Saqib Mausoof is a writer based in San Francisco. He produced and directed Kala Pul - the Black Bridge as a stage play, his documentary Hansot by the Bay premiered at the KaraFilm Festival and he currently serves on the board of Third I, an organizer of the South Asian Film festivals in San Francsico. Currently he is working on his never ending travelogue, Afraid to Shoot Strangers, blogging and thin slicing through life.

Ah, London in the summer – filled with beautiful happy people with their Princess Diana bobs and David Beckham pouting lips, the quintessential doormen with impeccable manners, the perfect clover floating over a froth of Guinness, the magnanimous (and free) British Museum with its Assyrian collection, the buxom Selfridges sales girls selling the world’s first anti-depressant perfume, the double carriageways and crazy preachers proclaiming the end of the world at Hyde Park, the eclectic South Asian DJ’s spinning drum and bass sets off Brick Lane, the moon glistening over the River Thames . . . and terrorist liquid bombers.

It’s been a long dry summer in London, the taxi driver tells me as he drops me off in Covent Gardens. “We have had a hose ban in London the entire summer. Every one knows that the planet is warming up, except Bush,” he adds with scorn. As an analyst for an Internet company I talk of web metrics all day and at lunch slip away to the nearby British Museum where the main exhibit is Word into Art: Artists of the modern Middle East sponsored by The Dubai Holding Company. Arabs in London enjoy a certain respect even with the occasional rabble-rousing that Muhammad Al Fayed, owner of the Harrod’s department store and father of Dodi Fayed, enchanter of Princess Diana, seems to cause with his conspiracy theories. In fact DP Worlds, another Dubai conglomerate, has won a contract today to build a massive port in Essex called the London Gateway. This is good news for businessmen from Dubai, especially after they were forced to withdraw their bid to run six ports in the US after fears by US senators of DP being used as a launching pad for Al Qaeda.

Later that night a friend takes me to Beirut Express on Edgware Road, the heart of the Arab food culture. Siren screams and bombs drop on SKY News as we chew our Chicken Shawarmas amid growing Arab anger. The British media is more balanced in showing the plight of the Lebanese then the US media: one editorial in the London Observer read, “In finding the needle, Israel burns the haystack.”

I have been debating the war in Lebanon via email. This is not only for dialogue-building but my personal Intifada; I am the only Muslim on this list. While some are Israeli apologists there are some who question the US foreign policy. To support my thesis I frequently forward articles from the Indian press. They make a good case as they are no fan of Islamic extremism, but collectively against the unjust war being raged by Israel. One of them asks me today, “Do Pakistanis actually care about the Palestinians issue, they are not even Arabs?” I answer that you don’t have to be Arab, just human.

“ England defeats Pakistan, with the help of a Muslim and a Sikh.” I witnessed this travesty at my first ever pub lunch. One of the architects of England’s victory is a fast bowler of Pakistani heritage, Sajid Mahmood whose 4-22 bowling figures sealed Pakistan’s fate. Unfortunately, he was booed for being a traitor by some Pakistani spectators; unnerved he jokingly added later that the booing might have been started by his own father who immigrated in the sixties to England. 21 st century London is filled with South Asians in all walks of life, even writers. However, while the Bengali community around Brick Lane is fictionalized by Monica Ali in her novel and Hounslow-based Punjabis are immortalized in the movie Bend it like Beckham by Gurindar Chadha, the community depicted by writers of Pakistani heritage like Salman Rushdie and Hanif Kureshi is seldom thriving. Mention Pakistan in UK and the first thing that comes to mind is “Paki” bashing and the 7/7 suicide bombings. Pakistani-Muslims have never completely integrated into the English society and remain disfranchised and increasingly susceptible to Islamic extremism. That night I ask about the perceptions of Pakistanis in London from a friend who works for one of the largest Pakistani satellite channels. He cites the example of Amir Khan, the Olympic medalist boxer of Pakistani heritage and the rise of rock music channels. For some reason British-Pakistanis tend to do better in aggressive sports and loud music, both appropriate channels for anger. He continues “One channel running a test transmission shows a fire storm over the London skyline with an Urdu underline, Aaag laga do, literally ‘light it up,’ as if we don’t have enough trouble with fire clouds.”

On Thursday morning everything changes. I wake up to news channels screaming, “Murder on an unprecedented scale.” Twenty-two British Muslims of Pakistani origin rounded up for plotting to blow up six airliners with liquid bombs. Trained in Pakistan, the authorities acted on a tip received from arrests done by ISI in Pakistan. I am stuffy with hay fever; the sun is hiding behind a cloud as is yesterday’s British-Pakistani cricket sensation. Later, while discussing an econometric time series model at work an analyst remarks that “they [terrorists] always try to blow themselves up on Thursdays; maybe it is because if you die on Thursday, you get into paradise.” There is an awkward silence as I meekly add that Thursday is also one of the busiest flying days. An Irishman who has flown in from Dublin for this meeting adds pleasantly, “You get the double whammy mate, get profiled as a terrorist but take the same risks.” That night my work people take me out to dinner at a Moroccan restaurant but neither the belly dancing nor the hummus makes me feel particularly cheerful.

The Home Secretary John Reid has declared that this plot is biggest threat to England’s security since WW II. A commentator on BBC asks, “if this is indeed so, why is PM Blair still vacationing in the Caribbean?” The reality is that in the bustling city of London where hijab-clad girls bring you a pint and bearded Muslims drive public buses, it is impossible to be paranoid about Muslims; they are everywhere, even in fictional history. That night I watch a play at the reconstructed open air Globe theatre -- home to the original Shakespearean theatre company -- called Under the Black Flag: the early life, adventures and piracies of the famous Long John Silver before he lost his leg. The play depicts that his father was shot by Cromwell, how he earned the title of Long (is it long, is it short, show us your cock) and how he lost his leg. In an emotional scene he proposes to a Moroccan princess who declares that she cannot marry a Christian and the lead actor in his perfect baritone proclaims Laillahillalah Muhammad ur rashool illah (There is no God, but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet) as a lone airliner flew over our heads.

Flying back to San Francisco was an ordeal that I had to face with absurdist humor. On TV, a commentator is livid that the delays are wrecking the travel industry, “I mean I hate saying this but why don’t we just profile Pakistani men, after all they are the ones who are under suspicion?” “But what about the shoe bomber, he was Jamaican!” the anchor man asks. “Oh that is an anomaly,” is the response But aren’t all suicide bombers an anomaly, I think to myself as I read Graham Greene’s Congo Journals, his travels to a leper colony. It makes my four hour wait to check my bags in seems like a walk in St James Park. Graham Greene writes that dreams are remarkably important in setting the mood for the day. This morning, I had a futuristic dream where all passengers are scanned in the nude before they board their space shuttle and once on board they are given everything they require, including a synchronized personal data drive and silk robes. Instead of fearing cavity searches or being blown up in space I was dreaming of galactic soft porn.

The passengers were finally allowed to board with nothing but a plastic bag containing travel documents only, no books, magazines or even a pen. I heard a rumor that an airliner had just returned to London because fortress USA found a cell phone on board. On the other hand, PM Blair only whispers a complaint when unannounced US Army planes land in Scotland with a cargo of fifteen-foot laser guided bombs for the Israeli Defense Force. On the plane, like a political prisoner suffering under Suharto, I gleefully write my thoughts on a paper napkin with a borrowed pen from the flight attendant.

Earlier this year three detainees in Guantanamo prison committed suicide. This collective suicide was declared as "an act of asymmetric war directed against us," by Rear Admiral Harry Harris. While the classic model of asymmetric warfare is the Hezbollah guerrilla tactics against the Israeli defense forces, every struggle against oppression, including buying fake Gucci bags, can be seen as asymmetric warfare. In the media’s world the battle continues with electronic Intifadas and Al-Jazeera challenging the established order. But now as the Lebanon war grounds to a halt with a shaky peace, Muslims are still faced with a stark reality in the form of the accused suicide bombers - they were all in their early twenties. As progressives, we collectively believe that the current war has shown that Israel has and continues to do innumerable injustices to the Palestinian and Lebanese people. However it is the response of Muslim writers and artists that makes us different from radicals. Our asymmetrical war is also against the false Sheikhs who inspire our youth to conduct resistance in a dishonorable way. The fictional and real life heroes that we create must reflect the jawanmardi (chivalry) of Salahuddin Ayubi, the absurdity of Mullah Naseeruddin and the philosophy of Allama Iqbal.

As these English born liquid bombers had prepared to blow themselves up to appease Sheikh Osama, your Sindh-born writer visited another Sheikh in a quiet London suburb of Mortlake. In the forlorn Catholic cemetery of St. Mary of Magdalene is a m ausoleum carved to resemble a Bedouin tent. Beneath the roof runs a frieze of Islamic stars and crescents and in the center, tucked behind an iron cross, is a miniature camel. Inside lies Captain Sir Francis Richard Burton, the nineteenth century explorer credited to be the first westerner to perform Hajj, discover the source of the Nile and translate the Arabian Nights into English, with his wife Isabella,. A gifted (and cunning) linguist and a ferocious warrior, he once fought his way out of a battle with hostile Somali tribesmen - with a spear lodged in his mouth. Captain Burton spent considerable time in Sindh and it was here that was ordained into the Qadiri Sufi order whose pantheism is symbolized by a mystical rose; to this day Burton has opened the hearts and doors of Muslims in his travels and writings. It is widely believed that his wife, a devout Catholic, buried him here after he was shunned away from the Westminster burial ground as there were persistent rumors that he was a heathen or had embraced Islam. At the back of the enclosed tomb, perched up on a ladder, with my nose pressed against the glass window, I recited the surah fatiha loudly and clearly. I am sure Sheikh Al Hajj Abdul Wahid would have liked that.