In the Same Boat

Recently, I joined a pen pal site. As I wanted to talk to other Muslims, I typed the appropriate keyword in the search box. Lazily skimming through it, I came across some non-Muslim names. The one that I clearly remember was of a girl who had added a note that "blacks and Muslims" needn't write to her, while another was of a Danish youth saying that Muslims shouldn't boycott Denmark's goods and that it was the government's fault which was very bad and racist (I agree with him). Anyway, I didn't feel like writing to anybody -- the mood was gone -- and I believe I even blinked my eyes twice. But I got around to writing to a Muslim profile which claimed that nobody should send her pictures because she was blind. I was curious so I wrote to her to ask who read her all the letters and may Allah bless her.

Today in the morning I received a letter in my email from "Roy" and he had written to be my friend. But what struck out were his words, haunting as they are -- a testimony to what viles plague our common sense of humanity:

I'm happy to be your friend if you don't mind being friends with an African.

With a few corrections, that's what he just about said. And immediately my mind traced back to the "no Muslims and blacks" entry. To make him smile, I replied that the question was not whether I wanted to be his friend but whether he wanted to be mine. I'm not very passionate to regulary converse with "Roy" because he wants to improve his English and this venture is bugging (as I've learned from the second letter which I received a few minutes ago), but I think I will write to him once in a while. We are in the same boat: blacks and Muslims and Arabs; and yes, Europeans and Americans, too. It's sort of like Noah's ark where all creation is delivered to the Lord's refuge.

Food for thought

I often make fun of the eating habits of the Hemşinli people who reside in Artvin Province, Turkey—the group to which my wife belongs—but I am only joking. I make fun of their taste for Black Sea Cabbage, for every meal seems to involve this pale-leafed brassica, and I am often heard running off a list part truthful, part made up. Boiled cabbage, cabbage dolma, cabbage kofta, cabbage soup, cabbage fried with onion, pickled cabbage… It’s a variation on the old yarn about the Englishman’s love for the potato: baked potato, boiled potato, roast potato, mashed potato, potato chips, potato waffles and potato crisps. It is only jest, though, for I have a lot of respect for those who have managed to maintain their traditional diet, warding off the endless possibilities of consumerism. Cabbage and Hamsi—the prince of all fish known to Turks—is my staple diet whenever I go to stay in our village in that forested valley several miles inland from Hopa. Meat is not eaten all that much and I have a feeling that this is how it should be.

They say that the traditional English dish is ‘meat and two veg’, but in fact the meat element only has a history spanning a few hundred years. Cabbage was probably a staple of the English diet for epochs as well. Unbearable to us in our modern age, I appreciate, given our love of meat and variety. Not only are we used to great choice on the culinary front, but we have also come to expect it. Demand it even. We live in a society which has made food one great plank of consumerism and sadly—it seems—British Muslims have fallen for this modern sunnah , adopting the norms that surround us without question.

Vegetarian Muslims are sometimes lambasted by the majority for their abstention from the consumption of meat—some zealous individuals even go as far as to say that not eating meat is haram. Yet it seems to me that vegetarians are much closer to the sunnah of our religion than most of us. In the olden days, wealthy Muslims used to eat meat once a week, often on Fridays, while poor Muslims would consume it on the Eids. Most of the meals that the Prophet ate, did not have meat in them, peace be upon him. My friend who eats meat very rarely is simply following the model of the best of us.

I suspect the reason why some Muslims react so strongly to people who eat little meat has less to do with a concern for the prohibitions of our religion and more to do with the desires of our tongues and stomachs. Count the fried chicken shops along the length of the Uxbridge Road from Shepherd’s Bush in London to Uxbridge out west: these mostly Muslim-run establishments tell us of an insatiable demand. The delightful spread of the generous host for his guests is almost always a lavish stream of birianis and curries, chicken, lamb and mountains of meat-laced rice. The daily filling and emptying of the counters in the halal butchers tells us that we are a people who really do ‘do meat’.

But maybe we should control ourselves. Maybe we should ‘do meat’ a little less. Consider the words of Umar as recorded in the Muwatta: ‘Beware of meat, because it has an addiction like the addiction of wine.’ Well we see this all around us. The trouble is, our problem today is not just the addiction: what are we going to say about the way our food was farmed, the way the animals were slaughtered, the way it was cleaned, the way it was sold and the way we eat it? Consider the vast acreage of refrigerated units in our supermarkets always fully stocked with plump chickens: now and then, when I really think about it, I find it quite abhorrent. But I guess the small counter of my local halal butcher is not much different. Why abhorrent? I am not a vegetarian; it is just this insatiable demand of ours. I visited a commercial slaughterhouse one Eid and was horrified by the production line they had going there, but that’s how it has to be in a culture that demands meat as much as ours. When I was studying Geography and Development Studies a decade back, one of our lecturers—an expert in water politics—predicted that the next war in the Middle East would be over water. He may not have predicted the intervention of a non-regional army seeking out WMD or oil, but he made a strong case nevertheless. Much of it comes down to our demand for meat: the production of the tons of grain required to rear animals is dependent on the availability of adequate water supplies after all.

In our household, our consumption of meat has lessened slightly. Some days we eat wholly vegetarian dishes, some days an egg quiche, some days some trout or sea fish and, yes, sometimes some lamb or chicken. I started eating very little meat after my visit to the abattoir and suggested we became vegetarian. Over time, the meat returned in larger and larger quantities, until our next attempt to re-evaluate our habits. Latterly, our desire has been to find a supplier of meat that takes the welfare of animals seriously, that slaughters on the small scale, taking the kind of care that is impossible in a production line situation. While we bought our milk and fish from a dedicated supplier, we could never buy their organic meat because it is not halal. So we just found ourselves eating less meat instead.

Fortunately times changes, with a few Muslims now going into small scale farming as a result of their concern about the food we eat. No one else is doing it, they reason, and somebody has to, so it might as well be them. Their meat is obviously more expensive that the supermarket or butcher’s alternative, but if you only intend to eat it a couple of times a week, it needn’t be of concern. There has always been wisdom in the saying that we are what we eat, whether we like it or not. If we care about our spiritual wellbeing, we have to realise that our religion has a lot to say about the food we eat. And if we are sincere, we have to act on it.

In any case: in my humble opinion, Hemşinli dolma is far tastier than its vine leaf equivalent. Yes, cabbage turns out to be far more appealing than I ever thought possible.

What Can Be Believed?

Some say Muslims don't believe in freedom of speech and expression. Some say they are uncivilized and supporters of "terrorists". Some say Muslims are the Other. Some say let's lock up the Roma People in the Beltzec death camps because they don't belong. Some say it's all about manifest destiny and we are there to win. Some say it's all a big mistake, that they've come down to take our temples and churches and mosques and we've got to make a stand, a tired stand against these nomads. And I hear them...the leaders holler about their kind and their blood and their race under a shower of confetti. The dictators of the East and West don't understand now.

I say, don't be absurd. Look at your image in the mirror. Is it defined by the dehumanization of the Other? Is your image so frail that it can only exist by your screwed up patriotism. I say, some Muslims are indeed wild but just like the killers of Haditha -- not more. I say, some Muslims are indeed ignorant but just like the politicians in Washington -- not more. You talk of "Enlightenment" and throw heavy words like "civilization" and "freedom" into the faces of poor people while shooting them down. What with the beast and what with the armour!

You say it is all a plan to "Talibanize" the virginal West by the "new-caught sullen peoples, half devil and half child" (Kipling). You say I am not living up to the Bill of Rights because that's when the majority bites. You say I am an anti-American hoodlum who'd like to strap a bomb and go up in a "blaze of glory". I say I am afraid to die and afraid to kill; I may die but I won't kill. I say, everyone has a right to life like you and yours. And I won't stand still until your tanks and guns fall. You play your national anthems, and I mean all the nations, and while you play your anthems and you hang your flags, East and West, I'm left to think what with the pride...the pride that oozes from the wounds of your victims.

And I ask, what can be believed. That I am to conclude like Goethe that patriotism "ruins history", but what nation is free when her sisters lie confined. And I have been and I have seen the blood on her sleeves. Isn't it time we had a universal expression of solidarity that is kind and true? How about One God? One humanity will follow.

A Comment

"This country has gone over the top with political correctness. We as a society feel that Muslims have to have attention otherwise we are not being fair to them. Muslims have protested outsite churches making remarks about Jesus. Could a Christian abuse Muhammed outside a Mosque, without being arrested? NO" - Mr Holden, Northern Ireland

I can assure you that no Muslim would make offensive remarks about Jesus, as he is held in extremely high regard by the Islamic faith. Muslims love Jesus, in the same way that they love Abraham, Moses, Noah and others. Muslims also hold his mother Mary very dear indeed, believing that she was the most pious and noble of all women in the world, through every age.

I would suggest one of two things therefore: either the people you witnessed protesting outside churches making remarks about Jesus were not Muslims or they did not make remarks about Jesus. In the case of Christians abusing Muhammad, however, this is in fact a common occurrence. Indeed this occurs on a weekly basis at Speakers' Corner in Central London, without any intervention from the authorities at all.

You may find that Muslims themselves would much prefer to receive as little attention as possible, having made an overwhelmingly positive contribution to British society for many years. Many of the country's leading doctors are Muslim after all, specialising in vital areas such as CHD, neurology and cancer. Just a thought.

Yellow Skin and Slanted Eyes

This is a very interesting bit of news, with undertones of classic Orientalism, from Haaretz which reports the words of the Israel ambassador to Australia:

The Foreign Ministry on Friday condemned remarks by the Israeli ambassador to Australia in which he told Haaretz that the two countries are white sisters amid "the yellow race" of Asia.

"If the article is accurate, this is a grave and unacceptable remark," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. The ministry said it will not return to business as usual if an internal examination confirms that the ambassador, Naftali Tamir, in fact made the comments attributed to him.

Tamir said that due to what he characterized as the racial similarities between Israel and Australia, the two countries should work together to enhance ties with other Asian countries.

"Israel and Australia are like sisters in Asia," Tamir said in an interview with Haaretz during a visit to Israel this week. "We are in Asia without the characteristics of Asians. We don't have yellow skin and slanted eyes. Asia is basically the yellow race. Australia and Israel are not - we are basically the white race. We are on the western side of Asia and they are on the southeastern side."

Racism in my view is the never-ending fulmination of the most evil. It is that sin coupled with extreme disobedience for which Iblis was/is punished by Allah:

And surely, We created you (your father Adam) and then gave you shape (the noble shape of a human being), then We told the angels, "Prostrate to Adam", and they prostrated, except Iblis (Satan), he refused to be of those who prostrate. (Allah) said: "What prevented you (O Iblis) that you did not prostrate, when I commanded you?" Iblis said: "I am better than him (Adam), You created me from fire, and him You created from clay." S. 7:11-12

Even though Iblis refused to obey his Creator, Allah the Lord of the Worlds, the reason he gave seems to be more convincing (if we're to take the line of racists) than theirs within the human race. I wonder what some of them would say if Allah had made them djinns among men. Whether it's Irshad Manji bad-mouthing and demonizing the Palestinians and clicking photographs with two smiling children from the same camp to show her "humanity", the little ones having no idea what she conceals in real and how she advocates their present state; or George Bush saying that Iraqis are "tolerating the violence" (655000 dead!) in their bloody war for freedom which the so-called liberators said they would get. Never mind the fact that the first place the US military captured in Baghdad was the Oil Ministry. Never mind dead bodies found drifiting in the Tigris everyday. Who are they? What are their names? Did they have families? Were they happy when they last left home? Was there a real need to go out? Did they have aspirations, dreams and a simple imagination? Did they think of the fleeting pleasure on the faces of their grandparents when they were young?

Fate

Let me be a man of wisdom
And investigate the issues of fate
What is the fate of the onlooker?
That Time has yet to decide
But the Omnipotent One
Has decreed our path
Time is a sense of Man
Fate is concealed in the mists
Of which God alone has the knowledge

The Discovery in the Dark

- My Path to Realization -

From beneath the phantom’s veil
The clouds passes and bursts
Dew of the morning is dried
When the yawning of the sun
Is repressed and cloven
Lead us, Allah, from darkness to light
Lead these lambs to green pastures

But now I’ve to walk on this path
When I discovered the Word in the dark
Lo! It lay in my heart under serene armour
The Qur’an is what’s in the wind
That inspires those who think
Not a mortal rhyme in a time
All that is extended by mankind isn’t true
How I wooed the flowers and friends
To please them despite my solitude!

When the world screeched on my back
I had to leave the heartbreaking past
I prayed in the dark, holding the spirit within
To my bosom; teardrops in my eyes
My voice was Silence of the meek
Still a child, and wild in the feet
I first read on the Greek Myths
And puzzled saints who thought they knew
But all their philosophy on life and death
Could not seduce a young critical mind
Of mine for I was simply on the hunt for Truth

Born into this universe of subliminal beauty
How painless it is to love Allah
And how agonizing to be shut into a trap
Of pleasures and bars and criss-cross guitars

When I’m clothed in silk
And pushed into darkness:
This is the trap
When I’m slumbering on flowers
And down pours the rain:
This is the trap
When I taste the honey
And it stings my heart:
This is the trap

As I sat in the blue, bitter and unhappy
About the things I related to you
I opened this book that had the Mark of Heaven
Ah, the words of Allah, no vanguard or saint
But the Lord of the Worlds, Who fashioned
The busy consciousness within me
Do I have to declare this love of Faith?
Yes, as the unspoken universe unfolds before me
Gently dragging me out of the dark

Q / (1 + exp(a (t – year)))

At work I am involved in the local implementation of a complex government-driven national computer programme. In my particular region, every surgery and health centre has been kitted out with the latest technology, delivering over 300 new PCs, 50 printers and 20 servers. The aim of the national programme is to connect thirty-thousand doctors to three hundred hospitals for the benefit of patients. The goal is to create an efficient patient-centred health service, wherein high quality information is shared effectively between different teams and organisations.

Without a doubt, these are all very admirable aspirations, but there is a question which keeps on recurring in my mind… “What happens when the oil runs out?”

I’m not being funny — although whenever I ask this question at work, I find myself the immediate target of mockery. “What, this computer runs on oil, does it?” a colleague asked me sarcastically, prompting those around us to snigger at my ridiculous statements. I am the irritating voice in the office who must always inject a historical or futuristic reference whenever some piece of technology is not working exactly as it should. I have the misfortune to sit beside the noisy, clunky photocopier and am thus the first recipient of the expletives when the paper jams again. “I hate this thing,” is a frequent refrain; “This Bloody Machine” another. As I sidle across to assist the huffing and puffing victims of copier fart, I cannot help asking — as I retrieve the crumpled rogue sheet from flap five — how we got by in the olden days, why everything is such a hurry. The last time I told a colleague who was lamenting how long it was taking for the machine to wake up from its power-saving slumber that at least waiting on a monk with a quill could have been worse, the “you’re an idiot” glare was useful confirmation that my “it’s not that bad” optimism is getting on everyone’s nerves. Still, whenever there is a problem with the computer network and patience begins to fray, I continue to ask what we are going to do when the oil runs out.

No, I’m not being funny. I’m serious. “What, this computer runs on oil, does it?”

Well yes, in a way. The American Chemical Society (http://acswebcontent.acs.org) estimates that the construction of a single 32MB DRAM chip uses 1.5kg of fossil fuels in addition to 32kg of water, while the production of one gram of microchips consumes 630g of fossil fuels. Most of the keyboard, mouse, CPU case and monitor is made from plastic, which is a polymer derived from oil. It is estimated that the construction of the average desktop computer consumes ten times its weight in fossil fuels, while the US Environmental Literacy Council (http://www.enviroliteracy.org) states that the energy used in producing ten computers is enough to produce a car, largely due to the purity and sophistication of materials required to produce microchips. All electrical devices make use of silver, copper, and/or platinum, each of which is extracted, transported, and fashioned using oil-powered machinery. The production of one ton of copper requires the equivalent of 17.8 barrels of oil, while the energy cost component of aluminium is twenty times higher. In other words, the production of computers is an extremely energy-intensive operation throughout the cycle.

Take yourself off to the website of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (http://www.peakoil.net) and sober up. While I am sure that everybody is aware that oil is finite resource, what this means hasn’t really hit home yet. Every time we hear that production is peaking we learn that a new oil field has been discovered and so we relax; it seems the oil will just run and run. Last time I was in Turkey I met a BP engineer heading off to Trabzon. My wife laughed: there’s no oil down there. “Oh yes there is,” he replied with a smile, on route to his connecting flight. Out on a rig in the Black Sea, off the northern Turkish coast, they are drilling for more black gold. Why don’t the scaremongers just quieten down? Probably because they are right. We don’t know when the oil will run dry — in 1956, Marion King Hubbert incorrectly forecasted that world oil production would peak at some point between 1993 and 2000 — but we can be certain that it will. Hubbert was correct in his prediction that US oil production would peak in the early 1970s.

Some reports now suggest that the peak of oil production — which coincides with 50% depletion of our oil endowment — has been superseded and we will therefore begin to see production levels drop my 3% each year. Thus oil production in 2020 is likely to be equal to that in 1980, although demand for oil will significantly outpace production due to population growth and more widespread industrialisation. As CEO of Halliburton in 1999, Dick Cheney stated that, “there will be an average of two-percent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead, along with, conservatively, a three-percent natural decline in production from existing reserves. That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional 50 million barrels a day.” Andrew Gould, CEO of the oil services firm Schlumberger noted: “An accurate average decline rate is hard to estimate, but an overall figure of 8% is not an unreasonable assumption.”

Those who only consider the implications of a decline in the production of oil in light of our transportation and energy needs, must awake to the realisation that petrochemicals are actually key components in a vast array of applications, from the production of medicines to the distribution of water, and from the creation of plastics to the production of food. Indeed, in the case of the latter it is estimated that industrialised societies use 10 calories of fossil fuels to produce every 1 calorie of food eaten. In addition to the energy used in farming, transportation and packaging of the food we eat, oil is the building block of many related resources. Pesticides are made from oil, for example, while fertilizers are made from ammonia, which is derived from natural gas.

We are running, but where are we going? The growth in the popularity of consumer electronics in recent years has brought with it an acceptance of planned obsolescence and the perpetual upgrade, without any real appreciation of the implications. Last year’s status symbol was the Apple iPod, this year’s the Sony Walkman phone, next year’s the portable PlayStation? We move from hyper-threading chips to dual-core offerings within a matter of months. The traditional conservative approach towards electronic equipment (such as the Hi-Fi and TV) that anticipated longevity has largely been superseded by the idea that a product will need to be perpetually upgraded (mobile phones, computers, PDAs, MP3 players). Computers are vulnerable to this idea on two fronts: aging hardware and new versions of software. Indeed, the two link together in a perfect marriage: as computers get more powerful, so does the software, the next generation requiring ever greater hardware specifications. The result, unfortunately, is the creation of huge volumes of waste and consumption of limited resources. We know that much of this is unnecessary, but we just accept it as a fact of life. It is said that most of the consumer-level problems with computer software are not inherent in the technology. Rather, they are the consequences of user-hostile business models, which see the perpetual upgrade as its primary source of revenue.

But where are we heading? The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (http://www.millenniumassessment.org), which was drawn up by 1,300 researchers from 95 nations over four years, concluded that human activities threaten the Earth's ability to sustain future generations. The way in which society obtains its resources is said to have caused irreversible changes that are degrading the natural processes that support life on Earth, and it is believed that this will compromise efforts to address hunger, poverty and improve healthcare. Its authors say the pressure for resources has resulted in a substantial and largely irreversible loss in the diversity of life on Earth; fisheries and fresh water, for example, are now well beyond levels that can sustain current demands. Thus the report suggests that society must alter its consumption patterns and promote better education, new technologies and higher prices for exploiting ecosystems.

We can communicate across continents in an instant for free, sharing files, sounds and video at ease. We can calculate financial forecasts faster than ever before using metre-wide spreadsheets with thousands of entries. We can share our thoughts with strangers in far-off lands. Our Doctors can view digital X-Rays on their computer as soon as a fracture has been photographed in a hospital twenty miles away. Software logarithms can now identify cancers within a CAT scan without human intervention. Technology is shrinking the world and allegedly speeding life up. Ears plugged into the iPod, eyes fixed on the computer screen, we are racing onwards as never before. But where are we going and what are we doing? My question is serious: what will we do when the oil runs out?

Those who are studying peak oil are not speaking about the last drop, only the downward slope of the bell curve. When demand outstrips supply, they say, the economy as we know it will probably collapse. And what will we do when that happens? How will we live?

Slow down. Learn how to live. Learn how to survive as those before us did. As another writer noted recently, some of us don’t know how determine when it is time to pray because we have become dependent on computer generated timetables. Some of us don’t know how to determine whether Ramadan has arrived because we are dependent on someone telling us on the phone. We have entered the on-demand age of e-Government, e-Banking, e-Commerce and e-Support, and we are apparently more connected than ever before. But do we know how to cook “real food”, or grow some vegetables, or conserve water and heat? Do we know how to conduct business? Do we know how to survive in the post-oil age?

It is possible that this apocalyptic vision is an exaggeration of our future reality – a dystrophic apparition more akin to that old film entitled Mad Max. I have read that scientist are developing new plastics based on polymers derived from corn and that theoretically circuit boards could be printed on sheets of lasagne pasta. Perhaps by the time oil is seriously on the decline, we will have developed efficient renewable sources of energy, or Mr Blair’s nuclear programme will be well under way. Perhaps today’s silicon based computer chips will have been replaced by organic processors. Perhaps the future will be rosy and my concern is misplaced. Perhaps.

But as we march onwards at an ever increasing pace, and I am invited to upgrade my computer and mobile telephone, to buy an MP3 player and download the latest version of Microsoft Windows, that question just returns. Our resources are finite: about this there can be no doubt. Isn’t it better that we slow down and question where we’re going? That we ask now, before it is too late? I think I can get by without an iPod. What about you?

Note

If you are interested in contributing articles to this website, please send an email to

b o w e s _ t i m @ y a h o o . c o . u k

including information about yourself and if possible a short sample of your work.

If approved, an invitation to join will be sent to you via Blogger within the next few days.

Contributors are free to write on any topic (art, architecture, science, technology, current affairs, environment, dialogue, etc.) and in any style (news articles, essays, poetry, short stories, etc.) – the only criteria is that your writing from the ummah should be positive, shining a light.

Where possible, keep these principles in mind: are my words necessary, beneficial, true and kind?

Only You

In the world to come, I shall not be asked, 'Why were you not Moses?' I shall be asked, 'Why were you not Zusya?'

- Rabbi Zusya

Mother of the Heart

I was walking down the garden path
When insecurity knocked in my heart
Workman’s hands grinding the door
And I sat on the heath watching them dance
The flowers gamboled in the breeze
And tossed their heads about
But no ray of sunshine visited me
All the hills I ever climbed
Were hidden in the spirals of yonder
When in the twilight I saw an ambassador
Allah hath sent down me a mother
But I still shook when the wind blew
And it crossed my heart through
Like a spear of love in the route
I would walk mother to the valley
Where she could gather all the flowers
But I read in my dream she hated flowers
In the blackness of the night, I set forth
Under the eyes of the shining stars
To dispose the flowers in the river
I heard mother’s voice on a hill
And she told me to bring home the flowers
That she would still love me
And not to follow dreams unseeingly
I rested on a rock and tears rose in my eyes
If only mother knew how much I loved her
That I would walk into ten thousand valleys
And bring to her all the flowers

Dear Concerned (Part 3)

Sin, repentance and reform

When you spoke of sin and the fact that we are all sinners, I feel I have to add something to this. Christians believe that Jesus was sent for the sinners. Muslims also believe this and that Muhammad was also sent for the sinful. In this much we agree, but upon taking this further, we part. For the Christian, it seems to me, this is the end of it: you’re a sinner, there’s nothing you can do about it, so rejoice in the fact that you have been granted salvation from the consequence of your sins. As I read it, for the Muslim, this is just the beginning. Yes, we are sinful, but the point is that we can change. The difference is that for the Muslim there is an acceptance that righteousness is within human potential. Of course we will all commit sins from time to time, and it is for this reason that God taught us to repent. In the Qur’an, this becomes patently clear. After a mention of the consequence for those people who commit the gravest sins, we read, “Except for those who repent, believe and do righteous work. For them God will replace their evil deeds with good. And ever is God Forgiving and Merciful.”

Islam is a religion of reform, as I know very well. I know that it is hard for anyone in my family to see that I have changed in any way for the better by my association with Islam. That is because what was, and to some extent still is, my biggest problem relates to the matters of the heart – those hidden things, deep inside, such as insincerity in intention, dishonesty and other things I need not mention here. For many other people, though, the reform may be mainly in the actions, and I know of people who having once indulged in all sorts of dubious activities are now the most kind, generous, charitable, well-mannered and sincere people you could ever wish to meet. When we sin, we should turn to God in sincere repentance, and never become complacent with our sin, for that is a trick of the devil who wishes to convince us that we will never be good enough to worship God as He asks us to.

Making people unhappy by my belief

Now, finally, coming to an end of my marathon effort, let me address the last things you wrote to me with regards to my religion. You wrote that you believe “that God is always sad when we do anything which displeases Him and I feel that He must be very sad to see how deeply unhappy you are making your parents…” In Islam, respect of and obedience to our parents is commanded to every believer. He is told not even to say “hmmth” to his parents. This applies to all spheres of life and in all circumstances, except one. The one exception is where obeying one’s mother or father, grandmother or grandfather, means disobeying the Creator. Obedience to God always come first. I do not actually always manage that; sometimes I compromise, against my better judgement, and do things which displease my Lord, simply because I do not wish to offend my parents.

I cannot escape from the fact that my belief in Islam as the one and only way causes deep unhappiness to all close to me who do not share this belief. I cannot ignore that fact and nor do I ignore it. I know that every one only wants what is best for me. Of course I know that. But as I have now explained, I hope satisfactorily, my belief in Islam is one which I hold sincerely. It is not something which I can turn on and turn off like a light bulb. People may assume that because of this I do not care about my family, but nothing could be further from the truth. Just as you pray that I may be guided to what you consider to be the truth, I also pray for everyone that they may be guided. On both sides, we believe that we have a hold of the truth, and on both sides we fear that our loved ones will die without a hold of that truth. Unfortunately, this is just one of the things which comes with the territory of believing there to be a definitive truth and a reason for our existence.

The nature of guidance

On the question of guidance, I hope that we can acknowledge that we all need to seek this treasure. As I have already written, this request for guidance is part of the Muslim’s “worship” prayer. Of course, being sincere must accompany these words, but I hope that you can see what an important part of my life, as a Muslim, seeking guidance is. I believe that this is something to reflect upon. There is another aspect which I feel we should consider about what we mean by guidance. A Muslim’s actions are based upon knowledge founded on the teachings of a Prophet sent by God. The Muslim believes that God sent Prophets in order to teach mankind the Straight Path and the way to worship Him. This, for the Muslim, is guidance.

I do not know of any comparable approach in Christianity. The “taught” guidance familiar to the Prophets is replaced in Christianity, it seems to me, by what people “think” is right. I do not wish to cause any offence by mentioning these things. Rather, I am simply suggesting that there is a need to define what we mean by guidance. From my own perspective, I find the idea of guidance without a basis in knowledge rather problematic. For example, a few centuries ago no practising Christian would have dared take interest on a loan, for it was considered a grave sin. Today, however, the majority of practising Christians freely invest in interest in one way or another. Now, the problem with regard to guidance, as I see it, is, who is guided? Are modern Christians now guided closer to the truth? If so, does that not mean that the previous sixteen centuries worth of Christians were misguided? Or vice versa? The same could be said about the establishment of Protestantism breaking from Roman Catholicism. Of course, it is possible to argue that only belief in the crucifixion is a salvation issue and that all these other points are side issues. As it now stands, however, from a personal point of view I am not sure that I would be able to decipher what is guidance and what is not, for, unlike in the supplication for seeking guidance I mentioned before, the issue to be guided upon has not been defined.

Let us continue to pray with true sincerity that we, each and every one of us, may be guided to follow the right path, particularly at this stage in our lives (the life of the present, before the awesome Day of Judgement) when our whole future is at stake. I know those were words which were meant only for me, but if finding the truth and acting upon it is genuinely our aim, I know that you won’t be offended. I have written all of this; this long, long letter; in the hope that you will better understand what I believe and why I cannot now abandon it, purely to make life easier for myself with respect to my family and my career.

Dear Concerned (part 2)

Moving on, I would like to address the question of prayer. I think I may have confused you by talking about one type of prayer previously and then giving you a tape about a different form later. A distinction needs to be drawn, therefore, between the five obligatory daily prayers (salah) which are an act of worship, and supplication – prayers of asking. The tape referred to the latter type. I think previously I tried to explain that the five daily prayers were comparable to your attendance of church on a Sunday. If you think about that, you will think of your singing hymns in worship, your utterance of the creed, your prayers of forgiveness and, of course, your prayers of asking. In the Church of England, as in most other denominations, you follow a set structure as to how you perform these rituals. Every individual obviously has their own reason for attending church on a Sunday, but I would guess that most practising Christians consider it a duty and feel that it refreshes their faith and reminds them of something greater.

I would like to suggest that you consider my five daily prayers in this context. Perhaps you could imagine that they are little church services. Let me tell you what they entail so that you can see what I mean. When the time comes to pray, I will stand in a room facing in the direction of a building which the Prophet Abraham built with his son Ismail for the worship of God. This should not be very strange, for in the Church of England, you all face eastwards in church. Next, having made the intention to pray, I will raise my hands up to my ears and say, “God is the Greatest”. Then I will place my right hand over my left arm on my navel and say, “O God, glory and praise are for You, and blessed is Your name, and exalted is Your Majesty; there is no god but You.”

Then I will recite the first chapter of the Qur’an, the translation of which is, “All praise is for God, the Lord of the worlds, the most Merciful, the most Kind; Master of the day of Judgement. You alone we worship; and You alone we ask for help. Guide us along the straight path – the path of those whom You have favoured and not of those who earn Your anger or of those who go astray.” Then I will recite another chapter of the Qur’an, then bow down saying again, “God is the Greatest.”

While bowing, I will say at least three times, “Glory to my Lord, the Great.” Then I will stand up straight again, saying “God hears those who praise Him” and “Our Lord, praise be to You.” Then I will prostrate on the ground with the words, “God is the Greatest,” and says three times, “Glory to my Lord, the Highest.” Then I will sit up, then prostrates again with the same words, and then stands to follow the same structure again, reciting a different chapter of the Qur’an after reciting the first as before.

This time, after the second prostration, I will sit and say, “All prayer is for God and worship and goodness. Peace be upon the Prophet and the Mercy of God and His Blessings. Peace be on us and on the righteous servants of God. I bear witness that there is no god but God and I bear witness that Muhammad is His servant and messenger.” Then, depending upon which prayer it is, I may repeat this process again or end. Within this prayer, other prayers may be made, i.e. of the asking variety, but basically it is a prayer of worship.

So I hope that you can now see what I mean in my comparison with the Christian attendance of church. The purpose of the salah prayer is to remind us of our Creator and our purpose in life, and to cleanse us of our sins. You might consider it the way the Prophet explained it: if you were to take a bath five times a day, would you not be very clean? So think of the prayer as a bath in relation to our sins.

Now, as to your worry that praying these five prayers while working might prove detrimental to my career, there are one or two other things to note. First of all, I would not be praying all five during office hours. The first prayer is at dawn before the sun rises, the second is at midday and therefore can be performed during my lunch hour, and the last prayer is at night. So that leaves me with only two to pray during office time. Now, consider that it is a legal requirement that employees are given the right to VDU (screen) breaks if they are working on computers, to avoid eye strain. So while my boss might take a walk up the corridor, I could go and pray.

Other employees are allowed to take smoking breaks. Some take coffee breaks. This prayer actually takes no longer than ten minutes to perform. You might also consider that in the summer months, I could only be praying the midday prayer at work, for the day is longer, the mid-afternoon prayer falling later, the sunset prayer perhaps at eight or nine in the evening. So, I have to ask, is it really such a problem? The answer, of course, is no. Islam is a middle course, going to neither the extremes of ease or of hardship.

As to prayers of asking – supplication – it is true to say that we could pray whilst washing up or mowing the lawn and that it might be accepted if we are sincere, but we might expect that a prayer for which we made a great deal of effort would be more pleasing to our Creator. Think of the account in Matthew’s gospel, where Jesus is said to fall on his face and pray that God will take the “cup” away from him. Clearly there must be benefit in prostrating during prayer or else he would not have done this. Prostrating, taking upon a position of utmost humility before God, was the practice of all the Prophets and you will find that amongst some of the “orthodox” churches, some Christians pray in this manner to this day. This said, Muslims do make their supplications in different ways. Some will raise the palms of their hands up towards the ceiling, while kneeling down, and ask God for that which is on their mind.

With regards to the words of the prayer from which you quoted, this is one which Muslims are encouraged to use when forming any decision or choosing the proper course. The Prophet instructed his followers to pray for guidance in all their concerns. There is a story I would like to tell you in connection to this. During the summer before I went to Stirling, I had my ups and downs; my periods of strength in faith and my periods of weakness. Now, there was one period, just after I had listened to that tape in fact, when I decided to pray this prayer – for the first time. I had not heard from Stirling about whether I would receive a place or not, and I had no idea what to do next. So that night I prayed two units of the voluntary “worship” prayer and then I uttered those words,

“O Allah, I seek Your counsel by Your knowledge and by Your power I seek strength and I ask You from Your immense favour, for verily You are able while I am not and verily You know while I do not and You are the Knower of the unseen. O Allah, if You know this affair, that I should go to Stirling to study Publishing Studies, to be good for me in relation to my religion, my life, and end, then decree and facilitate it for me, and bless me with it, and if You know this affair to be ill for me towards my religion, my life, and end, then remove it from me and remove me from it, and decree for me what is good wherever it be and make me satisfied with such.”

When I awoke in the morning, barely sparing a thought about the words I had uttered the night before, I went downstairs and saw that the post had come. When I picked the envelopes up from the mat, I discovered a letter from the University of Stirling and in it I found that they had offered me a place. So now, whenever a matter arises for me, I do pray for guidance using these words, and I feel, for example, that I can rest assured if I don’t get a job from a certain interview when I have prayed in this manner.

On some of the other things you said about your belief in God and the way He answers our prayers, I can either quite agree with you because I believe the same or I can empathise with it because I felt that way during my “searching” period. Where you wrote, “My belief is quiet and personal. I believe there is one God who knows everything about me, my thoughts, my actions, my hopes and fears…” it brings a smile to my face, because this is how I was in my agnostic phase. And, of course, it is also true of my belief today, but the difference is that at that point, that was all there was to it.

Dig Here!

Robert Fisk writes in a recent article entitled "If You Want the Roots of Terror, Try Here":

So I sat on the carpet in my living room and watched all these heavily armed chaps at Heathrow protecting the British people from annihilation and then on came President George Bush to tell us that we were all fighting "Islamic fascism". There were more thumps in the darkness across Beirut where an awful lot of people are suffering from terror - although I can assure George W that while the pilots of the aircraft dropping bombs across the city in which I have lived for 30 years may or may not be fascists, they are definitely not Islamic.

And there, of course, was the same old problem. To protect the British people - and the American people - from "Islamic terror", we must have lots and lots of heavily armed policemen and soldiers and plainclothes police and endless departments of anti-terrorism, homeland security and other more sordid folk like the American torturers - some of them sadistic women - at Abu Ghraib and Baghram and Guantanamo. Yet the only way to protect ourselves from the real violence which may - and probably will - be visited upon us, is to deal, morally, with courage and with justice, with the tragedy of Lebanon and "Palestine" and Iraq and Afghanistan. And this we will not do.

Of course, it is up to us to draw the conclusions. Methinks he has hit the bull's eye. Let's also look at Juan Cole's previous reaction to this bit of hate speech i.e. the phrase "Islamo-fascism" or "Islamic fascism":

It is hard to see the difference between the bigotry of anti-Semitism as an evil and the bigotry that [Michael] Medved displays toward Islam. It is more offensive than I can say for him to use the word “Islamo-fascist.” Islam is a sacred term to 1.3 billion people in the world. It enshrines their highest ideals. To combine it with the word “fascist” in one phrase is a desecration and a form of hate speech. Are there Muslims who are fascists? Sure. But there is no Islamic fascism, since “Islam” has to do with the highest ideals of the religion. In the same way, there have been lots of Christian fascists, but to speak of Christo-Fascism is just offensive.

Don't Be Brutal, Brother!

When I read this (whence it doesn't matter), I felt my heart sink:

A Christian stone mason received critical injuries, including dislocation of his after he was seen drinking water from a public facility, by a Muslim man on June 6 (Tuesday) just outside the eastern city of Lahore, the Pakistan Christian Post (PCP) has reported.

Nasir Ashraf, the Christian mason was working at the construction site of a school. The trouble for him began while he was returning to the site. Confronting him with anger the Muslim man asked him as to why he drank water from the public facility by using a glass that was placed at the water tank.

“Why did you drink water from this glass since you are a Christian?” the PCP quoted the Muslim man as asking Nasir.

“The man accused the mason of polluting the glass and proceeded to destroy it. The Muslim man then summoned a crowd by shouting, “This Christian polluted our glass,” and encouraged them to beat him up,” the PCP report said.

“The crowd began beating Nasir, eventually pushing him off a ledge. The fall dislocated his shoulder, broke his collarbone in two places and knocked him unconscious,” it said.

Yes, we have to work for the human rights of non-Muslim minorities along with those of Muslims, and educate those who have been misguided. "Untouchability" is a racist casteism concept. Let's live together and join hands. No one is "dirty". Whether it be a Muslim, a Christian , a Jew, a Hindu -- there is only one God and one humanity. And by undermining this, we are destroying the inner universal beauty that links us. Let's drink from each other's cups more often.

The Separation of Lovers

The following is a moving excerpt from the article "Crimes in Iraq: Lest We Forget Thirteen Years of Sanctions" by Felicity Arbuthnot:

Then there was Jassim. In the same ward as Ezra, he lay with his huge eyes and glossy hair, listlessly viewing the barren ward. He had been selling cigarettes on the streets of Basra to support his family until he became ill. “This is Felicity and she writes for a living,” said Dr.Haddad. Jassim was transformed; he glowed and showed me the poems he spent his days writing, when he still had the energy. He collected phrases, too, to incorporate where he thought appropriate. I told him all writers collect words and phrases, they are our tools. He glowed again, delighting that he was being understood and that his instincts were guiding him correctly along his passionate path. “I asked death, ‘What is greater than you?’ Death replied, ‘Separation of lovers is greater than me,’” was one of his collected phrases. He was 13."

One of his poems was called “The Identity Card.” In translation, it reads:

The name is love,
The class is mindless,
The school is suffering,
The governorate is sadness,
The city is sighing,
The street is misery,
The home number is one thousand sighs.

He watched my face for reaction. Lost for words, eventually I said, “Jassim, if you can write like this at thirteen, think what you will do at twenty.” I asked him if I could incorporate his poem in articles from that visit and said I would send them back to him, so he would see it in print. Some weeks later, I did just that and sent cuttings back to him with a friend and imagined him glowing again. He had fought and fought, but lost his battle just before my friend arrived. He never saw his poem in print and became just another statistic in the “collateral damage” of sanctions by the most inhuman regime ever overseen by the United Nations, which arguably condemned the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child - the most widely signed convention in history - to the dust, to the mass of graves of Iraq's children, resulting from the embargo years.

Indigenous Middle Eastern Jews Condemn Israel

Middle Eastern Jews are one of the noblest peoples and the most nuanced in their thinking. This is in stark contrast to even the majority of the American public who have been brainwashed by their media, and as a recent poll suggests support Israeli brutalities in Lebanon. But let's briefly look at the overview of the World War 4 Report on this:

"Indigenous Middle Eastern Jewry, from Lebanon, Morocco, and Iran, have issued recent condemnations of the Israeli assaults on Lebanon and Palestine."

Click here to read the full account.

The Devil's Wine

I am not that well
And I might die soon...
Often treading the darkness
So strange this night
The Devil’s wine is keeping me low
An athirst for sin, however wasteful
Take me home in a whirlwind
Dim the flight of yesternight
That spoilt a mother’s child
I am going to be up for Peace
None of Lucifer’s resources
Beginning of a realization
The Curtain is drawn
My spirit grows
The bony Oars of Time
Will push me nearer the Lord
And bring me life

Dear Concerned...

Why I believe what I do and the nature of this belief

I GATHERED gathered the impression from some of the things which you wrote in your letter, that you view my choice of Islam as my religion as just that: a choice from amongst a multitude of choices, as though I were looking for a coat in the winter sales. You advised me, “At this stage in your life I do not feel that changing to this form of religion is good, right and proper ‘for you, your livelihood and for the consequences of your affairs’…”

I have to put this point across clearly and, perhaps, forcefully, because it is fundamental to understanding everything else about my belief. Islam is my religion because I believe that it is the right path, the truth, or whatever you may wish to call it, and because I believe it to be the only Way. At origin, this statement is exactly the same as what you are saying when you tell me that my family pray that I may be guided. On both sides, we believe that we have a hold of the truth and, on both sides, we are deeply hurt and we despair at the other’s rejection of that truth. I cannot, therefore, reject what I believe simply because of a perception that it might get in the way. I believe it to be the truth and, thus, I act accordingly.

A friend once said to me, when I told him what I believed, “…whatever makes you happy.” Since then, I have come to realise that many people perceive that my belief is founded upon this principle; but it is not. My criteria for taking Islam as my path was one alone: “Is it the true way?” Having concluded that it is, everything follows on from this point. Where I might choose one coat over another because I prefer the colour, this is not in any way how it was when I came to believe in Islam.


My responsibilities in this life

Now, a second element which I would like to touch upon relates to my responsibilities in this life. You wrote, “At this stage in your life I do not feel that changing to this form of religion is good…” and later, “we are all praying for you [for guidance]… particularly at this stage in your life when your whole future is at stake.” My response is to ask when a good stage would be, for throughout our lives we may meet a thousand different stages. After getting a job, would the question then become getting a mortgage or a promotion? It could never end. Of all the unknown areas of our futures, however, there is one more pressing than any other, and that is death. We do not know when that will come to us. It may come in old age, but there are plenty of precedents for it to occur in our youth. I have a friend who was knocked off his bike by a van; he survived, but the doctors thought he never would. I knew somebody at Stirling whose twenty year-old friend returned home one evening feeling a little dizzy and within hours he was no longer alive. It is because I do not know when death will come to me that I feel that I must act at “this stage” in my life and, to pass your words back to you, because my “whole future is at stake” (i.e. in the life to come).

For a Muslim, the hereafter is not an added extra, tagged onto the end of life to take away the sorrow of death. Rather, it is the very aim of our life in this world. The life of this world is a passing stage, a period of preparation which determines whether we succeed or fail. In simple language the life of this world is an examination and the hereafter is the qualification. If we pass our driving test, we may drive a car and if not, we may not. This may be a difficult idea to grasp, because in the teachings of Paul is the idea that mankind must be saved from sin. A person is not, therefore, tested by his response to sin; the ability to sin or to turn from sin is not considered as a means by which we are judged.

Nevertheless, because the Muslim believes that this life has been given to us in order that we may determine our own outcome for the hereafter through the application of freewill (unlike other created things which innately submit to the laws of God), he believes that he must strive throughout this period of his creation to please God by adhering to His Law. Of course I am aware that such adherence may create difficulties for me from time to time, but I accept this because of the reasons I have so far mentioned. I am reminded of a verse in the Qur’an, the translation of which is: “And We shall certainly test you with something of fear and hunger and loss of wealth and lives and fruit, but give glad tidings to the patient, who, when they are struck by disaster, say, ‘We belong to God and to Him we will return.’ Those are the ones who have upon them blessings from their Lord and mercy. And those are the ones who are guided.”

Another verse will surely sum up what I am trying to explain: “Blessed is He in whose hand is Dominion, and He has power over all things – the One who has created death and life to test you as to which of you is best in deeds.” I hope that this helps you to understand the reason why I cannot delay my acting upon what I consider to be the truth.

There is one more thing which I would like to mention in this regard. Beyond these reasons, which derive directly from the teachings of Islam, I also have a very personal objection to the idea that I shouldn’t let my religion get in the way. I object to the treatment of God’s Law as an irritant which gets in the way of our “lives”; this is not the excuse, upon which Christian doctrine is founded, that Paul gave for its abandonment. Up until the appearance of Jesus, who adhered to the Law himself, Christians consider that the Law was not only valid, but also a fundamental aspect of belief. This being the case, I cannot understand how my adherence to the Law should be brought into question for any other reason than it being no longer necessary due to the idea of justification by faith in Jesus Christ as Lord. So far, however, this reason has not been given; only the fact that it may negatively affect my career prospects.