Hello world, I’m still mentally stable and lovely. Promise.

Previously on Hello world, I'm mentally stable and lovely. Promise.

In the past, I’ve never really taken racism seriously. Racism has always been ironic to me. Perhaps because of my fairly pale skin, my white mother and having most racism aimed at me being a ‘Paki,’ to which I’d wittily reply ‘…BUT I’m not!’ Proper mind games, I really confused those racists. In the playground aged seven in my all-white school my peers would sing racist songs to me ‘Bud bud ting ting 2.99.’

What did I do? Join in of course, we all love a sing-song. I’d come home serenading my sisters with it. I was blissfully unaware of the racial undertones insinuating my Father owned a corner shop. It was a catchy tune and there was no harm done. How could I be the target of racism when I didn’t realise I was any different?

How I wish for those days of blissful ignorance.

Recently I’ve had some ‘abuse’ from people passing by me, usually in cars (including unfortunately, an EDL chant) and my first thought was not that it’s my impeccable driving or my bad singing that’s triggering the one fingered salutes, but my Muslim look. I’m hoping it’s just paranoia or the change in weather bringing out the worst in people.

In response I raise a thumbs up and smile, but to no avail and so pretend to take their registration number instead. Still, I go home feeling ‘upset’ (equally as ‘upset’ as the BNP feel about lions, sparrows, or white people being extinct, my point of reference being the interview BBC Radio 1- try not to wet yourself laughing/crying at their logic).



On a serious note, as the media tells us more of the cases of the ex-Guantanomo prisoners, and released-without-charged suspected terrorists, Muslims are ofted filled with a genuine fear. If they were innocent, why were they there? What if we make the same mistake? What exactly maketh a terrorist?

In the furore of the BNP’s pre-election song and dance, the EDL protests and the news of ex-Guantanamo suspects being given a secret hearing, I am being made painfully aware of my difference. The thought of being screened at an airport with a ‘naked’ body scanner fills me with dread. I would feel humiliated. I would feel discriminated against, even if my fellow indigenous Brit was also ‘selected’. I would feel a target. And what if I refused? A strip search? Better start that diet now then…

My worry is that we are going backwards. In the hope of squashing poor immigration policies, or fighting terrorism, there is a substantial population in the UK which will grow up confused: detached from their ‘ethnic’ roots, and feeling targeted by their own society. Being made to feel different.

A difference I always argued in my time living in the Middle-East (and desperate to return to my Mancunian roots), had no need to exist, as a Muslim peace-loving hippy happy Brit.

Now that, my friends in high places, is the perfect a recipe for a real home-grown terrorist. Do something about it.