I am a big fan of Imam Zaid Shakir. I find him to be classically knowledgeable in ways that are highly relevant to modern life, and still very humble and sincere. May Allah aid him and preserve him. He is now publishing some of his writing at his website, New Islamic Directions. Click on the “blog” link at the top to read his writings. Here’s an excerpt from a poem he published on August 10, 2010:

As we stand on the verge of beginning the great fast,
let us pray that the blessings we enjoy are decreed to last.

Let us pray for the people, who have lost their homes, fields and cattle in the flood,
that they are patient and see their sins washed away by torrents of forgiveness and divine love.

Looking at the website just now I see there are some new pieces that I have not read yet. But I’ve read his piece titled “A Higher Ground for Our Marriages”, and I think it is a must-read for every married Muslim. I read “Graveyard Detroit” and was impressed by the historical context in which Imam Zaid framed the murder of Imam Luqman Abdullah. You really can’t go wrong reading Imam Zaid’s work. He will educate and enlighten you.

I like the color and look of the website as well. It’s a good showcase for Imam Zaid’s work. My only real complaint is that although there is a comment link at the bottom of each post, none of the comments appear. When you click on the comment link you get a form to fill out your comment, then when you submit the comment you get a message saying that the comment will be published after review.

However, no comments are published. It can’t be only my comments that are denied, because none of the posts have any published comments. So why waste our time? Why let us sit there typing out our comments, and letting us believe they are being reviewed? It’s annoying. To compound matters, there is a form to submit feedback about the website. I wrote to complain about comments being published, and received no response.

Imam Zaid himself is a generous soul, a great thinker ma-sha-Allah, and an important Muslim American leader. Whoever is managing his website is not doing him justice in their handling of reader comments.

I don’t think there is anything else on the web like IslamicAnswers.com. There are several good fatwa websites, but IslamicAnswers.comis the only one in which a staff of lay people armed only with common sense and experience dole out common-sense advice on every imaginable type of family, marriage, parenting, or relationship issue. Some of the problems people bring to the website are quite shocking. Adultery, drug use, abortions, lies and abuse. The editors reply to each one with compassion, and sometimes indignation.

The amazing thing is that the volunteer staff of only five editors (three women and two men) every single question, even if there is a delay due to the large backlog of questions in the queue. They answer about two or three every day. The answers are frequently given with evidence from Quran and Sunnah, but again the focus is not on fatwas or legal rulings but simple common-sense advice.

The formula is clearly working, as the website traffic has been constantly climbing and recently soared past 2,000 readers per day. The website is looking for additional qualified editors, by the way, so if you think you’ve got what it takes you should contact them. The requirements are basic Islamic education, life experience, common sense, and compassion.

Masjid Fresno at Sunset

I’ve been living in Fresno, California for about a year and a half now (this time around – I went to junior high school here, and attended university here as well). There are four mosques here, the oldest of which is “Masjid Fresno”, located on Shaw Avenue across from Fresno State University. I remember when the mosque on this lot was simply a small, rented house. Most of the attendees were international students from Malaysia, Palestine and Saudi Arabia, back in the days when the USA still admitted Muslim students freely. There were a few walnut trees in the yard, and after prayer we would shake the trees until some walnuts fell, then work on cracking them open to eat the walnuts. There was a ping pong table in back, no place to park, and not enough room inside.

Later the community bought that house, and then in 1987 or so tore it down and built this modern mosque. It’s large and attractive, but I will always remember that tiny house where I had good friends, walnuts and ping pong.

The Masjid Fresno Website

Well, enough with the reminiscences. When I talk to people at the mosque and they find out I’m a web developer, they often complain to me about the mosque’s website. They say that it’s too cluttered, difficult to navigate, and generally not useful. One person told me that the Imam pays a web development company $400 per month to maintain the site, and has rejected offers from Muslim students to do it free of charge.

As far as appearance and navigation, they are right. The Masjid Fresno website is a case in point of what not to do as far as design and usability. Animations and small icons overwhelm the page and make it difficult to focus on any single thing. Some of these small icons lead to pages with more icons, some initiate pdf downloads, and some cause new windows to pop-up. There is no indication in advance of what action each image might perform. It’s like clicking on a field of jack-in-the-boxes, not knowing what will pop out.

The only saving grace is a column of text links on the left side that lead to a few useful, if still poorly designed, features.

In January 2008, Smashing Magazine wrote a classic piece on the 10 principles of effective website design. See the article for details. I will summarize the ten principles here:

10 Principles of Effective Web Design

1. Don’t make users think
2. Don’t squander users’ patience
3. Manage to focus users’ attention
4. Strive for feature exposure
5. Make use of effective writing
6. Strive for simplicity
7. Don’t be afraid of the white space
8. Communicate effectively with a “visible language”
9. Conventions are our friends
10. Test early, test often

The masjid Fresno website violates almost every one of these guidelines. It makes me think like a overclocked computer processor; it squanders my patience left and right; it scatters my attention; there is no effective writing on the home page; it is as far from simple as it can get; you’d find more white space in the Amazon; and there is no acknowledgment of conventions, meaning what the typical user would expect to find, and where.

I give the Masjid Fresno website a 2 out of 10 on the design and usability scale.

Oneness of Allah

The above image comes from the profile page of brother Bilal Mustafa, the founder of the Ummah1.com Ning network, also found at http://ummah1.ning.com. The site was founded last year, and I was one of the early members, having joined in January 2009.  The website grew to almost 3,000 members, predominantly African-American, but also with a scattering of members of other ethnicities and nationalities. Members share personal photos and Islamic videos, make friends, and discuss Islamic issues through the forum.

At first I enjoyed my time on the site and made frequent use of the forum. I also connected with a few old friends who happened to join the site.

However, the forum on Ummah1 is unmoderated, and in recent months it has become an acrimonious and unhealthy place. Three “anti-Sunnah” activists, one of whom masks his identity, have become dominant players on the forum. They bill themselves as “Quran only” adherents, denying the relevance or importance of the Sunnah in Islam, and referring to the hadith of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) as “fairy tales.” They are aggressive in trying to silence or belittle anyone who stands for both Quran and Sunnah.

Alhamdulillah there are several rightly-guided Muslims who have opposed them, but the point is that every single discussion devolves into a debate or argument over this same issue.

On a different end of the extremist spectrum, there is one very active member who is highly anti-American (despite being an American himself) and often makes vitriolic and extreme statements.

In response to this state of affairs, I sent the following message to brother Bilal:

“Brother Bilal, wa alaykum as-salam. Thank you for adding your voice and clarifying your position. Brother, I know your intentions are good in wanting this site to be “inclusive” of people of all ways of thinking. However, I can tell you from many years of experience on the internet that if the forum is not moderated, the constant acrimony and divisiveness will make it unpalatable to most people.

It’s a fact there are certain people with corrupt ideologies and hidden agendas who frequent Islamic forums and attempt to confuse and divide the Muslims. It’s vital to the health of the forum that these people be weeded out.

You have stated that you accept the Quran as the word of Allah and the final revelation, and you accept Muhammad (pbuh) as the Messenger, and you accept his recorded authentic Sunnah and sound Hadith. The great majority of Muslims around the world agree with you on this matter. I suggest that this should be confirmed as the ideological foundation of the website, and the common ground that you propose, and those who do not agree with this position are free to go elsewhere. There are many debate-oriented forums created just to discuss such issues.

It’s not because I am unable to answer these corrupt individuals. I am very familiar with their ideologies, which have been promulgated in the West by the false prophet Rashad Khalifa and others, for many years. I just don’t care to spend my time arguing the same points over and over with someone who is not really interested in learning, but is only here to sow seeds of misguidance. I’m also not comfortable merely ignoring them, because I worry that some Muslims (for example new converts who may not have an extensive Islamic education) may fall for their lies.

Leave the Muslims on this forum free to discuss issues such as taqwa and imaan, da’wah, the pillars of Islam, family and marriage issues, gender relations, current affairs, the media, the struggle to practice Islam in this day and age, fiqh, tafseer of Quran, sunnah, and any other issues that may concern them.

Let us discuss these issues in a peaceful and constructive atmosphere, without this constant fitnah being sown by those who deny the validity of the Sunnah and other basic components of Islam.”

However, no action has been taken to moderate the forum. Because of this, I do not recommend the Ummah1.com website, and I am much less active there. I particularly feel it is an unhealthy place for new Muslims or those who have little Islamic knowledge, as they may be misguided by some of these anti-Islamic activists. At the least they will find the forum to be an unhelpful and disappointing experience.

In my next post Insha’Allah I’ll take a look at an Islamic forum that is healthy and operating the way it should.