Islam

I didn't know how to introduce this piece. I wasn't sure I should incase it seemed like I was trying to defend myself and my words. I hope it makes people think if nothing else.

Islam.

I was young and reckless once (ok, so maybe more than once...). In my arrogance I walked up to a young Muslim lad in a shopping centre and told him that I would love to smash Allah's face in with a cricket bat. Of course I wasn't serious. I just wanted to antagonise him and make him do something fanatical in retaliation to my outlandish claims about the almighty. I should've just suggested I call my teddy bear Mohammed but the cricket bat scenario seemed the best way to go at the time. As one would suspect, thanks largely to the media, he quickly summoned a group of his friends, whom I will assume were fellow followers of Islam, and chased me from the shopping complex chanting for my blood and making wild threats against my family.

Now I'd love to say that over a decade later I've grown up somewhat and learned the values of religious freedom and understanding and was no longer an angry young bigot making threats with a lump of wood, and that the Islamic faith was not so fast to attack with such force anyone who didn't see their point of view or worse still who just didn't believe at all and that I'd be right. Sad then that over a decade later I have come to be only fifty percent right. I no longer like to play cricket.

Not that I support what I did. I was a young teenager rebelling against everything and anything that crossed my path. It was a very narrow minded thing to do. I am rather ashamed of it to be honest. Although as I look back I am worried not so much that I did something so childish and immature, because that is what young people do – they make mistakes, but at the shocking retaliation on the part of the Muslim boy I antagonised. I think I am more shocked that even boys aged sixteen could quickly amass a mob driven by something they can't possibly understand at such a young age and set out to violently attack me for uttering a few wayward words, stupid, ultimately harmless words. Plenty of young people of all walks of life say and do stupid things and although should be educated around the bad things they say and do we certainly shouldn't get together in gangs an chase them across the neighbourhoods of Britain with torches and pitchforks because they might have uttered something we didn't appreciate.

Controversial Dutch MP Geert Wilders avoided sport altogether and went ahead to declare that; “I don't hate Muslims. I hate Islam.” And Mohammed would, “... in these days be hunted down as a terrorist.” The Dutch Islamic community showed their understanding and appreciation of Wilders and freedom of speech by several attempts to take his life. One of which on the 10^th of November 2004 involved three men with hand grenades in a building in The Hague. The ever trustworthy source of information, Wikipedia, claims that Wilders can now only see his wife about once a week due to the security risks posed by his outlandish statements.

I am glad to see that the old school yard nugget of Gold “Sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me!” hasn't been forgotten then. Safe to say Muslim children were not taught this rhyme at school. I have to be honest usually the bullies just threw me in the large dustbins after I had sung it at them anyway. To be fair the Muslims tend to save their sticks and stones for the women who complain about getting gang raped. If the men say it didn't happen then it didn't happen and the women is punished for suggesting such nonsense. I heard a joke once; What makes nine out of ten people happy?

So why is it that followers of the Islamic faith can't seem to ignore insults both childish and sometimes cruel yet still only words? Why is it that Gillian Gibbons spent fifteen days in a prison in Sudan for suggesting they name her classes teddy bear Mohammed as it was seen as offensive to Islam and the prophet of the same name? I'd be pretty chuffed if a class of children wanted to name a teddy bear after me, it would surely mean I had influenced their live somehow in a positive way or had left a lasting impression that was deemed worthy of an honour no matter how large or small. It is estimated that around fifteen million people have the name of Mohammed in some form. I doubt very much that all fifteen million of them live a life fit to be called after a prophet and don't watch television, masturbate, swear, eat candy and do all the regular normal stuff that they should be getting persecuted for by Islamic law (and yes Catholics, Masturbation is normal...).

In 2008 Wilders released a short film called 'Fitna' in which he took quotes from the Quran and slapped them over grotesque acts of violence and terrorism perpetrated by Muslim extremists and radicals. The opening quote used to depict the followers of Islam in a negative light comes from Surah 8, verse 60 and according to devout Muslims is taken out of context; “Prepare for them whatever force and cavalry ye are capable of gathering to strike terror, to strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah and your enemies.” I have tried to apply a thousand contexts to this sentence and cannot seem to find one in which it might not come across as a little threatening. To try and even the scales a little I did a quick google search (the only way to find the truth of any matter!) for positive quotes regarding the conversion to Islam. I came across the web site www.covertingtoislam.com and on the front page they had a quote from Surah Al-Ma'idah, verse 3 which reads; “This day the unbelievers have given up all hope of your religion. Yet fear them not; fear only me.” I couldn't really believe what I was reading The same message of fear us, almost believe or die, forced belief in religious teachings through fear ran through the quotes being used both negatively and positively, both sides saying almost the same thing yet opposing one another and both striving for very different outcomes. The same website also claims the Arabic word Islam means 'Surrender' or 'Submission', tell that to the wives I though to myself and then wrote here because I thought it might raise a smirk.

I guess it would be naïve to take my decade of experience with Islam and the lack of development regarding it's acceptance of criticism and project that onto the grander scale of things like the ill treatment of women, the public stoning of homosexuals, the complete lack of respect for others freedom of speech and freedom of religious belief. I can't begin to offer up a true workable solution to the problems Islam will face when it comes to brainwashing the everyday person like me into following its frankly barbaric and backwards principles. So I can safely say my days of threatening deities with cricket bats are well and truly behind me. If I can make such forward developments in understanding other cultures, beliefs, systems and people then how come a religious group that has millions of followers across the globe and power to possibly change the world forever can't seem to grasp it?

“Inter-dependence, of course, is a fundamental law of nature. Not only higher forms of life but also many of the smallest insects are social beings who, without any religion, law or education, survive by mutual cooperation based on an innate recognition of their interconnectedness.” - Tenzin Gyasto; The Fourteenth Dalai Lama

Honesty Died with the Polaroid Picture

This is short piece I wrote on the train after a day and night in the wonderful city of Leeds. I love visiting Leeds. It somehow feels like home.

Honesty Died with the Polaroid Picture.

I sit on a train listening to three girls talking about Facebook like it truly is a revolution. They talk about wall posts and IM's like they are words and phrases etched into history as the tide changing, generation defining, rousing dialogues that will be remembered in years, decades, centuries to come.

“It's your love that controls me. No seriously, he wrote that on my wall!” Darts out from under a hum of train talk; the mundane weather and the general state of public transport, and the buzzing of the train in motion.

“I'm going to Tweet about today when I get home.” Is met with a series of nods and smiles.

A group boards the train and the seat next to me appears to expand and force me to press against the window under the expanding weight of sport relief conversation, how packaged salads contain more calories than a Big Mac, Converse trainers, tight jeans, I-Pods and flat caps as fashion accessories and the does and don'ts of wearing pumps (“Don't!” I scream inside to myself). I feel suffocated by a world I am losing touch with. We used to talk to God but now we just type it into Google.

For the longest time, maybe even as far back as my childhood, I have felt that the air on Sundays is heavier than in the week. I know that is impossible and it is probably just ingrained human guilt towards the rejection of the almighty on the holy day of rest. Rest under our new God, Money, just seems harder. Everywhere you look is a statement, be it a billboard or an item of clothing or a text message all of which even when consumed serve as an advert, or rather a message, just like mass, that the new God is there watching, wanting from you but for nothing in return. At least with God we felt we had something even when we had nothing but with money as a replacement if you don't have it then you don't have anything. You don't have faith, hope or comfort. I can't ignore the voice echoing in my ears “We did this to ourselves”.

In a sea of denim, leather and Indian ink identity gets blurred and lost as individualism becomes a contest for who can afford the latest accessory first. Your only artistic expression is the colour of your I-Pod, your status update, your myspace bulletin – You are what you Tweet. I have never had so many friends yet felt so alone.

I find myself sailing on a boat out in the vast ocean, the wind whistling past me, the water spraying my face. I feel free. I try to smell the salty sea and the freshness of the air and to feel refreshed by the cool water and calming breeze but this isn't real. The motion is digital, my companion is a collection of pixels, the sounds recorded and played back upon demand, all wrapped up in an advanced physics engine designed to capture and simulate reality. Second Life is the closest many of us can get to a second chance. I don't see that as a bright side.

Everything seems so immediate, so impersonal, so forced, so manufactured, from phrases uttered to the clothes that are worn to the way each and every detail of your life is shared with a hundred or so “Friends” who only know you through a portal to your life on an internet site. Who you are and what you do are fused into one. You are like an art print of a person – a copy of an original. They claimed dance music would be the future, the future of what nobody could be sure but whilst that prophecy fell by the wayside make no mistake that the digital revolution is here and in full swing and your success of adapting to it can be measured by the Linden dollars you carry in your open source designed trouser pockets.

If you can remember when adult meant grown up and not pornography then you have been left behind, a relic, a dinosaur, a piece of history. Honesty died with the polaroid picture. If you don't fit the bill they can photoshop you out. Who will remember us when we are gone if we leave nothing more tangible behind?