Eid Mubarak, The Gambia...

A little word of encouragement is needed even for the most valiant. Where I come from, it is said that no matter how fast your well-bred racing horse is, a little whipping with a riding crop motivates. My point being: to spur on one's government is different from "sycophancy," it motivates; just as being too saucy and condescending is no fair "criticism."

But that's by the way; it's official, tomorrow we celebrate end of Ramadan 2017. From my family and I to you and yours, Eid Mubarak and dewenati!

May all our good deeds be accepted. May the level of self-restraint manifested by us in this Ramadan be adopted. May we be more tolerant and overstanding and more open-minded to ideas. May we continue being brothers' keepers but be able to know when to live and let live, and when to let go. May we cherish rather than abhor our diversity. May Allah increase ours with joy, happiness and prosperity. May He bring peace to all chaotic places of the world. May the sick be healed and all departed souls showered with His Mercy.

Change is always happening...

Like it wasn't for some people last year or years before that, this year's Eid is not gonna be the same for others too. Circumstances change and so do people. In fact, change is always happening. Sometimes for the best, but also table-turning change that can cause one to look at one's fairweather friends and just want to punch them and their treachery in the face.

It takes a person of faith to accept and overcome grief motivated by change like that. The faithless and those who are quick to burn their bridges are caused to be in perpetual denial and anger. It's not easy but it should be expected; y'know, going back to how things were, back to rags even where one thought one's riches were forever, having to endure gloom though bloom once felt as if one's birthright, and times when one cannot but pick up humility as one's new habit.

When you're really good...

When you see them trying to change or tighten the rules of the game, or whatever it is that you're into, in the middle of it, and just when it's about your turn to perform, it's usually because you're really good. If you ask me, be energized - never say never.

Once I was a part of a dunk contest on a high school hoop along Via Augusta, Barcelona. Boy, I was on a roll like Dominic wilkins in his days. Some who would rather I lose, caught feels, decided to hike up the adjustable hoop to a lil above 10feet, but what they weren't told was that Lyke Myke was kyte... ha, elastic bruh! 

Us and our clichés...

I think we need a new cliché. I'm kinda missing that inordinate use of words like "impasse," "no-stress," "recuse," "unconstitutional," etc. and "blueprint" is tired.

On a serious note, fi kufi sanyon, Banjul moye daha Paris. Wye nak, before a "road map" for that, before all our beautiful ideas are forced to be moved from concepts to reality, before one dismisses the improvement of our newfound system so far, before any comparison between ours and Ghana's or Senegal's is considered valid, it's only fair that one asks oneself:

Do I become a negationist and pretend that our realities are the same? Is our political change a clean up or a smooth pick up from where the ex left off? What do we have as baseline if not hydra-headed social, political, and economic problems left unsolved by the ex-government? Me, given our circumstances, I wouldn't say a blueprint is long overdue. What's prolly overdue is the silence of some who've become overnight volunteer development con-sultants.

The #NewGambia discourse...

There's genuine criticism, but some baseless outcry is sheer nincompoopery - the difference between the two is usually not so deep that you cannot tell. As far as the #NewGambia discourse on here is concerned, the latter's what's prevailing and I think I'm also entitled to say this:

Just because your personal expectations were high and now hopes are fading doesn't justify you becoming a philosopher of pessimism. No government is in the business of addressing individual frustrations. So, feeling all upset about yours not being met yet is untrue to duty, it's selfish, unreasoning, and inconducive to that spirit of democracy that we all say we want to uphold. I just hope that reason will someday and hopefully very soon prevail on us all.

I am a Muslim...

I am a Muslim, was a Muslim from I was zero, taught to treat all people fairly; not for what they're said to be, or who I think they're, but for what I see and can prove of them - evidence over prejudice. This is why by Allah, I'd be a Muslim if I had to do it over again.

I hereby testify that the Islam that I know and the Islam of decent and intelligent civilisation has nothing to do with aggression, transgression, oppression nor any other 'ession' ending noun. In fact, it's common knowledge that oppression is a sin in Islam. So, all who says Islam is a threat to world peace is a bloody fraud, yeah.

The real threats to world peace are terror-funding politicians and we know them, those who profit from crime, the politics of terror, and today's islamophobia that's not even a phobia, just an attitude of fixed dislike, enmeshed with lies and hypocrisy - yeah, that’s it; groundless prejudice towards all who says Allahu Akbar. And because the bigger the lie, the easier to believe, some unthinking morons are being fooled and are now correlating Islam with violence.

But I am not going to be here fighting to protect Islam - that's not my job. Islam is God's to protect and He will. Mine is a personal spiritual struggle against evil, temptation, and for self-improvement. My job is to be a better Muslim, one who'll serve as an example worthy of emulation, one like the Imam of Finsbury Park Mosque. Mine is to give tidings, to "invite" (that's the word) to the way of Allah and to pray for personal salvation but also collective guidance.

I repeat... the Islam that I know doesn’t coerce; compulsion is forbidden. It is after one willingly believes that it becomes a must to obey regulations, majority of which are preventive of the spread of corruption. So if there are nutcases hellbent on creating mayhem by quoting half verses or tampering with punctuations in the Qur'an just to deform its meaning to their own agenda, that's theirs not Islam's and I'm not gonna apologise for that, nor will I on their behalf. Salam!

The #NewGambia observations..

The #NewGambia: I see many is becoming a volunteer auditor on here, and each trying to show how high he's on top of things - y'know, the urge to police and expose something shady about the public or the private sector.

Well, if I can't call it brave, I wouldn't say it's a bad thing. 

However, what I do find scary about it is how everyone's taking his opinion or hunch for a fact; scary because sometimes you think you're near when you're so far, until some rude awakening to the fact that your observation was illusory. 

Where people aren't so tending to see the bright side of things...

Where people aren't so tending to see the bright side of things, be there faults or not, people will create faults to find, hence not unusual for folks to suppress their emotions and expect you to enter their heads, find out who or what they have issues with, their expectations, causes of discontent, then become a god and fix it, otherwise the usual judgment:

you could, you just don't want to, or you just don't care. You wanted shit to happen. You're so selfish and cold like that... but how the hell is someone supposed to know what's weighing you down if you don't get it off your chest? So everyone ends up being angry and none can tell you the reason why, and prolly why the words "hater" and "hypocrite" are being whored out.

People are uh-mazing!

It's amazing how objective we can be, and how quick we are in passing judgment when it's someone else/else's at fault. But when we/ours is in the wrong, probably the same wrong, and we want exoneration, we tend to be blinded by our emotions.

We become anarchists, misplacing our moral compasses, setting selfishness in motion, justifying wrongs and condemning the right things to do. But even more astounding is how we want red tapes cut, rules bent, facts diluted just because it's us/ours, and how all who has a problem with that is a "hater."

Betrayal...

Betrayal - breaks the heart then hardens the heart. It changes people, their thoughts, emotions, and behaviours. It imbues that empathetic region of their psyche with a feeling of vulnerability, a need to be wary, a desire for revenge, particularly when betrayed by someone one cares about. Rational? I don't know. But I know man still ditches, snitches, and bitches, creates hitches against his, yet expects normalcy - so naive!

About youth...

I know youth – I once was. I know how it feels to feel broken though in one piece, to feel the need to be politically active, the need to be felt, to be heard, and to be seen to be burning down Babylon.

Positive thing if you ask me. But it can also be dangerous, particularly when one goes 270km an hour about it… you know, initiating needless defiance, waging some low-key protest or intifada against nothing; wanting to turn a Wellingara into a West Bank or Gaza, though different realities.

Charity...

Charity that I know is when you give to someone who cannot repay you. Giving to someone as fortunate as oneself may cultivate goodwill and strengthen bonds, but it's not charity; call it gift exchange. What's even more uncharitable is when the wretched willingly gives to the affluent, either as a bait, or a bribe, like poor communities be depriving their own to give to politicians.

Don't just believe, know...

Be careful what you choose to believe in. They say the best way for an enemy to get to you is not always through you. Rather, he'll find someone you love the most and use him. By this theory, buddies have ceased to be on friendly terms, and none of them can tell you the reason why they fell out.

This enemy only needs the beginning of a story he can sell to the one you love; limited? It doesn’t matter. He can always use his own imagination to fill in the details. If he's good enough, he'll make the lie look so elaborate and so compelling that vindicating oneself may best case be so difficult a cause; worst case, impossible.

The fara-fennis...

None so shifty in opinion (especially on social media) as he who wishes to belong to the circle of those who he believes hold some social (media) prominence, swear down. Such a person could be seen and heard parroting all over, granting authority to every word of those whose approval he lusts after, though conflicting.

Hold on. I think I should give an example. I think my narrative English is failing me:

Mr. X pessimistically posts on his wall: "The way I see it, this 'New Gambia' is incapable of success." Dude comments: "Spot on! I've been saying this like, forever."

On Mr. Y's wall is a rejoinder saying: "This 'New Gambia' will succeed, because the administration's proceeding as planned." The same dude comments: "I couldn't agree more. I think people are just being too adversarial, but really, we are on track."

Wait, me that's a mutual follower and sees both comments is now confused like: grr, what tha hell! Dude, yowe fo farr (where do you stand?) Do you even have a mind of your own? So, you see, one reason why the verbal (political) onslaught on here cyaan done?

Change is not always accepted just like that...

Managing change, especially in a politically changing environment will always be a challenge, because not everyone's gonna be thrilled that things are changing.

So in dealing with those who are being caused to accept change, the approach of those who caused the change should be agreeable to empathy and overstanding, knowing that they're dealing with feelings, with a people who are victims of their own beliefs, a people who feel that they're being asked to abandon their emotional attachments, and to quit on all what they depended on, and believed in for so long that they feel they should defend.

It's like trying to rehab someone undergoing withdrawal or enduring a heartbreak, like walking the grief-stricken through the "cycle of grief" - the denial, the anger... then acceptance, and like enabling disabled hopes, or seeking to include a people who already feel that they're being excluded.

You cannot call it friendship when....

You cannot call it friendship when it comes with the condition that one must be submissive to all of the other's wishes, or should uncritically agree with the other all the time, you know, like a yes-man. Candour in friendship is not "hypocrisy," deception is.

You can be confidently affirmative of each other's ideas, but when the other's in the wrong, makes a mistake or bad call, say it like it's natural to be fallible. If you choose to betray this principle for what's expedient, you must also not forget that God is witness to everything.

Kanilai riot, my take....

Matters of belief and ethnicity are often sensitive, with support structures so delicate that I'd rather avoid though not devoid of opinion. However, when a part of our own is about to fall victim of their own beliefs, and they perhaps don't know it yet, it behooves the rest of us to help save them from themselves, and from the harms that they can do to themselves.

Along that line, I think the many respected and informed residents of Kanilai and environs should take the lead in dialoging with the community, in promoting responsible behaviour, in nipping chaos in the bud, and in helping those who are still emotionally attached to what was to let go of their emotions and let God manifest His will, knowing that ours is too close-knit a country to allow issues like this to grow.

20-Fuss Century World News Headlines:

Terror attacks, suicide vests, drones, sadness, fear, stress, China-made hearts, disabled emotions, intelligent lunatics, foolish fanatics, imposed ignorance, denial and avoidance of truth, decline of civility, target-specific laws, porous policies, criminal aiding justice systems, bilateral and multinational crookeries, broken economies, editorial bias in mass media, selective sympathy and support, demonised religions, sanctified political systems... yeah, that too; it's that bad. God help this Dunia.

Gambia - I thought I should say this:

I believe there's a difference between 'truth to power' and 'attack on power.' I think the latter's an attempt to detract power from its worth and credibility, while the former's about standing firm against unjust acts, disservices, monocracy or like they call it in Nigeria: "bigmanism." I believe truth to power is about reminding power of it's responsibilities even if unnerving, but with courtesy, reason, and tact.

Yes, it's not unnatural to cross some lines here and there, but one shouldn't allow oneself to be pushed over. Truth to power is not about trampling on the constitutional rights, perks, and every privilege of power, because that'll be plain rude. And to be honest, half of the supposed "truth" being hurled against power on here lately are just attacks. Finally, if getting this out of my chest means I'm being a "hypocrite," then glory hallelujah I'm a "hypocrite."

The #NewGambia commentaries...

John Milton is credited with the saying that: "the mind is its own place and in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven." I Agree! And so I think it's important to know what to focus one's thoughts on/to.

Making one's sincere thoughts known is a noble thing. However, the extent of alarms being sounded on social media, and some of the positions on non-issues being pointed out as deserving reprehension about this "#NewGambia" can cause one to want to bail out of the implied apocalypse that's about to happen.

But when you look around real life, and do your own appraisal, unbiassing your mind as much as possible, you wonder whether the forecasted dysfunction in some of the criticisms is in fact a stance on principle or just a fit of pique. I just hope we're not inveighing against things to annoy one another, because that'll be so nasty and so inconducive.