The Benevolent Dictator - No, Not Kim Jung Il, ME<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"As Salaamu Alaikum and good morning all.\u00a0 It's about 9 am here in Virginia.\u00a0 Kids are off to school, smaller ones are ensconced in front of the TV\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/muslimahinprogress\/2011\/12\/the-benevolent-dictator-no-not-kim-jung-il-me.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Benevolent Dictator - No, Not Kim Jung Il, ME\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As Salaamu Alaikum and good morning all.\u00a0 It's about 9 am here in Virginia.\u00a0 Kids are off to school, smaller ones are ensconced in front of the TV\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/muslimahinprogress\/2011\/12\/the-benevolent-dictator-no-not-kim-jung-il-me.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Muslimah in Progress\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-12-19T14:31:31+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.com\/blogs\/muslimahinprogress\/files\/2011\/10\/bismillah2.jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Nancy Qualls-Shehata\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Nancy Qualls-Shehata\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/muslimahinprogress\/2011\/12\/the-benevolent-dictator-no-not-kim-jung-il-me.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/muslimahinprogress\/2011\/12\/the-benevolent-dictator-no-not-kim-jung-il-me.html\",\"name\":\"The Benevolent Dictator - No, Not Kim Jung Il, ME\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/muslimahinprogress\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2011-12-19T14:31:31+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2011-12-19T14:31:31+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/muslimahinprogress\/#\/schema\/person\/6218cbef696f8f6c933831dfcc2096b9\"},\"description\":\"As Salaamu Alaikum and good morning all.\u00a0 It's about 9 am here in Virginia.\u00a0 Kids are off to school, smaller ones are ensconced in front of the TV\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/muslimahinprogress\/2011\/12\/the-benevolent-dictator-no-not-kim-jung-il-me.html#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/muslimahinprogress\/2011\/12\/the-benevolent-dictator-no-not-kim-jung-il-me.html\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/muslimahinprogress\/2011\/12\/the-benevolent-dictator-no-not-kim-jung-il-me.html#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/muslimahinprogress\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"The Benevolent Dictator – No, Not Kim Jung Il, ME\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/muslimahinprogress\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/muslimahinprogress\/\",\"name\":\"Muslimah in Progress\",\"description\":\"I'm an American Muslimah of a certain age with some pretty strong opinions. 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{"id":203,"date":"2011-12-19T09:31:31","date_gmt":"2011-12-19T14:31:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/muslimahinprogress\/?p=203"},"modified":"2011-12-19T09:31:31","modified_gmt":"2011-12-19T14:31:31","slug":"the-benevolent-dictator-no-not-kim-jung-il-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/muslimahinprogress\/2011\/12\/the-benevolent-dictator-no-not-kim-jung-il-me.html","title":{"rendered":"The Benevolent Dictator – No, Not Kim Jung Il, ME"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

$\"\"$ <\/a>As Salaamu Alaikum and good morning all.\u00a0 It\u2019s about 9 am here in Virginia.\u00a0 Kids are off to school, smaller ones are ensconced in front of the TV watching cartoons.\u00a0 The cats are milling about hoping someone drops a frosted flake on the floor.\u00a0 I am here this morning to confess to being a really disorganized person.\u00a0\u00a0 It affects all areas of my life.\u00a0 I start something, forget what I was doing, go back later and have to start again.\u00a0 I do it with this blog, too.\u00a0 Sometimes I\u2019ll post more than one day in a row.\u00a0 One time I even posted twice in one day, wow!\u00a0 But then I\u2019ll get busy dealing with a sick kid or someone\u2019s spelling bee or something, and then I\u2019ll come back a week later or more to pick up where I left off.<\/p>\n

Well, when I did that, I didn\u2019t realize that comments had been automatically approved for all my posts.\u00a0 Now, being human, I love to hear positive feedback from people and the kind words really gave me a warm glow.\u00a0 But in among those were a lot of comments that were, shall we say, not very nice.\u00a0 I was\u00a0 shocked to see so many<\/em> comments.\u00a0 I guess that my visibility is higher since I\u2019m here at Patheos instead of over at Blogspot, and I\u2019m being seen by A LOT more non-Muslims.\u00a0 That\u2019s a good thing, but it is also natural that a blog written by an unapologetic Muslim will attract some caramel-covered nut balls as well.\u00a0\u00a0 I am here to tell the nut balls to go away.<\/p>\n

I have switched my settings so that I have to approve comments now, and I will be very, very selective on what gets through.\u00a0 If someone raises an honest point or criticism, I reserve the right to use the comment in a following blog post so that I can answer the comment in a full, thoughtful manner.\u00a0 If someone is just blowing off steam, as happened with my post about wanting Sharia law in the universe, well, you are more than welcome to create your own blog and then you can bloviate to your heart\u2019s content.<\/p>\n

I do want to say a very big \u201cJazaak Allah Khair\u201d to some Muslims who worked in the comments to refute those who had negative things to say.\u00a0 I appreciate your efforts, but I don\u2019t want the comments section to be a forum in itself for debating Islam.\u00a0 My blog is not a place to debate Islam; it is a place for me to PRESENT Islam.\u00a0 You are welcome to agree or disagree, but I won\u2019t let everyone have a piece of me.\u00a0 My blog brings me pleasure and I will hit the \u201ctrash\u201d key really fast in order to avoid being brought down by something hateful, or even something that\u2019s not hateful but just ignorant.\u00a0 No doubt that will whittle the comments way down, but that\u2019s why my blog is a dictatorship, not a democracy.<\/p>\n

Aha!\u00a0 You say.\u00a0 I KNEW she was against democracy.\u00a0 See, she wants to bring Sharia law even to her blog!\u00a0 Well, duh.\u00a0 Of course I want my blog to be a place of Islamic values, and that includes not allowing nasty people to post lies about Islam.\u00a0 I promise to read thoughtful comments even when they don\u2019t agree with me.\u00a0 I will do my best, in my disorganized fashion, to post regularly so that if something I wrote previously was unclear, I can try to clarify.\u00a0 That\u2019s the best I can do.\u00a0 And trust me, I think I\u2019m doing pretty good.<\/p>\n

Even while I was writing this very post, I was interrupted by 1. preschooler wanting cereal with NO milk and a cup of milk on the side 2. toddler with a dirty diaper who then wanted to nurse 3. customer coming to pick up item he had bought 4. circuit breaker tripping and cutting off electricity to half the house and making me think, for one panicked moment, that my blog post went \u201cpoof\u201d 5. preschooler going potty and needing me to help her clean up, and 6. toddler just now climbing up into my lap to see what I\u2019m doing.\u00a0 So, on the whole, considering all the distractions, I think I did okay, huh?<\/p>\n

I deleted ALL the comments, good, bad, and ugly, and will try to keep up with them more on a day-to-day basis, though I\u2019m not promising anything.\u00a0 The kids will be on winter break in a couple of days and nothing is better at disrupting my literary muse than a house full of screaming kids chasing the cats.\u00a0 But, that\u2019s life.\u00a0 We can only take it one day at a time, apologize for the mistakes, and then keep plugging away.\u00a0 I\u2019ll see you next posting, inshaAllah.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"