Last week, Umar Lee posted his parting message to the Muslim blogging community, after his blog had been offline for some weeks. His reasoning was twofold: one is that all the best blogs (Sunni Sister, Izzy Mo, Tariq Nelson, Amir of Mujahideen Ryder etc) have been closed down or become inactive and the medium and community are no longer as vibrant as it was, and the other is that all the people who stand for action in the Muslim community are actually out doing things and practising Islam in mosques, while the internet has long been the domain of irreligious and anti-religious modernist types.
I posted my views on the issues he raised in a comment on that entry, but I do wish to make the point that the traditionalist blogs, including at least one of those he names which have shut down, always challenged the extreme modernists, notably the Muslim WakeUp site, covered the schisms in the “Progressive Muslims” movement which eventually burned itself out, and drew attention to the RAND report and its clear attempt to drive divisions in the community by supporting one section against another. The blogs he talks about may well exist, but I’ve managed to avoid them all the time I’ve been part of the Muslim blog scene.
As for why several of the older blogs closed down, I do believe that the Jordan issue contributed substantially. Once Umm Zaid was gone, those close to her felt less need to continue. Certain people knew of problems there which they chose to keep silent about; the way it came out in early 2009, with foully-worded comments on Umar’s blog and on Salafi Burnout (which the WordPress admins rightly closed down as it was full of unbridled libel against many individuals; my comment here), caused a lot of hurt and acrimony. Another issue may have been that the ending of the Bush era made the sense of solidarity it brought about seem less necessary, and thus some Muslims became less tolerant of each other. One formerly well-respected blogger became antagonistic to me and more recently to several others over what still seem like very petty issues.
Am I going to shut my blog down? Certainly not. Blogging is still relevant in a British context, given that we have Europe on our doorstep, large sections of which are becoming increasingly hostile to their own Muslim populations and where an anti-Muslim rabble-rouser stands a chance of becoming the prime minister of one of our closest neighbours, and there is pressure within this country to take a similar road. We have newspapers who run front-page attacks on Muslim women, usually for their dress; we have TV channels which send spies into mosques and then broadcast what they find; we have even had physical attacks on Muslims, including an attack which left an imam in London completely blind, and on Muslim properties and mosques; and we still have Muslims willing to be played off against others and to attack whole other groups of Muslims in the press by calling them terrorist sympathisers and the suchlike. American Muslim readers should remember that the first successful terrorist attack happened here nearly four years after 9/11, and we are still dealing with the consequences of it.
All this needs to be fought and the internet — individual and group blogs, forums, mailing lists and so on — is a good way of co-ordinating resistance as well as refuting the nonsense which appears regularly about us in the media. There are other issues this blog covers, such as the ongoing issue of mentally impaired people being harassed in the street and sometimes tortured to death by groups of their so-called friends, and the fact that some people think a serious disease which can paralyse and mute a 14-year-old girl and take someone out of circulation for twenty years or more is some kind of joke, not to mention the personal interests that this blog helps support. This is why I have no intention of stopping blogging any time soon.
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Salams
I am a frequent visitor to your blog but don’t comment. However I would like to say that I’m glad you are still blogging because your posts certainly address a lot of the issues I think about as a Muslim living in London and for that I think you are doing a great job even if I don’t always agree with you.
I’m not really aware of what ‘the Jordan issue’ was about, I did try reading some of the posts connected to it but not in much depth and I did also enjoy reading Umm Zaid’s blog when it was up.
Other than that I look forward to your next post Brother Yusuf.
It would seem Umar Lee’s decision to stop blogging would have more to do with the entry he put up (and subsequently took down) right before he closed his blog down temporarily, but I guess we should accept the brother at his word.
J: maybe, maybe not. His posts had become less and less frequent, and less frequently about Islamic issues and more to do with boxing.
Mona: I’ve been reliably informed since posting this that UZ actually did not leave Islam.
Assalamu Alaikum,
I think blogging, as you say, provides a platform to communicate amongst each other on various topics of interest across the globe as well as defend our religion against unjustified or downright stupendous attacks.
Keep up the blogging, because some Muslims are required to work in the mosques and centres, others through the Internet, others through employment, etc etc. We need them all.
It’s quite sad to hear about Umm Zaid. Who was she and what was the “Jordan” issue that caused so much commotion?
Salams
Salaam Alaikum,
I do find the cries of “The Muslim Blogosphere is dead” to be awfully arrogant. The Anglophone blogosphere is just one slice of Muslim online discourse.
There are plenty of brilliant blogs out there, especially by sisters. Ginny, Fairuza, Lucky Fatima, Jamerican Muslimah, Organica, Margari Azziza Hill and the wonderful Baraka are all brilliant with active blogs.
There does need to be a more active UK/European Muslim blog scene. The UK just baffles me sometimes. Where I live, the local chain supermarket has a huge halal butchers, my place of work has wudu and prayer facilities, many working women wear hijab and there is even a special hijab designed for policewomen… yet all the problems you mentioned also exist. It’s troubling. Safiya Outlines´s last blog ..Won’t you take me to the Queen of Hearts?
Salaam ‘alaikum. With Umar it also didn’t help that he had a brand new baby to care for. Actually, so do I (she’s now 19-months-old), and my caring for her certainly slowed me down in terms of my blogging output, although I never stopped completely. Personally I have no intention at this time of quitting blogging. I may be slowed down again at some point in the future, but I enjoy the acts of writing and editing too much to quit blogging completely. JDsg´s last blog ..Understanding Malaysia (II)
I still blog, but almost always on the Ahmadiyya issue.
I might return to normal blogging at some point, but I still haven’t made up my mind whether closing down Suspect Paki was the right move or not.
I’m glad you’re still blogging. You’re a must read for me, even if I rarely comment.
What is a Muslim blog? A blog written by a Muslim or a blog concerned with Muslim ‘issues’?
I don’t read any of the blogs you mentioned. only yours. So I don’t know of those events. Keep it up though, you write about important things. Unlike me!
Salaam ‘alaikum,
The jordan issue, as you call it, had nothing to do with the shutting down of any blog you’ve mentioned, so why bring it up?
Also, (and perhaps more importantly) that calim you made about an individual ex-blogger was tremendously irresponsible. And you should remove the references to it in the comments section.
AA-
Keep up the good work…Being a (part-time?) blogger, I must commend you on the effort you put into regularly posting.
@JD, so your daughter is your excuse for not blogging the rankings of high school bands? Man, I really do miss those posts. ;-) Naeem´s last blog ..Sura al-Layl on Feminism
The reason why Umar shut his blog was probably because of the Muhammad Knight issue. In the end the guy was a radical Wahhabi.
Sunnism and Shiasm is facing absolute collapse as the dynamism associated with the Islamic awakening has evoparted under a pile os smoke in the streets of baghdad and Somalia.
Its only a matter of time the Quranist will take over. Sunnism and Shiasm died when the Abbasid Empire collapsed. It was sectarian religions for the Abbasids. It has nothing to do with Islam.
The Mutazilites were the real Islam. And they were Quranist.
Quran is peace!
I do not normally approve ‘Quranist’ propaganda comments, but your assertion about Mutazilites clearly shows your ignorance. They were not - they believed that someone who was sinning was between iman & kufr, a concept rejected by mainstream Islam. There were other divergences, but rejection of hadeeth was not on the agenda back then.
Salaam ‘alaikum.
@ Mash: To answer your question, my answer would be “both.” A Muslim blog is a blog written by a Muslim, who writes at least occasionally on Islamic or Muslim issues. Plenty of Islamophobes write about Islam, but we, obviously, would never call them Muslim bloggers. Likewise, some of the writing should be with respect to Islam and/or Muslim issues. I write two astronomy-oriented blogs, but I’d never call them “Muslim” blogs. On the other hand, on my main blog, about 20% of all the posts I’ve ever written are about Islam; as far as I’m concerned, that blog is a Muslim blog.
@ Naeem: Those posts are normally written only in the summer. You probably missed the ones I wrote last year when you were on your sabbatical. Click here so you can catch up with the results from last season! ;) And the groups are called DRUM CORPS, not high school marching bands. :D JDsg´s last blog ..Understanding Malaysia (II)
Salam alaikoum I do think a lot of us ex bloggers have moved onto group blogs and other fora ( me at mmw and lbb for example). As a European (sort of) I agree with you that there is still “stuff here” to blog about. I think pressures within the community have a lot to do with us taking it to group blogs. I love umar lee’s blog and will miss it, but take offense at his assertion that there aren’t other non upper class white American converts blogging, or at least not about what he blogs about. I am as working class southern as they come, as much as mr lee, and I feel like he discounts the idea that people from the same background can come to different conclusions in deen, like his is the only way. But that’s another subject…
Salam,
Keep up the good work!
Wa s-salam, Yahya Yahya Birt´s last blog ..Defining Islamophobia today: the state of the art
Salams
Please do remove that part of my comment which might cause offence as it is incorrect. Thanks
Salam alaikum,
Others of us who have also felt like giving up on various occasions have been encouraged to carry on by those wiser than ourselves who cite reasons similar to those you set out.
Though we often wish to head for the hills, we have to be reminded that while silence is sometimes wisdom, it is also sometimes a crime.
So for your “Certainly not” I think we can all say Alhamdulilah.
On the other hand, there is a definite need for frequent re-evaluation of purpose on the part of the writers in this sphere. If gossip, suspicion and back-biting become almost the norm for us, something is definitely wrong.
A balance needs to be struck. We have been given so much guidance on these affairs that really we have no excuse.
May Allah grant us wisdom. Tim´s last blog ..Two key principles
I was a regular reader of Umar Lee’s blog despite being a non-Muslim. It was refreshing to read someone who spoke plainly and I’m sorry to see him leave. The RAND tactics are classic divide and conquer so vigilance is in order. I’ll be bookmarking your blog.
salam… to be honest, the Muslim presence on the net is more important now than ever before. Blogs are routinely tapped into for feeling the “pulse” of the communities. Non-professional writers many times surpass professionals due to the former’s lack of “professional pressure”. Every kid is now on the net. People get their information first on the net than anywhere else.
The future is only more electronic, and if we don’t have people like you, Br. Yusuf to keep a watchful eye on issues affecting the British Muslims, for instance, then who else? The Telegraph?
Individuals have shut their blogs for various reasons I am sure. But from my own experience, it has more to do with commitment than anything else. I can assure you that if we had stayed with the original 5 people who started MuslimMatters, we would have shut down too. We are now at nearly 25 writers and still sometimes struggle to keep our schedules full. The pressures of keeping up with blogging, constantly and consistently are tremendous. With group blogs, the pressure is shared, which is why MR joined us… sharing his expertise without trying to run a site all by himself.
Sometimes people extend their own specific experiences and views to the general. The Muslim blogosphere is not only alive and kicking, but growing. New and fresh writers joining the fray everyday.
May Allah allow all of us to benefit the Ummah in the way we can, and purify our intentions. amad´s last blog ..Some Advice for Muslim Husbands on Giving Your Wife a Break
Most people blog because they have something to say. When that gets tiresome due to repetitions, you can’t blame them but respect their bravery in acknowledging their accomplishment.
The blogs that last the longest are often the ones with affiliations to companies or think tanks. They are more of a notice board or a propaganda tool than the original reasons blogs were founded upon.
I don’t think that blogging appeals to Muslims. Something I have suspected for a long time is that because Muslims live in tighter knit communities than middle class non-Muslims, they prefer to live in the real world rather than cyberspace. It is highly likely that the internet has passed many Muslims by in a similar way to the white urban British underclass.
I recently read about a study of Muslim blogs by the Home Office that revealed that most British ones obtain the bulk of their news from the Guardian and the BBC, and little comes from Islamic news sources such as Press TV or Al Jazeera. This blog is no exception and it makes me wonder whether the majority of Muslim bloggers are liberals at heart and not staunch Islamists. Very few staunch Islamists I have met read mainstream newspapers or watch the BBC. They overwhelmingly prefer the Islamic media.
Most of the powerful and prominent anti Islamic blogs are not individual but collaborative efforts - mainly run by Zionist outfits. The Muslim community is ineffective at countering them with their own blogs and websites.