And so another day and another 1,000 leaflets, I miss my family, I work away from home Monday to Friday, I get back from work Friday evening after my kids have gone to sleep and on the weekends I do my MPACUK work and having to miss spending time with my kids on one of the days of the weekend for the last 3 years is hard, spending both days away from them is even harder, on me, them, and my patient supportive and long suffering wife, but that I keep telling myself is the ‘Jihad’. The love of this world, has to be controlled so that my sacrifice for Allah is worthwhile. My relatively high sacrifice is insignificant to those who are being butchered due to an unethical foreign policy. I know my wife understands but she says with justification “I didn’t get married to live a single life” how right she is. So what’s the answer, “yeah you’re right, let me spend an entire weekend with you, let me give myself up to the heaven that is my kids, and your company”.

I think that every time I push a leaflet threw a door, I think that every time a Muslim tells me that MPACUK are causing fitna, I think that every time I have the door answered by a Muslim who has no concept of the war in Iraq, or Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine, or the war on terror is having to UK Muslim. I think that because these people are living their lives, having fun and spending time with their families whilst I am trying to push a rock up hill. I wonder if the rock falls and I get crushed, will the sacrifice be worth it. Is MPACUK and its team ahead of its time, or behind it, is the time for active, pragmatic Muslims past never to been seen again?

I think comforting, bitter-sweet thoughts of my family, my little girl, demanding my attention, my son whinging when I kiss him too hard, I think of them and how much I miss them, every time a Muslim opens his or her door, and when taking a leaflet treats us like a nuisance, as if we were selling insurance or double glazing. I think of them when I pray in the Mosque, a sanctuary for people already at peace, whilst wars rage around their oblivious pious heads of the congregation. For those who are awake there is no sanctuary, there is no peace, what happened to others yesterday because of our inaction in the West is happening to us in the West today. We Muslims allowed the Palestinians to be dehumanised and now we are being dehumanised. I have no peace, unless in my mind’s eye I see my family. In the present, the hard grey pavement we have been pounding for hours the place, where the elite of the all three political parties are focusing their energies, still Muslims are asleep, the shockwave of a defeat for Labour because of its polices is being analysed by political commentators and policy makers everywhere except it seems, amongst the leaders of the Muslim communities.

Still when we knock on doors on a Sunday afternoon, in the rain, we are inconveniencing Muslims! We, MPACUK, the few, are arrogant, or so I was called by someone in the street, In a previous age, maybe one when I didn’t have kids and a wife, I would of risen to the occasion, maybe I would of wound him up calling him a pacified Muslim, or maybe a “Cave Muslim”, not now, not on this humid, grey, rainy Sunday afternoon. I didn’t even have the energy to argue. I turned away, and continued the thankless task of talking to Muslims about democracy and the importance of participating.

The thing that hurts more than the name calling, the closed doors, the scratched fingers, even hurts more than being called “arrogant” while your fingers are blackened with ink, and dust from rusty hard-to-open letter boxes, the thing that hurts the most is to see the poverty of the Ummah, to see the squalor of the mindset that the Muslims have trapped themselves in. To talk to young Muslims who cannot articulate arguments or logical thought outside of dogma that they heard some one else bark at them, and conversing with an older generation that cannot understand the concept of a tactical vote, to ensure that which ever party takes power they understand that the Muslims are not to be taken for granted, and policies that target Muslims have a cost.

The difference between poverty and squalor can only really be appreciated when you find an area with a large Muslim community like Southall. In this context, poverty is an economic concept, a reality that affects living standards, social mobility, choice and economic freedom. The Muslim communities are poor, door after door, council house after council house, estate after estate, poor Muslim with low aspirations answered the door. It is a task but not unachievable, to convince these people of the need to partake in the democratic process. It is thankless, and at times seems pointless, but we continue because we have no choice. We have no choice because the Mosques who could distill this message in 5 minutes at a Jumma Khutba have chosen not to. So we do.

Why do we use the term squalor of the mind? This is the mindset that allows the poverty of their surroundings to go unchallenged, the mindset that allows people (in this case Muslims) to walk past filth on a daily basis and not notice it, and not think it needs cleaning. The squalor of the mind that allows a Muslim sister argue with MPACUK on its Mosque reform platform while the pro-war MP Keith Vaz swans past her, she didn’t so much raising her voice in anger to a man who supported a war that has killed over 655,000 innocent Iraqi civilians according to The Lancet. A man who voted strongly against an investigation of the Iraq war, and a man who voted for the anti-terrorism bill, he walked by unchallenged, yet I was causing fitna! I pointed the irony out to her, she shrugged her shoulders and said “I didn’t know that.” I dryly replied ‘That’s the problem’. This one anecdotal experience repeats itself up and down the country and in summary is an example of a squalid Muslim mind unable to grasp enriching concepts like social justice, and opposing wrongs.

So on Sunday, with an ache in my heart for my family, and a pain in my heart for the state of the Ummah, I resolved, that either MPACUK gets out and mobilizes the Muslims to bring to the ballot box the pain we feel in our hearts. Or other Muslims groups do. And if they don’t then Muslim groups have no legitimate reason to oppose anything MPACUK does. After all it isn’t the mosques who have organised Muslims to find out who the most pro-Palestinian candidate is, incredibly not a single Mosque has organised a husting! That is the shame of it, while others have talked a good game when it mattes the real work is left to a group of Muslims who are hated by Zionists and shunned by Muslims. Allah is our sustainer and we all know from him comes victory and defeat.

As I got home it was too late, my kids had already gone to sleep and I needed to be up early to catch a flight, I took a deep breath, and cried.