By Aisha Gawad
October 27, 2009

Google Alerts are an amazing invention. Instead of scouring the web everyday for “Brad Pitt affair rumors” and “evidence of life beyond earth,” all you have to do is give Google a few key words and it does all the searching for you, delivering the results to your inbox each day, even separating them into “news alerts” and “blog alerts.” So if Brad does ever leave Angie and you have a handy Google alert, rest assured that you will certainly be one of the first to know. But if you’re like me and you have a Google Alert on “Muslim women,” you’ll soon find out the category encompasses more than what you might expect.

I set up the alert a year ago when I started work on a thesis project about young Muslim-American women studying to become religious experts. After a year of receiving daily results in my inbox, I have not found a single alert to be the slightest bit helpful in my research. Still, the alerts are not without their lessons and tidbits of useful info. For all those wondering what happens, here is the vital information that I was lucky enough to find out:

1. That radical Islam may have suddenly entered my life (including a warning on how these radical Muslims are “interacting with Ummah"—the horror!)

2. That Dalia Mogahed (appointed to serve on the White House Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships) is “Obama’s Muslim Czar.” The website also features an awesome cartoon of Obama crossed with Fidel Castro crossed with a Russian folk dancer - definitely worth a peek.

3. That Muslim terrorist perverts are using child porn to pass messages. And that “Islamofascist terrorists” are also referred to as “mouthbreathing subhumans.” Seriously.

4. That Muslim women are apparently fighting for the right to pants and beer, two of the most important fundamental freedoms.

5. That someone named Charles E. Brown from Tulsa Oklahoma is “disgusted with the veil.”

6. That even reputable newspapers like the Wall Street Journal think it’s okay to publish op-eds with the headline: “Sharia-Sanctioned Death vs. Western Toleration.”

7. That Saudi women may be too emotional. (There is a hilarious photo of this old Saudi lady crying...or wiping dust from her eye, I’m not sure which).

There is also at least one alert on Obama a day (because has everything to do with Muslim women, obviously) - Obama’s health care plan will fail! Obama’s health care plan will succeed! Obama is the anti-Christ! And at least one on the “plight of the Afghan woman,” as if she were a puppy awaiting rescue at the pound, which reminds me of the day I got an alert linking “Michael Vick’s second chance” with “Islam’s mistreatment of animals.” Sarah Palin comes up quite frequently as does Hillary Clinton. Poor Maureen Dowd only got one hit.

As you can see, I learned a lot this year. Thanks Google.