veiled4allah: Muslim voices 1

Muslim voices is a new feature at veiled4allah. It will highlight some recent interesting posts by Muslim bloggers. I'll be working my way down the Muslim Blogs List and select five blogs each time.

There are two reasons that I've started this project. First, I want to introduce these blogs to a larger audience. Second, I want to motivate myself to read them more regularly.

The first blog is *~!Niche of Light!~*, which appears near the top of the Muslim Blogs List due to all the punctuation marks in the title. Niche of Light is authored by sister Sara. The title of her blog is taken from a beautiful verse of the Quran, which is quoted in her sidebar. One of her recent posts (April 14; permalinks are bloggered) is an extended meditation on rain from an Islamic perspective. Mashallah!

The second blog is Blah blah blah. The blog is much more interesting than this title would indicate. Sister Yasmine (who describes herself as "everyone's favorite rebel child and the most unconventional hijabi you'll ever meet") has a lot to say and says it well. Some of her recent posts are about Jenin (April 15) and about reading the Quran (April 5).

The third blog is A Portrait of the Artist as a Muslim Woman by Karen Hanson. Like me, sister Karen is a convert to Islam. Her most recent post talks about homosexuality. Among other things, she discusses the question of why God would create people to desire something that He had forbidden and why He would give them such a terribly difficult test in their lives. She also reminds us of an important truth: the more we have to struggle to do good, the greater our reward will be when we succeed. She writes, But can you imagine the reward that person would get for struggling to remain chaste and not go against the boundaries set by Allah? SubhannaAllah, what a good reward would wait for someone like this, as long as they kept all the other duties to Allah at the same time! It’s almost enough to make one jealous of such a person for their fortitude and, inshaAllah, eventual reward. I agree with what she has written.

The fourth blog is Aizuddin Danian's Volume of Interactions. I should mention that brother Aizuddin hosts the Great Malaysian Blog List, an awesome resource. In recent posts he's been criticizing the idea put forth by some Muslims (though I've seen it from sexist men of other traditions as well) that women are overly emotional and can't be trusted to make sound decisions. You tell 'em, brother!

The fifth blog is Bin Gregory Productions. Brother Bin Gregory is another convert to Islam. He has an amusing page in which he compares himself to John Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban". In a recent series of posts (most recent is April 8), he's been looking at Malaysian contributions to the English language, such as the word "ketchup"!

I hope you enjoy reading these blogs and that you learn something about Islam and Muslims from them, inshallah.