athena25

So I was standing waiting for my train last night and watching (not in a stalking way) two teenage muslim girls. They were doing the teenage girl thing: absurdly colourful mobile phones out, giggling at something, lollipops. The works. One of them turned around and she was wearing a huge black hoody with "Soldiers of Allah" on it in giant faux-stencil silver writing. Several thoughts tumbled into my head at once: was she a goth; was it a political statement; was it irony directed at the Salvation Army? I did discount the latter on the grounds that they don't seem to have as much of a presence in The Smoke as in God's Own County. (please note, and this is pertinent to the next section, that I almost deleted "god" in that phrase).

Of course, my lefty all-things-to-all-people-I-went-to-a-grammar-school-so-the-world-is-a-meritocracy part of my brain (that I usually drug, traumatise and beat up) kicked in like a mule. I became paranoid. Would I have thought these things if she had been white?

*Pause*

Fuck it. Of course I would. Especially if she had been some teenager (youthful smug bastards) with a "Soldiers of God" and a fuck-off crucifix on a bling necklace that dangled to her navel. Or would I? At any rate, I wouldn't have had the "warning team!" reaction that I did. Maybe it was the headscarf. As an item if clothing it causes the wearer to fall into three main categories: yah-scum, hippy-scum and Religon. The latter seems to stall my (usually) honed ability to scatter backhanded sarcastic comments. Looking at her, with my self-consciously "non-muslim" eyes and sketchbook understanding of the faith, I could not form an opinion. And that bothered me. Usually I have no issue with stereotyping: Bloke In A Tracksuit? Gobby Chav Scum. Girl with Short Skirt: Fevered Slut Monkey. It's a game that I entertain myself with at train stations and, as it all occurs in my head, I feel quietly justified, or at least not ill at ease with myself. This was different. The real problem is that I don't know what the outfit "meant" to me, or how to react to it.

Maybe true religious and political freedom is the ability to call everyone a twat.

I am going out tonight. So I packed a second pair of shoes as I did not have the right colour of tights (black tights with fawn shoes = blind) At least I apply the same stringent rules to myself as to everyone else. I am an even handed sociopath.