Year 2012 and 2013 in summary

Notable articles in

2012
January: Batriya sect, Khawarij and Ibn Arabi the Sufi
February: Zaydi sects and a propaganda documentary
March - June: Mutazila sect
July: Syrian sects
August: Safavid

2013
March: Islamic politics or the Iranian Wilayah al-Faqih system
April - May: Islamic terrorism
June: Iranian Presidential election and the Shia of Iraqi vs Iranian
November: Criticism of Iranian leadership

Restructuring work

The bad news is I've not done any restructuring on my blog since 2012. Probably missed this one due to the blog shutoff between august 2012 - Feb 2013.

Good news is thanks to the shutdown, I didn't get to write a lot of articles so the restructuring work should be easy.

So far, I've update the index under the Zaydi and Battriya sects here
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Couple of articles have been added under the index Batinis especially about the Qaramite sect

Couple of update under the Kharajites and Waqifa sects

As far as what's not being updated are articles about Shia, Sunni, Mutazila or Salafi. Articles on these sects tend to grow the most on my blog because I've most interest in writing them. You should be able to get to everything about these sects via the header on the top of my blog.

References
http://researchintoothersects.blogspot.com/p/index-to-shia-pages.html
http://researchintoothersects.blogspot.com/p/other-sects.html
http://researchintoothersects.blogspot.com/p/kharajite-sufi.html

Unpleasant tasks ahead

End of the year is generally when I restructure my blog.

The process takes a long time and sometimes that's not very pleasant for me.

Afterward, I create a summary of written articles, what I've accomplished this year and what my visitors like to see on my blog.

While I can see the value of going back through each of my posts and linking them to indexing pages for easy retrieval but this work can also be a waste of my time; my time could be better spent writing new articles rather than revisiting old work. Besides, my earlier research about Islamic sects has almost nothing to do with most of my recent posts which are generally about politics, social, current events and sometimes completely random stuffs.

I definitely will continue my work in researching other sects but I don't plan to delve too deep into any single sect. I do feel the need to keep my sects related materials only at introductory level.

I also believe that some ideas (religious or non) are very interesting and I pursue them because doesn't matter what is the origin of it, if it's worthwhile then we should learn and know it.

References
http://researchintoothersects.blogspot.com/2011/12/restructuring-blog.html
http://researchintoothersects.blogspot.com/2011/12/this-is-taking-longer-than-i-originally.html
http://researchintoothersects.blogspot.com/2012/01/finally-done.html
http://researchintoothersects.blogspot.com/2012/01/end-of-year-report.html

Just like everything else in Christianity

Christmas also has nothing to do with Jesus or Christianity. It was supposedly a pagan holiday related to the winter festival related to a bunch of superstition. I’ve seen efforts by some apologetic Christians to de-link Christmas from the stigma of being a ‘pagan’ holiday by quoting a bunch of vague and obscure narratives/snippets about early Christian’s festivity and passages from the bible to give a ‘Christian’ spin on the holiday. Unfortunately or maybe fortunately, really depend on how you choose to look at it, Christmas is soo commercialized nowadays that no one really cares about the religious or the pagan significance of the day.

While the western world has standardized Christmas to fall exactly on Dec 25th, other Christians like the Orthodox Church prefer to celebrate Christmas on January 7.

Noteworthy comments

I sometimes get very interesting and thoughtful comments from my readers. I, of course, don't get to respond them in a timely manner because I sometimes disappear from my blogs for days or weeks, I'm busy working on other interesting topics, due to a diversity of topics on my blog I may not be in the mood or ready for that comment or I may ignore it for a while...only because I know I'll respond better when I'm not tired, hungry, sad or lazy.

A recent noteworthy comment that you may want to check out is in this topic

I do appreciate my readers who take the time to read and respond to my articles. Don't get upset if we don't see eye to eye on most issues.