Who is Radek Bigos?

When i moved into our new house about a year ago we found hundreds of letters from debt collection agencies and bailiffs, all trying to find someone called Radek Bigos. Radek Bigos is a Polish name.

What this unscrupulous individual had been doing was buying cars, registering them fraudulently to my address and then driving through London without paying the congestion charge, parking on double yellow lines, and generally clocking up fines wherever he went.

I got in touch with the DVLA (Vehicle Licencing Authority) who deregistered the cars from my address and thought that this was the end of the problem.

Unfortunately, 12 months later i am still getting letters through the post informing me that cars have been registered to my address, and a few days or weeks later these are followed by letters demanding that i pay penalty fines for motoring offences that Bigos has been responsible.

There are two Eastern European families who live near us who i suspect of being behind this but as yet i haven't been able get concrete evidence that it is them. They buy cars and leave them on my road with a "For Sale" message in the window, which takes up valuable parking space and also i found out is illegal.

Just the other day i spoke to a neighbour about the problem and he said that he is experiencing the same problem.

In the past year i've had to request that around 30 cars be deregistered from my address, and have seen letters which if summed up would demand around £30,000 in penalty fines.

When i spoke to the police about it they said "if we find the individual behind this, we'll have a word with him." After all the aggro i've been through they're going to "have a word with him???"
I'd rather not involve the police and find out who he is and torch his cars or at the least put some spuds up his exhaust!

How the Dutch want to define themselves

I came across a story about the new citizenship tests in the Netherlands. Would-be immigrants will be shown a film showing "two men kissing in a park and a topless woman bather" to test whether their values are in harmony with the famed tolerance of the Dutch and basically fit in.

Lets leave discussions of Dutch tolerance to the side for a moment. This test is just plain disgusting. Is this how the Dutch wish to portray themselves as a nation? Aren't there people in that country who object to this video?

The one good thing about it is that since this test is basically targetting Muslim immigrants, it is that the Dutch identify Muslims as the ones who have a sense of morality based on traditional values - values which seem to be so loathsome to them.

And i wonder if you can draw parallels between what the Dutch intend with this video and the following verses from the Qur'an that quote a dialogue between the righteous Prophet of Allah, Lot, and his people of his town who practiced the sin of homsexuality:

And (remember) Lot when he said to his people "Do you commit indecency while you see (one another doing evil)?"

"Do you approach men in your lusts rather than women? Nay, but you are a people who behave senselessly."

There was no other answer given by his people except that they said: "Drive out the family of Lot) from your city. Verily, these are men who want to be clean and pure!"

[Qur'an 27:54-56]

No Khushoo'

I've mentioned previously that though its great at my office that we have a room set aside for the Muslims to pray (and there are only three Muslims in total), its located right next to where i sit. So whenever time for salaah comes for me, i just have to walk a few steps and i'm ready to pray.

These last two weeks i've been snowed under at work and i've not been able to maintain khushoo' during my prayers. In fact, i'm ashamed to say that i was stuck on two problems separately, and the answer came to me whilst i was praying. God did i feel guilty.

Reminds me of a story involving a famous Imam when a man came to him and said that he's lost an item that belonged to him, and he needed help to find it. So the Imam told him to go away and pray two rak'ah nafal. So the man went away prayed and in the middle of his salaah he remembered where he had put this item. So he came back to the Imam to thank him, but was promptly blasted for allowing Shaitan to play with his mind and distract him from the main purpose of salaah.

"Little Mecca" in China

Nice report from the New York Times - click here to view .