  Today's urlLink Ramadan Journal features a mother's hilarious comments about the secret added benefit of the holy season's fasts: finally losing those pesky ten pounds!
As long as your at the Journal, stick around for urlLink this essay , which discusses the western world's influence on Islam with a fast food analogy: "All of the sophistry of our past can be swept under the rug of the contemporary feel-good fast-food-Islam literature. For the first time in Islamic history we have an institution (The Saudi Council of Esteemed Religious Scholars, or whatever they call themselves) which can tell us (the lay people) what Islam is and how to follow it. " The author argues that modern Muslims are buying into the single-dose peddlers of their religion, a la Islam for Idiots, at the expense of truly studying and understanding what they believe.
I see his point, and yet, I also feel the advent of this new form of religious literature offers a wider variety of media through which the average Muslim can approach his or her religion, which might encourage those who would never study their belief system at all, instead just following what they are told or tradition without critical examination. 
