Share your useful suggestions, tips and tricks… OR share whatever else is on your mind. Here are some past ones:

• Wondrous Cell Phones!
• Muslim Man’s Guide to Style
• Muslim Culture vs. Pop Culture: Halaal Alternatives
• Observing the Sunnah in the Professional World
  

The mere complaint is an unjust detainment by the Israelis in 1993 during a visit to his family in Palestine. Many other Palestinians like him were unjustly detained for no crime because this was a common practice by the Israelis whenever political turmoil arose in the area. Soon, he was released without any charges or any court summons.

Here are specific action items that we can all take:

1. First and foremost, MAKE DUAA’! There is no success in any cause without Allah!
2. Forward this message and cross-link/cross-post to this entry as much as possible.
3. Sign the online petition — http://www.petitiononline.com/qat5871/petition.html
4. If you have a Facebook account then join the following two groups:
   

   • Peaceful Support for Qatanani (hundreds of members and counting)
   • Friends of Qatanani (hundreds of members and counting)
     AND advertise the following Facebook event:
     “RALLY TO SUPPORT IMAM QATANANI”

5. Attend the rallies and encourage your family and friends to attend the rallies. Rally details and an image of the flyer can be found here: http://www.americans4qatanani.org/site/content/view/39/54/
6. 6. Last, and most important: MAKE DUAA’! I can’t stress this enough. Constantly and consistently pray to Allah to help us through this test, and all tests that we face every day! Duaa’ is our best resource, and it never runs out! For some duaa’ recorded in authentic narrations of the Prophet (S), you can visit — www.makedua.com

Our favorite reviews from the past:

• Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
• Sarkozy, Muslims, and the New France
• A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khalid Hosseini
• A Return to Modesty

Come one, come all, to the 2008 Regional Muslim Youth Conference: Building Tomorrow Together. (more…)

Here’s three “Old But Gold” posts for your reading pleasure. Here, we’ll start off with a theme that revolves around the Book of Allah ‘azza wa jal, the Qur’an.

• The Literary Beauty of the Quran
• “Alhamdulillah” - A Linguistic Miracle of the Quran
• The Royal “We”

To get us started, here are three “oldies but goodies” centering about the theme of spirituality:

• Ma`rifah: Being Acquainted with Allah by Abu Aaliyah
• Ibn al-Qayyim: “… is such a person not nourished night and day by his Beloved?” by Ahmad AlFarsi
• The Triangle of Virtue: Fasting, Taqwa, and The Qur’an- Part 1 by Yaser Birjas

What’s a podcast?

The term podcasting derives its name from Apple’s iPod, but to create a podcast or even to listen to one, you don’t need to own an iPod, or any portable music player for that matter. In a nutshell, Podcasting is a new type of online media delivery. You publish selected audio files via the internet and allow your users to subscribe via an RSS feed to automatically receive new files. (source)

If you don’t know what any of this means, click here to get started with Podcasts, and check out the FAQ at Apple’s site.

For those awaiting a solid podcast to subscribe to and get free mp3’s, insha’Allah this is your answer

We will be podcasting out all the audios that have previously been posted on MuslimMatters since the site started early last year. We also have some hot new content that you have not heard from our on-board Shuyookh and others.

*If you have some recordings, specifically of our on-board shuyookh, that have not yet been made public, please contact us and let us know. The best way to get these is record the khutbah’s they give when you get an AlMaghrib class

We need everyone to subscribe to the MuslimMatters.org podcast. This will obviously give you free lectures, but more importantly, it is a dawah opportunity for you. The more people that subscribe to our podcast in iTunes, the better our ranking in the iTunes podcast directory, and the more people that benefit insha’Allah. Currently we are in the Religion&Spirituality -> Islam section, but we are a few pages back. In fact, podcasts for the Ahmadiyyah movement are featured far more prominently in this category than many Muslim podcasts - and the top “Islamic” podcast is currently Farrakhan speaks.

So what’s left now? Subscribe and enjoy the podcast

–> Subscribe in iTunes <–

(the link above automatically takes you to the MuslimMatters Podcast in iTunes)

–> Subscribe using another PodCatcher <–

Before YOU start talking about ANYTHING, here’s reminiscing on three of MM’s oldie-goldies around family & marriage… perhaps you can add more thoughts and ways!

• Thoughts and Advice on Interracial Marriages by IbnAbeeOmar
• 60+ Ways to Keep Your Spouse’s Love by Amad
• Feeling The Love: 60+ Ways to Please Your Parents! by AnonyMouse and YOU (the readers)

“Please forward my salaams to everyone & encourage them to keep me in their prayers. Things are winding up for me here in Alexandria and we might have a final decision in May, wAllahu a’lam. And our hope and trust remains with Allah ta’ala alone.”

I would urge all brothers and sisters to make your deepest dua’s for Dr. Ali, in hoping for justice and fairness. I also urge his supporters to write to him, because letters are a window to the world for prisoners. May Allah release him to his family and to all the Muslims.

Alexandria Detention Centre
2001 Mill Road
Alexandria, VA 22314

You can get more background information on his case from the following article in Atlantic Monthly.

Also see: 14 Year Flashback: Accusations of Terrorism (speech by Ali Timimi)

A brand new MuslimMatters! Here’s a rundown of some of our new features:

• Archives page to fulfill your daily nostalgia for past articles.
• Contact page to let us know your thoughts, comments, maybe some guest submissions, and of course, all your unanswered fatwa questions (just kidding, we are not a fatwa service).
• New ABOUT page with information on how to stay up to date with the site.
• AUTHOR PAGES with unique RSS feeds!! Go to the home page, and check out the authors on the left side. Now you can make sure to get all the articles from your favorite writers, and see some cool pictures
• New front page - You can see the latest posts from our main categories now featured on the front page. Recent posts also display up top and in the sidebar. Our active content also displays in a top posts heading in the right sidebar.
• CAROUSEL - check out the carousel under the featured posts. Click the arrows on the sides to check out some of our featured content!
• Related content - when you read posts now, you will see more from that category and more from that author displayed in the right side.
• Oh, and a new GOOGLE search in the sidebar to quickly locate posts.

iPhone and iPod Touch users-

You will now notice a new iPhone friendly theme when you load the site. No more need to resize the page and turn your phone or ipod to the side, a new theme will display to make the site readable.

Also, make sure to drop the MM bookmark on your homescreen, we have a new iPhone icon ready to add next to the Stocks and Weather icons that you use so much.

PODCASTS?!?!

Look for an official announcement coming within the next week. We will be starting a MuslimMatters PODCAST with audio and video. If you’ve enjoyed our khutbahs and videos, make sure you subscribe and catch the latest. We will be podcasting out all unique MM content that has been posted on our site, and we will also be rolling out some new audios as well so stay tuned

But wait - There’s MORE!

New Associate Writer!

We are also pleased to announce that Siraaj Muhammad of StrangersOasis has joined on as an associate writer. Look for a new series of posts from him coming very soon as well.

We hope you like the new site, and the new features. You can also look forward to some amazing articles coming in the future that will insha’Allah set the bar high for Muslim online media.