Did we ever read the Book we claim to uphold, or were we too enamoured by our pseudo-intellectuals bamboozling us with their speech?
Indeed, We have revealed to you the Book in truth so you may judge between the people by that which God has shown you. So do not be an advocate for the deceitful.
The hunters would rather we didn’t reflect on verses like these. They would much rather drive us to silence with their harassment than ponder on a venerated word.
And seek forgiveness of God. Indeed, God is ever forgiving and merciful.
May God forgive us for the immense wrongdoing we have done in our lifetimes. None of us is without sin. Still, we hope for companions who might advise us, steering us away from the ill we do.
And do not argue on behalf of those who deceive themselves. Indeed, God loves not the habitually sinful deceiver.
No, do not rush to my defence if I should sin or err, but bring me back down to earth, and advise me sincerely. As to my wronging another: here your task is to witness to truth, in pursuit of justice, sincere to the One who created you.
They conceal from the people, but they cannot conceal from God, and He is with them when they spend the night in such as He does not accept of speech. And ever is God, of what they do, encompassing.
All the world is now a podcast. But when the audience has dwindled, and the audio files have been erased, the podcaster will still be called to account for whatever they revealed and concealed for their audience, good or bad.
Here you are — those who argue on their behalf in worldly life — but who will argue with God for them on the Day of Resurrection, or who will be their representative?
May God forgive us for the sins of our tongues and typing fingers, and for whatever we did knowingly or unknowingly. May we place our forelocks on the floor in pursuit of the mercy of our Lord.
And whoever does a wrong or wrongs himself but then seeks forgiveness of God will find God forgiving and merciful.
Let the hunters hunting reflect on the promise of God. You are not responsible for my sins, nor am I responsible for yours, nor you for another’s. Each of us has earned what we’ve earned, and no amount of good PR can change that.
And whoever commits a sin only earns it against himself. And God is ever knowing and wise.
So perhaps now is not the time for another flurry of videos, presenting ourselves as pious sages, humble before all the world. Now might be the moment for introspection. For taking ourselves to account. For facing the music, so to speak.
But whoever earns an offence and then blames it on an innocent has taken upon himself a slander and manifest sin.
May we be protected from blaming others for our own crimes. May we take ourselves to account before we are taken to account. And may the hunters turn their hunt inwards towards their own heart and soul, rectifying what truly needs to be rectified.
“Verily, in the body there is a piece of flesh. When it is sound, the whole body is sound and when it is corrupt, then the whole body is corrupt. Verily, it is the heart.”
I thought I was being generous to my colleagues, proposing that we invest in training for them. But it hasn’t quite worked out that way.
One colleague, booked on a course entitled Organising Work and Time forgot to attend the course. Another with lamentable computer skills decided to cancel their MS 365 Essentials training in favour of carrying on as normal.
Any attempt to upskill this team falls flat, for in truth, we’re all completely content with our ineptitude. That’s just part of the banter: that we have no idea what we’re doing, hehe. Isn’t it great to be such idiots!
It’s the same even for training I deliver myself. Afterwards, everyone tells me how useful it was, only to then go back to continuing exactly as before without implementing any of my recommendations.
And here I am, trying to promote practices across our organisation we really will be held to account for, while we can’t even get it right amongst us. It’s got so bad that I’ve now booked an hour with the team every month to repeat the exact same thing, hopeful that one day it might sink in.
But it won’t, because whenever it raises its head, everyone points in my direction and says, “That’s his responsibility!” No, no, this is what I’m trying to teach you, you great buffoons, this is everybody’s responsibility. That’s how we’re all meant to be doing it.
But, no, it’s futile, for we are the unteachable. Carry on as normal.
It seems that we’ve completely failed to articulate what it is that we believe, and why.
It’s true: we cannot be fair, caught in the middle of these sibling rivalries.
If we try to encourage one of them, we are unfair to the other. If we tell one off, we are unfair again.
On and on it goes. He said, she said. She did, he did. If that was me…
Yes, we get it. We’re not fair, and we never will be.
When I get to do my job, I could say I love what I do. Today was one of those days, enabling me to remain productive all day long. Sadly, most days are not like that at all.
What does it take to stand up in the face of wrongdoing or injustice? A lot more courage than you might imagine.
I learnt that a few years ago, when I found myself standing alone, in near complete opposition to everyone I knew, feeling myself compelled to articulate the fruits of my own research.
Most just politely ignored me, but one dear old friend took me to task for it. He felt my speaking up was unwarranted, distasteful and out of order.
Though more direct than most, I think he just articulated what most of my friends were thinking. If I couldn’t toe the party line, I could at least choose silence. In short, don’t think for yourself.
My friend may well have been right. And perhaps I would have done as asked were people in my own circles not mobilising for just one side in complete disregard for the precepts of the faith we claim to profess.
Finding me silent today, some acquaintances try to convince me that I have since been vindicated for my stance. I’m not so sure, for that stance cost me dearly. Least of all many a friend.
But then I note that everybody is silent now. Nobody dares report the news as it unfolded. Search the activist press for an update on that affair, and you will find absolutely nothing at all. Not a jot!
Either they know and have decided to close ranks and not report it. Or else they do not know, in which case ignorance is bliss. Why probe and search as I once felt compelled to do, when you can instead turn away, indifferent to the calls of faith?
Do not mix truth and falsehood! Stand firm for justice! Do not advocate for the deceitful! Do not deprive people of their due! Do not commit abuse on the earth!
But, admittedly, that’s easier said than done. Who knows what livelihood will be deprived for your stance? What freedom? What wealth? Or what relationships? When it comes to it, would you really do what’s right?
That didn’t take long, did it? Coming to the realisation that the membership thing was self-indulgent nonsense. Does anyone really care that much? Nope. Nobody but spammers and hackers, anyway.
So I backtrack, disabling that functionality. Now we have two content states: published or unpublished, accessible or not.
Does that mean I’ve withdrawn all of my writing? Not for the time being. You may as well just read freely, if you want to. It’s not a big deal. And if not, that’s no big deal either. As the teenagers amongst us would say: Whatever!
That’s the word that most often comes to mind in my encounters with the commercial web industry. Also known as companies pulling the wool over the eyes of their customers.
A recent one I came across: a web host deliberately crippling core functionality of a platform for the sole purpose of differentiating its own products.
If you want automatic updates, they say, you’ll need to move up a tier. Why? Because that’s more complex? No, quite the reverse. The complexity is found in them turning that functionality off for standard users.
Of course, most of their customers wouldn’t know any better. Their disadvantage is their own ignorance. But I find these tactics lamentable. If anything, it makes their least technical customers more vulnerable to security breaches.
But, hey, that’s business. You have to turn a profit somehow. So let it be at the expense of customer ignorance.
LinkedIn prods me: “Your account has been in hibernation for 6 months.” I think to myself, “So what?” and hit delete. But by morning, I’m peering in, wondering what’s new.
I find my former manager being congratulated by a multitude of well-wishers on their new role. I decide not to join them, as it feels a bit galling that they came and went so fast. Momentarily, I consider quipping, “Sorry we broke you,” but realising that’s too close to the bone, I move on.
Scrolling, scrolling, these are all people that I used to know. Some of them have accrued impressive new job titles, others new acronyms after their name. Mostly, they’re a bunch of people in perpetual transition, moving from one role to another. This is that thing we call “career progression”.
Yes, that thing, which has caused me to crash so many times in recent years. I look at the great variety of roles others have had, rising that imaginary ladder into senior leadership, and then I look back at myself, witness to nothing but this constancy.
It’s at this point that I stop scrolling, and kill that tab, returning to my work. I remember why I last put LinkedIn into hibernation mode. It’s not a sleight on the ambitions of others. I just realise this foray is likely to undermine my own fragile contentment.
I’ve learnt to live a different kind of life. Here we remain in our little house in our working-class neighbourhood, second-hand car outside. Were it not for pride and the pressure of external expectations, would I not be perfectly content with this life of ease, unburdened by debt?
Truth be told, this is the most I deserve. I was never on the trajectory of any of my peers, no matter how haughty or humble. Not with these cognitive deficits, this perpetual brain fog, those early language impairments, that long-lasting lethargy.
For me, contentment is definitely the way to go. To be content with the niche that’s been cut out for me, no matter the lack of prestige or status. It’s an honest wage, with good working conditions. Dare I swap it for a lengthy commute in pursuit of some kind of mythical golden role?
No, that’s not my world. Nor is the world of LinkedIn. “Stay in your lane,” I remind myself, retreating back into obscurity once more.
I was pleased with myself on Saturday, congratulating myself for doing a proper weekly shop. But it’s only Tuesday, and already supplies have been depleted, the fridge all but bare.
What would have been a week’s supply of fruit now lasts barely days. Any treat, polished off within hours. Either we’re a household of very hungry caterpillars, or there’s not much baraka in the weekly shop anymore.
I work with some highly intelligent people — researchers, professors, doctors, psychologists — but sometimes they’re completely illogical.
Indeed, sometimes I’m really surprised by their stupidity. I guess we all have our own unique skills and expertise, as well as complete ignorance. To each their own.
Many of us converts are nowadays bemused by the typical view Muslim communities have of us, as degenerates only redeemed by our adoption of faith.
It seems to escape them that many of us had highly ethical upbringings, raised with good morals and manners. Alas, many Muslims are triumphant without reason.
You have nothing unless you practice what you preach. Nothing unless you allow the way to transform you. Nothing unless you bring the precepts of your deen to life in your lives.
“Careful or he’ll be after you.” Erm, well, not really. I wasn’t after anybody. True, there was somebody I liked, though they’d never know it because I kept that to myself.
Yes, these are my gardening ruminations. The delayed reaction to events long gone, forced to the forefront of my mind by the monotony of preparing garden waste for a trip to the tip.
Gardening is supposed to be a therapeutic hobby, in which we empty ourselves until we are completely relaxed. Sounds nice, but I just find my mind wandering back into the distant past to reinterrogate all that once occurred.
Mostly, I’m found taking myself to task for some idiotic action or conversation, endlessly shaking my head at myself. But this gigantic pile of branches has me taking aim at others, suddenly amused by all that was once said about me at pivotal junctures of my life.
Indeed, amidst that pile of leaves, there are simply too many ironies now to contemplate. For all that was projected onto me, I was the most boringest person amongst them, far removed from their notion of me as a predator seeking conquests.
Outside college, my social life was a church youth group and playing in a philharmonic orchestra I was completely unsuited for. Where did those ideas come from then? I can only think of two places. First, prejudice. Second, a mate, who had a very different take on relationships to me.
The first is easy enough to observe in the community I now find myself a very vague part of. To this day, parents will still warn their children to steer clear of the gora kids, lest they set them on a path to destruction. Though the irony here is exemplified by that second explanation.
I was so naïve back then, thinking my mate a sort of Muslim version of me, with strict parents, a religious upbringing and shared ethics with respect to wholesome relationships. But it turned out that I couldn’t really have been much more mistaken.
That might have occurred to me when he once introduced me to his new girlfriend. He seemed to need to show me he’d won a white girl, but I was just perturbed that she was so much younger than him and should probably have been at school.
But it didn’t properly occur to me until the day we parted company. Naïve once more, I thought the college leaving party would be a sort of social gathering, where we all stood around eating crisps and talking about plans for the future. Of course, it was nothing like that.
Suddenly, I saw my companions in a whole new light, and it wasn’t a positive one. Never in my life would I have countenanced picking up a girl in a club for a one night stand. That wasn’t in our culture at all. Talk about culture shock: that was all mine.
That was the night I discovered that my mate, who had long embedded himself in the underage clubbing scene, was very far from the sound advisor I had imagined him to be. Who knows what he had said on my behalf, and to whom, when I was not around?
Separating my pruning into different piles, wood from green, large from small, I can’t help smiling to myself now. Predator? Seriously? With an upbringing like mine?
My mother had only recently been ordained priest, after long working as a respected hospital chaplain. And my father? I’d be dropped off in the morning by him, climbing out of his dark blue BMW E32 around the corner so no one would see me, enroute to his office at the foremost law firm in town.
But naturally, all of this could be a complete misreading of events. Perhaps I was harassed because I was a nerd, my unmasculine face inviting derision, my skeletal frame only capable of producing mockery. Perhaps it had nothing to do with my mate.
Perhaps I was just an easy target because I seemed so weak and pathetic, my voice so odd, my form so immature, my manner so passive. For indeed, I was harassed not only by those who encountered me daily, but also by complete strangers on the street.
Perhaps they all just saw something in me they could easily latch onto. Once at a bus stop, being pelted with eggs, causing me to walk the four miles home thereafter. And daily at college, forever being denigrated and castigated for…. what?
A few times now, I’ve had an opportunity to speak to those involved back then, but none of them remembered any of these events. Indeed, they couldn’t even remember me, or place me as ever having wandered amongst them. And why would they? I was just a leaf blown by the wind, soon to disappear.
And with this thought, my job is done. I’ve collected all the loose garden waste into two builders’ bags, ready to dispatch to the tip. Over there, a pile of branches to be cut into logs next time I take my chainsaw out. And a pile of hazel limbs to be stripped bare, to be used as stakes next year.
Here a job I could only complete with the aid of the grumbling indignation within, which all these years on still provides the fuel of momentum. Let’s get these bags in the car.
