Muslims Have Lost the Right to Be Raving Lunatics

As it's revealed the killer in Southport 'might' be of Muslim heritage – sparking racist riots against Islam all over UK – I have to wonder: how would you react if I went apeshit?

“I think you may suffer from dyspraxia,” the driving instructor explained solemnly, moments after announcing he could no longer, in good conscience, take my money. Some people just can’t be taught to drive.

Insulted and outraged, I took a deep breath while I Googled dyspraxia. A neurological (brain) condition, also known as developmental coordination disorder (DCD), diagnosed to those who have problems learning and doing motor skills. Most people who don’t suffer from this condition, he argued, would see there was a fuck-off big truck approaching our way many seconds before I decided to swerve right in its path.

“I’ll have you know my spatial awareness is in perfect order!” I screeched, citing as evidence my penchant for throwing shapes on packed dancefloors without bumping into fellow ravers. And while on drugs!

I’ve taken lessons since. Everyone behind the wheel – be they professional instructors or a hapless, over-optimistic friend – has reached the same conclusion: I’m a fucking terrible driver.

Now, imagine I’m having a bad day. Say, my wife has left me for her literary agent – the same one who dismissed my pitch by saying there wasn’t a market for a story about a Muslim Indian waiter who ties up racist customers in his basement to get revenge – leading me to hit the Charlie and the Jack hard. I’m listening to some gangster rap to soothe my soul, and am suddenly overcome by the urge to smash the agent’s face in. I get into my wife’s car, still sure all those naysayers were quite mistaken and that I can totally drive… watch me now, I’m the King of Road.

No sooner than I hit the road, I promptly mow down a few tables where tourists are tucking into bravas on the terrace near where I live on Rambla de Catalunya. Relax, no one is hurt, but the sangria splattered everywhere does look awfully like blood in the photos.

What do you think happens next?

No one is going to report it as ‘Crap Drunk Driver Loses Control of Car’. The headlines will scream ‘MUSLIM GOES ON TERROR RAMPAGE’. Suspected links to the extremists behind the 2017 Barcelona attacks will be fabricated across social media. A photo will surface of me in my Eid clothes outside a mosque in 2001, the year the Al-Qaeda brought the West down to its knees. An ex-girlfriend is quoted as saying, “Destroying lives is what he does best.”

After 9/11, Muslims collectively lost the right to be reckless, troubled or plain dumb individuals. There will always be the suspicion a jihadist agenda rages behind any threatening deed. 

The fact is, even though I am westernised enough to make the whitest of folk pale in comparison – from encouraging friends to join me for a good old-fashioned knees-up to Gilbert and Sullivan over sherries, to bringing bubble and squeak with crispy bacon to our annual expats Thanksgiving table – there’s no getting away from it:  

I can never do anything newsworthy without being labelled a Muslim.

See, you don’t get to be an atheist if you’re born into Islam. No one called Salman Rushdie an atheist while the fatwa hung over him—always ‘ex-Muslim’, or ‘born Muslim’. It’s much like being a serial streaker. He hasn’t streaked in years and didn’t streak around the clock back when he did, but he was known to, and for the rest of his life there’ll always be someone who says, “Hey, you’re that streaker guy. Your family are still streakers, right? I see your dad and brother run stark bollock naked past the mosque every Friday.”

Yes, I was a Muslim once, and I did everything within my power to eradicate all trace of it. Not that it made a difference to others. Even getting the ‘Muhammad’ taken off by deed poll and passing the British Citizenship Test to swap my Bangladeshi bog green for a midnight blue-coloured passport, presenting myself as entirely integrated by sporting brightly dyed mohawks, piercings and tattoos, did little to deter those intent on getting to the roots of my being. In my journey from immigrant to expat (for the past nine years, working as a graphic design consultant for the World Health Organization, I have been based in Switzerland, France and now Spain), I’ve accepted that no matter where I go in the world, I cannot escape the question, “Muslim?”

Everyone, from the gunmen at customs to the rug store cowboys in souks, wants to know what type of Muslim they’re dealing with here.

The chip on my shoulder – that once led me to bark “I’m an individual with my own unique quirks, goddammit” to anyone reducing me to the simple label of “Muslim” – has long been shrugged off. I am now resigned to the fact the world will ultimately see me as one, the way Vietnamese children adopted by white American parents accept they will never succeed in erasing Vietnam from their defining credentials.

To the majority of strangers, we are what we look like.

There’s no evidence that the killer at the centre of the Southport attack had any kind of Jihadist agenda, and plenty to support he was suffering from mental health issues in a post-Tory Britain where services to regulate such individuals have been severely cut, but try telling these people that…

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