Wanted: Single White Female (Muslims) | iMuslim.tv
The BBC issued an advert asking for “Caucasian” white Muslim women to contribute to a programme about their lives since 9/11. They say:
The BBC World Service, Heart and Soul series, is making a programme on Caucasian Female Muslim converts to Islam over the last 10 years since 9/11. We are looking for Muslim sisters happy to share their own personal experiences of converting into a faith which has been on the political agenda over the past decade. The basis of this programme is to mark 9/11 by celebrating these personal, spiritual journeys. The programme will be broadcast on radio internationally.
I’m not going to publish the contact details, because I am sick of media features on converts to Islam overwhelmingly concentrating on white women. There have been so many such features and so often they come with the subtext of “why would a white, middle-class woman want to be a Muslim?”. It’s as if we did not live in a multicultural society and converts to Islam do not come from all of the various ethnic backgrounds and both sexes — why do they not want to hear from black women converts, for example? There are a huge number of them, particularly in London. When I first converted, I heard the story of a man of Hindu background who converted to Islam and was thrown out of the family home by his father when this was discovered. Why are these stories not worth telling?
The bit about being broadcast “internationally” is a clue — perhaps they think foreign audiences want to hear about “real British people” rather than those of foreign backgrounds (needless to say, it doesn’t matter if you are of a white foreign background). White Muslims are not new; they have existed in Turkey, Syria, Bosnia and many other places for centuries. Although at least one of the two contacts is a Muslim, the same might not be true of the others involved in the programme and so the sneering judgementalism found in other documentaries of this type might be just as obvious in this, so if the open racial bias does not put you off, I would advise extreme caution.
These days, if you go into hospital for virtually any procedure or any surgery, chances are high that you will be out in much shorter time than you would have been in the past. I recall reading a book by Judy Blume, titled Deenie, about a girl who had to wear a back brace for scoliosis, and the doctor told her that the options were the brace or an operation. However, the operation would mean months on her back and possible complications. These days, people are up in days and out in weeks following that operation, and nobody wears a Milwaukee brace anymore. However, it seems that more and more procedures are being done on a day or overnight basis, and there is an obvious reduction in after-care and the potential for things to go wrong once the patient is back home.
I have held off writing about the wave of rioting and looting that hit London and some other English towns and cities early last week partly because I was busy (work, Ramadan and an overhanging article on ME) and partly because I did not feel I knew enough about the situation to write anything of value — I do not live near where any of the major violence took place, I did not witness any of it, I do not have strong connections to the communities involved, and so could not write much that has not already been said by others. Croydon was my home town until 2001; I used to go to London Road a lot, and I was quite shocked that there had been so much destruction there when there was no protest motive and the people whose property was damaged could not possibly have done anything to offend, let alone oppress, the attackers. I read an edited version of 
This past weekend was dominated by two major death-related news stories: the bombing and subsequent massacre in Norway on Friday, and the death (to me at least, sudden and unexpected) of the singer, Amy Winehouse, in London on Saturday. Readers abroad may find it astonishing that I put the two stories in the same sentence, but Amy Winehouse was a big star here even if she was a one-hit wonder in some other countries, even though, as 
The Sun today was 
It was with much satisfaction that I learned that the News of the World, the British Sunday tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch, was going to publish its final edition today. This happened, for those overseas who didn’t hear, after it emerged that private investigators working for them had illegally accessed the voice-mail of 
Recently Google launched their Google Plus social networking system, and as I write I haven’t been able to get into it, as I still need an invite, despite them having launched the Android client already, and despite the front page giving the impression that it’s open for business, only telling me I’m not welcome when I log in (and I’m normally logged into Google on my home laptop and desktop machines anyway; it’s only on public computers that I have to log in). That’s annoying, but I still intend to join as soon as I can, and I expect it to succeed. (Click 
