The Brass Crescent awards

Aziz Poonawalla has opened nominations for the alt.muslim Brass Crescent awards (nominations here), for the best Muslim blogs and blogs about Islam. I’ve put in my nominations (and no, I’m not expecting nominations in return!). I’ve got a few comments of my own on this.

First, a lot of people don’t realise that the nomination thread is for nominations, not votes for people to get the awards.

Second, I don’t quite see the point of nominating your own blog. Surely being a nominee should be an honour in itself, as a token that your blog has received some appreciation? This would be better done in secret – surely someone at alt.muslim could put together some PHP for this purpose?

Third, given the orientation of alt.muslim, one should not be surprised to see some flatly anti-Islamic opinions being expressed here. “Zack” nominated as the “best post” his own on slavery – I don’t know why this is eligible for this year’s awards anyway given that it dates from November 2003. It makes the absurd suggestion that those “awkward” passages about those whom our right hands possess be “abrogated” as

these are no longer valid and do not apply now because they condone great crimes and sins. These clauses are from an era when humanity hadn’t progressed much and people didn’t have many rights that we take for granted nowadays.

I consider slavery to be a crime against humanity.

Well, Zack, aren’t you satisfied with Islam as a religion? Aren’t you satisfied with Allah as your Lord and with His Word? Or do you just not realise the implications of what you write? Don’t you think before you type, or at least before you click the “publish” button?

I was also somewhat disappointed to see the author of one of the blogs linked here commenting that “I think you’re right to criticise the attitude of the Qur’an towards slavery (as well other issues like, perhaps, women’s rights)”. It’s seriously making me re-think my blog directory idea, because it seems there’s a desperate shortage of commentary I’d actually want to dedicate a whole site to cataloguing. It’s always offensive to see non-Muslims make dirty accusations against the Prophet (sall’ Allahu ‘alaihi wa sallam) and the other Salaf; to see people who consider themselves Muslims call the actions of the Salaf “crimes against humanity” is just beyond the pale. Fear Allah.