Mauris non nisi at urna pellentesque rhoncus. Make Prince Charles amir-ul-Mumineen.  Proin in nisl quis libero laoreet sodales. Nullam blandit sem vitae tortor. Sed ante.   Look at bizarre solutions such as oujiah boards, seances and x-factor style national fatwa voting competition. Duis lectus leo, porta id, dapibus mattis, congue quis, mauris. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; on an optimistic note, its about food, family, extra days off, and having your first daytime coffee. feugiat rhoncus ante. Duis fringilla diam quis justo. Vestibulum ligula dui, luctus sit amet, lobortis nec, instilling our own neuroses into our children, so the generational cycle can start again. Happy Eid.  Lorem Ipsum Delor.

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I am writing to remind you that I am there for you, and I have been doing all I can to support. I am forced to write this in response to the latest request from you for us to

I do not mind supporting you in the normal reasonable things, but this latest request goes too far. May I remind you that I am not a supremely wealthy man, or one endowed with the patience of the Prophets, or one that can be in more than one place at a time.
May I also, kindly remind you that

I am a simple man, with simple needs. I have studied what life is about, and learnt its lessons through a series of failures.. At the risk of sounding patronising, I will relate to you Maslows hierarchy of needs, namely, your phsyiological needs, your safety, your self esteem, your need to be loved, and self actualistation…

I vow to provide these to you willingly, freely, and with no condition. I also vow to tidy up behind me, to keep myself well groomed, and to wear clean clothes and not smell of bad things. The balding, the going grey, the wrinkling and the sagging I can do nothing about.
However, one small item please honour my request for

One final thing before I sign off, when you are puzzled as to how my friends and I can socialise by just eating a little food, sitting around and occasionally insulting each other, that in itself is a good time and we do not have to have an output at the end of it.

I write this letter as a response to your initial request. I hope, having read it, we understand each other a little bettter.

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 could have sharpened up my ideas, my vocabulary and references and become a serious academic. I could have researched and dugg and investigated and queried, and become a full journalist. I could have delved deep into my soul and become a poet or a prose writer whose imagination touched on the eternal human condition. But I have done none of these, and in my present condition am unlikely to.

There are some subjects though, that I have always been typing away at, not because of qadr, destiny, karma or habit, but because people I know have always told me about them. I remember typing up my fathers notes on his visit to the Holy Land, serialised in a magazine as “Subjugation Witnessed”. Here he described a gun being pointed at a child my age. I was so happy being on the computer that the meaning of these words did not register. Years later, when I saw a picture of a similair scene, my reaction was one of grim familiarity.

My first ever journalistic piece for Q-News was covering a conference on the Holy Land. It was here I heard the phrase “Right of Return”. I noticed that in each issue of a British Muslim magazine there was an article or feature about the Holy Land- it wasn’t about the Khilafah or supporting whichever person was in power, it was about the Holy in Holy Land. I remember a few months later looking at a different cover photo and being horrified at the image of bloodstains trickling down rubble.

This week, British campaigners took out full page adverts in the broadsheet newspapers highlighting what was really happening in the Holy Land. And today, people around the world told their own stories relating to the Holy Land. I was going to write about the Holy Land being like the baby in story of King Solomon, where two women both lay claim to it and Solomon proposes the baby be cut in two. I was going to write about the story of David and Goliath. But it is late. Tomorrow I will continue to write about silly things, but today, I wanted to write a little about writing about the Holy Land.

….I am not the first to notice that there is a growing tendency among Muslim youth to become so obsessed with the oppression of the ummah that they reduce Islam to a political ideology that gives legitimacy to their aggressive means of activism. Their inability to place these events within a wider Islamic framework is a severe handicap that ends up misguiding what are potentially great efforts. Whilst the concerns of such individuals and groups are certainly valid – and their intentions usually very noble – some have become so caught up in expressing emotional outrage that in the process they have become political zealots, willing to disregard almost anything – including basic good manners and human decency – to get their point across.

A common tactic of this group (which extends beyond any one organisation) is the use of what I can only describe as spiritual blackmail. Many an e-mail has told me that anyone who doesn’t picket outside Selfridges next Saturday morning doesn’t care about the murder of innocent Palestinian children. And in case the equation doesn’t add up, pictures of babies with bullets through their chests are attached to increase the guilt factor. The question then arises; do we really need such graphic reminders to motivate ourselves, or will the circulation of this imagery work against us by de-sensitising the world to the horrors of the situation?…

also…

…Recently, the internal politics of some Muslim lobby groups have indicated that the anti-Zionist movement is in danger of becoming something of a competitive industry devoid of spiritual dimension. The horrors of daily existence renders it almost impossible for the Palestinians to think beyond their immediate condition, but those of us claiming to work strategically have to keep our intentions pure and our religious beliefs firm. The manner in which we conduct ourselves when fighting for the rights of the Palestinian people cannot be one that disregards our essential spiritual connection to the holy land and the sanctity of our mission. Becoming bitter, angry, and abusive people will not invite the sympathies of those whose assistance is desperately needed in our endeavours; nor will it incline anyone towards Islam if we resort to such undignified modes of behaviour.

Our conduct, as Muslims, should not only be distinct, but exemplary. Our character, modelled on the Best of creation (pbuh), should be one of our greatest assets, not one of our most embarrassing drawbacks. Only then, when we acquire the character of true Muslims, will we be deserving of the divine gift that is Palestine…

By Shagufta Yaqub

The full article appeared in issue 341-342 of Q-News (March-April 2002 – Safar 1423).

So, the only conclusion you can draw from this is ‘if you’re a woman and want to enter this mosque, do so as a non-Muslim . If you should convert once in the mosque you’ll promptly be kicked out.

Here is another local Birmingham story. I heard this first hand from my friend who helped project manage the construction of the mosque. This mosque applied for planning permission on the basis that there was X number of spaces for women, with separate entrance and facilities. The architectural plans were nice. However, once the building was erected, no women from the community were allowed to use the mosque. My friend did come to me recently and say that they had held a talk at the mosque where women were allowed. However at congregation time they were sent home.

Now I don’t want to come across as a ranter. We have enough of those online and offline. So here are a few suggestions regarding the running of mosques in the UK.

• To those that run smaller mosques and say, we do not have space for women, a solution would be to open up you mosques anyway. Women have money, maybe by opening up you will fill your empty rows. Everyone knows there is a busy-ness at Jumah time, but there are 34 other congregational prayers in the week. Most of these take place on a barely-filled mosque.
• To those that take the fatwas of exclusion of women in the public sphere, the understanding is that your opinion is in a minority. Salafis don’t have a problem with women in mosques. Sufis don’t have a problem with women in mosques. People who follow madhabs on the whole don’t – just travel in Turkey, Syria, Jordan, or Malaysia where Hanafis and Shafiis have no problem with women in Mosques. It seems to be a subcontinental peculiarity that has transferred itself to the UK.
• To those who run mosques and say that ‘we have provided radio transmitters so the women can listen at home’. This makes as much sense as saying ‘I pray with the TV. There is jamaat in Makkah I follow via the live streaming on the Islam Channel’ This is not a technological issue, its an access and fairness issue.
• To readers who are wondering what they can do, I would suggest they get involved in local mosque organisation. My hunch is that people who read blogs are creative, educated and interesting – just the type persons a mosque committee needs. If it doesn’t work out, at least you tried. My cousins run mosques, and I am going to talk to them this weekend.
• There is a post called “Adviser on Inter-Faith Relations to the Bishop of Birmingham”. Maybe we need to think about getting “Advisors on Intra-faith issues” for all our institutions.
• To those that say ‘We can do this, so what if you don’t like it, you are a liberal! Times are bad and we don’t want fitnah!’ The counter to this is that if they are happy to see the damage they are doing to individuals and Muslim communities as a whole, then so be it. Ye reap what Ye sow. There is no evidence that women are any sort of fitnah.� Is it not surprising people turn away from the deen because they are turned away from the House of Allah?

Like I said, I don’t want to become a ranter. We know that the evolution of the mosque from a prayer room in someones house to the superstructures we see today in the UK came about organically. Many of the people who work inside are much more pious than I am, and dedicate their lives to the deen. They have more taqwa and sincerity, and I do not have hate for any group or community.

This is also not a new issue. Next week, someone else will be talking about this. The most active activist group, MPAC, ran a long campaign on this over the last few years. The MCB, MAB, BMF and other acronyms got together to create MINAB. The MCB also had a Mosque 100 project. I wish all these projects the best, but I fear none of them will have the courage to effect meaningful change until the Imams and committees themselves change.

I am off to Jumah now, and navigate through the english khutba on esoteric theories on the origins of terrorism. On my way in and out I will glance the silly parking. I will dutifully fight my way through the scrum at the end and search for my shoes, hidden in my secret place. I will glance and the sign for the mobile company which will give “‘This weeks donations to Mask”. The mosque has facilities for women, but the only lady I will see will be the one standing away from the mosque grounds, who is still asking for money, same time and place, for the last two years.

Despite all this, I love praying at the mosque. I am sure we can do better than this.

The three year anniversary of my fathers death passed recently, if you can, say a prayer for him. He was a pretty complex and unique man. His obituary, first published in Q-News, can be read following the link below, take a moment to read it if you can.
(I originally put the q-news link in but the website seems to be in a coma)

http://mooslim.com/blog/?page_id=126

I am from the underside of lapcat, the soft fur comforting in way only warm purring can.

I am from Huffaz of Highfields and Molanas of Mumbai, from Milkmen of Manej and Petlad, from the Bora collective where resistance is futile. I am from the khandaan where on a visit to Manchester we saw Faisal put a whole roti in his mouth in one go and swallow it, a mean feat for a teen.

I am from the writers with quick tempers, the readers of slow old tomes, the teachers of misfits and the wanderers of many homes.

From world that is temporary and everything will end in destruction, to the importance of calling an aunt in a far off land at four in the morning to see if her fever has subsided, where friends of siblings are pulled in, dipped and shared like pizza.

I am from rebellious Muslims who sent their children to university in big cities, where seemingly fast family friends of fathers’ fall in a fickle fashion when seeing females further themselves.

I’m from Moors of Yorkshire, the lone eaters of kari-kichri in a town of aloo-paratha, then in Leicester, seemingly the lone readers of Austen and Pratchett in a town of Baheshti Zewar.

From the childhood travels where travelled by intercity 125 on the Midland mainline, from being taken from school to watch ‘stig of the dump’, where Erf and I visited college to see what imagination realised would be like, where on a midnight landing I listened to how the Karate Kid ended as told by loving sisters, recent returnees from Philadelphia.

I am from the place where a photo of a park gate can spark nostalgic outpourings on a facebook page, where wrestling cousins ate chips coming back from swimming.

I am from the bedroom where cousins went prospecting, peering into Leicester parks using only binoculars and prayers for a clear day

I am from halls of Oxon, where I was shown what friendship is.

I am from Boras, Pijvis and Tarapuris, Yaqubs and Chopdat-Birts, I am from the family that shouts when it should be quiet and whispers when one should roar, where a Mother tells us a simple bed cannot be beaten, and where her tomoto chutney is eagerly eaten. I am from the clan that laughed on the way to a funeral in Bangalore, and laughed on the way back, broken as we had lost our father. I am from the family of literate travellers where peppery Istanbul soup and Umrahs were more worthy than cars, and a jokes about Tolkien and Tabligh cover up the scars.

Haroon Shirwani, academic, linguist, author and tutor at Eton, has translated the Fatiha. With his permission, I have reproduced it below.

THE FIRST ENCLOSURE

9:34pm Saturday, Jan 19 2008

…in which we find the key to open up the way…

Dear Lord, be my guardian;
Help me shun the Evil One.

Lord of Mercy, God Most Kind,
We begin with You in mind.

Let us raise all thanks and praise to God:

Lord of all that we might find;
The Merciful, the Good, the Kind;

Master of the final day,
When the judgement shall be made,
When our deeds will have their say,
And good and bad shall be repaid
— As we have dealt thus He will deal.

In front of You alone we kneel;
You alone can help or heal.

Give us light to find the way,
The noble way your friends have taken,
Not the ones who have forsaken
Your goodwill or fell astray.

Hear us Lord. Thus we pray.