The Holocaust didn’t happen?

Recently I received a forwarded email (oh how I love those) which claimed that teaching of the Holocaust has been banned in UK schools.

So most of this stuff gets put straight into the junk folder and the person who forwarded gets a virtual slap for believing everything they read on the internet.

But it seems that this email has been round the houses quite a bit according to the BBC.

The MCB has in the past and as far as I know currently still do refuse to attend Holocaust memorial days, not as a sign of denial, but of a desire to include all other acts of genocide within this one memorial day. Whether it should be renamed to Genocide Memorial day or something I’ll leave to the politicians.

But actual denial of the Holocaust is a bit of a silly thing to do. Even if people claim that it is a ‘Jewish/Zionist/Christian’ conspiracy, I find it hard to believe that it didn’t happen because of the huge amount of evidence. And by denying it we are simply saying that most of the world’s population have been duped and I give them a little more credit than that.

On top of this Shaykh Hamza Yusuf presents a more lucid viewpoint, which clarifies what I think should be the normal Muslim’s position on this (hat tip to Hahmed). Basically it translates as ‘if enough people say something happened, then it happened, why waste time coming up with conspiracy theories.’

Muxlim TV goes into Beta

Muxlim TV (part of Muxlim.com) looks like it is into Beta now. I guess the content is focused on the Islamic, but I’m not sure how this content will be monitored (if at all). I’d be interested to see how much content gets put up there which is not in breach of copyright laws and also whether the Right Wing (of any religion) begins to hijack/hack the site.

As we know the sort of popularity that sites like YouTube and Metacafe enjoy, we should keep an eye on this to see how it takes off.

Power to the Pupil(s)

I loved this article on the BBC website which just shows that in this day and age people power does still exist. 13 year old Habiba Sultana was about to be married off to a 23-year old neighbour. But thanks to her fellow students who protested together with their parents the marriage was stopped by local police.

The age difference is not the issue here (how many eyebrows would be raised if she was 23 and he was 33?) The problem here, which the Bangladeshi authorities may have missed was that she may be being forced into the marriage. The Police ordered a stop to the marriage on legal grounds i.e. she was underage. But I guess it is too early for people to understand that forced marriages at any age are the wrong thing.

Crystal Balls? Pah…give me a test

I just came back from a few days in Horsley Towers on a management development course. So apart from running around the countryside we also had a few tests to determine personality types, or more accurately, natural tendencies. One of them was what is called a Myers-Briggs test. This involves answering a set of simple questions resulting in 4 letters being assigned to you. E or I S or N T or F J or P I came up as a borderline ENTJ or ENTP. None of this means that I cannot be a different person, but it seemed to indicate my natural state. Of course different moods and circumstances can affect this behaviour and how we react, but under stress, our natural state is what we return to. This piqued my interest and one of my colleagues started talking about something called an Enneagram. So she explained what it was and she told me I was a 3. I had no idea what she meant, so back in my hotel room I decided to take an enneagram test (of the many that are on the Internet) and surprise surprise, I came up as a 3. Are Astrologists missing a trick here? These seem to be fairly accurate and may not pretend to predict the future, but it certainly does help understand my own behaviour on occasion.

Return to Jahiliyah

For my non muslim readers, Jahiliyah is an arabic word refering to the time before the advent of Islam in Arabia. Literally I believe it means ‘Ignorance’. So despite the name sounding exotic, I’m pretty sure its not a place worth visiting. This was a rough time for all, but especially women.

The second Caliph of Islam, Umar Ibn Al Khattab, often recalled a story where he buried his daughter alive as was a common practice amongst the Arabs in pre-Islamic Arabia. After becoming a Muslim, he would often cry while remembering this act of his. The Arabs used to be disheartened and annnoyed with the birth of girls. The perception was that girls are useless in defending the family short of just screaming and shouting and would not bring money into the home. These beliefs allows for this evil practice so even the fear of poverty or disgrace was enough to push people into performing these heinous acts. In some traditions, it was also permissible to sell a daughter into effectively slavehood. In that context, the Qur’an states in a derogatory manner of occurences during the day of judgment:

“When the female child buried alive is questioned: For what reason were you killed?” (81:8-9)

and

“When news is brought to one of them, of (the birth of) a female (child), his face darkens, and he is filled with inward grief! With shame does he hide himself from his people, because of the bad news he has had! Shall he retain it on (sufferance and) contempt, or bury it in the dust? Ah! what an evil (choice) they decide on?” (16: 58-59)

As a father of a girl, whom I love like crazy, I am sick to my stomach whenever I read accounts of what used to happen before. And this morning I find myself experiencing the same feeling as I read the story of Abdul Rahman (who I’m guessing is a muslim, the name is a bit of a giveaway. In fact the name is a shocking misnomer in this instance meaning “The Servant of the All Merciful”).

Abdul Rahman, the Grandfather of this child decided to take it upon himself to bury her.

I have nothing more to add other than I feel sick.

Rhetoric

Not yet a single mention of Muslim by Jacqui Smith and Gordon Brown since all this latest malarkey started…I wonder if this is a change in tack. All I seem to be hearing nowadays is that all communities need to fight this evil. As opposed to previously it was..Muslims need to address this issue within their community.

I personally think this change is pretty important as it doesn’t alienate most of us Muslims in the UK who are tired of all this and just want to get on with our lives.

However, this is still a honeymoon period at the moment and until things get really heated, I’ll reserve judgment on the ‘new’ government.

The Virtue & Vice in Steak

Over the last few trips to Saudi, I’ve become instilled with a sense of paranoia about the Muttawa.

Who are the Muttawa?

Well one of the Saudi Government bodies is something called the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, or as some call them, the ‘Religious Policemen’. They are responsible for monitoring that nothing untoward or allegedly ‘Unislamic’ happens in the Kingdom.

In the past, they have held a strong control over what people can and cannot do. I have heard stories of women having their hair clipped by Muttawa if it was slightly exposed and all sorts of other stories. It is not possible for single Saudi males to go into shopping malls in the evening or weekends unless they have family with them. On occasion I have waved my British passport and have been let in with no problem. Inside these malls, those single males teenagers who do get through spend their time communicating with people of the opposite gender via bluetooth. Something which from a western perspective sounds kinda cute.
On occasion you will even see young ladies without the Niqab (veil) and even without the Hijab so all their hair is exposed. I’m guessing in the past this would never have been seen. But it seems that times are a-changing in KSA.

In a recent case, a man was arrested by the religious policemen for picking up a woman. This man later died in custody and now some of the Commission staff face a trial. This would never have happened in the past. It was later found out that the man in question was in employ of the family of the woman and was simply running an errand.

But the sense of trepidation still exists. A friend and I were indulging in a steak in a mall the other day. This was a special kind of steak where they bring the meat out on a hot slab of granite which you end up cooking yourself. But of course you need aprons and these are provided. As we put these aprons on, a couple of young ladies approached us and started asking questions about the aprons and what we were doing. Now in the UK, we would chat along and not worry about a thing. But conversation was stilted from our side simple because of this fear of the religious policemen. Be careful who you talk to when you’re in KSA…

Sadness

I am sitting in Riyadh at the moment on a work gig, and I am watching Sky News. (Sometimes sensationalist media is the only option) and I’m looking at what has happened in my homeland over the last 3 days.

2 attempted carbombs and another driven into Glasgow Airport and I just feel sick and angry.

I mean what is the bloody point? Do people really think that if you hit someone more than yourself they will roll over and accept it?

Its like a mosquito attacking a whale. It will not have any effect. In fact it will push people’s opinion in the opposite direction.

Back when the IRA were running a bombing campaign across the UK, they tried to keep public opinion on their side. Bombs were placed and then warnings issued. This gave the authorities to evacuate the location before the device explodes or is defused.

But the approach being taken by these amateurs (who frankly aren’t even planning these attempts properly it seems) is one designed to push people’s opinion against them. Assuming that these attacks are a result of some ‘Islamic’ viewpoint, then I’m assuming that anyone who suffers the backlash from society at large is ‘collateral damage’.

There is a famous saying of the Prophet Muhammad: ‘Muslim akhul Muslim’, which translates as  ‘A muslim is the brother of a muslim’. So by taking these attempts at destroying lives, people are simply offering up their brothers/sisters to be attacked by their ‘enemy’ namely UK society.

Muslims in the UK are angry, angry with their so called brothers.

Welcome…

After the ban on smoking in Public which came into force on 1st July 2007, I decided maybe this was an appropriate time to move from www.blog.com (who have served me well over the last few years) but WordPress seems to be a lot more reliable.

So, Bring your own Shisha? No need, there is No More Shisha