Shahed, I think you're doing a great job. I totally hear you about full time student, job and kids; I got two toddlers myself…

I remember when Ahmed and Jawad kept MWU going. One of the things that attracted me to it despite the sometimes Leftist political content was that there were smart people who didn't require I support their politics in order to have good mutual learning experiences with regard to Muslim issues and Islamic theology. I had initially deteremined to discuss only Muslim issues and disregard all political items, until people started spouting stuff about where I was deployed to, which I knew for sure to be untrue. I've liberalized quite alot because of that experience.

I had a one of the women there gently correct me about my sometimes acerbic tone, and I'm eternally grateful she did. If only others would take the same lesson…

But, I was quite disappointed when they let it go in the aftermath of the PMUNA infighting debacle. They let all the mean-spiritedness get them down and so, it seems, they quit from the pressure. I don't want to see that happen to other Muslim websites where sanity and reason reign; it would set our community back quite a bit!

I understand your committment to free speech, which is why I fight fire with fire. The problem is that those two or three commentors are little more than spoilers who go the distance to spread intellectual intimidation. I fear that in the distribes between me and them, alot of other voices get drowned out. Thus the problem is not disagreement and dissent, because I learn alot from people who disagree with me and poke holes in my positions, and in the real world, that's a "Good Thing" (tm). The problem is there isn't alot of arguing going on; but there's a tremendous amount of vitriol involved in personal attacks, most of which are so ludicrously out of touch and assumptive that sometimes I just bust out laughing, seriously. But, to let that continue is to permit an atmosphere of intimidation which is all too familiar among us: brow beat non-Muslims and especially other Muslims who break the unspoken code of tribal groupthink so that such opinions will not be publicly expressed anymore. Thus, I suspect DrM in particular to be one such active spoiler. Instead of attacking you, he attacks any and every progressive, modernist or liberal opinion (and others) in order to dominate the comments so as to project the impression that 'no Muslims agree with these articles or thier liberal/progressive/modernist/realist ideas'. So, I don't think its as innocent as an off-balance commentor; its an active campaign of intimidation and I would hate to see yet another good magazine/site fade away because of Islamist and fundamentalist assaults.

I mean, the guidelines for commenting are there, but if they are ignored by people constantly resorting to ad hominem attacks without correction by the editor, then what use are they?

Anyway, I do professional webdesign and coding on the side. I think altmuslim.com looks pretty good and its design doesn't distract me from the content; it loads fast, has just enough graphics, good use of the alt="" attribute of the img tag and other such good attributes. pMachine is OK as far as content management goes, just don't drink the Kool-Aid of a bloated Moveable Type install ;-) My only comment would be to maybe increase the default font size in the body text by maybe a point or two.