Bring your own Shisha

Well we are officially back from Haj. We were actually back on 5th Jan, but then I got bogged down in work and suffered from the Post-Holiday blues for a week or so. Then I somehow managed to have the ‘Haji’ cough manifest itself a week later than it should have done, and was it a serious bout, I certainly thought so. My wife defined it as ‘Man Flu’, but I still maintain I was at death’s door.

The Haji cough is something which afflicts pretty much 99% of all people who go on Haj. You have to imaging 3million people all in such close proximity to each other, colds and coughs will always spread. And of course some people are not conscious of the age old adage, “Coughs and Sneezes Spread Diseases”, especially as they splutter there way through their days in a climate which in theory should not cause you to have a cold.

and my return to the UK has also been heralded by a feeling of ‘I am a second class citizen’ by the popular media’s coverage of Muslim’s and their ‘problems’ and while I was away, my beloved Prime Minister identifying Muslim’s as being a bit of a problem community. And then surfaced the ‘Shilpa Shetty Affair’.

for those who may not know, and I understand that the rest of the world is not necessarily obssessed with ‘Reality’ television, Big Brother is a program which puts 10 or so people into a house with no contact with the outside world for a period of a few weeks and watches them disintegrate. And as such there is a ‘Celebrity’ version. This year, our screens were graced with people who ranged from Dirk Benedict (’Face’ from The A-Team, and Starbuck from BattleStar Galactica-the old series), and also Jermaine Jackson (Michael’s brother) which is now a muslim living in Dubai (he is now named Muhammad Abdul Aziz), and of course Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty.

But also in amongst this glitterati of B-List stars was thrown in a bunch of ‘Celebrities’ who over the last few weeks have made comments about Shilpa Shetty which have thrown into sharp relief the racial/cultural difference which are still apparent in the UK of 2007.

My concerns obviously lie with the apparently racist comments made, but more worrying I think is that we in Britain have decided to raise people up to the status of celebrity, i.e. to be celebrated, for qualities would normally be used for ridicule.

We glorify stupidity and ignorance (“where is East Angular?”, asked Jade Goody once, oblivious to the fact that it is East Anglia and is only a short drive from her home county of Essex and my favourite of Saddam Hussein being a boxer!).

We glorify people who are willing to take their clothes off in public (Danielle Lloyd, glamour model and Beauty Competition contestant)

And generally we are willing to make people rich on the basis of these qualities. What does this say about a society who will celebrate the existence of people who simply have no idea what is happening in the real world not because they are living privileged lives, but simply because they do not think important what happens in the world outside of their blinkered view of it.

Happy New Year Everyone!!

About 3million people will be turning up in Makkah over the next few weeks culminating in the Hajj around New Years.

So my agoraphobia is having to take a back burner while I and Two million, Nine Hundred and Ninety Nine Thousand and Nine Hundred and Ninety Nine (2999999) other people will share the oft quoted ‘Experience of a Lifetime’. In fact, the Piccadilly line on a Monday morning at 8am apparently doesnt even come close. Still I can look forward to the Chicken Shawarma & Pepsi for 3 Riyals (what’s that around £0.50 !?). Or I could enjoy the spiritually uplifting experience that it should be.

So for those who are staying out of Makkah, Happy Holidays, and those joining me there, Hope the journey is successful.

Peace.

It’s been so long since I posted anything here. Mainly for a variety of reasons, but largely it has been purely laziness.

Thanks to all you guys who have emailed me asking where I am. “I’m all good” as they say. I’ll be back soon, but its just been manic.

10/8 (note I’m using the standard UK way of stating the date first, i.e. 10th August, 11th September)

That would have been another date up there with 11/9, 3/7, 7/7.

Or so we the Metropolitan Police/Home Office would have us believe. I have no doubt that there may well have been a plot. But there are a few questions I would like answered:

This threat has been monitored ‘for months’ and ’scaled up six weeks ago’, but why is there this grape-shot approach to the airports?

Is this like when Tanks were rolled into Heathrow (piccies here) and is this another method for the Government to instill the fear in us necessary to pass legislation which will infringe further on our civil rights? Just for the record, a couple of days before the Tanks @ Heathrow incident, there was a small demonstration in London. Also interesting is the Home Secretary’s speech to Demos which was delivered on Wednesday this week.

Now let’s turn to the alleged terrorists: The Bank of England has frozen the assets of 19 of the 24 people currently being questioned by Police in relation to yesterday’s plot. Thus the names of these 19 have been released to the public. What I find disturbing though is that one of them (Abdul Muneem Patel) is not even 18 yet. This is surely ‘redicalisation of the youth’ at its finest.

When will people realise that the foreign policy of the UK/US is what is driving these young men into doing crazy things? I’ve seen people in the UK Muslim community adopt the mantle of victimhood citing a litany of ‘crimes’ including the occupation of Iraq and the lack of WMDs, the failure of the US to capture Bin Laden, the Israel/Palestine problem, now Lebanon, the US’ preoccupation with Iran (which actually does go back to the Revolution in 1979), the placing of US troops in Saudi Arabia (or as some call it incorrectly, the ‘Hijaz‘).

Then there is also the perception that Oil is the main driver behind the US/UK interest in the Middle East. The relationship between the US and the house of Saud has cooled after 11/9 and the potential for getting oil from Iraq and the Caspian area has precipitated that. Many will cite other problems in the world which just dont get the same attention: Darfur, the troubles in Sri Lanka, the countries in the world which needed more ‘Regime Change’ than Iraq did, i.e. North Korea, Myanmar, heck even Zimbabwe. No Oil, No Interest.

People will counter this with, ‘Well I don’t see people from Sri Lanka blowing up Western interests.’ And they are right, but this is a misunderstanding on how Muslims see the world and how non-Muslims see the world. Muslims consider themselves part of one body. One part is cut and the pain is felt elsewhere. This is so that race, States (which have always come and gone through history) and the colour of skin plays no part in people’s allegiances. The allegiance for Muslims is to one ‘flag’ and that has no physical boundaries as it is a belief. Muslims as a whole should care about what happens in the world, as opposed to people who dont share this belief focus in on largely what happens in their backyard.

To finish off however, I must say that the if this was a genuine Terror plot, then the intelligence services have done a great job, but it doesnt just end there. They are under pressure to perform and prevent any future actions/plots, but they must use the Muslim community and bring it under its wing to make any serious attempts at stopping this threat. As said before, if I hear someone is gonna blow up a something or other, I go to the cops. I don’t want to see people blown up. That is not my Islam.

I’ve just been waay too busy to write over the last few weeks.

So much has happened, and the weather has just been too good here, so I’ve been cooking, sitting in the sun and also working. All which has kept me quite busy.

Going back to being political, here’s a link.

Update:  And one more. To quote from this one:

A record of conflict: the death toll from wars Britain has fought under three prime ministers

Tony Blair
71,617 deaths
9 years in power

200-300 Iraqi deaths (based on UN estimate)

John Major
22,316 deaths
7 years in power

Margaret Thatcher
1,013 deaths
11 years in power

255 UK troop deaths 655 Argentinian troop deaths 3 Civilian deaths

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.

I’ve had a bee in my kufi about the way that Nasheed concerts work, and Yvonne Ridley comments on it further, albeit a little vociferously. The point she makes about not joining the Police Force is a bit strange in that I don’t believe you can change a system unless it is from within and she does love this Britain Bashing thing she has going on. This does appeal to first generation immigrant muslims quite a bit I have noticed, but may be little cynical me sees it as just a grab for headlines. As a presenter, she certainly is no Paxman.

Coming back to Nasheeds, I personally like listening to them however I have some issues with some artists. Very often groups such as 786 and so on, are emulating a style of music which just sounds a little alien to me. Together with that the lyrics are a little wanting if not repetitive. Artists such as Dawud Wharnsby and Zain Bhikha write lyrics and nasheeds which focus on issues which to me seem more relevant than the simplistic ‘Do Dua’ by 786. Together with that, what really grates with my is the cynical way that Sami Yusuf is using the Nasheed market. As a bit of background for the non-muslims out there, music is considered forbidden in Islam but percussion is fine. This is due to the intoxicating/distracting nature of music which would mean you lose focus on what your life is about.

Now our Mr Yusuf, released his last album in 2 versions: With Music, and Percussion only. My argument here is that if people want to hear music they will hear music. So have music on your album and say it is, but don’t try to open up sales to a market which wouldn’t be there for you by adding a Percussion only version. As an artist, are you not compromising your artistic integrity by allowing a song which has been written with a particular melody in mind to be altered in order to appeal to a broader market?