The Benevolent Dictator – No, Not Kim Jung Il, ME

Last updated on: December 19, 2011 at 9:31 am by Nancy Qualls-Shehata

The Benevolent Dictator – No, Not Kim Jung Il, ME 2011-12-19T09:31:31-05:00 Nancy Qualls-Shehata

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As Salaamu Alaikum and good morning all. It’s about 9 am here in Virginia. Kids are off to school, smaller ones are ensconced in front of the TV watching cartoons. The cats are milling about hoping someone drops a frosted flake on the floor. I am here this morning to confess to being a really disorganized person. It affects all areas of my life. I start something, forget what I was doing, go back later and have to start again. I do it with this blog, too. Sometimes I’ll post more than one day in a row. One time I even posted twice in one day, wow! But then I’ll get busy dealing with a sick kid or someone’s spelling bee or something, and then I’ll come back a week later or more to pick up where I left off.

Well, when I did that, I didn’t realize that comments had been automatically approved for all my posts. Now, being human, I love to hear positive feedback from people and the kind words really gave me a warm glow. But in among those were a lot of comments that were, shall we say, not very nice. I was shocked to see so many comments. I guess that my visibility is higher since I’m here at Patheos instead of over at Blogspot, and I’m being seen by A LOT more non-Muslims. That’s a good thing, but it is also natural that a blog written by an unapologetic Muslim will attract some caramel-covered nut balls as well. I am here to tell the nut balls to go away.

I have switched my settings so that I have to approve comments now, and I will be very, very selective on what gets through. If someone raises an honest point or criticism, I reserve the right to use the comment in a following blog post so that I can answer the comment in a full, thoughtful manner. If someone is just blowing off steam, as happened with my post about wanting Sharia law in the universe, well, you are more than welcome to create your own blog and then you can bloviate to your heart’s content.

I do want to say a very big “Jazaak Allah Khair” to some Muslims who worked in the comments to refute those who had negative things to say. I appreciate your efforts, but I don’t want the comments section to be a forum in itself for debating Islam. My blog is not a place to debate Islam; it is a place for me to PRESENT Islam. You are welcome to agree or disagree, but I won’t let everyone have a piece of me. My blog brings me pleasure and I will hit the “trash” key really fast in order to avoid being brought down by something hateful, or even something that’s not hateful but just ignorant. No doubt that will whittle the comments way down, but that’s why my blog is a dictatorship, not a democracy.

Aha! You say. I KNEW she was against democracy. See, she wants to bring Sharia law even to her blog! Well, duh. Of course I want my blog to be a place of Islamic values, and that includes not allowing nasty people to post lies about Islam. I promise to read thoughtful comments even when they don’t agree with me. I will do my best, in my disorganized fashion, to post regularly so that if something I wrote previously was unclear, I can try to clarify. That’s the best I can do. And trust me, I think I’m doing pretty good.

Even while I was writing this very post, I was interrupted by 1. preschooler wanting cereal with NO milk and a cup of milk on the side 2. toddler with a dirty diaper who then wanted to nurse 3. customer coming to pick up item he had bought 4. circuit breaker tripping and cutting off electricity to half the house and making me think, for one panicked moment, that my blog post went “poof” 5. preschooler going potty and needing me to help her clean up, and 6. toddler just now climbing up into my lap to see what I’m doing. So, on the whole, considering all the distractions, I think I did okay, huh?

I deleted ALL the comments, good, bad, and ugly, and will try to keep up with them more on a day-to-day basis, though I’m not promising anything. The kids will be on winter break in a couple of days and nothing is better at disrupting my literary muse than a house full of screaming kids chasing the cats. But, that’s life. We can only take it one day at a time, apologize for the mistakes, and then keep plugging away. I’ll see you next posting, inshaAllah.

Islam

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