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May God preserve us from fame, celebrity and great acclaim. May He protect us from the attention-seeking ego, from the lust for admiration, from inflated self-regard. If one day we should state our intention to head for the hills and disappear, may our words be true. Let not the lusts of the narcissistic self drive [...]

Instead of leaving snide remarks about departed writers in the comment fields of others’ blogs, why don’t you remember them in your du’as? Pray for their iman, their health and their wellbeing. Pray that Allah reward them for the good they put forth and for all that benefitted you, and ask that He forgives them [...]

It is a sentiment that several of us have noticed being repeated with increasing frequency on the world-wide-web: that the Muslim blogosphere is dying a death, that all the good blogs have disappeared, that the Muslim blogging phenomenon has run its course and all that remains is tired, uninspirational, repetitive dross. As a so-called blogger [...]

The past two weeks have seen this blog go through the full mid-life crisis. First going into maintenance mode, then reappearing for a couple of days, then being deleted and replaced with the finale from a Walt Disney cartoon, then momentarily restored, only to be shunted into a sub-directory, to be abandoned in favour of [...]

A quick note to say thank you to those who read this website and decided to vote for it in the category of Best European Blog in the recent Brass Crescent thingymabob.

What follows is aimed specifically at webmasters and bloggers running self-hosted websites using the open-source CMS, WordPress, but I am sure there are general principles here that can benefit others. If you have a self-hosted weblog or website, there are two things that really should be your priority: beefing up your security and having some sort of backup process in place. All in all, this is a modest plea to my respected writers: before disaster strikes, take a few steps to protect your website so I can carry on reading what you have to say to my heart’s content.

Our blessed Prophet said, “He who truly believes in God and the Last Day should speak good or keep silent.” For those of us who love to write, the implications of this are clear. To “Blog” brings with it responsibilities. Although I don’t consider myself a “Blogger” – simply a writer who finds the dynamic [...]