Bring your own Shisha

A comment made on my last post has got me thinking about what we as muslims do and how we react. Recent reactions to the Danish cartoons and the general Muslim worlds obsession with revenge is saddening. In the last post I also mention the story to the Prophet Muhammad when he went to the town of Taif.

He went their to spread his word, and after rejection by all the chieftains he was run out of town and stoned. And he offered the following supplication:

O Allah! I complain to You of my weakness, my scarcity of resources and my humiliation before the people. O Most Merciful of those who are merciful. O Lord of the weak and my Lord too. To whom have you entrusted me? To a distant person who receives me with hostility? Or to an enemy to whom you have granted authority over my affair? So long as You are not angry with me, I do not care. Your favour is of more abundance to me. I seek refuge in the light of Your Face by which all darkness is dispelled and every affair of this world and the next is set right, lest Your anger or your displeasure descend upon me. I desire your pleasure and satisfaction until you are pleased. There is no power and no might except by You.

The Angel (some say Jibrail/Gabriel) came to him and said ‘If you wish, I will destroy that town for you’ and bloodied though he was, Muhammad replied ‘No, I hope that these people will one day come to worship only God and Him alone’.

To my mind, the state of Jahil (Ignorance) is one which is fuelled by a hateful desire for revenge and entry into a vicious circle of violence and hatred, taking us all further away from the ability to do good.

Those who speak of vengeance against the West will the next minute destroy a building considered by others to be a place of worship. Because a person’s belief does not match mine does not mean I kill him. In fact the opposite is true. A true muslim would do what Islam the word means - Submission. Submit yourselves to what God is saying and doing and have belief that what is happening is for you and only because God has decreed it for you.

To all those who read the Qur’an and like taking things literally, read the second chapter, Al Baqarah and specifically verses 285-286:

285. The Messenger believeth in what hath been revealed to him from his Lord, as do the men of faith. Each one (of them) believeth in Allah, His angels, His books, and His apostles. “We make no distinction (they say) between one and another of His apostles.” And they say: “We hear, and we obey: (We seek) Thy forgiveness, our Lord, and to Thee is the end of all journeys.”

286. On no soul doth Allah Place a burden greater than it can bear. It gets every good that it earns, and it suffers every ill that it earns. (Pray:) “Our Lord! Condemn us not if we forget or fall into error; our Lord! Lay not on us a burden Like that which Thou didst lay on those before us; Our Lord! Lay not on us a burden greater than we have strength to bear. Blot out our sins, and grant us forgiveness. Have mercy on us. Thou art our Protector; Help us against those who stand against faith.”

Ultimately one of the fundamentals for life in this world for a Muslim is the understanding that this is only a temporary life and not to worry too much about it. It’s the hereafter we should worry about. So why do we get so het up about what people do and don’t do. Surely it was be simpler to accept life for what it is and get on with living it as best we can.

The 2 men arrested in Forest Gate as part of a growingly infamous Terror raid were released last week and there were large protests against the raid and what is perceived as ‘heavy-handedness’ on the part of the Police. Once again the Police Commissioner is under pressure to quit. Sir Ian Blair is the man who was in charge during the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, the man who controversially said that the media was insitutionally racist while at the same time ignoring that the Police have been classed as such for years.

Now I believe the Police do a tough job which I would never have the guts to do, but they really do need to sort out their PR.

I want to leave you with a quote from John Irving, the Chairman of Wiltshire’s Racial Equality Council: “If we look at it from the interests of the national safety - the safety of the nation - not merely one community in it, I speak as a Muslim myself, but I also speak as an Englishman - we have to look at the safety of the nation now.”

Seemingly my ‘favourite’ new muslim, Yvonne Ridley is suffering from verbal diarrhoea again.

Realistically how she does not expect the flames from being fanned further by this inflammatory talk is beyond me. Ok, the police service (nee force) have their issues, but surely we would be in an even worse situation if it turns/turned out that the Forest Gate brothers are actual bombers and had something planned.

Respect’s Hanif Abdulmuhit seems to take a more common sense approach: “If someone, for example, comes to me now and says ‘Hanif I’m sitting in my kitchen making a bomb to blow X up’, I will go to the police. “
For once I agree with something someone from Respect is saying, hell I would report them as well because the ‘X’ could be me, my family, my friends (both muslim and non-muslim) and anyone else who simply happened to be walking past. I think that applies whether they are muslim or not. Hell a bomber is a bomber, regardless of what flag he works under.

A close relative of mine has recently (in the last week) been appointed as the global head for an Islamic Charity. And he brings me an interesting story about perceptions.

A young orphan boy of around 7 (though he claims to be 11) lives in Dhaka’s Government New Market (no longer ‘new’ as it was built over 50 years ago). He lives under the stairs to the main market mosque and wakes every morning to find food. So he looks in bins and there are specific bins where you will always find a half eaten banana, or a bit of a coconut, or if you’re lucky a piece of bread. This staves off his hunger and then he starts running errands for the shopkeepers, i.e. bringing cups of tea, getting drinks etc. And by around 11am he may have earned enough to buy something to stave off the hunger until the evening. He then continues to work until the evening by which he will have earned around 12 Taka (around US$0.18) which will buy him an evening meal. Then its back to bed.

This is life for this orphan, one of possibly millions in Bangladesh, while there are people importing brand new Mercedes-Benz’ which at 100% import duty cost effectively double the cost. So the person who I have seen has imported an SL65 AMG is paying US$185,000 x 2 = US$370,000. While our little friend is spending US$0.18 for his main meal everyday.

Poignantly this young boy’s envy for a better life is not directed at this ‘Boro Lok’ (Big Man), but at other orphan girls of his age.Why? Because people will do ‘Kharap Jinish’ (bad things) with them and then will feed them properly. He perceives them to have the better life. He did say that there was an NGO nearby who did things for kids like him, but he couldn’t find it. My relative did give him some money so he didnt have to work for a week so he could spend the time finding that NGO and getting help.

And this is certainly not a unique story. There will be hundreds if not thousands like this boy whom we simply cannot see. It makes you wonder at what point we as humans stop caring. Is it something we are taught or is selfishness a natural state for us? Sometimes I think it is certainly the latter and some people just give up trying to get out of this state.