Verily,As you can see from the many comments that have greeted my incipient venture onto the Infidel’s Superhighway, my loyal readers would like details of my life before becoming The Great Mufti.
Zionist curs! Crusader spies! I have dispatched my loyal fedayeen to hunt you down! You obviously desire this information so that you may imprison me again in the Guantanamo! Well, know this! I fear not your cages nor your so-called interrogators, nor the soiled panties of Ashlee Simpson that were draped over my face in an attempt to humiliate me! A punishment? I can still taste their sweet musk upon my lips!
Anyway, The Great Mufti is not a vain man, so he will tell the story of his life here on the Internet, up to and including everything that has happened until now … no, now … no, now … heh heh, forgive the Mufti; he was just playing a little game with you there. I saw that Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind the other night (I know, I know, its like 3 years old but the ‘new releases’ section of the Lashkar Gul video shop still has Fast Times At Ridgemont High on it, so throw me a frickin’ bone here will you? Even the fact that I am still using Austin Powers catchphrases shows how shite our video shop is) and quite enjoyed its innovative messing around with time and space and blah blah blah, although I would quite happily let fall the sword of Allah on the bare neck of Jim Carrey if only to still his perpetually gurning mug.
So, as a callow youth, I was just like any other child of a Bradford kebab shop owner, busying my days with cricket, school, studies of my religion, and the taunting of local strays with a pointed stick until they reached such a frenzy that they would bite parts of themselves off in crazed frustration.
One day, when I was preparing a double meat with extra garlic sauce and chips for a neighborhood drunkard, another man, one from the old country, with the most luxuriant beard I had ever seen, and piercing eyes, came into our shop, wittily named by my father “Bradford’s Best Kebab Shop.”
The man watched as I stroked the blade through the soft, giving manufactured lamb meat that we sold to our inevitably inebriated customers at a large mark-up (and more often than not, with a special bacterial addition!) and muttered: “I see you have a good, smooth stroke my boy. Come here and I will tell you of jihad.”
Just I was about to leave to hear these fantastic tales, my father returned from the betting shop where he had gone to lay a small wager upon the outcome of that night’s episode of Robot Wars. My father was thoroughly assimilated and had embraced the deviant ways of the infidel wholeheartedly. To watch him hooting and jabbering with excitement like a primitive ape as his favoured contraption won the day on the satanic Robot Wars program drove a skewer through the very centre of my young heart.
“Oi you, beardy! Clear out and don’t fuckin’ come back. We don’t want your type round here poisoning the kiddies minds with your bullshit about ‘jihad’ and ‘holy wars’ and the mujahid donkey of Baluchistan that can shoot rockets out of its arse and all that flim flam. Take your fuckin’ robes and piss off back to Tattooine where you belong,” shouted my father, brandishing a bottle of cheap cider he was evidently planning to consume in order to maximise the excitement of Robot Wars.
Gathering himself up with the dignity that I have come to associate with my brothers in jihad, the older man rose to his full height before issuing his riposte:
“YEAH? YEAH? Anytime you cunt! Name your fuckin’ time and place! I’ll fuckin’ have you! Peace. Allahu Akbar!”
A brief and unsatisfactory scuffle ensued before my father forced the bearded man from his property. He complained about a lingering “stench of camel shit” in the shop for the remainder of that afternoon, and during the evening rush loudly spoke about “them gypo cunts who was in here before stinking up the joint” in order to allay any suspicions our customers may have had.
Later that night, someone came and placed human faeces in a paper bag on our doorstep, lit the paper bag, rang our doorbell and ran away. As my father was stupefied by drink after his winnings on Robot Wars, I answered the door. Seeing the blazing package, I knew it was a trap. Instead of stamping on the package and covering my foot in faeces while also sustaining minor burns, I merely pushed it aside with the broom into the gutter, and doused the small blaze with the garden hose. As I finished, I heard a rustle in the darkness, as a tall, robed figure moved away from a corner and down the street at speed.
The next day, as I was on my way to school, Simple Iqbal, who had been cursed by Allah for his father’s wickedness (although my own father said that it wasn’t wicked to buy a house directly underneath high voltage power lines, just plain fuckin’ stupid) came up to me bearing a note. Patting him on the head, and sending him on his way, I opened the note and read it –
“Thou did see through my trap well, young Jedi, er, er, I mean jihadi. You have the makings of a great warrior for Islam! Even now, a great battle rages in the land of Afghanistan, where the godless Russian crusaders seek to impose their ways of irrigation, universal health care and education for women on the good sons of that Islamic land. We must not let this stand. If you would fight for your God, give unto Simple Iqbal your agreement, and I shall take care of the rest. Signed: Abu El-Traain.”
Retrieving Simple Iqbal from the hedge into which he had wandered after I took the note from him, I told him to go back unto whomever had sent him on this life-changing errand, and tell them I desired the path of the holy warrior.
NEXT WEEK: To the land of jihad on the back of a giant goshawk!


