Our New Look, Some New Blogs and More...

Well I'm sure most regular visitors to this blog realize that it's gone through something of an overhaul lately. Not only do we have a completely new template design, but we've had a quite a few recent postings by Qadeeb al-Ban Harris as well. Insha'llah, we'll continue to see regular postings by Qadeeb, since his account was created in the interest of taking up the slack time on this blog since I'm often unable to consistently post for a myriad of reasons.

In conjunction with the new look of this blog, there have been some more subtle additions and changes as well. Yesterday, I added Qays' Blog to the BLOG LINKS section in the right-hand sidebar. I've been an admirer of this blog for some time, but just never got around to adding it to my list. The other night - as he mentions on his blog - I happened to meet Sidi Qays Arthur at a local Orlando masjid just after Salat al-Tarawih. This was a very nice experience, not only because Cyberspace and reality finally came together, but also because he's a very nice and personable brother as well.

As his blog shows, Brother Qays is traveling around Florida this Ramadan doing some fundraising for the Central Islamic Organisation of Guyana (CIOG) which is a very active charity organization that focuses on helping the needy in Guyana and establishing traditional Sunni Islam amongst the people. And just to clarify...Brother Qays mentioned that he met me at what "wasn't exactly a Sunni Masjid", seemingly because it -- like most masajid in America these days -- doesn't adhere to any of the four acceptable schools of Islamic jurisprudence. Rather, it adheres to what pretty much amounts to a Salafiyyah and Ikhwan al-Muslimeen methodology -- an approach that regular visitors to this blog should know that I certainly don't agree with. However, I'm not one to avoid any masajid that loosely considers itself to be Sunni -- except some of the very puritanically rigid and spiritually suffocating Salafi/Wahabi masajid that we have in the area. Since the masjid in question certainly isn't one of these, that explains why Brother Qays and I both happened to meet last Thursday night. So even though the masjid where me met wasn't Sunni in the highest and most traditional sense of the word, it wasn't like it was Shi'a, rabid Wahhabi or anything like that...

I should also mention that Sidi Qays has some interesting articles on his blog, some of them quite personal, including My Path to Tasawuf - How Allah rescued me from ‘Salafi burnout’ and Man from the Men of Religion - My initial encounter with my master Shaykh Nuh Keller, so give them a read when you get a chance.

In addition to adding Qays' Blog to our BLOG LINKS section, the new Alhambra Productions Weblog and the Scholar's Pen blog have been included as well. Also, two blogs that I've had links to for awhile, namely Ginny's Thoughts and Things and SAFspace, have both moved to new domains -- so please update your own links to them if you've got 'em.

Mentioning these two blogs, as well as Seeker's Digest, reminds me that there seems to be quite a trend of bloggers getting their own domains, abandoning Blogger.com and using free blogger software like WordPress and Moveable Type instead. I'm considering doing this in the future, but since I'm so relieved to have my recent template redesign over with, I plan to delay it for awhile -- and lately Blogger.com has been performing pretty well.

Still on the subject of blogs, a few days ago I came across the Spiritual Tendencies blog, which deserves a few words of praise in my opinion. Not only do they have some interesting Sufistic content, but Shaik Khafid has posted some really cool and unique Islamic graphical artwork as well. However, it's the anti-terrorism banners that they've produced that really won my heart. Yes, it's at Spiritual Tendencies that I found the American Muslims Against Terrorism banner that now shows up in the bottom of the right-hand sidebar. You can check out all of their banners here -- and there are ones for quite a few countries, so please make use of them if you have a weblog or website. All Muslims who adhere to the way of the Prophet of Mercy -- may Almighty God bless him and give him peace -- need to make a more vocal and concerted effort to make it clear that wanton attacks on non-combatants is a gross violation of Islamic teachings.

As far as websites go, Imam Zaid has a new site called New Islamic Directions which I've added to my WEBSITE LINKS section. I expect that this will become one of the most beneficial traditional Islamic sites in the near future, so please remember to check it out. I've also updated my links page with quite a few new sites -- and the new ones always go down at the bottom, which I do quite frequently although I rarely mention it in the blog. As far as I know, this is one of the most complete lists of traditional Islamic sites currently out in Cyberspace -- and maybe the most graphically intensive as well -- so please remember to refer your friends to it.

Finally, I've also added the Bootleg Busters banner to the sidebar, since I want to promote the efforts of the Islamic Media Association whose mission is to promote adherence to copyright protection laws for the benefit of producers of Islamic media. We pray that Allah blesses them in their mission and brings their strategic plan to fruition, since far too many Islamic publishers and multimedia producers face difficulty staying afloat due to the prevalence of bootleg materials.

Please make du'a for all of the above mentioned endeavors and Deen On...