I work in an office, probably like the one that many of you also work in. Row upon row of shining desks, kitted with personal computers, flat-screen monitors, swivel chairs, post-it notes; surrounded by notice boards, weekly targets, coffee machines, softly humming recessed troffer lights, matrixed carpets, whitewash walls; topped off with the larger rooms of our directors and team managers, divided off with glass at the end. Where the blinds are sometimes drawn… Where the big decisions take place… Where you dread being called to… Depending on your productivity levels of course!
Continue readingPoetry Recital At Oxford University ISOC, 2015
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Interview with MuslimView’s Masud Ahmed Khan
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TYRANTS, OLIGARCHIES, BOAT THIEVES AND THE TISSUE SWEPT FROM UNDER THEIR STORMY HISTORY LESSONS!
The power of Romanticism, radicalism, anti-racism, and the urge for human survival imbue the Power poems in Power and Conflict Cluster of the AQA anthology for GCSE English Literature
An article and commentary on the Power poems from the Power and Conflict cluster of the AQA GCSE English Literature course to assist in revision for GCSE students
Powerful spectres, phantasms and shadows lurk in the power cluster poems, which conjure images of abject human polities before awesome, tyrannical figures. Shelley, the radical; the anti-authoritarian poet, evokes a fictional representation of Rameses the Second, “king of kings” whose “sneer of cold command” and “wrinkled lip” conjure a portrait of a cruel, tyrannical leader. Blake, the visionary, composes a bleak vision of an impoverished London population, who “cry”, “sigh” and “curse” the shadowy oligarchies of the monarchy, the church, the government and ruling society who imprison them through bans, “chartered streets”, child labour, prostitution, and exploitation. Browning, some decades later, explores the egoistic, supremacist mind of a fictional Duke of Ferrara in My Last Duchess. Through the dramatic monologue, and through supreme understatement and euphemistic expressions (“I gave commands/ And all smiles stopped”), Browning horrifies us with this man, who kills off his duchess as he deems her love of life dishonourable and her carefree attitude an insult to his rank and status (“My gift of a nine hundred years old name”).
So far, the power poems caution us on the follies of human arrogance, hubris and corruption.
We see the futility of Ozymandias’s self-worship through the enduring supremacy of time and nature. His memory, in Shelley’s imagination, is but a “Half sunk, shattered visage”. The powerful elites in London fail or even refuse to perceive their abuse of power and their unjust privileges, which deafen them to the struggles of the poor. Blake’s sensory evocations of “sighs”, cries, curses, “blasts” and “marks of weakness” perhaps foreshadow the coming centuries of working-class uprisings, the development of democracy and the disintegration of pyramidal societal structures. We are being warned of an oncoming storm of human uprisings.
A storm also consumes Heaney’s imagination, but he conveys a sense of survival and equilibrium in his islanders, who have learned to weather the tempests of nature, and perhaps the Northern Ireland troubles. Heaney’s islanders, with a sense of solidarity, prepare for the winds as they have built their houses “squat” and roofed their houses with “good slate”. For these islanders, they have come to a realisation that it is “a huge nothing that [they] fear”. Gone are tyrants, the despots and barons on this island, and now they learn as a polity how to survive through the inevitable storms of life, and power of nature.
Wordsworth, sharing his anecdote as a young boat thief in the Lake District, reveals an unforgettable and paradigm-shifting encounter with the power of nature and the human imagination. His narrator’s youthful escapade with the “elvin pinnace” begins with a euphonic promise: “small circles glittering idly in the moon” and “one track of sparkling light”. But the “huge peak / black and huge”, the immense physical presence of the mountain, and symbolically, nature’s spirit and imagination, haunts him, stalking him back to shore. Until all that is left is “huge and mighty forms” which are a “trouble to his dreams”. In this, Wordsworth encounters a supreme power that we perhaps should not rally against, like Ozymandias and the Duke. Instead it is a force that we must come to terms with and bow to with a degree of respect: the unearthly power of nature and the imagination.
The imagination and particularly memories and history drive Carol Rumens and John Agard in their poems to speak out against the spectres of racism and exile. Carol Rumens narrator is an emigree or an exile, who faces hostility in their new city, whilst being drawn back to the “impressions of sunlight”, the “tastes” and the “evidence” of sunlight of their native city. Despite their city being “sick with tyrants” and accusations of being “dark” in their adopted city, this narrator cannot avoid seeing the daylight of their memories, in stark contrast to the figures of degradation in Blake’s London. Rumen’s oppressed wanderer possesses a power of will and survival through their turmoil.
Agard’s voice also speaks with a passionate pride for his Black history and his resignation and mockery of “Dem tell me / Wha dem want to tell me”. His voice acknowledges the suffocation of his history through the supremacy of Western education, but now is standing firmly against this bias and is “carving out [his] own identity”. Now we can see power structures fading behind the rising spirits of historically oppressed voices and communities.
And finally, the rug, or should we say, the tissue, or the paper is pulled from under the feet of all these power structures through Dharker’s musings upon the power of tissues, and how they can “let the daylight break through capitals and monoliths / through shapes that pride can make”, through egoistic statues, through covetous paintings, through palaces, through the corridors power and history books. Human tissue, for Dharker, is both vulnerable and, like paper, “thinned to be transparent” which raise structures that are at peace with their mortality, with nature and with the human soul.
ISLAMOPHOBIA IS NOT A THING TO DWELL UPON
Listen here dear Muslims!
Align your selves to God
Islamophobia is not
A thing to dwell upon
And listen here dear people
Of faiths or of non-faiths
Our job is to explain to you
There’s none except His Face
If you don’t take our calling
Well that is your freedom
There’s no compulsion in belief
God rules His whole kingdom
It’s not for us to judge you
There’s only One True Judge
So, you worship the gods you like
There’s no need for a grudge
But God tells us: ‘Don’t worship
No other gods but Me
If you choose to forsake My Words
None can save you from Me….’
So dear Muslims don’t worry
Or fret about cruel words
Islamophobia will pull you
From the beauty of His Words
Focus on the One Presence
Like Prophets of the past
The people of their times were worse
And looked at them, aghast
Noah was cursed and slighted
Moses was shunned and scorned
Jonah felt down and left his town
Mary was left forlorn
There always will be those ones
Who don’t accept Allah
They will see you as trojan horses
Plotting to cause them harm
So stand tall like the Prophets
Don’t fret that they curse you
Crying Islamophobia
Will not calm or soothe you
Shed light like Our Muhammad
Peace be upon him well
The more that people hate on you
Let Divine Love swell
For some this world’s a treasure
For some: heaven and hell
For some this world is such a pain
For some this world just smells
For true life is hereafter
That’s why you should not dwell
On their Islamophobia
Or mistreatment so fell
I don’t say be a doormat
I don’t say be passive
Protect your rights and learn to fight
But live and learn to forgive
So Muslims don’t you worry
Of Islamophobia
And people of all other ways
Shun xenophobia
We’re not so strange or scary
What we believe is ancient
We echo our father Adam
And our mother so patient
We will persist in saying
That God is only one
We will recite His holy book
And read the moon and sun
We do not worship your gods
You do not worship ours
But our origins are one and the same
We’re from the same flowers
Peace be upon Muhammad
And blessings on his friends
And be upon him family
And close ones till the end….
A Response to Katherine Birbalsingh
Dear Katharine,
I hate to sound like one of those preachers
But I’m a local English secondary teacher
Have been one for more than twenty years
And in every school I’ve taught, I’ve said my prayers
My zohr, asr and my dear maghrib
Whilst teaching the Destruction of Sennacherib!
And here’s a thing I hope you will not fear
Some students have prayed with me, laissez-faire!
The daily prayers have always lifted students
The ones I’ve seen have always been quite prudent
So, my advice to you before I depart
Is don’t break off your students from their hearts
The prayer for Muslims, like a flowing river
That we bathe in, it lets the soul just shiver
If you think that the kids are immature
Then surely there are staff you can implore
Or elders who can guide them while they pray
Who’ll help them to explore enriching ways
Your secular mission is oxymoronic
You seek to thrive with rules which are pharaonic
You can’t divorce a child from their deep roots
Exam results are not true learning’s fruits
So let these children be, and see their faiths
The real world is there beyond school gates…
When the CEO fell for the Majzoob
This story will confound you through and through
A CEO fell for a poor majzoob
She was the founder of a beauty brand
He lived on streets and hung around the strands
She worked so hard to build her own empire
The presence of Allah his only desire
She’d made enough money for long lifetimes
He slept in rags whilst witnessing the Divine
She had been scarred by handsome parasites
His only fear to lose dear Allah’s sight
And so one day, next to the riverbank
The CEO strolled by, with workers flanked
And so along this path, the majzoob staggered
Drunk with Allah, and looking rather haggard
These two conundrums met by the streaming water
The CEO took off her sunglasses and faltered
And though the crazy guy appeared offensive
She saw in his deep eyes a beauty intensive
Taken aback by wonder so supreme
Which shone in eyes that never touched eye cream
Inside a voice said to her, “He’s the one…”
And she was drawn like moths unto the sun
Discarding all her aides and pompery
She said to him: “you’re the one for me!”
The majzoob stilled himself and shook his head
Then chose to give her some advice instead:
“You’ll never find true peace in just a man…
Flee to Allah and take Mustafa’s kind hands
I’m not the one; Allah is One, you see…
Through Him be rich, and vanish in His seas…”
And whilst these two engaged in reverie
An aide piped up: “are such positions open for me?”
When I Went To Palestine
I was guided somehow and the year was 2000
My heart had grown dark by desires
But then the deep hole was lit up in my soul
When I went to Palestine
We moved through the cordons of Israel and Jordan
The border staff grilled us in lines
This moment a fear grew that we would not get through
When I went to Palestine
But worry’s a killer, and Alhamdulillah
Our way was freed by the Divine
Off we embarked on a cab from the car park
When I went to Palestine
We checked in a hotel near where the Arabs dwell
Jerusalem East and sublime
And something beyond called to us with a song
When I went to Palestine
So ancient and pretty endured the old city
We walked as if under a spell
The sun seemed to rise as we came to the climb
When I went to Palestine
Above the roofs rose the clear golden dome
My heart rent apart and just sighed
The closer we got so our fears we forgot
When I went to Palestine
We came to a guard gate, met these eyes full of pure hate
But the other was friendly and fine
The Israeli guard scanned, the Palestinian shook our hands
When I went to Palestine.
It felt so distinct in the sacred precinct
The blue walls, the dome hit our eyes
Al Aqsa in view, like an emerald, a jewel
When I went to Palestine
Our tears were unblocked at the Dome of the Rock
And it felt like we floated in time
At maghrib, enthralled, resting up to the walls
When I went to Palestine
And fajr heavenly in masjid Al Qibli
We met a Shaykh with glowing eyes
He gave us some mint tea, blessed hospitality
When I went to Palestine
The next day we risked it and just took the biscuit
To Hebron we both set out eyes
We felt the appeal of pure Al Khaleel
When I went to Palestine
A young man he helped us, along there he guided us
To get to the mosque in good time
But he was debarred by the colonial guards
When I went to Palestine
The wrongs they increase and the thoughts will not cease
But the beauty remains in the mind
Your heart feels at home, your soul’s free to roam
When you go to Palestine
Strange Meeting on the Gaza March in London on November 11th
For Owen
It seemed that from the march I escaped
Down some tunnel, with mouth agape
Scooped through the hazy granite of time
Deep into the annals of past years, hopes sublime
Yet there, sleeping soundly as cherubim
Lay men of merit who’d seen times so grim
Those unknown faces who once in the past
Had laid their lives without much questions asked
For country, duty, and for freedom of good
And of them now a line of sleepers stood
Before me, all my grandfathers of yore
Who’d bravely fought in all these Western wars
And at the front there stood a man of charm
My own grandfather an honourable Khan
“Strange indeed it is,” I said, pensive
“That for a foreign land your life you’d give…”
My grandfather, he looked me in the eye
“My son,” he said, with a knowing, wistful sigh,
“My own father, my cousins and my elders
We served so that our families would be sheltered,
And we fought hard and firm for the British Raj
Not fleeing from a skirmish or barrage
And so eventually I settled in England
I wore my medal ribbons and I mingled
I bore a family in old Birmingham
And now you stand here with a plate of jam!
But listen here, these words, I speak in truth
Never would we fight for this, forsooth,
For selling the poor soul of Jerusalem
And purging that land of Bethlehem
Never would we stand with such disaster
As bleeding dry the children of young Gaza
The enemy they kill are young and free
Who now lay cold, were loath to leave early
Alas us men at arms we had no such choice
So for those children indeed raise your voice…”
We Need Peace In The Middle East
We need peace in the Middle East
We need peace with an immediate ceasefire at least
We need peace from the aerial bombings at least
We need peace from the indiscriminate killings at least
We need peace from killing mostly civilians at least
We need peace from the chemical and nuclear weapons-and of course from the rockets at least
From the tanks, the infantry, and the white phosphorous at least
We need peace in the Middle East
Continue readingVOICES FROM THE SMOKE AND BLOOD
Terrorist! Devil! Barbarian!
Thieving Occupier! Felon!
Son of a killer, murdering fiend!
Son of a coloniser supreme!
Your fighters slew our kids in bed
Your snipers shot our children’s heads
We will avenge your shameless crimes!
We will resist your vile designs!
80 years we have had no peace!
80 years our lands decreased!
The rockets you sent they killed our dreams!
Your bombings blew us to smithereens!
From you, we do fear our security
Before you, we lived in our country, free
We were fleeing persecution and death
But you exiled millions of us in a breath
We returned to this land, our clear birthright
You usurped all our lands; we will always fight!
We settled right here in the holy lands
By stealing our houses and tying our hands
When we came to this land, we established law
And you spurned our rights and international law
Can’t you see all we want is to live in peace
Can’t you see all we want is our pain to cease
We are here to stay; there’s no turning back
We are of this land; we will grow right back!
THE STRANGEST MILAAD MEHFIL EVER IN BIRMINGHAM
Mustafa and Ali stood outside Masjid Abu Bakr, which was nestled into the corner of ancient Walford street and the adjoining Stratham Road. Row upon row of red bricked, terraced, Victorian houses dominated the scene. Busy traffic zoomed by as Friday evening had arrived; the sun was settling for its slumber, and the late-night shopping districts were now warming up for the oncoming shoppers.
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