You can go in and change it yourself and say what you like. There is an edit tab. Click it and describe yourself to your heart’s content. That is what Wikipedia is there for. The idea is that people will enter content, and other folks will add to or correct that content until you have a reliable and up to date encyclopedia. And so they do. Librarians now suggest students look at Wikipedia instead of the more standard Encyclopedias these days.

Now if your question is “why” did I mark you a conservative? It certainly has nothing to do with your politics but rather your religious orientation as I have observed in your posts. Conservative is not an insult, by the way. To me, it means you take Islamic law and theology seriously. To borrow from Catholicism, I do not see you as a “cafeteria” Muslim. You do not pick and choose what you like but rather assume there is a larger tradition and a broader community you are working with that are rooted in the Qur’an and the Sunna. I consider myself a conservative-progressive .

My sincerest apologies for tagging you innappropriately. These descriptions are always inadequate and ultimately incorrect even when chosen oneself. I’m going to have to sort out what “conservative-progressive” means now. Let alone “progressive.” If it makes you feel any better, Mike Knight chided me as I wrote the entry up quickly one day saying “Don’t use ‘conservative’. What does that mean?” Indeed.

My apologies.

how convinient??? thats the problem with language.it has started to take on ugly meanings and forms after 9/11. conservative, fundementalist,liberal…where as, if we were to think clearly they are harmless words that have been put to use so lethally.
thank you mr bush

be open to change,but never give up your values

Oh God! Laury is Spartacus! I'm sorry, if I had any idea it was you I would have been curious, as opposed to horrified. I was envisioning an anti-traditionalist sitting in a benighted basement somewhere in Woodstock.

Do you get up for fajr? It must be 4AM where you are. I'm impressed.

I thought about changing the entry myself but wondered if that was against protocol. I assume that since you wrote the PI entry (which I'm glad you did) it's all right to write or edit things about oneself? I guess it was the journalist gene telling me it would be a conflict of interest; looking now I can see they don't prohibit writing about your own activities. (Which is good in an encyclopedia; better dozens of warring agendas than one overarching agenda.) I assumed that since they have an email address for corrections and inaccuracies, they wanted you to go to them directly.

I totally see what you're saying, and if that's how you mean conservative then that's exactly what I am. (And if you are too, then I'm in good company!) I was alarmed because I think that outside the discussion within Islam—ie, to the average American or Brit or Canadian—the words 'conservative Muslim' mean 'absolute psycho'. The media commonly calls sheikhs like Muhhamad Sharaf ed-Din, who is nothing if not frightening, conservative Muslims. It's become the polite way to refer to a Muslim who does not engage in violence (that's a 'radical Muslim') but who advocates extreme or ascetic theology, much like a 'conservative Christian'...Pat Buchanan or Jerry Falwell, for instance.

I always thought that within the discussion of modern Islam, Muslims whose personal practice was fairly traditional but whose politics were fairly Left were 'liberal Muslims'. That's what I remember the breakdown being like at the various prog media outlets; a 'progressive Muslim' was one who was non-traditional in personal practice and way left in politics. (Or, alternately, a neocon. I never did figure out how that flew.) That's a simplistic breakdown and clearly a lot of people reacted to it, and what we have now sounds more like what you're describing.

I'm glad we had this talk, because I was bitching to an editor at the NY Times last week about this very subject, and he thought it was interesting enough to warrant an op-ed somewhere, if I could find a way to write about it un-polemically. It was only because I was feeling saucy and wanted to be polemical that I wrote about it here. Thank God I did.

I absolutely love how you described me Laury!

Willow: I had the same reaction: Huh? And then when I found out it was Laury I was like, Oh well then it should be fine.

I wanted to describe myself as “42 and Fab,” but thought that would be a bit too much. Danke Barak, I thought that description suited you! Glad you like it.

I think the rule is just tell the truth as you see it and use documentary evidence to support yourself. I think if you went in, Willow, and described yourself as you do above as in the non-psycho part that would be great. You know it would reveal a lot to folks about what a problem these terms are.

I just changed something in my dad’s entry. Long term fight over his birth name. Fans really believe it was one thing and it wasn’t! I just went in and said “Some people believe….but there is not any documentary evidence to support it.” Let one of them see if they can find his birth certificate! Born in 1911 in Brownsville from FOB-Ellis Island parents who spoke almost no English. I’d like to see that birth certificate!

Well, someone just described me in the ‘contributors’ section. Please take a look everyone. I will certainly not permit myself to be painted like this! time for some in-fighting!

http://www.progressiveislam.org/contributors

oh wait, i wrote that.

This is Ali’s way of rebuking me for being high strung. ;)

I’m going to go look up your Dad’s entry now, Laury—that sounds too interesting to pass up.

I think you should absolutely describe yourself as 42 and fab. There’s no such thing as too much.

The real question is, what the hell do I do with the nice blank space next to my name? Change it to “unemployed loser with dipoloma and debt”?

How about self-employed freelancer with diploma and a slight cash-offset problem? ;)