Brass Crescent links roundup: carnivals of the Islamsphere

The Brass Crescent Awards were a great success - but you don't need to wait another year to sample the best of the Islampshere. Thabit of Muslims Under Progress (who won an Honorable Mention in the Best Thinker category) is hosting the next State of the Ummah blog carnival (as you may recall, Umm Yasmin of Dervish blog hosted the first SotUmmah carnival last year). The SotUmmah is a nice complement to the Brass Crescent Awards, since the former will occur a number of times throughout the year and be focused more at the level of individual posts, and posts on given themes, rather than at the blog level like the Awards.

In fact, the theme of this SotUmmah is Beyond hatred and apologia: contemporary Muslim responses to sacrilegious treatments of Islam. As Thabet explains:

The Danish "cartoon controversy" has become a huge story. The publication of those cartoons have been blown out of all proportion, but the issues raised are real enough. Of course, this isn't the first time such a "clash" has occurred. For this reason I've decided on a topic which revolves around Muslim responses to productions (novels, plays, visual arts) that are deemed sacrilegious. The emphasis is on responses to the arts, because equally offensive material is produced every year under the guise of news, history or politics, but there are no such widespread angry response (these might be considered worse because they are being passed off as "fact"). As the theme of the Carnival suggests, I am looking for those posts which engage with the issues, not merely suggest they stand for "free speech" or "against Islamophobia". Posts needn't be limited to the recent Danish controversy, although I suspect most of them will be about those 'toons (which, as an individual who grew up reading comics and watching animation, I have to say are aesthetically unpleasant. That's twice the insult!).

Blogging carnivals are driven primarily by submissions by the authors themselves - in other words, a chance for you to promote your own work. To participate, simply send an email to thestateoftheummah [at] yahoo [dot] co [dot] uk with the following information:

- The name of your blog with a link (with a hyperlink).
- The title of your submitted post and a link to the post (with a hyperlink).
- A couple of sentences to describe your submitted post (which may be edited by the host).
- Optional (for host and blogger): a trackback link.

NOTE: Submission deadline is March 6th.

In addition to the SotUmmah, the group blog Living Tradition (which won a Brass Crescent Award in the Best Group Blog category) is also hosting a blog carnival, dedicated to the Prophet of Islam, Mohammed Rasulullah SAW. The carnival is entitled In Honor of the Prophet and is a truly wonderful collection of tributes.

I consider it a source of pride that these two blog carnivals are how we in the Islamsphere have responded to the Danish cartoon issue. The one is our assertion in favor of our dignity in the face of gratuitous insult levied at ourselves and our Prophet SAW. The other is an outpouring of love, a triumph of the infinite Deen against the vulgarities of Dunya.

Let me also take time to mention the most recent Carnival of the Liberated, hosted by Dave Schuler at Dean's World, which regularly features the voices of Iraqi bloggers across the spectrum. In any roundup of Islamsphere carnivals, the CotL deserves equal standing, and Dave sincere kudos for his tireless work in that regard.

No word on whether the Brass Donkey Awards will be held this year or not. We can only hope. Surely the jafis must be given their due...