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!