I hailed in the New Millennium on London’s Embankment with my husband, nine month old daughter and four year old son.
The next year brought us a new daughter and the world September 11th. For twelve months I travelled the country with my children explaining that this atrocity was not Islamic. But there are only so many ways you can say that Islam is anti-terrorism, anti-extremism, anti-violence.
By the end of 2002, my body, mind and spirit were fatigued. It was all very well saying what Islam was against, but what was it for?
In 2003 we started emel – a magazine set to explore what Muslims were for; to show the eclectic range of interests and talents that makes up the Muslim community. At the launch of the magazine we never anticipated that we would go global with subscribers in over 60 countries. The magazine has been my life since its launch. I have eaten, breathed and slept emel for 7 years. I pray it has made a difference; that it has begun a paradigm shift in people’s thinking. I hope it has allowed Muslims to have more confidence in themselves, and allowed others to see Muslims in a more human light.
For me personally, the last three months of 2009 that were the hardest. I had personal challenges to face. Yet, in weakness one finds strength, for it is when you are broken that you have to realise that it is on God we rely. And it is with that realisation I begin the new decade.
In this decade all my children will become adults, God willing. I pray also that emel too will reach maturity and fulfil the many hopes and aspirations which it attempts to capture within its pages.
Sarah Joseph, Editor
I guess a defining moment of the past decade for me was the death of Benazir Bhutto. I was working at a pretty snazzy law firm at the time; glass elevators, cool furniture – the works. They had giant LCD screens everywhere, but they were always muted. I remember around lunchtime, I was signing out at the reception desk and I glanced over at the screen. “FORMER PAKISTAN PM BENAZIR BHUTTO SHOT DEAD”, it read. I remember immediately feeling goose bumps. It wasn’t that I was a political supporter, or the fact that we were both Pakistani – but instead, I realised that her three children had just lost their mother in the most brutal way possible.
People often talk about how horrible and unnatural it is for a parent to lose a child – but for a 12 year old to see her mother publicly executed is no different at all and completely, if not, the most unnatural experience.
The remainder of that day pretty much passed in a blur. I was unsure about what to feel – but I most definitely felt an overwhelming amount of grief. A woman who was trying to change the world was massacred on her homelands – the very same land that my mother and father once roamed fearlessly. Her children were going to have life-long footage of the moment their mother was ruthlessly taken from them. What had the world come to?
Weeks later, I was able to put the entire episode into perspective after seeing a single picture. Bhutto’s youngest child, her 12 year old daughter, was sat beside her grave – a single tear running down her cheek but a look of resilience and composure plastered on her face; just like her mother. It was at that moment I realised that good people who want a better future for our children and our world, can’t just be gunned down and buried. Their ambition and their desire to spread peace and goodness travel like light around the world and ignite an inextinguishable passion in fellow human beings. Hurdles are inevitable – we just have to be willing to support each other when jumping them.
Ayman Khwaja, Assistant Editor
Well my defining moment is when the ‘mp3′ players came out! I remember my first mp3 player in my school days, at the time when they were all the rage and I thought I was so ‘cool’ for possessing one.
I remember my best friend at the time had no idea about technology and I gave her an mp3 player as a gift.
She took the whole package and placed it near her ear and asked meekly,
‘So how does this work?’
I found that utterly hilarious. Besides this memory I thought mp3s were brilliant and much easier to carry around than walkmans. I never knew how much the experience of listening to music would change over the years.
Hafsa Begum, Design/Web Intern