Thank you for the confidence-builder. I’m completely new to blogging, and while the overwhelming majority of the comments I’ve received have been positive, mashaAllah, it only takes one offhand remark to have you completely second-guessing your own God-given ability to put words together.

SubhanAllahil-’Adheem wa bihamdih

the blog doesn’t seem to take actual criticism….

what makes anyone think they’ll take ‘deconstructive criticism’?

remember this post just a few days ago? ibn hazm

“Whoever believes he can totally avoid people’s scorn and criticism is mad. Whoever examines matters carefully and disciplines himself to rely on the facts would enjoy people’s criticizing him more than praising him. This is because if they praise him justly and he becomes aware of their praise, it might make him vainglorious, and this would devalue his virtues. If they praise him unjustly and he becomes aware of their praise, he would attain happiness from that which is false, and this would be a grave fault.

“On the other hand, if people criticize him justly and he becomes aware of their criticism, it might help him to avoid that for which he is criticized; and this would be a great fortune, which only the faulty would forsake. If they criticize him unjustly and he becomes aware of their criticism and perseveres, he would become more virtuous by his perseverance and forbearance.”

FYI, don’t worry about people criticizing you on blogs, or for that matter anything in life – someone will always have something negative to say about you or your writings.

I do agree, however, that “public displays of anger” should be done with wisdom and proper etiquette.

I think this is a given, especially considering the excerpt from Ibn Hazm (rah)’s book posted not too long ago. We have to be able to take the constructive criticism and simply ignore the insulting/useless comments.

What happened exactly? If this is referring to any of my words, I apologize. Uncle Dawud has his flaws and asks your forgiveness. :(

Possible Remedies:
1) Similar practices happen among non-muslim blogs, but I think the trick here is to draw a certain crowd- people with quality, not quantity of people.

2) One solution is to rather than write only opinion, solely, write on more factual or textual stuff or episodes that occurred. Br. Saqib’s last piece on lying for knowledge was an excellent example of this. You can’t easily hate on this sort of writing. But that also means, you can’t force good writing neither. As Socrates said, “Genius is eternal patience.”

3) I think this might help understand the social/psychological effects of internet interaction among Muslims:
http://muslimology.wordpress.com/2009/05/25/towards-a-fiqh-for-the-internet-the-need-for-a-digital-akhlaq/

4) If you reach an argumentative state, then leave off. You conquer ignorance by silence, not speech. And have an open mind too, “He who doesn’t understand the arguments of his opponent doesn’t truly understand his own.” So in that spirit perhaps discuss Islamic literature as well so the ignorant are forced to remain quiet.

Just keep at it guys. Look, you need to be ready for the bad. Its a part of life, things go wrong but you gotta make the best of it. Their is a hadith in which it is related Eesa alayhi salam was walking with his disciples and they saw a dead dog on the ground. The disciples exclaimed, “How foul is the stench!” And Eesa alayhi salam said, “How white are its teeth!”

The lesson in the hadith is people have an eye for the negative and see it as more real than the positive. Don’t let that distort things or your perception of reality.

Baraka Allahu feek

Assalamu-alaikum. Thankyou brother for reminding us all… I was often distressed by vicious/malicious comments on this blog, but feel even more let-down & disappointed when some MM writers themselves resort to sarcasm or adopt a holier-than-thou attitude while dealing with such comments. Oftentimes, it seems like they have taken it as a personal insult and go on to defend themselves on a personal level, or defend their favorite person unconditionally.. wallaahu aalam. Just wanted to remind everyone, including myself that this too is a form of Jihad, and it would benefit us to follow the example of Ali RA when he let go of an enemy who spat on him in the battle-field, because he was so scared for his taqwa that if he killed this person, there was a chance that consciously/unconsciously he would avenge himself. May Allah Ta’Ala bless all your efforts and guide us all to the straight path.

Unfortunateley, some of the authors at this site seem to have a hard time distinguishing between ‘deconstructive criticism’ and someone simply disagreeing with what they have written (and of course doing so in a perfectly respectful manner. OK, I’ll be more specific and quantify this statement: From my limited experience with this website, one author in particular lacks this ability to distinguish, and as a result I seldom visit this site. I posted a comment that clearly dissented from the author’s opinion in his article but did so in a dignified, mature manner. My comment was promptly deleted and replaced by, what I felt to be, a very arrogant response. I am not mentioning names as this incident was not significant enough for me to remember one, but I perhaps naively assume the author in question remembers and need not be mentioned by name anyway…

I think MM should adopt a new policy: we will delete any and all annoying posts, without need to explain. :)