Smile!

Pause For Thought with journalist Abdul-Rehman Malik

In our house, political leaders were like members of the family. My parents were on a first name basis with some of them. From dinner table to coffee talk, politics was part of the daily conversation and the decisions that politicians made mattered and deserved scrutiny.

I embraced the political bug with zeal. I became the odd kid who liked watching party conference speeches on television. On election nights, we’d make popcorn and wait for the results to come in. During one rather politically turbulent period, I remember picking an argument with my teacher which became so heated that he took me into the hall so that our verbal repartee wouldn’t disturb the rest of the class. Like most political arguments it ended badly. I was called “pig-headed” and “absurd”. I was 11.

In the twelfth grade, I was rather chuffed when I was asked to manage a campaign for student council president. It should have been easy: Craig had lots of friends, was a star rugby player and a member of the “in” crowd. The trouble was Craig was considered, even by most of his peers, to be a bit of a lightweight. He was great for a laugh and to hang out with, but not particularly suited to student leadership. His opponent, an equally popular girl, had been tipped for the job for years. Nobody thought he could win.

We set out to change that. Our posters were witty. We wrote a plucky manifesto and slipped it in to every student’s locker. We used a Queen song as our campaign anthem. But Craig did more than that: he stepped out of his comfort zone. Many lunch hours were spent talking to the techies, the theatre students, the computer geeks, the hip hop heads and the freshies. Over several weeks, Craig got to know all those high school subcultures that were often ignored by the popular kids. In other words, he got to know the rest of us. But, even when the race heated up and I was itching to put out a negative ad or two, Craig said no.

The Prophet Muhammad once asked his companions, “Shall I tell you what is better than much prayer and charity?” “Mending discord,” he answered and added, “and beware of hatred for it strips you of faith.”

On Election Day, Craig won by a landslide. In the popularity contest of high school, he’d won out by being a decent guy. He recruited me to be on the student council with him, but he also reached out to his opponent. Together, we made a great team.