Brass Crescent Award Winners

On behalf of both alt.muslim and City of Brass, we'd like to thank everyone who voted (over 250 validated ballots cast!) in the First Annual Brass Crescent Awards. Voting was very close in most categories, and we would like to be the first to congratulate our winners and Honorable Mentions, as well as extend our thanks to all the nominees and voters for helping make this celebration of the Islamsphere a success. We also would like to thank Crooked Timber, A Fistful of Euros, Ideofact, Head Heeb, Amygdala, Left Edge North, Liberals Against Terrorism, Velveteen Rabbi and all the others (including the nominees) who linked to us and helped publicize the Brass Crescent Awards.

We'll keep a permanent list of nominees for the Brass Crescent Awards available, as they represent a dynamic, creative, and powerful cross-section of Muslim thought on the web. We fully expect next year's crop of nominees to be just as interesting, if not more so, than this year's candidates. We plan to run the Awards again next year, inshallah, so start bookmarking posts, series, comments, and blogs now!

Winners and Honorable Mentions may email us or leave a comment below to receive HTML code to display a badge announcing their achievement if they desire.

Let's not keep you waiting any longer - listed below are this year's winners and Honorable Mentions. (In cases where the second place candidates were tied, we jointly awarded Honorable Mentions):

BEST BLOG:
Winner: avari/nameh
Honorable Mentions: Abdusalaam Al-Hindi and veiled4Allah

BEST WRITING:
Winner: Haroon Moghul (avari/nameh)
Honorable Mentions: Thabet (Muslims Under Progress) and Zack Ajmal (Procrastination)

BEST POST:
Winner: Haroon Moghul (avari/nameh),
Explaining the Mideast to the Midwest
Honorable Mention: Abdusalaam Al-Hindi, Driving while menstruating

BEST SERIES:
Winner: Leila M on Muharram
Honorable Mention: Zack Ajmal on Marriage

BEST IRAQI BLOGGER:
Winner: Riverbend (Baghdad Burning)
Honorable Mention: Aunt Najma (A Star From Mosul)

BEST NON-ENGLISH BLOG:
Winner: Asif Iqbal (Asif Iqbal's Multi-Lingual Blog)
Honorable Mention: Zack Ajmal (Procrastination)

BEST GROUP BLOG:
Winner: Muslims Under Progress
Honorable Mention: HU

MOST DESERVING OF WIDER RECOGNITION:
Winner: Chapati Mystery
Honorable Mentions: Ethnically Incorrect and Mere Islam

BEST NON-MUSLIM BLOG:
Winner: Juan Cole (Informed Comment)
Honorable Mention: Abu Aardvark

BEST NEW BLOG:
Winner: Malo's Adventures
Honorable Mention: PakPositive

BEST COMMENTER:
Winner: Silent Spring
Honorable Mention: Al Muhajabah (veiled4Allah)

BEST THINKER:
Winner: Silent Spring
Honorable Mention: Razib Khan

BEST FEMALE BLOG:
Winner: A Dervish's Du'a
Honorable Mention: Sister Scorpion

Mubarak to all winners and nominees! Please let us know your comments about the Awards, suggestions for new/obsolete categores, etc in the comments below.