Here is the first post in a new column called Islamify Inspires where we will be highlighting interesting posts from Islamify.

Islamic Scholars Impersonated by Children

This was absolutely hilarious and I wish I could see the full version. The make-up done on these children was done professionally and the talent was apparent. Having the scholars there and seeing their reaction was priceless as well. Zakir Naik, AbdurRahman Green and several others were there . They did an impression of Yasir Qadhi but you only got to see a short clip of it.

Grand Theft Life by Suhaib Webb

Shaykh Suhaib warns Muslims against the evils of the Grand Theft Auto video game series and against wasting their time but the real shocker in this piece was the quote: “I’m ashamed to admit that my exposure to this game was limited until I began to travel the Muslim world.” Wild man, Subhanallah!!!

Canadian Union of Postal Workers Campaign Against Israeli Apartheid

This was truly inspiring. According to the article this is “the first time a country-wide labour union in North America has voted to participate in the global campaign against apartheid in Palestine, CUPW’s resolution represents a critical juncture for the involvement of North American labour in this campaign.”

“Verily, the victory of ALLAH is near!”

This gives me hope that when the Muslim reconquer Jerusalem for the second time it will be as the first, a bloodless victory inshallah.

Critics Cost Muslim Educator Her Dream School

While this article is about Debbie Almontaser’s dilemma after being forced to resign due to the media’s branding her secular school project, a radical madrasa, what really stood out was a quote from Daniel Pipes. He warned against “lawful Islamists” who are conducting a “soft jihad” against America by “working through the system — the school system, the media, the religious organizations, the government, businesses and the like — [to] promote radical Islam.”

I don’t need to tell you how outrageous that sounds. Apparently, even the nonviolent participation of Muslims in American society is dangerous!

Imam Siraj to Give Khutbah in Defense of America’s Imam

This one is about some important activism. If you are in the area of Newark, New Jersey you should come down, at least for the Jumaa salat if you are able to lend your support to the beloved Imam Mohammad Qatanani who is unjustly facing deportation. I call him America’s Imam because he is the model of what an Imam in America should be. His efforts in helping the Muslim community are tireless as are his civic and interfaith activities. Because of his reputation high profile Rabbis, Priests and politicians, including Governor Corzine of New Jersey, have given him public support. Help out or spread the word. inshallah.

Well that’s all for the first edition of Islamify Inspires, if there is anything on Islamify that inspires you please comment and let us know.

Go and check out sister Shirien’s latest post on EgyptianGumbo.com. She discusses the use of Stumbleupon to increase traffic to her blog and for marketing purposes. Inshallah, in the future the Islamify blog will be discussing StumbleUpon in more detail but this should serve as a good introduction.

While I thought that tags where self-explanatory I have gotten questions asking me to explain them and tag related phenomenon so I thought that a post describing them would be beneficial.

Essentially, tags are a form of metadata which is data about data. The internet is just one mass of unorganized information and the challenge that many social media web services are tackling is how to organize that data and make it easily accessible.

Search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Live were at the front lines for helping people find what they were looking for on the internet. But now with Web 2.0 and the rise of social media web sites like Islamify, Digg and Del.icio.us, the use of tags has become an important and more efficient means to organize user submitted data.

To take Islamify as an example, whenever someone submits an article they must also submit tags, which are basically words that describe the article in a relevant way. For example, this is an article which was submitted to Islamify.com: “Morocco trains female imams to spread moderate Islam.” The tags in this case could be “morocco, imams, women, moderate islam.” This allows searchers to easily find articles that they are looking for or topics they are interested in.

Tags are also increasingly used to organize data in ways that are more in tune with the way people think. For example, the email organizing system that Gmail uses is essentially based on tagging except that tags are called labels. When filing away your email you can put several labels on one message. This allows you to place one email in several different categories making it superior to a filing system that forces you to decide on only one place to file information that might be relevant across many different topics.

Another popular use of tags is to create a tag cloud which organizes tags on the basis of popularity. A tag is represented with larger type and bolder font the more often it is used. This gives you a visual representation of the hottest topics on a blog or social media site.

Check out the tag cloud on Islamify.com and find articles that interest you.

Was this article helpful? Are there other questions you might have that we can answer? Please let us know in the comments.

If you have been on Facebook lately you are probably tired of receiving invites to applications that are haraam (forbidden) or even pointless. You know what I’m talking about, when was the last time you used “Superpoke!” for a halal reason? There so many Facebook apps revolving around poking other people: foreign poke, office poke, kinky poke, karma poke, naughty poke, poke pro, desi poke, dive poke, gift poke, pet poke, poke stats, poke wars and the list goes on for a total of 177 applications. Yes, that’s right, 177 applications dedicated to poking.

Well, here’s some good news. Believe it or not, there is a small but growing trend of Muslims creating Islam related Facebook applications that can actually benefit other Muslims. At the moment there are about 20 such applications. Twenty applications sounds like a lot and can really cramp your Facebook profile, but lucky for you I have compiled the top four Muslim Facebook apps here for you in no particular order ;).

1. Islamify.com by Islamify.com

This app is the number one Muslim news application on Facebook. The Islamify team set up this application so that the top stories from Islamify.com, a Muslim Social News site, show up on your Facebook profile. This gives you instant access to the hottest Islam related news right from an automatically updated application.

2. Quran Verses by Abdullah Arif

Add verses from the Noble Qur’an to your profile from over 23 languages! This application offers great flexibility in choosing the suras (chapters) from which to choose the verses, the number of verses to display, among many other options!

3. Hadith by Khaleel Mughal
This application will display a random Hadith (saying of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) on your profile, allow you to search for hadith and bookmark your favorites, its also in English and Arabic!

4. The Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) Quotes and Teachings by ByteSize
This application allows you to get the words and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad on your profile and phone!

There you have it. Now you can use these apps to enrich yourself or for dawah through your Facebook profile. Inshallah these apps will become as viral as “Superpoke!” and spread like wildfire through Facebook. It’s all in your hands. I’ve linked the above list directly to their corresponding apps, so don’t forget to click on the ones you want!

Are there any other Facebook apps we might have missed? Comment and share them with us.

Ladies and gentlemen, do you feel a little left out of the loop with your ignorance of RSS. Well, never fear, we here at the Islamify blog want to help and so here is a little video explanation that should do the trick of telling you all that you need to know.

For those of you who prefer to read a description rather than see it, scroll down past the video. When you’re done subscribe to our RSS feed by clicking on the image to the right for the latest from the Islamify team. Continue reading »

After putting this off for quite some time we have finally launched the official blog for Islamify.com the number one Muslim Social News Site. Not only do we want to provide our fans with updated news and about the goings on of Islamify but we want to be available to field questions and suggestions about the site.

Also, we have hopes to educate our fans about internet technology and services so they may develop into more savvy web surfers.

If you have any questions that you want us to address or just want to show your love then please let us know in the comments section.

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