LBC: JO'B, Women and What Influences Their Choices.

I have just got off air with Mr James OB discussing the story of the 20 yr old woman who drowned in Dubai 19 years ago, because her dad told some life guards not to rescue her as he didn't want them to touch her, fearing she would be dishonoured.

In Islam, when a person's life is in danger it is permissible to do everything possible to save that person, male, female, gay, transgender, who cares, their life is in danger. This is what the father in this situation (if he was in fact, Muslim), did not fully understand.

The discussion quickly moved from the dad and his daughter, to women not being touched in Islam and the reasons for that, which several people, including me, tried to explain to James, is because 100% of a woman is awrah, which means forbidden. Unless of course you are her husband or in the case of being with her in a casual way, her family. 

I realise James has to make a show and 90% of that means he can't always stick with his own views and has to mix it up to cause more people to call in...and he's good at it. However, on this issue, regarding Islam, I really think he actually believes the stupidity that he was spouting. Get the podcast, it was truly alarming to me.

Does he believe that his own wife is allowed to choose who puts their hands on her and I am not allowed the same freedom of choice? That's what it sounded like to me. He kept saying "because God..." No, because I choose this religion! My choice and he has a problem with my choice.

Hypocritical.

On what basis does his woman choose? Atheism, Secularism, Christianity? It doesn't matter what influences her views and opinions on her decisions that she makes because James agrees with them.....so it's ok.

Mine...because he doesn't like what influences my choices, then somehow I am barking mad for choosing them and he "fears" for me. Patronising? A bit yeh.

So wherever James draws the boundary lines on his own personal space and his own reasons for those boundaries, and he will have some, he's married. He will have physical contact boundaries and verbal communication boundaries with the opposite gender....it's somehow ok because God isn't behind them?

What if I have the same boundaries as I have got now, but God wasn't behind them? Would that be ok? Would my choice then be acceptable as a woman? Nothing would have changed, just that Islam wouldn't be behind my choice.

He seems to have a problem with Islam, Hijab, women exercising their freedom in Islam, like a lot of people, because it doesn't fit with his stereotypical view of how he wants to catagorise Muslim women.

I am a confident woman, a Muslim, equal with my husband and in full control of my own life thanks.
Seriously, this is what I heard. I'm open to what anyone else heard.

Not one of his fav callers any more uh?

The Disempowerment of Fathers

Isn't it weird that I live in a society that criticises Islam for being stuck in the dark ages, sexist and male dominated and yet our law, which was founded on Christian principles, favours mothers over fathers in terms of full custody. Fathers often have to prove the mother unfit, to have their children live with them. While she often stays in the family home and the father is renting somewhere and has to face endless checks by agencies to deem whether his place is fit for his own kids to come visit and stay over. If society is proper equal, that's what feminism has been crying out for a long time now, why not the mother move out and the father stay in the family home?

I find it hard to take seriously the well worn criticisms of Islam, when the balance of those western judicial scales is enormously weighted against fathers. Expecting them to pay for their children (and rightly so) but are treated like dogs in the court system only thrown scraps of time in comparison to the mothers who often don't even stick to their court agreements, making it so difficult for the father to attend his visits or even saying the child is sick several times in a row when they're clearly not. This should be an offence when mothers do this! They should be chased by the authorities in the same way the dads are chased financially.

What do you think that does to the image of their father in the child's eyes?

In Islam the father is treated with utmost respect. No one is taking his kids away from him and Islamic law doesn't uphold the mother's rights against the father unless the father is abusive.

It is a common thing in our modern, empowered society, for me to hear women who use their children like a weapon against the father of those children because of some issues she has with her ex. How is any of that mess the childrens fault? Yet they suffer because of a out of control woman who needs someone to put her in her place! Where is the empowerment for the man uh?

And people say the Islamic way is messed up. Looking at the way the 'christian' system of family law works, I don't think so.

Israel Bought Some Bitter Butter But It Made Her Batter Bitter, So She Bomber The Fuck Out Of The Butter Seller...

I got kicked out of a pub once (a while ago - pre Islam) for having a legitimate go at a woman who had a disability. It was a bit of a shocker because as far as I was concerned, I was chatting to her like I would anyone else.

Whenever I heard a person with a disability speak on the radio or TV they always said they just wanted to be treated like everyone else, seriously, I must have heard that a ton of times.

So I asked this lady about how she came to be disabled and she was proper rude about it...Why is my face and arse mixed up....she snapped back at me. So I pointed out to her that she had started chatting to me first, I didn't elicit a conversation from her and she said, she wished she hadn't started one up. So I asked her if she was so stupid to think that she wouldn't get questions about her disability and I told her I wasn't being insulting just a proper interested question about a very huge and obvious part of her life. I did apologise and attempted to leave it at that.

However, she continued, likening it to someone asking a black man why he was black and I seriously had to stop myself from laughing and remarked that her logic was even more disabled than her body. Suddenly, the affable landlady went all Gollum on me "LEAVE NOW AND NEVER COME BACK!" because I "....shouldn't argue with a disabled person." Yeah really!

I asked the lady being condescended to, if she was happy being 'defended' in this way and she seemed smug that someone had, on the surface of it, stood up for her, so I left, under the scowling eyes of the raging landlady.

This story is what springs to mind when I think of the national identity of Israel. Something unimaginably awful, horrific and unjust happened to a vast number of Jewish people in history (not to mention a whole bunch of other nationalities too), and now the world is too afraid to treat Israel as normal. Even if you just look at the figures of those who have died on both sides of the conflict involving Israel and Palestine, you have to wonder how it gets away with such disproportionate responses when many other countries would not. Israel literally gets away with murder, over the top, needless killing, trading in on its own tragic historic losses.

Instead of being angry, vengeful and ungenerous, Israel could so easily be a nation that is known for its generosity and peacefulness given that itself has known so much pain and unjust persecution.

Stay prideful Israel, hateful and disproportionately murderous and one day it will be one too many murders and your major supporters will not be able to excuse your actions any more and they will all turn against you.

Child Abuse: The Big Paper Cover Up

I read Exaro News about the #VIPaedophiles investigation they are reporting and I listen to LBC when they do interviews with Politicians about the climate way back when kids from children's homes were "residuals" is the word I think I remember hearing.

I wonder about these important politicians and Lords doing their important jobs from some of the best schools in the country, educated to the highest standard, that someone didn't teach them the basics. The value of human life, dignity, honour, duty, integrity....etc. All that money went into educating them and they didn't even learn the important stuff.

I'm being sarcastic as they clearly knew right from wrong and even if you can see that it was somehow 'acceptable' to treat the lives of these children as your own personal objects to do with as you please without consequence, you would expect that today 2015, the climate would be much improved what with our enlightenment.

I have been out from the care system for four and a half years and I can't see so much difference from what I'm reading in the news and what I knew of some of the kids I lived with over a ten + year period.

The only thing that seems like it has changed are the new and improved policies that keep coming from the suits to safeguard vulnerable children. The reality of these policies issued to over-stretched, under-resourced agencies, is that targets are introduced to keep records of actions taken. Ten minute chat in some corridor TICK....supervision completed. Five minute chat on the phone "Everything alright love?" TICK....counselling session complete. If the paperwork says it happened, it happened.
It doesn't prevent sick people from having access to kids in care.

It's like staff don't really want to hear anything about their colleagues because then they would actually have to make a report and it seemed to me, a lot of staff try to avoid that because it makes their own life more difficult and their own job insecure.

Do the agencies involved have concerns about some of these people looking after kids? Sure, I can't see how they couldn't have. Some workers and agency staff are friends and so turn their eye blind, some overseers recognise it's not a popular job, no one really wants to look after a bunch of kids who thieve their belongings, abscond, fight with staff and verbally abuse them most days, so the few workers they have, they want to keep.

The kids seem no safer in care today than they were way back when. But as long as we have policies and ticked off paperwork that says they are, the suits are covered.
 
The big paper cover up.

House, House, House, Home

House:
hungry, wet, silence, cold, empty, dark, alone, ignored
hit, pain, broken, crying, drugs, mum, boyfriend, lying
raw, meat, rank, sick, doctor, xray, plaster, trip


House:
many, scary, anxious, fights, noisy, chaos, paedos, nights
knife, hidden, pillow, sleep, stabbed, hand, man, creep
truent, loner, safe, clever, aggression, trust, NO, never


House:
rent, empty, new, MINE, cooking, shopping, working, fine
pubs, clubs, fun, youth, religion, study, Islam, TRUTH
ummah, Rina, shahada, friend, wali, marriage, single, end


Home:
man, weird, wife, weirder, funny, new, mum, nearer
aunties, uncles, mum, clean, du'a, mending, healing, dream
trust, man, love, release, home, children, life, peace

Tackling Extremism

Interesting article by Rachel Shabi

"Forget David Cameron’s five-year plan on terrorism........"

".......Denmark once had the highest European figures, relative to size, for citizens emigrating to fight with Isis. In 2013, 30 citizens made the journey to the Middle East; by 2014, it lost just one"

It certainly seems a more natural and organic way of tackling the issue than somehow forcing integration by how exactly!? In David Cameron's disappointingly predictable speech.

Syria, Terrorists and Islam: This is what I think

Terrorists within IS in Syria give Islamic reasons for why they are fighting to dominate land and people and it can seriously mess with the mind of a Muslim in the West trying to work out what they think. Especially a young Muslim, especially a new revert and especially when the topic is so difficult to discuss openly and honestly.

It would be beneficial for everyone to talk about what's going on in Syria, what is going on in the group calling themself IS and what Islam is really about but with Muslims and non-Muslims alike, it's simply not possible. This inability to be able to have transparent discussions only serves to feed the beast that many people fear.

There's nothing wrong with being radical (guardian article); nothing wrong with being a fundementalist and wanting to stick to the core tenents of a thing; nothing wrong with Jihad which has a wider deeper and more personal meaning than simply 'Holy War'; nothing wrong with the possibility of an Islamic State.

                                                     _______________________

When you're in a room full of non-Muslims you learn not to think, you just have to react with the 'right' words when the topic of IS comes up. You learn what people want to hear and you have to react quickly. As a Muslim in a room full of non-Muslims, every second you don't speak, the silence, even when others are chatting away, grows louder and louder in the room until you leave that room and then others feel they can express their concerns to each other. Or they just raise their eyebrows and blow their cheeks. I've been in several situations and seen this happen because others didn't realise I was Muslim as I wasn't wearing hijab.

If a non-Muslim actually asks you what you think, don't stumble over your words omg. Say the right words and say them confidently. This isn't the time for a discussion, no one wants to know what you think, they just want you to say the words they want to hear.

This happened to me recently @LBC with @ShelaghFogarty talk show. A previous caller was saying how recorded testimonies of people who have gone out to join ISIS and come back regretting it would help stop others from going. I called in to say why that wouldn't work. After listening to my point, Shelagh asked me some questions of her own and I didn't say what she needed to hear. Several people on afterwards expressed their concerns about me personally, including Shelagh herself, because of what I hadn't said (clearly none of them listened to what I did actual say), it mean't that I had to send a text in 15 minutes later saying what everyone wanted to hear.

Non-Muslims need to stop being so alarm and encourage people to express their views without jumping on their head at the first sign of opinions and views they don't understand or don't like.

                                                              __________________

When you're a Muslim, in a room with only Muslims, the same thing happens. The topics of Iraq, Syria or IS comes up and the learned response is silence because it's improper to say anything bad about another Muslim. The correct thing to say when another Muslim seems to do something bad is that they are weak and we should make du'a (prayer) for them.

As a Muslim, you would be wrong for judging another Muslim when you are not in their situation and you didn't see what they did or know why they did it. You would be wrong for expressing that person isn't a true Muslim. You would be wrong for criticising another Muslim for taking action when those voicing the criticism do so from the comfort of their sofas.

All wars are messy and every nation that has been birthed has had victors who subjugated those in the land they conquered. They say that the men and women committing heinous crimes in Syria are not terrorists but freedom-fighters who are willing to do what is necessary to achieve something good for Islam. They mix up truth with opinion and tell you that Shari'a Law is the ideal for every Muslim and a land where true Islam can be followed is an increasing possibility, instead of seeing Muslim-majority countries sell out to the West.

Some people say that the IS group is so large and mixed, it's made up of sincere Muslims who are fighting for an Islamic State and treat those they capture with kindness as the Qur'an demands, while others in the group are sadistic and cruel terrorists who are along for the ride and don't even follow Islam at all, preferring to live out their sick fantasies without an ounce of humanity.

Do you think certain types of people are attracted to certain religions?

Do you think that evil is simply someone who is so switched off and so far gone that they have little or no humanity inside themself to be able to extend it to even another person?

Do you think that the group can be so large and out of control that the cruel sadistic ones are the only ones we get to hear about in the media?

Do you think terrorists will use any reason as a vehicle to be who and what they are, living out their sick ways for the cause of Islam today but really, it could have been any reason.

Unfortunately I have more questions than I have answers.