A derogatory article about Durga (a Hindu goddess) was published in the British newspaper- The Guardian. It has angered some Hindus. A Hindu website, the Hindutva Jagaran, has said this may lead to some blood being spilled. Protection is being arranged for editors and the publishers of The Guardian.

That does not look like a good reporting. Does it? It makes it look as if the radical website that issued the threat is the representative voice and is newsworthy.

Anyway, the “news” above is fake.

It is to show what is wrong with the news coverage of the South Park episode. It begins with the report that allegedly a Muslim Website issued “death threat” to the South Park folks.

Fox news stops it’s coverage there, as expected. CNN continues and quotes my dear friend Aziz. That’s better, but as poll after poll has shown, Aziz’s view is far more representative than are the radical voices. Why report the radical voices first? It gives them undue attention, and a false sense of importance. In other words, it gives them motivation to seek more attention by actually committing a crime.

To get a representative voice, they could have approached CAIR, or ISNA or even their local Masjid. If the “revolution Muslim” reference is the only one covered, then that seems to be an important one. (I have never even come across this website before except through RT once. Never through my Muslim friends.) Of course that’s what Fox want to show. But what’s wrong with the others?

Fox news seemed to revel at the episode. God forbid, if one of the writers get killed, they get a double bonus. South Park is something they don’t like. Islam too.

It is true that most Muslims believe that the Prophet (SAW) should not be drawn, but drawing him will cause more annoyance than offense or anger. The reason Muslims were offended and angered by the Danish cartoon is not because it drew the Prophet (may peace and blessings be upon him), but rather because it portrayed him as a terrorist.

When the Muslims conquered Mecca, they forgave the persecuting Quraish. They destroyed all the idols that were there in the Kaaba, which was built (or rebuilt) by Abraham (AwS). However, there was a picture of prophet Jesus (AwS) and his mother Mary (may Allah be pleased with her), which the prophet carefully put away.

Muslims love and respect all the other prophets, including Abraham, Moses and Jesus (AwS). Whenever they are ridiculed, we are hurt too. The difference is, as Jesus (AwS) is “shared” between us and the Christians, so we do not feel we (Muslims)  are being picked on.

The episode of South Park in my opinion was not trying to offend. It was trying to engage/incorporate the Muslim faith into the dialogue the way they know how. That’s the problem. Americans do not understand other cultures, not even European ones, and do not attempt to understand them. They expect them to ‘know what we are talkin’ about.‘

It just does not work that way. You can’t converse in Bengali with a Chinese.

Personally, I did find the show a bit offensive. One, because it showed the Prophet (SAW) clad in a stupid teddy bear costume. Two, it made innumerate references relating Muhammad (SAW), Muslims and violence. (Three) nor is Muhammad (SAW) immune from criticism. Even Muslims believe that he was a fallible human. We just believe that overall he was an excellent person- an example for all humanity to learn from. We are open to sincere criticism, but we do not like him ridiculed.

So, in short, I am a somewhat offended by, and a bit dissatisfied with the show, but in no way angry with it. I urge my fellow Muslims to engage the larger society- including the media, and use this opportunity to create some positive atmosphere. I urge the media to talk to representative Muslim organizations, and emphasize that they are such, before talking about fringe groups.

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Whether you’re researching an article, want to find like-minded people, or are simply curious, the Muslim Bloggers Directory can help!

Open the directory, and you should see a box in the left-hand sidebar, titled: “SEARCH BLOGS”. Enter your search term into the form, click “GO”, et voila! You’ll be presented with relevant search results that have been derived from the database of 600+ (and growing!) Muslim blogs listed on the directory.

The aim of the custom search engine is to promote real Muslim opinion, and encourage discussion, debate and dialogue. Everyone is welcome to use it; especially those who wish to improve the representation of the Muslim community within mainstream media.

As the site grows, so too will the range and diversity of the Muslim voices promoted by our search feature. Therefore we ask that you please continue to submit your favourite Muslim blogs to the directory.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact us.

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With the Brass Crescent Awards coming to a close, and the launch of the new Muslims Bloggers Directory, I feel it’s a good time to take a closer look at the world of Muslim blogging.

I’ve had the honour of working on several online initiatives alongside MuslimMatters these past couple of years. In particular, the website Ijtema.net, which, since its launch back in 2007, has aimed to promote the ‘best of the Muslim blogosphere’.

Our initial approach to achieve this goal was to act as a type of human filter of the Islaminet: our team of editors would link to Muslim-authored content that we found interesting, in the hope that our readers would too. I guess that they did, as we were nominated for a BCA last year under the category “Best Group Blog” – though we were beaten by some unknown entity called “MuslimMatters.org”. Anyone ever heard of them?

However, as the number of Muslim blogs we followed became greater and greater, and the spare time of our editors became less and less, we knew we could not sustain our efforts for much longer. We decided to close the site, albeit temporarily, and focus on a new, hopefully more efficient strategy.

That eventually led to the launch of the Muslim Bloggers Directory – a freely accessible, categorised collection of links to Muslim blogs, vlogs, and other multimedia channels, with a custom search engine allowing visitors to search through the actual content of listed sites.

It took the Ijtema team about a year to complete the task of preparing the directory – mostly due to the same lack of time and energy that lead to our initial demise. Ask any activist: one of the main downsides of initiatives that rely entirely on volunteers, is their abandonment when the “day job” eventually takes over. In our case, various members began PhDs, created new families, returned to old careers, and one even took a step backward and become an MSc student again after completing her PhD (ahem).

So what does all this have to do with the title of my short thesis: “Observed Trends in the Muslim Blogosphere”? Well, compiling the database of >500 links presently listed on the directory, whilst concurrently experiencing life in the Muslim blogosphere, and meeting other prominent Muslim bloggers in person, has lead to some interesting conclusions.

The life of a Muslim blog can be very short indeed

This applies to all blogs, but even more so the ‘successful’ ones. One of the organizers of the BCAs, a co-panellist at the RMW event, ‘Wired Warriors for the Soul of Islam’, mentioned that the average life cycle of a blog nominated for an award is about two years. This observation was verified by the need to weed out dead and/or password-protected blogs (which are effectively dead to all but a selected few) from the directory database. Those same links had been active and open at least the year prior, when they were first added – so what killed them?

Many have blamed outlets like Twitter, and Facebook, that provide the quick mental fix that many bloggers depend on to get through the day: that is, to express themselves, to be heard, and to engage with others – even if the discussion is restricted to 140 characters at a time. In fact, I suspect this has been the cause of my own reduction in blogging activity. But at the end of the day, my blog is still “alive”, if not a little lean… so can Twitterbook really be the prime suspect?

“Non, je ne think not pas” as the owner of the little, grey cells may have put it… or more likely, this man (imagine: 12 years ago I got an A* in GCSE French).

IMO, the most likely cause for premature blog death is the disappearance of factors that lead to the individual blogging to begin with; namely: free time, passion and inspiration. This can be especially true for ‘popular’ blogs, where said individual – who may have had no initial intention of ever becoming popular (though most hope to be influential) – becomes burdened by the pressure of having to please their audience. Even in the age of feed readers (you must know what an RSS feed is by now? No?! Okay, read this beginner’s guide then), many bloggers feel compelled to publish quality posts, at a consistent rate, lest the readers lose interest.

Therefore, the innocence of a fresh, young blogger to the lure of fame may be the only thing that keeps their blog from going under. Further, popular sites may also become a victim of their own success by becoming attractive targets for ‘trolls’ and other nasties, forcing the owner to seek refuge in password-protection and restricted-access.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be as dramatic as all that. As I described earlier with Ijtema.net, circumstances change due to the numerous course corrections we make on the journey that is life. People get busy, or simply lose interest. In fact, I firmly believe the only reason MuslimMatters has not yet succumbed to the same limiting forces is that, first, we only remain here by the benevolence of Allah, in spite of our numerous mistakes and shortcomings – and second, though most of the staff have moved on with their lives (several doing so quite literally, exchanging N.America for more Middle Eastern climes), their passion to share Islam and aid the Muslim community remains as strong as ever, alhamdulillah.

Considering that most blogs do not make their authors enough money to offer any material incentive to keep writing, it really is passion that keeps a blog alive.

The majority of Muslim blogs on the directory are “personal”

That means, they don’t have an obvious niche theme, such as cooking, stamp-collecting, or gardening (actually, I don’t think I’ve come across a gardening blog run by a Muslim – someone set one up, eh?). As I say about my own blog: its overarching, central, unifying theme is… me. Not too egotistic, right? But it’s true. I, and most authors of ‘personal blogs’, write about whatever inspires us, which often happens to be the minutiae of our own lives. So if the blogger leads an interesting existence (not me), or writes particularly well (still not me), and they know how to plug their blog at every given opportunity (not m-… oh wait, that’s definitely me), then that makes a good recipe for success, insha’Allah. That could be why no-one reads my blog (which, fyi, lives here).

The next most populated category is politics, followed closely by Islam – though each of these categories has only half the number of links that have been shelved under “personal“. That tells me, though Muslims love to talk politics and religion, what they really love to talk about most, is themselves!

Of course, to be fair, it could also be the fault of certain Ijtema editors who tend to shove blogs under the ‘personal’ category, when they don’t know where else to put them… that calls for a second “ahem”.

Geographical regions are not equally represented

There is a great skew in the stated location of Muslim blogs towards the northerly part of the Western hemisphere, with a massive over-representation of N.Americans in the dataset. In actual fact, we don’t have any blogs listed for S.America! Does this mean that N.American Muslims are more expressive than the rest of the world?

Before we draw any conclusions, let us first assess some underlying parameters: the directory only presently lists blogs written in English. Second, many of the blogs were discovered via blog rolls; as like attracts like, if we started off reading American blogs, we were more likely to come across even more American blogs. Third, not everyone states their location: so it could just be that American Muslims are more proud to state their nationality, and/or they care less for their own personal security, than the rest of the world.

But I suspect that the most significant factor of all, as noted by another RMW panellist, is that much of the world does not have reliable access to a source of electricity, never mind the funds to afford a high-speed internet connection. As many Muslims live in the poorest countries, some of which are ravaged by war, with weak or crumbling infrastructures, it is not hard to understand why these populations are under-represented online, no matter what language they write in. Ironically, their stories may actually be the most interesting and educational of all. Indeed, the web isn’t as ‘world-wide’ as we might imagine it to be.

In Summary

Muslims blog, just like everybody else. Muslim blogs die, just as other blogs do. Muslims prefer to share their own personal experiences, just like people from other communities. Muslims in the West have the privilege of internet access – unlike much of the rest of the world.

I leave you now with a request to submit your links to the Muslim Bloggers Directory; especially those that redress the imbalances that I have described above. We want more niche blogs that seek to educate us about the thrills of activities such as bird watching, and base jumping (are extreme sports even halal?). And we would also love to hear about bloggers based in the East… and North, and South. Basically, anywhere but the West – unless you happen to be an American Muslim, paragliding ornithologist.

Some humorous blogs would be nice too.

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Assalamu ‘alaykum dear friends of Ijtema.net!

It’s finally here… an exciting, new development from the Ijtema team… the Muslim Bloggers Directory!

The Muslim Bloggers Directory is a categorised collection of links to Muslim blogs, vlogs, and other multimedia channels, with a custom search engine allowing visitors to search through the actual contents of listed sites. It is open to submissions from the public… and it is entirely FREE!

Come on over and see if your site has been listed. If not, submit it today, and become part of the Ijtema community! Visit the FAQ page to learn more about the directory and how to use it, including how to claim an existing entry.

We hope to see you there soon!

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As you have noticed, IJTEMA has been silent for the past half year or so. However, as promised, we had been working behind the scene on our next service. It derives from the same IJTEMA philosophy- sharing good content.

In preparation for the forthcoming launch of our latest service, we launched a new Facebook page, and Twitter stream.

To find out more, please stay tuned on Facebook and Twitter. If enough of you join the fan page on Facebook, we can register for a decent shortcut (i.e., facebook.com/ijtema). So please become a fan NOW!

We shall make the final announcements very soon, inshaAllah.

Please remember IJTEMA and the whole Ummah in your Du’a in this blessed month.

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IJTEMA is in crisis. We tried to come up with solutions, but we have failed so far. The model that we work on- reading a ton of blogs, selecting a few of them, posting them and finding relevant image is a very time consuming process. We are not even sure how much we have achieved, looking at our site meter. It would seem that the model of IJTEMA is a failure.

We also had constant attrition in memebers leaving the group because of their other, “real life” obligations- as IJTEMA duty takes quite some time. And it is not even clear what was being achieved. We had trouble getting new recruits, as we did not write much ourselves, but promoted others’ writings.

The IJTEMA photo contest that we had, two years ago was a success, and I look back at that wistfully. We were unable to do something similar this year.

So we have decided to shut down the normal operation of IJTEMA for the time being. We do not want the brand that we have made to get lost, so the site will be there for some time, inshaAllah. Also because we want the archives to be available, at least for some time.

We are also planning to have a blog directory. InshaAllah it will be completed.

In the meantime, if you want something of your own writing to be published here at IJTEMA, please do forward it to editor AT ijtema DOT net

Therefore, allow me to say JazakAllah khair to our group members, the writers and to our readers for staying around all these years when we were experimenting with IJTEMA, and inspiring us. We hope to be back, one day, when we have another idea worth experimenting with. InshaAllah that time it will be a success.

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Shelina Zahra Janmohamed blogs at spirit21, and she is the winner of brass crescent awards for best blog and best female blog.She writes:

I took the book to a number of publishers whose commissioning editors loved the story, but couldn’t see it fitting with the existing mould of books about Muslim women. “We need an ‘alias’ of a book that is already out there so people understand how it relates to previous books,” they explained, meaning it should be either a forced marriage story or one of escape from Islam.

With such black and white views about the stories that Muslim women are permitted to tell, how can it ever be possible to create an understanding of our diversity and complexity?

I hope my book brings a fresh perspective to the discussion about Muslim women. But there is a serious question to be asked – will it provoke the Muslim community to look into itself and wonder why these lazy stereotypes exist? Sometimes as Muslims we lack an intellectual honesty about ourselves, and are not brave enough to tell our stories as human beings on a journey, with all our flaws. If publishers are guilty of monolithic misery memoirs, then Muslims must also take some of the blame for not sharing our universal experiences in a language and context that everyone can relate to.

To find out more, click here.

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Anybody in the USA and near Atlanta, will be delighted to hear that there is an art gala happing close to them.

The main goal of the Art Gala is to promote understanding and tolerance through the medium of art. They believe that the universal language of art is one of the few forms of expression that can transcend divisions like race, religion, and other boundaries we set up for ourselves. It is also important because this event promotes a celebration of diversity and a coming together of different races and faiths.

Some of the artists that are participating are Haji Noor Deen from China, Peter Gould from Australia and Kelly Izdihar Crosby from Dubai, as well as local Atlanta artists.

For more information about the event, go to the Emory Art Gala website.

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You know, the one think I like more than art is good photography.  It shows a glimpse of the creator’s power within a small frame.

This is why I love meeting new photographers.  This is also the reason that I wanted to show you the website, Organic Light Photography.

The person behind Organic Light Photography is Youssef M. Ismail.  He hopes through these photographs that we may all come to recognize the Signs of the Creator, ponder on them, and eventually come to the recognition and glorification of the Creator in concert with the rest of creation, in unity, as a whole, the way we were meant to be.

The website isn’t much to look at but the gallery is filled with some wonderful shots.

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