This is a great article for everyone, especially our youth, to read and reflect upon. Nice one Jai.
This is no way to be a man
Lennie James, The Observer, Sunday June 8 2008
Barely a week goes by without another young Briton being brutally killed in a knife attack. Acclaimed actor and writer Lennie James, who will star in Fallout, the TV version of Roy Williams’s play about teenage violence, has watched in horror as the death toll mounts. Here, in an open letter to the knife carriers, he draws on his own difficult upbringing to make an impassioned plea to the lost generation of young boys who visit random savagery on their victims
Next month Channel 4 will show Fallout by Roy Williams, the screen version of his critically acclaimed stage play. Beautifully directed by Ian Rickson, Fallout is the enthralling story of the murder of a 16-year-old boy, Kwame, and the consequences that befall the four boys involved in the killing, the two girls connected to it and the police officers investigating the case.
I play one of the police officers, DS Joe Stephens, who is returning for the first time to the estate where he grew up to help in the investigation. He identifies greatly with the victim. Like Joe, Kwame had ambitions outside the confines and dictates of his estate and his background. Joe takes Kwame’s death very personally, as if the killers had murdered Joe’s younger self. This leads him to pursue the suspects with a zeal that alarms his colleagues, and to bend the rules to breaking point.
First and foremost, as it was on stage, Fallout is a wonderfully written, engrossing and entertaining story about belonging, escape, revenge and love. It is also a story that attempts to make sense of the seemingly senseless killing of a 16-year-old boy, stabbed to death for his trainers.
The issue of knife and gun crime among the young is firmly on the agenda at the moment, and rightly so. Since we premiered Roy’s play at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 2003 some 350 teenagers have been shot or stabbed to death by other teenagers or young adults, and that may be a conservative estimate. Twenty-six teenagers were shot or stabbed in London alone in 2007. So far this year more than 100 have been attacked using knives. The number of dead is already at 13 and likely to rise.
Much has been written on the subject of this seeming spike in teen-on-teen violence over the past year or so. Columnists, commentators, politicians, child psychologists, law-makers, police officers, religious and community leaders, bereaved parents, gang members and ex-teenage killers have all expressed their opinions, apportioned blame and offered solutions. I myself was intent on writing a comparison between the war in Iraq and Afghanistan with the so-called ‘war on street crime’ announced by Boris Johnson, and others before him, and the relative collateral damage and loss of young lives. It was to be an investigation into whether the best response to our young people killing our young people is to declare war on them.
But as I sat down to complete the article, to add some statistics to bolster my argument and to clarify my misgivings as to whether Boris had an exit strategy for his war, I read of the death of Robert Knox. Robert, 18, was allegedly stabbed to death by a 21-year-old who was carrying two knives. So I scrolled up my article to change ’13 [dead] and likely to rise’ to 14 and likely to… As I did so I wondered how many more times I would have to scroll up and change that number before the article was printed. Would I have to change 16 to 17 and 18 and 19 and so on, and would it still be ‘likely to rise’?
Suddenly the article I’d thought would be an interesting and insightful take on the subject became little more than another voice added to the collective hand-wringing and navel-gazing that seems to have characterised the response to this issue. It is all well intentioned and absolutely necessary if we are to find solutions. The problem is that we are so very adept at exploring our own deficiencies but so very slow to improve on them or to learn from them.
Like a huge tanker turning 180 degrees, it takes for ever for our sentiment to be made into decisive action. In the meantime, should the current trend continue, a teenager or two will be stabbed, possibly killed, every week for the rest of this year, like last, by someone no older than themselves.
So instead I have written an open letter to the knife-carriers, to the murderers-in-waiting and their potential victims. I don’t know how many of them might be Observer readers, but in this www. world, where this is written may not be where it is read.
Since this article was written, two more teenagers have been killed in London, bringing the total to 16.
Fallout, part of Disarming Britain, Channel 4′s season on gun and knife crime, is to be screened at 10pm on Thursday 3 July
To whom it may concern,
My name is Lennie James. I am a 42-year-old father of three. I grew up in south-west London. I was brought up by a single mother. I was orphaned at 10, lived in a kids’ home until I was 15 and was then fostered. I tell you this not to claim any special knowledge of how you’ve grown, but to explain how I have, and from where I draw my understanding.
I want to talk to you about the knife you’re carrying in your belt or pocket or shoe. The one you got from your mum’s kitchen or ordered online or robbed out of the camping shop. The knife you tell yourself you carry for protection, because you never know who else has got one.
I want to talk to you about what that knife will do for you. If you carry it, the chances are you will be called on to use it. It is a deadly weapon, so if you use it the chances are you will kill with it. So after you’ve killed with it, after you’ve seen how little force it takes for sharpened steel to puncture flesh. After your mates have run away from the boy you’ve left bleeding. When you’re looking for somewhere to dash the blade, and lighter fluid to burn your clothes. When your blood is burning in your veins and your heart is beating out of your chest to where you want to puke or cry, but can’t coz you’re toughing it out for your boyz. When you are bang smack in the middle of ‘Did you see that!’ and ‘Oh, Jesus Christ!’ here’s who to blame…
Blame the boy you just left for dead. Blame him for not believing you when you told him you were a bigger man than him. Blame him for not backing down when you made your chest broad, bounced into him and told him about your knife and how you would use it. Blame him for calling you on and making you prove yourself. Tell yourself if he had just freed up his phone or not cut his eyes at you like he did, he wouldn’t be choking on his blood and crying for his mum.
Then blame your mum. When the police are banging down her door looking for you, or she hears the whispers behind the ‘wall of silence’, tell her it’s all her fault for being worthless. Cuss her out for having kids when she was nothing but a kid herself, or for picking some drug or some man over you again and again. Even if she only had you and devoted herself to you, even if she is a great mum, blame her anyway. Blame her for not being around more to make sure you took the chances she was out working her fingers to the bone to give you.
When you’re done with her, blame the man she picked to make you with. Blame him for being less than half the man he should have been. When he comes to bail you out and starts running you down for the terrible thing you’ve done, tell him straight: ‘I did what I did coz you didn’t do what you should have done.’ Even if he did right; respected your mother, worked to provide for his family financially and spiritually, taught you right from wrong and drummed it home everyday… Even if he nurtured you as best he could, blame him for the generation of men he comes from.
The one that allowed an adolescent definition of manhood to become so dominant. The one that measures a man by how many babymothers he has wrangling his offspring, or by how ‘bad’ his reputation is on the streets of whatever couple of square miles he chooses to call his ‘ends’.
Damn them for letting you believe that respect is to be found with gun in hand or knife in pocket. Damn them and everyone who feeds the myth of these gangsters, villains, thieves and hustlers. Anyone who makes them heroes while damning hard-working, educated, honest men as weak, sell-outs or pussies.
If you are black, blame white people for the history of indignities they heaped on you and yours. For the humiliation of having to go cap-in-hand or get down on bended knee or having to burn shit down before you are afforded something so basically fundamental as equality. If you are white, blame black folk and Muslims for taking all your excuses. Failing that, blame a class system that keeps you poor and ignorant so the ‘uppers’ and ‘middles’ can feel better about themselves.
You have good reason to blame them all. I wouldn’t be you growing up now for love nor money. Your generation has so little room to manoeuvre. We had more space to step around the bullshit. We weren’t excluded at the rate you lot are. Teachers hadn’t given up or lost their authority over us. They still tried to protect and guide us even through our most disruptive years.
The police stopped and searched us, but we fought that right out of their hands – we hoped into extinction. But they want to bring back that abusive practice. They are still hooked on punishment rather than prevention. They seem ignorant to the fact that they are feeding you acceptance of an already prevalent gang mentality. As far as you can see, the police are not protecting and serving you, they are coming at you like just another street gang trying to boss your postcode.
When I was where you are now, generations of state agencies, social services, policy-makers and politicians had not abdicated all responsibility for me. We weren’t left to our own devices like you have been. Is it any wonder that you end up expressing yourself in such a violently pathetic way?
We should be ashamed. I am. You have shamed us into a desperate need to do something about ourselves. We have collectively failed you and we should take all the blame that is ours for that… but so should you.
I blame you. I blame you because as a generation you are selfish, self-centred and have little or no empathy for anyone but yourselves. You are politically stunted and socially irresponsible and… you scare us. What scares us most is that you would rather die than learn. Your only salvation may be that still most of you aren’t playing it out dirty. The vast majority of young men, even with all that is stacked against them, are finding their way around the crap. The boy you will kill, should you continue to carry that knife, almost certainly had the same collective failures testing him. He probably felt no less abandoned and no less scared. He also, almost certainly, wasn’t carrying a knife.
Whatever it seems like, whatever you’ve read, whatever you tell yourself about protection being your reason, statistics show the life you take will be that of an unarmed person. That is what that knife will do for you. It will make you escalate a situation to where it is needed. It will give you a misguided sense of confidence. It will make you the aggressor. That knife will make you use it. It will bring you nothing worth having. There is no respect there. The street may give you some passing recognition, but any name you think you might make will soon be forgotten.
Your victim will be remembered long after you. Name me one of the boys who killed Stephen Lawrence. Once you’ve bloodied that knife you may as well be dead because you’ll be buried for 10 to 20 years. Banged up for that long, only a fool would look back and think it was worth it. You’ll be nothing more than a sad, unwanted, unnecessary statistic.
If you were mine, this is what I would tell you. I would make myself a big enough man to beg. I’d get down on bended knees if I had to. I would beg you to take that knife out of your pocket and leave it at home. I would tell you that I know you are scared and lost and that I know the risks involved in what I’m asking you to do. I know that what we could step around, you have to walk through, and that there is always some fool who isn’t going to make it any other way but the wrong way. I’m just begging you not to be that fool.
Be a better man than that. Let the story they tell of you be that you exceeded expectations… that you didn’t drown. Don’t spend your days looking to be a ‘bad-man’ – try to be a good one. Our biggest failure is that our actions have left you not knowing how precious you are. We have left you unaware of your worth to us. You are precious to us. Give yourself the chance to grow enough to understand why.
Be safe.
Lennie James
Knives, young people and the law: The roller coaster of tragedy
24 January 2007 Jevon Henry, 18, is stabbed to death in St John’s Wood, north London – the first in a spate of teen-on-teen stabbings and shootings at the start of the year.
1 February 2007 Maximum sentence for carrying a knife is increased from two to four years.
22 February Church and community group leaders attend a Downing Street summit on knife crime. Tony Blair and Home Secretary John Reid promise tougher legislation, but Shadow Home Secretary David Davis says: ‘This is the fourth summit on gun crimes and gangsters Tony Blair has had and at every turn the problem has got worse.’
Speaking on the same day in Manchester, David Cameron says the solution to teenage gun and knife crime is to strengthen the family: ‘Gangs are crowded with boys who have never been part of an intact family, where people belonged with and to each other. The same boys may never have known the innate respect which flows from having access to a father’s love and direction. They cannot survive in an emotional vacuum and their absent fathers know it.’
March 2007 Five teen-on-teen stabbings in the UK in under three weeks. Odwayne Anthony Barnes, 16, in Birmingham; Jason Spencer, 17, in Nottingham; Kodjo Yenga, 16, in Hammersmith, west London; Adam Regis, 15, in Plaistow, east London; Michael Metcalfe, 19, in Garston, near Liverpool.
19 March John Reid announces that police will now be required to record whether an incident involved a knife, telling Parliament: ‘It has to involve personal and parental responsibility as well as the local community.’
27 March A one-off select committee inquiry into knife crime takes place. Martin Salter MP advises: ‘We need to cut through all this nonsense and bring all the legislation together in an overarching knives and offensive weapons bill to simplify the process.’
April 2007 Blair claims that teen violence is a problem of black culture and cannot be solved ‘by pretending it is not young black kids doing it’. Lee Jasper, senior adviser on equality to London Mayor Ken Livingstone says: ‘The government has failed to respond to… a clear demand for additional resources to tackle youth alienation and disaffection.’
1 October 2007 The Violent Crime Reduction Act comes into force, making it illegal to sell a knife or any item with a blade or point to a person under the age of 18. Previously the age limit was 16.
1 January 2008 Henry Bolombi, 18, becomes the first teen-on-teen violence fatality of 2008; stabbed after he gets off a bus in Edmonton, north London on the way home from New Year’s Eve celebrations.
February 2008 Government publishes Violent Crime Action Plan, a three-year strategy to tackle gun and knife crime including a £20m investment for interventions and information sharing between police and communities.
May 2008 A survey of 355 people aged 16 to 24 in London, Manchester and Bristol found 30 per cent said it was acceptable sometimes to carry a knife while 23 per cent would use one. One in 10 claimed to have had access to a gun.
5 May London Mayor Boris Johnson appoints Ray Lewis as his deputy for young people. Speaking at a knife crime summit in City Hall Lewis said ‘We need to offer them [teenagers] outlets and guidance that will respond to their aspirations and divert them away from gangs and antisocial behaviour, whether it is sporting activities, after-school clubs or mentoring.’
24 May Harry Potter actor Robert Knox is stabbed to death outside a bar in Sidcup.
29 May A two-week campaign by police in London resulted in almost 200 knives being seized.
5 June 2008 A Downing Street summit results in the prosecution age for carrying a knife being lowered from 18 to 16.
June 9, 2008 at 9:09 pm
Yeah it was a good article -but thats all it is.
Call me a sceptic but that letter is not going to change a thing. For a start what are the chances of a hoodie reading a letter?
It frustrates me cos we have muppets like these in the asian community. I knew so many guys who did not grow up in poverty-far from it. I may even go as far as saying some were middle class. But they have a self-destruct aura about them. Like theyre are trying to be something theyre not, dragging themselves down, muppets.
Stabbing someone is not about “being a man”. Its about having balls. Having the balls to do something crazy, proving to other miscreants you are a bigger psycho than them, hence earning more respect-this is the ghetto mentality.
This kind of thing has been going on in Britain for a long time. The only thing that has changed is the limit. They may push things further but Im not sure whats next.
June 9, 2008 at 10:18 pm
As-Salaamu ‘alaikum,
I read the letter and it seems that it is a raft of negative stereotypes about what young people think (blaming mum and dad or their victim etc). It fails to take account of the fact that a young person might carry a knife because of perceived necessity and not seek out trouble, and not pull it out as soon as someone casts aspersions on him. The statement that “if you carry a knife, the chances are you will be called on to use it” is baseless, unless it means the carrier avails himself of the opportunity to freely visit any neighbourhood he likes, as those of us who live outside the ghetto are able to do freely, with or without weapons. It is a fact that historically, men carried swords when out in public, and this includes the time of the Sahaba (radhi Allahu ‘anhum), and surely most did not get called upon to them more often than not.
June 10, 2008 at 4:02 am
I do think its highly unlikely that the average youth will read that letter – and it actually seems too long to read! But I applaud Mr James nonetheless for trying to do something.
I found This article interesting.
Lessons learned in knife class
June 10, 2008 at 9:57 am
Wa ‘alaykum salam wa rahmatullah
Yeah it was a good article -but thats all it is.
Call me a sceptic but that letter is not going to change a thing. For a start what are the chances of a hoodie reading a letter?
I think Umm Maymoonah and yourself have only echoed what Lennie himself says at the beginning of his letter: that the youth on the street won’t see this (or understand it probably), but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be written. And of course, the internet makes such articles that much more accessible.
But that’s not the point of the article for me: I’ve put it up for everyone else to read. It is our responsibility to spread this message down to the youth. No public/state policy or initiative is eagerly followed by the youth until the elders and responsible members of the society break it down to the youth and translate if necessary what the politicians and the rest of the community want from them.
All of us know young people, and if we don’t, then instead of wasting our time as only Muslims know best how to do, we should revive our da’wah efforts and take our Deen to the streets. And part of that effort is to utilise everything that we have to reach our objective whether that’s government funding, new initiatives, frank articles like the one above to educate us and thus reach out to them in a language they will understand etc.
It’s just far too easy for us to read that and say, “that’s nice, shame they won’t see it though.” This smacks of elitism and apathy: it might be acceptable for many, but not for Muslims who are working to better the social condition of their community. The onus is upon is if we know that they aren’t going to do anything about it.
It fails to take account of the fact that a young person might carry a knife because of perceived necessity and not seek out trouble, and not pull it out as soon as someone casts aspersions on him.
Failing to take account of the exception is not blameworthy in any piece of work or article, otherwise it wouldn’t be 3 pages but 6 pages everytime.
And it is the exception. How many killings can be attributed to someone who killed in self-defence using his knife that he never intended to attack with? I’m afraid the stereotype of the aggressor wanting to frighten/threaten/attack the weaker one is the reality that the majority of us recognise and witness in our “no-go” areas. And it is to this stereotype that Lennie has directed his article at, and quite right too.
The statement that “if you carry a knife, the chances are you will be called on to use it” is baseless
I’m happy for you that you’ve not had to experience first-hand how incorrect your statement is. Many of us will remember from back in the day (and indeed some of us in current times), that when being attacked, one desperately tries anything to repel the attacker. Whether that’s a brick, a stone, a branch, a mobile phone (!) or conversely using the ground as a weapon (i.e. throwing against) or a car window etc: this is the reality of being attacked.
In fact let me put it to you in more frank way: if I am being jumped by three attackers and they are kicking the living xxxx out of me, and I know that I have a knife in my pocket, it’s coming out. Simple as that. That knife is either going to scare off or damage enough to stop the attack. As for what happens after that, then we ask Allah for ‘afiyah.
If I don’t have a knife, then if I have no other way of defending myself, I’m curling up and minimising the damage. That’s the reality brother that you’re missing.
Obviously I’m talking about a situation of peace and stability as we have in this country however bad some of the crime is getting. This is not the case for when we live in complete fear.
This vicious circle where everyone needs to carry a knife either to attack the weak or for the weak to defend against the aggressor has got to stop. This is not a war zone: these are peaceful streets, with families and children, in a land of peace. I’m not a pacifist by any means, but if you keep indirectly justifying what you are, the playground scrap that we used to have every day with old good old punches and kicks will be replaced with the reality of knives. And like Lennie, with children of my own in school, that is an unimaginable situation to have.
Please revise your ideas. This has nothing to do with living in the ghetto or outside it. Once something is justified in one place, it will find its way into the rest of the country and especially the schools in no time whatsoever.
It is a fact that historically, men carried swords when out in public, and this includes the time of the Sahaba (radhi Allahu ‘anhum), and surely most did not get called upon to them more often than not.
This historic fact has context. It is to scare off the enemy in dangerous times and when the state is unable to control the situation. Exceptions for the state and the Mujahidin are obvious, but normal people should only really carry weapons themselves when law and order has broken down to that extent that there is absolutely no hope of safety. That is normally called a “state of war” which the streets of London and other cities haven’t reached yet by any stretch of the imagination.
And Allah knows best.
June 10, 2008 at 10:50 pm
As-Salaamu ‘alaikum,
None of the recent spate of killings has appeared to have been done in self-defence. There have been a variety of motives: the stereotypical ones have been murders occasioned by petty provocations and visiting the wrong neighbourhood. Some have been targeted murders (particularly the early ones in 2007), some have been gang attacks, and the most recent seems to have been an attack on a young girl by a predatory male. One that was wrapped-up last week involved a cold-blooded murder by a young man whose chain had been pulled off him several hours earlier by a friend of his victim. If any of them had been self-defence, it would not have caused this outcry.
The problem is that it is not a proof against carrying a knife for self-protection. People (men especially) have been doing this since well before early 2007 – when I was at sixth form college (1993 to 1995), I heard it said that some students (males from Norbury and Thornton Heath – generally considered the “rougher” parts of Croydon) did not feel dressed if they went out without a knife. Yet, I do not recall anyone having been stabbed for anything like the same reasons young men are being killed now.
Are any of these killers men who have carried knifes for self-defence and got “called upon to use them”? If we do not know, this writer’s claim does not stand.
As for the circumstance of being attacked by a gnag, that is precisely the circumstance when using force is legitimate, and if a thug who attacks someone and discovers too late that his victim has a knife, it’s no tragedy. It’s a tragedy if someone curls up to “minimise the damage” and they kick him for too long for that to work. I do not have to deal with this on anything like a regular basis and that is the reason why I do not carry a knife; it is not the result of my not carrying a knife.
This is not a war zone: these are peaceful streets, with families and children, in a land of peace. I’m not a pacifist by any means, but if you keep indirectly justifying what you are, the playground scrap that we used to have every day with old good old punches and kicks will be replaced with the reality of knives. And like Lennie, with children of my own in school, that is an unimaginable situation to have.
Well, I don’t remember “good old playground scraps”, I remember being beaten up in public by thugs for roughly the same level of provocation that gets people shot or stabbed today. The teachers let them get away with it because it was supposedly my fault.
How widespread this type of abdication was I don’t know (my school was a small, badly-run special school), but clearly we have a certain type of youth out there today who think they do not have to put up with petty irritations like being spoken to in the wrong tone of voice, who are prepared to use lethal force and probably do not care that carrying knives is illegal. No, I do not wish to have knives go into school playgrounds, but that does not mean that the average person in the street is dangerous if he or she has a knife. (It is, from what I have read, legal in Poland, and I wonder if they have anything like the problem we have in some communities.)
As for the context in which the Salaf carried swords, carrying swords in the street was common until relatively recently in times of war and peace. The state simply cannot be there all the time and it is not much comfort to be told you did the right thing leaving it up to the state by leaving the knife at home when you have had an expensive or treasured item stolen or, worse, been sexually assaulted. It is not only useful for defending oneself, but also for intervening when someone else is in trouble nearby (not only from a person but possibly also from a dog, and sometimes both as some thugs are known for being fond of pitbulls). In some parts of the UK it has been reported that people are attacked in front of a crowd, and nobody has intervened; I suspect that such people might not be so bold if they thought people around might be armed.
Ultimately, carrying weapons is illegal right now and I do not recommend carrying them, but it is disturbing that every time someone is killed, people call for minimum 5-year sentences for just carrying one, when this carries a substantial risk of jailing young men who had no intention of using them if at all possible, and had been stopped for reasons relating to their appearance. It probably will not stop murders on estates of young men caught walking into the wrong neighbourhood; most of those caught will be outside these places.
At the end of the day, I do not think that the average person – including the average young Black person – is dangerous when carrying a knife in the sense that they will stab someone at the smallest provocation. If that were so, you would have a lot of stabbings in kitchens! Fists can be lethal weapons as well and we are not required to leave them at the door on the way out, however powerfully built or skilful with them we are. Rather, we have a certain type of youth with a certain attitude, and that is the problem.
And Allah knows best.
June 10, 2008 at 11:31 pm
Assalamualaikum
Jazakumullahu-khairan.
“if you carry a knife, the chances are you will be called on to use it”. This statement is factually false. If I start to carry a knife, do my chances of getting into a fight increase to 51%? No? Well then my chances are still that I will NOT be called on to use it. However there is still SOME chance of getting into a fight eventually, and GIVEN that I am in a fight I PROBABLY WILL use the knife. (read the words in capitals in your choice of south asian accent).
It seems some of our dear brothers and sisters have their own idea of what Mr James it trying to do and criticising him for falling short of that idea. He is not trying to make all thugs drop their knives immediately. He is well aware that those most likely to stab are least likely to read .
Mr James is hopeful that some few young folks will read his article and change their minds, and I have to regard him well to have tried. Also please be aware that in journalistic fields, the Open Letter is a format which has an intended audience not only of the addressee but also of the general public. That means it is a valid activity for Mr James to address the youth even if he knows full well that it’s only us insomniacs that read it.
The point so far? Mr James has done an honourable and useful thing without straying significantly from the realm of accuracy so let us recognise that.
The young fools will try to bust each other up with or without knives. The attackers frequently express surprise at just how easily the knife goes into the victim. Family breakdown is a big issue, but even with the family visibly intact it can be missing the right balance of love and discipline. I was going to mention how to control your kids with love over discipline but I havn’t got any (got no kids or discipline, got lots of love) so I’ll leave that to Mr Smith.
June 11, 2008 at 2:50 pm
World of the Unseen – NOT TO BE MISSED
Belief in the Last day
by Sheikh Waleed Basyouni
Manchester: Sat 14th – Sun 15th June 2008
Join us in a journey from the life of this world to the life of the Hereafter. Learn about the signs of the last hour, the inevitable death and the transition from this world to the hereafter.
June 15, 2008 at 1:34 am
Assalamualaikum
I thank Abu Esa for putting this article on his blog. Whatever the intentions Lennie James had for writing this letter, his as with all literary pieces invokes a varied and widespread response in the hearts and minds of individuals – literature is emotionally very subjective especially evocative pieces and peoples perceptions are based upon individual experiences and upbringing. People who have been immersed in a situation of this nature will undoubtedly be able to relate to it like myself. I got myself in a spot of bother with some white guys from a neighboring school (my brother and I cained a couple of lads because they tried to jump us- these lads turned out to be well connected and a bit nuts)These lads (5/6 of them) would wait outside the school gates and one had carried a knife. We had some pretty near misses but by the grace of Allah we were alright. I decided to get a knife myself for “protection” (it was a crocodile dundee esqe “you call that a knife” knife), my teacher eventually found out I was carrying a knife around school and he asked me some obvious yet pertinent questions such as “what would you have done if you saw these lads?” I told him I would show them the knife and it would act as a deterrent. He then proceeded with this line of questioning by asking “what if they weren’t deterred?” I couldn’t answer him. I didn’t think that far ahead as the whole series of events were based upon impulsion and youthful naivety is masked by youthful exuberance and that deceives you into believing a Utopian conclusion would prevail i.e. firstly I didn’t require any help from elders coz I was 10 men and secondly, I assumed I wouldn’t use the knife. Alhamdullilah the schools liaised with each other and expelled the boys and the situation diffused almost instantaneously thereafter. If someone had relayed Lennie James’ message to me in a more succinct manner (teenagers don’t have the will or patience to read all that)I may have done things differently. Maybe that was one of his intentions as the letter was published in a broadsheet, one can assume it was directed towards the middle classes and intelligentsia and him believing in the age old adage of change happening from the top down.
People will still be killing each other but that doesn’t mean we should allow our defeatism to consume and devour any kind of pro active impulses we may have. Would you be so apathetic if you showed an ounce of empathy and put yourself in the shoes of Jessie James’ mother or Amar Aslam’s father?
June 17, 2008 at 3:00 am
JazakAllah khair brother Billy.
One thing to remember is that the initail reason for carrying a knife and then the reason it was used are probably in most cases not the same.
Many of the boys in my high school carried a pen knife – small – but still a knife. In most cases I think the fact that they were armed made them feel braver and lead them to more voilence. Allah knows best.
July 5, 2008 at 10:12 pm
Disappointed with “Fallout” drama…
Last Thursday, Channel 4 broadcast Fallout, a feature-length drama about a stabbing in London and its aftermath. Its star is Lennie James, who wrote an article for the Observer a couple of weeks ago in the form of a letter……