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 Diary >> Affan Chowdhry The New Statesman suffers from historical amnesia The Height of Opulence in Abu Dhabi Where the wine flows like lassi Q in the News Iran's mystery DJ Women slipping thru’ the gaps >> Samira Ahmed The Rock Star and the Mullah >> Fareena Alam "A modern day hippie in search of love" >> Abdul-Rehman Malik Handing Victory to the Terrorists >> Shami Chakrabarti and Megan Addis Who is Sania Mirza? >> Siraj Wahab Democracy Inside Out: The Case of Egypt >> Louay Safi Turks: A Journey of a Thousand Years >> Isla Rosser-Owen Raising Aspirations >> Raihan Alfaradhi Bleedin' Islamophobia >> Yakoub Islam Disappeared in America The Muslim Blogosphere >> Shahed Amanullah Blogger's Manifesto >> Haroon Moghul The politics of common purpose >> Ian McCartney Waking up to Progressive Muslims >> Nazim Baksh The Shariah Firestorm in Canada >> Faisal Kutty Renewing Our Faith in Common Ground >> James Abdulaziz Brown Hafiz Gulammohammed Bora >> Fuad Nahdi Chicken Soup for the Muslim Soul >> Sana Khatib Mourning the Unknown >> Abu Anon Youssou N'Dour wins world music award Fun times for Oxbridge Muslim Alumni Deenport Mania Book views |
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A Blogger’s
Manifesto Page 37 Haroon
Moghul rambles, but he’s read. Thousands of people visit his
award-winning blog every week and are in turns inspired, infuriated and
perplexed. But, what makes him tick? Friends casually remark, “It seems like so much work to maintain a blog.” Seems? A successful blog exists in the most precarious tension. Let’s say you want to start a blog. First, you have to identify an ideal audience - and then realise it. (What is, after all, the point of talking to yourself?) I suggest starting with the “lowest common denominator” and, from there, generating your proposed readership. Then sustain its interest. This requires going above and beyond repeating affirmed beliefs and presenting ideas, possibilities and patterns that stimulate the readership without chasing it away. Finally, your newborn blog needs to expand its horizons. This demands sufficient superficial eye candy - catchy titles, whimsical turns of phrase, neat color schemes - to ensnare the passing web surfer. Unless, of course, it is your intention to restrict yourself to a certain population and remain bounded by that; perhaps it is the expansionist American in me, perhaps it is the expansionist Muslim in me, or even the two multiplying together, but I cannot stand a static blog. Though this does not explain what it is that possesses a person to devote so much time and so much energy to such a thankless task. If there were a calculus of writing, writers would be measured and found wanting - as well as bankrupt. Last January, during the first month of a short study stay in Islamabad, Pakistan, I launched Avari-Nameh. (The name is Quenya and Persian, meaning “the Book of the Unwilling.”) The Avari were a subset of elves from J. R. R. Tolkien’s history, those who heard the advertisements of a utopia far to the west, across the great sea, but nonetheless turned the offer down. The Avari may not have had concrete arguments behind their obstinacy; rather, only emotions. But what makes an emotion any less real than an argument? For their sin - refusing to leave the water of awakening, the land from where they came - Tolkien deliberately removed them from the later narratives of Middle-Earth, declining to share with his readers the fate of this faction. Even their homeland is lost - it no longer exists, or else its location has been forgotten. Sometimes I wonder: will we too be dismissed from the narratives of history because we have refused to make the migration west? At best, Avari-Nameh is composed of sketches, knee-jerk reactions put up far too fast and with far too little reflection. Somehow, it sticks. It survives. Dare I say, it thrives. Several hundred hits a day and a few thousand a week. Who are these readers? I know where they are - they live in New Zealand, Australia, America, Canada, India, Pakistan, England and South Africa; I just don’t know why they come so often to read what I have to write. The more they read of me, the more they see into me. Just like you’ve started to wonder: who’s this Haroon person? I should mention that special skill I possess, which allows me to devote so much time and so much energy to this activity. It is my ability to set aside the work I have and must do and instead spend my time on what is primarily leisurely activity. (Question: Can that which starts in diversion do anything but divert?) One fellow blogger described one of my posts in the way I generally think of my entire blog. She commented, “Haroon mostly rambles…” Indeed he does. He rambles but he is read. Because I know how you feel. Every day - every single day - you are bombarded with news that denies, denigrates, dismisses or else diminishes you. It is the fault of Middle Eastern and Islamic mindsets! You are the culture that forgot time and got forgotten! You have deservedly been left behind! You are God knows how many thousands of square miles submerged in darkness, and only the West can bring you light! The errors of idiots fill not only newspapers but books and speeches and policies as well. Take them and make a bonfire of them. See what you are being persuaded to forget. The sentiments that bind us are not made imaginary by their sentimentality. Nor do the characteristics of a century contain a millennium, though they may herald one coming. Those worlds that are in such visible and painful turmoil may be clawing at the threat of their submergence, and in so doing writhing free of their current tragedy. We recall and are rightly proud of our pasts. Do we not have cause then to see in those beginnings better ends? |