Heightened Senses

30 things about meme – my invisible illness.

This is a great contribution for M.E-Awareness by Dannie, a severely-affected M.E patient who is bedbound. It’s incredible that she has such a positive outlook and leads a pretty full life (in the sense that it is possible to have one from bed). Do have a read if you can.

Love to you all,

“I have not seen any excessive bounty which is not associated with a right which has been violated.” Imam Ali b. Abi Talib (A.S).
“Those who sought to bring winter to an Arab spring and possibly destabilise a US election, were keenly aware of the impact those words would have, situating the film within on-going tensions between Israel and the Arab world and stirring up the hornet’s nest of minority relations in a region where they remain unsettled….

“If you deny any relationship between the systematic discrimination of Muslims and stigmatization of Islam and the overreaction of the Muslim community to offensive jokes, or films, or cartoons, then you are only left with essentialist explanations of Muslim hysteria and violence. These protests aren’t about a film – they’re about the totality of ways in which Muslims have felt humiliated over decades.”

One of the better analyses I think I’ve read. This is a freedom issue, just not one that we, who live so well-off and comfortably, and relatively unopressed in the West, can recognise.

I love how every ‘liberal’ pundit has commented on preserving ‘our’ freedoms, yet so arrogantly forgets that our ‘freedom’ tends to systematically curtail theirs.

What a great post! How treacherous is it that the elite white men from the Global North are able to continue to escape from their guilt and turn a blind eye to their ongoing crimes.

Though the ability to forget can sometimes be a mercy, choosing to forget is quite the sin.

Hello to my faithful three readers! I just wanted to write to say hello, and to wish you well. I know I haven’t posted in over a month, and I apologise for this. Things seem to be getting the better of me lately and I’m spending an extraordinary amount of time reclining! But I am very much alive. I’m just recouperating from a rather taxing car-journey to visit relatives in Leicester and Birmingham (I’m at the latter as we speak…or as I type…) and will be home in a few days! 

A dear friend has recently launched a rather good site http://www.abiggersociety.net/  – which comprises of several blogs and articles combine from a range of writers, a large number of whom are from the London-based Muslim community. The pieces are intentionally quite short and thus very readable, and some of those that are on the site so  far are pretty good! Definitely worth a read. 

I have some musings that I”ve been working on that I’ll try to write about and post later – they’re about ‘Reclaiming Shari’ah’   – but just in case MI5 are reading this – don’t be alarmed. I have no hostile sentiments toward this country, it’s people or the West. Okay, I get a ‘little’ annoyed at the Government and the utter contempt they have for international law and just basic humanitarian principles, but then I’m entitled to those views. But for too long are we Muslims allowing our own discourses to be misappropriated by others…so once I’ve composed it I’ll post it and I’d love to know what you think.

In the meantime, keep smiling. 

It’s just me musing today. I’m back from a week in hospital, which was rather long. Am mostly stuck in bed now recouperating. I have a lovely zimmer frame to use temporarily – I asked my sister what to name it, and without batting an eyelid, she said ‘Arthur-itis’! Made me chuckle no end. I suspect that she’s appropriated it from somewhere else without realising it; however it was hysterical.

My point to day is about how to ‘know’ something that is far ‘bigger’ than our comprehension permits. Hypothetically  (and if it had solid borders), what if we had the ability to walk toward the largest star in the observable universe, arguably VY Canis Majoris? – A start that might be 2,000 times as big as our sun.

What if it wasn’t so increadibly hot and bright and we were say, able to walk toward it. What would happen to a human being if he was to stand at the edge of it’s majesty and look up at it? My mind shudders just to think of it – I couldn’t imagine merely walking up toward something (assuming that I’d even notice it was there as it’s size would probably envelop my entire horizon  – what if it ‘knew’ that it was there all along and knew the general direction in which to walk – though funny enough my mind seems to argue that in fact, every plane of existence and space around me, in front of, behind, under, would be engulfed by the star – counter-intuitive as it seems) of that natue , a perceptibly infinite object, as that; yet what is it we do every day to the Creator of that star, of our enitre universe. No humility. We stand at the door of true Majesty and we fail to notice that He is there, from within ourselves. I might argue that knowledge is knowing that the star is massive, but truly Knowing is how we spiritually respond to it.

Yet we are constantly invited, the door is left open yet we stand outside, arrogantly turned away from it because the Master of the House is apparently beneath our dignity to recognise. We might seethe in hatred because we recognise that the house is too beautiful for our lower selves to Love. We know in which direction to walk, yet how many of us actually bother? We are so pathetic.

Here I am, so blindly, so ignorantly, comparing knowing the Lord with a star so miniscule in His comparison that I’m bordering blasphemy. Perhaps the only way to begin to recognise the Almighty in this sense is in the way of the ‘old’ – don’t worship the star, of course not, but recognise its grandeur. Then ponder over why it is that the Lord of the Universe doesn’t seem to warrant a greater reaction, more humility, from us.