Sarfraz Manzoor

It is only the first week of the year but I am exhausted already. Earlier this week an article of mine was published in the Guardian; at the time of my writing it I thought I thought I was writing a thought-provoking and perhaps slightly mischevious piece pointing out that not all aspects of Muslim life were terrible and that the wider society could possibly learn a few things from Muslims. Well the torrents of comments which flooded the Guardian website showed just how provocative readers thought my article was and the most peculiar thing was that I was not in any way intending my views to be all that controversial. Reading the original article now leaves a bitter taste in my mouth; the truth is I think its tone was too strident and I came across like I was slagging of loads of aspects of British society and urging everyone to be more like the Muslims. But thats not what i think! So how did it happen? Partly because in reducing my original 1200 word piece to 900 words I was not careful enough to see how its tone had hardened. Also I should have asked to know how the piece was titled since it was given a rather incendiary headline. And finally I think I should have had worked harder to highlight the commonalities between cultures rather than appearing to stress the differences. I think if i had done that the piece would not have outraged as many as it did. The best I can say about the whole incident is that I have learnt from the whole messy experience.