Updates, Links and More...

I just want to let our readers know that not only is this weblog back in business in regards to new postings, but we've added about fifty new links to our Links Page, removed a couple of dead links from it, refined our Blog Roll, and added a few new Reading Lists on the side bar as well. Expect to see a lot more of these Reading Lists in the near future, insha'llah. I've got most of them almost built—or ready to be built—and hope to have them completed soon. We've also uploaded our new OPML file, which allows you to quickly subscribe to all of the RSS/Atom feeds on our Blog Roll—and we've pasted an OPML icon for this near the bottom of our side bar as well.

For those of you who are new to all of this, the purpose of an OPML file is to make it quick and easy to subscribe to a bunch of blog feeds, which is done by importing the OPML file into an RSS Feed Reader (a.k.a. News Aggregator). One of the great things about this is that once you've got your RSS (or Atom) Feed Reader—and NewsCrawler is the one I use—installed and configured, then you no longer have to waste time checking your favorite blogs one-by-one to see if they've been updated. Rather, by simply launching your RSS Feed Reader, you'll receive automatic notification of which blogs have been updated—and there are web-based RSS/News Aggregators which can do this as well, such as Bloglines.com and NewsGator.com. Most RSS Feed Readers work for podcasts as well, so make sure you subscribe to the Alhambra Productions and Zaytuna Institute podcasts so you can keep up with their latest audio and video releases.

Moving along...I've selected Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code, by Bart D. Ehrman, to be our new Book of the Month—although due to our lack of activity over the past few months, maybe I should call it the Book of the Quarter. However, we'll try to remain optimistic and determined in regards to how much time we'll have for blogging...so hopefully such a long posting famine won't happen again.

The reasons that I chose Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code this month are twofold: 1) the much acclaimed release of the film based on Dan Brown's blockbuster book; and 2) a couple of ill-informed and potentially embarrassing articles that I read, which were written by some Muslim doctors, demonstrated to me that some members of our Ummah are in dire need of a history lesson. In the not too distant future, insha'llah, I plan to post an angry tirade exposing the numerous factual errors and ignorance contained in these articles, since the slanderous and sloppy claims which they put forward are totally inexcusable...so please be on the lookout for that.

And by the way, for anyone who wants to know what Dan Brown got right in The Da Vinci Code and what he got wrong—whether by design or otherwise, Bart Ehrman's is the best book on the subject that I've found. Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code is relatively short, written for the layman, and—due to its academic perspective—relatively free from bias and an overt agenda. This stands very much in contrast to many, although certainly not all, of the responses written by Roman Catholics, Evangelicals and other Christians...not to mention those on the other side who try to lend credence to some of the themes in Brown's book in order to serve their own ulterior motives.

You also might want to drop by this blog again in order to read some responses I've written in regards to following one of the four traditional madhhabs...or not. I had a lot of pent up ideas, as well as some older writings that I've done, on this subject, some of which I released in a rather lengthy comment that I posted the other day on Higher Criticism—which is a blog that I hold in very high regard. I hope to have the new pro-madhhab rants posted soon, insha'llah, so keep an eye out.

Also, please don't forget to visit our Links Page, since I admittedly get a bit frustrated when there aren't a lot of hits on it after all of the trouble that I've gone to. And because in the past some people seemed to have missed the point of the somewhat cryptic format of our Links Page ...I'll explain that you're not necessarily supposed to know what all of the links go to. If the site's logo inherently makes it clear what the website's name or purpose is, I certainly don't fight it or try to hide it. However, in the case that it's just a logo that doesn't really tell you what the site is all about...well do some exploring and find out for yourself. That's the real purpose of the Mere Islam links page: To encourage exploring to various websites which are largely, but not exclusively, related to traditional Islam. For those who just want our "A-List" of useful links, well that's always on the sidebar of our blog pages in the cell entitled Website Links.

We thank all of our readers for their continued support. Please read, reflect, comment, enjoy and...Deen on.