4. Do we have what it takes?

Victory, Freedom, Justice, and social equality all come at a price. We are hoping that the Egyptian people will be willing to pay this price, but am I? Are you? If I were in their shoes, would I be on the streets or in my home? Would I be cold, hungry and shivering with the protesters or would I be following at home on televsion? Parents who are allowing their children to join the protests are giving their own hearts to the struggle. This mass of protesters, while huge, are a percentage of the population who are determined to put their own selves, their spouses, and children on the line for the sake of a better future for everyone. They are heroes. While standing against a tyrant and his oppression holds promise of tremendous reward from Allah, some people will be hurt and some people will die. If we were present at a moment of truth, when freedom and justice demand an advocate, do we in our current state have the strength to stand up?

Source: http://blog.mastarbiya.org/2011/02/02/100-reflections-on-the-egyptian-uprising-a-lighthouse-episode/

'The Tower of Babel' by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, 1563.

(Please see Corrections & Amplifications below.)

Do the languages we speak shape the way we think? Do they merely express thoughts, or do the structures in languages (without our knowledge or consent) shape the very thoughts we wish to express?

Take “Humpty Dumpty sat on a…” Even this snippet of a nursery rhyme reveals how much languages can differ from one another. In English, we have to mark the verb for tense; in this case, we say “sat” rather than “sit.” In Indonesian you need not (in fact, you can’t) change the verb to mark tense.

In Russian, you would have to mark tense and also gender, changing the verb if Mrs. Dumpty did the sitting. You would also have to decide if the sitting event was completed or not. If our ovoid hero sat on the wall for the entire time he was meant to, it would be a different form of the verb than if, say, he had a great fall.

In Turkish, you would have to include in the verb how you acquired this information. For example, if you saw the chubby fellow on the wall with your own eyes, you’d use one form of the verb, but if you had simply read or heard about it, you’d use a different form.

Do English, Indonesian, Russian and Turkish speakers end up attending to, understanding, and remembering their experiences differently simply because they speak different languages?

These questions touch on all the major controversies in the study of mind, with important implications for politics, law and religion. Yet very little empirical work had been done on these questions until recently. The idea that language might shape thought was for a long time considered untestable at best and more often simply crazy and wrong. Now, a flurry of new cognitive science research is showing that in fact, language does profoundly influence how we see the world.

The question of whether languages shape the way we think goes back centuries; Charlemagne proclaimed that “to have a second language is to have a second soul.” But the idea went out of favor with scientists when Noam Chomsky’s theories of language gained popularity in the 1960s and ’70s. Dr. Chomsky proposed that there is a universal grammar for all human languages—essentially, that languages don’t really differ from one another in significant ways. And because languages didn’t differ from one another, the theory went, it made no sense to ask whether linguistic differences led to differences in thinking.

The search for linguistic universals yielded interesting data on languages, but after decades of work, not a single proposed universal has withstood scrutiny. Instead, as linguists probed deeper into the world’s languages (7,000 or so, only a fraction of them analyzed), innumerable unpredictable differences emerged.

Of course, just because people talk differently doesn’t necessarily mean they think differently. In the past decade, cognitive scientists have begun to measure not just how people talk, but also how they think, asking whether our understanding of even such fundamental domains of experience as space, time and causality could be constructed by language.

For example, in Pormpuraaw, a remote Aboriginal community in Australia, the indigenous languages don’t use terms like “left” and “right.” Instead, everything is talked about in terms of absolute cardinal directions (north, south, east, west), which means you say things like, “There’s an ant on your southwest leg.” To say hello in Pormpuraaw, one asks, “Where are you going?”, and an appropriate response might be, “A long way to the south-southwest. How about you?” If you don’t know which way is which, you literally can’t get past hello.

About a third of the world’s languages (spoken in all kinds of physical environments) rely on absolute directions for space. As a result of this constant linguistic training, speakers of such languages are remarkably good at staying oriented and keeping track of where they are, even in unfamiliar landscapes. They perform navigational feats scientists once thought were beyond human capabilities. This is a big difference, a fundamentally different way of conceptualizing space, trained by language.

Differences in how people think about space don’t end there. People rely on their spatial knowledge to build many other more complex or abstract representations including time, number, musical pitch, kinship relations, morality and emotions. So if Pormpuraawans think differently about space, do they also think differently about other things, like time?

To find out, my colleague Alice Gaby and I traveled to Australia and gave Pormpuraawans sets of pictures that showed temporal progressions (for example, pictures of a man at different ages, or a crocodile growing, or a banana being eaten). Their job was to arrange the shuffled photos on the ground to show the correct temporal order. We tested each person in two separate sittings, each time facing in a different cardinal direction. When asked to do this, English speakers arrange time from left to right. Hebrew speakers do it from right to left (because Hebrew is written from right to left).

Pormpuraawans, we found, arranged time from east to west. That is, seated facing south, time went left to right. When facing north, right to left. When facing east, toward the body, and so on. Of course, we never told any of our participants which direction they faced. The Pormpuraawans not only knew that already, but they also spontaneously used this spatial orientation to construct their representations of time. And many other ways to organize time exist in the world’s languages. In Mandarin, the future can be below and the past above. In Aymara, spoken in South America, the future is behind and the past in front.

In addition to space and time, languages also shape how we understand causality. For example, English likes to describe events in terms of agents doing things. English speakers tend to say things like “John broke the vase” even for accidents. Speakers of Spanish or Japanese would be more likely to say “the vase broke itself.” Such differences between languages have profound consequences for how their speakers understand events, construct notions of causality and agency, what they remember as eyewitnesses and how much they blame and punish others.

In studies conducted by Caitlin Fausey at Stanford, speakers of English, Spanish and Japanese watched videos of two people popping balloons, breaking eggs and spilling drinks either intentionally or accidentally. Later everyone got a surprise memory test: For each event, can you remember who did it? She discovered a striking cross-linguistic difference in eyewitness memory. Spanish and Japanese speakers did not remember the agents of accidental events as well as did English speakers. Mind you, they remembered the agents of intentional events (for which their language would mention the agent) just fine. But for accidental events, when one wouldn’t normally mention the agent in Spanish or Japanese, they didn’t encode or remember the agent as well.

In another study, English speakers watched the video of Janet Jackson’s infamous “wardrobe malfunction” (a wonderful nonagentive coinage introduced into the English language by Justin Timberlake), accompanied by one of two written reports. The reports were identical except in the last sentence where one used the agentive phrase “ripped the costume” while the other said “the costume ripped.” Even though everyone watched the same video and witnessed the ripping with their own eyes, language mattered. Not only did people who read “ripped the costume” blame Justin Timberlake more, they also levied a whopping 53% more in fines.

Beyond space, time and causality, patterns in language have been shown to shape many other domains of thought. Russian speakers, who make an extra distinction between light and dark blues in their language, are better able to visually discriminate shades of blue. The Piraha, a tribe in the Amazon in Brazil, whose language eschews number words in favor of terms like few and many, are not able to keep track of exact quantities. And Shakespeare, it turns out, was wrong about roses: Roses by many other names (as told to blindfolded subjects) do not smell as sweet.

Patterns in language offer a window on a culture’s dispositions and priorities. For example, English sentence structures focus on agents, and in our criminal-justice system, justice has been done when we’ve found the transgressor and punished him or her accordingly (rather than finding the victims and restituting appropriately, an alternative approach to justice). So does the language shape cultural values, or does the influence go the other way, or both?

Languages, of course, are human creations, tools we invent and hone to suit our needs. Simply showing that speakers of different languages think differently doesn’t tell us whether it’s language that shapes thought or the other way around. To demonstrate the causal role of language, what’s needed are studies that directly manipulate language and look for effects in cognition.

One of the key advances in recent years has been the demonstration of precisely this causal link. It turns out that if you change how people talk, that changes how they think. If people learn another language, they inadvertently also learn a new way of looking at the world. When bilingual people switch from one language to another, they start thinking differently, too. And if you take away people’s ability to use language in what should be a simple nonlinguistic task, their performance can change dramatically, sometimes making them look no smarter than rats or infants. (For example, in recent studies, MIT students were shown dots on a screen and asked to say how many there were. If they were allowed to count normally, they did great. If they simultaneously did a nonlinguistic task—like banging out rhythms—they still did great. But if they did a verbal task when shown the dots—like repeating the words spoken in a news report—their counting fell apart. In other words, they needed their language skills to count.)

All this new research shows us that the languages we speak not only reflect or express our thoughts, but also shape the very thoughts we wish to express. The structures that exist in our languages profoundly shape how we construct reality, and help make us as smart and sophisticated as we are.

Language is a uniquely human gift. When we study language, we are uncovering in part what makes us human, getting a peek at the very nature of human nature. As we uncover how languages and their speakers differ from one another, we discover that human natures too can differ dramatically, depending on the languages we speak. The next steps are to understand the mechanisms through which languages help us construct the incredibly complex knowledge systems we have. Understanding how knowledge is built will allow us to create ideas that go beyond the currently thinkable. This research cuts right to the fundamental questions we all ask about ourselves. How do we come to be the way we are? Why do we think the way we do? An important part of the answer, it turns out, is in the languages we speak.

Corrections and Amplifications

Japanese and Spanish language speakers would likely say “the vase broke” or “the vase was broken” when talking about an accident. This article says that Japanese and Spanish speakers would be more likely to say “the vase broke itself.”

—Lera Boroditsky is a professor of psychology at Stanford University and editor in chief of Frontiers in Cultural Psychology.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Rain continues to fall and flooding is expected to worsen, as officials now estimate that more than 14 million people have been affected by severe flooding and landslides in northwest Pakistan.

A senior United Nations official said the scale of Pakistan’s floods is worse than the 2004 tsunami in Asia and this year’s earthquake in Haiti.

Islamic Relief workers are helping in the evacuation effort, administering aid, and helping serve thousands of flood victims, but the need is still immense.

Shortages of food, water, clothing, shelter, and supplies are making it difficult for the victims. Waterborne diseases like diarrhea and cholera have contaminated nearly all the water wells and the deadly diseases are beginning to infect the most vulnerable of the people. Children are especially at risk.

After devastating Pakistan-administered Kashmir and the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) province, floodwaters are now affecting areas of Punjab and Sindh.

Two million people are now homelessand more than 1,600 lives have been lost.

Flashfloods and landslides washed away entire villages and uprooted thousands of acres of farmland.

Due to the sheer magnitude of the rains, which caught most victims off-guard, many have lost their livelihoods and have no idea how they will survive after the disaster.

Islamic Relief USA’s Vice President of Programs, Adnan Ansari, is part of the IR team in Pakistan helping with aid efforts and assessing the needs of the people. He reported, “Outside the camps, many people were staying put in their villages, despite their homes being destroyed and the roads being cut off.  ’This is all we have left,’ one of the victims who stayed home (which had no walls left) told me. ’I can’t risk leaving my belongings unattended.’”

“People’s dreams were hit hard by the floods. But their ability to overcome the hardship is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. Still I wonder how long they can hold up.”

Read more of Ansari’s blog post here.

Adnan Ansari’s Interview with Al-Jazeera English

More information @ Islamic Relief USA.

What else can we do?

• Du`a’. Pray for them.
• Donate food and clothing. There are organizations that are working to ship in-kind donations to Pakistan.
• Spread Awareness. This can be as simple as changing your Facebook status.
• Fundraise. If you’re on campus, have a bake sale or pass around a coin jar in your classes. Have a fast-a-thon to raise funds.
• Brainstorm. What else can we do?

Source: SuhaibWebb.com

Rebekah Hwang/Guardian

By Editorial Board

Unless you’ve been cuddling rabbits in Pepper Canyon for the past month, you’ve probably noticed the ruckus on Library Walk.

Ever since the A.S. Council considered a resolution that recommended the University of California divest from companies supplying weapons to the Israeli military, tensions between Students for Justice in Palestine and Tritons for Israel have escalated, resulting in less-than-civil discussions.

When the MSA held Justice in Palestine Week — which took place May 10 to 14 and included the installation of a mock-Israeli division wall on Library Walk — a new flame was added to the fire.

In retaliation, Young Americans for Freedom, an otherwise unknown, politically conservative student org, invited slimeball pro-Israel commentator David Horowitz to speak on campus that same week. During a question-and-answer session, Horowitz dodged a legitimate request from MSA member Jumanah Albahri to back his claim that terrorists fund her organization. He also bullied Albahri into agreeing she would support a mass genocide of Jews, simplifying the issue into “for or against” language.

Now, fears of anti-Semitism are trickling into the campus conversation, and TFI is asking the A.S. Council to stop funding Justice in Palestine Week, while requesting that a long list of departments, groups and colleges on campus stop endorsing the event, which many pro-Israel students perceive as hurtful.

Is it just us, or did we already settle the funding debate last quarter? If you’ll recall, no matter how much the Black Student Union rallied to stop putting student fees toward the Koala’s racist jokes, the cocky marsupials are still printing new issues.

The information presented during Justice for Palestine Week — which does not even approach the Koala’s caliber of disrespect — is both emotionally charged and controversial, but that’s all the more reason to financially support it.

The MSA’s mock security wall may have come off as shocking, but how often to does a passerby stop for a tame little info session? MSA members have every right to be upset about the human rights violations being committed against the Palestinian people and seeing their pain is just as valuable as learning the facts that have caused it — even if it does make the stroll down Library Walk a little uncomfortable.

We support the council’s funding of Justice in Palestine Week, just as we support its (partial) funding of the YAF’s distasteful guest speaker. If members of TFI are upset about how Justice in Palestine Week presented the facts of the conflict, we encourage them to take equal advantage of the student fees at their disposal and plan an event of their own. Ultimately, public forums like these spur healthy discussion among uninformed students, who would otherwise spend their time mulling over the “Lost” finale.

While we’re on the topic of Horowitz, though, we’d advise students not to take his exchange with Albahri so simplistically. Of course, Jewish students are entitled to feel threatened or upset by recent events on our campus, but it takes quite an imagination to believe that MSA members are out to kill off UCSD’s Jewish population.

Ultimately, we must remember that the issue at hand is the Israeli government’s occupation of the Palestinian territories. But when any number of student groups disagrees with each other, they should all be given the means to deliver their opinions to the public. It’s the only way the rest of us might learn something.

Source: The Guardian, UCSD

As you are all well aware, I am the one who spoke at the David Horowitz event this past Monday May 10, 2010.

Allow me to begin by stating that I do NOT condone murder, I do NOT condone genocide, and I do NOT condone racism under any circumstance whatsoever against Jews or anyone else. These accusations are lies that I refuse to allow David Horowitz and his allies to perpetuate in their irresponsible and hateful smear campaign against those who disagree with or differ from them.

On April 19, 2010 I volunteered to speak at the Racism/Genocide Holocaust Event last April only because of my strong convictions against genocide like the Holocaust. I was there every step of the way during the protests denouncing racism on campus last quarter—from the very beginning to the very end. Never have I uttered a negative syllable towards or about any person because of their ethnicity or religion on campus or otherwise, Jewish or otherwise. Regardless of my participation in these events, for Mr. Horowitz to insinuate that I am anti-Semitic is ridiculous; I am a Semite.

I attended the event as an individual, not as a representative of any organization, least of all the MSA. My presence was solidly founded in my academic and personal quests to hear diverse viewpoints. Unfortunately, Mr. Horowitz is a seasoned polemicist whose intent is not to encourage academic discussion by expounding his arguments or even supporting his positions with hard facts, but to excite the passions of an audience. Mr. Horowitz spent an hour indiscriminately attacking liberals, students, Arabs, Muslims, and Palestinians, utilizing verbiage that completely departed from an academic tone and delved into hate speech—especially labeling groups and individuals that support Palestinian rights “terrorists.”

Insofar as my references to Hitler and the Nazi Youth programs: it was Mr. Horowitz who spent a substantial amount of time referring to the MSA as the “Hitler Youth” and its Justice in Palestine Week as “Hitler Youth Week”— pejorative titles that as a human being, a student of history, and a person of faith, I find disgusting. I uttered them in a sarcastic manner only to point out the ridiculous and slanderous nature of Mr. Horowitz’s labels—Nazis sought the extermination of anyone who was not “white,” and this racial category excludes the vast majority of the Muslim population.

I asked Mr. Horowitz to explain the purported connection between UCSD’s MSA and “Jihadist Terrorist Networks.” His pamphlet did not mention the organization; rather it focused on other groups like UCI’s MSU and Berkley and LA’s MSA chapters, and offered supporting grounds that can be characterized as shaky at best, with sources that had little credibility. He chose not to engage my question (his opening arguments were the verbatim generalizations made in the pamphlet, though my question asked for specifics) but instead decided to subject me to an interrogation because of my headscarf and Palestinian kuffiyeh. The fact that Mr. Horowitz claimed on a respected national cable news network that the MSA receives forty thousand dollars to put on Justice in Palestine Week, speaks volumes to his status as a gross exaggerator who should not be trusted to deliver opinions on anything. The information can be found here on UCSD’s official website http://as.ucsd.edu/finance/sofr_view_program.php?id=710.

Towards the end of the exchange, I became emotional. I could no longer hear Mr. Horowitz speaking and so did not even hear his injection of Hezbollah’s credo of “rounding up” Jews in his last tangent. I could no longer contain my anger at being implicitly and improperly labeled a terrorist, an anti-Semite, and a proponent of genocide. The answer I was coerced into giving grossly misrepresented my beliefs and ideologies.

My answer, “for it,” in the context in which it was said does NOT mean “for” genocide. I was referring to his initial question that asked me for my position on Hamas, a topic that for his own political reasons he was relentless in pursuing. “For it” was not a legitimization of Hezbollah’s or anyone else’s credo for that matter that Jews should be exterminated. In fact, Mr. Horowitz’s intent was to entrap me with his barrage of questions so that he could avoid answering my question, and construe any answer that I would provide as anti-Semitic, genocidal hate speech in order to further his political agenda.

I am not a member of Hamas, nor have I ever given support to Hamas, nor do I agree their actions or stances wholesale, but I refused to offer Mr. Horowitz a blanket condemnation of Hamas that night. I felt that doing so would be a blanket condemnation of the Palestinian cause. I refused to throw the baby (the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people) out with the bathwater (Hamas.) In addition, Mr. Horowitz asked me to condemn Hamas as a genocidal organization; which to my limited knowledge on the subject, is another unsupported claim made by Mr. Horowitz.

My opinion of Hamas is not as simple as condemn or condone, “for it” or “against it.” I firmly believe that the killing of civilians, even as “collateral damage” regardless of creed, politics, sexuality, nationality, or ethnicity is one of the highest crimes in the eyes of God and is morally reprehensible and abhorrent. But I condone Hamas in its ambition to liberate the Palestinian people. I condone Hamas as the duly elected representative government of the Palestinian people granted governance in an election overseen by our ex-President Jimmy Carter; and characterized as fair, open, and fully democratic. I condone Hamas in its desire to end the inhumane siege of the Gazan people. I condone Hamas in its struggle to free the 10,000 Palestinian men, women, and children unjustly locked away in Israeli prisons. It seems that in Mr. Horowitz’s logic, my support of freedom, peace, and justice makes me a “terrorist.”

David Horowitz can try to erase my history, the history of my grandparents, the history of the Palestinian people, he can call me a terrorist, he can mischaracterize my faith as bloody, and my God as false, but I will NOT allow him to vilify me as a racist or a proponent of genocide and remain silent.

For Peace, For Love, For Justice,

Jumanah Imad Albahri

After emotional public input and a complete rewrite of the divestment resolution, proponents plan to reintroduce original language next week.

John Hanacek/Guardian

Hundreds of students gathered at the A.S. Forum last night to watch the council debate a controversial resolution calling for the University of California to stop investing in companies providing military technology to Israel. The resolution identified the Palestinian territories as being occupied by a military force guilty of committing human rights violations against the Palestinian people. The council ultimately voted 13-10-4 to create a committee to further discuss the resolution.

The resolution, which was modeled after a similar effort at UC Berkeley, called for the UC Board of Regents to divest endowment funds from corporations such as General Electric and United Technologies. According to the resolution, these companies manufacture technology used in military weapons and vehicles, such as helicopters, used in war crimes in the Middle East.

According to Associate Vice President of Enterprise Operations Rishi Ghosh — who helped draft the document — the resolution is not the first of its kind. However, Ghosh said, if it had passed, it would have been the first recognition of Israel’s war crimes to be approved at a public university. Hampshire College, a private college in Massachusetts, has already divested entirely from the state of Israel. (The resolution considered by the council last night only advocated a break from corporations said to profit from Israel’s alleged war crimes.)

The bill drew students from campus groups such as Tritons for Israel and Students for Justice in Palestine, who spoke during the public input period at the beginning of the meeting.

Campuswide Senator-elect Elizabeth Elman said the resolution encouraged the university to adopt a neutral stance in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by divesting from companies that support Israel’s actions in the conflict.

“I’ve heard that passing this resolution will divide our UCSD community on an issue that is far removed from this campus,” she said. “I would argue that we are already divided. I believe that discussing this resolution is the first step in reuniting our community. This resolution divests from American companies whose business solely benefits the war efforts of one side in this conflict will help restore the neutrality that our student body so vocally desires.”

However, Tritons for Israel President Dafna Barzilay argued that the legislation was biased and that passing it would alienate the pro-Israel community on campus. She said that the pro-Israel committee had been unfairly excluded from the drafting of the resolution and that the pro-Israel community had only three days to formulate a response before the vote at last night’s A.S. Council meeting.

“My community is feeling threatened, and we’re feeling unsafe,” she said. “One thing I would like to urge is that this is not a pro-peace resolution. It is marketed to be one — however, I would like to maintain that peace incorporates talks, negotiations and respects from both sides of any conflicted forces and this kind of movement should not be one that’s done overnight.”

According to A.S. Director of Policy Initiatives Mac Zilber, the money invested into G.E. and United Technologies does not come from tuitions or student fees — as the resolution states — but instead is derived from private donations. In addition, he said that the investment money supporters the capital unit of G.E., which is a commercial leasing unit of the company and is not involved in providing military technology overseas.

Following public input, councilmembers began to discus whether the resolution was an appropriate topic to discuss.  A motion by Campuswide Senator Katie Hall to table the motion indefinitely failed 13-16-2 with 13 members voting in favor of tabling, 16 voting against and 3 abstaining.

Vice President of Student Life Ricsie Hernandez proposed that the original version of the resolution be amended and instead be replaced with a version created by Campuswide Senator Tobias Haglund. Haglund’s version removes all mention of Israel or Palestine and instead states that the council does not condone the financial support of companies that invest in military occupation in any country.

Ghosh said he would support the amended version of the resolution.

“That version was terribly watered down and a lot of people in our community weren’t happy with it, but I would have voted for it,” Ghosh said.

The amendment passed, but the issue was eventually voted to be discharged into a committee chaired with Speaker James Lintern, who resigned from the position at the end of the meeting.

“I didn’t volunteer for this position and this committee is going to fail in a big way,” he said. “I didn’t have good experiences with the council on this last year, and nothing’s going to happen with it.”

Hall, who voted for the issue to be discharged, argued that the debate should be resolved only once both groups have had equal input into the resolution.

“My problem is that there are members of Students for Justice in Palestine on this council, but there are hardly any members of Tritons for Israel on this council to have their voices be heard on this resolution,” Hall said.

Ghosh said that he was disappointed with the outcome since the original resolution had already been so radically altered.

“The last compromise really could have been passed, it was very transparent,” he said. “They knew it was about to pass so they voted it into committee where people can keep bringing up new things.”

Ghosh said that he would bring up the resolution again at the 2009-10 council’s final meeting of the year, which will be held next week.

“Next time I won’t bring up the compromised document but instead the original document,” he said. “I’m just going to keep bringing it up again and again and it might take 10 years, but divestment will pass.”

Readers can contact Angela Chen at shchen@ucsd.edu.

SOURCE: http://www.ucsdguardian.org/news/council-delays-decision-on-human-rights-violations/

Babar Ahmad

Babar Ahmad is a 34 year old British Muslim and the longest detained-without-charge British detainee held as part of the global ‘war on terror’. In December 2003 Babar was arrested at his London home under anti-terror legislation. By the time he reached the police station Babar had sustained at least 73 forensically recorded injuries, including bleeding in his ears and urine. Six days later he was released without charge.

Babar then filed a formal complaint that he had been subjected to horrific physical, sexual and religious abuse by the arresting police officers. An IPCC supervised investigation later dismissed his complaint and even “commended” one of these officers for his “great bravery” in arresting him. Babar is currently suing the Metropolitan Police for assault.

In August 2004 Babar was re-arrested in London and taken to prison pursuant to an extradition request from the US under the controversial, no-evidence-required, Extradition Act 2003. The US has alleged that in the 1990s Babar was a supporter of “terrorism”. Babar denies any involvement in terrorism. He has now been in prison for four years even though he has not been charged in the UK.

Babar’s family, friends and campaigners have mounted a high profile campaign for his release. He recently appeared in the news when it was revealed that the police had bugged his prison visits with his MP, Sadiq Khan (Labour-Tooting). His final appeal against extradition is at The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, which is due to decide on it shortly. If extradited he faces the rest of his natural life in solitary confinement in a maximum security US ‘Supermax’ prison. Further details on his case are at www.freebabarahmad.com. He reflects on his four years in captivity.

I have now spent nearly an eighth of my life in prison. Life in prison is a journey into the unknown. Unlike other journeys it is one of those things that you can never plan ahead for. You don’t plan to have a car accident. You don’t plan to get cancer. You don’t plan to die. And you don’t plan to go to prison. Prison is just one of the many tests that you must pass in order to succeed in life.

The Prophet (saw) said, “There is some magic in words.” Tyrants use the magic in words to control people’s thoughts and deeds by making evil appear acceptable to them. So kidnap is known as “arrest”, brutality becomes “reasonable force” and torture is nothing more than “enhanced interrogation.” When an innocent man is kidnapped from his home by bearded Arab gunmen and locked indefinitely in a room he is a “hostage.” But when an innocent man is kidnapped from his home by uniformed white gunmen and locked indefinitely in a room he is a “terrorist.” The world causes uproar over the former but is silent over the latter. “In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends,” observed Martin Luther King.

Fear is a disease that consumes the soul of the one who embraces it. Man’s total capacity to fear is fixed: the more he fears one thing the less he fears another. People fear standing up to a tyrant because they are afraid of some harm that he ‘may’ cause them, even though that harm is limited to the life of this world. Such people have little or no fear for any harm that Allah will cause them in the Hereafter. However, if these same people were to fear the Day when they shall return to stand before the Lord of the Worlds, they would not fear any tyrant on the face of the Earth. “Do they fear them? Allah is more worthy for you to fear if you are indeed believers.” (Quran 9:13)

We survive in life by wearing a variety of faces that disguise our true inner selves. We have one face for our families, a face for our friends, a face for our colleagues, and a face for strangers. Since we are always switching between faces others hardly get to see who we really are. Sometimes we ourselves forget who we are. The harsh reality of prison life relentlessly files away at your external faces and personae to reveal the true you. There are no secrets in prison. Sincerity, hypocrisy, bravery, cowardice, good, evil – all are laid bare. Prison brings out the best, and worst, in people.

Prisoners undergo such a concentrated experience that they develop intensely deep personalities. We interact with each other heart-to-heart, not face-to-face. Our conversations frequently revolve around hope. No man, let alone a prisoner, can live without hope: hope that there is indeed a dawn at the end of this long, dark night. What else do you say to a man facing life in prison?

People are like “metals”, according to one narration of the Prophet Muhammad (saw). Some people are like a cheap bracelet plated in gold: the smallest crisis files away the fake gold to reveal the cheap metal underneath. Others are like a gold bracelet covered in rust: hardship rubs away the rust to bring out the gold below to the surface. And a third type are solid gold, inside and out: calamity just polishes the gold so it sparkles from near and far.

During the last four years I have personally witnessed the worst of men turn into the best of men. I have seen gangsters, drug barons, armed robbers and murderers, of all faiths and races, convert to Islam in prison. I have always been inspired by converts since every conversion is a miracle, but seeing a hardened criminal accept Islam is something else. Only the true religion is able to cause genuine, lasting change in an individual in a short space of time.

The first word revealed in the Quran was “Read!” There is no life without reading. Reading beneficial writing is one of those pleasures that makes you forget you are in prison. During the last four years in prison I have travelled back in time and all over the world. I have visited Jerusalem during the Crusades. I have lived in Muslim Spain. I have accompanied African slaves as they were kidnapped by European slavemasters. I have shared in the suffering of the Native Indians in North America. And I have lived with leaders, hostages, death row inmates and journalists as their writings narrated to me their stories.

Yet all of these writings amount to nothing compared to the one book that has helped me through my ordeal the most: the Glorious Quran. It is my breakfast, lunch and dinner. If I do not read my daily portion at dawn, my heart feels heavy by mid-morning. The Quran is not just a book that mentions stories which are centuries old: it is a book that mentions the present. “We have certainly sent down to you a Book in which is your mention. Will you then not reason?” (Quran 21:10) Whosoever reads the Quran and reflects on it will find himself and his situation mentioned therein. This is only one of its many miracles.

Prison teaches you not to be judgemental of others, but to treat everyone at face value. When you deal with fellow prisoners you must deal with their present, not their past. That is the only way you will get through prison. Prison hardens you in some aspects, and softens you in others. It humbles you: laying bare your shortcomings. Since much of prison time is spent reflecting on your own past, all of your life’s wrongs come to the surface. Man cannot progress in life until he acknowledges his weaknesses and mistakes. Acknowledging that a problem exists is half of its solution.

Prison has taught me that there is a part of you that no-one can ever take from you, and that is your heart. For the heart is where true happiness resides. When you reach the stage where you are content with your destiny you have defeated your captors and become the most powerful prisoner in the world. This is what belief in Divine Destiny is all about. It is to be happy with whatever Allah has decreed for you: to be happy with your life, to be happy whether you are rich, poor, tall, short, dark or fair. When you are satisfied with your lot in life, you have won.

Every hardship is like being in prison. People feel imprisoned by ill-health, marital discord, financial insecurity, family disputes and other problems. To anyone who feels imprisoned by life’s problems I would say: be content with what you already have and never lose hope of things getting better. Be happy with your share because this is a quality of someone who truly loves Allah. When the Companion Muadh ibn Jabal (ra) was undergoing the pangs and agonies of death, he cried out, “O Allah! Bear witness that I love You, so do with me whatsoever You wish!”

I would never have wanted to come to prison, but, looking back at these four years, I am glad that I did. I have ventured close to breaking point but due to Allah’s Grace and the support of some wonderful people I have not yet crossed it. My ordeal has been harsh, difficult and exhausting, but it has also been an adventure. Some of the happiest days of my life have been in prison. I have had experiences in prison and met people that I will never forget.

The writer Mustapha Sadiq Ar-Rafei wrote, “When I looked into history I found a small number of individuals whose lives mirrored the lifecycle of a grain of wheat. They were torn from their roots, then crushed, then ground in mills, then kneaded with fists, then rolled out and baked in ovens at high temperatures… just so they could provide food for others.”

Patiently persevere in the face of hardship hoping for a good outcome because you never know how many dead hearts you will bring to life in the process. No hardship lasts forever. There is always an end.

(A version of this article appeared in the July 2008 edition of the Emel magazine.)

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