Adil Zeshan

EARLIER THIS YEAR, I took a train to London for an upcoming conference. As I walked out of Euston station, dusk was settling, and not very many people were about. As London tends to be an infrequent stop for me, I am not intimately familiar with some of its more recognisable locales. However, a friend, who had arrived a day earlier, was feeding me directions via mobile on how to get to my hotel.

I walked past the red buses in front of the station, and as I turned right onto a main road, I felt slightly odd, as if there was something unusually familiar about where I was. I carried walking straight on, as instructed, double-checking with my guide where I was meant to turn next. I let him know I would call him if I ran into any problems in getting there.

Despite the traffic, the atmosphere was relatively peaceful. The arching trees swung gracefully in the cool breeze, and I glanced over to a grand, polished building on my left. As I walked past, something stood out in particular: a circular plaque on the building. I looked closer to read the inscription.

And it was then I truly realised where I was.

The plaque honoured the building’s historic link with the great Charles Dickens, who had once lived within the expanses of the site. And it was this very same plaque that, only some months earlier, had been streaked with flesh and blood.

Memories of 7/7 instantly flooded my mind; I stood only a few feet away from where a crowded red double-decker bus had once been shredded apart in just a few seconds.

ON THE DAY when three planes ploughed into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, and when United Flight 93 crashed down in Pennsylvania, I experienced intense mortification, shame, and profound anger at my religion and most of its followers; as months went by, these feelings were aggravated further by Muslims’ ridiculous refusals in policing their own. But even though I eventually fell from grace and joined the ranks of unbelievers, my feelings of embarrassment and anger towards the religion and subculture in which I was born and raised have remained. On July 7, 2005, I experienced the same profound surges of shame and anguish, even though I was now an ex-Muslim.

As with 9/11, I am deeply disturbed at the bloodlust that was on display on the morning of 7/7. And I continue to be appalled by the systematic duplicity employed by most Muslims in condemning their own; to utter half-hearted words of outrage at terror attacks while refusing to do so against their perpetrators is the hallmark of moral degeneration. And I am disgusted at Muslims who engage in high condemnation of those non-Muslims calling attention to Muslim atrocities, while refusing to unleash their anger on the Muslim perpetrators of such barbarities. And it sickens me wholly that Muslims go to the indignity of playing upon many non-Muslims’ default ignorance of Islam, by generating an unrelenting barrage of lies, so as to keep the many unsavoury aspects of Islam out of public discussion.

Those Muslims who admire and sympathise with the totalitarian nature of their fellow strident jihadis must be made, nay, forced to learn that it will bring forth nothing but the ravages of personal misery. And the jihadi terrorists must be hunted down, persecuted, and killed without apology.

When I stood in front of that little plaque that day, such were my thoughts as I remembered the innocent community of the dead; I was, and continue to be, filled with shame and anger over what has come to be. I am fiercely proud of my precious England, and woe betides any unlucky Muslim who tries to persuade me I am wrong.

Adil Zeshan

SAGES WHO SEE whole universes within grains of sand are not of this world, indeed not of any universe. But of all of the animal kingdoms flung far and wide across our planet, only one species strives to edge closer to that elusive reverie. That peculiar creature is us. Homo sapiens sapiens has, increasingly of late, made notable progress towards the ranks of the fabled sages, even if the destination remains beyond us all.

One does not need to be an all-seeing sage to appreciate that in our era, humans have made profound progress in witnessing the generation and application of critical thought. Innovation runs deep in the blood of humanity, less in some parts of the world than others, but we stand as universal witnesses to the fact that those who dare to climb the highest of summits of knowledge do not possess some elusive genetic superiority over other humans, but a core feature of the individual psyche common to all humans but less pronounced in other species: a trait arising from the unusually exaggerated evolutionary development of the prefrontal cortex, which harbours and regulates a quality we may call willpower.

Once upon a time, a small step on the moon was a giant leap for mankind. Our incomparable curiosity compels many of us to explore the vast depths of space; our inquisitive nature drives us to investigate the spectacular intricacies of the microscopic world. Ever since the dawn of civilisation, our universe seemingly shudders from the assaults in our unrelenting quest to seek familiarity with the inexorable laws of nature, wherever they are yet to be found.

We now know a little more about the universe we call our home. For a start, its boundaries extend far beyond what we could ever hope to imagine, and does not revolve around us humans alone. It does not shudder at our questions, and yet does not remain entirely insoluble, yielding up a few of its secrets to us only when we have earned the right to finally know. We earn this right only by devoting meticulous efforts into constructing a language that is truly worthy of communicating with our vast home. This language has been gradually and painstakingly crafted, through our humble but relentless endeavours, over the past several centuries. It is called science.

The purpose of science is not so much to predict or control as it is to explain, elucidate, and illuminate the mysteries of our home. An eagle makes its own flight possible not through first controlling and overcoming the forces of the air, but by exploiting existing air currents to its advantage. Similarly, science does not subjugate the object of its study, but looks alive to its peculiarities and seeks to understand them, using them to derive the larger context and framework of which they are a feature. Exceptions to the rule can shed as much insight, if not more, into the general explanatory framework as any compliant datapoint.

If the pursuit of understanding and insight were a religion, then as humans we are rapidly becoming the gods of our universe. We can now more than ever before reap the fruits of the scrupulous construct of the ongoing scientific enterprise. For we live in an age of science, and we are a lucky people.