The present is the first time since my early childhood that I have been content with my face. Ramadan losses excepted, it has filled out, my cheek bones no longer so pronounced, my face fatter and more proportioned, my skin aged. Most people spend their lives seeking the elixir of eternal youth; I spent mine …
I’m hidden, but I’m not hiding. For note, though I’m barely read, I am a prolific writer, revealing my innermost thoughts before the entire world. Those thoughts are not locked behind a paywall or multi-factor authentication. I am right here, in the public domain, hidden in plain sight. There is no mystery surrounding the man; …
Of course it is disappointing that the first thing a person asks me on learning of the path I have walked for the past quarter of a century is my view on terrorism. Of course it is upsetting that a path that brings such peace to so many is forever associated in the minds of …
A sure sign that you have become middle-aged is that you can write about any topic under the sun and not give a stuff what anyone thinks.
It’s a shame that when fasting we lose weight in all the wrong places. My arms are like sticks again, my face drawn. But my fat gut: alas, I still look pregnant. An undesirable look for a bloke, which I cannot even blame on beer. For my belly, I must take up Couch to 5K …
If others were asked what most defines my life, they would say religion: first being raised in a very religious home, then adhering to an alternative religious tradition from the age of twenty-one. However, I would say that what most defines me is a chromosome disorder undiagnosed in my youth. The failure to diagnose being …
What does it mean to be white? Of course, it is a political construct. I can count numerous people amongst my companions whose skin is broadly the same colour as mine, but none of them are considered white by those that must define us.
Gradually, we come to terms with reality, that we are what we are; I am who I am. My soul was inserted into this skin and this form, with this gender, to live in this land under that sky. I was raised in that family, with those privileges and that ease, but was nevertheless built …
In his own Aramaic tongue, his name was Yeshu, Eesho or Eshoo; two thousand years later, it is impossible to say how it was pronounced back then. In Hebrew, we think it was Yeshua, from Yehoshua, derived from the verbs to rescue or deliver. His name was transliterated phonetically into Greek as Iēsous, roughly pronounced …
I fear we protest too much, self-centred as we are. In the wake of Parliament’s vote to permit military action in Syria, BBC Question Time invited Maajid Nawaz to join the panel along with Nicky Morgan, Diane Abbott, Caroline Lucas and Jill Kirby. The inclusion of Mister Nawaz prompted immediate consternation online: “Couldn’t the BBC …
From our children we are learning the politics of identity as we hear what they have learned from their white and brown friends, who regurgitate the opinions of their parents. In modern times, Muslim does not mean follower of the Islamic faith, but is shorthand for non-white. These little kids have been brought up to …
In one breath you dismiss the faith of millions of your brothers, writing them off as sell-outs, apostates and hypocrites, while in the next you agitate on behalf of millions of others, unknown. Here are the contradictions of the Muslim propagandist. A brutal oppression is raging out there, elsewhere, in distant lands, and it is …
Who convinced these people to embrace the hideousification of the face? Why uglify yourself that way? Grateful to have preceded Generation Mipster; we were blessed with the natural elegance of an unassuming modest beauty. The grotesque, gargantuan inventions of today’s fashionistas are like comic turn. Clowns revelling in an identity without its core.
It is sometimes supposed that converts to Islam get special treatment in the mosque, but I’m not so sure. Moving in the circles I do, it has become quite apparent over the past few months that the notion of the convert is still alien to many people’s minds. A Palestinian friend I often walk back …
Recent months have seen a sudden upsurge in devotion to the Christian faith amongst followers of the British National Party (BNP) and the English Defence League (EDL). In June the BNP chimed against the Islamic colonisation of Britain, seen in the widespread conversion of churches throughout the land: the Central Mosque of Brent; the former …
