Today we visited friends near Dorking in Surrey. The landscape out there is magnificent – forested rolling hills. Our hosts – an Englishman and his US Puerto Recon wife – have been friends of my wife ever since they worked together as Social Workers in west London some years back. We headed down the M25 …
Although Lesley White’s article focusing on the social life of the British Muslim community in this weekend’s Sunday Times was not particularly negative, it has irritated me. There seems to be an underlying assumption that the United Kingdom is defined by a monoculture, outside which lie the Muslims. It is not. I am a native …
There was a time, back perhaps twelve years ago, when I would say, “I can’t live without music.” It is interesting how times change. After eight years as a Muslim, during which time I have more or less abstained from listening to song, I find there is not much I treasure more than peace. Sitting …
What on earth have the Israelis been fighting for? I have just had the misfortune to encounter a three metre high Think Israel tourism promotion on an advertising board whilst returning from Jummah this afternoon, which features an up-close image of a virtually naked woman. So there we have it: a nation apparently founded on …
It is interesting where my frequent digressions lead me. I have a tendency to see in other people’s writing what they did not intend, or never could have intended: the little snippet, the sentence or the word, which leads me off in an altogether new direction. Late last night I was thinking about that article …
I woke up late this morning, but now I’m up it seems like one of those Stupid News days. There was one of those debates about Islamic extremism and the moderates on the Radio 4’s Today programme on my way into work. Yahya Birt made a useful contribution, but the same could not be said …
In an opinion piece on a US website last week, a British Muslim journalist lamented the growth of pop culture within the Muslim community. She was commenting on the response of female audiences to the nasheed (song) performances in a central London concert hall which in her opinion resembled a boy-band fan club. “Eminent scholars …
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4965116.stm Oh Muslim youth, I weep for you. Those of you who gather outside the mosque immediately after Jummah prayer, the F-word already littering your conversations once more. Those of you stunting on your mountain bikes in front of old ladies so that they quake in their shoes. Those of you who park on private …
So it is the day after May Day once more. While I often forget my birthday, this bank holiday and the day that follows it in the UK calendar is stuck in my memory. Eight years ago this wee holiday was the weekend I concluded that I believed in Islam. The Tuesday that followed was …
I am, as they say, ker-nackered. I have spent the afternoon in the garden, trying to prepare my wife’s vegetable patch. We are on very heavy clay soil and the clumps are like rocks. After spending a couple of hours trying to break the chunks of mud into smaller pieces, I started digging in 300 …
So I keep going on about writing – writing, writing, writing – but there is actually another past-time fast taking over. All of my hobbies are time consuming. It isn’t that I enjoy hard work, indeed I am probably one of the laziest people you could ever meet, but I love to see the finished …
Last year I moved house and changed jobs at the same time. We got the keys for our new home in the last week of May and I started my new job in the first week of June. In both cases it was the start of something new in an unfamiliar town. We had lived …
Some of the people dearest to me are people who would call themselves “Salafis”. They nurtured me when I was new to this deen, helped me and never failed to offer me support. Over the years I have seen each of them evolve in their own particular way. One of my friends is sensitive, has …
Here comes the rain – Alhamdulilah. The sky is beige and its falling in sheets. Good for the garden I am sure. Still, my wife has rushed into the garden to defend her vege against the snail/slug onslaught – last seen heading for the garden with a bag of porridge. Don’t ask. Anyway, alhamulilah for …
While preparing our vegetable patch this weekend, burning the last remnants of our pruning, it occurred to me that the average Englishman hardly has any relationship with fire in this age. If we are cold, we flip a switch and do the same when it gets dark; the closest we get are the blue jets …
