Introduction

I’ve decided to stop writing and thinking in 140 characters or less.

I still consider Twitter the best way to keep up with news and some of the best commentary from my favorite op-ed writers, bloggers, and editors, but I think it’s lost its efficacy as a means of sharing opinions.

About a month and a half ago around the time of the Paris Attacks, I made a series of posts on that platform that caught the eye of several of my followers. The posts were mostly expressions of sorrow for the city I once called home and had grown to love, but I had also written a series of tweets expressing anger at those Muslims and scholars who immediately urged spectators to not blame Islam. One even went as far as to say that “Muslims are not perfect, but Islam is.” That was, in my humble opinion, the straw that broke the camel’s back.

It seemed disgraceful to post messages urging acceptance of Muslim beliefs only moments after self-described adherents of these beliefs had terrorized the City of Lights. I took to my own profile to criticize those who had immediately stood by their faith and refused to question whether the tenets of that faith could have had anything at all to do with the massacres. Followers of mine took issue with what they considered bigoted and hateful or at least misinformed speech that demonized Islam and placed undue blame on the faith; they insisted that blame lay with the individual criminals while I insisted their violence had points of origin in the religious faith they espoused.

The argument with one follower in particular turned out to be hugely productive but that specific one had moved beyond the public twittersphere into our direct messages where the platform had just recently removed character limits.

We discussed everything from the events in Paris to more complex discussions on American relations in the Middle East and even more generally the role of Muslims in the larger crisis within the faith.

It proved a wonderful exchange and convinced me that Twitter was just no longer the avenue through which I wanted to express my ideas and have meaningful conversations not because I didn’t want to but because the medium itself didn’t lend itself to that form of social interaction. Luckily, friends of mine had posted through this medium, Medium, before, and I quickly familiarized myself with the formatting and am ready to start this New Year on the right track.

That track includes a promise to myself that I will post here at least once weekly on any subject I find interesting or worthy of exploration. The posts I make here will always be drafts because I’ll always continue revising, editing, and never really finalizing and etching in stone my opinion because I refuse to believe that will ever be a productive exercise. I truly believe that the only right opinion in the constantly evolving one, the one that grows as it’s proponents do. So heres to the New Year and a new year of more thoughtful exchange and a more meaningful interaction with the world at large.