Mutual Exclusion

I’m a Liverpool fan, so you won’t be surprised to hear that faced with the choice of finishing a vital presentation for tomorrow to my boss’ boss that might just allow me to hold onto my job for another year and watching a fairly meaningless formality of a Champions League qualifier this evening between my team and Bordeaux, I plumped for the latter.

The price I pay for my indulgence is a late night finishing the work that will help me pay the rent for wherever I might be living in a year’s time. Hey ho.

It would be odd if a condition of my employment was to forsake the love of football and to pledge allegiance to Sony uber alles, but thankfully, the company that pays the wages for my white-collar (brown-collar?) toil has a somewhat liberal HR policy that allows me my indulgences, as long as they don’t stop me doing my job. Hell, I even got the offer of a free ticket to tomorrow’s Arsenal game, but I declined. I didn’t tell them that it was because I have boycotted their stadium for supporting Israeli (Palestinian!) tourism and that I would otherwise be occupied with an Arabic lesson, but hey!

My country - and it is my country, is getting cold feet about my religion. That’s a little inconvenient. I doth protest, but in my mind, the practice of Islam is totally compatible with being British. I accept that Christianity is under attack too, as the Archbishop’s occasional protests highlight, but he is often (unfortunately in my mind) completely ignored as an irrelevance. After all, Christianity doesn’t preach bombing the shit out of foreigners, or at least, subjugating and colonising them. Not anymore anyway. And certainly not overtly.

Of course, Tony Blair and his master George Bush are both Christian, but I wouldn’t be so stupid as to imagine that all Christians, despite the actions of their political leaders, are warmongering, murdering bastards - savage colonialist rapists who plunder and defile on a whim, or at least a sexed-up dossier or two. That would be short-sighted of me.

I don’t for a second imagine that Blair is representative of a religion who along with the Jews (and the Muslims I should add) live by the credo “Thou Shalt Not Kill”.

So why the concerted attempt at forcing me to address the wrongs of some of my co-religionists? I didn’t bomb the London Transport system, and neither did 1.6 million other Muslims. Most of us deplore terrorism, pro rata of course. Let us not forget that the biggest terrorist state the world has ever known is not a state at all, but a Union of quite a few states - and is One Nation Under God.

I mean, if we’re counting, it’s Osama bin Laden 3000, George Bush and Tony Blair 1,000,000. That’s considerably more than a pound of flesh. I don’t have to be Muslim to despise the actions of a nation that kills 300 innocents in return for every one of its own. That makes Israel’s recent 30:1 foray into the lives of innocents in Lebanon seem almost equitable in comparison. I don’t have to be a Muslim to find these actions repulsive and hideous. I am standing alongside Christians, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, atheists and even pagans in this anger.

These terrorist regimes are doing their best to frame Islam, but they will fail.

I had a chat with my daughter recently. She made it clear to me, and I feel pride when I recall this, that she loves London and wouldn’t trade it for anywhere else in the world. Me too sweetheart. I’m pushed sometimes, but me too.

Sure, my ethnicity and religion is not the same as the majority, but lest the racists forget, India was part of the British Empire, and citizens of the Empire were free to move about within the Realm. I am a child of the British Empire, whether the British were colonialist plunderers is by-the-by. This country is as much mine as any native white man’s.

Some have got the wrong end of the stick. I don’t despise whites. I deplore their racism; the belief that they are superior to other races - still entrenched as I made clear in the post that revealed the results of a University of Lancashire study that the Home Office tried to bury.

I don’t want to force you to stop eating pork or stop drinking alcohol, though I’d be delighted if you did. Remember, it is a central tenet of Islam that there is no compulsion in matters of religion. Please don’t quote various suras of the Qur’an that you feel might contradict this, you are reading with the wrong eyes and I know it far better than you.

Yes, there is a radical element amongst us. They must be allowed their voice, just as the BNP must be allowed theirs. Hate speech from either side should be deplored, but let’s deplore it equally. After all, there is a lot of right-wing terrorism that we just don’t get to hear about.

So let’s play fair, yes?

• I won’t force my religion down your throat, and you stop this endless, racist villification.
• You stop pulling veils from Muslim women’s faces and we’ll stop believing that all the suffragettes died for was for modern women to have the freedom to pole dance and expose their silicone-enhanced breasts at the drop of a hat on national telly.
• We’ll stop our campaigns to try and get people into public office who represent our interests when you start doing your fucking jobs and realising we are a large share of the legitimate vote.
• You stop telling us our religion is responsible for all the world’s evils and we’ll stop reminding you that actually, yours is.

Finally, in light of the fact that you:

• Lied over and over about your reasons for going to war on Iraq
• Lied about Dr David Kelly’s murder, with help from the disgraceful Hutton whitewash
• Lied over and over about the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes
• Lied about not knowing that Depleted Uranium bombs were being carried through our country to commit war-crimes against Lebanese children
• Removed our rights to protest
• Have continued with a concerted campaign of hatred against a religious minority on the basis of suppressed news and evidence that suggests that the problem lies with you
• Have made independent enquiries utterly meaningless with the introduction of the Official Enquiries Act of 2005

I think it’s only fair to say that we’ll believe the Official Narrative on 7/7 when you Release the Bloody Evidence

I support Liverpool and I do my job well, even if I don’t drink at the office dos.

I am a Muslim until I die - and beyond - and I am fucking British - even if I don’t support the actions of my country.

You will not stop me being Muslim. So please don’t stop me being British.

Steve Gerrard, Gerrard
He’s better than Frank Lampard!
He’s big and he’s fucking hard…
Steve Gerrard, Gerrard!

And of course..

Assalamoalaikum