How many children does the Prophet has?

Yesterday afternoon was our agency's celebrations of Prophet Muhammad SAW Maulid celebrations. The speaker started by asking how many children does the Prophet has? I have to admit I was a little bit lost. I know he has a couple of daughters and a couple of sons who died in their infancy but I don't know the exact number. The speaker threw the question open to the audience and there was no brave person answering that question. That was in fact one of the points raised by the speaker was just how little we know of someone who is a very significant figure such as the Prophet and yet we know more about today's pop stars and idols of today. Most people were able to answer whether Mawi AF was married or not. (By the way, the answer is 6 children - 4 daughters: Zainab, Ruqayah, Umi Kalthum and Fatimah and 2 sons: Qassim and Abdullah).

My wife came home the other day after chatting with the other mothers while waiting for their children to come out of the classes. One of the teacher mother did not know the name of one of the major department's director when she is supposed to be a teacher and should be fairly knowledgeable about this matter. I am not sure whether to blame that teacher mother or maybe that's the way things are. I have to admit at my level I am expected to know more things and I do know many things but there are also much more things I will never know even if my life depends on it. I don't have the time to learn them.

I guess there are several lessons here. Knowledge is dependent on interest. Interest also has to be cultivated and cultured. If we don't know, ask. From what I was told, the writer, CH Gallop, I blogged about yesterday apparently is a prolific questioner. He asked many things and by asking, get many answers. Sometimes we stopped our children from asking too much and just ask them to accept certain things. We should not do that. Much knowledge is gained by asking.

I am going to impart a few useless knowledge which I learned yesterday from a book which I just got off the post - the Thais, Filipinos and Indonesians are in world's top 5 for watching the most television per week; surprisingly the Thais and the Filipinos are in the world's top 5 for reading the most; the Thais also came 5th for listening to the radio most and came 2nd for spending the most time on the computer and the internet! I am just wondering how the Thais managed to do everything and still able to have an average population growth of 0.89%. USA on the other hand has the largest total prison population of more than 2 million and also the most even taking population into account with more than 700 for every 100,000 are in prison. By percentage of GDP, Brunei's 5.1% defence spending of GDP makes us 19th in the whole world! By the way, the book is the Economist's "Pocket World in Figures 2006 Edition".