The Asian News Blog

IT’S been a hectic couple of weeks recently, what with Ramadan and then Eid and now am back at work seeing to clients who have been inviting themselves to the welcome party they presume I am throwing for the husband.
I have yet to see what the husband is like in a social gathering before I make any such commitment, but politely told everyone that they were going to be number one on my list if and when I do throw this party.
Anyway the husband informed me a few days ago that he was arriving this weekend, yep you heard right, this weekend. He wanted to arrive before Eid, but I managed to buy myself some time and persuaded him to spend the special day with his family so I can party with my friends.
I have however been getting use to the fact that I am a married woman and about to be joined by a husband, but mentally I can’t seem to get out of my singleton minded head.
In the past few months I’ve never felt married, I usually forget that I am, but that is bound to happen when the husband is thousands of miles away in Bangladesh.
I told the husband to fly to Manchester, but because he’s never flown before and his English, well lack of spoken English, is very minimal, he’s coming in by Bangladeshi Biman instead and I have to meet him at the airport in bleeding London.
Mum has been busy cleaning the house since to make a nice impression for her son-in-law though the house is spotless anyway.
His relatives have been bombarding me with phone calls, all excited, all offering me advice about married life, urging me to have children ASAP – yeah right!
I’ve decided I have to look at this marriage in a different light, usually two people meet fall in love and then decide to spend the rest of their lives together in holy matrimony.
But since I started with getting married first, I need to do the rest now -you know try to get to know him, grow to like him and then feelings would develop and love will blossom and then when I’m good and ready I can have that party everyone is so eager to come to.
You see if I look at it through this new perspective, it almost sounds a little exciting, a little bit like going out on the first few dates, though there is only a little tingle of excitement I think it is a start.
Well right now I better get back to work and enjoy the rest of the week as a free married singleton.

Imagine in the run up to Christmas, two groups of Christians can’t make their mind on which day to celebrate.
Sounds absurd doesn’t it?
But that is exactly what has been happening in the Muslim community for as far back as I can remember.
Each year clerics at different mosques are left divided on which day to observe Eid-ul-Fitr – the Muslim festival which marks the end of the month of the Ramadan fast.
On Monday I, a Bangladeshi, along with the rest of the Bangladeshi and the Arab community celebrated Eid. Today, majority of the Pakistani and other Muslims are observing the festival.
So why do we end up celebrating Eid on two different days?
You see Eid-ul-Fitr, not only ends the month of fasting but is celebrated after the sighting of the new moon, usually on the last day of Ramadan.
The imams at my mosque follow the Saudi Arabian calendar and celebrate Eid when the Saudis have spotted the moon, after all it’s in Saudi Arabia where Islam was first born. Therefore my celebration coincided with the Saudis.
However other Muslims, and it’s usually the Pakistani Muslims in the UK, wait to spot the new moon in the UK first before they celebrate Eid, hence the reason why it’s celebrated on two different days.
Now while this may suit the imams at the mosque, quite frankly it leaves people like myself a bit miffed.
For example even though I marked Eid with my family and some of my friends, my Pakistani friends couldn’t join me because their celebrations started today and I am back at work.
Just imagine if Eid was celebrated by everybody on one chosen day.
There would be much more of a celebratory atmosphere throughout the north-west, the police will only have to worry about policing the “curry mile” on one night instead of the two, I can celebrate it with all my friends on one day and it will of course create better community cohesion between the various communities.
If loved ones end up observing it on different days that sense of togetherness is just lost.
But observing the festival on one day by everybody very rarely happens.
Islam is about being united, but when two groups in the Muslim community are divided on which day to celebrate Eid, it doesn’t show much togetherness does it?

HE got his visa. That’s right he’s got it and now I am confused as ever. My friends ask me why I even bothered applying for his visa if I didn’t have any feelings for him, but now that I’m married I think I should at least give it a chance and see what happens.
Who knows I may even grow to fancy him and he can go and learn English so that I can take him out to meet my friends and we can go to the various parties I get involved in and he communicate with my colleagues – I hope.
Though he did piss me off on Friday – the guy couldn’t even be bothered to tell me he had got his visa until a day later – by that time his whole family in the UK had known except for me – how embarrassing was that?
So after a good moan at him I gave him my shopping list – I may not fancy him but that doesn’t mean he can’t go on a shopping spree for me!
Well he’s coming in two weeks time – that quick I thought. I told him to spend some time with the family in Bangladesh before he came to the UK – you know may be spend a couple of more months while I got use to the idea of having a husband around me – but he insists that he can’t wait to be with me and that he loves me.
I tell him that he could not possibly love someone he had only known for two weeks and that was in January which was nearly 10 months ago. The Husband claimed he fell in love with me the day he met me. That was a quick half hour meeting. He barely asked me anything while I randomely sleceted questions In wrote out the night before and fired away at hime.
The only reason I decided to choose him as my partner was because I thought he was going to do as I say. You see I told him – that’s right TOLD him – to salam my granddad (you know touching my granddad’s feet and asking him for his blessings). Which he did and I thought “hey this guy is going to do as I tell him to” and from that basis I said yes I will marry him and then I couldn’t remember what he looked like until I saw him again on the wedding day.
I had pictures of him and I knew his family in Oldham – they all seemed pretty OK, you know he had an aunt who was a nurse, another aunt worked for the council and they all seemed nice enough – quite modern it seemed to me as well.
The Husband seemed to be a well dressed guy – I wasn’t too keen on the shoes though – they looked like platforms to me – which is why when I did see him during the first meeting my sister had to tell him to take his shoes off so we can measure him against me – he at the time seemed at least two inches taller than my 5ft 4inch height – though I realised after the wedding the gelled up hair had added an inch which meant that I had to lock away my heels for the two weeks I spent with him in Bangladesh.
As for love – well I sure didn’t have butterflies running around in my stomach and a month after coming back from Bangladesh I soon forgot that I had a husband – it almost felt as though I had a small holiday romance and it ended as I stepped onto the plane heading for England.
But I wasn’t about to get into all that and reassured the Husband that if he wanted he could stay longer in Bangladesh and there was no hurry to come to England.
I on the other hand have to get things sorted – mainly in my head and figure out what I want to do.
The worst feeling I have is that of guilt – I feel guilty that I married this man whilst on the rebound – really it wasn’t fair was it? And I was being selfish – but it was a mistake but one that I now had to see through after all it was the right thing to do wasn’t it?
I couldn’t let my parents down either – though my dad seemed more keen on the match than my mum – she had a problem with short Bengali men – she said they were always up to no good!
Well my shopping list was at least going to get sorted – I ordered 100s of Bollywood films, almost every Shah Rukh Khan movie and I even ordered some Sylheti movies – though badly produced were a laugh to watch.
I told my parents about the “good” news straightaway – they seemed pleased though I’d been cornered by various female relatives in the family since then to tell me how to handle a Bengali man from Bangladesh.
It seemed to me that Bangladeshi men from back “home” are a completely different species all together.
First of all I must, and they insist, must hide his passport – just in case he decides to do a runner – they warn me that he might just be after a stay in the UK only – well that was reassuring.
They then told me that I must keep my finances a secret from him – “you don’t want him to know the ins and out of your account” one aunt said.
My grandmother wanted to make sure that I was on contraception – “you don’t want babies until you know he is here for you and not for the passport.”
My neighbour who also married a man from Bangladesh told me to get him into work straight away and make sure he handed his wage to me every week. Because if I don’t, the neighbour told me, the Husband will send it all to his family back “home” and won’t support me at all – after all she said I was a working gal and men from back home would not feel guilty about not supporting their wives here.
My sister warned me not to tell him anything about my life – not to introduce him to all my friends especially the male friends and the less he knewabout my life the better.
I was off to a great start here – basically I have been told not to trust the guy – but if that was the case why on earth did everyone encourage me when I said I was going to go back “home” to get married. At the time I was told it was the best decision that I had made – I was desperate to get over my ex but at the same time I was a little thrilled – it was a little flutter of excitement in my stomach and that was all. But the signs of encouragement from the very same people that were now telling me to be on my guard was quite disturbing.
I guess I have to play it by ear and see what happens.

FOLLOWING my veil feature our website, the Asian News office has been inundated with letters and emails and I too have been getting calls from the national media to comment on the veil debate.
Though I don’t think am an expert on the subject and feel that journalists should really be speaking to women who actually wear the veil on a daily basis, I have told them my views.
But what has disturbed me the most is that certain people from the wider non-Muslim community have been talking about Muslims as if we are alien to this country.
They seem to think that we just live here but it’s not our home and that Britain is only for the “English” and therefore we must do as the English do.
Hang on……I have always seen myself as English – and Britain isn’t a place I live in – this is my HOME. I was born here and want to remain here, not in Bangladesh or some Muslim country. My veiled friends think the same as well.
As for integrating – I have many friends from all races and backgrounds. My best friend is white/Irish, my other close friends consist of Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Chinese and Afro-Caribbean – you cannot get more integrated than this.
Britain is for everybody – there is no such thing as English = white, English is made up of every culture and creed that exists on British soil and Muslims are part and parcel of that!

YET again Muslims have been brought into the spotlight but this time the attention has been turned to women after Jack Straw pointed out that women who cover their faces are detrimental to building better community cohesion.

It would suit him, says Straw, if veiled women could take of their niqab so he can see their faces and get a “better understanding” of what they were saying.
This has obviously caused a lot of debate and anger in the Muslim community – but then why shouldn’t they be when their local MP is practically saying he feels uncomfortable talking to veiled women!
Recently I was at an event in Middleton organised by a Muslim organisation who wanted to look at ways to tackle extremism. At this event I was the only Muslim woman present who did not wear a head covering or a veil but I was surrounded by women who did.
For me to ask them to remove their veils whilst I spoke to them just to get a “better understanding” of what they were saying would have shown a complete lack of respect especially as there were men in the same room.
I as well as Straw both know that they choose to wear the veil because no other man except for their father, their bothers or their husband are allowed to see their face. Yet this did not hinder my interviewing skills when I spoke to them – whatever emotion they were trying to portray could easily be seen through their eyes and heard though what they had to say and through the tone of their voice.
Surely Straw, an MP, has these simple people skills to pick up on this when speaking to veiled women without having the need to look at their nose and mouth!
Although it’s good to see that Straw has educated himself to find out why women wear the veil and even knows about the different Islamic schools of thought surrounding the whole veil debate – I found it disturbing that knowing this, he would still then ask women to show their face.
Does this show a complete lack of understanding and disrespect? Of course it does.
Would Straw ask, lets say, a white women wearing a tankini and short skirt to go and put some clothes on? I do not think so.
Would he ask a Catholic nun to take of her head garment? I do not think so.
So why is it that when it comes to Islamic dress there is so much hoo haa around it?
Why can’t a Muslim woman dress how she wants without being told she is an extremist, without being told she’s subjugated and without being told she is bad for good race relations in the UK?
Straw’s request also puts Muslim women in a difficult position. He says that they have obliged with his request in the past – but they are there to seek his assistance and how many women would say just in case it jeopardises their problems even further?
One of the reasons I am proud to be British is that we live in a multi-cultural society where all races and faiths have the right to practice their religion freely and if this means a woman wants to cover her face she should do so.
Muslims do not go around telling their white neighbours they don’t like the way they dress – then don’t do the same back!
I have not yet come across a Muslim women, veiled or not veiled, who does not want to integrate. If anything every veiled woman I personally know is a professional working alongside the wider community, who accepts the fact that they are British, that they are Muslim and that they can be both because what they admire most about this country is the freedom to express themselves.
Their white colleagues have no qualms about it, their neighbours do not either and when stranger asks them why they have covered their face, considering it was in a polite manner, they are more than willing to sit down with them with a cup of tea and explain what being a Muslim means to them and why they wear the niqab.
This debate only stresses the need to educate people. Which is why over this month of Ramadan there have been numerous events, conferences and even parties where Islamic organisations have actively gone out to invite non-Muslims to educate them about the religion and its customs. This is what I call building social cohesion and it is the Muslim community who are at the forefront of it all.
Although Muslims are trying their best to build good relationship with the wider society, it is a 50/50 process. As Muslims we are told to respect and be loyal to the country we live in, well then the same applies to the authorities and that’s it to show respect back.
Straw’s comments have hardly been a great exercise in promoting community dialogue and cohesion.
Though he is right to point out that there is a growing number of women choosing to wear the veil, but the figures are still not that high to suggest that by them covering their faces they are affecting work towards building better relationships with non-Muslims.
I say put a 100 veiled women in a room with 100 non-Muslims – you want to see people building bridges – well then I guarantee both groups will walk away having created dialogue and broken down stereotypes.
The face veil is worn by millions of women around the world and their societies function perfectly well and they are able to conduct their daily affairs without any problems. I think it is wrong to restrict the freedoms which form the foundations of our society over misplaced concerns over community relations.
Having experienced a day wearing the veil when I was even called a “terrorist”, I know from first hand experience of the daily abuse these women face from non-Muslims whilst walking down the streets.
Being called a ninja, a terrorist, even batman , to have alcohol thrown on you or to be refused a service because you were a veil is insulting and not nice.
So Straw if you want communities to unite and live along side each other peacefully then I suggest that you tell those racist yobs to stop harassing veiled women first and let them walk the streets proudly and freely.
Shelina Begum

LET me first introduce myself before I bombard you with the little details of my life that has so far spiralled out of control and now I have found myself married to a man who does not speak English, who I don’t really fancy and who is expected to arrive in the UK in the next couple of weeks!
My name is Rujina Begum. My friends call me Ruji for short. I am a British born Bangladeshi Muslim, living in Oldham.
I am 23 years old and work in PR in Manchester and oh yes I, a well educated modern girl – who always dreamed of marrying a prince riding up in white horse – recently changed my mind and had an arranged marriage in Sylhet, Bangladesh.
Why do you ask did I go and do something crazy like that I hear you say?
Well it’s quite simple, my ex boyfriend decided that he will marry his cousin instead – if three years of being together didn’t mean anything to him then that was fine by me!
But it left me with a broken heart and what better way to mend this broken heart but to get married before he did!
Finding a good looking husband from the Greater Manchester region was taking too long.
My family started their search early last September – but with no luck in the UK I decided my destination would have to be Bangladesh and that is where I ended up in December – married to a man I only met once and then spent two weeks with him before returning home.
And here I am in England waiting for him to join me in a couple of weeks.
The Husband had his visa interview this morning and I’m just waiting to hear from him now – surely he would get it after all I’m a working person with my own house – which I haven’t yet moved into because my mum thinks I should make that move with the Husband.
But anyway that sums me up for the time being – and you’ll be hearing from me a lot more as I spend the first couple of months trying to adjust to married life with da husband from Bangladesh who doesn’t speak English and who I don’t fancy!!!

WELCOME to the new Asian News blog.
Here you’ll find some completely new views on life, through the eyes of some of the area’s Asian community, as they go about their everyday lives in the North West.
Community workers will write about their experiences as they try to make lives better for those living in their neighbourhoods.
A local woman will share her experiences as she makes an epic journey through India.
We’ll have the latest news and gossip on the Bollywood scene, from a local perspective.
And the Asian News editorial team themselves will keep you up to date with the latest goings-on at the paper’s newsroom.
Not only that, you’ll be able to interact with all of our correspondents, joining in the debates that occur and having your say on the issues raised.
So keep your eyes peeled for our first entries, and get ready to be a part of the Asian News.