A lost perspective

 Moderation is key to everything viewed from a Muslim perspective as it promotes balance ~ highly prized ~ for addressing and readdressing it is key to our spiritual development. But I do feel and think you are either a Muslim or not ~ so I don't like all the various terms that are used to describe Muslims such as 'moderate' & 'extremist'.

Islam is after all about surrender to the One & Only and basically pure & in no need of adjectives to define it. 

Bad & good are human qualities & not definitive of faith ~~ 

My perhaps somewhat simplistic argument may well appear to be semantically motivated however it goes a bit deeper.

Forgo

Image: The Spruce Eats / Cara Cormack

On her walk back home she saw a woman struggle trying to lift a tv set out of her car. She stopped and asked if she could help. The woman’s bandana had slipped off her head in the attempt to hoist the tv through the car door, displaying a gold earring dangling from one ear. The tv brought to the front door, the woman muttered numerous thank yous before unlocking and pushing the door open, adding she would take it from there. 

Glancing in through the clear window she could see piled up cardboard boxes in an otherwise drab bare room, a sight that filled her with arid thoughts.

Back on her walk home, she purposefully visualised herself getting a cup of tea and a piece of toast lavishly spread with the extra thick cut marmalade she had just purchased and suddenly remembered her favourite soap was soon on.

On arrival she noticed she had forgotten to lock her front door so was thankful to find all seemed to be as she had left it. Kettle boiled, she buttered her toast and spread the marmalade as evenly as she could without being tempted to pile it on too thick. 

She walked over to her usual spot and sat down, retrieving the tv remote which unsurprisingly had slid down the side of the sofa. She clicked it on and sat back to watch her soap which was just about to air. 

In clear sight sat a vase with purple flowers, usually hidden behind the tv. 

Dangling from its neck glistened something golden. 

She allowed her marmalade with orange undertones of warm golden sunshine to take over and to think of nothing else. 

Moral of the story? 

Never regret having helped someone if help you could for you are not to know how they might manage or not manage to help themselves 😉

Like’s consequences.

 … if you’ve had enough of the plastic expressionless faces, the fake pretend to be real eyebrows, the in-your-face fat lips that are I am told like kissing a ‘thing’ not a person ~ then join the club.

Refrain from ticking ‘like’ and sending hearts on posts about celebrities who rely on their plasticity as role models whilst what they in truth invite should rather be compassion for being clear victims of trend dictates. 

Click ‘Like’ only when valuing a celebrity for skills that may have earned them their status not for their ever more plastic appearance serving little other than to blaze a trail for young impressionable people. 

This is damaging on a very broad scale affecting not only people’s appearances but their very spirit and attitude towards life and the essence of living that can only be enhanced through spiritual growth throughout time. 

There’s no denying the advance of plastic surgery is amazing. It can help so many who have serious disfigurements to function better in life. However with plastic surgery readily available for whatever age so long as money is present the good from the practice is overshadowed by the unwholesomeness of it. 

If we lived in a world where people respected balance I would be tempted to leave those who choose to have minor unnecessary tweaks which are barely noticeable and who keep it on the quiet, out of the equation. They do not flaunt it or want praise for it. Their role in society is not governed by it. They are not too different from anyone who chooses to enhance their looks and thus morale without the use of invasive surgery, so for those I say ‘to each their own’. Having said that however, we as a society fail to respect balance and so it must be made very clear that invasive surgery should not be encouraged by ethical surgeons nor by ordinary folk but rather left for whenever it is truly needed. It should not be seen as a tool to correct the diverse wonders of natural appearance functioning perfectly in the first place. 

Meddling with a face and a body or both and permanently changing a person’s features is always going to be accompanied with huge consequences. 

Consequences not for the person alone but for a whole society’s make-up, figuratively speaking. 

So many of us know it but feel helpless to do anything about it. 

It always feels time to say STOP.

And yet the time never comes for it to stop.

Not ticking ‘like’ would just be a start.

Without a balanced outlook in favour of the wholesome attributes of life we have deformity creep in wherever it can and cloud the clarity otherwise unobscured.

amiT flicker thoughts: Arabic, not just another language

amiT flicker thoughts: Arabic, not just another language: The following is quite naturally a very personal point of view from an angle that relates to little things that count. To be understood b...

The MEAT Feast

Eid-elAdha or as it is now referred to in slang terms : Eid el-Lah’ma:

THE MEAT FEAST

She slapped a large thick flat piece of red meat onto her marble worktop with her well rounded forearm; extension as it were in semblance of colour and volume. In her other hand she held a long sharp knife and with a glance in my direction she muttered angrily and audibly about how annually she had to cut it all up to give to those less fortunate.

I stood some distance away in the dark hallway and saw the sweat creep onto her brow, sensing her anguish and frustration escalate as my silence mounted.

Recoiling at the physicality of it all I could not help but be in awe at how so dutiful an act, selfless in principle, could inspire her to feel such pure resentment. Was the purity of the selflessness infectious or was it the other way round? How adulterated was each?

Idle onlooker as I felt myself to be, with the question gathering its own beads of perplexities I slunk further into the shadows of the dark hallway from where I could just about manage to escape into the light of day.  

How do we learn?

People are worried about the safety of statues everywhere since the Colston* one was hurled into the harbour, now retrieved. 

People had asked for its respectful removal for years however no one bothered to listen. There was talk of amending the plaque with a few added words, a half-hearted gesture at best and one that fell disappointingly flat.

Walking by a slave trader put on a pedestal and venerated every day must be agonising for anyone who feels the effects of racist views personally and indeed for anyone at all aware of them whether or not directly affected. 

WHY ARE PEOPLE SO AFRAID OF MORE STATUES BEING TORN DOWN? 

Is it only because of the anarchic behaviour or is there a deeper fear? 

I hear you, you say it’s history ... in which case surely we should add a few more, political, social and cultural figures, of those who in their time were influential and cheered ... we could name a few but I hear you say that would be in bad taste.

And I hear you;  you say it teaches people history ... so let’s think about the way in which that history is being taught. How people are learning about history whilst on a walk to work or back home, learning while more and more anger and outrage build up because no one has really learned anything, anything at all.

~ Anger and outrage not only due to the acceptance but to the veneration of people throughout history that have abused or been void of essential human values in order to achieve their ambition. 

Do we need a statue that stands as a tribute and sign of respect to teach us about history? Do books and all present media not suffice? 

For that is what a statue is: a tribute, a sign of respect not just for what a person has said or done but for what he/she stands for. 

And I hear you, there is good and there is bad.

But what does it tell us when charitable works benefiting  some are only at the expense of the lives of those regarded as nothing more than a sub-race?

WHAT DOES IT TELL US when it turns out that a venerated figure, one after another, after another and another held racist and/or fascist views... ?

That’s where the fear lies: In exactly what it tells us.

Please listen to this poem: It is as wonderfully insightfully visual as it is profound. All would do well to view the world from its angle if only for the sake of change: 

https://youtu.be/b3DKfaK50AU

* “Since the late twentieth century Edward Colston (1636- 1721) has been a controversial figure in Bristol's history, because of his membership of the governing body of the Royal African Company, which made its profits from trading in enslaved Africans.” Wikepedia. 

What it doesn’t say is that many of these slaves for one reason or another were thrown overboard and never reached shore. So though his charitable works may indeed have benefited some, it was at the expense of human lives ... #BLACK LIVES MATTER 

On the blink ~ Brexit and the rest

So all free movement has come to a halt. Petty little Brexit assuming it would be independent and in control, rather it’s a miniscule and even pathetic drop in the ocean when the world is seen from above.

Whatever our differences and there are many no doubt, be it among the same people or that between different cultures, we are nevertheless one world, with countries separated only topographically and by imaginary borders to be caved into or to try and overcome.

With airlines cancelling flights here there and everywhere we stare disconnection in the face and our global predicaments are clearly seen as shared. We become dysfunctional through our pretentious platforms of sovereignty. We all walk on shared soil, we all breathe shared air, we all have an innate desire to be part of a family, a community, and with that, part of humanity.

There is no comfort in being cut off. There is no reassurance that being cut off is within our control. There is no respect for our humanity when the world we wish to live in turns into a jungle of every man for himself.
In short there is no refuge from whatever we are meant to endure.
There are only lessons of acceptance and forbearance to our existence.