Interesting time to be a paki.
I still can’t quite bring myself to write or say “paki” with the gay abandon that Dre can say “nigga”, but I’m working on it.
The journey to work is interesting. The really young kids still smile back when I smile at them. The slightly older ones retreat back towards the arm of a racist parent - black or white. Like this evening on the way back from work. Yesterday was a result. A kid smiled back at me. He was white. His mother was too. She looked at me like I was a piece of shit. If you’re not a paki, you will never understand.
Are you black? Imagine if children cowered from you, if they and their parents cried on planes when you were around because you looked black, behaved black, smelt black - and it was all because Blair said he’d joined in the War on Niggaz. Hey, it’s happened before you know.
It’s very odd, that a growing fragment of society fears and hates brown people. There is no defence you can put up against a child that cowers away from you because their parents have been saying “pakis are bombing killers” loudly in their homes and those “pakis” are being pointed out with a gesture or a nod or a wink or an outright description. What do you do against such gestures? “Hey, I’m not going to blow you up, I’m a nice guy, really!”. It’s too late. When Yobliar talks about an arc of extremism, he might as well have got Reid, his bulldog, to say it was from Walthamstow to East Ham. Hell, I’ve even shaved. (Not to cowtow to the racists - mostly white - some black - some even brown and Indian - or Coconut) - It makes no difference.
I’ve seen my kids three times for a few hours since I got married. On Saturday, I was given an hour’s notice by their mother. Of course, I dropped everything and went to see my beautiful children. 3 times in 2 months. And they don’t get to speak to me either. Since their mother confiscated their mobile, no texts either.
We were on the bus. Top deck, back of bus, classic-paki-suicide-bombing-myth-configuration. Of course, The Sun (they really should rename it The Cunt) thinks that brown babies are suicide bombers too. So, every reason for racists on the bus (racist children) to believe that me and my daughters were all about to blow the bus up.
Anyway, the youngest of four black kids (Nigerian Christians) was going on about Muslim churches or something. The eldest (about 11 years old) interrupted him sharply and conspiratorially started whispering in Yoruba. Then all of them started staring at us. I tried to work out what it was in their young faces. I felt dizzy with anguish. It was fear. They were terrified of us. I smiled painfully at the eldest and said “You don’t have to make it so obvious”, then grabbed my daughters and got off the bus.
I’ll never know why they were afraid.
A few days ago, some tall white, working class, scruffy Cunt reader came down the stairs at Willesden Green station, spotted my complexion, started muttering obscenities (interlaced with ‘paki’ and ‘murderer’) and attempted to barge into me. I expected it, stepping aside at the last moment, causing him to lose his step. I said nothing. It wouldn’t have mattered. Yobliar had him convinced that all brown people are murdering pakis.
On the tube on the way back today, the headlines screamed:
“8 ‘SUICIDE BOMBERS’ ARRESTED”
I immediately enumerated the stupidity of this racist headline:
- There was no suicide
- There were no bombs
- No tickets were bought
- The lynchees did not even have passports
- The accusations were brought by a police force known to have lied, lied and lied again. Remember, this police force brought you the “terrorist” story of Jean Charles de Menezes and the Flat of Evil in East Ham with No Evidence of Suicide Chemical Vests
- Not a shred of evidence on 7/7 has been released to the public other than one low-res, composited, fake picture of a group of unrecognisable blobs in impossible suppositon.
- Of the over 1000 arrests of Muslims, only 12% led to charges and of those, precisely fuck all have been charged with terrorist offences.
I’d laugh if it wasn’t fatal.
I’d curse the country that bore me for spawning such divisive, evil, propaZandist press, if it would make things better, but it won’t. I still ache for a Britain that was, or might have been.
They have always hated us and they always will. You whites and blacks have never seen it. Blacks have problems of their own of course. More of them have died in police custody than any other race, let’s not forget that.
I remember in the late ’70s, a kid at school had a copy of The Cunt. The back page screamed:
PACKER’S PAKIS SENT PACKING!
If you remember the Kerry Packer World Series of cricket, you might recognise the episode. I just thought - “If the newspapers can say a word that is usually accompanied by the crunch of a skinhead NF boot, then the whole country is free to despise us”.
I gave this country 40 years of my best. I was whiter than fucking white. And many of my “brothers” and “sisters” too. What has been done to us now will never be undone. What we worked all our lives for, what our parents sacrificed their families for, has been destroyed - not by “home-grown terrorists” (I refuse to believe a single bloody word of it - show me the evidence, bitch) - but by the highest office of the land - the besmirched position of Prime Minister.
And now you’re treating us like the Jews of Germany in the 1930s. I look forward to the Pogroms.
May God give us many Schindlers.
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{ 29 comments… read them below or add one }
Checkmate 08.22.06 at 5:26 am
I don’t know what to say, because I don’t know what I am feeling right now reading this post. It is anger mixed with contempt for Blair, sorrow for the lost innocence of the white, brown, yellow and black children. And then there is a evil need to say “I told you so”. Sorry, but I have friends who would give their right hand to go and slave for the whites in America and Britain. They are still ready to do anything and everything for the american dream. Is the contempt and the racisim worth the luxuries the west has to offer? And the bigots and racist have always been there in the shadows. The only difference these days is they can come out because less people will condemn them and more will join them.
But I ask you why are you still a Paki after 40 years in UK? I know that all the families that went to America and UK were looking for better future for their children. But what have they got now for a lifetme spent away from their homeland and their families.
I sound like a pompous, self rightous ass right now. I am truly sorry. But I need to understand how can you take this. How??
shahid 08.22.06 at 10:41 pm
I didn’t come here - I was born here. This is my home. My parents and their friends brought a microcosm of India/Pakistan with them, but I was not as exposed to that late 1950s feeling as I was to Britain. And my God, do I love Britain. Despite all of its crimes, it has so much going for it. And for every racist, there is a white man willing to stand up for me - I just don’t see them in public - they have been scared off by society.
I take it, because this is my country, this is my home, and I have no other. Racist whites just don’t get it. They never will. The only place to “go back” to is Middlesex Hospital - and I go there every week, to breathe the air of my childhood, to walk the streets my father did, to hear the echoes of my nursery.
I didn’t come here to slave for anyone. I was born here, and this is my country, and I love my country, but I hate what it has become. You know, people have parents that abuse them, they still love the people that gave them birth, don’t they?
Why am I still a paki after 40 years? Because that’s all they see. They see brown skin, and they feal fear and hatred. They felt it hundreds of years ago and they feel it now and they always will. Sometimes, this hatred is suppressed, or covert, but it is there.
And you know what? Although I’ve lost a friend or two (good riddance to those who turn against the friends that gave them so much) - I still have good friends who have never cared less for my colour - nor I for theirs.
My father passed away a few years ago, thank God, but I’m glad he came here. Not because Britain is better than Pakistan, no. Not because this is the land of milk and honey and paki-bashing, no. I’m glad because this is my home - and it will always be in my heart, even if it is not in my blood.
Olive Ream 08.23.06 at 9:50 am
Shahid, this is such a remarkable post. This is why I enjoy your posts so much. It is extremely rare to read such an honest and precise opinion piece on the situation currently being faced by british citizens (of Asian/Pakistani origin). The reality you present is hidden and never spoken of, yet it exists for some many people in Britian (and other European countries).
You speak for so many others so please keep doing it.
PS. I love your suggestion for renaming The Sun. How absolutely appropriate!
Checkmate 08.23.06 at 10:50 am
Thank you for your answer. I am sorry if I hurt you in anyway. It is just so damn depressing these days. It’s like banging your head against a wall. I just wanted something to make sense. Now I am not making sense!!
I hope against all odds that people will learn to see beyond the color of your mine and everyone elses skin.
My prayers for you and your children.
papaj 08.23.06 at 2:18 pm
I can dig what you’re saying about the looks of fear and suspicion on people faces. I was born here but am of black caribbean origin and remember how it was in 80s when black people were demonised in the playground, brutalised on the streets, vilified in the press, beaten to death in police vans and prison cells, firebombed in their homes….
Unfortunately for muslims - especially if you’re asian muslims, all this treatment is probably coming to you soon.
oh yeah…and I’m muslim too. Out of the frying pan, into the fire, so to speak.
Unfortunately in the country, non-whites will always considered “the other” until they drop all their cultural/religious/behavioural traits. Even then, you still can’t change your skin colour…
..but why would you want to anyway.
peace
shahid 08.23.06 at 5:53 pm
Dear checkmate, you didn’t upset or hurt me. The reality is complicated, that’s all.
David Southwell 08.23.06 at 10:41 pm
This post alone justifies the whole blog thing as more than masturbation. Gay abandon or not, with material like this you are doing a lot more than reclaiming the word paki.
Cirkux 08.24.06 at 7:50 pm
Hi
I’ve lived in the UK for two years now and I’ve been wondering why no britons seem to be noticing what’s actually going on (I’m thinking here of the pretty fucking forceful decent into full fledged police state, rampant media bias and opression in the name of freedom), but obviously I just meet the wrong people, or they’re not willing to discuss politics with a foreigner. Your blog is therefore somehow strangely comforting.
In my native Sweden the papers have carried next to nothing on Jean Charles de Menezez or any of the other stories that have made me so surprised, angry and not a little nauseous over the past two years. They just join in the call for sterner measures and the giving up of freedoms for protection from some vague and unspecified threat. What Blair has achieved Maggie wouldn’t have dared dream of.
Thanks for giving me another perspective on what’s happening in this country.
Razarumi 08.25.06 at 10:14 am
Your post is powerful and straight from the heart. However, your comment in response to checkmate’s queries was laden with contradictions. I am not being critical because life is contradictory and complex. Perhaps checkmate needs to appreciate that despite your full British credentials, for a number of white racists, you will always be a Paki and - thanks to 9/11 and 7/7 - a Muslim. This can be understood only by those who have lived in the UK - and I was there for a number of years. Things were okay-ish in those days but these are troubled times indeed.
Thanks for being so bold, direct and true to your inner self. I would only suggest that you may re-consider the use of four lettered words - howsoever relevant these are in times of exasperation - as it can dilute your message. I am not a prude but am concerned that your real message mustn’t get sidelined! Muslims across the globe will have to undertake internal reformation and peaceful, non-violent struggle against the racism, apartheid and profiling being done these days in the name of a manfactured war on terror – and therefore it is all the more important that we are heard loud and clear and never misundertsood…
jimboGreen 08.27.06 at 1:37 am
great post,
Im a white working class guy and i understand where you are coming from. It makes me sick to see any colour/ creed or type depicted in such a way. Sure we do have differences but the media should be promoting the simularities rather than the extremes or the outright lies
This is a war that is against all of us. And this media sensation is just another way to screw with the laws and destroy all our rights which ironicly has been going on for decades. I suppose it just goes to show just how much real power we have in our so called western democracies.
Give me a simple happy life without the stresses of this form of slavery anyday.
Hot Potato 08.29.06 at 10:07 pm
i understand your justifiable anger but i think you let the anger get the best of you which weakens your position and hurts your cause. people look at you funny and often despise you without knowing you because that is what they are taught. sometimes through schooling but more often than not by watching the tube or other people including friends and family.
considering the 24/7 hardcore rhetoric coming from downing street and 1600 pennsylvania avenue regarding the war on terror, its not difficult to imagine the hate you face daily. thus your animosity towards bush and blair is understandable. however, scanning over your posts, you seem to take issue a lot more with jewist or jewish fascist which makes me question if you are not perpetrating the same hate upon others that you hate yourself.
yes, there are a handful of jews among the neocons in the states that seem to have a lot of influence on bush. but they do not make policy or fight wars. further, most jews disagree mightily with the neocons. if you add up all the jewish neocons in the states it would not measure on a graph. however, the christian evangelical right who support israel as a precursor to the return of jesus and have strong fascist tendencies make up more than a third of the country by some estimates.
and while i will not defend the indefensible in olmert, it once again is odd that you lump all jews together with him but are able to separate bush and blair, for the most part, from their people. isn’t this what you hate? you are muslim, ah, you must be a terrorist. and try walking in their shoes for a minute - a tiny country of a few million that lives daily knowing that hundreds of millions of surrounding arab and muslim children being taught daily to hate jews.
and is the problem really the jews? yes, the latest episode was a disgrace. and there have been other transgressions throughout the years - none this bad i think. but these still pale compared to that of the recent iraq war and to the behavior of every surrounding arab or muslim dictator. are you as outraged by the genocide in the sudan? if not, why not? and again, i am not saying israel or olmert are not worthy of criticism only that jews face a similar discrimination that enrages you.
and i would add that you seem to have a blind spot as to muslims. are most or half or a lot of muslims terrorists? hardly. but there is a growing (thanks to bush and blair and olmert) group who are. and the koran does call for believers to make war on unbelievers (9:73) just as the bible instructs jews and christians alike to kill those who try to seduce believers with other gods: “You must stone him to death, since he has tried to divert you from Yahweh your God”. and the history of islam is not only one of enlightenment as you suggest. and it certainly is not one of enlightenment right now. so your post rings a bit insincere here.
anyways, i am rambling and while i do have issues with some of what you say and how you say it i do commend you for trying to make a difference and speaking out which is not easy and can even be dangerous. i think that the world would be better off, though, if we all took a more humanist approach. we hear about the wonders of the flat earth when it comes to the globalization of business. but that’s where it stops. we now have all the information at our fingertips to see human sufferering throughout the world and often to the benefit of so few. is it moral for the US to spend so many billions on weapons that will never be used when mere millions would save hundreds of thousands of africans merely by buying mosquito nets? or for person X to buy house number 8 and car number 123 when 20% of the children in their own country live in hunger? let’s make globalization work for us by recognizing we are all people and work to make the world better for everyone. we don’t need to be a brit or paki or muslim or jew - we are all the same.
and frankly, if we are to make a real difference and reclaim the planet for the people instead of the few we will need to all work together as one. because the opposition has all the money and resources and the power. even democratic countries cannot rid them through democracy (see mexico and the US). so if we are to make a real difference the only thing we will have on our the each other, the people, and the knowledge of knowing we are on the just side.
shahid 08.29.06 at 10:41 pm
@HotPotato - thanks for taking the time to drop by and leave a thoughtful comment. You don’t have time to read my entire blog or to know me, because if you did, you’d see that I like Jews and Christians a lot. Note the slur I use as a provocation is based on the Western “Islamist” slur. A racist Zionist from Israel is a Jewist - a Jew is completely different. A racist Zionist Christian or indeed, much of evangelical Christianity in the US is comprised of Christianists.
I certainly don’t have a blind spot for Muslims. My point is simple. Now is not the time for navel gazing. We are under the most profound, ill-conceived and racist attack in living memory. We will navel gaze once we aren’t look at by children as killers just because our skin is brown, thanks!
Did I say the Jews were the problem? Nope. Can’t see it. Listen, I love Jews, they’re People of the Book, as are Christians - but I have a right not to like racists who would oppress and murder. Do I dislike the Muslims who oppress and murder? Of course! But this is a time for a different perspective.
My point is more personal than political anyway. I refuse to be differentiated on account of my colour. I will react very strongly to anyone who sees me as “other”. You can kick me out of London, or Britain, but you will never take London or Britain out of me, crudely. I refuse to be told to “integrate”. I was never “disintegrated”. It was whites (and more recently blacks!!!!!) who “disintegrated” me. I resent that, and I have every right to.
If you prick me, do I not bleed? I’ll be humanist when me and my kind are looked upon as human. Right now, my mission is to restore that humanity. Christianists and Jewists (and secular atheists) don’t exactly have that problem right now.
You’re brave and kind for commenting sincerely and honestly. Thank you for visiting and I hope you stay!
sozzipolli 08.30.06 at 11:38 pm
“I still can’t quite bring myself to write or say “paki†with the gay abandon that Dre can say “niggaâ€, but I’m working on it.”
I have to admit that I’m surpirised that you can use the word ‘gay’ (regardless of context) without being sick inside your robes. Your ‘brohers’ have made my life hell for the past 5 years; why? Allah, God, made me this way so FUCK OFF! Homophobe, Islamophile, rot in Hell motherfucker.
Yeah, I’m as ‘brown’ as you ‘bhai’, but I have to suffer as a result of your ignorance. I have to suffer the broken bones and the and pain of your intolerance. How dare you claim that you are ‘wronged’. DIE. Leave me and my partner in peace; we never hurt you, nor tried to offend you.
I love the UK because it has set me free of your religious bigotry. I was ‘born’ a muslim, but you cast me out. Now I’m happy to be part of the ‘wider community’ and they seem not to care about my clour, my sexual orientation, my beliefs. You are as hypocritical as our parents’ were; you don’t know which side your bread is buttered.
To my beautiful ‘new husband’ (we’ve beenh permitted to ‘marry’ in this country) I can only say ‘I love you and always will’ no matter what your hatred teches us. Fuck You. I’m 45 years old and I’m so happy to have been born here and been able to be part of a society where I am accepted. When I go ‘home’, I’m not motherfucker, so fuck you!
sozzipolli 08.30.06 at 11:42 pm
I’m so terribly sorry about the typos, but I’m so very poor with a keyboard.
hotpotatomash 08.31.06 at 5:25 am
thanks for the reply and i’m sorry for jumping the gun without first understanding the meaning of some of your terms and philosophy. and i hear you on the color of your skin complaint. i cannot imagine the hardship “others” are feeling these days - especially in the US and England. and while no one is feeling the hate more than muslims and arabs you should know that almost everyone is under attack. actually, to be gay in the US cannot be much, if any, better than what you are experiencing.
but while gays get the brunt of the hate, everyone is a target. it’s a necessary outcome of the fanatical right in power. they cannot run on accomplishments, policy or the future so they are limited to running on scare tactics or fear. so even democrats and liberals (liberal has become a dirty word so most use progressive now) are targets. that’s half the country. and you can add blacks, french, holllywood celebrities, intellectuals, academics, French, environmentalist, secular humanists, communists (not many but boy does the right love to hate the dreaded communists) to the mix.
finally, my point about humanism was more about being open to everyone without prejudice, not about pacifism. if things are going to change, there will be plenty of blood. those in power have already proven how far they will go. premeditated and preemptive war without justification, torture, extraordinary rendition, police states, etc. they have shown their hand, perhaps by intention. are you or her or him or me willing to fight those in power who do such terrible things at risk of life, liberty and freedom. not many in america are willing to do these things yet. that only changes with a severe economic meltdown or WWIII. neither of which is inconceivable.
in the meantime i will be rooting for you to succeed in restoring humanity.
NoFagsThankYou 08.31.06 at 7:46 pm
sozzipolli, not only are you a faggot but a moron as well. Get your dirty shitty ass out of here you nasty ass muncher. I’m not interested in your sob story.
sozzipolli 09.01.06 at 12:29 am
Nice to hear, that you are as homophobic as I thought you might be. In actual fact I’m as straight as you, perhaps straighter since I don’t have to get my parents to arrange a marriage for me. It was simply a tester, as a journalist, to encourage Islamic homophobes to come out and demonstrate their credentials as being worthy of joining our great society.
I am a Muslim; I was born in Pakistan, unlike many of you. My wife and children are practising muslims, but we increasingly find this blind intolerance on the part of our ‘brothers’ a particularly heavy burden to bear given the hatred that is already directed towards us. People like you should leave Britain now before the ’shit hits the fan’. Fuck off back to Pakistan where you belong you semi-literate, wife-beating, child raping, Shoah-denying, pseudo-muslim fuckwit.
If you read The Guardian within the next two days you will see your comment reproduced within an article by David Aaronvitch which questions the right of ‘Pakistani’ muslims to dictate terms of reference with regards to anti-terrorist measures whilst they continue to display such abhorrent, antiquated, recividist beliefs.
Guess what? You’ve been ‘punked’ motherfucker and you’ve just contributed to even greater bigotry against you, fuckwit. I just love those who are so unable to see the light before them that they stumble so unwittingly into the dark and are then trapped.
Ps darling, I’ve also got your IP. Kisses, love.
shahid 09.01.06 at 11:05 am
Dear Sozzipolli - I don’t know who you are, but you’re not the first person you portrayed yourself to be, nor the second.
1) You are not allowed to reproduce anything from my blog, whether it be by me, or whether it be from people who comment on my blog as in this case, without my express, prior, written permission.
2) How do the readers of this blog know you didn’t “punk” yourself?
3) You cannot determine the IP of commenters. I can. You don’t have that info.
4) How do you know that the commenter, or anyone here for that matter, had their marriages “arranged” by their parents? In fact, the last time someone said something like that on my blog, they turned out to be a vicious racist. Like you perhaps?
5) No journalist would write as poorly as you.
6) No journalist would use one comment by one unknown person on one obscure blog in a vain attempt to prove or entrap bigotry against Islam. So not only are you transparent, but you’re probably not Muslim, not a journalist, not even brown and you’re certainly not credible. Which is why I didn’t respond to you in the first place.
7) In any case, if there was even a single percent of truth in your claim, I’m sure you’d like to see your comment “child-rapist” towards your own “set-up” comment by your own brain-child re-printed in context too.
Go and play your BNP games with your mates. You won’t be impressing the Guardian.
Razarumi 09.01.06 at 6:31 pm
Well put Shahid. Keep writing..
Andy 09.04.06 at 10:51 am
You say that you dont believe the images of the 7/7 suicide bombers? … you digust me with your attitude!
Did you not also see these “innocents” speaking in close up, very clear tapes delivered from Pakistan / Afghanistan about why they did this? …. do you believe the government has made these tapes themselves to turn everyone against Muslims in the UK?
Man you need a reality check! … you need to open your eyes and accept that you are being hassled not because of the media but because of what you “brothers” have done!
If 9/11 didnt happen them this would not all have happened! … OBL is the cause of all this with his jealousy of the West!
shahid 09.04.06 at 7:20 pm
Andy:
1) Only one image with allegedly all four of them has ever been produced. From that imagine, it is impossible to discern the identity of more than two, perhaps even one of the alleged bombers.
2) They are still suspects, even according to the police.
3) I didn’t say they were innocent
4) I saw some TV footage of a blurry tape, with no mention of 7/7, or a location, or a time, or anything other than generic nonsense. People who knew the suspects are quite clear that those people were not the people they knew in any sense of the expression.
5) There was no mention of Pakistan or Afghanistan.
6) I have not done anything
7) 9/11 was a lie - and more and more Americans as part of the truth movement now believe it. All of the buildings were destroyed by a controlled demolition, nothing else explains it.
Given the above - it is you who needs the reality check and you who needs to open your eyes. You’re deluded and asleep. I am waking up.
Thanks for visiting my blog - please do feel free to start looking into the truth, if it’s important to you. I wouldn’t be surprised if you still believed that there are WMDs in Iraq and that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11
Red Tulips 09.05.06 at 12:04 pm
Ever stop and think that maybe the reason why people fear Middle Eastern looking people on a plane is because, oh, I don’t know, the vast majority of terrorists are Middle Eastern??
If you are upset about it, why not go out and demonstrate against terror, and prove that Islam does not equal terror? If you are upset about it, do something - prove that Muslims can be peaceful.
MEANWHILE, Blair never said Muslims are responsible. He said radical Muslims are responsible. Unless you are a suicide bomb loving radical Muslim, then you should not be offended.
But then again, your screen name is “Shahid,” so I suspect you do have some sympathies with radical Islam.
It’s quite comical, really. You call yourself “shahid,” which ascribes a certain sympathy with suicide bombing, and then are outraged when you are checked at airports! Oh, the horror!
Guess what? Jews are not even allowed entry into Saudi Arabia, and are treated like second class citizens or WORSE in most of the Middle East. Do I see you complaining? Hellllllz no!
It’s all “How dare they call radical Muslims what they are? I am offended! Rabble rabble rabble!”
Please, don’t make me vomit.
Red Tulips 09.05.06 at 12:11 pm
Let me add something else. You are flat out delusional if you think 9/11 was a “Jew conspiracy” or whatever the hell you think about it. There are multiple links which disprove the “9/11 Truth movement.”
I have seen ‘Loose Change.’ I read all about the faux-conspiracy theory. I don’t buy any of it. I am not some idiot who has to be enlightened.
Popular Mechanics debunks 9/11 conspiracy theories:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1227842.html
Link debunking other 9/11 conspiracy theories:
http://michaelgriffith1.tripod.com/refute.htm
Most of all, OSAMA BIN LADEN TOOK RESPONSIBILITY. If that is not proof enough, nothing is.
If you are upset about the treatment of Muslims, then work to get the message out that Islam is not terror, but most of all, change your frigging screen name so it doesn’t say “shahid,” and isn’t sympathetic with radical Islam. Because as of right now, you are part of the problem.
shahid 09.05.06 at 8:58 pm
Dear Red Tulips,
Thanks for visiting my blog. I appreciate it when people visit. If you have time, I encourage you to read other, older articles to get some perspective, but if not, that’s fine, we’re all busy nowadays.
The Popular Mechanics article has been totally rebutted with real science. It set up several strawman arguments and knocked those down. That is not science, it is evil.
Osama taking responsibility? Reference? And when you find it, if you’re lucky, let me know if a nutter claiming he is the serial killer the police are looking for is automatically guilty.
The science shows conclusively that buildings only fall like that through controlled demolition.
I work every day to get the message of Islam out, you are just not interested in it. You’d rather hear the lies of the media - or the views of the radicals. If I told you that I think everyone in the West is a fascist, just like Hitler, because he too was white, would that not be absurd?
“My frigging screen name” by the way is my real name. Please take the time to study Muslim names and Arabic and then you will see that “Shahid” has no negative connotation whatsoever. I bet you don’t even know how to pronounce my name. When you have learned it, and realise that half of your comment is baseless as a result, feel free to come back and talk like grown-ups, I welcome your input and presence.
Eagleeye 09.16.06 at 10:48 am
A brave, honest and insightful post Shahid. Kudos for that.
May I add my two bit?
Perhaps it is not possible for the white man to get over the bygone days when the British Empire rose to its pinnacle in showers of colored people’s blood. That the imperialistic genes are surging again in the white man’s veins is amply demonstrated by Prime Minister Tony Blair’s decision to tag on to the coattails of the latest Empire seeker, the USA, and the decision of his people to re-reelect him to his office giving a seal of approval to these imperialistic ventures.
The British, who now chaperon the Americans, did not massacre their subjects because they wanted to make the world safe for democracy decades later. It happened, as all imperial massacres do, in the frenzy of absolute power. It happened in the sick conviction that all colonial masters have toward their subjects–that they have the god given right to decide the course of history for them while at the same time gorging themselves on the loot from the very same subjects.
For centuries, the white man from Europe has plundered & terrorized the non-European world treating with contempt the people of different skin color, cultures, philosophies, religions, languages, and way of life. The conquered nations were expected to give up their own culture, their religions, even their languages, and convert to his set of beliefs and values that he defined as “civilizedâ€. In the process, he tolerated no opposition. Any kind of expression of opposition was brutally suppressed. Today’s terrorist groups are like a bunch of kindergarten kids when compared to Europe’s colonial armies. Using those armies, the white man killed the people of color, and terrorized the survivors, with a careless abandon justifying it at various times by calling those killed as pagans, heathens, savages, cannibals etc.
Just one harrowing illustration of this attitude is the treatment of Aboriginal people at the turn of the 19th century. The near extermination of the Aboriginal people started with an incident near Hobart in Tasmania in 1804 when British soldiers fired on a party of Aboriginal men, women, and children. Some of the 50 or so killed that day were reported to have been salted down and sent to Sydney as anthropological curiosities.
Perhaps the worst example of white man’s contempt for people of color is the biggest human tragedy of the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade. Tens of millions of Africans were exported to the Americas by Europeans and many perished before reaching the destinations. The Atlantic slave trade was a barbarity of stunning proportions.
Ironically, the white man continues to be called ‘cultured’ and the rest as ‘Pakis’, ‘hadjis’, ‘brutes’, and ‘ragheads’. This incongruity cannot be clearer than in the answer of an Indian to a taunting European settler. The Indian said, “White man, you have wiped us out, you stole our lands, you destroyed our homes, and you raped our women and brought deadly diseases to our people. You have done all the unthinkable crimes anyone can imagine. It does not hurt me any more. What truly hurts my people and me is that despite all these crimes you have committed against my people, we are considered savages and you the “civilized” people. That truly hurts me the most!”
And that, Shahid, truly hurts me the most too.
opaque 09.16.06 at 7:56 pm
Lies, twisted logic, Islamophobia, bad spelling and pretensions at being a journalist - you haven’t been ‘Punked’, you’ve been ‘Northed’.
Bridget Dunne 09.19.06 at 9:14 am
Shahid
Your writing never fails to move me, and this post in particular. Such a good heart and spirit shines through.
After the events of 7th July, I felt such empathy towards Muslims and such horror that the Government and media were using these events to not only demonise Muslims but also to push a theory of ‘collective guilt’. Not for the first time in history, create a false enemy to deflect and distract from who the real enemy is.
Yet I am not Muslim or black, I am a white working-class woman who would be classified by eagleeye’s logic as ‘part of the problem’. His/her logic would lead to believing that for instance a black working-class man or Muslim working-class woman would have more in common with the likes of Condi Rice than they would with me. Which is a sad state of affairs and one that fails to allow us to see what we have in common, which in my opinion, is class. It is on the basis of class that we are oppressed. It is on the basis of colour, race, religion and sex that we are divided. We become prey to the ignorant and the likes of the BNP, who feed off these false divisions.
If we continue to be divided we will continued to be ruled.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4943675105275097719
The Antagonist 09.19.06 at 3:08 pm
With a caveat about the alleged links between the alleged 7/7 perpetrators and the ‘Bakri network’, Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed, in conjuction with a former senior British Army Intelligence Officer, has provided an analysis of the air terror plot that could never have been, unless the laws of physics can be defied, and has gone a stage further by discussing the implications of the analysis in the context of London bombings of 7 July 2005.
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Lieutenant-Colonel (ret.) Nigel Wylde, a former senior British Army Intelligence Officer…. who was awarded the Queen’s Gallantry Medal for his command of the Belfast Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit in 1974…”
Lt. Col. Wylde also raised questions about the criminal investigation into the 7th July terrorist attacks in London last year. He noted that police and government sources have maintained “total silence” about the detonation devices used in the bombs on the London Underground and the bus at Tavistock Square. “Whatever the nature of the primary explosive materials, even if it was home-made TATP, the detonator that must be used to trigger an explosion is an extremely dangerous device to make, requiring a high level of expertise that cannot be simply self-taught or picked-up over the internet,” Wylde stated.
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Full article on Raw Story.
So, if the four British Muslim kids accused of perpetrating the London bombings didn’t learn how to do build detonators over the Internet, from whence might the expertise come?
paki4lyf 06.24.08 at 4:09 pm
u know im proud to be a paki. i do respect the black and hite race 2. our so called paki grandads came to england wiv nothin but still im living in a nice house they also go paki bashed but they dealt wiv it. OH YEAH AND I HATE FUCKING HATE FUCKING FUCKING FUCKING FUCKING FUCKING FUCKING FUCKING FUCKING FUCKING FUCKING FUCKING FUCKING FUCKING HATE GAYS GAYS GAYS GAYS THEY ARE STUPID DUMB FUCKS.