About

I’m Imraan. The purpose of this blog is for me to attempt to be introspective and  philosophical about my life. But perhaps it’s  just a facade.  I like to write stuff down, and occasionally upload them.

If you know me, then you’ll understand that the title of this blog, ‘Heightened Senses’ is a cruel joke about my life. But it makes for much laughter too. Laughter, if sincere and not indulgent or mirthful, is perhaps one of the most edifying things I have experienced.

When able, I like to campaign for disability rights, and often share experiences of my own life – having for the last decade been an ME sufferer, and in the last five years and a half years or so (as of October 2016) a Severe ME patient spending most of my time almost completely bedridden and barely able to sit upright for any real amount of time, unless thoroughly sedated. I am twenty-(some-odd) years old – and so I often wonder if my life was ‘supposed’ to go this way; as a result I now have an interest in the notion of ‘Destiny’. Of utter human liberty, of intellectual freedom. Maybe that is all I will ever be Permitted to attain, or maybe my pursuits will result in misguided, deluded or even indulgent thinking. I pray that I am open to your, my dear friends, suggestions in unshackling my mind. Or perhaps that Liberation has to come from within, to be truly free from this world and her shackles, spiritual flourishing in the hopes that what remains after the body decays are one’s metaphysical works, with the Grace and Guidance of the Almighty.

I have an interest in politics, anarchism, religion and religious studies, Islamic studies as a discipline on its own, anti-colonial and anti-hegemonic studies; moreover I have an abject dislike of the politics of Zionism (“can’t we all get along?”), Western Capitalism, US Imperialism, and am a firm believer that “man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” – only Rousseau’s formulation of freedom verges on the totalitarian.

I love to read, but don’t read nearly as much as I should – and have recently become more furiously Leftist in my approach to politics, economics…even religion. My heroes include Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, the late Ayatullah Khomeini, Edward Said, Karl Marx, Mordechai Vanunu, Julian Assange,, Fidel Castro, Tony Benn, Foucault; Dr Rowan Williams, Dr Seyyed Hossein Nasr, and a host of other names and ideas that have helped give birth to a vision – one that I pray of course will broaden and astound me always in life. But most importantly Muhammad, the final Messenger, and Ali b. Abi Talib are the men in whose hands and lineage by way of Fatima (s.a) I place my hope, and in the Lord that they worshiped, and of Whose Unity so utterly, they profess, is He who I pray will Receive me. And, one day, return me to my real Self.

My favourite quotes, taken from rather different sources, are:

“Do not let your difficulties fill you with anxiety; after all, it is only in the darkest nights that the stars shine more brilliantly.” Ali b. Abi Talib

“No tree has branches so foolish as to fight amongst themselves.”   Ojibwa saying

“Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.“  Mark Twain

“If walls are high, the sky is higher still.” From the film Kandahar, 2001

“If there is faith in the future, then there is power in the present.”  Zig Ziglar,known also as America’s Master Motivator

“If you want to make God laugh,  tell him your plans!”

“Every day I wake up and have to apologise for what I said yesterday.” Roseanne

“He who seeks worldly things is like the man who drinks sea water: the more he drinks, the more thirsty he becomes, until it kills him [with his thirst unquenched].” Ja’far ibn Muhammad al-Sadiq