I’ve recently been involved in some extensive remodelling for a web application. Modelling applications is a big part of what I do for a living, but this one was special. It’s massive, and really, for the first time, I had myself thinking if we should use a framework to do the reconstruction work that would follow the remodelling. Of course, without wasting any time on the history of why we were remodelling (it’s a different subject, really) – I figured I should share when to use a PHP framework, as opposed to why to use it or why not to use it – there are many articles out there that address those 2 issues, but they are generally abstract by nature because at the end of the day, you have to, in the position  you are in, decide whether or not you want to use one.

Before starting the framework discussion, though, you must ask yourself if you’re using any particular kind of software architecture. In the web world, you’re most likely better off using MVC driven architecture or some variation of a three tier architecture. This is important, because the popular PHP frameworks (and probably all the PHP frameworks) including CodeIgniter, Cake, Symfony, Zend, etc. are built on the MVC architecture.

I must preface the remainder of this article by saying that I’m not someone who breathes and lives code – I enjoy doing it, but I’m more of a big picture, pragmatic kind of guy. I like things to work, I like my apps to be scalable and I do write a lot of code myself, even if it is generally at the prototyping level or at the very focus’d level when someone in the team gets stuck.

Back to deciding on architecture. I’m involved in 2 kinds of projects – a big project which is essentially an in-house application. We have a dedicated team behind this, we have our own code base, our own requirements, and I didn’t think MVC was the best fit for this (I’ll explain why in a bit), so for this application, we decided to not use any PHP frameworks. The other side of the business which requires me to look after application development includes building smaller, custom web apps for other businesses. This development team, in particular, works on 12-20 different projects in a year. These aren’t long-lasting projects. We don’t need to maintain a dedicated code base for them. For these projects, it makes sense to use an existing MVC framework and rely on someone else’s code base (assuming you think they will continue to support it).

As with all things IT, web, or software – there is no absolute right. You have to do what works for you.

Why I decided to not use a framework for what we would consider a major web application is something that requires more discussion than I don’t think MVC works and I want our own code base. You see, to me, the web is rather simple. A web application consists of requests that the application receives from a user and a data or interface that is served back to the user who made the request.  MVC is a nifty way of structuring your application code so you can separate the business logic from the database and the interface, but it does come at the expense of performance, and I think it is unnecessary. For most applications, the request is made and served by the view – so I think letting the controller make decisions is, well, tedious and probably unnecessary. If you make your view smart enough to know what the model needs and requires, you can effectively eliminate the Controller layer in the MVC sense. Note, however, that you can’t really do this if you are building a generic framework which defines a way for a community to code websites or applications. It’s an architectural preference (choosing to not use MVC), and whilst it has performance and preferential benefits, in terms of framework abstraction, it will leave something to be desired. But that is the beauty of being a software company that’s building its own product as opposed to a product that others will code with – we know exactly what our application needs to do and when, so generic is not really a concern. If any of that makes sense, it is in this kind of a scenario, where you don’t really want to use MVC architecture, that I think you don’t need to use a framework.

In all other scenarios, where you don’t have the budget to maintain a dedicated code base, or the need or desire to deviate from generally accepted architecture / design models, using a PHP framework just makes good, pragmatic sense.

At some point, I will make the effort to document the architecture that I am working on and perhaps discuss it. It’s a mixture of MVC and MVP, but in my view, more simplified. In fact, I think that it will make the shift for procedural PHP developers to OO programming easier as it attempts to approach the application in a linear fashion, whilst still splitting the practical code into views, business logic and a database layer.

For now, though, I hope that this brief insight into how I made the decision may be of use to you too.

I’m personally not a big fan of PPC advertising online, unless you can really hone in on your audience. Facebook and LinkedIn provide you this, but the statistics leave much to be desired. With time, though, one of the big things with advertising businesses like Google Adwords, AdBrite and others is behaviour based advertising.

Whilst is may sound like behaviour based advertising is a great idea – well, it’s really a blackhole that will suck your advertising budget why. But first, for those who don’t know, let me explain what this is.

Behaviour (or behavior in the US) Based Advertising

So you’re browsing the internet and you come across something you like, or click on a certain link or ad and land on a website which may be of interest to you. A cookie gets generated and stored on your machine. Now, until you clear your browser history and delete this business or company knows you visited their site, and each time you land on a site that uses a network that these guys advertise with, you’ll see their ad – over and over again. Confused. Here’s a scenario:

You visit website X to see a product. You don’t buy it and you leave the site. Then you come land on Asifism.com, which has Google Adwords ads on it. If website X advertises with Google Adwords, you’ll see a website X ad on Asifism.com any other website that uses Google Adwords until you clear your cookies.

So, what’s the problem? Well, this may be great because marketing experts (also known as morons, sometimes) claim that it takes 3-5 times for someone to see your ad or message before they will act on it. It’s a bit like suggesting an idea to a visitor again an again until it becomes acceptable. So, if you sell a web app that may have been of interest to someone, and you float your ad to them long enough, they may just come and sign up. And this is where the problem begins.

The Problem

I’ve recently been trying out a bunch of CRM applications. I personally think MS Dynamics CRM is great, but it’s quite comprehensive and a tad bit costly, especially if you start piling up some users. So, I researched a whole bunch of these CRMs at work and decided I’ll sign up for a couple of them. But I didn’t sign up on the same machine I browsed the websites with. I signed up using another PC. Now I spend 8 hours a day doing various things on the internet and keep seeing ads for a CRM application for which I’m running on a free trial. I conveniently click on the add and end up on their website. If, after 15 days, I decide I don’t want to use their service, they’ve probably paid at least $2-3 each time I clicked on the add and got zero business out of it.

So why do businesses do it?

Probably because they don’t realise that this really is not that brilliant a marketing tactic.

I’ve received repeated mail and invites from marketing experts who’re going train you on how to use this to your benefit – don’t buy their baloney. Ultimately, as the advertiser, you can’t do much to stop me from seeing your ad once the ad network picks up that cookie and starts displaying your ad. In fact, if I am a competitor and know that you are using behaviour based advertising, well, I can run out your PPC daily allowance rather quickly.

Advertising on Facebook, for instance, is just as risky. The same person can see your ad 10 times and come visit your site 10 times and not sign up. Or, they could keep clicking on the ad and coming to your site to log-in to their account. Until these kind of, well, holes in the system can be addressed, I recommend staying away from behaviour based advertising.

Besides, PPC is not for everyone. More businesses now probably shutdown because of how much money they spend on Google Adwords than make a killing. It’s not 2001 anymore!

As someone who oversees the development of various browser based applications on a daily basis, I commonly come across the dilemma of using objected oriented or procedural programming with PHP myself. Since the advent of PHP 5, the use of classes and objects has become a privilege that was previously not available to PHP developers. Developers have always argued that no matter what, object oriented programming is the right and only way to go forward.

Yet, there is a plethora of PHP developers who refuse to change their ways and focus on developing under the procedural methodology. I have long been of the opinion the right methodology is driven by the nature, scope and goals of the project. Many will disagree, but saying that using object oriented methodologies for writing all or any scripts is like saying you want the best for nothing. Everything has a cost, and software development is not different.

Robert Peake is an internationally renowned developer who regularly writes for Dev Zine, and he has put together a long, comprehensive article on what the differences are between projects that require procedural programming and projects that can, perhaps, afford the luxury of object oriented programming. I happen to agree with him.

The concept of object oriented program is great. The application is even better. But like all philosophically powerful abstract concepts, object oriented programming will take longer, cost more money, and in many cases, will execute a lot slower than code written in a procedural fashion. That said, I believe, the following is a very brief, and by no means fully comprehensive, list of characteristics to consider when building applications with PHP 5 under either of the methodologies:

There are several other factors to consider, but the above should give you a very basic idea of how this works. Most business applications are mission, time and budget driven. Therefore, the chances that the business will spend extra money quality code (which usually doesn’t mean much to a business user) and go with the object oriented methodology are slim to none. This is the reason why most software houses develop code using procedural methodologies with PHP.

Ultimately, it is up to the customer to make the choice between paying more and waiting more for a product that will do the same, but may become useful and less expensive later on. It’s not always the case of a wise investment, so many businesses don’t particularly care. Usually, though, it should be the decision of the project manager, keeping in mind the scope, nature and goals of the application in question.

However, what cannot be overlooked is there are some very powerful and widely used open source applications written using object oriented methodologies. Developers who embark upon such projects do so with the goal of creating good quality code. The reason why such applications become so popular and widely used, however, is that they are based on objects and are highly adaptable and easy to understand. Unfortunately, it’s not always possible to use this approach in business programming, because the end result is usually more important than the journey.

Personally, it is one of those dilemmas which breaks my heart. That said, choosing the right methodology can make or break your software or your business. You should, therefore, always pick your software and technology partner carefully.

This article is reproduced from one of our other websites which is no longer active. It was written a couple of years ago.

I’ve been a great PayPal customer for over 7 years. With multiple paid accounts and thousands of dollars in activity every year, I have finally made the conscious decision to no more use PayPal as our primary credit card processing system. It took getting bitten by the snake for me, but we had already been warned.

The internet has many websites dedicated to why you shouldn’t use PayPal, yet the millions of users who use PayPal are proof of the fact that PayPal is, in fact, not all a scam. It was a useful product, and it is for many people looking to accept credit cards without going through too much legal or banking hassle (which differs from country to country and it really is painful in some countries).

But when you start making larger transactions and you have no one speak to over the phone who can make decisions or tell you what happened or why something didn’t happen, it is bad – really, really, bad. Customer service at PayPal is highly questionable – and for the reasons detailed below, I have come to the conclusion that at a commercial level, PayPal really does, for the serious customer, suck. Here is why:

1. High Charges. PayPal may be easier to setup (even for the newbie webmaster – if you’re not going for seamless / invisible  integration) – but it comes at a cost.  The charges are high, especially when compared to to other larger merchants in the US and UK. Take authorize.net or SagePay or WorldPay – PayPal will lose every time.
2. Documentation. OK, this really is not reason enough. To be honest, for PayPal Pro, PayPal offered MORE functionality and BETTER documentation. But it still wasn’t enough. SagePay is OK, but WorldPay can definitely use some improvement in this department. Trouble is, they all discourage you from taking credit card payments on your website for online merchants – because they don’t get to advertise their brand!
3. Customer Service is Dead. Non existent at PayPal. We remitted money to someone abroad, about $1,500 worth. PayPal debited our account twice. Over the phone (after a call that probably cost us about $8 in phone charges), they conceded their mistake. In writing, they ignored us and continue to do so. Is it worth taking to court? Perhaps not, but it is unacceptable. Whilst we didn’t lose the money, this was a stupid mistake and one that upset our bank. The worst part was the staff’s incompetence.
4. Expensive Phone Support. Yeah, call a premium number. This is only available to PayPal Pro users and you have to call a paid number to get support. Greedy bastards is the term that comes to mind.
5. Incompetent Email Support.The kind of answers they wrote to us in emails would cause embarrassment to a company owned by any American (unless it’s HP). Pathetic.
6. Funds Release Time. For PayPal Pro accounts, PayPal held 20% of our money for up to 90 days. 3 months. There’s only ONE word for that: bullshit. With our new provider, the money hits our account in 72 hours.

I have to be honest – the deal breaker for us was the bad service. I’m not saying that WorldPay or SagePay have genius’ filling in their tech support, but at least they’re there and they respond. Also, if there is a billing problem, you have an account manager you can call or email or speak to. That’s not to say they will solve the issue or address it promptly, but you have someone to hold accountable. At PayPal, you don’t – and they take advantage of it.

This is really a simple one – you can harness the true power of twitter by saving yourself time and NOT using it.

Really, the best you can get from Twitter is by reading this and other articles like it and not being sucked into the black hole that is Twitter. Save yourself time and do something that’s really productive.

And grow up – no body on Twitter gives a toss about what you had for breakfast, where your last meeting was or where you are now headed on the train.

Now, if you just want to feel and look important, get in touch and I’ll show you how to rack up thousands of followers. Most of Social Media is based around you scratch my back, I scratch yours.

And I won’t charge you a dime for it. I just want to expose this stuff so fewer people in my line of work bother me about this obsession with twitter.

Having run businesses in 3 continents now, I can safely say that UK businesses need to do some things differently. They seriously need to come out of the dark ages if they want to compete in the global market – especially if they want to do what Americans have done with global business. Devious tactics, haggling and delaying payments doesn’t particularly attract quality vendors and that’s something most businesses fail to see. If price is consistently going to be the primary denominator of choosing a vendor or service, that already poses problems, but even then there are rules of business that British businessmen and businesswomen need to follow, at least to gain our respect and get our services.

1. STOP ASKING FOR PAYMENT TERMS.

UK businesses have the deranged habit of asking for payment terms AFTER the work is complete. Look – let’s grow up. If you’re hiring someone for 15 months, it is fair to ask for 30 day payment terms on each monthly invoice. But if someone’s doing fixed price work for you, you pay after the work is done – it’s that simple. What the hell do you need 30 days for to pay AFTER the work is done? If you want that, NO good vendor will want your business, which is why there are just a HANDFUL of good vendors in the UK in every industry. So, make sure you have money before you want to buy and be prepared to pay upon delivery and, perhaps, a deposit upfront.

2. COMMIT TO WHAT YOU WANT

British entrepreneurs and businessmen have slim to none decision making abilities. They seldom know what they want, and even if they do, they’re so unsure of themselves that they don’t want to commit to a scope of work. It’s particularly true of the software industry here. If you don’t know what exactly you, then you can’t get a fixed price – it’s that simple. Stop wasting our time. If you can’t commit to a scope of work, we can’t commit to a price. If you want your product to evolve over time, you have to agree to open terms – possibly on a SCRUM or some other form of Agile project management model. Of course, locals have no sense of this – bureaucracy and the pitfalls of PRINCE2 run deep in the British business bloodline, and both of these things will ensure that British business NEVER takes the lead in technology.

3. HAVE THE COURTESY TO RESPOND TO EMAILS

The concept of not responding to your emails for days at a time is very foreign to me. It’s not like they don’t check it, they just don’t respond. And then, a week later, to save face, they have to lie by saying “oh it never arrived.” Bullshit. It’s only polite to tell someone you have received the email and are going to respond soon – for whatever reason. But ignoring emails or telephone calls is just plain rude. Have the courtesy to say no – it will save you time. If you think you need to be crafty about your response – then inform the other person of the time you will take to respond. The point is – don’t be a moron – it’s bad for your business and will drive away any vendor with some self esteem (there’s just a few of these around – so you’ll get on with like minded folks just fine).

4. SAY SOMETHING MEANINGFUL OR JUST SHUT UP

Before I moved to the UK, I had only witnessed this problem with American lawyers and some of my Muslim comrades in the Middle East and Indian Sub-Continent. However, in Britain, no one ever says or writes something that makes sense and no one ever tells you when something will get done. Let me give you an example – if you ask someone when they will be able to send through a signed document, they’ll start explaining the process of who has to sign and how many secretaries and assistants someone else has – 20 minutes later there will still be no date or time. What a waste of time. When I took up my first job in the UK, my superiors would try and force me to send ambiguous emails to HQ in the US. Why? No one wants to be accountable for the rubbish they do. It’s bad news, folks. Things will catch up – you ever wonder why Brtain is not still leading the world? Let’s try and fix that rather laundering meaningless prose.

5. STOP HAGGLING AT SUB-CONTINTENT RATES

The Americans had their sweep of outsourcing technology to the Indian Sub-Continent almost a decade ago. After a couple of years, they realized it was a major screw-up, so the bigger players settled for offshoring and the smaller and medium ones decided it was better to do it right and do it in the west. British businesses, however, are plain cheap. Their attitude toward negotiating and haggling reminds me of a poster I saw at a computer peripherals store in Dubai – it read “Quality is free.” Needless to say, I didn’t buy anything there. I can’t tell you how many times people in London have told me that I should work at Indian rates or they can go to India. By all means, you should all feel free to outsource to India or Pakistan or anywhere else – and then like most of them, when you’ve lost your money, you can come back to us and pay us more. We offshore, but we know what we’re doing and we charge for it. What part of you pay for what you get do British businessmen not get? The message here is clear: pay what we ask for – we’ll let you know if we can offer a discount – otherwise we don’t want your business. Britons who haggle a lot make for difficult clients and are professionals at all the debauchery mentioned sections 1 to 4 of this article. Best to steer clear of cheap folks – sometimes you can tell by the way they talk. Sorry, this is not meant to be a racist comment, but if you use ‘me’ and ‘my’ interchangably, you should never be allowed in international business.

LATEST UPDATE: As many of you are majorly sick and tired of Skype’s BAD customer service and have talked for ions about suing Skype, I can help put together a case, but we need to establish that people are serious about seeing this through. If, therefore, you are serious about suing Skype or want to take the matter further, I suggest that you:

1. Post a comment with your issue;
2. Please file a complaint with the FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection on https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/FTC_Wizard.aspx?Lang=en (if you get confirmation number, please include it in step 3); and
3. Please send an email to skype@asifism.com explaining what your issue was and how you think Skype either violated their terms of service or mistreated you, aside from the fact that they take your money but refuse to speak with you.

————————————————-

The Skype Manager, which is supposed to allow businesses to manage numbers for business use, has had technical problems now for 72 hours. Skype has not had the decency to inform members of this. Users who’s numbers have expired are NOT able to renew them, and customer service refuses to help or do it for them.

I have had a chat twice with customer service. They refuse to help, give a timeframe for the solution, or even give the name or email address of someone to write to or compain. I have no sent a couple of tweets to Josh Silverman, the CEO of Skype. I am hoping he sets a better standard of professionalism than his customer service staff have done.

It is agains the law and the agreement Skype has with its customers to TAKE your money and not offer service. Our lines have now been down for 3 days, and Skype takes no responsibility. You would think a company like Skype would take responsibility for its actions, but here is an excerpt from my chat with an Andrea TB from customer service:

Me says
I will ask you one last time to:
Me says
Either renew our number
Me says
Get me a name and telephone number
Andrea T. B. says
Neither is possibly, I am sorry.
Me says
or just let me know your name and that of your supervisor so I can mention that in my email to
Josh.
Andrea T. B. says
*possible*
Andrea T. B. says
I cannot give you full names.
anawaz82 says
So you are refusing to help me or offer any service?
Andrea T. B. says
I am not refusing to help you, however, I am unable to do so.
Me says
You are refusing to give me a phone number and refusing to disclose your name.
Me says
Those are not things you are unable to do, those are things you are unwilling to do.
Me says
So, are you unwilling to help me?
Andrea T. B. says
I cannot give you a number as we do not have one and I am not allowed to give out full names.
Andrea T. B. says
In this case, yes, I am.
Me says
So in both cases you are unwilling to help me.
Me says
Can you give me a number?
Andrea T. B. says
In the phone number’s and full names’ cases, I am.
Me says
Basically, you are either unable to or unwilling to help, correct?
Me says
Despite the fact that I pay Skype money for service?
Andrea T. B. says
Yes.

And there you have it. For spending about £500 a year with Skype, this is what you get – incompetent customer service personnel. Perhaps we will be filing a small business claim for damages and switching to an alternative – as soon as possible.

I have used digg on and off for the last few years. During this tine, digg has in some way contributed to the traffic on asifism.com too, but my latest attempts to use it have been anything but successful.

As you may already know, digg has redone the UI and changed the way some things work, but the basic principle is the same (sharing content for those of you who are wondering). Now, first of all, going live with an extremely buggy interface on a website that’s dealing with 25 million unique visitors a month is just not wise, so I can’t for the life of me figure out why they would do that.

Then, digg has fallen victim to the same fallacy that so many other web applications do: the excessive use of AJAX. Seriously, I do not want twitter type error messages that come down from the top of the screen. I was, and I am sure others were too, perfectly okay with the application digging through a submission and always working, as opposed to saying it can’t get content from the URL.

Let’s put it this way: I’ve tried to submit 20 articles to digg over the last couple of days and on only one occasion was I able to post something. Why do people insist on using AJAX where it is not required?

People at Digg, the whole point is to improve the user experience, not to destroy it.

Those of you who are big social media fanatics and live in the world of one man entrepreneurs are probably well versed with social media and all the nonsensical talk that goes along with it. Until now, I had been quite patient, putting up with all the crap that we all get fed by social media experts who serious overrate their own value.

As business has taken off over the years and I’m no more flying solo, I’ve taken the time of to personally indulge in some of the ‘so called’ marketing and contact enhancing techniques that so many businesses swear by. Now I started my business in London online – I got my first client because of social media and the millions of online marketing tools out there, and for years I have been hearing these online marketing, SEO and Social Media Consultants talk shit. Frankly, now I’m a little bored of it.

A couple of weeks ago I attended a networking event in Central London. As with many networking events across this wonderfully pathetic city (see this article for more details), you’re expected to give your 40 or 60 second pitch summarizing your business and then you’re supposed to listen to 20 more people and pretend to really care. Then we had this social media and online ‘guru’ tell us about how you can and must use online marketing to enhance your presence and gain market share. He, like the many others, talked about how he had made a living doing this and why all the others should do it. Like the billions of such experts available today, he charges you a set fee to manage your social media presence initially and TRAIN you on how to do it – then you’re on your own. At this point, I didn’t say anything. I’m not one to bash technology, but I will take a shot at any salesman 7 days a week.

A few days later,  on one of the business forums in London, another such online specialist had posted a message asking what complaint business owners primarily had with online media – why they struggled to manage their social media presence and campaigns. That’s a ridiculously pathetic question, and every person who sets up a business doing this get rich quick stuff needs to be shot dead. They’re a bunch of lying morons and should not be given a dime.

Now let me tell you why you should not talk to these experts. First rule of thumb is those who can’t do, teach. So if someone is willing to teach you for £1,000 how twitter and facebook work and how you should go by getting followers and fans, tell them to fuck themselves. You don’t need 1000 twitter followers to run a business, and if it was this effective having 5,000 facebook fans, this person would actually be doing real business with all these fans and followers rather than preaching how to gain a following. The same applies to general sales and marketing consultants too. Here’s how you get a good expert or consultant – ask him to generate a sale for you and take a big percentage. If he’s that good, he’ll accept. If he wants to take money to teach you so you can continue to get rich on your own, he’s an asshole, not an educator.

So, back to social media. Let me tell you a little secret about this industry – besides all the lying scammers that promote it, trying to market in social media is like a drop in the ocean. If you’re going to do this, you have to make it count. If you’re a small business with real work to do, don’t bother much with it. If you’ve got time, sure, but if you don’t leave it be.

I’ve recently setup a personal twitter account on http://twitter.com/cynicalhoot. Our corporate accounts only have under 100 followers each, and although we’ve got very little business from them, they’re there because as a business you’re judged by all this rubbish – because of all the scamming morons and the low IQ individuals who generally tend to fall for their scams. Think about it, twitter experts say you’ve got to make your posts count, you’ve got care about the people who follow you. Frankly, I don’t think most of these people have more than 3 friends in life they really care about, and if you delude yourself by thinking that 1,000 people actually care about what you say and they’re gullible enough to believe you actually care about them by following them on twitter, well, stop reading and go on wasting your life. Just because you have 1000 followers does not mean they all read what you tweet; they certainly don’t give a toss. It’s just a good way to get your ego boosted. A major part of the twitter following is you scratch my back and I will scratch yours. Follow me and I’ll follow you. Then you’ve got these morons who will literally spam twitter with posts. Well, guess what, those of us who have work to do don’t really want to read your shit. So fuck off and don’t tell me what your plans are for tonight!

Now, for all those twitter success stories. Out of the hundreds of millions of people who use twitter, there have only been a few successes. The truth is, it is really not worth the effort for most small businesses. Yes, it’s a channel you must  keep open as it’s just another source that could get you business, but you’ll be much better off trying to understand a target market and go after them. If you tweet prospects, how seriously do you think they’ll actually treat you? If you disagree, good for you. Just don’t preach the social media religion to me, and don’t make it out to be what it’s not in public, or I’ll call you out.

I’ll leave LinkedIn out of this discussion. It’s actually an OK tool and as long as it doesn’t turn into an eAcademy, I’ll feel safe using it. Facebook is OK for business. Again, it’s not something you should spend your life on UNLESS you sell consumer products. If you sell B2B products, social media is just another way of getting some brand recognition, like getting your logo printed on t shirts or coffee cups. The chances of that converting to cash in the near future are slim – very slim.

So, if you really want to use social media networks to get business, research your market, find the people who need what you sell, define your unique selling points and know WHY they should buy from you, and then initiate contact with them. People always buy from people because they get something worth getting. Nobody who knows anything about twitter or facebook will buy from you just because you have thousands of fans and followers. Almost everyone who’s willing to kiss ass can accumulate followers – that doesn’t mean they’re good at running their business or doing good work. Just like talk, social media is free, so there’s way too much noise in this industry.

Ignore it and confront the liars.

Over the last few days I’ve had the whole boycott facebook thing turn up everywhere I see over a dozen times. Because of this whole draw Muhammad thing, some countries even blocked access to the social networking site for a few days. I’ve seen some rather interesting discussions about why people shouldn’t boycott facebook and why the Danish or Swedish or who ever the hell started this rubbish should or should not draw facebook. Whilst I will be the first one to concede that in none of these discussions any of my pro Islamic friends was able to explain WHY people shouldn’t draw Prophet Muhammad, I found one remark from a pro drawing person to be quite interesting. He stated that “the appearance of Muhammad as they draw it is a matter of historic fact and should not be ommitted from history.” The absolute incompetence of this statement, along with the failure of those who vehemently oppose the idea to explain why the prophet should not be drawn, have resulted in this article.

Let’s get some history right. The last time European artists decided to draw religious history, they drew Christ. Somehow, whether this is sheer incompetence or the shame that would be bestowed upon the then ‘white’ europeans, Christ turned up really white with blue eyes and blond hair. To this day, the entire Christian world deludes itself with this appearance of Christ, with few of them knowing where he was actually born. In case you’re wondering: Christ was born in what is now Palestine – yes, those middle eastern terrorists. So these artists who plan on drawing Muhammad this time around certainly have no authority when it comes to drawing a religious figure. If European drawings of the 21st century were to depict history the way it truly were, then they today would be drawing and painting Christ (and I hope I’m forgiven for saying this) of the same colour, skin tone and features as terrorists that they today show on TV as suicide bombers. That’s an accurate depiction, one that would bring shame to any decent Christian.

Now that we’ve clarified the skill and drawing abilities of these artists, let’s have a chat about why Muslims in general oppose the idea of drawing Prophet Muhammad. You see, human beings in general have the tendency to idolize things. It was because of idolatory (of the pharaonic form) that Judaism was revealed. It was for the same reason that Christianity and the Islam were brought to the people. Trouble is, when Muslims try to explain this, they refer to ‘Shirk’ – and none of our non-arabic speaking reason loving friends in the west understand that term. Put simply, the reason why you shouldn’t have any illustrations of Prophet Muhammad is because people may actually start to worship him instead of God – something that many Muslims believe the Christian world is guilty of in the case of Christ. Perhaps if Christ was never painted (no matter how inaccurately), there wouldn’t be the concept of a son of God – we certainly wouldn’t know what face to associate with him. The entire premise of Islam sits on the Oneness of God and worshipping or idolizing any other human being (including Prophets Muhammad and Christ) is a sin. The fact that you create an illustration of Muhammad increases the chances of him being idolized. Therefore, it was decided (perhaps by early caliphs – and this is history I’m not really familiar with) that no physical images or portraits of the prophet would be kept. All these Muslims are asking is that you respect this and don’t promote the potential idolizaton.

The modern intellectual would argue with that – they do with everything. Argument, after all, is a sign of intelligence in the 21st century. Perhaps that’s why the world is on the verge of destruction – the intellectual deficiencies of western leaders and philosophers is only taking the west towards the dark ages again as Arab nations are picking up speed. I’ll bet that got your intellectual temper flowing – see if I care.