Like you, I spend evenings glued to my beloved radiation-emitter. Sitcoms, soaps, something on reversing ageing through plastic surgery...“For direct interaction PRESS THE RED BUTTON!” Loony Toons Cartoons!  Sometimes even the News.

Imprisonment for 42 days without trial and Palestinian homes being bulldozed.  A thousand worlds away in front of my very eyes.

Oh and look, natural disasters affect God-bless-gun-capital-America too!  I drag myself off the sofa, bored of the 501 channels at my disposal.

Oh and I must say my prayers - that’s difficult after a long day, you know.  Must stop thinking of those tortured Palestinians that I forgot already and concentrate on religious duties; one must perfect ONESELF in order to get to heaven.

So, more info on the life and mind of because-I'm-Worth-It-Number-One:  I have a modern flat in a nice part of the city.  I have a company car and a degree from a good university that has enabled me to understand Chaucer in the original as well as legalistic terminology. Doesn’t that set me apart?

I’d be surprised if my local Imam could read anything other than The Qur’an in Arabic and the Friday Sermon in some alien dialect that my mother never taught me.

Not that mother would be permitted to set foot in the mosque and listen as is the case with many mosques and therefore the news must be right.

My half-asleep Muslim brain conforms to the idea that Islam is a chauvinistic religion, and violent because jihad, which even I translate as warfare, is how Muslim countries (according to the papers) exert their lacking authority.

My government is my sole protector in the War on terror.

We are at war perpetually and Islam is the new enemy to my underground train journey and the 42-day-detention-supporting government that calls my sister’s hijab an instrument of oppression is my saviour.

(Says my in-car radio before switching to some gangsta-rap to which I nod my head.  Motioning the affirmative to the beat you understand, not in agreement of uttered obscenities).

And what did the radio say again (and again, and again) about arresting Islamists? And what's that about knocking on my door?

Handcuffs...rights read out just like in those films that I watch, but they can’t arrest me, this is injustice!

I am an upstanding citizen, everyone in my area knows this! Neighbours, twitching net curtains, are secret spectators.

But it’s all a dream, a media-perpetrated dream, entertainment in your mid-grey lives just like in the news and movies.

We're just Ghost Detainees, and ghosts don’t even exist.

I need help because with the increasing level of Islamophobia I’m about to love everything! (But whom did I help?)

Is this the result of a refusal of an unthinking Ummah that allowed the media to present a prejudiced, crushed and pureed subversion of Islam?

Refusal to even write a single word against oppression, even though we say ourselves that the pen is mightier than the sword?

Are we dead in mind and the spirit to act, while in the meantime they have your brother’s body?

Sick and tired of Islamophobia?  This Ramadhan do something about it

Muslims and the Media
Saturday 6th September
4:30pm to 7:30pm (iftar will be provided)
Lewisham Islamic Centre
363-365 Lewisham High Street,
London,
SE13 6NZ
Admission Free (advance registration preferred)

Expert speakers will share their experience and advice.
Experienced activists will provide simple practical solutions.

All Muslims who want to make a difference to their community and the Ummah will benefit from the workshop insh'Allah.

Contact info@mpacuk.org now to register for your free place.

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