Talk Islam

Latest Updates: Muslim bloggers RSS

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  johnpi 1:25 am on March 5, 2010 | 12 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: blogger activism (6), blogger ethics (5), bloggers (59), blogging (50), converts (13), Muslim bloggers

  Willow wrote:

  There is clearly something deeper going on that you’re worried about or have doubts about

  You are correct about being troubled, specifically, spiritually troubled. This response is to Aziz too. Abu Noor, I think you’ve been reading too much of Umar’s long goodbye and seem to be stuck on the notion of ‘progressive devils’ being a fifth column of something or other…

  When I first exchanged some emails with Aziz and he invited me to blog here, I told him that I had been closely following TI for some time, but I hadn’t really engaged or participated because I wasn’t in a very good headspace, I was somewhat angry about some of my conversion experiences, and I didn’t want to engage poorly or from a bad place (I was also upset about how some orthodox problem-solving seemed to create dysfunction in modern life – Islam should give us all the tools we need to succeed anywhere at any time). I was particularly upset about feeling ’silenced’ (don’t ask disrespectful questions) and how – internally – that imbued those questions or concerns with more power and interest than they probably merited just from being bottled up. The initial blogging I did was helpful for deflating that material and kind of getting it out of the way, and it was at about that point that I started blogging here.

  I’ve continued to use the blogging to try to ‘process’ what comes in from the dunya and from other Muslim perspectives and communities, but I think that what may be happening is that in driving myself up against every point of contention in the media and every point of seeming incoherence within the ummah and within Islam, that it’s having an unhealthy spiritual effect, and I’m falling back into that bad headspace again, or at least not a very good space in which to be engaging other Muslims.

  So I need to take a break from being a media junkie, abstain from the blogging and find other diversions for awhile. Finding more and new Muslim community offline in another context might be a good idea too.

  To try to sum up the point, I do believe it’s a matter of spiritual integrity not to ignore the world and what’s happening in it if it challenges your faith or your practice, but wading out into this stuff day after day – seeking it out – for too long is also bad for your spiritual health.

  So I’m going to dial my blogging way back for a bit…

   

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  johnpi 1:11 pm on January 27, 2010 | 26 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Ipad, islamsphere (32), Muslim bloggers, technology (17), twitter (15)

  Ipad ho-hum: What is it with Muslim bloggers and their early adopting fetishes? Some really good bloggers have reduced most of their contributions to the ‘Islamsphere’ to 140 character Twitter haikus. Now formerly high-functioning Muslims are carrying on about the Ipad.

  Here’s a description of the Twitter phenomenon from a recent conference I attended:

  Twitter has reduced many bloggers to micro-bloggers, resulting in an annoyed backlash by many netizens against daily blog or LJ posts that are merely collections of disjointed thoughts in 140 chracters or less. How has Twitter changed the blogosphere? Is it a good thing?

  No. It’s not.

   
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  johnpi 8:15 am on January 8, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: iran (364), Iranian elections (90), Muslim bloggers, neda (22)

  Top news photo of 2009. The image of Neda Soltan at the moment of death was criticized by some bloggers, Muslim and otherwise, but it’s currently ranking as the best news image of 2009 over at Huffpo in their readers’ opinion.

  It will be interesting to watch how the professional journalism organizations rate the image.

   
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  abunoor 10:11 pm on January 2, 2010 | 7 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Mujahideen Ryder, Muslim bloggers

  Mujahideen Ryder blog 2000-2009

  Mujahideen Ryder, one of the oldest and most read blogs in the Islamosphere, is coming to an end.
  

  It’s been a long time with lots of fun, educational, spiritual, controversial and outrageous posts over an entire decade. The blog was bound to come to an end as do everything.
  I ask Allah to forgive me for anything wrong I have said. I ask anyone who may have been hurt by my blog to forgive me. Anything good that I have written is from Allah. Anything bad is from myself and the whispers of the shaytan.
  May Allah take away any suffering from any Muslim. May Allah remove the injustice around the world. May Allah bring peace to war infested lands. May Allah forgive all the wrong doers. May Allah guide all the misguided and continue to guide the guided.

   
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  johnpi 9:11 am on December 16, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: anonymous blogging (4), arab blogs (3), blog content (3), blogger activism (6), blogger ethics (5), bloggers (59), bloggers and journalists (13), blogging (50), blogosphere (9), blogs (23), Muslim bloggers, Muslim blogs (8), Muslim children bloggers (4)

  Where are they now? A few blogs and bloggers mentioned in the last year:

  • “Dear God” – A nondenominational website where desperate or struggling people could post often disturbing ‘letters to God’ with a prayer and a description of their travails. Readers offer words of hope and encouragement. “Dear God” was put up for sale just before Thanksgiving.

  • “Hal786″ – A blog by a Muslim girl, one of several Muslim children bloggers mentioned on the site. ‘Hal’ most recently blogged about her hopes for the Copenhagen climate change conference. “I can’t wait to see what’s going to be done by the world leaders to help save our planet!”

  • “malekat_el7oriya” – A blog by a Muslim teen girl who was most recently blogging about racial profiling of men wearing the ghutra and agal (the red and white scarf that men wear on their head and the black band that holds it on).

  • “Mahaguru58″ – Zainol Abideen is writing about his own made-up word: ‘Blogodementia.’ “Isn’t it quite absurd to see some of our fellow bloggers resort to abusing the blogosphere…to spread slander and ill will through their blogs and websites on an almost daily basis?”

  Mr. Abideen, the ‘pro-tem president’ of the Muslim Bloggers Alliance in Malaysia, first came to attention for “abusing the blogosphere” with his racist rantings against the Royhinga and for his odd takfiring of poor Muslims. He has never retracted his comments nor apologized.

  • “The Arabist” – A blogger who proudly wears the title ‘State Department Arabist,’ a term used derisively and that became widespread in Washington DC when the neocons took over under the administration of George W Bush.

  The implication is that anyone who takes such interest in the region is inherently suspicious and must have “gone native.”

  He also defends the word from leftists who try to conflate it with Orientalism. The Arabist drew attention for his review of the book, “What’s Really Wrong With The Middle East.”

  More blog updates later…

   
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  johnpi 9:15 am on November 20, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: anti-blasphemy law (2), blasphemy (7), blogger activism (6), blogger ethics (5), bloggers (59), bloggers and journalists (13), blogging (50), censorship (44), jafis (22), Jafiwatch (7), Muslim bloggers, retaliation against bloggers (13), retaliation/attacks against bloggers and journalists (17), zainol abideen (2)

  The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission is investigating 71 cases of Internet abuse by disseminating false and lewed contents and contents that insult Islam.

  Information Communication and Culture Minister Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim said out of the 71, eight had been acted upon under the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998 for defaming others.

  “One had pleaded guilty and fined RM10,000 and the court also imposed certain conditions on the accused, while seven are awaiting trial,” he said in reply to a question from Matulidi Jusoh (BN-Dungun) in the Dewan Rakyat today.
  ….

  He disclosed that the ministry had also taken action under Section 263 of the Act against seven websites which insulted Islam, namely http://www.syurga-islam.blogspot.com, http://www.faithfreedom.org, manatuhanallah.wordpress.com, adibahahmed.blogspot.com, surind.blogspot.com, tokbatinsenoi.blogspot.com and http://www.malaysia-today.net/2008/content/view/1252.

  One of the blogs is operated by Indian Malaysian atheist Surind Raj who was reported by ‘protem President of the Muslim Bloggers Alliance’ Zainol Abideen which prompted Raj’s supporters to launch an Internet campaign against Abideen. I can’t tell if this action against Raj is the result of Abideen’s complaint.

   
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  johnpi 11:05 am on November 12, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: blogger activism (6), bloggers (59), bloggers and journalists (13), blogging (50), islamsphere (32), Muslim bloggers, Muslim children bloggers (4)

  Someone should start an endowment to pay money to good Muslim bloggers like Umar Lee and Hijabman to ‘incentivize’ the perpetuation of good Muslim blogging.

  For critics of anonymous blogging, this would also ‘incentivize’ people coming out from behind their acronyms. Can’t write a check to an anonymous person…

   
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  johnpi 9:33 am on September 11, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: blog (6), blog content (3), blogger ethics (5), bloggers (59), blogging (50), Egypt (94), Muslim bloggers

  Bloggers in Egypt are now being arrested for not moderating comments on their blog posts.

  There is a question of blogging ethics here, in that an anonymous commenter launched into a personal attack against an employee of a company mentioned in the blogger’s story. The employee was not a public figure. The blogger eventually said “that he will delete them [the comments] because the attack is personal and unfounded.”

   
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  johnpi 4:29 pm on September 5, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: bloggers (59), internet (46), Muslim bloggers

  Internet addiction center opens in U.S.

  For a little over $14,000, up to six people at a time can spend 45 days sweating out their insatiable urge to be umbilically connected to cyberspace. Think cold turkey as experienced by heroin junkies, and you get the general idea.

  Residents are given counselling and psychotherapy, as well as encouraged to bond as a group in activities such as household chores, walks in the grounds and exercising.
  …..

  ReSTART offers anyone who suspects they are suffering from internet addiction the opportunity to test the hypothesis with a behavioural survey which, helpfully, can be completed via the internet. Question 12, for example, asks: “Are you experiencing chronic exhaustion due to lack of sleep, weight gain from lack of exercise, poor general health from poor nutrition, or other physical health problem due to excessive internet use or video gaming?”

   
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  johnpi 6:56 pm on August 30, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Muslim activism (4), Muslim bloggers, Muslim blogs (8), Muslim journalists (4), online Muslim communities (2)

  This writer reflects some of my concerns about what we (or I) create here at Talk Islam:

  What prominent national figures have spoken out in the last nine years not in the name of rubberstamped strategies, buzzwords or mantras, but in the name of ordinary Muslims — the supposed beneficiaries of this gigantic war effort? Our television screens splash our retinas with images of young American soldiers killed in combat, and now, Iranian protesters brandishing a slain woman’s picture. Where on these screens are the images and names of the tens of thousands of ordinary women and children slain by our own bombs and bullets in the Middle East?

  It is in this searing political context that I consider myself connected to Islam. I feel an inseparable link to those abroad, whose names I do not even know, who have suffered the impact of modern weapons unleashed on ancient pretexts. I insist on this connection precisely because the full weight of national propaganda is aimed at erasing, ignoring and discarding the memory of these victims, these invisibles.

  The cost of this remembrance, however, is alienation from Muslims around me. Just as an Islamophobe’s mind may produce menacing images when he encounters a Muslim, I see Muslims through the lenses of war, occupation, invasion and torture.

  If I see a woman in a hijab, my mind races to a recent surreal murder or questions about whether it reflects, for this particular person, a conscious choice of modesty, the inertia of tradition or the weight of oppression. If I see a man in chapals and shalwar-kameez, I immediately begin to speculate about his politics, what grievances occupy and animate his mind and his degree of reconciliation with modern life.

  In this politicized projection, the actual human being at the other end of one’s tinted lenses never comes into focus. The Muslim greeting assalam-alaykum, “peace be upon you,” is shorn of meaning because peace is neither in me nor bestowed upon most Muslims in these times; a few have violently rejected the concept altogether and have instead embraced a mindless nihilism.

   
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  johnpi 7:37 pm on August 24, 2009 | 5 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Anti-Islamophobia blogs (4), blogs (23), Islamophobia Watch, Muslim bloggers, Muslim blogs (8), Spittoon blog

  Blogs on blogs.

  The Spittoon blog, which got linked here at TI recently as a source of anti-Hizb ut-Tahrir commentary, knocks the blog Islamophobia Watch:

  On the left hand side of Islamophobia Watch’s website is a list of categories of articles on the website.

  At the very top is the category ‘Anti-Muslim violence’ whilst at the bottom of the (long) list is ‘Yusuf al-Qaradawi’. If you are unfamiliar with this name, he is the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, a man who supports wife-beating and FGM and who doesn’t like Jews or innocent Israelis very much.

  It might surprise you, then, to find that Islamophobia Watch has found the time to write 241 articles supportive of one of the world’s leading Islamists yet, despite its supposed concern with documenting attacks on Muslims around the world (a noble aim indeed), just 239 articles are concerned with ‘Anti Muslim Violence’.

  The explanation is simple. Islamophobia Watch uses a definition of Islamophobia which cynically conflates criticism of Islamists with anti-Muslim bigotry. Thus a man who wants to go to Israel and blow himself up is to be defended whilst a principled campaigner like Peter Tatchell is accused of “mindless sectarian bigotry” and Islamophobia.

  I don’t regularly read either of these blogs, but tonight happens to be a slow news night.

   
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  johnpi 6:25 pm on August 18, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: bloggers (59), blogging (50), meta (66), Muslim bloggers

  Teh awesome blog post of the day: How to gain a following and potentially win a Brass Crescent Award.

  I am vaguely calling you out

  Bowers writes:
  This is a message for all you Chicken Littles, you handwringers, you wannabe strategists, you people who have suggestions or doubts: I am vaguely calling you out.

  Who you are is not really important. Why I am vaguely calling you out is also not important. In fact, it is better that both “you,” and what you are doing, are never really defined. This has three advantages:

  First, it’s easy. As long as both you and your actions stay open-ended and amorphous, you can potentially be as many people I don’t like as possible without actually being anyone at all. This way, I win a huge argument with a lot of people, without actually engaging in an argument with anyone at all.

  Second, it allows as many people as possible to identify with me calling you out. Everyone is angry at something someone wrote on the Internets, so the emotional need to call someone out on the Internets is widespread. When someone reads and recommends this diary, they can also join in the please of vaguely calling someone out for doing something. Now, I have a following.

  Third, it prevents me from ever having to justify my calling you out. If I was specific in who I was calling out, it is possible that their written record would contradict my vague reasons for doing so. That would suck, so I am not taking any chances. This way, I can never lose.

  Click here to read entire article.

   
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  johnpi 6:09 am on June 6, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: internet (46), Muslim bloggers

  I removed my earlier post with links to a website about a Muslim community leader in Philadelphia accusing him of taking people’s money. I’ve been thinking about it since last night and I’m concerned that what started out in the Muslim blogosphere as an effort to protect the Muslim community from predators by exposing them could too easily devolve into Internet vigilantism.

  (More …)

   
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  johnpi 9:11 am on May 29, 2009 | 2 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Adventures in blogging with the US military (3), bloggers (59), blogging (50), freedom of speech (71), journalism (44), journalists (17), Muslim bloggers, retaliation/attacks against bloggers and journalists (17), US military (60)

  Pentagon plans new arm to wage wars in cyberspace.

  The US military is stepping up preparations to conduct both offensive and defensive computer warfare. I guess if we get too uppity here at Talk Islam, we might be in trouble.

   
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  johnpi 6:31 am on May 1, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: censorship (44), Muslim bloggers, retaliation against bloggers (13)

  The Committee to Protect Journalists has published a list of the 10 worst countries in which to be a blogger. Six of them are in the Muslim world, though only two of them – Iran and Saudi Arabia – are governed by Islamic governments.