#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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President Trump

Tomorrow, 20th January 2017, sees the handover of executive power in the USA from Barack Obama to Donald Trump and I'm still in a state of confusion about this whole election. It's been a while since my last post, during which I've been exploring alternative avenues of creative expression (Periscoped Life and Muslim Harry Potter) and dealing with a couple of personal issues but now that we're so close to the official transfer of power, despite being in the UK and not directly affected by it, I can't help but be a little nervous about the new situation.

In conventional elections, people generally vote according to the political party representative that they feel holds the best policies and when the election is over the person makes an effort to fulfil the pledges and promises they made. You vote with a rough idea of what to expect.

The bizarre situation that the Americans are in now is that Trump was voted in on a whole lot of rhetoric and numerous ridiculous policies (anyone for a Mexican-paid wall or bringing back torture?). We'd have been in a pretty dire situation if he had pursued these policies but now that he's backtracked on quite a few of them and established that he's not interested in keeping his word or integrity, we're in a position of not knowing what on earth he plans to do other than his well documented attempts at being friendly with Vladimir Putin of Russia. So far as his promise of 'draining the Washington DC swamp' of lobbyists and special interest groups goes, he seems to be going for the approach of replacing the lobbyists with the people the lobbyists were representing. The best example of this being choosing the CEO of ExxonMobil - the world's largest oil company - as Secretary of State - the country's most senior diplomat.

Those of us in other countries can take some solace in the fact that we're not directly affected, but still be anxious in the fact that we'll be indirectly affected. The USA does hold the title of world's most powerful nation and - like it or not - decisions and actions that take place there have ripple effects across the world and as the country pushes a more divided and unpredictable line, this leads to unpredictable reactions by those affected and fairly soon we'll end up with a whole lot of uncertainty and find ourselves living in an even more reactionary and even more suspicious world.

However, while the average person can't do so much about what goes on in the upper echelons of the corridors of power, we can do a lot with our own actions and choices. When all around you is uncertain and seemingly going to hell in a handcart, keeping a level head and not giving in to the lure of suspicion and fear of your fellow man at an individual level is the only way to counter the forces that seek to divide.

To quote from the Quran 13:11 "Indeed, Allah (God) will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves." This verse has multiple meanings and contexts but the essence of is that change has to come from within and with personal and individual effort, not whimsical hope for an undeserved or unearned saviour/miracle to remove what hardship the people are facing.

So rather than run scared and full of fear, keep praying and show love, affection and good judgement to those around you. Keep fighting ignorance and injustice where you see it while being careful not to indulge in those vices yourself. Maintain your own environment and help those around you maintain theirs without encroaching on the rights of others and with a little luck perhaps we'll all live to see another inauguration in four years time!


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Wedding Speech #2

Below is the transcript for a speech I gave at my friend's wedding yesterday. I'm getting better at them! You can watch it in Facebook Live. I used one of my old instructional videos to make sure I had covered all the important aspects of a good wedding speech. (video link at bottom)

Assalamualaikum everybody

For those of you that don’t know me, I’m Yusuf and I’m a friend of Suhayb’s. My job here is to pretend that Suhayb is just the most amazing person in the world. Obviously he’s already managed to somehow convince Maheen of this but the rest of you are probably undecided on the issue and may take more persuading!

Before I get into that – a quick shout out to the party planning committee and the crawley mosque. It’s been a great afternoon so far and the food has been really good.

OK. Suhayb. I’ve known Suhayb now for a number of years. We met when we were both working at Tesco head office. Life has taken us apart and elsewhere but at that time he was a freshfaced graduate trainee accountant looking to make his mark on the world. Well, I say freshfaced but he has had that beard for quite a while and already had it back then. In terms of making his mark, I don’t want to point fingers but I think it’s interesting that he was at Tesco before and during their recent accounting scandal. We met over lunch with another friend who can’t be here today and we have had many lunches since.

At the time my initial thoughts were something like “Oh dear, look at this guy’s beard!” And then he explained he was on the finance graduate scheme wanting to become an accountant and then I was thinking “Wow this guy is going to be so dull.” But happily I was surprised and wrong and he turned out to be a rather interesting guy with well-reasoned and sensible opinions. And in the years since we met he’s made it through his accountancy qualification, travelled and lived in the Far East, come back home, added on several extra muscles and settled into the adult world mashallah.

As he begins this new journey into serious adulthood with Maheen, I thought it might be handy if I gave a quick pointer to help her navigate the next few weeks. The main point I want to get across is food. Much as he claims to like to go the gym and eat clean, Suhayb is a man who likes his food. If you look at his before and after photos from China, you can see the visible impact that food can have. He’s lost the pounds now but the photos are well worth seeing. For a short while the Great Wall of China wasn’t the only structure visible from space. And if you’re sharing a pizza, just let him have the last slice - otherwise years later you’ll never hear the end of it. And if he’s ever angry, make sure to give him some food before talking to him. A well fed Suhayb is a happy Suhayb.

Before I wind this up I just want to say that we started as strangers, but over the time I’ve known him, he gone through ups and downs, grown in wisdom and experience and even more importantly he’s become family and I’d be proud to call him my brother. If you ever just talk to his parents, it’s plain to see how proud they are of him and it gives me great pleasure that mashallah today he’s taken this giant leap forward in fulfilling the Sunnah of the prophet SAW and I pray that Allah blesses your union and that both of you bring joy to each other’s heart and that you grow stronger in faith today, tomorrow and always.




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