#OrdinarilyRemarkable – thoughts on the blog-o-sphere.

Looking back over my blog posts I realise now I have been doing this since 2015! How on earth has the time gone by so quickly.

I initially started this blog from the desire to share something about my life here with the world because I see and read so much negativity about the Middle East, Muslims and Arabs, I wanted to counter that negativity with my own dialogue.

Then in 2016 whilst experiencing my own difficulties along the journey of life, and all the violence unleashed around the world from Daesh, the Syrian Regime, Western airstrikes, Russian airstrikes and of course not to mention the violence in Yemen raging, unstoppable. I found myself struggling to write.

I felt almost paranoid about being a Muslim. I am a practising Muslim, I wear a Burka, and to so many people that makes me the same as Daesh.

I asked myself how can I communicate with people in a way which demonstrates that I and so many other Muslims are not of them. Sometimes just saying that we are not the same is not enough.

I also could see in the news so many reverts like myself and other born Muslims actually going to join them. I thought a lot. Tried to understand. I even read an article in the NY Times, where it discussed the character “types” of Western people who join Daesh.

I fit that type.

That is a depressing thought.

I was and remain 100% opposed to them and to the way they have hijacked our Religion and how they have deceived the people who join them.

But what could I, with my little voice, my ordinary life, hope to achieve in the face of such large, evil forces.

I found myself struggling to write for two reasons.

How can one find anything productive to say when there is so much senselessness in the world.

How can one find anything productive to say when there is so much chatter and the value in the written word seems to have just bottomed out.

There is so much written material out there. So many, many, many blogs. So many people struggling, vying to be heard, to be an internet star. What do I possibly have to offer!?

Then I realised. Being ordinary is what makes us powerful.

Ordinary people live everywhere. We go about our lives. We don’t do anything particularly remarkable. We work, we have achievements but actually our greatest achievement is just that, our ordinariness. Our ordinariness to us could be remarkable to someone else living in another place. Our ordinariness is diversity itself.

We are what negates evil, extremes.

Without ordinary there is only chaos and saints left. Nothing in the middle to bring balance.

SO lets all unite. Blog ordinary blogs about every ordinary detail, read millions of blogs about every ordinary detail, let the whole world know how many millions of ordinary people we are.

Our lives are ordinary. Now that is remarkable.