Editor’s Blog

Shoe-String Wedding

Last modified on 2010-08-07 11:48:14 GMT. 4 comments. Top.

When Chelsea Clinton got married last weekend the event is estimated to have cost between $3-$5million. Chelsea’s Vera Wang dress alone came in at around $20,000. Such celebrity, high cost weddings are nothing new; with the exclusive pictures often being sold to the likes of Hello for upwards of £1million.

Yet, wedding extravagance is not the exclusive right of celebrities and former President’s daughters. All too often I see young Muslims couples feeling obliged to provide lavish ceremonies. Parents compete with parents. “So and so’s  wedding was amazing – how can we top it?” I see £40-£50,000 being spent on weddings without anyone taking a pause to ask the questions, “Is this really necessary?” “Is this really right?”

Everyone wants a happy occasion, something which can be enjoyed by the whole community and remembered by the family and couple. And whilst miserliness is not an Islamic attribute, neither is extravagance. As with all things, a balance must be found, and people must only do that which is easily within their means. Remortgaging the parental home to pay for a one day event is a folly which must be spoken against.

The extravagance of Chelsea Clinton’s wedding reminds me of my own wedding – by virtue of the fact that they were so different. When my husband and I tied the knot, I was a student and he was a pupil barrister. Our whole wedding was done on a shoe string. My mother baked the cake, my uncle iced it. My mother embroidered my dress, my sister sewed it together. We got the flowers from Covent Garden Flower Market – staying up all night to plant the centre baskets. My mother still has a plant thriving from the day. We did buy in the Asian food, but my mother and I cooked the English food. It was stressful – made more difficult by the fact my father died the week before the wedding, I went into shock and was hospitalised with a temperature which brought on a kidney infection. Yet, it was a family affair and everyone chipped in to help.

I’m not saying it has to be done this way, but I’m wary of the social pressures to put on a ‘big show’. My wedding day was a very special day – and we did not need lots of money to make it happen. What we needed was love and commitment – which are the bedrock of a marriage anyway.

Hiroshima’s Ground Zero – Why Nuclear Weapons are Fundamentally Un-Islamic

Last modified on 2010-08-09 15:16:36 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

August 6^th – 65 years ago today a bomb codenamed “Little Boy” was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, which had been spared conventional aerial bombardment so that it would be a “pristine target”. With a radius of one mile from Ground Zero, the first effect of the explosion was blinding light, accompanied by radiant heat from the fireball. Near Ground Zero, everything flammable burst into flames, glass products and sand melted into molten glass, and humans were either vaporised or turned to carbon in an instant. Famously, the shadow of one victim was etched into stone steps. An estimated 65,000 to 200,000 people lost their lives in the impact of that one single bomb, with later fatalities from cancer and leukemia coming over the next 30 years.

When I was 15 I travelled to Hiroshima with my brother and cousin. I was a passionate advocate for nuclear disarmament and could not understand how the two super-powers of the 1980s – USA and Russia – were engaged in an expensive arms race to create even more powerful versions of the bombs that had wreaked so much destruction on Hiroshima, and three days later, Nagasaki. Once in Hiroshima we approached an elderly Japanese man – old enough to have been a survivor – to ask where Peace Memorial Park was. He could speak no English, and we could speak no Japanese. He took us by the hand, on and off buses, until we reached the park. He bowed and left us.

The park stands as testament to the world of the horrors of that day. It is a destruction that the world should never forget, yet I find very few young people are even aware of it. And nowadays we find other nations building nuclear weapons. The USA, Russia, China, France and Britain were the five nuclear nations whose nuclear status meant they became permanent members of the UN Security Council. Now we must add to this list India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel (although the latter never publicly acknowledges the fact). Iran may or may not be trying to create its own weapons.

For me the fact that Pakistan has them, and Iran may want them, evokes the greatest sadness within me. That Muslim nations should attempt to attain something which is so far from Islamic principles shows how lost even Muslims have become – rejecting The Divine Creator.

The nuclear arms race is based upon the concept of Mutual Assured Destruction, whereby two opposing sides both have the ability to destroy each other, thereby protecting both. Yet this notion of “deterrence” does not take into account the fact that historically there has never been an arms race which did not end in a war. And for me, the acronym sums it up.

As Muslims it is our duty to think outside the box, not blindly follow the mandate of others. If having nuclear weapons is the ticket to becoming a permanent member of the UN, we need to change the ticket, not continue to spend billions of pounds of scarce resources of a “deterrence” that supposedly we’ll never use. The nuclear mindset comes from the 1950s. A lot has changed since then. We need bold new thinking to get us out of this quagmire, and Muslims should be leading the way based upon the principles of self-surrender onto God rather than blindly following like sheep (potentially to slaughter).

Some Muslims have cited to me the Qur’anic verse 8:60 which talks about preparedness for war. But the nuclear bomb is not the same as the sword and war horses. Nuclear weapons make no distinction between the combatant and the non-combatant, between the soldier and the old, the infirm, the women, the children. Nuclear weapons poison the land and the genetic code of future generations. The midwives in Japan saw the results of nuclear weapons  – the genetic destructions of generations. It is the equivalent of poisoning the wells ten times over and is fundamentally un-Islamic.

To continue aping the modern war mindset of societies that have killed The Divine Creator in their thinking is to head towards a parapet of destruction with our eyes closed. And thus may this anniversary of Hiroshima stand as testament to us now and to future generations that nuclear weaponry is fundamentally at odds with self-surrender onto Him, and no Muslim should desire them for their nation.

The Story of the Butterfly

Last modified on 2010-08-03 16:17:24 GMT. 2 comments. Top.

A few people have asked about my reference to a butterfly in my most recent editorial: “Any attempt to prematurely escape from such challenges before they have had the chance to impact your character is like the butterfly that is hastily urged out of its cocoon – it will be unable to truly fly.”  (http://www.emel.com/article?id=75&a_id=2084&c=63)

This reference comes from The Story of the Butterfly:

“A man found a cocoon of a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared; he sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through that little hole. Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could and it could go no farther.

Then the man decided to help the butterfly, so he took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the Cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily. But it had a swollen body and small, shrivelled wings.

The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected that, at any moment, the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body, which would contract in time.

Neither happened! In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shrivelled wings. It never was able to fly.

What this man in his kindness and haste did not understand was that the restricting Cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening were nature’s way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.”

What do you think the moral of The Story of the Butterfly is?

Whipping a woman for wearing trousers is an affront to Islam

Last modified on 2009-08-10 14:34:37 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

The case of the Sudanese woman, Lubna Ahmed Hussein, who is being tried for wearing trousers has passed quietly.

Just because it is not making headlines, does not make it right. I wrote a comment piece, “Whipping a woman for wearing trousers is an affront to Islam” for the UAE’s The National, www.thenational.ae

To read the article click here

Small Steps

Last modified on 2009-07-29 11:36:13 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

This is my transcript from today’s Wake up to Wogan show. What is your small deed that could help change your life? Leave a comment below the post.

———————————————————————————————————————-

I am – I confess – terribly unfit. It affects my life because I have – with three children, a full time job, a fair amount of speaking engagements and some volunteer work – a pretty packed life. If I was fitter it would be easier to do all these things; but because I do all these things it is difficult to carve out time to get fitter. It’s a bit of a conundrum really…

And with this conundrum in my life – I have – for some time – imagined a new me. A me that goes regularly to the gym; a me fit from aerobics; a me with muscles built from Pilates. I imagine a me – not quite Olympian – but certainly not the totally exhausted, unfit me that I currently am. But I cannot imagine me with all that jumping up and down in aerobics, or a me down at the gym lifting weights. And I really cannot imagine me at a Pilates session, even if David Beckham recommends it.

But I am unfit, so I need something that goes beyond imagining and actually gets me exercising… But what?! Something I do naturally every day would be useful.

Breathing of course springs to mind, but that’s not exactly exercise. I type a lot. I talk a lot. I drink a lot of tea – but none of these things would help in my quest to get fit.

Then I found it – walking. If I could find a way to increase my walking to such a point that the walking became exercise – now that would be a way for me to get fit.

So I thought about it for a long while – one can’t just rush these things… Then I got myself two things: a decent pair of walking shoes and a pedometer.

The shoes just make the whole thing more comfortable, but it’s the pedometer which really helps. It measures how much I walk. It’s there – every day – clipped to my trousers –  telling me how well I’m doing. My target is 10,000 steps a day and I am doing pretty well. Yesterday I managed 13,465 steps. I am patting myself on my back as I speak because that’s a big improvement from the 3000 steps I started with.

Without the pedometer measuring me I would not have anything to strive for each day. I realised it’s vital to have something tangible to aim for – a target –  however small really helps.

My lack of fitness was becoming an issue in my life, a problem that seemed too big to sort out, but too big to ignore. In the end, I think the answer has come in something very mundane and everyday.

There is a Muslim saying, “God loves the small deeds done regularly.”

And for sure: small deeds, even small everyday, mundane deeds, when added together can form something big. In my case, I hope it’s a collection of small steps that will allow me to walk to fitness. But for each of us, I believe there is a small deed, which can make a big change in our lives.

——————————————————–

To listen to the slot on the Wake up to Wogan Show, click here (available online until 9:32am Wednesday 5th August)

(My bit is around 1 hour 45 minutes)

Blogging Perseverance

Last modified on 2009-07-14 16:20:18 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

The emel team, particularly the feature’s editor, Somaiya Khan, have been wanting me to blog for a long time. I have always resisted, telling them, “life is busy enough.” But they persisted. And persistence – as it tends to in life – won. So here I am with my first blog entry and my first musing: be persistent in life, for as the Qur’an says, “God is with those who patiently persevere.”