Warped

It's been a bittersweet day.
I've finally begun the process of paying back the decades (!) of prayers owed. By just one.
One small step, and I hope it continues.

So I've just been in a weird situation,
which shouldn't have been weird at all.
But my mind went blank,
and I had no idea what to say.
In my own home.

I'm a mixture of emotions right now,
but the best course of action I believe is to file this incident away,
along with a canned response I have attached to it for future, similar incidents.

And after I end this post,
I'll be moving swiftly on.
Nothing like dwelling on an incident
to overreact the next time something similar happens.

My little sister had gone out to the hall,
and told my younger brother that my mother wanted to sleep outside.
He was folding clothes and watching the news.

When she came out a second time,
I really should've said something,
but for the life of me,
I didn't.

Was it because I didn't want a debate?
Was it because I felt my authority had eroded somewhat?

He has a history of questioning,
making you justify WHY.

But it shouldn't have been a problem for me.
When all else fails,
I can just use 'Just because'.
Also I'm much bigger. Physical objections won't get very far with me.

There's been a slew of unrelated incidents recently,
incidents which I normally go out of my way to avoid.
But in the end, after going through them,
resolving them,
it turns out I really needed to confront those fears, or more accurately, apprehensions.

This is another one.
I will not remain quiet any longer.

So many things going on in this world right now,
particularly the massacre in Gaza.

The daily news (alternative and mainstream)(whatever the hell that means)
makes the world seem like a bleak, depressing place to be in.

I feel for the victims.
But it's important that I pay close attention to my own life,
and not fill my thoughts solely with that type of news.
More positivity is needed. Optimism. Humour.
When I am balanced, will I be in a better position to make the world a better place.


Also, fuck France.

Well, enough of that

Blurry

Not sure if I'm still sleepy,
but I don't really feel it,
except for the fog that's clouding my thoughts,
almost preventing me from forming critical arguments.

Or maybe it's the lack of constant writing.
It's become so easy to let others do the thinking for me,
to form the arguments,
and to just agree with them.

George Galloway, Norman Finkelstein, Glenn Greenwald, Noam Chomsky, amongst others.
Now don't get me wrong,
I trust them, trust their judgement.
They shed light on the dark things in the corners of society,
things that need to be revealed.

But once you start to simply go along with their arguments,
and heavily rely on them to shape and articulate your thoughts on certain issues,
you start to erode your own critical thinking skills.
At least, that's what I feel is happening to me.

And there's so much to think about.
Besides having to counter the usual rubbish that flows
out of Islamophobes' mouths,
I need to think about setting up the smoothie business.
The things I'll need.
How much will it all cost? What's the timeline I'm looking at here?

My mind is being frustratingly sluggish.

But things are looking up.
 
I'm praying regularly now,
combating was-was.
Sometimes I do have bad days,
and I can feel the retaliation happening.
The old, almost-forgotten things that would bother me,
that bothered me in the beginning years ago,
they are starting to resurface.
Unnecessary questions arise from time to time with more frequency.

All this tells me I'm doing the right things.
Retaliation is a good thing.
It means I'm on the right path, and on this path I shall stay.

Well enough of that

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Kind of a lame title,
but it accurately reflects the situation I'm in.

Well technically,
the situation we're in. My wife and I.
As much as I try to shield her from what's going on
and pretend that everything's OK,
she senses it.

When something's just about to fall apart at the seams,
it's only a matter of time before the signs become glaringly obvious.

It's the second day of Ramadhan,
and I've been out of work for what, two months? Three, possibly.
I don't even want to check.

On my way back from sending her off at the airport,
I'd checked my back balance.
$25.
That's all I have in my account.

Talk about coming full circle.
But regrets won't help.

I'm redoubling my efforts.
Three letters a day, instead of two.
And when I get a job,
I'm putting her Smoothie Bar idea into action.
It's too risky to wait.
Too risky.
The money disappears so damn fast.

In many ways I am very fortunate.
We're staying at my parents' place, rent-free.
Hell, the past couple of weeks I haven't even been paying for the utilities.
Not that I could've.

Dark skies are coming, though.
And we need to get ready, brace ourselves for the coming hurricane.

My dad's nearing retirement age,
and how does his company reward his decades of loyalty?
But offering him the following options (if he's lucky):
Take a 10% pay cut doing the EXACT SAME THING,
or an annual contract with possibly 3 working days a week.

Things keep going the way they are,
and soon, we'll run out of money.

With my kid about 5 months away,
I need to act fast.
And I need to put in place contingencies to avoid
being in a place like this again.

I can't give up.
I won't.

Well enough of that

Recurrence

It's happening again.
Maybe it's because I woke up just an hour ago,
and my head still feels like it's floating.
Or maybe it's something else.

The last interview I had,
I could've been more articulate, but I wasn't.
It was a slight struggle to pick the words I needed.

I should've been writing on a regular basis.
Practised getting my thoughts in order.

Right now, I've got a few prominent ones flying round and round in my skull,
each one vying for attention.

One demands that I talk about the action hero story I'm working on,
about an Afghan man saving his brother from a secret prison.

Another demands I talk about the lack of Muslim heroes in movies and books these days.
The 'Western' ones, at least.

Another talks about the idiots bashing Dein Obeidallah's article on Boko Haram
on the Daily Beast. Holy crap are they stupid as hell.

Anyway. So many thoughts.
So many words begging to be used.


I can't. Not in detail. Not yet.
The fact that I've begun writing the opening portion of the rescue scene is heartening.
Just  little bit. Unless I continue the story soon, it would've been for nothing.


Right now though, I need to focus on getting a job.

Well enough of that.

Out of Time

In a bit of a rush at the moment.
I've decided to postpone writing that article,
and instead write the kickass Afghan hero story I've had swimming in my mind for a while now.

Well enough of that.

What It's Like To Be A Muslim in a Non-Muslim Country

I was feeling a bit depressed today.
News about the constant wars and seething hatred of Islam and Muslims.
It starts with a hardcore group of bigots:
Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, etc.
Most people don't really pay attention to them.
The distortions and outright lies are
merged with their dripping bigotry and greed
to create a reeking, toxic mix.

I won't link to this group and add to their traffic.
Feel free to Google them, although be warned:
There is a reason why I used the word 'hardcore'.
All the Nazi propaganda leading up to the Holocaust?
Just substitute 'Muslim' with 'Jew', or 'Roma' or 'Disabled'.

Problem with this group is that they have powerful, wealthy backers.
So the stench emanates to an outer layer of a supposedly moderate or 'neutral' group,
Which includes most mainstream news organizations like the CNN and BBC.
Now this 2nd group tends to act as a sort of filter:
The really nutty or genocidal comments and articles
by the 1st group tend to be excluded from their reports (not always, of course).

But content that's deemed 'believable' by the (non-Muslim) public?
(Muslims hate us! They hate women!)
Hey no problem!
They are more than willing to spread them far and wide.
Of course when a crime or tragedy that's been falsely attributed to Muslims,
or if that incident had never even happened,
you'd require a damn microscope to find the amendments,
long after the damage has been done, of course.

Or in the case of Fox News, never.

As for the threshold of 'believable',
over the years I've noticed a steady increase in the amount
of bullshit people will swallow.
If someone 20 years ago (at least here in Singapore) had said that
Muslims grow up being taught to kill or convert every non-Muslim,
people would look at you as if you were out of your mind.
A paranoid lunatic bigot.

But through the steady rationing and gradual increase
of extremely negative and untrue portrayals of Muslims over all those years,
such a perception is now relatively common.
Oh some might believe a more diluted version ('no, no, but they do want to convert everyone!'),
the point is, the threshold has been successfully increased.

Makes me sad to say,
but it probably only is a matter of time before
the mass deportations (of the countries' own citizens) and internment camps arrive.
Already in many Western or Western-backed countries (including the myriad dictatorships in Muslim-majority countries),
their rights have been severely curtailed (no mosques, no headscarves, no fasting, etc),
and stories of discrimination are rampant.

So the propaganda campaign has been a success.

The 2nd group legitimizes hatred and discrimination against Muslims.

Only a handful of sites such as The Intercept and DemocracyNOW,
and politicians such as George Galloway.
But their voices are but drops in the ocean of lies circulating in the news networks and on the internet.

So yeah,  I was depressed.
Figured I'd visit Cracked, and lo and behold! A bullshit article from an Atheist about living in supposedly extremist, fundamentalist Bangladesh.

I knew it was bullshit the moment
he wrote about his Muslim family killing all the pigeons in an area,
when he brought to them a Quran that had been stained by bird droppings.

Of course there was no verification. Also, it sounds batshit crazy.
And naturally, naturally it is presented as fact,
which most of the commentators accepted.
What a bunch of malleable fucking idiots.

Killing all the pigeons? Really?
Let's say it's true. OK. For argument's sake,
his family did wish to kill the pigeon that stained the Quran.
His argument is that because they couldn't tell which one did it, they killed them all.
Have you EVER seen a pigeon to hang around after another pigeon has been killed?
Hell, have you ever seen a pigeon just stand there as you walk up to them?
Once you hit a certain proximity, they're on alert.
Get any close (or run) and they get the fuck out of there.

And nobody bothered to really ask this simple question.

So you know what?
I'm writing an article of my own.
Maybe it'll get published, maybe it won't. But I'll write it anyway:
What It's Like to be a Muslim in a Non-Muslim Country.

Before even the first sentence has been written,
I can already sense the almost-palpable rage of the bigots,
foaming at the mouth,
either screaming 'Liar! Liar!' without any coherent argument,
or attempting to sound intelligent by quoting verses out of context or
simply pointing to other countries or some incident that happened somewhere else
which has absolutely nothing to do with the statements in the article or myself.

They can't accept it. Most of them anyway.
I've seen it too many times.
They can't accept that it is they who are the bigots.
They are the ones advocating violence and murder and genocide.
They are the ones clamouring for institutionalized discrimination.

They simply cannot accept that they are the ones who are cruel.
They are the Nazis. They are the Fascists.

But therein lies hope.
They refuse to accept those things because they recognize them as horrible.
Which means there could be just a tiny bit of humanity left in them.
And if given enough light, and nurtured,
it might grow large enough to make them open their eyes.

Of course they could also be too stupid to know it.
But hey, you can always hope!

The first sentence shall be laid down tomorrow.

Well enough of that

Where Am I

Even the title of this post reflects my
struggle to find the right words to articulate how I feel.

A word lingered in my mind,
yet I'm unable to find it.
Maybe it's the fatigue,
or the stress of looking for a gig with a baby on the way.

Lately I've been watching and reading way, way too many
articles and videos involving Islamophobia, and the crises in the Ukraine, Palestine and Syria.

I understand and support the arguments put forth by Chomsky, Galloway, Finkelstein.
Problem is, I'd been letting them make the arguments for me.
It's like putting my mind on auto-drive.
There are arguments I should counter on my own,
with my own words and thoughts.

But there's a need for balance too.
Constantly immersing myself in the negative news
means too many arguments to counter, all the time.

Just the thought of it exhausts me.
I don't just want to take a step back,
I need it.

I need my focus to be back on hunting for jobs,
being able to form critical arguments for why I am the cure to the organization's pain.

The first step is something I repeat from time to time,
but it doesn't diminish the importance of it:
I need to write on a more regular basis.

Pick an argument and counter it.
There's no need to counter every single one I come across every day.

Pick a different topic everyday, too.
Whether it's the corruption of the Lee Kuan Yew and the PAP,
the stupid xenophobic arguments made by Singaporeans,
or any Islamophobic argument made by anyone in the world.

My new workout routine begins tonight.
My new posting routine shall begin tomorrow.

Well enough of that