In the olden days i remember how great it used to be when speakers used to visit the UK. I remember the first time i attended the JIMAS conference and my amazement that Bilal Philips was just strolling around the bazaar area buying odd bits and bobs, and it was totally OK with him if you walked up to him and started a chat with him.
As the years passed, it became usual to see brothers like Ali al-Timimi & Jamal Zarabozo and Salim al-Amry stop for a chat outside the conference hall and within 5 minutes find them surrounded by over 100 people also wanting to listen in to the conversation. You would have brothers stopping them to reminisce over old times, others wanting to ask questions, and others just wanting to argue with them about some political issue. But the fact is that they were very open to hanging out with the rank-and-file brothers. The JIMAS conference became legendary amongst brothers because if you were bold enough you could get together in a group and go to the speakers dorms and chat with them from the early evening through to past midnight. Those were the days.
Fast forward to today, and it seems to me that many speakers seem aloof to rank-and-file brothers. They don’t really mix with them, or stop to chat with them as speakers used to in the olden days. Sometimes its because the organisers of conferences shepherd speakers away as soon as their lectures are over, acting like bodyguards around a popstar. I’m sure the speakers could come up with plausible excuses for why they don’t mix as much, but its one reason that i would prefer the old speakers over the newer ones any day.
Brass Crescent awards 2007
Voting has opened for this year’s Brass Crescent awards and they’ve listed a few cool blogs which i’d forgotten about and some that i’ve never visited before. I’m quite keen to see who’ll win the best group blog award. I think it’ll be MuslimMatters because of its general appeal (not to mention the excellent team of authors), though i actually voted for Austrolabe because of their excellent commentary on issues in the news where Muslims are involved.
