veiled4allah

housekeeping note

Bubba was blocked from commenting a couple of days ago and "Akmed" has just been banned as well. If these individuals choose to keep commenting where they're not wanted, their comments will come out as gibberish (disemvoweled). Grow up. Most people learned to stop scrawling graffiti on other peoples' property a long time ago. Get your own freaking blog if you want free webspace. Updated: Some people just don't seem to get the message. Comments are closed on all entries until further notice. Whether you call yourself Bubba, Akmed, Sammy or any other name, your harassment is not wanted here. If you could get a woman in real life you wouldn't need to play games like this on the internet so I suggest that you turn your attention to that To everybody else, I apologize that this one persistent troll has damaged your ability to give me feedback on my blog. I appreciate everybody who has taken the time to share their thoughts honestly. I am just sick and tired of cleaning this crap out of my comments every time I come online. I have better things to do with my time.

two years of blogging

I managed to miss it by two days, but this blog is now two years old. I started blogging on May 24, 2002. A lot has happened in that time, and there's been more than once that I wondered if it was worth continuing (it's the comment trolls that I've always had the hardest time dealing with), but I'm still here, al-hamdulillah.

enough

For the time being, I have decided to close comments on all blog entries older than today (comments on this entry are still open). I am not able to be online as much as I would like and I'm tired of coming back online every day or two to find half a dozen comments attacking my religion as evil, calling me a liar because I say that it is not, or advocating for mass murder of Muslims (links to these comments available on request if you doubt that they exist). I'd like to give a special shout-out to Carol and Mama. Thank you, Carol, for taking the time to respond to some of my other blog entries, about how my life is going, and for your support and encouragement. And thanks also to Mama for contributing in a positive manner to some of the other discussions. I realize that I haven't posted much lately and perhaps driven all my good readers away, but it really gets me down to see so much negativity all the time. Some people are already no doubt crying censorship, but here's a newsflash for you: this webspace I paid for with my own money and there's really no reason why I need to give people a platform at my own expense to spew. If you want free webspace where you can say whatever you want, go to Blogger. I have tried responding to each of the people who have commented here and have seen no interest in actual dialogue or exchange of information and knowledge leading to mutual learning. I'm sorry, but it's not worth it anymore.

milestone

On a lighter note, the previous entry (about the Muslim girl who was assaulted) is entry number 2500 at Al-Muhajabah's Islamic Blogs :D

accessibility statement

I've put up an accessibility statement for Al-Muhajabah's Islamic Blogs. It's linked in the sidebar of veiled4allah as well as on the AMIB main index page and on the index pages of A Quranic Journal and The Clipboard (for the 1.5 people who visit those pages or are even aware of their existence). The accessibility statement describes some of my efforts to make AMIB more accessible to all visitors, including those with disabilities. Others who are curious are welcome to check it out, inshallah. I appreciate the feedback I get from some of my visitors if and when they encounter an error while trying to view my blogs or post comments. Please always feel free to email me if you experience any problems like this. I've posted nearly 2500 entries over a period of nearly two years. The site is huge and it's very likely that a problem could occur on one part of it and I won't know about it unless someone visiting that part of the site happens to inform me. Or I may have been offline or otherwise occupied. So if you experience an error and it doesn't go away after a few minutes, email me! Thanks :)

hopefully the site should look OK now, inshallah

As noted by Zack in the comments, the results of my recent stylesheet modifications caused both this page and the :AMIB: index page (you have heard of it, haven't you; you don't just visit this page only, do you? :p ) to look pretty funky. Hopefully I've fixed both problems. The former required a CSS hack because IE 6 is buggy, the latter required untold hours until I finally located two unclosed tags that were causing the problem. Sorry for the inconvenience! Update 1: Carol in the comments pointed out that my site had fallen victim to the infamous IE peekaboo or scroll bug, which causes parts of the template to disappear unless you scroll up and down or highlight the text. I've implemented a fix and it seems to show OK now according to BrowserCam. If anyone is still experiencing this or any other bug, let me know. I switched over to a pure CSS layout and now need to find and resolve all the browser bugs. Thanks!

keeping myself honest

To keep myself honest, I've set up Al-Muhajabah's Islamic Blogs to show the revision history of my posts, from today forward (how-to is here). If the entry has been modified, the "posted by" line beneath it on the blog's index page, or the navigation header on the individual entry (permalink) page, will display "Revision History: Version 1.x" (an unrevised entry would be version 1.1 so the smallest number you'll see is 1.2 meaning it's the second version). This will have a hyperlink that will take you to a page displaying the changes that were made between this version and the previous version. If I've updated it more than once, you can continue to work your way back through the older versions. I tested it by modifying the Rachel Corrie entry so you can check it out there.

thanks for your patience

Thanks to Carol and David for letting me know via email of an error message that was preventing people from posting comments. I've been making some updates to my templates in the last week but apparently am not very good at it since this is the third error that's caused problems for people, lol. Hopefully everything should be working now and you can post comments again, inshallah. Apologies to all :) :bonk: :bonk: :bonk:

changes to comment procedure

Since the denial of service attack on my site two weeks ago, I've implemented a variety of changes to my comments system in order to protect against a similar attack in the future. Most of these changes are behind the scenes and don't affect ordinary visitors and commentors in any way. However, two changes that I've made this weekend will affect you if you wish to leave a comment. 1) Commenting is now a two-stage process. After you've typed your comment, you have to click on a button called "Spell-Check". This will take you to a new page where you can review your comment and make any desired changes. As a bonus, your comment is also run through a spell-checker (the spell-check functionality has been around for many months, but was previously optional). Only after this stage can you post your comment. 2) On the spell-check page, you must also enter a security code. This should be pretty easy for most folks. You will see an image with a number in it. Enter the number exactly as you see it in the form field below it. This should be pretty straight-forward, it just requires a little extra work from you. The reason I've implemented these changes is that although they are straight-forward for a human being entering a comment directly, they should be effective in slowing down or stopping automated comment submission scripts like the one that was used in the DOS attack against me. If you are using a text-only browser or do not have images displayed in your browser (unlikely in this day and age) or if you have special accessability needs (possible) you may not be able to view the security code image. If so, you won't be able to post comments. However, you are free as always to email me. Please let me know if you experience any problems with the new comment procedure. Thanks for your patience, and I apologize for any inconvenience. Note 1: More tech details available at my MT tips blog, for those who are interested. Note 2: While I was at it, I made some substantial modifications to my comment posting template which was horribly cluttered. Hopefully the new version is more user-friendly, inshallah, and this makes up for the extra hassle in commenting.

the niqabi paralegal is back (the blog, that is)

Last year, I set up a law blog (blawg) called The Niqabi Paralegal. The blog was intended to address "legal issues facing Muslims in the United States and other topics of interest". I was quite active in posting to it while I was still in school getting my paralegal training, because I had the time and the resources to do research just for fun. However, the blog lapsed last fall when I started volunteering at NWIRP and wasn't updated in about four or five months. Now I have a new job, and one that involves producing news releases and other types of legal writing - about issues that specifically affect Muslims. So I've revived The Niqabi Paralegal and posted some of my writings for Solidarity USA to the blog, those that are meant for public release. Inshallah, I hope to continue posting my releases and similar writings for those who are interested in it.