Check. One. Two

recorded 13/05/2005
(The title of the post is actually a direct link to the mp3 file. I am still figuring out how this is going to work. For the moment you can subscribe to the feed here. I am not yet sure it works so hold your horses until I find my way around this. thanks)

Music Links (in order or appearance)

• The Robot Ate Me
• Client
  
• OBI
• The Donnas
• The City Lights

Links to Things I Talk About

• Journeyman.tv this is actually a distributor’s site but there are always many really good documentaries on the homepage it is worth taking a look at. You can either watch the clip (ram) or read a transcript. And if you really really like what you see you can order a DVD of it.

• Blogger 10 - The Battle for Women's Rights - 11 min 39 sec

• Equality in Iraq / Yanar Mohammed

This is the site for Yanar’s organization. I had so much footage of her but in the end I had to use so little because of time restrictions and because it wasn’t a film about her, but this is something I am doing in the future. She is trying to do so much with the little she has. For example she is trying to keep a shelter for women who are under the threat of honor killings and the organization doesn’t really get as much support as you would expect. She told me that at one point there was just enough money to keep them going for two weeks at a time. It’s a bit better now, they can think in terms of months instead of weeks.
Although you might find it surprising that not many western organization are stepping in for support I think it has to do with her background. She was (is?) a member of the Worker’s Communist Party and maybe this makes a number of donors a bit uncomfortable but I might be wrong. At the moment she is my heroine.

• Blogger 11 – UK elections report (ram)

This is off the Newsnight site, the quality is not as good as the journeyman clips but this didn’t have an international release.

You know, I think in the end it wasn’t the three meetings with Galloway that made making this report such an interesting time - the meetings were dropped because they thought he might file a suit. It was meeting Muslim Brits.
For example that guy from Hizb ul-Tahrir (and this is a link to their manifesto - pdf), this is a person I would never actually be able to sit with in Baghdad. They are a Salafi group who wouldn’t touch someone like me with a 10-foot pole.
We talked for an hour and most of the talk wasn’t really about the elections. They opposed it. Period. It is not an Islamic model and it should be rejected. What I found interesting is that although he was advocating very strongly for a Muslim government based on Khilafah he wasn’t prepared to go live under one. He was just happy sitting in this infidel country sipping on his latte while telling *ME* that I should rejoice because it is people like him calling for a true Islamic government for me to live under.
This happened a couple of times while talking to people outside the two mosques near Brick Lane. Muslims living in secular countries have no idea what it is like when your barber suddenly puts up a poster saying he is not allowed to shave beards anymore, they just don’t understand that while they live under a law that allows them to pursue whatever beliefs they want to, that gives them the right to make choices, the form of government they are advocating for isn’t going to be open minded at all. But I guess that’s OK because they don’t have to live there.

And to think that all of them are second or third generation immigrants, People who left their countries because they were too oppressive. Why don’t you come and jump into my nightmare? Come get a taste, it’s going to be an eye-opener. You think you can walk around here with your ‘rude boy’ attire and talk about your Muslim ‘brovas’?

I gave up arguing after I got shouted at for my ignorance of how Muslims live.
And if I hear the words “The True Islam” one more time I am going to self-destruct. “The True Islam” is always brought up when I ask them to explain why Muslims are killing Muslims if it really is such a religion of understanding and compassion. True Islam doesn’t allow the killing of brother Muslims. True Islam gives women more rights than they can handle. Brova, talk to the prayer beads!

P.S.1 for those who are planning to use this in their kill-all-Muslims rant on that site with footballs: DON’T YOU DARE! Remember my mother is a Haja who has been to Mecca twice and prays 5 times a day. Does she cut one of my fingers off every time I open the fridge to take out a beer? No. We got a separate refrigerator. This is a post about hypocrisy. Not an Islam bash.

P.S.2 for those Muslims who plan to petition for another Fatwa on my head: see above. I know there was a stage in the history of Islam that was all about adaptation and assimilation, we call it the Golden Age. But you have to admit this age isn’t exactly golden.