@_anisahhamid

Racism: in 2015, in Life, in General

Current Affairs

It’s sad to even contemplate that racism is still rife, and I’m noticing it now more than ever.

Living in the countryside, I understood the compromise I was going to have to make everyday; 90% of the citizens in my town are over the age of 40 and definitely not accustomed to seeing brown faces, let’s say. The pushing past me on the roads, pushing in front of me on public transport and the weird looks every single day is something I’ve just had to ignore if I wanted a peaceful life. To a variable extent, I have ignored it and made the most of my wonderful new home and the great views on my doorstep. Every now and then I’ll get a little sassy if someone is explicitly racist but so far, I haven’t had a showdown.

Recently, and interestingly more so after the Paris Attacks of 2015, racism has suddenly escalated to a frighteningly all time high; threats of violence, Trump’s Nazi-like approach to Muslims living in the USA, attacks on the Muslim community etc are never front page news but viral on the internet with people doing nothing about it other than re-posting and sharing the articles. We’re treated like third class citizens primarily due to the ideologies of less than 1% of the Muslim population, because a large majority of ignorant people in the world choose pick what they believe to be true rather than looking at facts and statistics. In other words, they’re blinded by their own racist views to even contemplate the possibility that, hey would you look at that, maybe every single brown person on this planet isn’t a terrorist.

The most frustrating aspect of this is how much I’ve noticed these discriminatory attitudes and been a victim of them at work. I thought working in London would be a walk in the park, with cultural and educated people coming into the store each day but annoyingly, it’s quite the opposite. Customers literally throw clothes at me if they don’t want or need them, even someone I work with racially insulted me and my grandparents, simply because of my skin colour, claiming we’re “stealing all [their] jobs.” It appalls me that these attitudes still exist and are something Muslims must grow accustomed to. No matter how much I have accomplished and achieved in my 19 years on this planet, one look at my skin colour has me judged as inferior to an ignorant and uneducated citizen.

I think it’s high time Muslims, and other ethnic minorities targeted by racism, should stand their ground against discrimination. There’s no excuse for it, and there never was; it was blindly ignored as no one wanted to be the minority standing up against the majority.

This is our country as much as yours. Yes, some of us are not the same colour as you. Yes, some of us are more educated and successful than you.

Get over it.

A x

A Middle Eastern Sunrise

Original Poetry
I felt you in the Eastern sunrise
just as I felt you in the Western sunset,
but you weren’t there.
I saw you in the overlapping mountain peaks
and in the layer of mist caressing the snow-capped tips,
but you still weren’t there.
I sensed you in the mid-winter breeze
as it lashed it’s claws onto my skin
but you weren’t there next to me.
How can one be everywhere
without being anywhere at all?

“Work Smarter, Not Harder.”

Original Writing

Sigh.

I was on Facebook not too long ago and came across someone saying this. Multiple times. And I began to get increasingly frustrated with its context.

In this age of crash dieting, juice diets and fitness fads, there’s a slight issue which continues to crop up on my social media accounts and hits a nerve. Recently, I was told about a new “way to lose weight.” I’m not going to name the company but their suggested method of losing weight is to take their “capsules” which supposedly contain “30 kinds of fruits, berries and vegetables” that you take daily. Instead of eating food during the day, they advise you to drink their milkshakes which are also “plant based and a healthy alternative to food.”

In other words, you pop two pills and drink milkshakes all day so the weight will drop.

I have never tried diet pills and I most certainly don’t intend to, so I cannot personally admit or deny their effectiveness. However, I have read reports by scientists, health experts and a personal trainer who have all agreed that this system does NOT work. You are essentially starving your body of necessary food groups such as fat and carbohydrates in order to shed a couple of pounds. The worse aspect; the pounds aren’t actually shed at all, but put back on once you eat normally.

In 2014 I developed an eating disorder. I stopped eating completely, lost so much weight that the doctors became concerned and recommended a complete lifestyle change.I also required therapy to work through and come to terms with what I was suffering with – I’ve underlined the word because going through something as damaging as an eating disorder never really leaves you. It remains in the back of your mind as a constant reminder of what once was: in some ways, it still haunts me. When I look at pictures of myself on holiday, I grimace at the bones sticking out. It’s one of the worst things anyone can go through.

That is why I’m so against diet pills and more specifically, the idea of someone starving themselves to lose weight. Furthermore, over the last year or so, I’ve managed to turn my life around despite all the health conditions I’ve run into along the way. Like most people, I work my absolute hardest to be a healthy weight and a healthy person in general. They do say that if you’re not soaked in sweat, you’re not doing it right! There’s simply no easy way to lose weight.

The company I referred to above work as promoters for their products; their employees talk about the benefits of their products and how becoming a part of their team is the best thing you can do. Ultimately, they’re working from home (ideal, right?) by selling products to desperate women predominantly. They also get paid a HELL of a lot for conning customers. This is where I saw the titled remark of working smarter rather than harder, and thus is the point of my article.

Duping customers is not in my nature and certainly won’t open as many doors as my current job has. Starving my body will not make me as healthy as doing exercise and eating healthy will.

A x

 

Paris Attacks: November 2015

Current Affairs

I am once again utterly appalled and disgusted at the tragedy which unfolded in Paris on Friday 13th November.

It’s incomprehensible how humans can kill innocent men, women and children in cold-blooded murder and not flinch. It’s also disgusting to hear reports that one of the attackers cried “Allahu Akbar” before shooting into a crowd of hostages in the Bataclan Concert Hall. Praising God before committing murder is inhumane and delusional to the highest degree; it goes against every principle Islam, and Muslims, stand for. Allah will not reward these terrorists and suicide bombers with paradise in the after life. They will be condemned and punished for unspeakable crimes against humanity.

The harrowing concept of terrorism is ever-increasing in today’s society, an atrocious fact leading to ignorance and fear which, when mixed together, leads to violence such as what we saw unfold on Friday. It’s imperative we understand now that these members of the Islamic State do NOT represent the entire population of Muslims and Islamic values/teachings. As we’ve witnessed a rise in terrorism and racial attacks, we’ve also witnessed a rise in racism and racial ignorance.

I’m a Muslim. I am not a terrorist. In fact, I am avid campaigner for racial equality amongst other humanitarian concerns. My close friend wears a hijab, and she finds herself repeatedly defending our religion for the growing number of imbeciles who associate terrorism with the entire Muslim population. Unfortunately, ignorance has a louder voice than the truth; we need to stop this and stand united against terror, not fragmented by uneducated assumptions.

It’s promising that France are re-evaluating their security systems. It’s been reported that a Syrian passport was found near one of the attackers, allowing one to believe members of the IS attackers were immigrants hiding under the facade of refugees coming into Europe. What a disgusting, cowardice act. The world stands united against the attacks in Paris on Friday. We must remain united in the face of terror from hereon out. We simply cannot ignore terror rising around the world, in Serbia, Palestine, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India etc.

IS: if you want to kill anyone, kill yourselves and leave it at that.

We continue to stand united against terror, and will continue to do so until the end of terror has been reached.

#PrayforParis #ParisAttacks #Paris2015 #WaronTerror

“Daemon”, by Daniel Suarez

Book Reviews

Is mankind slowly transitioning into an element of technology? Or is technology taking the place of humankind?

These were the thoughts that plagued me after reading Daniel Suarez’s Daemon (2006). It begins as less of a tech novel and more of a crime-thriller though as it progressed, the reader is exposed to the increasingly concerning power technology can hold, beyond death. In many ways, technology is presented in this novel as a form of eternal life for mankind; we are introduced to the idea that a system can make one immortal, with it’s creator working beyond the grave.

The ‘daemon’ is a system created by a dying Sobol; the interesting conflict presented in this text is the dichotomy between the power of the system in relation to the intelligence of it’s creator. The system did not reflect the genius mind of Sobol as it relied primarily on his knowledge in order to succeed. For example, the ‘daemon’ could not evolve, making it less reliable. As readers, we can interpret Sobol’s creation as an attempt at reincarnation although the motives for this are somewhat unclear; was this a radical attempt to transform society and enforce a digital one?

Nevertheless, the idea of Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Life is not entirely new to us, as mentioned in my previous post; Suarez hasn’t managed to shock his readers by creating a new concept of the devolution of mankind and the evolution of machines and technology systems. Ultimately, the age of technology is undermining human intelligence and work forces but not to the extent underlined in the book, with human life at risk. Therefore, the novel isn’t futuristic in the sense that it is foreboding the rise of technology as the superior species. It does, however, warn the reader of the dangerous effects of exploiting this rise in technological power; the genius of Sobol is shadowed in the daemon through it’s ability to evade being caught and sent to jail. The novel serves as a chilling reminder of the power, and danger, of technology which originates from the creator and the creator’s intentions.