Thursday, 26 March 2015

The Outing of a Community

The Outing of a Community

Recently the Guardian ran a story on the suicide of a gay man.

Not an unusual occurrence given the statistics.

But of course the Guardian's take on it was where to lay the blame for which they claimed lay with the conservative attitudes of his community, family and parents. (1)

But the statistics paint a different story.

Off course the headline grabber is that LGBT young people are six times more likely to attempt suicide and six times more likely to succeed than their counterparts. (2)

Once again the propagandists would have that our schools do not go far enough in regards to eradicating homophobia in the classroom.
That is until you realise that a commensurate difference also exists within liberal Western society at large. (2)

Recent statistics show that liberal Western values have penetrated to our northernmost and remotest enclaves; throughout all urban, suburban, rural and industrial British communities. Interestingly when asked whether or not they would support a son or daughter of theirs in coming out, London because of its high immigrant and possible Muslim population fared the worst, in their books.

So it would seem that homophobic bullying is really at an all time National low, and people are generally supportive of such lifestyle choices and yet the significantly higher suicide rates, by a factor of six, of gays persist. (2)

After all Muslims really do only make up 4.8% of the population by the last census.

And I would even go so far as predicting that those rate differentials will not smooth down, no matter how much lobbying is done by the gay lobby to change the face of Britain.

This tells and interesting, but not politically correct, story that gay people are essentially unhappy.

Although countless time and money has been spent investigating the human genome to find the "gay" gene it has not been forthcoming.
And yet the illusion, in popular culture, that you can be born gay persists despite the science.

Some time last year, the up and coming socialist, Owen Jones wrote a piece essentially defending Muslims by saying that having Muslim friends he could easily see how much of their belief coloured everything that they do. I did not understand the disquiet that I felt on reading that piece until in fact I deliberated on what I say here.

What Owen was essentially saying was that you are born a Muslim, and can only very slightly affect your perceptions and views away from the dominant culture within Islam.
He was deliberately, and ever so quietly, equating being a Muslim with being a homosexual, off course not in substance.

After all modern socialism often finds it's crusading issues with the sidelined and undervalued, and during this age with the LGBT community.

But actually from a Muslim perspective neither is true. Muslims may well be born to Muslim parents, but still have to continually affirm their identity and most especially when the dominant culture is so very much opposed to them. Muslims choose to be muslims, and choose to honour the Messenger of God as the best of creation.

In a like manner homosexuals make a lifestyle choice. They are not born as such, but they use the ploy well.
In a like manner they would rather the air of respectability through marriage, even though its final moments could not mirror the unravelling of its counterpart's union. For "who would get the children?" would be a mystery best left to those future unfortunate judges.

Could a homosexual really go to court to claim divorce proceedings other than as a means of exerting their normality? Could it really mean anything once you remove the political dimension from it?

Dominant Western culture does tend to confuse love with lust. That if you have a lustful relationship then you are well loved.

And conversely also that if you love someone then it should be translated into a lustful relationship.
Monogamous relations there are paper thin.

Within Islam granted you are allowed up to four wives, but they are to be equally looked after. And lust can only exist within the limits set by God, that a man can only enter the tilth of his wife for pleasure. And the best of men is the one who is best to his wife, both loving and kind.

Whereas a man can, and is encouraged, to express his love for his fellow brothers in the religion.
For their love of one another is a sacred bond that is best and most easily expressed by the prophetic index finger touching of a forefinger; side by side and alongside.

A brotherhood of closeness.
A mutual love of friendship that will, by GOD's abundant grace, extend beyond eternity.

And not a frivolous sexual empty shell.

Shafees.
Telling it like it is.

(1)
(http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/mar/21/my-boyfriend-killed-himself-because-his-family-couldnt-accept-that-he-was-gay

(2) https://gactupdate.wordpress.com/notes/suicide/
Stonewall 2013 data: 3% of gay men compared to 0.4% of men in general for attempts to take their own lives.
For young people 16-24 years the figures are 6% as compared to 1% in general.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Stonewalled

Wednesday, 11 March 2015

Gaol of Conscience

What LOSS Modernity?

Guy Debord wrote: 'In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.'

Jack asked with that preface : "Have we become alienated from ourselves?"

-/////////-----

One would naturally assume that with the division of labour caused by modernity (specialisation), that with the increased efficiencies and associated cost savings, that people would have more free time.

But in modern urban society even with increased leisure time, we still find that we live an essentially primitive hand to mouth existence.
And this I talk from first hand experience.

That we fill, to the overflowing brim, our leisure time with things to do, achievements to pursue.

But what pushes us to this grind stone if it is not food?

Is it expectation?
Is it the sense that under achievement is failure?

That we must be seen to be successful?
"The accumulation of spectacle."

But there is another cause of a loss of humanity, no less sinister.

For when we specialise, specialise and further specialise does the human touch lack?

Necessarily not.
For in the medical fields, as in any other I am sure, it is the human touch that can set one apart from another. That sets one Doctor to be better than another Doctor.
That sets one Pharmacist over another. :)

Or is it that we miss the margin for error?

Where before an error could result in localised incidents now an error can have wholesale implication.
So we push our children into further education and away from experience in the hope to insulate them from error.

How we both laugh and identify with the apprentices when they, in hindsight, err. More so because we have no margin to err.

Our humanity is not eroded by specialisation itself, but when we cannot forgive and cannot overlook an error when it occurs. When we are not allowed that margin to do so.

And most perniciously when the greatest power in the land holds us to account for our personal beliefs.

For when the LAW encroaches on our personal lives then that is when we must worry.

When we cannot plead conscience.
When we refuse to house a gay couple within our own home, that we have given over to public convenience, because we believe it to be wrong.

When the greatest law in the land dictates which translation of the Qur'an we must read.

When the government dictates to us for what to believe, and refuses for us to form our own opinion.

That is when, worry we must.

And it encroaches now.
In this age.
At this time.

Then fight we must, with brain and brawn, against the gaoler of conscience. Our law.

That must be unmade through peaceful dissidence. Rightful argument.




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Parliament

Thursday, 26 February 2015

Father and Son

Father and Son- two voices

Dad dad
Look at me
Care for me
Be there for me.

Son son
Don't bother me
I'm too busy
Looking after you

Dad dad
Look at me
Care for me
Be there for me.

Son son
Excel for me
All my missed opportunities
Are there for you.

Dad dad
Look at me
Care for me
Be there for me.

Son son
Don't disappoint me
Try harder, harder
Then you'll make me happy

Dad dad
Were you ever _ there for me?
Did you ever _ care for me?

Son son
Look at me
Care for me
Be there for me...



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Cat Stevens Former Recording Studio

Wednesday, 24 December 2014

Joy overcomes

Joy comes

Now sweetened with a thing else.
But then I had no time

No time to feel the pain
No comparison to try to give it a name

No sight
Nor understanding
Of the sham.

Living the lie
Civiliesed
Drawn through Western mould

Thin, lacking substance
Not knowing the worth of small things
Precious things
Easily sold.

Born to work
Not to work to live.
Enslaved
Without even knowing

Family
Company
The time to acknowledge
A Shared time
To be just there

Cementing ties
Yasar, my br'er friend,
Faisal my friend from before
Arif Bhai a friend for the now.

The fair companion
Came
Changed
Educated me with tender loving care.

A gust of fresh air,
Monsoon of the east
Drenching my soul
That brought me home again.

From machine to man
Feeling
Helping
Connecting

For thank God, my Lord blessed
With a twinkle in my eye
That was her cheerful smile.
Making me both, and at once hot blooded, tempered and tame.

That still lightens my life
A not so heavy load to bear.

And a thing that I cannot bring to verse
That I cannot risk with terse words
That in this day and age people ridicule

And still others portray as cruel.
My LORD has blessed me with the greater.
A calm happiness that takes me when I stand,
at night.


Location:London

Monday, 22 December 2014

Borrowed Woe

Borrowed Woe

Sorrows line my brow
Alienation became my name

Swimming with my eyes
Near the tear filled rim

Nothing new this feeling of
Dread mixed in Disgust

Every decade sees in some new crisis
A new turn of events

That twists and turns my stomach
With malcontent

Never allowed to be put to rest
Always regurgitated up

Like a cow being fattened
On other people's hard luck

For these newspapers hail each new low
Like they take pleasure in other people's woe.

How their culture victimised me,
Alienated and converted me.

They called me Libyan,
Because I was Muslim and brown skinned.

Well I am.
Libyan, Saudi Arabian, Iraqi and Syrian.

And they?
They are the ones that condone evil.

Torture.
Who buy the lies of their corrupt masters.

Well they too,
Will be called to account on the day Day of decision.

Those who condone the torture of my
Mothers, brothers and sisters.

Of their children
my children

And no escape will they have.
From GOD's wrath.

END-
Shafees
Patience is the best of clothing,
That hides and shrouds what goes on inside.

My heart goes out to those that continue to suffer torture under the sway of the wicked regime.
And to my Gazan and Palestinian brothers, sisters and children...
I stand with you.

But even in our despair
My heart blooms and gladdens
With belief and trust that in all
Goodness will shine through.

Location:The US

Thatcher's Children- poem

Thatcher's Children... (posted 24/4/2008)
Thatcher's children, we did "our time".
But Rehab doesn't work,
When you're brought up in grime.

While you're behind prison bars,
Ever in your mind,
Never escaping to the stars.


Rehab don't work,
When you born, brought up.
With beliefs that leave you naked and stark.


You are- who you are,
Don't aspire to be.
No imagination, no history.


Thatcher's children, we've grown up,
Through times of uncertainty,
Fearing change. Becoming Thatcher's people.


Can't dare to hope,
Can't see a better way.
Better just forget and try to cope.


We're all Thatcher's children,
Where-ever we might be,
We live in a World of Uncertainty.


Shafees 


At a time of uncertainty, recession...
Our nature is to dare not to hope,
To buckle down all our aspirations,
To not VOTE for Change, Nor HOPE itself.
But to vote for what we know, however CRASS,
However BASE!

The Problem with Obama, 28th July 2009

The Problem with Obama, published 28/7/2009 on MySpace.
The relevance of this after so long appears after reading Chris Hedges... on truthdig



The greatest problem the World faces today is the resolution of the East-West divide.

I recall Tony Blairs congratulatory message that he sent to President George W. Bush on his re-election, Mr Blair lauded Mr Bush as a unifying force in a divided World. Off course the pair of them destroyed the credibility of the one organisation that was capable of really being seen as a unifying force for the World, the U.N. But irrespective of Mr Tony Blairs spin, his words underlie a sentiment that he must have keenly felt: a divided World.

At the root of our divided World, is not a Chinese Bird Cage but rather an unholy Jerusalem.


The Middle East is so vitally important for our divided World, not just because it straddles the East and the West, but because more importantly 1 in 4 of the World’s population are Muslims.



And then we had Obama.

Just today I am returning from staying 2 weeks in Mombasa with my in-laws. Blogging on a plane is off course one of my most beautiful past-times.


Obama is Kenya’s favourite son, precisely because his father was Kenyan. And so on his election to the office of the US Presidency, Kenya celebrated with a 2-day National Holiday. Mombasa has also honoured Obama by naming the important thoroughfare that connects Mombasa town to Moi International Airport after him: Barrack Obama Avenue. And yet there, I learned that Obama had vowed not to enter into Kenya until it puts an end to corruption. Laudable sentiments indeed.



Off course the seriousness of our divided World has attracted less laudable sentiments, and more telling actions from Obama.


The tragedy that was and is today’s Gaza has been forgotten by most of us. But Palestine and Gaza are more relevant to World Unity than ever before. Israel invaded and decimated Gaza on the pretext of stopping the Gazan rocket attacks into their territory. Gazan’s themselves began these token/ ineffectual attacks as a means of trying to the end the year long blockade that Israel had wantonly imposed on them because they sought to elect Hamas as their political broker and representative on the international scene. Off course time and again throughout the Muslim World the people, who represent the people that matter, are ignored, pressurized and demonized. Obama is no different; even he cannot swallow the bitter pill of democracy within the Middle East.

 

And while Gazans suffered innumerable war crimes, and continue to suffer under an illegal blockade that prevents them rebuilding let alone coming to terms with the great loss of civilian lives that they have been made to suffer, Obama turns a blind eye.

 

Worse still Obama then rubs salt into our still fresh wounds.

For complicit in the massacre that was Gaza, and in their continued suffering, is Egypt. And what better place to extend a hand of friendship, an olive branch of Peace to the Muslim World, than in the place through which Israel still continues to exert it’s most greatest oppression of the Palestinian people. 

 

That speech may have been well written and performed, but taking place in close proximity to the tragedy that is Gaza whilst seeking to ignore and belittle its significance says much, much more.

 

Kenyans should be happy with Obama’s, impossible but nevertheless laudable, insistence on it’s being corruption free. The World should be much less so with Obama’s misguided wish to heal a broken World by ignoring its most recent victims.