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ABOUT THE AWARDS  |  CONTACT US

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2005/1426  |  2004/1425

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We started the Brass Crescent Awards in 2004 with the purpose of promoting the best writing of the Muslim web and exposing them to a greater number of readers, and with your help we seem to have succeeded. We are humbled and overwhelmed by the response that the awards have been given by the nominees, winners, and voters, and hope to improve and expand the awards to more effectively serve the growing community of Muslim bloggers.

The Brass Crescent Awards are awarded on an annual basis, based on the Islamic calendar. Nominations begin immediately after Ramadan, with a panel of judges narrowing the nominees down to five in each category. Voting then begins and concludes shortly before Eid al-Adha, when the winners in each category are announced.

Our methodology

There are three ways in which awards such as these can be given. One way is to make all the decisions ourselves, with or without a board of judges, and simply present them without having a vote. The second is to let the process be completely open, and let people vote for any site, with the highest number of votes for any site prevailing. We feel the first method is too authoritarian, and does not tap into the energy of the blogosphere to promote the winning sites. The second is basically a popularity contest, which does not necessarily promote the best writing and opens the awards up to potential abuse.

In keeping with the goal of promoting the best of the Muslim blogosphere, we've settled on a hybrid of the two:
  • Readers nominate their favorite blogs to the Brass Crescent Awards
  • A panel of judges will validate the pool of nominees to select the five finalists
  • Readers will then vote for the top blogs in each category
We do not select or deny nominees on the basis of ideology, as this conflicts with our goal of highlighting the diversity of the Muslim blogosphere. So long as nominees consider themselves to be working in the best interests of Muslims and/or Muslim/non-Muslim relations, and are accepted as such by the bulk of their readers, they will be eligible for nomination to the BCA, in the spirit of the Qur'anic injunction to "compete, then, with one another in doing good works" (5:48).
The judging process

Our panel of judges reflect the talent and diversity of the Muslim blogosphere, and are accomplished bloggers themselves, as well as past winners of the Brass Crescent Awards:All judges have agreed to pull their respective blogs from consideration for the BCA awards. Together with BCA founders Shahed Amanullah and Aziz Poonawalla, the panel of judges will select, on a consensus basis if possible, final sites out of the nominee pool based on the following criteria:
  • Quality of writing/production
  • Popularity in the blogosphere (as measured by comments, links, Technorati score, etc.)
  • Suitability for category
  • Previous participation (i.e. no past nominees in the "new" category)
  • Nominations in other categories (limit to three total)
If you have any questions or comments about how the Brass Crescent Awards are run, please contact us.
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