Watershed is a term commonly used to describe the Rushdie Affair. I previously held the view that it was an exaggerated episode in British Muslim history, equally exploited by a miscellaneous group of Islamists, politicians, liberals and the media to suit their parochial agendas. I also saw its contemporary references as being exploited to peddle the superficial allusion of Islamic fanaticism which can creep up and leap upon any ‘civilized’ society when it least expects it, especially in such terror-obsessed times. That was until I read Kenan Malik’s From Fatwa to Jihad (2010).

Malik’s book is not an exploration of The Satanic Verses itself but a scathing critique of multiculturalism. The narrative of the Rushdie Affair, the infamous fatwa by Ayotollah Khomeni calling for his death and the reaction of certain sections of the Muslim community are used as a stark starting point to map out a series of tragic events (Bradford riots 2001, terrorist attacks of July 7^th 2005..etc, ) naively nurtured in the bosom of multicultural policies. Malik is not anti-multicultural per se, having been an active participant in the anti-racist movement of the 70s, 80s, he embraces the reality of multicultural Britain but refuses to entertain the maladministration of multicultural policies in Britain which have wrought injustices even within minority communities themselves (p.xx). According to Malik, multiculturalism intrinsically engenders divisions. It fosters parallel communities each exclusively aware of its own ethnicity and faith, of its own difference. Such ‘tribal’ (p.xx) mentality continues to thrive, unchecked, to the present day as the copy-cat politics of identity, initiated in the 70s, gathered momentum and swelled into unmanageable numbers.

The wholesale acceptance of multiculturalism, especially after the Rushdie Affair, also acted as a premature elegy to the anti-racist movement and the campaign for equality. The unwelcomed shift, chiefly felt within the political discourse of injustice, was the ‘redefinition of racism itself (p.59) by the exponents of multicultural rights. Difference became the buzzword in a new identity-sensitive multicultural Britain and the politics of parochial identities ensured that political mobilizations were used as means to this end. An unholy alliance was established between central and local governments and specific groups, especially Muslim communities, to the detriment of a larger vision of social cohesion which was reduced to a fanciful utopia and hence not worth fighting for. Racism, as Malik laments, was no longer about equal rights but ‘about the denial of the right to be different’ (p.59). Such a surreptitious modification had undone years of work done by the ‘anti-racist’ movement.

Malik’s book has not been received well by those in positions of power, especially those organizations, such as the Muslim Council of Britain, who purport to speak on behalf of such a complex, fractured and heterogeneous Muslim community and this is rightly so for Malik raises some alarming questions about how shallow party politics has stifled the creation of any kind of meaningful relationship between Britain’s Muslim communities and  governments who have been shamefully  hankering after the Muslim vote. For instance, Malik explains how the Labour Party exploited the Mirpuri tribal politics system (known as biraderi), especially in the north of England, by co-opting clan elders to help them gain votes. In a critical indictment of the Muslim Council of Britain, Malik traces the roots of the organization back to the Rushdie affair describing it as having clear links with an Islamist organization in the subcontinent called Jamat Islami. Furthermore, the complex web of Muslim political representation is brought to light with numerous instances of infighting.

One would be hard pressed to find sincere and intelligent rejoinders to many of Malik’s arguments. The encouragement of identity politics has undeniably led to a complicated set of affairs in Britain. The magnificent way in which Malik highlights the historical contours of multiculturalism and its adverse consequences should serve as a lesson for us or, more specifically, for those in Whitehall. However, despite the lavish praise I’ve heaped on the work so far (no, I am not being paid), I do have a few criticisms.

Firstly, the sensationalised title of the book betrays its painstaking research and intelligent critique of multiculturalism and maybe off-putting for many ‘serious-minded’ academics.

Secondly, Malik’s own definition of prejudice seems to be fixed in stone. At times his criticism can be clouded by a very palatable embitteredness and even resentful attitude towards Muslim identity politics. A politics which undid years of tireless anti-racist protests for equal rights – he has every right to feel this way. However, Malik’s sometimes linear narrative from fatwa to Jihad greatly underestimates how a post 9/11 world generated new forms of prejudice directed at a specific type of cultural group. The nature of prejudice is such that it does not allow the victim to select the pejorative terms it intends to hurl at it. I agree with Malik that the term Islamophobia is nonsense. I prefer to use anti-Muslim prejudice. However, whichever term we chose to use in the end, all the evidence clearly demonstrates that there is a malevolent, spiteful and calculated campaign currently being directed towards Muslims in Europe. Malik seems to suggest that Muslims get a strange kick out of playing victim (p.140). He is right in pointing out that victimhood is an Islamist’s political dream since it makes stoking the fires of division that much easier. But, Malik fails to bring out such crucial nuances concerning a very important topic.

Overall, Malik makes a strong case for the motion that multiculturalism is bad for us. Liberals have betrayed their role as defenders of Enlightenment values for fear of causing offense. Malik is a worthy apologist of the right to the freedom of expression. He astutely observes how the restraining-order effectively placed on free-speech with regards to culture has severely back-fired on us as a society. Words have become dangerously conflated with deeds. In this respect multiculturalism has subconsciously forced ,not only liberals, but all of us, to make fundamental concessions. As Malik argues, in many ways we have ‘internalised the fatwa’ and as a result multiculturalism has ‘helped undermine civil liberties, erode freedom of speech and weaken democracy’ (p.35).

Many of you may have seen the annual news coverage of the sea of devout Muslim pilgrims of all races draped in nothing but two simple white shrouds circumambulating gently around the huge black cube known as the Ka’ba. It is an undeniably beautiful and poignant sight to behold whatever your ideological bent might be.

For me the Hajj has always symbolised the transcending of racial, class and gender barriers. It is one of the most powerful expressions of social equality one will ever witness. Both King and pauper stand side by side becoming equals as they bow their heads in humility acknowledging a power greater than themselves as they cast their ego aside.  It is was this experience of Hajj which led Malcolm X to radically change his extremist views from the ‘white devil’-hating Islam that he had learned from the Nation of Islam to Islam’s true message of peace, love and the brotherhood of mankind.

In the last few years I have been given the chance to go on an all expense paid trip to Hajj by my dear mum (God bless her). However, each year I have blankly but respectfully refused her offer. You may be surprised to read this given the way I just plugged the Hajj like some Saudi Thomas Cook travel agent on commission. But my objections against Hajj are based on moral and ethical grounds, indeed, it is a political protest against the iniquities of the Saudi regime and their growing cannon of human rights abuses under the indifferent gaze of the international community.

This month it was brought to our attention that eight Bangladeshi migrant workers were publically executed under the barbaric Saudi penal code. The Saudi government has a warped and archaic interpretation of Islam which in turn justifies such horrific punishments. It is an interpretation which ensures that the monopoly of power and wealth remain in the hands of a few self-appointed leaders (who are mostly related) and guarantees that the less vulnerable remain vulnerable. Women were only granted the right to vote a few weeks ago and will only be able to run as candidates in regional elections (they can exercise this in 2015). However, if any women in Saudi Arabia are thinking of driving to the ballot box, they can think again – women have not been granted this simple right yet.

Furthermore, funded by the petrol dollar, Saudi Arabia has managed to spread its malevolent interpretation of Islam to all four corners of the globe through the dissemination of their religious literature which feeds the mind of many impressionable young Muslims teaching them a very rigid interpretation of the faith. Paradoxically, as reported by Amnesty International and other human rights groups, the kingdom also uses draconian laws to arrest people without trial under the guise of its anti-terror laws. In some cases individuals have completely disappeared and in others reappeared after a long period of unlawful detention.

Many Muslims will object to my stance of boycotting the Hajj and cry out the proverbial “render unto God that which belongs to God!” What has all of the above got to do with the religious ritual obligation of Hajj? Shouldn’t religion and politics be kept in separate, tight compartments?

I would argue that by boycotting the Hajj we have a chance to deliver a two-fold blow to the Saudi regime. The first will be an economic one since Hajj generates billions of dollars of revenue for the Saudi government. Although this may be an insignificant blow to a country saturated in oil, no one likes to lose money, especially the creasy Bedouins of the House of Saud.

But it is the second form of protest which would have greater repercussions because of its symbolically powerful nature. In boycotting the Hajj, Muslims will be protesting against the barbaric interpretation of Islam preached by the Saudis. For me, such a protest would be akin to a Lutherean- style of reclaiming religious interpretation for myself. A tyrannical regime such as the Saudis needs to be challenged theologically as well as politically. By framing protests in a vernacular familiar to them, we will essentially challenge the regime’s raison d’être.

It would be hypocritical of me to go on Hajj knowing all I know about the Saudi regime. It would be a pilgrimage in body devoid of a soul, an empty ritual with no significance outside of itself. I was always taught that any religious act of faith must have a tangible manifestation, a rippling of goodness that emanates from its core to the outside world. This transformative power of religion on the terrestrial plane has always been the mainstay of the world’s great traditions and their proponents. History has shown us time and time again that faith has the power to move mountains.

This has always been the way of ‘good’ faith, the healthy type like that of Buddha who protested against the Hindu caste system, or the faith of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. Theirs was a stubborn faith that did not allow them to turn a blind eye to the social injustices in the world they found themselves in. Gandhi once remarked that he who says that religion and politics don’t go together hasn’t understood politics. When Muhammad preached the religion of Islam in seventh century Mecca he came with a bundle of egalitarian enterprises which were hugely ahead of their time; he raised the status of women, orphans and slaves and granted them rights some of which were unmatched by Europe even into the 19th century such as giving women the right to vote and own their own wealth and property.

The recent concessions made by the Saudi government are half-hearted measures to appease the pro-revolutionary sentiments currently brewing in the kingdom. Although the Arab Spring has yet to reach the arid lands of Saudi Arabia, there have been reports of a number of small anti-government protests which have unsurprisingly been quashed before they gather momentum such as in the region of Qatif as reported by Reuters. Furthermore, even the slightest waft of a revolution in neighbouring Arab states seem to strike fear into the heart of the Saudi regime. This explains why Saudi Arabia have sent their own troops into Bahrain to break-up growing protests by the Shia communities.

Many Muslim theologians, along with other political leaders, have weakly called on the country to declare a moratorium (suspension, not a ban) on the use of the death penalty. As a Muslim, I’m also protesting against such indifferent theological hair-splitting. There is something deeply inhumane about those individuals who choose to quibble about abstruse theological questions while people are being hacked and hanged to death. But it is not only Islamic scholars who are to blame. Because of Saudi Arabia’s strategic location, a country with huge oil reserves, it has been granted an alarming degree of unspoken immunity by our own politicians who continue to place profit before people.

Buried deep beneath the veneer of Hajj is a countless list of human rights abuses committed by the Saudi government. We are only now realising the mammoth implications of united global political protests made possible through technology. Such protests have the capacity to be organised and implemented within weeks. This is a technological grace which literally saves lives and overthrows dictators. We have seen how the pressure threshold of a government is strained and lowered as long as the masses continue to apply that pressure. I, for one, would love to see the triumphant spectacle of over one billion voices of the Muslim world crying out in unison against the plethora of human rights abuses committed by the Saudi regime. Sadly, I know that such a spectacle is idealistic given that most Muslim majority countries are infamous for human rights abuses. I would, however, expect Muslims in the West to exercise their freedom of speech to condemn the Saudi regime. Freedom of expression, as the scholar Hamza Yusuf eloquently put it, was about the freedom to speak out against tyranny. I hasten to add also that Mecca, the birthplace of Islam, is considered to be the capital of the Muslim world and one cannot but imagine the rippling implications for the rest of the region.

To my immediate family and friends my stance is viewed to be outright sacrilegious. But my understanding of Islam is not one of a literalist reading, which is always the pernicious foundations of extremism. It is a symbolic reading in which I consider the Hajj to be the manifestation of the highest form of equality sanctioned by the divine hand of God itself. Such a symbolic reading cannot exist when the backdrop is the total opposite. Muslims need to reappropriate the symbol of Hajj as that emblem of equality originally intended by the Prophet Muhammad. This for me would be akin to a political pilgrimage which will most definitely be accepted by God. True spirituality has always been revolutionary. After all, the Quran itself declares that ‘whithersoever you turn, there is the Face of God’ (Quran 2:115). We do need to go to Mecca to get spiritually closer to God. Such a restrictive notion of God is far more sacrilegious than what I am proposing.

So, this year, once again, Mum, I’m sorry, I can’t possibly think of going on Hajj.

“One day a group of pupils sat around lamenting the prevalence of evil in the world. There was so much darkness that they could not find a means to dispel it. Eventually they went to see a learned Rabbi and shared their concerns with him. The wise Rabbi ruminated over the problem in silence for a moment. He then asked each of them to fetch a broom. He told them that his cellar was very dark and that they should go down to the cellar and clean out the darkness. The students, bemused at such a request, complied and went down to the cellar. They soon returned and informed the Rabbi of their failure to clear out the darkness. The Rabbi then asked each of them to grab a stick. This time he asked the young men to beat the darkness until it went away. So the students went away again. After a while they returned with abject faces having failed once again to get rid of the darkness. The Rabbi then told them to go back to the cellar and shout at the darkness. The students tried this also and returned even more confused and frustrated. Finally, the Rabbi  gave each of them a candle and asked them one last time to return to the dark cellar. And so they went down to the pitch black cellar and one by one they set their candles alight until the darkness disappeared.”

My Reflections

Too often our belief in the injustices and oppression in the world far outweigh our self-belief that we can collectively take action and alleviate just as much; the man of religion scratches his head and looks to God; the secular man shouts empty slogans at the closed door of the state. Both are united in their creed of passing on the buck of responsibility.

The thing about darkness is that you can’t see anyone. No Muslim, no Jew, no Christian, no Hindu, no humanist, no left-wing or right. We all understand that darkness is debilitating to the human spirit and so it transcends labels and beliefs. What emerges is the most unlikely, diverse bunch of candle-bearers, who, seeing themselves in a new light, become brothers and sisters.

I am a recovering ‘PhD depressive’. I use this term consciously to denote a stress induced by the PhD experience. Some of us simply have natures which are predisposed to depression. There are certain triggers which just set the mental ball of melancholy rolling and the PhD comes with a mine field of such triggers.

A few months ago I experienced the type of “psychosomatic” paralysis caused by depression. After months of anxiety-fuelled sleep deprivation, cold sores, eye styes and panic attacks, I am happy to say that I am back at “work” and recovering. The cause of my depression, according to my doctor, was a deficiency of serotonin-a vital chemical component in the brain which is basically fundamental to neurotransmission, hence, such a shortage of serotonin explains the debilitating form of inertia I fell victim to.

However, I have always refused to take this biological diagnosis in its totality but not with a pinch of salt. Metaphorically, the diagnosis, it seemed, arrived at the scene way after the accident had occurred hence the causes remained a mystery. My personal belief has always been that we are more than just our bodies. I believe in the spiritual dimension of my being and also believe that it is integrated into the physical. Call this consciousness, the psyche or whatever, something else is there even though we haven’t a consensus on its definition. The point is that my existential outlook had to play a part in remedying myself. I needed nursing on the cosmic as well as the terrestrial plane of my being.

And so I put everything out there. I went to counsellors and my GP. I found that their explanations of my depression were not holistic accounts but rather schizophrenic in relation to me. I still remember how these voices inside me, atavistic almost, resonated and called on me to acknowledge the spiritual dimension of my ailment. I am in no way undermining modern psychotherapy. There is something soulfully liberating about the simple act of “talking it out”. I am simply saying that in relation to me, I it needed to be more expansive and take in to account my weltanschauung.

But I dared not breathe a word of this to my GP or counsellors for fear of patronizing reprisals. We do, after all, live in a culture which does not welcome the “religious” and indeed scoffs at it in the name of rationality and pragmatism. One brief insight came to mind in that we can have our freedom of expression stripped away in more than one sense. For instance, if your nature does not chime with the public spirit of the age then it demonstrates the way in which culture can generate a set of unspoken constraints i.e. if an individual is made to feel socially uncomfortable in the culture he or she is embedded in then the notion of freedom needs to be re-evaluated. For the prerequisite of true freedom is the total omission of fear.

We live in a time where meaningful truths have been sacrificed at the alter of rationality. If it is not empirically verifiable then to the hell with that! The thing about such sardonic rationality is that it silences fundamental aspects of the human experience. The totality of human experience can never be analysed in a Petri-dish.

So I spoke to my GP and counsellors about the past, the present and the future. I spoke to them about my worries, my anxieties and my biggest fears. I opened up a Pandora box of childhood experiences, about the death of my father which I never really had a chance to grieve over because of the stoic ethos of my family. I also spoke about the many horrifying accidents I had in my childhood, which include being scolded by boiling hot water at the age of two, massive scars which I retain till this day; a tragic fall down a dark, damp cellar which resulted in a bloody head injury at the age of five and then the main event of my accident prone childhood in which I was hit by car at the tender age of eight.

Anyway, why am I divulging such personal information? Well, because for me the nature of depression is that it is a chain-reaction of contained negativity, it is like the spilling of acid on the brain and this acid selectively burns away all positive memories leaving only shards of the negative past and present. One begins to see oneself in a shattered mirror, and begins to believe that that shattered reflection is oneself! Stephen Fry put it most articulately when he said that depression is a manifestation of self-pity and the thing about self-pity is that it destroys everything else around it and leaves only itself standing.

Unless your PhD is one which is heavily involved with the ‘real world’, you need to realise that the PhD is primarily a cerebral existence. It is a highly sedentary existence too. The worst thing I did was to fragment my PhD and therefore myself. An individual’s profession must be saturated by his or her personality. Your work then should (on most days) be as natural to you as breathing. My meaning is that if you find yourself alienated from your work then go back to the drawing board and don’t forget to take yourself with you! You must remember that your PhD proceeds from your being, it is your baby. The end product is going to be the result of years of solitary reflection.

Here I come to the crux of this blog: that one must ensure the process of their PhD is a holistic one.

So my tips:

1)      Honesty shall be your mantra! I can’t drum this point home enough. You have to be honest with yourself in terms of your capabilities, which should be within the grasp of your nature. This sounds mighty esoteric, but it’s not. As my supervisor so sagaciously advised me, “play to your strengths, Mustafa!” Such advice is golden because it commands you to identify what you are passionate about, apply it, and above all, enjoy it!

2)      Transparency: academic walls need tearing down. Don’t live in the ivory tower. Tell anyone who you think might be interested about your PhD. Even if you can’t formulate exactly what it is in one sentence, tell them roughly. There is wisdom to be gained from every interaction and word. So go out there, smile and say this is who I am and this is what I am trying to do and I welcome your feedback. Transparency with one’s supervisor is also paramount. You will spend 3-4 years together with this person and the relationship needs to be comfortable and supervisory meetings need to have an atmosphere of trust for the sake of mutual intellectual engagement.

3)      Leisure and PhD: find things relating to your PhD which you would normally associate with leisurely activities. Is there a novel that you could read which could tell you more about the nature of identity? Is there a film too? Or items in the media? Is there a social event (excluding academic conferences!)? These gentle intellectual contributions to your thinking may breed powerful insights. Never dismiss anything. A PhD requires an open heart as well as an open mind, and furthermore, requires you to be an open book. I am not a big fan of the approach that suggests you forget you are doing a PhD in the evenings and on weekends. I think such an attitude is indicative of a bigger picture which suggests that you shouldn’t be doing it if you want to forget it.

4)      You are Not Your Ideas: this means that one needs to detach oneself from one’s study. Am I contradicting myself here? No! Basically, for me the fear of criticism was also paralysing. Somewhere down the road I took criticism of my work as criticism of who I am as a person. So if a supervisor said “this needs a thorough reworking”, I would internalise this and think it was me who needed reworking. I’m producing shit work because I am a shit! Your ideas are simply unformed shadowy figures dancing around on the plane of your being. Never invert this image otherwise you will feel like a vulnerable ship at the mercy of a hostile sea.

5)      Prayer and PhD: pray to whatever whoever it is you pray to. Prayer is confession and resignation to things beyond our control. It is also the humble request for assistance. We are beginning to realise that we are not the masters of our reality and, for me at least, in the recognition of such a stark fact is liberation. Life is full of paradoxes. It is inconsistent and simply can’t be rationalised. We are heart as well as head. You are flying these two kites constantly so be aware that you can only have so much control. You can’t predict which way the wind will blow; the more you realise this, the more adept you will become.     

6)      Smile: the physical manifestation of the PhD experience is none the more apparent than on one’s face. I have come across many PhD students and academics (including myself) who look like the bedraggle faces from the ProPlus adverts. Smile and the whole world smiles with you as the old saying goes.

Bon Voyage! x

Many commentators are beginning to dismiss multiculturalism based on parochial definitions of the term. If anything characterises multiculturalism it is its elusiveness. Some view this as a flaw which breeds cultural relativism and the inability of a nation to embrace a consensus of shared values. For others, this elusiveness is precisely the strength of multiculturalism because it was never intended to be a ‘doctrine’ but more of a public intellectual space which encouraged dialogue across cultures with the liberal aim of arriving at the conception of the ‘good life’. If we were to define multiculturalism then by what it claims not to be then we can say that its exponents were never given a carte blanche and were forever aware of its precarious position. Multiculturalism was seen as an egalitarian liberal postulate and never something fixed in stone. Therefore it is imperative that critics of multiculturalism define their concept of multiculturalism before they attack it.

What was clear from the Prime minter’s speech at the Munich Security Council was that his definition of multiculturalism was one which encouraged cultural separatism and by extension, in its most abject form, terrorism. The ‘doctrine of multiculturalism’ in Cameron’s view is then a fertile ideological ground which allows the spread of extremists ideologies. In addition to this, the ‘doctrine of multiculturalism’ severely hinders the creation of citizens who identify strongly with ‘British values’. For Cameron, multiculturalism is ‘neutral’ and encourages ‘passivity’.

However, Cameron’s definition of multiculturalism is one which is perniciously reductive. He egregiously conflated the reality of multicultural Britain (with all its ideals and imperfections) with the agenda of the threat to national security. Furthermore, he reduced the complex historical narratives and experiences of ethnic minorities in Britain by displaying an extraordinary ignorance of how such communities arrived and settled in Britain with no reference to the social, political and economic contexts, which played a part in how these communities eventually ended up. For instance, the settlement of Mirpuri communities in towns such as Rochdale and Oldham were the result of the closure of the textile mills, particularly cotton mills. Once these mills had shut down, due to rapid technological advancements, the large swathes of uneducated and mono-skilled Mirpuris were left jobless with little prospect of social mobility. These Mirpuris did not elect to live in such squalid conditions but were rather slaves to socio-economic circumstances. Experiences such as these can be found in other parts of Britain which are densely populated by ethnic minority communities.

In such an ill-informed speech ethnic minorities were accused of refusing to ‘integrate’ into ‘mainstream’ society without reference to white middle class ‘gated’ communities. It is a peculiar paradox that Cameron chose to shroud a speech which, I assume, was meant to promote inclusivity in such exclusivist and coercive terms such as ‘our values’, ‘our aspirations’, ‘our way of life’ and phrases such as ‘muscular liberalism’.

It is also worthwhile mentioning that Cameron’s remarks on multiculturalism can also be seen as a way to show his solidarity with Angela Merkel who also lambasted multiculturalism in Germany. Cameron’s eagerness to jump on the bandwagon of publically elected officials and academics who seek to replace multiculturalism with ‘shared values’ defined by a few, elite white middle-class people also shows his disregard for the unique experience of Britain’s multiculturalism and its genesis.

There is a drive now in our political discourse to create the mono-citizen, the assimilated subject of the state who is forcefully divorced from his/her rich cultural heritage. Such state approved indoctrination will do little to stem the identity crisis which many people in Britain are now confronting. The healthiest identity we can foster is the identity of pluralism and it is multiculturalism which gives us all the opportunity to do this.

Positive Multiculturalism

But many people would argue that multiculturalism is Britain’s raison d’être. For the late renowned British political theorist Sir Bernard Crick multiculturalism was inextricably linked with notions of Britishness. He saw ‘no incompatibility between multiculturalism and Britishness. ‘Britishness’ he said ‘must be a part of multiculturalism’. This is because historically Britain is a land which became the home of many different ethnicities from the Celts who arrived from Europe two thousand years ago, followed by the Romans and then the invading Germanic tribes to the more recent arrival of people from the former British colonies and the Commonwealth. It can be said that the British Empire itself was indeed the first multicultural project. The colonial history of Britain not only shaped the colonised countries subject to British rule but also shaped Britain in return. Britishness then is quintessentially multicultural and Britain has been from time immemorial a veritable cultural melting pot. Crick further comments how ‘integration is the co-existence of communities and unimpeded movement between them’ and ‘is not assimilation’. The hallmark of multiculturalism in its most ideal form is the mutuality of different cultures and recognition that we all, even before large scale migration as Crick points out, have always been aware of having more than one identity.

Bhikhu Parekh’s definition of multiculturalism is admirably democratic. Having written extensively on the topic, he arrives at the conclusion that ‘Multiculturalism basically means that no culture is perfect or represents the best life and that it can therefore benefit from a critical dialogue with other cultures’. This definition gains potency especially in our radical and often dogmatic discourses with liberalism as the overseer of values in contemporary Britain looking contemptuously down on other cultures that do not hail from a post-Enlightenment European tradition.

Multiculturalism and the Discourse of Fear

It is a shame that a Britain which once celebrated ‘steel bands, saris and samosas’ is now being replaced by an exaggerated fear of Muslims, immigrants and terrorism. Multiculturalism, defined in the most positive terms, saves Britain from becoming a society full of xenophobic citizens. Cameron’s speech will add to the mistrust and suspicion which Muslims in Britain are increasingly being subjected to. Indeed, his speech will be fodder for right-wing fascists such as the EDL and BNP, groups which are gaining an alarming momentum in certain parts of Britain.

Muslims in Britain are constantly asked if they are worth their salt as British citizens. These questions often begin with the assumption that all Muslims are barbaric, backward, Jihadist war mongers and womanisers bent on implementing Shari’a in Britain. I cannot remember how many times I have been asked about my opinion regarding the veil, the niqaab, the position of women in Islam, homosexuality and stoning as if these bombastic questions will determine my loyalty as a British citizen.  Rarely am I asked about my own story and that of my family with a mother and father who arrived with a community of Mirpuris to help in the rebuilding of a post-war Britain torn apart by war. Rarely do we hear stories about the Muslim contribution to the First World War with the Punjabi Musulmaan Regiment holding the front line and thereby halting the German army from reaching the Channel Ports as described by the military historian Gordon Corrigan and thousands of soldiers of the common wealth who lost their lives for Britain.

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

In his speech Cameron also said that ‘young [Muslim] men also find it hard to identify with Britain too, because we have allowed the weakening of our collective identity’. It is true that young Muslim men in Britain are facing a crisis which is to do with belonging but this is not the result of the failure of multiculturalism or extremist ideologies. It is to do with the stories and the narratives which Britain has deliberately omitted from the historical consciousness of its people. Muslims in Britain have born the brunt of this omission by having their long history in Britain blotted out from the nation’s imagination. The scholar Benedict Anderson writes about how a nation defines itself based on the narratives it chooses to tell itself. Narratives play a powerful part in forming the collective identity of a people. It is the systematic omission of such narratives, especially from our educational establishments, which has been the real cause of the weakening of our collective identity. The problem with British society is that most people believe that South Asians, Muslims or indeed all immigrants only began arriving during post-war Britain. However this is far from the truth as Nabil Mattar’s scholarly work on Islam in Britain tells us that Muslims arrived in Britain as early as the 16^th century with a documented visit from a Moroccan ambassador to Elizabethan England. Furthermore, Muslims from the subcontinent and other minorities formed a sizeable population of British society in the nineteenth century.

It is true that minority communities in Britain are plagued with internal ills but their failure to identify with Britain is more to do with the incessant discourses which emphasise their difference. When demands are made on a community to integrate, it inevitably places them outside of mainstream society and all contributions made by such communities go unacknowledged. Cameron’s missed opportunity to capitalise on the mess made by the last government and to hail a new era of multicultural dialogue and exchange will be the biggest lost for the Coalition government. If our ideal visions for our collective future rests on the narratives we choose to tell ourselves, past and present, then Cameron indeed failed to construct a collective narrative which recognised the contribution of minority communities which have and continue to enrich British life.

Howard Zinn was once asked in an interview why history was so important. He replied that it was to tell people, especially, the oppressors, that ‘I wasn’t born yesterday’. Fortunately, historians in Britain are now beginning to rectify these historical lapses and a new generation of academicians are engaged in the noble unearthing of bringing Britain’s Islamic past to light. It is this history which multiculturalism forces us to recognise. It behooves us as a nation to stand up to such rhetoric and let politicians and the media know that we were not born yesterday. But such an attitude requires every citizen of Britain to educate themselves and critically engage with their diverse history.

In my closing remarks I would like to mention Cameron’s obsession with national security and the threat of extremist Islamism. Multiculturalism is the Islamists worst nightmare. Extremist ideologies are the product of a pathological bipolar view of the world – the us versus them rhetoric not only promulgated by the Bin Ladens of this world but also by Neo-Cons and fundamental liberalist who believe in the absolutism of post-Enlightenment values. The discourse of multiculturalism is a saving grace which prevents us from falling into bipolar ways of thinking. Again, this is comes down to the way in which we define it. It is a fundamental fallacy to think that multiculturalism in some indirect way endorses extremism as merely another opinion. In fact, it lays bare all the views held by cultures and openly subjects them to scrutiny and above all highlights various injustices.

People fear multiculturalism because it forces them to confront the reality of modern Britain, a reality which makes them feel at unease because it also questions who they are. British Muslims are not the only one’s facing an identity crisis – the whole of Britain is. However, such ruptures are the very recipe for positive change when they are embraced. It is important that we move away from the discourse of fear to the dialogue of mutual understanding, respect and tolerance. This is what multiculturalism is all about.



I would like to begin this essay by exploring the theory of identity as espoused by the cultural theorist Stuart Hall. For Hall identity acts as an open ended signifier. It is far from being a static entity but rather a discursive concept dictated by particular discourses at given times. Hall’s conceptualization proceeds from a deconstructionist framework whereby essentialist labels and categories are subjected to a critique putting them ‘under erasure’[2]. Through this deconstructionist approach Hall tells us that essentialist concepts are ‘detotalized’ or ‘deconstructed’ so that they are ‘no longer operating within the paradigm in which they were originally generated’[3]. Furthermore, Hall’s concept of identity is one which is constantly in flux, it is a constant process played out against the backdrop of given contexts. With this idea in mind Hall challenges us to think of identity not as a simple, fixed noun but rather a verb, a constant process of identification:

‘…identification is constructed on the back of a recognition of some common origin or shared characteristics with another person or group, or with an ideal, and with the natural closure of solidarity and allegiance established on this foundation…it is not determined in the sense that it can always be ‘won’ or ‘lost’, sustained or abandoned. Though not without its determinate conditions of existence, including the material and symbolic resources required to sustain it, identification is in the end conditional, lodged in contingency…identification is, then, a process of articulation, a suturing, an over-determination or a lack, but never a proper fit, a totality. It obeys the logic of more-than-one.[4]

Hall’s concept calls on us to recognise the complexities of identity, guarding us against the pitfalls of essentialism. It is expansive and defies clear cut classifications. Although this deconstructionist perspective on identity may sound like a type of postmodern relativism, I believe as a model it best describes the active nature and reality of identity in relation to the Muslim communities in contemporary Britain as I shall go onto demonstrate. Hall’s framework also provides a space to entertain multiple identities as well as raising questions about the contingency of labels, categories and offers a sharp critique of classificatory systems themselves. However, Hall’s work should not be viewed as an abstruse intellectual exercise void of any practical implications, as he tells us that ‘the question, and the theorization, of identity is a matter of considerable political significance’[5]. This political significance is a reality for Muslims living in Britain today who are embroiled in the politics of identity. It is inevitable then that such a politically charged discourse should come with questions of power: who in the end has the final say on what a British Muslim is? Who defines and has the final input on the distinct features of a British Muslim identity? This power dynamic is not wholly relegated to the realm of authority but also to the realm of public perception where popular stereotypes feed into the wider misrepresentation of Muslims and creates a further imbalance of power in which British Muslims hold no agency over their identity. This is a point made by Ziauddin Sardar when speaking of the perception of the Muslim community in Britain:

‘In contemporary Britain, being Muslim is a problem no matter what you do as a human being or as a British citizen. The problem begins with perception, the general perception that Muslims seek out and live in segregated communities. The perception is supported by a complex of stereotypical commonplace cultural ideas about the nature of Islam and Muslims. These ideas rationalize Muslims’ supposed desire to remain different and distinct from British society, the better to sustain a separate identity.’[6]

Sardar’s observation can be extended to the realm of discourse in general and tells us a lot about identity and power. Stereotypes are the antithesis of Hall’s theory of identification since they are tightly compacted definitions of individuals and communities, a skewed and essentialised image generated by negative exaggerations. Furthermore, such crystallised observations are mostly external and it is these external observations which, in the end, feed and construct a classification system which will be taken as a standard by which a certain community will be measured against. On a realpolitik level such classifications will ultimately dictate the way a government will deal with a certain community and if the classifications are found wanting then this has obvious implications for the said community, a theme which I will also explore later on.

‘The Logic of More-than-One’

When we survey the landscape of the studies that have been carried out on the Muslim communities in Britain we can see that their identity is framed within a limited, reactionary type of discourse mostly as a result of a specific event or set of events. The labels and definitions that emerge from such events have very little input from the Muslim communities themselves, instead, they are imposed by popular media and academic discourses which hold the power over representation. Therefore, the identity of Muslims in Britain is subject to the swaying sentiments of popular perception and the public imagination. The Rushdie Affair is very revelatory of this since prior to the Rushdie Affair, for example, the popular perception of South Asian Muslim men was one of passivity and being effeminate. Post-Rushdie, however, the perception was one of aggressive, illiberal and anti-democratic Muslim man. This stringently bipolar discourse is picked up by Peter Hopkins in his article on Youthful Muslim masculinities: gender and generational relations:

‘There is evidence of two main discourses about the masculinities of young Muslim men – one that emphasizes patriarchy and aggression, the other effeminacy and academicism – and together they offer polarized perspectives of young Muslim men’s masculinities.’[7]

Hopkins’ analysis is primarily to do with gender relations, however, it tells us a lot about the nuanced identity of gender itself and its discursive nature. Masculinity is not a fixed category, in fact Hopkins’ comments that ‘research about young men as active subjects ‘involves making masculinities plural and understanding and addressing them as relational identities which boys construct and inhabit’[8]. In this sense masculinity is an active process responding to and interacting within given contexts. Such a dialogical view of gender identity highlights the inadequacy of putting forth the case for a distinct British Muslim identity which homogenizes and glosses over the issue of gender as an important facet of one’s identity, a category which may be more useful in certain contexts to understand a given situation involving the Muslim communities in Britain. Such an understanding is not possible with the tightly compacted definition of British Muslim. Instead, it is more useful to apply Hall’s ‘more-than-one logic’, the multiplicity of identities and the process of continuous identification.

The inadequacy of the label British Muslim is also a theme explored by Burlet and Reid in their article entitled a Gendered Uprising: political representation and minority ethnic groups. Burlet and Reid highlight the dangerous of essentialism by expanding on the labels they use with regards to the Pakistani community in Bradford. Like Hall, they put certain terms ‘under erasure’ for a more nuanced ‘conceptual manageability when exploring the issue of gender and conflict’[9]. For example, ‘the term Pakistani community is used to incorporate two points of identification for the community under exploration, that is, faith and ethnic identity’.[10] Burlet and Reid thus recognise identity as a site where the intersection of identities are acted out in response to a given set of circumstances. This is particularly important in the case explored by Burlet and Reid who look at the role of Pakistani women during the conflict in Bradford in 1995 involving male youth and the Police. They argue the case that after the initial conflict ‘the public debate…centred on community representation in general and the role of male youth in particular’[11] with little attention given to the implications the conflict had for Pakistani women in the community. For Burlet and Reid the conflict ‘accelerated a process whereby Pakistani Muslim women’ redefined ‘intra- and inter-community relationships in the public sphere’[12]. With this in mind, we must ask ourselves if the label of British Muslim would negatively subsume such successful articulations of gender identity, in fact, I would go further and state that as well as gender identity, we would also need to take into consideration a specifically Pakistani Kashmiri ethnic identity and regional (Bradford) identity to better understand the full dynamics of the event that occurred in Bradford in 1995. They also highlight how essentialised discourses with reductive terms have the potential to exclude certain members of society, namely, in this case, women.

Reductive definitions also bring with them reductive ways of dealing with that community on avowedly British Muslim terms, based on narrow classifications. Katherine Brown’s article on The Promise and Perils of Women’s Participation in Mosques: The Impact of Securitisation Agendas on Identity, Gender and Community takes to task the way in which the government’s security agendas have led to the narrow classification of the British Muslim community and ultimately yielded ‘negative ramifications in the long run for women’s rights’.[13] Brown’s article exposes how definitions of the Muslim community have been imposed from the top in strictly binary or bipolar categorizations where British Muslims are relegated to two camps, that of ‘moderate’ or ‘radical’ or ‘civilised’ or ‘barbaric’. In Brown’s view, such a dichotomization is nothing but a modern regurgitation of nineteenth century Orientalism whereby the Other is subjected to the dichotomization of the Orientalist gaze. For example, in ‘orientalist imagery…women’s roles in society and religion became the benchmark by which societies are judged as ‘civilised’’[14]. A similar objectification of Muslim women is also being applied today in the name of securitisation agendas in Britain where

‘The personification of ‘integration’ is in the Muslim woman entering a mosque, symbolising entire communities’ adherence to the ‘British way of life’. Those groups with the label ‘integrated’ are considered ‘civilised’ and ‘British’ and are therefore not those which conduct ‘barbaric’ and ‘immoral’ acts of terrorism.’[15]

Brown’s analysis also tells us a lot about the discourse of identity and labels. The label of Muslim women or men or British Muslim are merely signifiers waiting to be infused with whatever meaning imposed on them. Again, Hall’s notion of identity best captures the contingent nature of the label British Muslim when we think in terms of discourse and the nature of language used:

‘I use ‘identity’ to refer to the meeting point, the point of suture, between on the one hand the discourses and practices which attempt to interpellate; speak to us or hail us into place as the social subjects of particular discourses, and on the other hand, the processes which produce subjectivities, which construct us as subjects which can be ‘spoken’.[16]

Brown’s article is a perfect example of this whereby the category of British Muslim woman is being used to ‘hail’ the British Muslim community into the ‘social subjects of particular discourses’. In this sense, the notion of a distinct British community can not be removed from the political realities that accompany them. Homogenized notions and binary constructions that are used to deal with the British Muslim community breakdown once they are implemented in reality. British Muslims become frustratingly evasive subjects which can fit into more than one box and even that box is a temporary point of attachment[17] until circumstances dictate otherwise. So, the category of British Muslim can sometimes be deployed for the sake of political expediency and gloss over the complexities and dynamism of identities. Brown makes this point by challenging the popular orientalist image of Muslim women as peaceful pacifiers, the innocent and empty mediators of British values and radical Islamic ones by stating that ‘such stereotypes are at odds with the international increases in the militarisation of women’s resistance movements.’[18]

What I have highlighted so far is how reductive categorisations, which fail to acknowledge the presence of the more than one dynamic of identification, can lead to the exclusion of or undermine certain voices. In the aforementioned examples it was primarily the voice of British Muslim women who were ultimately deprived. However, the reductive label of British Muslim can also lead to the failure of addressing the real problems of social and economic deprivation faced by certain ethnic groups within the homogenized category of British Muslim. Often, at the level of policy, government initiatives can end up applying blanket solutions to the problems of socio-economic deprivation faced by the Muslim communities in Britain. Although the intention maybe well placed the homogenized way in which these various communities are dealt with can often yield little or no results at all. This is because the dynamism and diversity of the Muslim communities in Britain is not recognised. It is popular knowledge now that Muslims are the most socially and economically deprived minority group in the UK[19], but what is not recognised enough is the way in which different ethnicities within the category of Muslim living in the UK all have differing histories and experiences. These different experiences bring with them their own problems and require specific solutions. This point is made explicitly by Serena Hussain in Muslims on the Map where she tells us that there is a:

‘…substantial body of empirical data now available demonstrating that ethnic minority groups have differing socio-economic profiles and that the data constantly points to the higher levels of deprivation faced by Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. This is in comparison to not only the White majority but also other South Asian ethnic groups, namely Indians and African Asians and when compared with other groups’[20]

This recognition of a diverse British Muslim population must also take into consideration the changing dynamics of a specific group and that even within in a certain ethnicity change is a constant theme. Take for instance the nature of the Somali community in the UK. The earliest Somali community were seafarers and their presence in the UK goes back to the nineteenth century. However since then there have been two additional major waves of migration of Somalis to the UK each one having its specific reasons behind it, so, for instance, the third phase ‘was not due to labour shortage but due to political instability in Somalia’.[21] So, the idea of a distinct British Muslim identity has the potential to ignore the diverse histories and experiences of different ethnic communities subsumed under that category.

In the introduction I made the statement that the label of British Muslim cannot be divorced from certain negative events that served as an impetus for discussions on identity and the Muslim community in Britain. Such episodes can also reveal a lot about the origins of such reductive labels as British Muslim and the reason for their perpetuation. The Rushdie Affair is often held up as a marker in the history of the Muslim community in Britain. It heralded a sharp change in public perception towards Muslims, especially South Asian Muslim men as mentioned before. However, the real upshot of the Rushdie Affair was the birth of a bipolar discourse of western liberal values, with its love of the freedom of expression, versus the ostensibly intolerant, illiberal and anti-western one personified by the South Asian Muslim community at that time. The episode was not seen in terms of identity but rather the perceived clash of values. However, a more identity based analysis would have yielded richer results, one in which both the identities of ethnicity and religion are taken into consideration. For Modood, the assertion of a primarily Muslim identity during the Satanic Verses Affair was a reaction to the specific nature of the external attack on the personality of the prophet Muhammad. It was an attack on a Muslim identity which was fashioned by the life of the prophet Muhammad and his example. The Rushdie Affair played a huge part in forming the popular, homogenized image of British Muslims as violent, barbaric and anti-democratic, an image which was further crystallised after the attacks in London in the summer of 2005 by young British born Muslims.

But when we reflect on the Rushdie Affair what comes to light is the realisation of multiple Muslim identities which were previously subsumed under the essentialised category of Muslim. These multiple Muslim identities can make us better understand the origins and reasons behind certain forms of protests, as Werbner points out that ‘radicalism could also be explained in terms of specific sectarian beliefs,’[22] and that, for example,

In the Rushdie affair Barelwi followers were enraged by the attack on the prophet Muhammad, who is the subject of supreme adoration for Barelwis as for all Sufis; in the Gulf crisis, support for Saddam Hussein stemmed from their continuous opposition to the Wahabi movement and its Saudi rulers, regarded as the desecrators of saints’ shrines throughout Arabia, including that of the Prophet himself. Indeed, in both instances the radical position of the Barelwi encompassed followers in Pakistan as well as diasporic Pakistanis in Britain.[23]

Hence, even the Rushdie Affair, taken to be the marker in many discourses surrounding British Muslims, when an ethnic community chose to define itself along a primarily religious identity, can only really be revelatory of the South Asian Muslim community and a projection of one identity in a given context and time which felt it was being attacked, hence its contingent nature. It also brings to the fore Hall’s definition of identification being a ‘process of articulation’ a definition which is personified by the various protests made by Muslims in Britain in response to certain issues.

Abdullah William Quilliam: An ‘Over-determination, a Lack, but never a Proper Fit’

An essay which seeks to establish whether there is such a thing as a distinct British Muslim identity would be incomplete without the mention of the personality of Abdullah Quilliam. Quilliam, a nineteenth century Liverpadlian convert to Islam who was endowed with the lofty title of ‘Sheikh-ul-Islam of the British Isles’ by the Sultan of Turkey[24], is often held up as the beacon and model of moderate British Islam. In fact, the Quilliam Foundation, which describes itself as ‘the world’s first counter-extremism think tank’[25] say their organisation was:

‘…established in memory of Shaikh William Henry Abdullah Quilliam to help foster a genuine British Islam, native to these islands, free from the bitter politics of the Arab and Muslim world.’[26]

But Quilliam seems to mean many things to many different people. For the scholar Yahya Birt, it is possible, in the light of certain facts regarding Quilliam’s life, to regard Quilliam as Britain’s first Islamist, the antithesis of everything the eponymous Quilliam Foundation stands for, as Birt states:

Far from being “free” of the “bitter politics” of the Muslim world, Quilliam seemed fully engaged, working not only against the British Empire but also the tide of opinion in the Muslim world that had become anti-Ottoman, rallying the Muslims of the diaspora to a defiant defence of the caliphate.[27]

But how can we reconcile these two contrasting representations of Quilliam’s personality? Many will argue that Quilliam can be either this or that and not both. Again, Hall’s identification theory helps us to understand and entertain the possibility of Quilliam being both when we view Quilliam’s name as a mere signifier dictated by a certain discourse. As stated before, the definitions given to Muslims living in Britain have mostly been the product of certain events which have given birth to dichotomized discourses and labels, for example, moderate/radical, civilised/barbaric and so forth. Quilliam, therefore, becomes a floating signifier within this larger bipolar discourse. It seems then that the more we find out about the life of Adullah Quilliam the more we realise that he can not easily be placed into one classification or another, in fact, his identification reveals to us how his character, in fact, presents an ‘over determination’ and the refusal of a ‘proper fit’. Therefore, we can conclude that Abduallah Quilliam is not the model of a distinct British Muslim identity since his personality is incapable of being classified in the reductive contemporary discourse in which Muslims living in Britain today are embroiled.

The Problematique of Being Muslim

An analysis of the discourse involving the British Muslim community also reveals something else: that the definition of being a British Muslim is primarily deduced from the premise that they are a problem. This is something which Ziauddin Sardar speaks of in what he calls the ‘problematique of being Muslim’:

‘So long as we accept being seen as a problem, the problematique of being Muslim will obstruct and hinder genuine integration across all sectors of British society’[28]

Sardar brings to light another facet of the bipolar discourse which we have spoken about thus far where British Muslims themselves internalise given definitions. This means that the options of engagement available to them are very limited, hardly any alternatives are presented in such a closed discourse. They are constantly perceived as lacking or not quite meeting the standard erected by a more powerful Western liberal discourse. This creates the illusion that there is an end which British Muslims need to arrive at. It is in arriving at this particular end that they shall finally prove their worth as loyal British subjects. This distinct British Muslim end seems to be clearly defined and at the same time inherently ambiguous. Take for example the following quote from Phillip Lewis’ book Young, British, Muslim:

“Muslims in Britain, at ease Islamically with religious diversity and democracy, making their distinctive contributions to public and civic debate as citizens, could have huge contribution to the same debates across the Muslim world. After all, in Britain, unlike much of the Muslim world, there is intellectual freedom and space for robust debate. However, as the Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan reminds us, ‘the Road is still long…one must not be afraid or apologize for needing time.”[29]

Lewis’ quote displays the embededness of the polarized discourse within which British Muslims are framed. One gets the feeling that Muslims living in the Britain should be grateful for the opportunity afforded to them by Western liberal societies where they have ‘intellectual freedom and space for robust debate’,  a choice which would be denied to them in the ‘Muslim world’ (wherever that is!). Again, such a statement, though well intentioned I am sure, inevitably homogenizes the diverse community of Muslims in Britain and ultimately places them outside of ‘mainstream British society’. Furthermore, quoting from the popular Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan, who speaks of the road being long and Muslims needing time, creates the illusion of a determined end, which I find extremely problematic. If we take into account, once again, Hall’s theory of identification, we see that identity has no determined end since ‘it is not determined in the sense that it can always be ‘won’ or ‘lost.’’[30] Once again, to reiterate the main theme of this essay, identification is a perennial process so it is illogical to assume that it has a fixed end.

In this essay I chose to concentrate on the problems that the question asked poses. In many ways I questioned the question itself as a form of protest by highlighting that such a question can not be divorced from the various discourses and political realities Muslims living in Britain today are embroiled in. Furthermore, I felt that by concentrating on the nature of identity itself we could better understand the complexities and dynamism behind the term British Muslim which is taken for granted. Hall’s theory of identification for me serves as a timeless model for the true representation of identities in flux, where a multiplicity of identities play themselves on the backdrop of given contexts, floating signifiers given meaning by certain discourses, one in which today’s barbaric Muslim was yesterday’s effeminate and passive one. In this sense, I could have easily applied the popular model of Said’s Orientalism described by one critic as being concerned with:

“…the status of all forms of thought and representation for dealing with the alien. Can one ultimately escape procedures of dichotomizing, restructuring, and textualizing in the making of interpretive statements about foreign cultures and traditions? If so, how? [31]

But I felt that Hall’s theory of identification was one possibility of escaping such dichotomizations and narrow discourses and, in this respect, it took me further than Said’s model could have.

The category of British Muslim is then only useful for describing the geography of Muslims who happen to have been born in Britain or British citizens who happen to be Muslim and nothing more. It is only when we see the activity of identities in given contexts that any notions of a distinct British Muslim identity begin to breakdown and we see that there is no such thing as a distinct British Muslim identity since Muslims born in Britain are that and much more. Hall’s theory helps us to map out these dynamics conceptually and in this way also helps us to see the imbalances of focussing on one identity over another which can lead to the ultimate exclusion of another as in the case of Muslim women in Britain.

The conclusion I have arrived at may seem a bleak one, after all, I am breaking the notion of an idealised British Muslim citizen who incorporates the best of both British and Islamic values. But I do not have any objections towards such an endeavour- as long as it is taken as an endless endeavour. The question then is not simply one of whether there is such a thing as a distinct British Muslim identity but whether or not the idea of a distinct British Muslim identity can adequately describe anything about the Muslim communities living in Britain today. My personal view is that Hall’s analysis creates an awareness which is ultimately empowering, it hands the autonomy and agency back to the individual. Muslims are no longer the passive units in a given discourse but become active agents of changed with the power to define themselves, an aspiration shared by Sardar who says that:

‘The greatest of the spaces of hope I look forward to is that in which we develop the capacity to explain ourselves better both to ourselves and to our fellow citizens as we share in the burdens and difficulties of making Britain a better society for everyone’[32]

Hence, although there maybe no distinctive British Muslim identity what we are left with is something better and more enduring: active agency where ‘identity has the ontological status of a project and a postulate’[33], and the never-ending narrative of being a Muslim in Britain today.

Bibliography

Abbas, T. ed. (2005), Muslim Britain: Communities Under Pressure, ZED Books: London

Hall, S. & D Gay, P. (1996) ed. Questions of Cultural Identity, SAGE: London

Hussain, S. (2008), Muslims on the Map: A National Survey of Social Trends in Britain, I.B Tauris: London

Lewis, P. (2007), Young, British and Muslim, Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd: London

Lewis, P. (1994), Islamic Britain: Religion, Politics and Identity among British Muslims, I.B. Tauris: London

Modood, T. (2005), Multicultural Politics: Racism, Ethnicity and Muslims in Britain, Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh

Phillips, R. (2009) ed. Muslim Spaces of Hope, Zed Books: London

Journals

Brown, K. (2008), ‘The Promise and Peril of Women’s Participation in UK mosques: the impact of securitisation agendas on identity, gender and community’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations 10 (3)

Burlet, S. & Reid, S. (1998) A Gendered Uprising: Political representation and minority ethnic groups, Journal of Ethnic and Racial Studies 21(2)

El-Haj, N. (2005), ‘Edward Said and the Political Present’, American Ethnologist, 32(4)

Hopkins, P. (2006) Youthful Muslim masculinities: gender and generational relations, Transactions of the Institute of the Institute of British Geographers, 31(3)

Werbner, P. (1996) ‘The Making of Muslim Dissent: Hybridized Discourses, Lay Preachers, and Radical Rhetoric among British Pakistanis’, American Ethnologist, 23(1)

Websites

www.abdullaquilliamsociety.org

www.quilliamfoundation.org

www.yahyabirt.com

The former Home Secretary, Jack Straw, certainly felt it was necessary to superfluously comment on the criminal gang which groomed vulnerable young girls and sexually abused them. Sentencing the remaining members of the gang, Judge Phillip Head described their acts as pure ‘evil’ and described one of the members as nothing more than a ‘sexual predator with a voracious sexual appetite’. There was no mention of race or culture. The only valuable comment in Straw’s muddled statement was the view that the young women who were abused by this deplorable gang were perceived as nothing more than ‘easy meat’.

How Straw arrives at this tenuous link between race, culture and sexual abuse is mind-boggling. For by the same logic we could say similar things about gangs from Eastern Europe who are widely implicated in child sex trafficking or indeed about the majority white (how we forget this is also an ethnic group!) imprisoned sexual offenders across prisons in the UK. In November of last year a paedophile ring was found to be operating in Cornwall involving three white men all in their fifties. According to a BBC news report these men were said to have abused no less than 30 young girls. Are we now to suggest that there is something in men of Cornish cultural heritage which makes them more likely to commit acts of sexual abuse on young girls or that men from Eastern Europe have a cultural predilection for trafficking vulnerable young girls? Indeed, we would never for a moment suggest that the hundreds of white sex offenders in jails across the UK reflects anything about white British people in general?  Not only is Straw’s language vacuous but his logic is deeply flawed and at best absurd.

But this absurdity only comes to mind when we replace one already essentialized group (Asian- Pakistani) with another that has not yet been subjected to the egregious homogenizing language and representation by the media and inept politicians. As The Independent columnist Joan Smith points out that there is no evidence to suggest that men from a certain culture are more likely to commit sexual offences compared with another. So Straw’s patronizing plea to the Pakistani community to ‘think about why this is going on’ will only really play into the hands of racist right-wing parties like the BNP providing them with more fodder for their media campaign to groom the vulnerable, disillusioned, white, working class voter. Furthermore, thanks to Straw’s indirect political benediction, the Asian man as ‘sexual predator’ will now be an addition to the catalogue of abusive characteristics (barbaric, fundamentalist, terrorist, backward, licentious) already used to describe young British Pakistani men daily in the media. It is indeed the unconscious recycling of 19^th century Orientalist lore by Straw being embedded in the Western psyche as it is. But I don’t want to go into that.

Honour killings too are often associated with certain cultures despite the majority of people in that culture who find it equally as shocking as those from without. Honour killings are an abhorrent aberration from any culture and should never be seen a part of it. What is often overlooked is that cultures are not static bodies or monolithic blocks but that one culture has a thousand divergent voices which are in constant flux. When we associate acts of criminality with certain cultures we are in danger of maligning the individual members of that culture, some of whom are calling for a change in certain abhorrent acts committed in the name of their cherished heritage.

As a result of Straw’s comments a political storm is surely set brew this week. Straw has leant his support to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre which is to conduct an investigation into how and why young, vulnerable girls are groomed. This is a welcomed endeavour as long as its focus remains on identifying the stages which leads these young girls putting themselves in such dangerous situations. Let us not forget that it takes two to groom, the groomer and the groomed. The study should be a societal one rather than a cultural witch hunt aimed at British Paksitanis. My personal view is that it should focus more on the attitude and perceptions of males towards females. Also, without sounding too patronizing, we should reinvigorate the old-fashioned message of not talking to strangers or taking anything offered to us by a person of dubious character. As one comment on a newspaper website suggested that the true moral of this horrific tale is simple: Do Not Talk to Strangers.

Many media commentators are now voicing their frustration at the culture of silence which refuses to acknowledge the problem with men of Asian heritage and the way in which they hunt young girls in packs for sex. Although no one is denying this disgusting phenomena, acknowledged by even some members of the British Muslim community, there is another culture of silence in Britain to do with the sexualisation of women in Western societies. These young girls are victims of a wider and more embedded problem which Western societies have refused to acknowledge at the risk of sounding too religious or moralistic. This is to do with the routinely sexualized and dehumanized image of Western women in the popular media. We have all seen the way in which women are degradingly, depicted in magazines, adverts and music videos. It is the female body reduced to meat in the cattle market of consumerism where sex sells. Unfortunately, what advertising doesn’t tell us is that it is the female body, which like a veritable Barbie doll is constantly stripped and made into a malleable victim for solely profiting purposes that does the real selling.

Recently the anti-rape charity Rape Crisis Scotland produced a provocative TV advert showing a woman in a nightclub dressed in a short, shiny blue mini skirt. A few boisterous Scottish males sitting across the way by the bar drinking their alcohol see her and come to the conclusion that ‘she is asking for it’. The advert then shows another earlier scene of the woman buying her glittery blue mini skirt when the shop assistant comes up to her and asks whether she requires any assistance. The girl responds with crude sarcasm intended to shock the viewer, ‘Yes, I’m going out tonight and I want to get raped. I need a skirt that will encourage a guy to have sex with me against my will’. After a moment she looks straight into the camera and says, ‘As if’. The advert achieves its effect best by challenging male perceptions of women head on. This is a view shared by the charity Rape Crisis UK which makes it unequivocal that in cases of sexual assault ‘most perpetrators are male and most victims are female’ and concludes that ‘it is both a consequence and cause of gender inequality’. Unlike, Jack Straw, Rape Crisis Scotland did not seek specifically to find whether there was something in Scottish heritage which encouraged rape!

In our modern Western societies gender inequality is not reducible to economic and social inequalities (although these are very important) but a deeper inequality in terms of the image of women constructed by Western culture, which has sexualized the female body for the sole gratification of the male gaze. It is a view shared by the pioneers of feminism who lament the shift from liberating the domesticated female to the birth of the sexualized female.

So what is sexualisation?  Recently a large scale task force was commissioned by the American Psychology Association (2010) to study the sexualisation of girls in society. One of the main points of analysis was the depiction of females in the media. Before I share some of the startling findings let us look out how the APA defines the process of sexualisation. For the APA sexualisation occurs when:

• a person’s value comes only from his or her sexual appeal

or behavior, to the exclusion of other characteristics;

• a person is held to a standard that equates physical

attractiveness (narrowly defined) with being sexy;

• a person is sexually objectified—that is, made into a

thing for others’ sexual use, rather than seen as a person

with the capacity for independent action and decision

making; and/or

• sexuality is inappropriately imposed upon a person.

The report tells us that only one of these occurrences need to be present for the process of sexualisation to take place. It also tells us that it is the third, sexual objectification (mainly of females), which runs rampage in our society today. The Task Force on the Sexualisation of Girls clearly identified a direct correlation between the construction of women in the media and how this directly impacted on the self-perception of the young girls. For instance, ‘for both White and Black teenage girls, the more they idealized TV images and compared themselves . . . to those images, the stronger their drive was to be thin and the more dissatisfied they were with their bodies.’. Hence, sexualisation is not simply to do with external perceptions but it is also an internalised process which impressionable young girls imbibe from the images of beautifully constructed women blearing from their TV screens.

With regards to race the report did come across an interesting empirical finding. It found that the ‘cultural ideal for female beauty’ has been ‘racialized’ and that the idealized beautiful woman is mainly white. The way in which young girls of different races relate to these idealized images of White females is also interesting. The report found that young girls of an African American heritage felt less intimidated by these images than their white counterparts and did ‘not demonstrate negative body-image effects of objectifying media’. Furthermore, young black girls displayed an almost indifferent attitude to mainstream teenage magazines since they entertained different standards of beauty and attractiveness. This finding may seek to answer Jack Straw’s comments of why Pakistanis girls are ‘off-limits’ to Pakistani men (or for any men for that matter). Could it be that they subscribe to a different standard of beauty and attractiveness which regulates their behaviour in society? A study into this would indeed shed more light on this. Also a few of the members of the Derby gang were married so Pakistani women were not off-limits to them.

In many instances the Asian gang from Derby played out the pretentious lifestyle so often seen in music videos. The gang cruised the streets in their expensive, flashy car as it bleared out hip-hop music. Once the gang had spotted a potential victim they then aimed to lure her with the promise of a more expensive lifestyle. The young victim was showered with gifts and trips to restaurants, made to feel important by the things she was bought. But as APA’s findings demonstrate this is the motif of most music videos viewed by teenagers today. Through an extensive content analysis to ‘determine how often sexual content consumed by teens objectifies girls or women’ the task force came across music lyrics containing such things as “I tell the hos all the time, Bitch get in my car” by the rapper 50 Cent other lyrics included “So blow me bitch I don’t rock for cancer/I rock for the cash and the topless dancers” sung by Kid Rock. Lyrics such as these were accompanied by music videos which the task force analysed and found that up to 81% of music videos contain sexual imagery. In these videos women were seen as ‘decorative objects’, dressed in scant and revealing clothes and served no other purpose other than to look sexy. What the task force concluded was that ‘massive exposure to media among youth creates the potential for massive exposure to portrayals that sexualize women and girls and teach girls that women are sexual objects’.

The APA’s findings will greatly help us in understanding the perception of women in our own society since the process of globalisation has also allowed the worst of American culture to infiltrate British teenage culture. The predominately Asian gang in Derby can be embedded in this culture of sexualized image of girls. The influence of mass media and the way in which it unconsciously and at times unhelpfully aides us in the construction of the Other (be it Asian or female) must be studied more. For all of us, regardless of race, are continuously bombarded with the same images, which is received by each of us in different ways depending on who we are. Judging by the findings by the APA, Western man is indeed exposed to an unhealthy diet of the sexualized female which indeed, to borrow Jack Straw’s words, contributes to the ‘fizzing and popping’ of his testosterone.

If we are to have any study into how these young girls were groomed, let us focus on the wider cultural perceptions of women by men in our societies. For the real victim here is not one ethnic group (white females), it is women everywhere. It is sad that Straw chose to express his concern in such terms. He can at least be admired for his frankness and honesty, although it was misplaced and misinformed. Let him heed the advice of Sai Baba, the Asian sage, who said ‘Before you speak, think -Is it necessary? Is it true? Is it kind? Will it hurt anyone? Will it improve on the silence?

Just as I strive daily to distance myself from those extremist Muslims who commit atrocities in the name of my faith, I now equally feel the need to distance myself from these radical liberals. Those liberals who claim to speak on behalf of us all with their symbols of Freedom, Human Rights and Feminism, as if their parochial definitions were shared across the board. Their freedom and equality is a veritable paradox of exclusion. Behind their comments on the niqaab lies a more sinister discourse of the incompatibility of ‘Islam’ and the ‘West’, the clash of civilisations thesis, which they seem bent on propelling into existence. This cosmic clash of symbols gives them a purpose in life. One in which their immutable gods of Freedom and Equality are given the sacrifice of ‘incompatible’ Islamic symbols. Indeed, it seems that everywhere I turn these days I always find a radical liberal calling for the blood of religion to be spilled on the altar of Secularism. For example, at a recent conference on ‘Re-constructing Multiculturalism’, and as positive as the title of the conference might have sounded, I was appalled by the bigoted attitudes towards religion I encountered, in general, and the explicit contempt towards Islam’s perceived growing influence in particular. One woman, braver than the other liberals who mostly shrouded their language, went further than most by booming that ‘Wherever there are Muslims there is trouble!’

What is most horrendous about the niqaab farce is how it is used to legitimise insults (‘walking coffin’, ‘paper bag’ ..etc) against a powerless and vulnerable group. Although we do not have the correct estimate of how many women wear the niqaab in France, it is estimated that out of its six million population, only 2,000 don the niqaab. Furthermore, we have no idea of how many of these are being coerced into wearing the niqaab. However, despite the paucity of qualitative research in this are it is taken for granted that behind every oppressed veiled Muslim woman there lies a barbaric Muslim man; the stereotypes fit like hand and glove. In the media we have heard French officials using freedom of expression in its vilest form; to mock, ridicule and parody a minority group within a minority group. If Islamophobia is defined as ‘the irrational fear and hatred of Islam and Muslims’ then these people are nothing else but Islamophobes.

On the issue of whether these women are being coerced or not, I think it is hard to gauge. I, as a Muslim, would be the first to admit that there are aspects of the Islamic tradition, owing to warped interpretations, which are extremely patriarchal, verging on misogynistic. These traditions have been handed down without being interrogated and subsequently crystallized and canonised as part of the Shariah, mostly interpreted by men. This is a problem which needs to be addressed. Would it not be more productive, as a lot of ‘progressive’ Muslims have been trying to do, to encourage an open and frank debate about the niqaab instead of an outright ban? Would it not be more helpful to support the instigators of these debates who are coming from within the Islamic tradition itself? Above all, would it not be more productive to empower Muslim women themselves, by giving them a voice and listening to their real concerns? It is about time radical liberals stopped patronizing Muslim women.

One of the strengths of a multicultural society is that it forces cultures who enter the melting pot to confront their own inadequacies and embrace the positive aspects of other cultures which it finds lacking in its own. Sometimes this is done through debate and discussion, at other times this reflection occurs on a subconscious level and the change is as natural as time itself. One example of this in the Muslim community is the way Muslims are embracing democracy more than ever before in Britain with the huge surge in MPs, councillors as well as people engaged in political lobbying and the like. In my view, there is no democracy without active citizenship. This participation should be celebrated since it is an indication of how far British society has come. It brings democracy to life again, instead of it being bandied about like a dead noun on a meaningless placard. The type of mature political participation we are witnessing by European Muslims today is indicative of how far Muslims in the West have come in their reconciliation of their faith within a predominately secular liberal society. If we strengthen Muslim women, we will have less to fear (not that I believe for one moment that there is anything to fear). I agree that Islam as it is now is predominately patriarchal and women still bear the brunt of most of all its ills. If there is an encroachment of a more intolerant, conservative Islam on the horizon, as we are lead to believe, then the only people who will be fit enough to stave of the attack will be liberal European Muslims themselves. One’s who have been given the intellectual breathing space in a multicultural society like Britain to formulate a balanced and progressive theology.

When issues such as the niqaab is catapulted into the spotlight it only undoes all the positive work being done by this group. The neurotic fixation that liberals have with the female Muslim body is only exacerbating the current situation with regards to the misrepresentation of Islam in Western societies: it is inane, disproportionate, fear-mongering and, above all, reactionary. Most importantly, in the end it is the very people who they purport to be ‘helping’ who will suffer the most.

yes, we can be French and Muslim!

The biggest tragedy the ‘modern world’ has encountered en route to the industrial and technological revolution is the complete loss of spiritual symbolism. Today consumerism has a monopoly on the science of symbols. Marketing is a clearly defined science hypnotizing the individual into ways of thinking, behaving and living. Indeed, advertisers are the first to put the newly discovered findings of psychology to use. They are aware of the power that colours, images, symbols and words possess and the impact it can have on the decisions we make in our daily lives. It is not that we are oblivious to symbols themselves for they are paraded across our television screens, pasted on billboards, our daily lives are littered with marketing-generated symbols. This is not the tragedy I speak of. The loss I speak of has more to do with the loss of the autonomy of perception, an undiluted vision unfettered by the chains of international marketing corporations. I will expand on this point later.

However, it is not only consumer culture and corporations that have desecrated our spiritual organ of perception, but institutions and vacuous traditions which claim to speak in the name of God or the gods of this world, the self- appointed mouthpieces of divinity. These bullshitting buddhas have layered the kernel of religion with an infinitude of warped interpretations and peeling this theological onion is often a painful and teary process. The catastrophe that this had on us is a reading of scripture which was shallow and literalist, moreover, it was a reading which was devoid of love and compassion. This shift in man’s engagement with the divine relegated the traditional symbolic readings of tradition and revelation to the cesspool of dogmatism.

Literalism is a claustrophobic hermeneutics. It suffocates revelation and constricts the spiritual enterprise of religion, which, I believe, is universal in its scope. I believe that if tradition does not attempt universality then it is bound to wither and fester in arid particularities. In attempting a universal reading of scripture we do not loose particular traditions, on the contrary we enrich them.

Not much work has been done on this theme of literalism and Islamic historiography, about where the ruptured occurred. My personal inkling is that it has its roots in colonial history when Muslims were subjugated by European imperialism. Furthermore, the dar al harb (abode of war) and Dar al Islam (abode of Islam) division may also have set the conceptual framework for a more rigid, black and white, reading of the Quran. It would be interesting to survey the historical landscape of Quranic hermeneutics and carry some comparative work out on the tafaseer of scholars who were under colonial rule and those who were not, whether their interpretations differed and in what way, maybe a perfect model (or models) are already there for us and ready to be applied.

What has occurred is a superficial division in Quranic exegesis history where symbolic readings of the Quran have come to be primarily associated with Sufism. Nineteenth century Orientalism also has a lot to answer for in this respect with its relentless scientific categorisation and labelling which created divisions where there previously were none. An example of this maybe how Sufism became an entity outside of Islam having Islamic strands rather than being considered one of the many branches of Islamic epistemology as it once was known, namely, tassawuf.

The blame cannot be fully apportioned to outside influences however. The problem of having a crystallized creed, as developed by Muslim scholars of the 8^th century, is that it creates the illusion of a normative (fixed) Islam and anything which adds or subtracts from that interpretation is seen as lacking, superfluous (bida) or beyond the pale. If we hearken back to the life of the Prophet Muhammad, we can clearly see that divine revelation was far from static, during his lifetime, we see that it is fluid and, above all, contextual. If divine revelation was meant to be static then God could have revealed it all in one go. There is wisdom in gradual revelation, and something tells me that the root of this divine wisdom is nothing but compassion. In some cases the sayings and actions of the prophet seem to run contradictory to the Quran. For example, despite there being a myriad of verses in the Quran urging the Muslims not to take the unbelievers as friends or protectors, the prophet still signs the Treaty of Hudaiybah. Also, later in his life, when reflecting on a particular pre-Islamic pact he made with the various tribes of Mecca, known as the treaty of virtue, he comments that even today were he ever called to partake in such a venture he would not hesitate in the slightest. We are all familiar with such traditions and stories from the prophet’s life and they appeal foremost to our universal sense of humanity. Actions such as these ran contradictory to specific verses of the Quran but parallel to the overall spirit of God’s revelation. And this is an important point for us to consider as Muslims: is it not time that we agreed what the underlying message and symbol of the Quran is? Is the Quran a symbol of justice? Equality? Freedom of spirit? Does it embody a perennially revolutionary spirit? These are the types of symbols which we can actualize in our daily lives grounded on the unequivocal epistemology of the Quran.

Carl Jung in his magnificent book Man and His Symbols elaborates on the concept of symbols:

“Thus a word or an image is symbolic when it implies something more than its obvious immediate meaning. It has a wider “unconscious” aspect that is never precisely defined or fully explained…because there are innumerable things beyond the range of human understanding, we constantly use symbolic terms to represent concepts that we can not fully define or fully comprehend. This is one of the reasons why all religions employ symbolic languages or images.” Carl Gustav Jung, Man and His Symbols

What strikes me about Jung’s definition of symbols is how, in a religious context, it teaches us humility. The idea that symbols have a ‘wider “unconscious” aspect’ and can never be defined or fully comprehended breeds acceptance of parallel, or ostensibly different, worldviews. Symbolism therefore acts as a fortress against bigotry and religious intolerance, never allowing one thing to lay claim to the whole Truth. Multiple versions of the truth, the rise and fall of ideas, are important for the intellectual growth of mankind and it is this dialectic which is at the heart of our collective creative spirit. Symbolism is food for the creative mind, we think in symbols not words.

The anxiety which comes with such an approach is the fear of diluting my own tradition. By interacting with the Quran in such broad terms I spread the veil of interpretation thin. Traditions become blurred into one amorphous heap of religious aphorisms causing the corruption of the particularity of our traditions. But symbolism also comes to the rescue here in that it allows us to ponder universalities whilst at the same time preserving particularities. This may reek of duplicity at first and come across as nothing more than a pretentious paradox, but read Coleridge’s understanding of symbols before you make up your mind:

‘the translucence of the Eternal through and in the Temporal. It always partakes of the Reality which it renders intelligible; and while it enunciates the whole, abides itself as a living part in that Unity of which it is representative.’

If those of a monotheistic faith are not capable of entertaining such ideas then it marks out an extreme flaw in the potential universality of their beliefs. A belief in one God must necessarily entail the idea that we are all capable of being unified by him/her/it; a belief in a compassionate God enforces this necessity ever more so.

Many people will ask why I am exerting my energy in this endeavour. My response is that up until now I have not been dissuaded from the idea that our thoughts and the way we think are the seeds which give fruit to our actions. If these seeds are sound then it must naturally follow that our actions will be sound too. ‘Actions are judged by their intentions’, so a famous prophetic tradition directs us and intention is the sweet soil of symbolism. The importance of such thinking is ever more urgent in contemporary society with the disease of monotheistic extremism. The extremist mind, unlike like his dogmatic doctrine, is a polytheism of ideas. By this I mean that what makes an extremist is not one thing; it is not hatred alone, revenge or a sole sense of injustice. It is a combination of these all coupled with the fact that their physical world is grounded on, and overlaps with, a metaphysical rigidity, and it is the latter which is the most important. The extremist is the product of a misinformed metaphysics, which can, through open dialogue, be repaired. Unless we promote a more symbolic reading of religious (and secular) doctrines then sacrilegious readings shall reign supreme. Above all (as I mentioned before in another blog) that this exercise is highly personal. I have no authority, even by the standards of moderate, classical orthodoxy I am highly unqualified for this endeavour; my command of the Arabic language is poor, my competence in the sciences of ahadith and Islamic law are extremely wanting but all of this is overshadowed by the fact that I have a God-given right, indeed, a divine injunction, to engage and ask questions of the Quran and any individual or structure which prevents that contact from occurring is committing a heinous act of shirk; they are setting themselves as the mouthpieces of God and at the same acting as annoying obstacles to the divine!

My reading of the Quran will not be restricted by the Islamic sciences or the Islamic epistemology as it has now come to be defined. I feel that a symbolic reading gives me the freedom and license to draw from the paradigms of other cultures and philosophies. This is a test for the Quran’s claim to be a book for the whole of humanity. So, my symbolic journey into the Quran will take me to ancient Greece, Confucius China, ancient India as well as to the annals of Western philosophy. All of this with the aim of self-illumination and the goal of constructing a universal fountain of wisdom in the green garden of the Quran from which we can all drink, God willing!

It is quite a daunting task. The sense of foreboding which permeates every fibre of my being as I type this is not one which is informed by me, rather it is informed by the poor Islamic education I received as a child growing up in Britain. I am sure every British born Muslim of my generation can relate to the read-the-Quran-in-lighting-speed-Arabic-and-without-understanding- a-single-word madrassa education we got when we were growing up. My time at mosque was far removed from piety and inculcating a sense of God consciousness. If I were to sum my experience of going to mosque and were to assign to it a constant motif it would be one of fear. Fear of the imams. Fear of making a mistake. Fear of lagging behind my classmates. Fear of Hell. This was of course supplemented by sheer and utter boredom and a room full of smelly children’s feet. Feet which two hours before had been toiling and running merrily in the playgrounds of that not so equally brutal but not too far off British education establishment: the school.

But what has all this got to with the Quran? Well, frankly nothing. But I write it for the purpose of catharsis if anything else. I feel the need to purge myself of this episode in my life and to begin anew. Apart from home, the mosque was the only other arena where I ‘engaged’ with the Quran. I say engaged but I think it was more of a disengagement, a spiritual distancing, a veritable gulf fed by petulant, sadomasochist imams who took pleasure in the mistakes the children made in their recitation and pounced on them like malicious cats lying in wait for meek mice.

I would imagine and hazard a guess that the British Pakistani suicide bombers who denoted their bombs on that fateful Summer day in July probably had a similar Islamic education. They went from understanding nothing of the Quran to an extremist, warped interpretation of the holy text. It begs the question that maybe if the first generation had done a better job at teaching the universal principles of Islam as primarily a doctrine of the promotion of social justice and equality then maybe that space would never have been left free for the extremists to desecrate.

At the centre of this disengaged Islamic education was the notion of power. Not understanding the Arabic text and innocently assuming that the imams did (most didn’t, as far as I can remember) gave the imams their raison d’être. True knowledge would indeed have been power since it would have given us, as we are seeing now with young Muslim men and women, the tools to question the instructions or lack thereof that we were given. At the heart of Islamic epistemology is that of the ‘aql or the intellect; a critical faculty whose strength lies in asking questions and one which is constantly engaged in analyzing the reality of the world set before it. Hence, we can say then that the philosophical mind has always been welcomed and encouraged in the Islamic worldview. It is through constant questioning that the Quran is kept alive.

Although this blog is public my discourse with the Quran is a private affair. I make no claims to authority and I am certainly not in the business of plugging, promoting or proselytizing. This Quran blog is simply my humble attempt at re-cultivating that severed connection with my holy text and ultimately with God. Yes, I believe that the Quran is the word of God, but for it to be the living word of God the hermeneutical enterprise must be encouraged and conducted by us all on an individual basis. Many Muslims of a distorted orthodoxy would disagree with this. They will argue that in order for one to make a tafseer (interpretation) of the Quran one needs to be highly qualified in the various branches of the Islamic sciences such as the ahadith and have an almost mastery command of the Arabic language. This smacks of intellectual elitism. The reality is that not every Muslim will have the opportunity to study the plethora of Islamic sciences in depth. Indeed, these constructed conditions placed on the believer before he or she attempts tafseer are nigh impossible in this day and age for the majority of the Muslims living in this information ridden world. Furthermore, we can say with confidence that these stipulations were constructed many years after the Prophet’s (pbuh) death. No one can deny the fact that with the consolidation and subsequent shiftings of the Islamic empire a certain body of knowledge was required to legitimate the status quo. Hence the Islamic sciences as we now have them are not apolitical, nor free from the corruption which inevitably accompanies history.

He, peace be upon him, came to clear the pathway between man and God. It was a pathway mired in stone idols as well as idols of the ego, of greed and of oppression. It is said that every word that was revealed to Muhammad he spoke and relayed to his companions. He was the spiritual vessel chosen by God because of his pure character and the believers could drink directly from this holy source. But we are far removed from the spirit of the Quranic revelation today. The spirit of the Quran is one which is in constant conversation with man on a collective and an individual basis. We may not have the idols of Mecca in our midst today distracting us from God, but we do have false constructs which hinder us from engaging with the Quran confidently and this is the biggest calamity to befall the global Islamic community since it sapped our creative energy.

And so I refuse to let the spiritual Quran gather dust on my shelf. Instead, I wish for its words of wisdom to soak my very existence. Already I feel the nudge of resistance and the distant voices of two friends disagreeing over some matter or the other, but all within the spirit of love and compassion.