah 75:7-10)

 The pre-Islamic Arabs believed that celestial bodies had power over events and people's fates, and sometimes worshipped them or associated them with their gods, but this is not part of Islamic belief.
  

  وَمِنْ آياتِهِ اللَّيْلُ وَالنَّهارُ وَالشَّمْسُ وَالْقَمَرُ لا تَسْجُدُوا لِلشَّمْسِ وَلا لِلْقَمَرِ وَاسْجُدُوا لِلَّهِ الَّذِي خَلَقَهُنَّ إِنْ كُنْتُمْ إِيَّاهُ تَعْبُدُونَ

Among His signs are the night and the day and the sun and moon. Do not prostrate yourselves before the sun or the moon; rather prostrate yourselves before Allah, Who created them both, if you truly are His worshippers. (Fussilat 41:37)

On the day the Prophet Muhammad's infant son Ibrahim died in the year 10 AH/632 AD, there was a solar eclipse and people thought the sun was eclipsed in sadness over the death Ibrahim's death, but the Prophet said:

«إنَّ الشمسَ والقمرَ من آيات اللهِ، وإنهما لا يَنخسفان لموتِ أحدٍ ولا لحياتِه، فإذا رأيتُموهما فكبِّروا، وادعو اللهَ وصلُّوا وتصدَّقوا»
Sahih Muslim, narrated by A'ishah bint Abu Bakr, no. 901 (Wikipedia)

“The sun and the moon do not eclipse because of the death or life (i.e. birth) of someone. When you see the eclipse praise Allah, make dua and pray and give charity."

There was an eclipse when I was in college in Jordan, and the students in the dorm prayed salaat al-kusoof (the eclipse prayer) in congregation, although it can be prayed individually.

Salaat al-kusoof is two raka'at with long recitations of the Quran in each, prayed after a solar or lunar eclipse starts and lasting no longer than the eclipse does (although it doesn't have to be that long).  If it's a total eclipse, surat al-baqarah is often read in the first raka'ah.  There are a number of hadith describing how to pray it, including two well-known ones narrated by Aishah.  It's mostly considered a confirmed sunnah (instructions on how to pray it here).  The Imam ash-Shafi'i and two of the other four sunni imams (not Hanafi) recommend that a khutbah (sermon) be given after salaat al-kusoof, but at school or at home there was no one to give one.

(Sorry about the allcaps on that one Quran verse in English, I didn't mean to shout.  Some of the formatting is weird here, but I couldn't fix it.  Getting html to work when you're pasting in both English and Arabic quotes is such a pain, and my favourite Quran site no longer uses images of the verses in Arabic so I can't just put those in and avoid the formatting problems).

Reading: October 2014

You Don’t Have To Be Pretty – On YA Fiction And Beauty As A Priority | The Belle Jar

The problem is that when we promote this idea that all women are beautiful, what we are really doing is emphasizing that it is important for women to be physically attractive. We are telling girls that, as females, the way that they look is a huge part of who they are – that we expect prettiness from them, and that we expect them to want it. Even if we don’t mean to, we are still attaching a high value to physical appearance. And that’s messed up. [...]

We never say that all men deserve to feel beautiful. We never say that each man is beautiful in his own way. We don’t have huge campaigns aimed at young boys trying to convince them that they’re attractive, probably because we very rarely correlate a man’s worth with his appearance. The problem is that a woman’s value in this world is still very much attached to her appearance, and telling her that she should or deserves to feel beautiful does more to promote that than negate it. Telling women that they “deserve” to feel pretty plays right in to the idea that prettiness should be important to them.

Teju Cole on "First World Problems", quoted here:

"I don’t like this expression "First World problems." It is false and it is condescending. Yes, Nigerians struggle with floods or infant mortality. But these same Nigerians also deal with mundane and seemingly luxurious hassles. Connectivity issues on your BlackBerry, cost of car repair, how to sync your iPad, what brand of noodles to buy: Third World problems. All the silly stuff of life doesn’t disappear just because you’re black and live in a poorer country. People in the richer nations need a more robust sense of the lives being lived in the darker nations. Here’s a First World problem: the inability to see that others are as fully complex and as keen on technology and pleasure as you are.

"One event that illustrated the gap between the Africa of conjecture and the real Africa was the BlackBerry outage of a few weeks ago. Who would have thought Research In Motion’s technical issues would cause so much annoyance and inconvenience in a place like Lagos? But of course it did, because people don’t wake up with “poor African” pasted on their foreheads. They live as citizens of the modern world. None of this is to deny the existence of social stratification and elite structures here. There are lifestyles of the rich and famous, sure. But the interesting thing about modern technology is how socially mobile it is—quite literally. Everyone in Lagos has a phone.”

Edward Said, "Impossible Histories: Why the Many Islams Cannot be Simplified," Harper's, July 2002 (I love Edward Said's snark: "Samuel Huntington's vastly overrated article on the clash of civilizations", "its belligerent (and dishearteningly ignorant) thesis", "an energetically self-repeating and self-winding British academic".  I wish I could be that salty in my day job writing and get away with it.)  Said rakes Bernard Lewis' ridiculous Clash of Civilizations over the coals:

 For the book is in fact an intellectual and moral disaster, the terribly faded rasp of a pretentious academic voice, completely removed from any direct experience of Islam, rehashing and recycling tired Orientalist half (or less than half) truths. Remember that Lewis claims to be discussing all of "Islam," not just the mad militants of Afghanistan or Egypt or Iran. All of Islam. He tries to argue that it all went "wrong," as if the whole thing—people, languages, cultures—could really be pronounced upon categorically by a godlike creature who seems never to have experienced a single living human Muslim (except for a small handful of Turkish authors), as if history were a simple matter of right as defined by power, or wrong, by not having it. One can almost hear him saying, over a gin and tonic, "You know, old chap, those wogs never really got it right, did they?"

But it's really worse than that. With few exceptions, all of Lewis's footnotes and concrete sources (that is, on the rare occasion when he actually refers to something concrete that one could look up and read for oneself) are Turkish. All of them, except for a smattering of Arabic and European sources. How this allows him to imply that his descriptions have relevance, for instance, to all twenty-plus Arab countries, or to Indonesia or Pakistan or Morocco, or to the 30 million Chinese Muslims, all of them integral parts of Islam, is never discussed; and indeed, Lewis never mentions these groups as he bangs on about Islam's tendency to do this, that, or the other, backed by a tiny group of Turkish sources.

Passport renewal

Whaaaat a clusterfuck.

The Canadian Embassy in Riyadh (Oman no longer has a Canadian consulate) told me I need to send my passport and renewal forms and bank order etc by Amex, which is in al-Qurum.  So I walked and took a taxi and took another very expensive taxi and then spent two hours walking around in the sun trying to find the damn office.  It was 48C that day.  My map was wrong.  Nobody knew where the Ernst and Young Building was and when I finally found it it was on the wrong side of the highway and I couldn't get a taxi.

I called Amex twice to ask for directions, which would have worked if I was driving a car, but not on foot.  There was no way I could take exits or cross the highway and I called twice begging the office not to close, I was almost there.  I didn’t have a lot of dignity left by that point.

I got there, fucking finally, and someone was waiting outside the Amex office for me and let me in the back.  He may actually have been an angel.  I continued having a meltdown in the office.  At least it was air conditioned, and they gave me a glass of water.  Having to do major stuff while autistic really sucks sometimes; I only have so much go and when I run out of go, that's it.  He asked me how much I needed to send and I told him I needed to send my passport renewal forms, the embassy told me to do it here, and he told me I needed the *Aramex* office.  Which is in Khuweir, and I don’t know where Khuweir is much less how to find the office.

Two very kind Amex employees, a Syrian and a Pakistani, took me to Khuweir, where I paid fifty-five rials to send my application.  That’s like 15% of my monthly salary.  I hope they don’t charge me on the return trip too.  And I really pray that nothing else goes wrong because I need a passport to renew my work visa and I have to start doing that in July or August at the latest.

The guys were trying to immigrate to Canada, since work in Oman has gotten worse and worse and they can't change jobs here (neither can I), and had a lot of questions about immigration which I couldn’t begin to answer because I was born a citizen.  They were puzzled about how I ended up in Oman, and I didn't want to discourage them, but I told them I came here to work, and people aren't always accepting of Muslims in Canada (bit of an understatement, where I come from.  I did not mention fascists or Nazis).  But their situation is not the same as mine - they're able young men with business degrees and good English and the whole world before them.  If they're lucky and they work hard - which they clearly do - they could make it.  You'll never make it if you stop hoping.

They seemed cool.  I would like to be their friend, but I am a lady, so that can't happen.  Which always seems stupid and wasteful to me, but it's how it is.

I saw what must be the largest pedestrian bridge in Creation, you could drive two cars along it if you could get them up the stairs and avoid the square holes down the middle where trees were supposed to go but aren't.  I'd be surprised if nobody's tried it. This picture doesn't show how it arches or do it justice, but:

The Qurum shopping centre had some cool mosaics mixed in with a lot of ones that didn't work so well:

Hadith 19 from the Imam an-Nawawi's 40 hadith is always a comfort to me.  It's one of my favourite books and one of the few that I own in paper:

(Translation:)  In a version other than that of al-Tirmidhi it reads:

"..Be mindful of Allah, you will find Him before you. Get to know Allah in prosperity and He will know you in adversity. Know that what has passed you by was not going to befall you; and that what has befallen you was not going to pass you by. And know that victory comes with patience, relief with affliction, and ease with hardship."

Rain and change in Oman

When it rains here, it rains in torrents.  It hammers my the corrugated aluminum roof and washes all the blown dirt that accumulated on it down into my courtyard.  Rain makes things less clean, not more.  It comes in the windows; everyone has at least one room in their house that leaks.  It batters palm trees, shreds the petunias the city planted, soaks the banana fields and the date groves.  Waves crash down the wadis, full of dead trees and mud from the mountains, and wayward cars, and assorted detritus.  Somebody usually decides to swim in the wadi or try to cross it in their car while it's raining, and they often die.

British traveller Wilfred Thesiger wrote of a storm on his journey from Sulaiyil to Abu Dhabi in the late forties:

One night there was a terrific storm, which started soon after dark and revolved around us until dawn. On that bare plain there was no sort of shelter. We could only lie cowering on the ground while the lightning slashed through the darkness of driven clouds, and the thunder crashed about our ears. I had placed my rug and sheepskin over my sleeping-bag. On other nights these had kept me fairly dry, but tonight the weight of water was too great to be turned aside. It flowed over me like an icy torrent. Sometimes the rain stopped and I peered out to see, silhouetted against the night by the almost continuous flashes of lightning, the dark shapes where the others lay beneath their coverings, like grave-mounds on a wet seashore; and the group of sodden animals, squatting tail to storm. [...]

Next day was fine and sunny and our spirit rose as the sun dried our clothes and warmed our bodies. My companions sang as we rode across sands which looked as if they had been uncovered by an outgoing tide. They were Bedu and it had rained, not scattered showers, but downpours which might well have covered all the desert. ‘God’s bounty’ they called it, and rejoiced at the prospect of rich grazing that would last for years. As I rode across these interminable naked sands it seemed incredible that in three months’ time they would be covered with flowering shrubs. Eskimos enduring the cold and the darkness of the arctic winter can count the days till the sun appears, but here in southern Arabia the Bedu have no certainty of spring. Often there is no rain, and even if there is, it may fall at any time of the year. Generally the bitter winters turn to blazing summers over a parched and lifeless land. Bin Kabina told me now that he only remembered three springs in his life. Occasional spring times such as these were all the Bedu ever knew of the gentleness of life. A few years’ relief from the anxiety of want was the most they ever hoped for. It seemed to me pathetically little and yet I knew that magnificently it was enough.

As we rode along, the others spoke of years when it had rained, and bin Kabina told me that never in his life had he known such rain as this. Then inevitably they spoke of the great flood in Dhaufar of sixty years ago. I had myself seen palm-trunks which had been jammed by this flood eighteen feet up among the rocks in the cliffs of the Wadi Aidam, where the valley was more man a thousand yards wide. We speculated as to how many days it must have rained to produce this flood, which had occurred in summer when it was warm. I wondered how long a man could survive such rain in winter before he died of exposure. It rained again in the evening and continued to do so intermittently for the next three days.  - Arabian Sands, Penguin edition, p. 256.

People are happy when it rains.

People are somewhat less happy when they get wet and their stuff gets wet and the streets are impassible and their car is possibly underwater, but still grateful for the rain, and it's an excuse to take the day off work.

It doesn't need to rain like this for long before stuff starts floating by my office window and the floors are wet and the handful of other people who showed up for work ask me why the heck I came in (I had a meeting.  Our projects wait for no one.  There was thunder and lightning and our windshield wipers don't work).

I posted the picture above on Instagram, worried about how I'd get home, and a friend said, بركة, يقال أن الدعاء تحت المطر مستجاب ("Blessings, they say that a dua made under the rain will be answered").  And also, "You can tell I grew up in the desert ."

This isn't the high desert Wilfred Thesiger - loved isn't a strong enough word.  عشق, شغف, شهوة, هيام, maybe.  He craved it and returned again and again to be consumed by it and in a sense he tried to possess it and keep it from changing - which I cannot abide, because I love this country too and because I have been the object of a more powerful person's love.  Object is the key word there.  That sort of 'love' doesn't allow the object to be fully human and changeable with a will and desires of their own, just an idealised image and an experience centered around the subject.  Orientalism and that sort of possessive, controlling love alike are all about the viewer, not the viewed, much as the viewer likes to pretend otherwise. Cf. chivalry.

Thesiger records in Arabian Sands that the Omani bedouin and other Arabs who helped him were often without food or clothing or medical care or education or hope of a better life.  It annoyed Thesiger that the Arabs were constantly sponging food off him, but they did it because they were hungry.  They were improving their lot through him.  That is why it's (still) traditional to feed visitors so much; they might starve otherwise (they may not starve these days, but I have so many times been glad to be fed a hot meal when I'd been living for so long on not enough dry bread and tea).  Ibn Kabina, Thesiger's orphaned teenage companion, gave another man his loincloth because he had nothing, but bin Kabina at least had Thesiger and so a way to support his family.

It is very easy to fall in love with a place and want it to stay just the way it was when you first saw it, if you are a foreigner with foreign financing for food and camels and you don't have to suffer under local conditions permanently, or as much as the locals do.  You can leave, even if you don't want to and would lose something beloved in leaving.  The world is larger, for you.  Yes, heritage has been lost and Oman has paved roads and hospitals now and Dubai has morphed into a science-fiction dystopia city with an  uncertain future - but quality of life has been gained. 

He writes in the prologue to Arabian Sands:

A cloud gathers, rain falls, men live: the cloud disperses without rain, and men and animals die.  In the deserts of southern Arabia, there is no rhythm of the seasons, no rise and fall of sap, but empty wastes where only the changing temperature marks the passage of the year.  Is is a bitter, desiccated land which knows nothing of gentleness or ease.  Yet men have lived there since the earliest times.  Passing generations have left fire-blackened stones at camping sites, a few faint tracks polished on the gravel plains.  Elsewhere the winds wipe out their footprints.  Men live there because it is the world into which they were born; the life they lead is the life their forefathers led before them; they accept hardships and privations; they know no other way.

The Omanis I know are mostly from villages, but living in the city; the old village with its date palms and banana and papaya trees and maize and irrigation channels still exist, but they don't depend on agriculture to feed themselves anymore.  Rain does not mean life or starvation for as many people as it used to, or not as directly and immediately as it used to now that they live in the city, but it's still very important.  As everywhere.

The courtyard of the hospital has water features, designed I believe to look like irrigation channels:

They even have beds of (decorative) plants next to them, like in the village:

These canna lilies are standing in three inches of water.  When it's not cold and muddy and drowned, it looks very clean and inviting, especially when it's above forty celcius and people have travelled a long way and waited a long time.  A lot of patients come here from the provinces, where the health care isn't as good.  I've seen bedouin families camping in the outer parking lots.

I have never seen anyone bathing in the fountains or drinking from them, but there are signs up to discourage people.  The water may look pretty and blue and clean, but it's chlorinated and not clean at all, especially now, after the rain, when it's full of mud.

They're addressing both men and women for once so I guess I'll have to find somewhere else to make wudhu, darn.

A popular dua for rain:

(source)

اللهم اسقينا غيثاً مغيثاً مريئاً نافعاً غير ضار

Allah quench us with helpful, healthy rain, beneficial and not harmful (sometimes added: now and not later).

When it rains, simply:

اللَّهُمَّ صَيِّبَاً نَافِعَاً

Allah may they be beneficial rain clouds.

And if it rains too much:

اللَّهُمَّ حَوَالَيْنَا وَلَا عَلَيْنَا اللَّهُمَّ عَلَى الْأَكَامِ وَالْأَجَامِ وَالظِّرَابِ وَالْأَدْوِيَةِ وَمَنَابِةِ الشَّجَرِ

Allah let it rain around us and not upon us.  Allah let it rain upon the hills and mountains and forests.

There are many others.

وَيَمْكُرُونَ وَيَمْكُرُ اللَّهُ وَاللَّهُ خَيْرُ الْمَاكِرِينَ‏

{‏وَإِذْ يَمْكُرُ بِكَ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُواْ لِيُثْبِتُوكَ أَوْ يَقْتُلُوكَ أَوْ يُخْرِجُوكَ وَيَمْكُرُونَ وَيَمْكُرُ اللَّهُ وَاللَّهُ خَيْرُ الْمَاكِرِينَ‏} ‏ ‏[‏سورة الأنفال‏:‏ آية 30‏]

"Remember how the unbelievers plotted against you, to keep you in bonds, or to slay you, or to get you out (of your home).  They plot and they plan, but Allah too plans, and Allah is the best of the planners."  - The Holy Qur'an, translated by Abdullah Yusuf Ali, Surat al-Anfaal (The Spoils of War), Ayah 30, pg. 109.

A group of important men of the Qureish gathered in Makkah to decide what to do about the Messenger of Allah, and Iblis joined them, pretending to be a Sheikh from the Najd. 

Abu al-Bukhtari proposed that they shackle and imprison the Messenger until he died, but the Najdi sheikh pointed out that the Messenger's companions would rescue him from prison, and possibly kill some of the Qureish.

Hishaam bin 'Amr bin Bani 'Aamir bin Lu'ye proposed that they load the Messenger on a camel which would carry him out of Makkah.  The Najdi sheikh objected that Muhammad (saws) would capture the hearts of any people he met outside Makkah, and convince them to take Makkah from the Qureish.

Abu Jahil proposed that they choose a young man from every family of the Qureish, give them each a sword, and send them to kill Muhammad (saws), whose blood would then be spread among every member of the tribe.  The group of Bani Hashim living in Makkah would not be able to fight the whole tribe of Qureish, so they would accept blood money in compensation for Muhammad's (saws) death, which would not cost any individual member of the Qureish very much. 

Iblis, in the guise of the Najdi sheikh, said that this was a very good idea, and the Qureish agreed.

The angel Jibreel appeared to the Prophet (saws), informed him of the Qureish's plans, and told him not to sleep in his bed as he usually did, and Allah permitted the Prophet (saws) to leave Makkah and go to Medinah, as many of the Muslims already had.

The Prophet ordered Ali bin Abi Tolib to sleep in his bed under his cloak, while the Quraish surrounded the Prophet's house and lay in wait for him.   The Messenger exited the house and sprinkled dust on the heads of the Qureish, reciting the ayah "And we have put a barrier in front of them and a barrier behind them, and we have covered them up, and they cannot see." (Qur'an 9:35)  And the Qureish did not notice the Messenger of Allah. 

The Messenger went to Abu Bakr's house, and the two of them left Makkah and arrived at the cave of Thawr (about five miles from Makkah) before dawn.

As for the Qureish, they mistook Ali for the Messenger and remained in ambush around the house where he lay in bed, waiting for him to exit. When it grew light out, the Qureish rose up and seized Ali.  They asked him about the Messenger, he replied: I have no knowledge of him.  The Qureish struck him and dragged him to the Ka'abah, where they imprisoned him for an hour, whereupon they went to the house of Abi Bakr and asked his little daughter Asma about the Messenger.  She said: I don't know, and Abu Jahil slapped her so hard that her earring fell off.  Then the Qureish sent out in every direction a request for the Messenger, offering one hundred female camels to anyone who brought the Messenger to them, be he alive or dead. 

The Qureish arrived at the entrance to the cave where the Messenger and Abu Bakr were hiding.  Abu Bakr feared that the Qureish would capture the Messenger of Allah, and said: If one of them looked at his feet, he would see us.

And the Messenger replied: O Abu Bakr, what you suppose are two, Allah is the third of them. (Soheeh al-Bukhari, 190, 4/189) 

‏(‏يا أبا بكر ما ظنك باثنين الله ثالثهما‏)‏ ‏ -‏رواه الإمام البخاري في ‏"‏صحيحه‏"‏ ‏(‏4/189، 190‏)

The Qureish saw a spiderweb over the entrance of the cave, and said: If he had entered, there wouldn't be a spiderweb here.  They left the cave, and the Messenger and Abu Bakr stayed there three nights, then completed their migration to Medinah in safety, although the Qureish were hunting them.

Had the Qureish looked down at their feet, they would not have seen their quarry, even as they didn't see him when he left his house in Makkah and sprinkled dust upon their heads, because the Messenger sought protection in Allah, the best of planners, who made him victorious over the Qureish and over Iblis.

 ‏{‏إِلاَّ تَنصُرُوهُ فَقَدْ نَصَرَهُ اللَّهُ إِذْ أَخْرَجَهُ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُواْ ثَانِيَ اثْنَيْنِ إِذْ هُمَا فِي الْغَارِ إِذْ يَقُولُ لِصَاحِبِهِ لاَ تَحْزَنْ إِنَّ اللَّهَ مَعَنَا فَأَنزَلَ اللَّهُ سَكِينَتَهُ عَلَيْهِ وَأَيَّدَهُ بِجُنُودٍ لَّمْ تَرَوْهَا وَجَعَلَ كَلِمَةَ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُواْ السُّفْلَى وَكَلِمَةُ اللَّهِ هِيَ الْعُلْيَا وَاللَّهُ عَزِيزٌ حَكِيمٌ‏}‏ ‏[‏سورة التوبة‏:‏ آية 40‏]

"If you don't help (your Leader) (it is no matter), for Allah helped him when the Unbelievers drove him out: he had only one companion, and they were two in the cave.  He (the Messenger) said to his companion, "Have no fear, for Allah is with us," then Allah sent down his peace upon him and strengthened him with forces which you did not see, and humbled to the depths the word of the Unbelievers.  But the Word of Allah is exalted to the heights, for Allah is Exalted in might, Wise." - Surah at-Tawbah, Ayah 40.

Sources:

تفسير ابن كثير لإسماعيل بن عمر بن كثير القرشي الدمشقي, جزء الرابع, تفسير سورة الأنفال, قوله تعالى " وإذ يمكر بك الذين كفروا ليثبتوك أو يقتلوك أو يخرجوك," دار طيبة 1422 -
 - Tafseer Ibn Katheer, Volume 4, Explanation of Surat al-Anfaal, Explanation of His saying "And they plot and they plan, and Allah plans, and Allah is the best of planners."
(http://www.islamweb.net/newlibrary/display_book.php?flag=1&bk_no=49&surano=8&ayano=30) Accessed July 21, 2012.

  - تفسير البغوي, للحسين بن مسعود البغوي, جزء الثالث, دار الطيبة.
 -Tafseer al-Baghwee, Volume Three, Explanation of Quran 9:30  (http://www.islamweb.net/newlibrary/display_book.php?flag=1&bk_no=51&surano=8&ayano=30)

 - ندوات تلفزيونية - قناة اقرأ - سورة الأنفال 008 - الدرس (11-30): تفسير الآيات 30 - 35 ، مكر الله ردّ على كيد ومكر الكفار ـ ما دمنا نتبع سنة نبينا فلن يعذبنا ربنا
لفضيلة الدكتور محمد راتب النابلسي بتاريخ: 2009-07-10
 - Transcript of a lecture given by Dr. Muhammad Ratib an-Nablisi on the television channel 'Iqra,' 10/07/2009.
(http://www.nabulsi.com/blue/ar/art.php?art=8455&id=189&sid=799&ssid=808&sssid=1410)

 - Video lecture:  Sheikh ash-Shu'arawi explains Quran 9:30.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?hl=en&v=kbuV0UzvuE8&gl=US)

السيرة النبوية, لفضيلة الشيخ محمد متولي الشعراوي, دار النموذجية, بيروت, 1422
 - The Biography of the Prophet, Sheikh Muhammad Mutawalli ash-Shu'arawi, Dar al-Namuthijiyyah, Beirut, 2002.