Assalaamu’Alaikum wa Rahmatullaahi wa Barakatuhu.

Comment Policy:

1. Please use names that are clearly pseudonyms. Names like “Concerned Muslim/ah” are acceptable. Names like “Anna,” even if it’s not your real name, are not. We don’t want to give the idea that commenters are giving up, or being asked to give up, their anonymity, especially when the commenter is a female. Consider this your Internet Hijab.
   • If you neglect to provide a suitable pseudonym, one will be provided for you. You may not like the pseudonym we choose, so to avoid that, just pick one you like from the get-go.
2. Please refrain from getting into sectarian differences or excessive argumentation. Differences in the Ummah are a blessing…let’s not turn them into a curse.
3. If you’d like to make a point strongly, with emphasis, please avoid using all caps. ALL CAPS INDICATE THAT A PERSON MUST REALLY BE STRESSED OUT TO BE ABLE TO TOLERATE SUCH UNCOMFORTABLE WRITING. All caps are generally difficult to read, very hard on eyes peering at a screen, and should be used incredibly sparingly. Commonly, all caps are “known” to indicate that the person is yelling. And nobody wants to be yelled at, right? However, sometimes we do want to indicate an inflection in tone (because who really speaks in a monotone) for emphasis.
   • So, how do you emphasize a point without using all caps? Most people are comfortable with bold-face or italicized words, to make the same point, without the increased volume (even if the volume is just in your own head). Here is how you can achieve these effects in our comment box, and you can practice them in the comment box on this page (we’ll delete your practice comments later, if you wish):
     • Bold: Enclose the words you wish to bold in these tags: <b> and </b>. So, I’m showing you bold would be typed like this:
       • <b>I’m showing you bold!</b>
     • Italics: Enclose the words you wish to italicize within these tags: <i> and </i>. So, I’m showing you italics! would be typed like this:
       • <i>I’m showing you italics!</i>
     • Both: Enclose the words you wish to bold in these tags: <b> and </b>. So, I’m showing you bold and italics! would be typed like this:
       • <b><i>I’m showing you bold and italics!</i></b> OR <i><b>I’m showing you bold and italics!</b></i>

       but never like this (look closely to figure out the pattern you should avoid):

       • <b><i>I’m showing you bold and italics!</b></i> or <i><b>I’m showing you bold and italics!</i></b>
   • The Admins will overlook use of CAPS when they are sparingly used and it’s clear that the intent is not to yell or be disagreeable. We’re simply not bored or malicious enough to chase down innocent uses of the caps lock key.
4. Please do not leave your email addresses in the text of your comment. The only people who are likely to contact you are spammers, and anybody else who actually would is probably weird, because why else would anyone contact someone they don’t know from a bar of soap?
5. Please do not use foul or abusive language. It feels a bit lame having to type this rule out on an Islamic website, but what can we do? Such is our sorry state. And maybe we just want to make this really long and official-looking.
6. Please hold the multiple exclamation points. One exclamation point usually does the job much more effectively. Anything more just looks, again, excessive, overdone, and very like yelling. It’s weird; we won’t do anything bad to you like ban you or anything for this offense, we’ll just think that you don’t know when to stop.
7. Please maintain as courteous a relationship with each other as possible. Just because you don’t see the person on the other side of the screen doesn’t mean it’s just a screen. There are people with hearts, with feelings, and connections to Allah who are reading your words. Let them develop good feelings about the community, and please don’t break down the good feelings they already have.
   • On a related note, let the Admins be the bad guys; we’ll reprimand, scold, ban, etc. All you need to do is sit back with a hot cup of coffee (winter) or a tall iced tea (summer) and enjoy learning from the website. If you’d like to bring some behavior to our attention, please drop us a line through the Contact form.
   • Please remember that bad public behavior will get a public scolding. It’s not personal, just expedient. If we emailed every single person and admonished them privately, then we wouldn’t even have time to catch our breaths, because then we’d have long chains of back and forth emails explaining why you did what you did, and how it really was not wrong what you did.  It would be like being in a court of law all of sudden. And that’s just no fun for anyone. Please forgive us if your feelings gets hurt when we have to occasionally scold you every now and then.
8. Please keep from posting rumors, gossip, idle speculation, and anything not useful to anybody but yourself. Weird stuff just makes more work for us, and more work makes us cranky. Crankiness, of course, results in you being scolded. You being scolded, naturally, makes you very unhappy. So, prevent your own unhappiness by being useful, not useless.

Question Policy:

1. Please submit a question once, and once only. Sending the same question five times with five different names will decrease the possibility of the question being answered, which is probably not the effect you were going after.
2. Please ask questions that are relevant to you, and you only. Questions about a third party’s problems in Sweden are not really relevant to either you or the person you’re talking about. Sometimes, we’ll need to ask you a question to further clarify what you mean…if the question is not about you, you probably won’t be able to give us the details we might need to serve your needs best. And if the third party does not think there’s a problem, then you’re probably just wasting your time on things that won’t be resolved.
3. Please use a genuine email address. If we need to ask you a follow up question, we won’t be able to do so without a real email address. Then, you’ll wonder why we’re not answering your question and send your question again…and again…and again. And we won’t be able to tell you why we can’t answer your question, increasing your own frustration and causing you to think that we’re just being mean by not addressing your very important problem.

These policies will evolve as time goes. If you’re not getting an answer to a question, you probably fall into one of these categories. InshaAllah, following these guidelines will result in a more pleasant experience for you and us. JazakumAllahu kullu khair.

Wasalaam.