Mr Moo

This is a really important programme to watch.  It can be  watched it on Channel 4’s website if one has missed it.  [Link]

There is an associated pdf pamphlet with the programme, and a web page with poll information.  The whole thing makes for pretty grim reading, and it is important, regardless of your background, to look at what the programme and pamphlet say.  Indigo Jo has more on his website. Click on the image below for the pamphlet.

This one is dedicated to some young people I know, who recently went camping and posted pictures online making gang signs to their Sony Ericsson camera-phones.

To my young brethren, this posting-of-gang-signs is not a good thing. Universally, this is not a good thing. Even if you reside in south Central L.A., and today is a good day because you didn’t have to use your AK, it is not a good thing. You live in south London, or the Asian part of Leicester, where despite what tabloids say, the only danger they face is choosing what colour trainers to wear with your camouflage clothing.

Now my dear young brethren, the time will come when your fathers and mothers will be aghast at your adolescent antics. Growing up in the UK, these fine folk will assume your character has become besmirched, and you are faced with the inevitable trip ‘BACK HOME’. Yes, BACK HOME, to get in touch with your roots and culture.

Now, listen carefully young brethren, for they may be alternative explanations as to why you may end up in the land of your ancestors. It could be tourism, for example. “Yeah, I am going to Goa, to sit on the beach, and do not much, then we are going to Agra and then to some small village in Rajastan to get to the ‘Real India’”

My exuberant young brethren, alternatively one could be travelling to visit loved ones, or to get married, or shopping for a wedding - for we all know wedding come in only two flavours now, Austere and Obscenely Lavish. It could be for work or even for religious reason, or to study, or for cheap dentistry of dubious hygiene. It could be to find one’s roots. “Dad, what do you mean back home, I live in ************ [insert town here], all my friends are from here, why do we have to go to [India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Yemen, Egypt etc etc]” and then the parents will say, “That is where your culture is from, you must learn your culture, not be brainwashed by the west.” and you will realise you are living in a Goodness Gracious Me sketch.

My dear young brethren… when you visiting the land of forefathers, do not get an Indian head massage. Yes, the barbers there make the ones here in the UK appear as uncouth barbarians, but the barbers of the motherland have, as you would say, skillz.

My favourite young brethren, take note of these barbers, for at the end of the excess hair-removal process, they will offer you two things. One is the ‘Fair and Lovely’ skin bleach - which is racialist nonsense, and they willl offer you a proper Indian head massage. If your life is valuable to you, please flee at the merest mention of this horrific procedure. The massage process is quite relaxing, but at the end the coiffurewalas will start to twist your neck. At this point, run for the exit. Do not stop to rescue women and children, they will only slow you down. Run away as fast as you can - obviously leaving money to pay for the haircut as one does not want to antagonise anybody who is skilful with a razor blade.

This barabric neck twist has been known to paralyse, it is identical to that neck twist they do in SWAT films when the good guys are raiding the enemy hideout, and the good guys are picking off the guard-who-keep-to-the-same-routine-like-clockwork one by one, and that ninja neck twist is the silent but effective way of dispatching goons.

To my emotional young brethren. Yes, we know your fingers dextrous and can loop over other fingers in a manner that would make a yogi blush. We know, with regards to those fingers, you can twist them, keep them rigid and wave them in the ayer like you just don’t cayer all at the same time. I believe you are looking for some kind of affirmation, well, here it is.

Well Done and Jolly Good Show.

You even do it without the slightest trace of irony which takes effort. However, to experience that real danger, go to the motherland get that head massage. If you can keep your head about you, then the respect you crave will come naturally.

Celebrating
There are three event that are occurring to celebrate British Muslimosity. We have Islam Expo this coming weekend, the week after we have Living Islam, and later on in the year we will have the Global Peace and Unity Conference 2008. Halal celebrations all round.

Ruminating
Here are three men quotes taken from the article 50 Greatest Quotes on Men.

• A man may conquer a million men in battle but one who conquers himself is, indeed, the greatest of conquerors.
• Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters.
• Men are like steel. When they lose their temper, they lose their worth.

Dominating
Three final things took place this weekend:

• The Doctor Who series finale, which was enjoyably mad.
• The epic Wimbledon Mens final, which was exciting to watch - even though I am not really into watching sport. Mrs Moo did the classic thing of, five minutes before the end, asking ’so what does Deuce mean’ and ‘what nationality is Federer? Is he the Good Guy? I know Mrs Moo was intending to wind me up, and it worked.
• The British Grand Prix - the only sport where a Brit is doing well. I don’t even know why I am putting these sport points in. It is late here and I wanted a third lot of ‘three things’ as most men at my workplace are into sport (deluded folk).

BBC News features a conference on chaplains looking at Muslims in the military.

Numbers: The BBC reports the following figures: Close to 400 Muslims serve in the military - about 300 in

the Army, 50 in the RAF and 40 in the Navy. 400 out of 2 million is about 0.0002 or 0.002% of all Muslims serve in the military. The numbers for military are very very low compared to general population in the UK (of which Muslims make up about 3%). The fact that the position of Muslims in the armed forces is being taken seriously is a good thing. Armies, in themselves can play a positive role, for example the Pakistan Army in disaster areas such as 2005 Earthquake.

Loyalty: Tabloids and right wing press and commentators make much of Muslim support of our military. I suggest the stock answer should be that Muslims support a decent military as much as they do any other apparatus of state, such as streetlighting and good roads. If there is Muslim-Rage(Tm), it should be directed (with adab) at politicians. As for Muslims joining, it is simply a matter of personal conscience and we should leave it at that.

Muslims in the Police forces: What is interesting is that another article talks about the number of Muslims in the police force. I would be interested to know how many Muslims there were in all the emergency services, not just police and emergency medical staff, but also the fire service. Extended family members work for both police and armed services and my own father was a translator for South Yorkshire police. His ID card was more effective than a passport when going through foreign customs - he was seen by officials as one of their own.

Pro-law, anti-war: The lunchtime spot survey (sample size 4) gave the result of three guys happy to join the police but not the military, and one not happy to join either. Whilst I would have no problem working for the police forces. Personally, I am not convinced by the arguments for my joining the military (if they were looking for a general communications bod). As an unreconstructed libertarian whose family, in previous generations went on the salt march with Ghandi, have no interest in taking part in military activities abroad, or increasing the UK arms trade or the military-industrial-complex. The influence of Gideon Burrows, an old university buddy and ex-housemate, is still too strong - see his book ‘the No-Nonsense Guide to the Arms Trade‘. (Yes I know the arms trade is not directly related to Muslim in the Military, but I will revisit this subject later on)

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• Will we use our nice prayer mats to complete our fantastic nafl prayers? Are nafl prayers are supery-rug-oratories?

• Was Alexander Phlegming, the discoverer of lysozomes in his nasal effusions, a Muslim? Is it significant he was from the tribe Bani Cillin?

• Will the Salafis ban the distribution of the Innovations catalogue in Saudi Arabia?

• Now that Abu Qatada has been released on parole, will he denounce al-Qaeda and join the Quilliam foundation? He would add some credibility. (To whom I don’t know)

• When will the Halal Monitoring Committee just take over the monitoring for the meat supplies for Nandos and end all endless online debates about the halalosity of peri-peri chicken. It is just seasoned chicken people. Seasoned chicken. That is all.

• We have heard about Islamic car - will Islamic microwave ovens finally take off? [The plate rotates seven times anti-clockwise. The microwave is more expensive, but the food is spiritually cleansed. There is a convection (non-racist) browning option available. The timer only comes in the following times: an hour every day, three days a month, forty days every year and the 'chilla' defrost option is only usable for four months in ones lifetime]

• With the release of the latest of the Chronicles of Narnia films will people realise that these novels are orientalist nonsense in the later novels? [Especially the portrayal of the Calormenes - turbans, pointy slippers, scimitars and crescents. To top it all, they have a many-limbed animal-god Tash. I thought it was manure when I read it as a child, and I think it is manure now. Be warned my friends, be warned.]

• Will Muslims please stop being angry at everything?

• Now that Boris Johnson is in charge in London, is it nafl for us in Birmingham to have our own mayor? Is a nafl Boris a superior-gora-tory?

• With Ramadan approaching, will Muslims please stop campaigning for a united Eid? It is disrupting the long-standing tradition of playing our employers and taking two days off in our non-Muslim workplaces. Clarity is the last thing we need.

• Will I get my house renovated by my NEXT birthday?

• Will we have more ‘What will Obama do for the Muslims’ events? [I have counted four so far. Makes as much sense as 'What will Obama do for the vegetarians'.]

• Will scientists find a cure for hayfever that does not involved white tablets?

• Will we get sucked into a black hole created at CERN? Will the sufis invent a Large Hadrah Collider? To find the mythical Hugs-MySon particles, will sufi scientists accelerate zhikr circles of differing tariqahs at high speed until… fanaa?

I love this new man stuff. The New York Times has a feature on the Basics of Fatherhood. Actually, it is a summary of a larger feature from the website Psychcentral. Below is a summary of the summary

• Be there.

• Be there throughout their childhoods.

• Balance discipline with fun.

The last paragraph is what caught my attention, I paste it here in full.

Be a role model of adult manhood. Both boys and girls need you as a role model for what it means to be adult and male. Make no mistake: The kids are observing you every minute. They are taking in how you treat others, how you manage stress and frustrations, how you fulfill your obligations, and whether you carry yourself with dignity. Consciously or not, the boys will become like you. The girls will look for a man very much like you. Give them an idea of manhood (and relationships) you can be proud of.

And below is the rather groovy, most-likely-Muslim-but-who-are-we-to-judge, father and son pictured in the NYT.

If you go to Masjid-e-noor, on Berners Street in Leicester between Asr and Maghrib, there will be a dozen or so men, mostly with white beards, who will be reciting diligently from the Qur’an. It used to be a regular thing, and I imagine it still is. The number of men visible escalates during Ramadan. I grew up not noticing these men, and most people attending the mosque will not: they become as ubiqutious as the green carpet. As children, we just popped into the mosque at prayer times, the spaces between prayers was park time.

I have written previously about mosques and their arrangements. I spoke to my cousins, who run mosques in London, and it transpired that most mosque committees have no interest in change. The evolution of most mosques in the UK follows a typical pattern, a small room or house is set aside as prayer space. Every few years, there is a growth spurt and the mosque expands. The mosque committees oversee this change, and raise funds and look after this space, and feel very very emotional towards it. In their eyes, it ceases to be public prayer space, or even community space, but THEIR space. Change in circumstances like this is difficult. But through all of this, the men in the mosque keep praying.

Back to the praying men in the mosques, if we ponder upon their priorities, I propose they are the Muslim equivalent of benedictine monks, dedicating their life to prayer and discipline. The challenge for my generation and my son’s generation is this: will we be able, or even feel inclined, to sit in their place?

I got tagged on a Six-Word-Memoir-Meme. My six word memoir?

Father’s shoes unfilled (despite bigger feet).

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There is also a photo mosaic meme going around. Click on the photo for the full answers.

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What is in your bag meme
This is from a while ago, and I have been meaning to do it properly, but here is a quick’n'dirty version. There are comments on the flickr page that explain more.

There is a lot of fluff spoken in our name. The same old phrases get called out, and it is tiresome. I know the people who write them are sincere, and this is a fardh-kifaya - i.e, communal responsibility, it is still dull. Even bloggers suffer from this disease.

So, to make the absorption of interviews and press releases more interesting, we can play British Muslim Bingo.

Here are the rules

1. Download the sheets above, each person gets one 5×5 grid
2. If you hear or read a word on the grid., cross the word out. If you get a line, shout ‘Takbir’, if you get a full house, shout ‘Islamophobia’

Please note, this should not be played if there is an interview with the village idiot.

Interviewer: What do you think of migrants?
Asian man with topi on: I think they are taking our jobs and our benefits. It is not right.
Interviewer: Do you have a job
Asian man with topi on: No, I am on benefits.

Dedicated to all the brothers who have beards, and wear ties and suits. It is sunny and warm, and that combination of clothing and weather is sure to keep one toasted. Sure, later, in the winter, we are happier than our less hirsute colleagues, but we suffer during the summer. This discomfort is exacerbated if we have to listen to hot air.

A recent BBC article on the corporate-speak in the workplace reminded me of a job interview I had a while back. Apalled at the nonsensical phrases in the publicity material, I called the friends of the CEO sycophants (and a much ruder word). I did not get the job. The offensive language was completely out of character and I apologised then and do so again, and do not condone that sort of behaviour. It was probably a good thing that I didn’t get the job. That worthy organisation is still using the nonsensical publicity material.

Another statement that really riles me, is the phrase ‘quantum paradigm shift’. Now, this is taken from the generally quite good ‘Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’. An otherwise competent manager used to use this phrase all the time. Quantum is very small, very very small, so a quantum paradigm shift is actually a really, really small shift in understanding. Thats what it means literally. Bah. Double Bah. The other thing that Muslim spokespeople in the UK tend to repeat the same old cliches - I have highlighted this before. So please, today, if you use hackneyed cliches in your workspeak, you should give 110% to clarifying buzzphrases, taking a birds-eye view and cascading this down to granularity.

Begging…

Safe, man. You lookin buff in dem low batties. Dey’s sick, man. Me? I’m just jammin wid me bruds. Dis my yard, innit? Is nang, you get me? No? What ends you from then? If this language sounds familiar, the chances are you’re from inner-city London, where a new multicultural dialect is emerging. But wherever you live, it’s coming to you soon.

The Guardian yesterday had a feature on Jafaican, the new street slang. When I showed Mrs Moo, she said “Sick”.

Social Notworking (sic)
As Barakah from Rickshawdiaries noted, this trend of incomprehensibility has arrived at facebook too. I submit an entry between two young cousins…

oi is der suttin u aint tellin me coz if u aint den we gtta chat sak dat we gtta chat neway. (SUBU lol)

I feel old, and I hug my Oxford minireference thesaurus for comfort. I suspect the quote above is the talk of the 2008 version of the bhangra muffins (from Goodness Gracious Me)

Haiku-Twittering
The sidebar has links | to my haiku on twitter | I post/text when bored

There is a bill currently being put through Parliament to allow terrorism suspects to be held for 42 days without charge. To those Muslims who support this bill, it should be noted that they have not had the pleasure of detained under the terrorism act for five minutes. Friends travelling through the local airport have, and their attitude before being held briefly, and after, is very different. Ah, the counterargument goes, if they have nothing to hide, they have nothing to fear. The point is this, people should be free to go about their daily business without living in fear of the police picking them up. The UK is not a mukhabarat state - yet, and we do not want it to become one. If there is evidence people are doing things that are dodgy, produce the evidence and charge them. It is not that difficult to get one’s head round.

Nick Robinsons blog on the BBC gives an interesting angle to the current situation - that draws parallels to the run up to the Iraq war . On Radio 4 this morning, the Shadow home secretary David Davis sounded comparatively reasonable (though not enough to get over our healthy aversion to politicians). However he mentioned an important point, that the bill will probaby be defeated in the Lords. It is really surprising how many Muslims don’t know how laws are made in this country (or most countries for that matter). Here is a primer (pdf) taken from this page of the parliament website.

Songs that could be nasheeds…
There are countless more, but these are the ones that just popped into my head.

Masterplan

All we know is that we don’t know
What is gonna be
Please brother let it be
Life on the other hand won’t let you understand
Why we’re all part of the masterplan

Return to innocence

That’s not the beginning of the end,
That’s a return to yourself.
The return to innocence.

Fragile

Perhaps this final act was meant
To clinch a lifetime’s argument
That nothing comes from violence
and nothing ever could
For all those born beneath an angry star
Lest we forget how fragile we are

I liked this short video.

Discriminating…

Interesting feature on Algerian-French author Faïza Guène.

In theory, France follows the republican model of integration where everyone is equal. ….But there’s something more subtle and dangerous, a neo-colonialist feeling that still infuses society … It’s not about racism, it’s about treating people differently.” Having foreign roots is like “a defect, a complex because we’re always being pulled back to that fact, reduced to it”. Being poor plus having foreign roots is a double smear, she says.

The US is also reaching out the French suburbs.

Anulling…
Muslim couple have had a marriage anulled because the lady it seems was not a virgin.
A French Muslim couple have opposed a government decision to contest a court ruling annulling their marriage because the bride lied about being a virgin. This has caused all manner of fuss. Have a read.

Inciting…
Bardot guilty of inciting racial hatred … again
Brigitte Bardot was yesterday found guilty of provoking discrimination and inciting racial hatred with a letter lambasting the influence of Islam on French culture. The 73-year-old former actor was not in the Paris court to hear the ruling and may well have viewed the result as a forgone conclusion. This was her fifth conviction for inciting racial hatred.

There is a recent story of a boy dying in a madrasa in Pakistan, after being abused for not learning the Qur’an. It is pretty horrific stuff, but it didn’t really come as a new thing. I remember growing up in Leicester going to Qur’an classes and seeing children being beaten quite regularly. We got used to it pretty quickly and developed some coping strategies. Bear in mind, this was for boys broadly aged 7-16, and parents were often complicit in the treatments described, in the sense that they knew that physical discipline was used and did nothing to stop it.

I would also like to make it clear that this took place in the 1980’s and is not the practice now in the UK thanks to judicious self regulation on the part of mosques. If these practices still do go on, I recommend that the police be called straight away.

In brief, the main punishments in the mosques of Leicester in the 1980’s

• Being thwacked with the bamboo stick
• Prolonged Squats - holding your ears and standing up and sitting down repeatedly - this was referred to as ‘utt bhes’ - literally standup-sitdown
• Doing the chicken - crounching over and putting hour hands behind your legs and grabbing your ears - also known as ‘murgha’ or ‘khaan-pakar’.
• Leaning against the wall at angle with book on head - if it falls, one gets thwacked.
• Standing for hours on end
• Having a pen woven between two knuckles and hand squeezed to inflict pain.
• The psychotic teacher diligently and repeatedly slapping and kicking an unruly child around the mosque floor.

I read this news piece on Makkah becoming a skyscraper city.
Islam’s holiest city set for 130-skyscraper redevelopment

The following poem came to mind

OZYMANDIAS

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Percy Bysse Shelley, published in 1818

Hope the Bank Holiday is going well.  I have put this on a time delay post in anticipation of the busyness of the day off, because wordpress can do that sort of thing, and plain old html cannot.

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Not-Yet-Revolting

Muslims are revolting!  It appears that some parts of a jail in Cambridgeshire has a third of its prisoners Muslim. and some staff are unable to control them, and a revolt is about to break out at any second.  Bishop Michael Nazir, we have finally found your no-go areas!

Un-Converting

Some Christians want to increase efforts to convert British Muslims.  Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali is one of the supporters… [reaches for his Ahmed Deedat pamphlet from the 1980's]

Diss-Appointing

Munira Mirza has been appointed diversity adviser to Boris Johnson.  Islamophobia-Watch has more.  I do hope this is not the sign of things to come from the Conservative Party - taking on the staff and policies of the Policy Exchange.

I have been tagged twice this week.  One was physically by a colleague who mistook a goodbye tap on the shoulder as playground tag and started chasing me, and the other was virtually, from Sunnisisters.com

Now, when people ask these questions, there is a temporal element to it.  What colour is a leaf?  brown bud, green shoots, deep green leaf, orange in the autumn and brown mush in the winter, and in a year, nothing. So, these are my answers for today.  Tomorrow they will be all different.

1. Last movie you saw in a theater?
We call them cinemas in the UK, and I believe it is spelt theatre, but that is just my personal gripe.  Asim and I saw The Iron Man, which was not about a laundry owner and his wonderfully creased linen, but an arms dealer who turns superhero.  He had a very effective exoskeleton but not this so he wasn’t really an Iron Man - (and isn’t Mrs Pepperpot meant to be a tiny lady)

2. What book are you reading?
Northern Lights - Phillip Pullman.  Great story, but his aqidah is all messed up.

3. Favorite board game?
Scrabble, And it is ‘Favourite’ spelled out on a double word and triple letter score.

4. Favorite magazine?
New Yorker, always has been since I was a wee bairn.

5. Favorite smells?
Baby Moo, except when he delivers one of his ‘parcels of uniqueness’.

6. Favorite sounds?
Baby Moo

7. Worst feeling in the world?
Regret, and that salty wet nausea mouth just before one is going to puke.

8. What is the first thing you think of when you wake up?
The dream I was just in…

9. Favorite fast food place?
Lahores Kebab House, Ladypool Road. It does both Kebab and Curry, so one does not need to choose. Prices are reasonable and the hygiene is fine. I will do a feature on this place as it is something special.

10. Future child’s name?
It will NOT be Umberto Viggo Wilhomena Xavier Zarathustra.

11. Finish this statement. “If I had lot of money I’d….?
Pay zakat on it. Then I would work part time and do more family stuff.

12. Do you sleep with a stuffed animal?
I am the stuffed animal. But there is a moo-cow somewhere in the room.

13. Storms - cool or scary?
Scary. I have seen what they can do, but I front and pretend to be alpha male.

14. Favorite drink/Juice?
Sprite with real lemon and lime in.

15. Finish this statement “If I had the spare time I would….”?
start and finish the S*** J***** P********* novels I have written in my head.

16. Do you eat the stems on broccoli?
Yup.  Chop them fine and spice them up.

17. If you could dye your hair any color, what would be your choice?
Whatever it will be, I will make sure my beard and eyebrows match, because I am a slave to my art.

18. Name all the different cities/towns you’ve lived in?
Sheffield, Wolverhampton (though at the time it was not a city), Leicester, Austin Texas (does six weeks count?), Bombay when it was still Bombay, Birmingham Shareef.

19. Favorite sports to watch?
Not a sports-watching person - more a doer than a viewer.  If pushed, I do like football but I don’t support a team.  Amreekans, this is soccer to you.  And I know you amreekans read this, I am in ur surverz, logging ur IP adres.

20. One nice thing about the person who sent this to you?
Respect to her writing and her photography

21. What’s under your bed?
Carpet

22. Would you like to be born as yourself again?
Reincarnation does not exist.  Dr Who, on the other hand, is real.

23. Morning person, or night owl?
I choose both.

24. Over easy, or sunny side up?
Eggs, over easy - but as runny as possible.

25. Favorite place to relax?
Reading a book on holiday

26. Favorite pie?
Apple and cinnamon

27. Favorite ice cream flavor?
Chocolate orange and chilli

28. Of all the people you tagged this to, who’s most likely to respond first?
I tag Chris Allen, Yahya Birt and Fozia Bora, who should be blogging, and also Aasia Bora who definitely should be blogging.  I don’t think any of them will respond [he said, throwing down the metaphorical gauntlet].