Eid Ka Chand - The Crescent Moon

Hi folks - my deep apologies for not getting to this sooner!
I totalled the amounts in the reciepts forwarded to me by sponsors of the Eid-al-Thon that we held last year to raise funds for the survivors of the Pakistan earthquake, and, thanks to several generous doners who contributed more than their pledged commitment, we managed to raise...

45 Pound Sterling, 5,000 Yen, and $1,655!!!!

(It is possible that we have also raised an additional $72.50 - if you're one of the people whom I PMed yesterday asking for a copy of your reciept, just let me know and I can add your amount to our final tally.)

Once again, a huge thanks you to both all the generous sponsors, and the fan creaters who produced the many fanworks that helped raise this money.

Also remember, the collection at AO3 is open for submissions of fic centering around a fictional Muslim character all year round, and in addition has subcollections for each year of the Eid-al-Fitr challenge.

I'd also like to mention that the lovely azuire and kairia will be taking over as the mods of this comm since I need to step down, and will be running the Eid-al-Thon in August this year.

Once again, thank you everyone for your support of this comm!

It's around 24 hours to Eid depending on your time zone, and we will close our challenge at the end of 13th September. And here are some really important numbers concerning our sponsorship for the Pakistan floods -

10 fanvids can raise $100
20 pieces of fanart can raise $100
10 pieces of meta can raise $100
25 fanfics of over 1,000 words each can raise $350

And 50 fanworks can raise - $625

Please, please help us reach this number. Persuade friends to write a short story. Ask them to draw your favourite heroine. Tell them to write up some meta about why a particular character or movie or book is awesome.

Our challenge is awesome and we love it, but being able to give some necessary aid to people devastated by the floods is even more awesome and important. And we have the ability to do this.

Please help us make this happen.

If you are writing fiction, post it to the AO3 collection. If you are making fanart, vids, meta or anything else, you can post it to your own journals, to this comm or both, just make sure to link to it in the master post of fanworks we will be making early on the 11th.

It is almost two weeks into Ramadan, and two weeks to Eid-al_Fitr. We hope your creations for our festival are going well!

We would also like to throw in our support of fannish fundraising efforts (such as help_pakistan) for the terrible floods that have killed over 1,500 people in Pakistan and displaced more than a million. What has been especially troubling for kairia and me has been seeing a link between Islamophic perceptions of Pakistanis as 'terrorists' and 'honour-killing savages' and an apathetic desire to 'let them die'.

As you know, one very crucial goal of our fanworks challenge has been to increase the responsible representation of Muslims in fandom, because we know the real world effects of what distortions and erasures in the media we consume can have.

So we would like to encourage you to support this challenge, and at the same time support the much more pressing and urgent need in Pakistan, by signing up to sponsor our Challenge.

How it works:

• You comment to this entry, making a pledge to donate a certain amount of money per fanwork generated. You can put conditions on your pledge, such as "I promise to donate $2 for every piece of fanfiction over 1,000 words", or "I will donate ₤5 for every fan vid, ₤3 for every fanart, ₤2 for every icon post", or "I will donate ¥1 for every fanwork up to a total of ¥30".
  
• On September 11th we will post a master list of all the fanworks created for the challenge, with a breakdown by type.
  
• By the end of September 12th, we will reply to your pledges telling you the amount you have committed to donating.
  
• We ask that you, when possible, send us reciepts of your donations, so that we can post the actual amount of money raised by this challenge. You can email them to dhobikikutti@dreamwidth.org with private info blacked out; all information will be kept confidential.
  
• The charities we are encouraging donations to are Edhi Foundation, Relief4Pakistan, or the organisations listed here.

Please do help us get the word out for this double challenge; we need both generous donors who will sponsor fanworks, as well as enthusiastic fans committed to increasing the number of fanworks in our challenge!

daysofawesome runs a similar ficathon as ours for Rosh Hashanah, and their mod has a great idea - the second day of Rosh Hashanah falls on the same day as Eid-ul-Fitr, and she suggests writing a crossover fic with both Jewish and Muslim characters. We'd wholeheartedly recommend signing up for that ficathon as well, at least to write the challenge fic.

Eid is less than a week away, so do consider snagging an icon or two to promote the festival, and encourage your friends to write something for our ficathon!

International Blog Against Racism Week (IBARW) started this Monday. We would like to support it, and use this opportunity to point out that Ramadan is approaching - starting around the 21st of August, 2009, and culminating in Eid, which will be celebrated around the 20th of September, 2009, depending on geographical locations and moon sightings.

Not all Muslim characters are non-white/characters of colour. However, a significant majority in the eyes of the white, Western media are -- and the link between Islamophobia and racism is pernicious and pervasive.

In looking back at the previous years our sister comm eid_fic tried to generate effort in an Eid ficathon, it's disappointing how few responses there were. Seeing responses to other ficathons that have very specific requirements (zombies! threesomes! obscure multi volume canon for pinch hit!), we know that fandom is certainly capable of rising to the challenge of writing beyond their comfort zone, as long as they feel the interest in doing so.

We'd like to ask you to help us generate interest.

If you have reviews of books or movies with Muslim characters, post or link to them, and tell us what names to add to our master list.
Write or repost meta analysis about the intersection of Islam and race/culture in a source you enjoy reading/watching.
Think of a character you can talk about, and write an intro post, or do a picspam.
Make icons to share with other fans.

We're not looking for everything to happen this week. What we'd love is to have commitments from enough people to be able to guarantee a post a day through the 28 days of Ramadan... posts that hopefully incite a larger response for the celebratory Eid ficathon.

Although my co-mod shewhohashope is Muslim, I am not, and I have had to deal with unpacking my own ignorance, getting over my own fear, and overcoming my privilege to write Muslim characters. Celebrating Eid is personal for me because it is a festival I share with friends and relatives, but wanting to see more characters like them in fandom is political. Because I think that fiction has enormous possibilities for inciting change in how we define "normal", and whom we learn to love and care for despite differences in culture.

Welcome to Eid ka Chand, which translates to "The Moon of Eid" from Hindi. This community is a place to discuss the representation of Islam and Muslim characters in fictional works, be they in film, television, comics or novels.

It is also a community where you can post or link to fan or original fiction about Islamic fictional characters. The fic does not need to deal with Eid or Islam. However, it does need to feature a Muslim character as a main lead. Fanvids and fanmixes are also welcome. Links to relevant blog or media articles are acceptable, as are cross-posts.

Posting is public and unmoderated for now, we hope that we do not have to change that status later on.

Please provide the following information at the top of your entry:
Name of your fandom/source material:
Name(s) of your character(s):
Rating:
Genre: (Meta essay/drabble/vid/fanmix/etc)

We will be marking the celebration of Eid-ul-Fitr and other Muslim festivals over the year.

This community should be a safe space for people of all identities, and no offensiveness towards religion, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, age, size or ability will be tolerated.

Master List of Muslim Characters
Freely sharable Icons
List of Useful Meta Posts