London standing proud

Yesterday's event outside the Houses of Parliament was bad. Simple and straightforward. Murder is never good and neither is attacking innocent people. It wasn't a large scale 'planned' attack like that in Paris so it's debatable if it was terroristic in intent or whether it was an opportunist but even still, it doesn't make it right or at all OK.

When such events happen, unless you're in the immediate area while it's happening, the only thing you can really do is keep on as normal and not panic. Countless cars drive in and through Westminster and other crowded places on any given day. Multiple knives are readily available in every household. 99.99% of these are being used as they are meant to be and we can't be afraid of doing our everyday activities in case someone decides to use an everyday tool with malicious intent. The city has 8million people and for the most part they're quite normal and nice but in every barrel of apples you'll be able to find a few that are rotten. This doesn't mean you discard the whole barrel or start panicking that every apple is going to kill you.

I happened to be at work a few miles from Westminster when the news broke and for the most part, my colleagues and I carried on with our day, slightly unsettled and keeping on top of the news and various social media, but otherwise continuing on as normal. As the hours went by, a few more facts emerged about the actual incident and numerous of my civil servant friends who work in Westminster reported their offices being on lockdown for a few hours.

The news was piecemeal and facts were few and far between - most likely by police intent to help them conduct rapid investigations. Given the information vacuum, news agencies tried to fill in gaps with conjecture and theories on motives and perpetrators. Channel 4 ended up naming someone who later turned out to be in jail and not at all involved but who fit the theory they were trying to spin. Other opportunist hate-mongers used it as a vindication of their hate.

Generally speaking, I'd say we can be better. It's perfectly human to be scared, anxious, hateful and suspicious but it's equally human to be brave, calm, loving and trusting. Let the dust settle, see what happened for what it was and recognise that while there are those who wish ill on others, most people aren't like that. I'd say London is doing an outstanding job of this and is representing itself very well as a leading global city. And long may it do so in sha allah (God willing).

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#NoMuslimBan

I went along to an emergency protest today outside 10 Downing St. Unless you're living in a cave, you will have heard about the Trump administration's ban on people originating from various countries in the Middle East. It's resulted in widespread condemnation and rightly so as despite claims that other countries also have visa requirements, the context here is that it's an early stage fulfilment of his campaign pledge to ban Muslims from the United States.

Having not been to a proper protest for quite a while I wasn't sure what to expect given the cold weather and the short notice but when I turned up to Westminster Station I was met by a slow moving queue of people all streaming towards the protest, many of whom were carrying banners and placards. I found this to be reassuring - seemed like there'd be a sizeable crowd - and upon following the crowd found that Whitehall was heaving with people. 

In the open space it was easier to read the placards that people has put together and it was alhamdulillah (praise be to God) heart-warming to see so many people standing behind and supporting Muslims against the oppressive nature of this latest political/social development. A number of banners were aimed at UK Prime Minister Theresa May who recently visited Trump and ostensibly made no measure of disagreement with his policy plans, other posters were focused on refugees but the overwhelming majority were aimed at Trump. Some of the chants were quite witty - "Trump can't build a wall, Trump's hands are too small" was one memorable example. 

Finding people you knew was a close to impossible task given that it was night-time and that phone signal was terrible with such a volume of people but the general atmosphere was friendly and welcoming and I did eventually bump into a couple of familiar faces. It was good to see that people were being active and demonstrating concern for this new world state of affairs and having now checked my social media I am even more pleased to see other people posting their photos of the protest. 

All in all, a worthy protest to go to but for me there were two interesting aspects. 

Firstly the sheer number of different reasons people had for protesting against Trump - human rights, women's rights, islamophobia, anti-capitalists, racism. The man has distinctly antagonised a wide range of groups. In a weird way this somewhat diluted the effectiveness of the protest with so many different messages that it was hard to focus on a particular thing (similar to the challenge faced by Hillary Clinton in the campaign). 

And secondly that given that this protest was organised in reaction to the Muslim Ban, that there were so many people who were out in support of Muslims who weren't 'visibly' Muslim. It's reassuring to know that despite the general negative portrayal of Muslims by some parts of the media and now also by national governments, there are people who care and who are willing to provide support to try and make sure humanity does not go down dark and dangerous roads.

Last thing to say is that if you get a chance to go along to a protest - make sure you do so and make your voice heard. Change may not happen immediately, but by applying pressure and showing that we won't stand for injustice or allow our representatives to stand idly by, we might just make change happen.

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Helping the Homeless

Walking the streets of London at this time of year you can't help but wonder at the sense of cheer that is built up by the bright lights and festive mood. The nights are long and you might well go to work in the dark, come home in the dark and see very little of the sun but that's easily forgotten when all forms of media are shouting out that we should be happy, content and spending lavishly.

When you hear about the problems that people are facing elsewhere in the world from refugees escaping parts of the Middle East and parts of Africa to Donald Trump somehow being a front runner in the Republican nomination and from terror attacks in Paris to asylum seekers living in the Calais 'Jungle' it's easy to believe that as a country, we're doing pretty well over here in the UK. And I think for the most part you'd be right. For the most part.

Take a moment to look away from the distracting lights and the less rosy parts of life begin to emerge. And they emerge right here on our doorstep.

For the past few Sunday evenings I've been going along and helping out with the Children of Adam Homeless Food Project at Lincoln's Inn Field. Every week, come rain or shine, a group of volunteers meets in Holborn to give food to homeless people and every week there's 200 or so homeless people who queue up to receive. Crisis puts the total homeless numbers in London at around eight thousand in a city of eight million so there's a lot of people who hopefully find somewhere else to get food.

I've learned quite a lot from even my minimal activity with the project. When I first went along I had an image in my head of what a homeless person would look like - an image that had been built up from media I'd consumed and my own uncharitable imagination. Rough looking men wearing ill-fitting, unkempt and mismatched clothing was what I imagined. Upon seeing the crowd of homeless people queueing though, I was struck by an unsettling thought. There were no easily distinguishable features - they were generally dressed just like anybody else would be on a cold December evening. Put me on the other side of the volunteer table and I'd have blended right in! They were young and old, men and women, British and international, bearded and clean-shaven, quiet and loud.

What was common though was that they were appreciative that there are people who are trying to help. As they walk past the tables they're polite and friendly. Even when food runs out at the end of the evening or things go wrong there's no complaining. Just last week the stall opened 40 mins later than usual when the hot food delivery was delayed but I heard barely a murmur from the waiting crowd - some of who had already been waiting hours (the project runs on a first come, first served basis). One of the homeless folk had even brought along a ghettoblaster and put on some radio to help pass the time delay! And when we did start there were no words of recrimination - they took their food and went on their way.

I'm going to finish off with a plea - the project is always in need of volunteers (as are most charitable initiatives!). It runs on a zero-commitment, come-and-go-as-you-please volunteer basis so if you just turn up to help at 1745 on a Sunday evening, the team will find a use for you. It's not particularly glamorous (available roles include Sandwich Distributor, Coffee man, Tea man, Security and Bagger et al) The other volunteers are an interesting mix of people and you do get good banter from the volunteers and the homeless folks and I really do think it's worthwhile getting involved in this or perhaps other projects closer to you.

Food donations are welcome but better to visit and volunteer first to get an idea of what kind of food works best and how much is needed before bringing food donations. I've heard stories of a family who turned up unannounced with a thousand homemade tuna sandwiches - the vast majority of which went to waste given that at the time there were only a hundred homeless people who came!

Money donations are probably helpful as well.

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Thought of The Day YMLP 2015

Assalamualaikum all

This is the tenth day of the programme and the first day of our self-run thoughts of the day.

I spent some time last night thinking about what would make an interesting topic for this and after writing and deleting a number of attempts decided to talk about human nature and to keep it fresh by exploring what happened just yesterday while its fresh in our minds.

I’m going to focus on our guided tour of the Islamic Gallery at the british museum with the curator. In case you’ve forgotten we’d had a pretty early start and by the time of the tour we’d already visited the Houses of Parliament. 

So, the first thing to strike me was the approach that the curator took. No phones, no food, no fun. Listen to me and do nothing else. At the time I remember thinking (to quote Ali) “WTF? This is a bit stifling.” And from the quiet chats I had with a number of you I know I was not alone in thinking this. Been a long day and the last thing we wanted was to be treated like little children. At this stage I also knew nothing about her beyond she was a curator. So to my eyes we had this random middle aged lady aggressively talking at us about objects of limited personal interest – to me at least – and my mind was totally switched off and in fact I was discreetly on my phone hiding behind Afnan. You might remember Raiyan tried similar but didn’t have my experience in hiding phone usage and got caught. And on top of that to be honest I don’t even remember what the first items were that we saw. All I remember thinking is This is ridiculous - I am super bored and how can I disrupt this class?

Now that was my perspective. I want to take a moment to empathise and look at it through her eyes. And obviously this is all conjecture but I think its reasonable conjecture.

We have a busy woman taking time out of her more enjoyable tasks to do one of the more usually thankless duties of her job. She knows the objects on display very well and has taken that tour countless times before and could do it with her eyes closed. Most likely with bored school kids and other captive audiences like us who pay her zero attention while she imparts what she considers to be wisdom and knowledge. And its quite likely that for her to not feel like she’s wasting her valuable time and effort she wants to have the appearance that her audience is actually listening – which leads to her insistence on no phones and food and allows her to say her spiel without interruption.

So what do we do? The audience is bored and the speaker is bored. There’s no connection between the two and no one is enjoying the situation.

It was at this point she opened up to questions and if you remember I asked her about her background as I wanted to hear about something else that the artefacts and personal histories fascinate me and it seemed a good way to be subtly disruptive. The question turned out to surprise her and throw her completely off the track she was on – really not something I was expecting at the time if im honest. But she answered at length and after the other questions that Ali and Dr Mustafa asked we now had a better understanding of who she was and the hard work she was doing to preserve muslim heritage and history – which is actually our heritage and history and something we should be grateful to her and her kind of people for.

And all that made me much more appreciative and attentive. I finally recognised that we had an expert in our midst who was doing work which was benefit to all of us. To my mind the mood in the gallery visibly changed and the curator herself relaxed by several levels which made her much more pleasant to listen to.

And from that point I remember a lot more of what we saw. Around the lamps if you remember she was asking questions of us – one particular was “Where did the memluke kings reign?”. I just threw out Syria as a random guess and followed it with Iran. While I’d heard of the Memluke kings I didn’t have the foggiest idea where they were from. But she heard Syria and that random chance led her to think that we were a knowledgeable audience and not a bunch of numpties and again she relaxed and felt more comfortable. By the end of the tour she had no issue with phones and people wandering to look at other displays and likely didn’t even notice as she was so engaged with explaining the artefacts to the core group who stayed around and demonstrated interest.

So that’s the story – what are the lessons? Quite possible that you may draw different lessons but to me the first is that if you are going to lead a group the most effective way is to recognise who they are and make sure they know who you are. You can’t lead without credibility and credibility has to be earned. To begin with the curator did not do this and we were all completely switched off and looking for ways to escape! Build a connection and make it personal. Put yourself in their position and recognise their issues so you can get to know who you’re collaborating with and once you do you can simply just watch how the world changes around you!

Second lesson is that people in general are quite simple no matter how senior or important they might be. They love to talk about themselves and be asked for their ‘expert’ opinion. Show an interest in issues that they are interested in and they will come to you a metaphorically long way. For example at dinner I’ve sat next to the Director twice now and for the first dinner we mostly made small talk about the weather and how ‘nice’ the food was. But the second time I and the people around me managed to discover his secret interest – Recent and contemporary Indian history. Actually not so secret as he is a historian and it should’ve been fairly obvious. And once we got onto the topic of madrasas in india we saw a whole other side to him and one that I really enjoyed seeing and talking to. And with that thought I’m going to close.

Yusuf's Guide To Living - Episode 2 - An Encounter with Greatness

It was Shakespeare’s Malvolio who said, "Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them". A question that people on the street often ask of me is "what's the best way to interact with other people?" Mostly I respond to this question with a smile and say "be yourself". However, I often feel bad about saying this because it has been statistically proven (in the great Humanity Survey of early 2011) that people generally make poor quality human beings.

"What do you think other people are like?" - 76,600 respondents.

It came as a surprise to me then that on my daily commute, observing people with much accuracy and judging them on how they responded to my staring, I saw a man who was not only born with greatness but also had greatness written all over him.

One genteel action set him apart from the wild mob of harried commuters.
He was standing alone, close to the doors and away from the seats. I was too afraid to approach him at first but after steeling myself I stood up and joined him in his glorious standing.

“Good day to you, sir” I begin.

“Hello”.

“So where are you headed?”

“Liverpool St.”

“Excellent,” I say, “That gives us lots of time, at least 20 minutes. I would like to learn from you. What's your name?”

“What?” He pretends to look confused.

“What do I call you?”

“Oh. Alpha Golden.”

“Ah…yes, of course,” I mutter, “that makes sense.”

“Mr Golden, please teach me.” I announce.

“I'm sorry, I don't understand.”

“I want to be great like you. How does this usually happen?”

“How does what happen?” 

“My dear fellow. Your modesty speaks volumes. Clearly you were born great. I would like greatness thrust upon me, Alpha, and I think you can help me. You are here, standing amidst all these empty seats because of your conviction and practice in that most ancient and glorious art of chivalry! Many thought that chivalry was dead and that men world over no longer strove for generosity of spirit. That men would happily sit down and let a woman stand, uncaringly ignoring all others save their own selves. I see from your stance that even though there are lots of empty seats, you stand alone in protest of the changing social landscape. You know that few women expect such behaviour and so you pre-emptively stand, rather than make them wait even a moment while you get up from 

your seat. Sir, I applaud you. Please teach me all that you know.”

A thought occurs to me.

“Oh. Wait. Am I allowed to call you Alpha? It won't impact our student teacher relationship will it? Should I call you Sir? Shaykh? Master? My liege?” I ask.

“Errr.”

This catches me by surprise.

“Why did you ‘errr’?”

“Erm. What...”

I cut him off. 

"Fraud! FRAUD!" I shout. "You cannot be great! A great man knows how to use silences instead of saying " errr" or "erm"! You are a fraud. What do you have to say for yourself?"

He stares at me initially with disbelief that I have discovered his dark secret, but rapidly his cheeks colour and what I recognise to be shame fills his expression.

“I...I...I think this is my stop,” he says as the train slows.

“But this isn't Liverpool St, that’s another 15 minutes away” I say.

Sounding desperate, he says “No, this is where I need to get off the train” but hesitates for a few seconds before jumping out as the doors are about to close.

I follow him with my eyes and as the train leaves the platform I observe that, unable to move because of his shame, he stays where the doors were.

An unknown man achieving greatness