Bradford Muslim

What kind of religion?

2009-11-27T14:59:00.001-08:00

Large parts of the third generation are finding religion in a way that few predicted. Some have attempted to explain it all away as something foreign and dangerous. I have understood it as something familiar, once one gets behind the veneer of difference. Is it strange that spiritual discipline should be attractive to those who were raised in the same North that welcomed Methodism? Is marching for social justice so foreign in a place that gave rise to the labour movement? Is believing in more than the material really that problematic in ‘Wuthering Heights’ country? Behind the veneer of difference, therefore, is a familiarity that can become obvious to those who lend a listening ear to the souls that are discovering their religious selves.

Religion is here, not arriving from outside, but developing from within our own local traditions. But what kind of religion is it? I am struck by the Muslim capitalist spirit that is present in Bradford. It is a religious spirit that bases itself on moral chauvinism, prides itself on the show of external symbols of religiosity and is linked closely with a capitalist spirit that seeks to exhibit the trophies of success to all those who are also engaged in this game of mutual rivalry. They have become religious and financially successful. But how moral is this position on religion? Is this why the moral voice in the community is seldom heard and why many very wrong things continue to be tolerated in the name of a chauvinism that pretends that God does not see everything?

There is another way of being religious that is also emerging. It is value-driven. Shami Chakrabarti came to Bradford recently and she is admired by many in the Muslim community. She has spoken out on issues even though she is not from amongst us. Are our convictions like her’s or are they driven dare I ask by a selfish individualism or perhaps even a selfish communitarianism? As the Sufis say, people wrapped up in themselves make small packages.

There is another kind of religion that is becoming evident: it is one of integrity, dignity and service to others; it seeks the Divine Mercy while also recognising that it is perpetually under the scrutiny of the Divine Gaze. Religion is about worship, contemplation, prayer and remembrance. It is also about our relations with each other: family, friends, colleagues, neighbours and fellow city-dwellers. Does the Prophetic tradition on relationality – as this is how it could be described – encourage us to give or to take from others? The encouragement is to give to everyone, and continuously, because the consequence of possession (of time, wealth and health) is generosity, for those who understand the true nature of things. Hence, as the moral energy is gathered, so it should be distributed, if we are minded so. Wordsworth said, ‘Blessed are they who in the main, this faith even now do entertain’. It is time that we began to feel this.

Another big mistake by pursue

2009-11-23T14:44:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, Greater Manchester Police released Shaykh Asif Hussain Farooqui after he had been arrested on counter-terrorism related offences the week before. Four others who were arrested at the same time have been charged. The police have been in their words investigating this case for the last fifteen months.

There is a lot of anger in the community about the arrest of the respected Sufi Shaykh. Years ago, when there was no prevent, and hardly any linkages between the community and the police - this kind of mistake could have been explained away. Today, when prevent is anywhere and everywhere, and there are hundreds of police officers employed to know about the community, how the police could have arrested the Shaykh is totally beyond me. That they spent fifteen months investigating this and then released him within seven days after searching his house just beggars belief. It confirms one of my greatest worries - that is there is too much focus including from the Muslim community on prevent and not enough on pursue.

From the policing perspective, the damage to the credibility of British counter-terrorism is immense. Some mistakes are just too big, and this is one of them. How are we supposed to take the pursue strand seriously? Let it be remembered that this is the same force that arrested the Pakistani students earlier this year.

Our problem as a community is that we react. Instead, we should be proactive and organised. We need to know:

Which officer was responsible for the decision to arrest the Shaykh. He has some serious explaining to do, on the very specific question of the arrest of the Shaykh himself - why was it necessary?

Who trains and has trained the counter-terrorism unit in North West (CTU NW)?

Which Muslims were responsible for advising on this arrest, if any?

How many Muslims do GMP or CTU NW employ or have in scrutiny positions?

If we wish to ensure that mistakes like this do not happen again, then we need to ask questions of those who are employed by us to protect us. Also worryingly, if the police are still arresting innocent good people then are they also missing the potential criminals?

Four Stages of Prevent

2009-11-01T03:24:00.000-08:00

The Guardian's recent reporting of examples of bad practice in the implementation of prevent are currently being investigated by the Home Office. Before I write about what I consider to be the core problems at present, I'd like to provide some context.

There are four stages in the development of the prevent strategy as it is currently in place.

The first stage was pre-prevent, if you like. If we take 9/11 as the beginning (this could be disputed, because there was some activity in this area in the 90s), then there was a period which I find most astonishing upto July 7 2005 in which there was no prevent. There was a leaked memo from Andrew Turnbull, the Cabinet Secretary of the time, to John Gieve, the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office at the time, in 2004 which gave indications of what prevent could look like in its embryonic stages.

The second stage began after the bombings in July 7 2005. This included the forming of seven working groups of Muslims that were called to advise the government in different areas including regeneration, youth, education, mosques, extremism, women and security and policing. Many recommendations were presented to government and some of them were taken up. The government was criticised for not taking up more of the recommendations, the response was that many of the recommendations could not be taken up by government because it remained for the community itself to take them up. A couple of succesful projects took off during this period including Radical Middle Way which was aiming to support the counter-radicalisation argument in the community.

The third stage was a response to the second stage. The problem with the second stage was that it involved activities at the national stage and there was not enough devolution of the prevent strategy to the local level, There needed to be productive partnerships at the local level for the prevent strategy to work thoroughly. Councils with large Muslim populations were therefore chosen and given small amounts of money in the first trial year to examine how this process would play out. The problem was that many councils were distant from their local Muslim communities and their youth, sometimes due to exclusion and sometimes due to history. The government decided to roll out a three year programme of funding for Muslim community groups to work together with the local councils on the prevent agenda.

This led on to the fourth stage. The police had a counter-terrorism remit which focused on the second strand of the contest strategy: the pursue strand which was about actually apprehending people who were about to commit terrorist attacks. It was about this time when counter-terrorism was refashioned with local counter-terrorism units and the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism at the Home Office being constituted (I'm still not sure whether this was not an elobarate form of musical chairs). The fourth stage of prevent involved the funding of prevent strands specifically in police forces, sometimes aligned with the neighbourhood policing agenda. This was announced by government at the time.

There are several problems with prevent at present. But perhaps before I proceed I should state my position on prevent as a whole. Is prevent necessary, that is, if Britain has a counter-terrorism strategy, then should it have a prevent aspect to this strategy which is specifically about positive linkages with the Muslim community? I think it should, indeed, it must. Otherwise contest is left to senior CT officials who tend to be Home Counties, Oxbridge and clueless. There needs to be a corrective element which adds to the strategy and comes from the Muslim community itself, at least in principle. I don't know if there remains a major terrorist threat to this country, but if there is, then the CT prevent strand must be Muslim-focused and inclusive. This is how most effective policy responses to social problems work.

About the problems. First of all, it is not clear to me whether the walls between the community aspect and the policing aspect are Chinese enough. If they are not, then this is a major problem. The cases referred to by the Guardian indicate that there are problems in this area. The key problem being that funding is being provided to community organisations who are then leant on to provide information for pursue.

Secondly, there is this whole problem of ensuring the the whole community is represented in the prevent strategy to reflect the diversity of the community. This mixes the objectives of prevent and dilutes the effectiveness of the strategy, as is happening in several projects. The only justification that I can think of for prevent money from a state perspective is if it leads to actually making Britian safer, but this requires some strong-mindedness from the officials. For example, a non-practising Muslim with hardly any activist history will simply not have any effect on deradicalisation of extremists, but a practising one can. But the government and officials are too worried of the Daily Mail factor and so instead are more willing to fund meaningless projects which help no-one except those that are funded. Here. the government should I think call Paul Dacre in and explain what this strategy is about, what they are doing and why and then ask for some slack from the Daily Mail in the interests of the security of the country.

The third problem is recognising the difference between community cohesion and prevent. One positive aspect of prevent has been that it has helped community cohesion in one way - there are many succesful projects - by linking up Muslim communities that were previously excluded from police services and local councils to those same bodies, by force. This has been attritional and many have resisted, but it has brought more co-operation and therefore more cohesion where it matters most, between officialdom and the local communities. Others (in the South) that previously had good relations were upset by stigma associated with prevent but the honesty of their convictions can be tested by looking to see how they have involved and employed Muslims throughout the rest of their organisations.

The fourth problem is Muslim involvement itself. This has been a big failure and the fact that there is this current attrition between the OSCT and the community and the fact that many Muslims have simply not cared enough about the recent reporting are indications of the distance that remains between officialdom and serious leadership in the community. This is a disaster and I can only put it down to cowardice on the part of officialdom - to take on characters who would have given them a hard time, but for a good purpose. Something to do with comfort zones? Does this explain why so many clearly dodgy characters are hanging around the prevent agenda?

The Tories have stated that they will keep with Contest but review Prevent. The DCLG select committee is also reviewing prevent. Is the community itself at a different place now than where it was five years ago? Is prevent as important now as it was then? Is something else required now? Could streamlining prevent (making it fit for purpose), ringfencing police involvement in prevent and mainstreaming Muslim community participation and involvement in public services a surer way to make this country safer?

J'Accuse le BBC

2009-10-20T01:26:00.000-07:00

Nick Griffin, if you haven't noticed already, is due to appear on this week's BBC's flagship political programme 'Question Time'. There is much concern and commentary across the media about this as a key moment in the growing acceptability of the BNP. It is their moment of arrival. The first point that I'd make is that the narrative of the steady upward climb of the far-right is (like the fear of the Muslim take-over) exaggerated and complicated. Many places have seen the rise and fall of the BNP vote already. Other places are still experiencing a rise, but for different reasons - mostly to do with the fracturing of the Labour vote. The BNP tends not to be as succesful in Tory areas and this may be due to 'a class thing' - ex Tory voters tend to vote Lib Dem or UKIP, whereas ex Labour voters tend to vote BNP.

This issue to me is more about the BBC than it is about Nick Griffin, and it is more about the content than it is about personalities. Many commentators have noted a shift in BNP rhetoric over the years to focus on anti-Muslim arguments - the same arguments that we are all familiar with. He will no doubt refer to them on the programme. The problem for me is that it is not the case as far as anti-Muslim prejudice is concerned that Nick Griffin is the prejudiced one, and all the rest are not prejudiced. Rather, sadly, it is the case that the opinions that Nick Griffin would wish to put forward are indeed shared by many in the 'respectable political establishment' especially when it comes to Muslims. The accumulative result is that there may appear in fact to be some truth in what Nick Griffin is saying, because as in Venn diagrams there is too much overlap with 'mainstream politicians'. It will be in these moments when the nation will collectively gulp as they recognise that they are in agreement with the leader of the BNP. (J'Accuse le BBC). The anti-Muslim narrative will begin to assume an air of truth.

Let's look at the people that have been reported as being approached to attend this Thursday: Richard Littlejohn, Douglas Murray and Michael Gove. Unfortunately in relation to some of their views on Muslim communities, there is much overlap between these individuals in their opinions. Hence the opportunism of the BNP.

Even of those that have been selected: Sayeeda Warsi and Jack Bhai, there is still unfortunately some overlap. I still haven't got to the bottom of Jack Bhai's comments on the niqab when Minister after Minister followed Jack's lead to lay in to the Muslim community and off their own personal portfolio. That was just wierd. One day we'll find out. Sayeeda Warsi has to engage in the politics of compensation in which she has to celebrate her success as a leading Muslim politician and compensate for it at the same time by saying the kind of things that could be agreeable to a BNP voter.

I blame the BBC. If the boundaries of acceptability have been widened, and content has been added to the narrative, then the appearance of Nick Griffin on the BBC is not one huge leap for freedom, but rather another small step in the direction of support for anti-Muslim prejudice by the nation's broadcaster.

Those who follow this blog will know that I have been chasing the BBC on its continued inclusion of Melanie Phillips on the Moral Maze as a panellist even on Muslim related issues when many Muslims have had to put themselves in a position of vulnerability to someone who has called for the use of torture in the war of terror and that the problem with the British government's policy on counter-terrorism is that they are not taming Muslims like we used to do in the Raj (I'll leave it for you to put two and two together).

The BBC's flagship religious discussion programme is called 'the Big Questions' and has recently invited Douglas Murray as a panellist on Islam and Muslims when he has said in the past that 'Islam is an opportunistic infection in Europe' (why is he calling us opportunistic?). Again, there is overlap between people who have been given prime-time space to make their anti-Muslim comments and some of the things that Nick Griffin says.

I used to think that the BBC was left-wing and pro-minorities. This is until I heard Greg Dyke as CEO describe it as 'hideously white' and then began to come across people in public life as former BBC employees: Rod Liddle and Anthony Browne are two examples of people who have had very influential positions in the BBC and also hold extreme views on Muslims and multiculturalism. This has made me wonder. Perhaps the BBC is not the airy-fairy, nicey-daisy organisation that some make it out to be. Perhaps its active encouragement of the anti-Muslim position over the years is just the simple context for this next step to be taken this week.

Which returns me to my title: I accuse the BBC of neglect and the systematic devaluation of its Muslim community.

If I was in the BBC in the months after 11 September 2001 and I had a position of responsibility, I would have immediately called in three lieutenants and said: 'Right, we need Muslim journalists, Muslim producers, Muslim editors and Muslim writers - and I don't want people who know nothing about the community - we need to know what's going on, what they're thinking etc. Bring them in'. Instead, as many people who keep an eye on the BBC know, there has been very little inclusion but plenty of objectification of this over-represented minority. Even til today, while the anti-Muslim voice gains ground. I can give examples here, one is the recent radio 4 programme on Muslim identity by Kenan Malik which was really poor and boring. (Some will point to the appointment of Aqeel Ahmed as head of commissioning for religious broadcasting at the BBC as a counter-argument - all that this does is put the burden of representation on to one individual who has to champion and compensate at the same time within the above kind of environment. The BBC would be on much stronger ground if it can bring ten practising Muslims who are succesful and achieving producers/writers/journalists to the fore).

I don't have a problem with freedom of speech, I think Nick Griffin, Melanie Phillips and others do have a right to their freedom of speech, but, crucially, so do we. Sorry, so did we, during the Bush years.

And this brings me to the final point. It was Emile Zola who wrote the famous riposte 'J'Accuse' against the French state for the false imprisonment of a Jewish army officer Alfred Dreyfus for treason. This cultural moment in French anti-semitism became known as the Dreyfus Affair. Some cultural commentators have in their more inspired moments contrasted the similarities and differences between the Dreyfus affair and the Rushdie affair. To me, the key difference seems to be that the Dreyfus affair was about the false imprisonment of an innocent Jew which then lead to a fairer treatment of Jews as a whole. The Dreyfus affair disrupted the anti-Jewish narrative. The Rushdie affair is about the fatwa but it was also slanted against the differentiated community rather than for it as in the Dreyfus affair. The Rushdie affair compounded the anti-Muslim narrative. The BBC played an important role in the Rushdie affair (I have studied this matter for my PhD). It helped then to increase the distance between communities. That was in 1989. Today, twenty years on and amazingly despite the Bush years (the volume and the intensity), the BBC - despite the odd exceptions - stands at a place in relation to the Muslim community which is discriminatory and prejudicial.

There is an alternative narrative - there is nothing inevitable about the anti-Muslim argument - there is another way to talk about what is happening in our cities, but it will require the BBC to find the tolerance, the courage and the will to find those ten Muslims that I referred to earlier.

And my question for Nick Griffin on the day?

How many colours in the rainbow?

Regenerating the Heart of Bradford

2009-10-14T16:38:00.000-07:00

Visitors from outside of town when driving through Bradford may have noticed a huge hole in the centre of the city. This is because several buildings were knocked down a few years ago to make way for a new shopping centre which is to be built by Westfield - a leading construction company in this area. Bradford is basically looking to develop a mini-shopping centre like Meadowhall just outside Sheffield or Trafford Centre just outside Manchester, only smaller. There have been difficulties getting enough tenants for the centre and the recession managed to slow things down before they had got started. I would like to call for something completely different.

If we want to revive Bradford's city centre, then we have to ask why would anyone want to shop in Bradford when they can shop online, go to White Rose shopping centre in Leeds, or Leeds city centre itself (with Harvey Nichols etc.), or Meadowhall or Trafford Centre, or Manchester city centre which has come on leaps and bounds as well. Most people that I have spoken to have said that if they want to go shopping then they will visit one of these areas, not a lesser version in Bradford and I can't see how having a couple of the usual tenants (BHS, M and S) would attract a greater proportion of shopping public that is now more mobile and that has the ability to shop from home.

If we want Bradford city centre to work then we have to sell it as an experience, a multicultural experience - in fact, this is why many people from outside of Bradford come to Bradford - to 'have a curry'. Bradford on the street looks very different to what it did in the nineties. Great Horton road, Leeds road, White Abbey road... these roads are alive and one could argue that Bradford has become the eating out capital of the North overtaking Wilmslow road in Manchester of yesteryear. Clothing outlets like Atique Textiles and Bombay Stores have also developed and attract many visitors from outside.

This is where the regeneration chiefs need to make their presence felt - they need to bring these and individual parts of Bradford's economic life into one whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. The way to do this is to change the design of the city centre - as is already currently being planned but bring everything into one place: a park at the heart that is surrounded by the leading high street stores, the best Asian restaurants and fast food joints and the best Asian clothing outlets -who knows there may even be some intercultural fusion in this kind of set up so Bombay Stores could start selling goods that are Eastern and Western at the same time. That would be genuinely exciting. I know that the creative flair exists in Bradford to do this, it just needs some creative and decisive leadership from the regeneration wallahs so that they can begin to see a vision in which a family may decide to spend a Saturday afternoon in Bradford where they can pop in to Next and BHS but also stroll through a park to Mumtaz's for lunch before buying some ethnic Westernwear from Bombay Stores on their way home. This could make Bradford stand out from the crowd and draw in numerous customers from outside of the city.

Farewell to the Bush years - Part 8

2009-07-11T03:01:00.000-07:00

What did you find shocking and unbelievable?

Like I have hinted at earlier, the Bush years were one long surreal moment in which it seemed that anything could happen. This moment began with a terrorist attack that could have never been imagined and ended with the election of a young African-American President which was also previously unbelievable. The attacks in Madrid were unbelievable. The anti-war March in London on 15th February 2003 in which 1 million people marched was unbelievable. The invasion of Iraq was unbelievable. It was as if we were in some world or realm in which the impossible became possible. This is how it felt at the time, but at the same time the calmer voice within me urges me to resist ‘the Bush years as exceptional’ argument. There had been a previous Gulf war. The US had previously attacked Grenada. The Irish experience of internment was much worse than what the Muslim community experienced during the Bush years. So in many ways, the Bush years can be characterised by a series of unbelievable events, but also it was in many respects business as usual.

The other aspect of the Bush years which was genuinely shocking was the widening of the boundaries of acceptability in relation to what one could say about Muslims. ‘Islam as an opportunistic infection in Europe’, ‘Muslims, like all dogs, share certain characteristics’ and we should tame the Muslim community as we did during the Raj (I have paraphrased this) have all been written by anti-Muslim spokespersons during these times. That they passed without wider comment is shameful and that it remained for Muslims to question this language is also shocking. Reading material like this, I did feel at times that I couldn’t believe that this was happening. These kinds of statements about any other community would have been regarded as unacceptable and condemned but they appear acceptable when ascribed to the Muslim community.

This makes me think that there were some that used the Bush years as an opportunity. I can think of two sectors here that had close but troubled relations with the Muslim community prior to the Bush years. The first is the race industry. Within the race industry there has been a variety of response. Commentators like Gary Younge of the Guardian and Karen Chouhan of the 1990 Trust have been at the forefront of support for the Muslim community whereas activists like Trevor Philips have used the Bush years to criticise the Muslim community for adopting a segregationist approach. His speech ‘Sleepwalking to segregation’ just after the 2005 attacks was probably one of the greatest acts of brinkmanship against the Muslim community in this period. The Anglican Church has been an institution that has developed relations with the community but this did not prevent leading members of the Church such as Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali from criticising the Muslim community through arguments that again presented the community as a problem, seeking to isolate itself and refusing to engage. There certainly was some opportunism during this period and it was revealing as to the true intentions of those who previously had painted themselves as friends of the Muslim community. Please note the links being made by anti-Muslim spokespersons from terrorism to politics through culture to religion.

What has changed and what will be the long-term impact of the Bush years?

Thinking about the Bush years I am taken back to the Rushdie affair. The main event was the issuing of the fatwa by Ayatollah Khomeini against Salman Rushdie in 15 February 1989. The book burning which is something associated with the fatwa is something that gathered significance retrospectively. At the time (early January 1989), it didn’t receive that much coverage in the press. The Rushdie affair though has been described as the origin of the ‘Islam problem’. Some commentators have attempted to force this narrative. For example Kenan Malik has titled his new book ‘From Fatwa to Jihad’ as if there is some clear link between the two. There may be, but only in the minds of those who wish to construct a powerful anti-Muslim prejudice that preys upon the deepest fears of an already fearful Western population. The Rushdie affair can’t really be described as the origin of the ‘Islam problem’. The halal meat episode and the Honeyford affair are perhaps important first experiences of the tensions around multiculturalism and the war in Bosnia was the formative event in the development of the more radical trends in British Islam rather then the Rushdie affair. ‘From Bosnia to Jihad’ would be a more credible account of the narrative and it makes much more sense: the jihad movement gained strength directly because of the weakness that many Muslims felt as a result of the murder and rape in Bosnia.

The Rushdie affair at the time though seemed to last for eternity and many of us who were there then felt that it was a really bad period to live through. However, as in the Sufi understanding, reality may contradict appearances. The Rushdie affair became a time of great soul searching within the community and considerable discussion as to the future of the community itself. Out of the Rushdie affair emerged therefore an approach towards understanding Muslim identity that was strident and yet focused on the naturalisation of a Muslim presence within Britain. Many people discovered themselves as Muslims thereafter and found ways to contribute towards such a natural Muslim presence within Britain.

The Bush years I think will have the same kind of effect and in fact I have already seen it happening. There is a large proportion of the third generation that is now politically focused, aware and strident. The difference between now and then is that then – twenty years ago - many of us had to make do with poor resources, many questions were left unanswered and we had very little means to figure out what we were going to do next. This is no longer the case. In publishing, the books that are available now are an amazing source of information and guidance. In terms of lecture series, there are many, many educational products available for Muslim young people which can help them through faith spiritually, intellectually and practically. These services rendered by leaders like Sh Hamza Yusuf, Dr Umar Abdallah, Sh Zaid Shakir and Sh Abdal Hakim Murad are a great service to the Muslim community and have been incredibly helpful. The internet through youtube and e-mail contact and online shops also makes all of these resources instantly accessible. The facilities and resources are therefore great and I sometimes marvel at the lack of appreciation from some 18 year olds that I have come across to the resources that they have available and that we never had then.

The other main difference between now and then is that the move in the nineties was towards cultural isolation and political oppositionalism. The move today is towards cultural and political engagement. The politicisation of the Bush years has therefore rapidly speeded up the development of a Muslim identity in Britain and the West in general and it has done so by politicising Muslim youth, that is marking their identity, which has then forced them to explore this identity through a much wider variety and better quality of resources that are now available and in the direction of engagement. This means that today and henceforth there is a much greater presence in the public sphere than before. That is to say, that where the doors have been opened such as in the Guardian’s comment pages, then there is a sizeable Muslim presence that is seeking to respond to the various challenges that we face and where the doors have been closed such as in the Telegraph’s comment pages, then Muslims are few and far between. One example of this shift from protest towards engagement is the Muslim student body FOSIS, the Federation of Students Islamic Societies. The nineties were a time in which FOSIS was either excluded from the deliberations of the National Union of Students or engaged in some antagonistic altercation with the NUS. Today, FOSIS representatives have been elected on to the national NUS body and there is in the main a strong and mutually beneficial and constructive relation between the NUS and FOSIS. In this sense, one could say that Muslim politics is maturing.

If there are several layers of representation: academic (e.g. university professors), media (e.g. journalists and commentators), policy (policywonks and civil servants) and political (members of the House of Commons and the House of Lords) and the representation has been continuous and intense then the story of engagement is very far from complete. There are only four Muslim members of parliament, the Muslims members of the House of Lords are not as strong as other members (their contributions to debates are lacklustre), there are very few national Muslim commentators and also very few professors in the human, social and political sciences. But the numbers are slowly increasing.

The extent to which this period has had a transformative effect upon the community can be envisaged by the changes that have occurred to some its leading individuals. Sadiq Khan began this period as a lawyer working with Louise Christian on cases that were taking the government to task on its counter-terrorism strategy. Sadiq Khan then became an MP and then a Minister for the Department of Communities and Local Government which leads on race equality and cohesion matters. Salma Yaqoob was transformed through her experience of anti-Muslim prejudice and has since become a leading political voice for the community, appearing on national television and speaking in front of thousands in numerous occasions. Majid Nawaz began this period as a leading member of Hizb ut Tehrir. He was arrested in Egypt and then found guilty. He was released, returned to Britain and began to appear on satellite Muslim television and then announced his departure from Hizb ut-Tehrir to lead a counter-extremism think tank that is heavily backed by government.

It’s still too early to tell what all of this will lead to and this is probably why we are currently engaged in a war of positioning and have been so since 9/11. What is clear though is that where there is under-representation of Muslims in public life, it’s not because of a lack of ambition or aspiration or even talent, it is instead due to the fact that the doors through which one has to enter in order to gain a foothold in any of these arenas are firmly shut.

There has been real resistance from policy makers and commentators to respond to the terrorism question simply as a political issue and there has instead been a real readiness to move towards defining the problem as a cultural problem and so policy makers and commentators have lead on the war of positioning by putting forward the examples of Ed Hussain, Anjum Choudhury and even Shami Chakrabarti as leaders for the community to contend with. Salma Yaqoob, Inayat Bunglawala and others have also fought to carve a political position that retains some critical edge while remaining integrationist in principle. That Ed Hussain has been actively supported by the government and Anjum Choudhry is given instant access to the mainstream media – something which is almost impossible for most intelligent, coherent, sound, decent and generally persuasive Muslims – shows that the matter of the future of Muslim identity is actively being contested by several actors. The Muslim community has to keep a close and perceptive eye here on developments and the kinds of people that receive patronage and why. This story though is still in the making.

Farewell to the Bush Years - Part 7

2009-07-04T12:43:00.000-07:00

Who did badly in the Bush years within a British context?

When one begins to think about who did badly in the Bush years and who did well, then it is clear that of those on the national scene it was those who were able to provide some kind of persistent leadership through example which represented good judgment and political nous that came out as winners in the Bush years. Lord Nazir Ahmad was for example the de facto Minister for Muslim affairs in the first Blair administration but his influence declined in the second administration. This was because he was perhaps a bit too vociferous against the government of which he was a member. His political position was in effect right in my opinion i.e. that someone had to take a critical stance towards what the government was doing from 2002-2004, however his manner of execution was too abrasive and risky. Tariq Ramadan was also a voice that was poised to become an influential player in the Bush years but he has not been able to attract a mass following perhaps because his interventions have been too general. Leadership during the Bush years too often centred and depended upon the specifics and outlining a response to specific developments. The Muslim Members of Parliament Muhammad Sarwar and Khalid Mahmood also lost ground during the Bush years. They were unable to articulate any vision for the Muslim community which the community could adopt and follow.

The Muslim Council of Britian has also emerged weaker from the Bush years. Their initial position prior to 9/11 was as Labour’s only Muslim interlocutor. Word had it that Iqbal Sacranie the Secretary-General of the MCB had a direct line to Tony Blair. However, the influence of the MCB began to decline as the Bush years wore on. This is for two reasons. The first is the two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Ultimately, the MCB took a position against both wars (though it was slow to condemn the invasion of Afghanistan) and this included being part of a huge coalition against the invasion of Iraq. This soured relations between the MCB and the government. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly the MCB was slow to respond to the needs of the government. From 9/11 onwards the government needed a partner with which it could work and upon which it could rely for the delivery of key policy objectives. The two key areas were community cohesion (or the integration debate) and counter-terrorism (and what later became the prevent strand). On both agendas, the MCB didn’t really respond in any way that could be regarded as offering some form of direction to government and leadership to the Muslim community. If the government was frustrated uptil July 7, the terrorists attacks of July 7 2005 highlighted this great absence and the government effectively decided to instigate its own proto-Muslim leadership through the establishment of seven working groups themed around key policy areas. In one step, the MCB was sidelined and it was perhaps necessary at the time for a government whose priority was the safety of its citizens. Rival organisations such as the British Muslim Forum (headed by former Labour activist Khurshid Ahmad) and the Sufi Muslim Council (headed by former Labour activist Azhar Ali) were formed and these began to challenge the MCB on the national stage. In effect though, the MCB remains the main player because of its large number of affiliates and the other two organisations remain weak. The MCBs influence has however declined and with the advent of the prevent strand in full measure across the country and the formation of the Young Muslim Advisory Group and the Muslim Women’s Advisory Group by the DCLG, the MCB has been sidelined altogether. This could have been regarded as a price worth paying if the MCB had gained concomitantly in its support within the Muslim community but this hasn’t happened either.

Other people whose influence has declined are the anti-Muslim extremists. Straight after 9/11 there was a great deal of interest in the anti-Muslim position, however, as the years have gone by the positions of the anti-Muslim extremists have begun to appear more and more absurd, especially because the solution that they offer is of further polarisation. Since the moderating tendency within the Muslim community has increased and become more vociferous during the Bush years, their position seems less accurate and therefore more paranoid. Their influence has certainly declined.

Who did well in the Bush years? Who came out as winners?

The Bush years have been very good for Muslim moderation (unfortunately, they have also been very good for extremism). This was for two reasons: the first is the moral repugnance that many Muslims felt towards the terrorist attacks and their justifiers. This did genuinely move many Muslims to realise that we had a problem within the community. Secondly, Muslim moderation became a political necessity in response to terrorist attacks. Terrorist attacks lead therefore to a strong revival of moderation simply because the opposing path was too politically fraught with danger. Those who therefore articulated a Muslim moderation with a clear and consistent approach emerged as winners from the Bush years. The Muslim community was seeking some direction and further polarisation was not a part of it so those leaders and spokespersons that articulated a moral response and political direction that exhibited some spine and some substance were those that were held in high regard. Sadiq Khan and Salma Yaqoob emerge here as two important voices that articulated this position very clearly.

One point that I’d like to add here though is that the Bush years were a very challenging time for people who were leading the Muslim community in that the Bush years had this habit of throwing up scenarios which most people were not prepared for and probably had never thought about. Immediately, we, as a community, would be thrown into the eye of a major storm and we’d have all of three hours to respond with conviction and good judgement. This was asking a lot of most people and the first generation shied away from this responsibility, probably because they didn’t have a clue as to how to respond. Many in the second generation stepped forward and I commend them for their bravery. Many have also made the occasional mistake. And this is where I think we should provide some breathing space for those who were brave enough to stand up for the mistakes that they may have made during this period. Which brave soul is going to suggest that they could have done a better job? Perhaps, he who is without fear should cast the first stone, but I’m sorry to note that most people were afraid, but not too afraid to criticise. Having noted this, I would also state that internal criticism is a very useful corrective measure if it’s done in the right way. We need internal criticism (of individuals), but we also need bravery and good judgement.

Where do you think Quilliam foundation fits into this?

I think the Quilliam foundation has been a real disaster. This is not because I disagree with their political position, in essence I agree with their political position. That is that we have to question some of the influences upon British Muslims and ensure that we help develop an approach that is conducive towards the preservation of Muslim identity as well as outreach towards the wider community. The problem during the Bush years was that internal critique (of aspects of the community) became almost impossible during times of heightened politicisation. The community was on the defensive though it had and has many issues that it needs to face head on. We were coming from a point of political oppositonalism and cultural isolation at the same time. To help lead or navigate the community from this point towards one in which the community is politically engaged and culturally confidant is a delicate, sensitive process. There were several Muslims who were leading this trend and it was moving slowly but surely. However, the Quilliam foundation has almost totally discredited this position not because of the position itself (or what it means) but because of their tone and approach. The community could be seen as a young teenager that was being coaxed out its teenage rage by a loving parent towards a mature take on the world. The Quilliam foundation instead appeared as the angry parent who belittled the teenager and moralised against him. The teenager at this point of course walks out of the house. If the community does need some form of leadership which seems very similar to a kind of paternalism, then it should be a form of paternalism that helps the transition not one that confounds it.

I have been talking a lot about positionality and this is because the Bush years did in one sense foster a war of positioning in the Muslim community. This can be seen time and again as major players such as government departments like the DCLG or think tanks like the Policy Exchange or commentators like Timothy Garton Ash have spent much of the Bush years engaged in some exploratory anthropology-like exercise towards the Muslim community. Timothy Garton Ash’s search has been for a liberal Muslim that can be reconciled with his version of liberalism. He began by extolling the virtues of Ayaan Hirse Ali as ‘the new Voltaire’, then moved on to Tariq Ramadan who now works with him in Oxford university and Ash is now an advisor to the Quilliam Foundation. Similarly, the Policy Exchange has published a policy paper on ‘being careful as to who one chooses as friends’. This leading think tank for the new conservatism feels the need to help map out a pathway for conservatives in their relations with the Muslim community.

Farewell to the Bush Years - Part 6

2009-07-01T14:54:00.001-07:00

What do you think of Bush himself?

The arrival of Bush himself was an interesting moment. Many Muslims were angered by Bill Clinton because of the sanctions against Iraq and many Muslims in America had supported the Republicans in the 2000 elections as compassionate conservatives. The group of politicians around Bush were called neo-conservatives after the movement that was based upon Leo Strauss’ political philosophy. The neo-cons were described as political activists who wished to spread liberal democracy through force and that this was the justification for the Iraq war. This logic turned what began as a political war into a cultural war. A closer look at Leo Strauss’ political philosophy revealed however that he was anti-liberal and his political philosophy was a conservative critique of liberalism. This was a strange discovery because it seemed that Leo Strauss was adopting a position that was fairly similar to a Muslim critique of modern society. And so it seemed that what was originally a political philosophy with which Muslims could engage and perhaps even partially agree was being used to justify a war that was being waged against Muslims. Unfortunately, very few people picked up on this and the problem of Muslims finding an intellectual location for themselves within a Western context remains. Bush’s presidency came to be characterised by his personality, his group of advisors and a political philosophy that justified their ambitions. Bush himself was characterised as a buffoon, somebody whose job it was to read the autocues at press conferences and public speeches. The group of advisors were to provide the steel and substance to his presidency. They were the individuals of past administrative experience who could provide the strength to Bush’s presidency that he needed. Bush will unfortunately be remembered for his gaffes, a president who really should not have been president of the most powerful country on earth. He did not make his country proud and the world wondered what was so great about a political system that conjured up such an obviously inadequate candidate as president.

And Blair?

Blair is also a huge personality from the Bush years. He will be remembered for his ability to communicate, especially his great speeches. He knew how to convince an audience, a country, he relied upon the trust that he asked for to win his arguments. But that was his downfall as well. It was an ‘et tu Brute’ moment when the country stared back in to his eyes and realised that he was in fact being economical with the truth on the most serious of matters. Blair will be remembered therefore for the enthusiasm, the hope and the trust that he inspired as well as the massive loss of trust that he generated after the Iraq war. He worried towards the end of his time as Prime Minister as to how history would judge him. I think history will judge him as someone who was not brave enough to stand up to the US administration in the lead up to the Iraq war. This could have been forgiven if he had then not gone on to become one of the great supporters of the invasion. History would have judged him differently if he had stood up at the time and spoken against the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq.

And Osama bin Laden?

The last thirty years could be described as the rise and fall of the jihad movement. The jihad movement has to be divided into three strands: the largest strand includes those engaged in freedom struggles for Muslims in minority situations such as Chechens in Russia, the Kashmiris in India and the Bosnians in Yugoslavia. The second strand consists of those Islamists who criticise more mainstream Islamist organisations for being too soft and argue that the Islamic state can only be achieved through violent means within Muslim countries and usually through waging a war against the government itself. Khalid Islambuli who assassinated Anwar Sadat may be considered to be from this strand. The third strand is those that have said that the war needs to be taken from Muslim countries to those that back the regimes in these countries and specifically the United States. The jihad movement was represented through these three strands but the second and third strand only really began to gather momentum in the seventies and then through the eighties as the third strand emerged as a dominant perspective in the nineties. Many of the individuals involved in the jihad movement actually went through the three strands in a personal, psychological developmental way. Osama bin Laden and Ayman Zwahiri can be seen as examples of this psychological trajectory. This was mainly because of the increasing desperation of the jihadi movement as it began to find that it had very few avenues left to achieve its ends. The attacks on September 11 though lead to two developments. The first is the actual tracking and assassination of jihadi leaders throughout the world. The destruction of their training camps in Afghanistan and breaking up of the financial support mechanisms that were in place. This had a practical, disruptive effect on the movement. A second development though and perhaps a much more important development was the turning of the tide of Muslim opinion against the jihad movement. Uptil September 11, there was a considerable amount of support for the jihad movement in the Muslim world, and this was in the main because of their work in countries like Bosnia and Kashmir. However, if September 11 was the turning point, then further terrorist attacks and support and justification for them from jihadi leaders turned Muslims away from the jihadi movement. They now began to regard it as a corruption of Islamic teaching and perhaps also a political miscalculation. Today, there is still considerable support for Muslim communities that are experiencing difficulties because of their minority status however the other two strands are much weaker in their representation within the community when compared to before.

The only group of people that have shown a level of support for terrorist groups like al Qaeda now seem to be ‘the newly practising’. These are people who seem to have become religious fairly quickly and internalised a radical, politicised identity version of religion which incorporates a violent method of retribution as part of its understanding. They tend to mature out of it though as they begin to meet with scholars and develop a deeper understanding of their faith, something which based upon the religious texts rather than a quick interpretation of media depictions of political situations involving Muslims throughout the world.

Farewell to the Bush Years - Part 5

2009-06-28T14:26:00.000-07:00

What were the important cultural moments?

The Bush years have had a huge effect upon our common culture, in the US and here in Britain. That is to say that the politics of the time has not been ignored by the culture of its time, in fact one could say that there was a running cultural commentary on events; one that was not univocal though: it did represent different perspectives as the political arguments and positioning found their way into the screenplays of films and the writings of leading writers. Sometimes, the cultural world waits, and reflects, and then comments through artistic production after the event. This was not the case for the Bush years.

It began with the attacks on September 11 itself. This terrorist attack was described on the day like something from the movies. But the commentary from the cultural quarter came not on the terrorist attack itself but instead the commentary was focused upon the US administration’s response. The arguments about freedom of association, the permissibility of torture, the right to a fair trial – essentially the argument about the relation between politicians and the judiciary in a time of war dominated cultural responses to the Bush years. In Britain, there was also much agonising over the position of the Muslim community and how it was receiving the war on terror.

‘24’ – an American spy thriller set in present day United States of America – began to air in the States in the autumn of 2001. It captured the zeitgeist and enthralled audiences while playing on their very real fears of an impending terrorist attack. The twists and turns, the unexpected, the double-crossings, the pressure of time – all served to make terrorists and the whole threat of terrorism look interesting and disturbing at the same time. Its legitimation of torture, the ease with which suspects were tortured and killed were unsettling. The BBC commissioned and then aired its own drama ‘The Dirty War’ in September 2004 which depicted the aftermath of a dirty bomb attack on the city of London. I remember one scene in this film which still shocks me as I recall it as this was the murder of a Muslim inmate by fellow prisoners. Shahid Aziz had been killed in Armley prison in the months prior to the screening of this programme. It was also shocking because it was a footnote to the major story-line, it was passed over as a detail in the bigger story. This was the nihilism of the Bush years. The BBC did also produce the documentary ‘The Power of Nightmares’ which focused on the climate of fear that the war on terror was generating and the series ‘The State Within’ which was a fictional story about a conspiracy within a American government to take the country to war.

Channel 4 was to air ‘Yasmin’ written by Simon Beaufoy, ‘The Bradford riots’ directed by Neil Biswas, ‘The road to Guantanamo’ directed by Micheal Winterbottom and ‘Britz’ directed by Peter Kosminsky. Theatre was not far behind. David Hare’s ‘Stuff Happens’ and ‘The Vertical Hour’, Richard Norton-Taylor and Nicholas Kent’s ‘Justifying War’, Victoria Britain and Gillian Slovo’s ‘Guantanamo’ and David Edgar’s ‘Playing with Fire’ were all staged during the Bush years. Many of these television and theatre productions were important cultural events at the time receiving coverage and comment in the press.

The literary world has also responded to the Bush years. Don De Lillo wrote ‘The Falling Man’, Martin Amis wrote ‘The Last Days of Muhammad Atta’ and John Updike wrote ‘The Terrorist’. ‘Saturday; by Ian McEwan focused on the march against the Iraq war in 2003. The film industry similarly responded to the themes thrown up by the Bush years. Ridley Scott directed ‘Kingdom of Heaven’, Michael Moore directed ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ and critics noticed the influence of the Bush years on ‘V for Vendetta’, ‘Star Wars Epsode III: The Revenge of the Sith’ and ‘The Dark Knight’.

As you can see, much has been written or produced on ‘the war on terror’. I don’t want to provide an analysis of all of this but I would like to say that the cultural commentary has been consistent and mostly it has been critical of the dominant political narrative, some of the literary interventions excepted. Though this cultural commentary has been critical of ‘the war on terror’, there have been fewer films, books or plays that have attempted to get inside the mind of a Muslim unless he happens to be a terrorist. There has therefore been plenty of criticism from a political position perspective but simultaneously cultural responses to the Bush years have in the main refrained from attempting to humanise or normalise a Muslim presence, this is while the domineering ‘other-ising’ discourse has continued to send out messages and stories that paints the Muslim community in stereotypical colours. This period has also seen very little cultural production from the Muslim community itself. Very few Muslim writers have been able to make it in to the mainstream as cultural brokers for their communities. This has meant that although there may remain widespread agreement with the community on matters of policy such as torture, Guantanamo and the Iraq war, there remain real gaps in the understanding of Muslims and the Islamic faith. Muslims may need to step up to the plate on this issue to describe who they are and how they feel.

How do you think the Muslim community responded to this culturally?

The Muslim community’s response in matters of culture has been fairly variegated. A new magazine was published in Britain: Emel, a Muslim lifestyle magazine. Probably the most famous Muslim artist in Britain is Mohammad Ali, a graffiti artist who combines street art with Islamic and political themes. Sami Yusuf has emerged as an immensely gifted singer. He has become very popular over the whole of the Muslim world. Outlandish a hip hop group from Denmark has also become very popular. And there has been the emergence of Muslim comedians such as in the ‘Allah Made Me Funny’ tour which includes Preacher Moss, Azhar Usman and Mo Amer. But it has probably been the genre of nasheeds that has proved to be the most developed and popular. There are now countless nasheed artists, many with good voices but few with good song writing abilities. Two that stand out here are Dawud Wharnsby-Ali and Kareem Salama. In many ways, it seems as if the Western Muslim community has responded to the Bush years through song. The literary side has been weak though: there are hardly any poems, plays, novels or short stories written as a response to ‘the Bush years’. There is now the Birmingham-based Muslim Writers Awards but this is still in the early stages of development and Muslim writing has a fair way to go to match the quality or populism of Sami Yusuf. Most popular novels on the British Muslim experience have been written from an outsider perspective, for example Zadie Smith’s ‘White Teeth’ or Monica Ali’s ‘Brick Lane’. Young Muslim writers are emerging but their voices have yet to hit the mainstream of the Muslim community or British society itself.

Farewell to the Bush Years - Part 4

2009-06-20T08:56:00.000-07:00

What was the greatest moment?

The greatest moments were when the smallest rays of hope began to appear. One of the biggest problems was that the Muslim community was and perhaps remains so far away from being the least bit prepared for the challenges it faces. There is no national functioning organisation that can authoritatively present the community’s case to government and wider society in an institutional and professional way. There are very few national leaders who command the respect of the community and wider society. There seems to a real schism between religious leadership and non-religious leadership whether this be business, academic or political. There are hardly any functioning regional organisations and very few local organisations. In short, the community is severely dysfunctional. One of the reasons for this is the lack of unity or understanding what unity means or should mean for the community. In many senses, there is perhaps not even a sense of a unity of purpose for the community. Amidst all of this, when it seems that so much of what the community is doing is so wrong, the greatest moments came when it appeared that at least some sections of the community had managed to get it right. Sami Yusuf’s first album was one such example. The recent establishment of the Cambridge Muslim College is another. The emergence of Salma Yaqoob as a political leader was another. These were moments when the rays of hope began to appear.

These are all important, but in terms of the grand scheme of things then the big turnaround was the election of Barack Obama to the office of the President of the United States of America. The most important moment for me here was the Iowa caucus. By the time of the presidential election itself it was clear that there was a strong chance that Obama may become President. But it was at the Iowa caucus that this first became a possibility. They said that a white state would never vote in an African-American for President so when Obama was the leading Democratic candidate in Iowa for President then this meant that for the first time in the campaign he was an actual possibility for President. Up til this point I had seen him as an interesting candidate and not much more. I didn’t think that he had a chance. I’d seen his speech to the Democratic party from a few years prior to the nomination contest and he was a powerful young speaker, full of energy though I wasn’t sure where he was going with ‘the promise of America’. I was far more interested, intrigued even, by his choice of Samantha Power as a foreign affairs advisor. I had been following Samantha Power’s work since 9/11 as an American academic in the area of human rights who had made public interventions into the debates on human rights in the war on terror which contrasted with the interventions of Alan Dershovitz and Michael Ignatieff. All were based at Harvard and Power and Ignatieff were both based at the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard university. Ignatieff had made a case for the legitimacy of torture whereas Power was clearly against torture. But it was at the point that Obama became an actual possibility for President that must represent the greatest moment of hope for myself in the Bush years. That the Bush years could be coming to an end. But not in a slow, whimpering sort of way. They could end in a bang with an almost total reversal in policy. It was as if Obama was a possibility and could only have been a possibility because of the Bush years. It was at this time that I began to take a much closer level of interest in the American elections.

But hope is also spiritual. And I don’t want it to sound as if hope and despair are bound with our material and political circumstance. Yes, it was very difficult to ignore the events that surrounded us. But the way of the religious person is to rest his hope in the eternal spring, and to let the immediate problems pass away because they too will pass as they did. In the life of the heart therefore there is this constant struggle between the immediate and the eternal as one’s quiet religious life is violated if that is how it was felt by the immediacy of political events which were beyond the control or influence of most of us. Hope is always present for those with their eyes on eternity, but the rapid rush of one event after another made it such that our gaze could not but ignore what was beginning to happen around us in ever decreasing circles.

Did the war on terror affect you personally?

The war in terror in the main and for the majority of Muslims was a news event. By this, I mean that it affected others. Others were killed, tortured and arrested. The majority of Muslims were therefore not directly affected by the war on terror, except when it came to travel. Even here, many Muslims will have travelled during the Bush years without any difficulty. This was however not my experience. I was questioned on many occasions while crossing borders during the Bush years. I did feel that the war on terror gave immigration bureaucrats an excuse to pull me aside. On each occasion, and especially when I was pulled aside, I remember looking at the official who was asking me these questions and wondering whether he or she really was in a position to make an informed judgement as to my innocence. It seemed very arbitrary. I fitted the profile: a young British Muslim of South Asian heritage travelling.

I was stopped in Aqaba in Jordan as myself, my wife and my son returned from Nuwaiba in Egypt. We had crossed the border to visit Egypt and then renew our visa for Jordan. We had spent a day in Nuwaiba and had caught the fast boat – a hovercraft - back from Aqaba. We had taken the slow boat – large ferry – to Aqaba and the wait had been long and the journey slow so we had decided to take the fast boat back. We arrived in to Aqaba and were taken into immigration services. As the fast boat was that bit more expensive the majority of people on it were Americans, Europeans and Australians. We all sat down in the waiting area and were called up nationality by nationality by the immigration officials. When it came to the British, they began to call us by our names. I was surprised by this but then realised that we were the only ones left. Eventually, the only people remaining in the waiting area were us. I had said to my wife earlier that I did not expect us to leave Aqaba port before the arrival of the slow boat, but I was half-joking at the time. And sure enough, the slow boat had appeared on the horizon. We waited. After about an hour, when the slow boat was much closer to the port we were called by a policeman who then asked us to follow him. He took us through offices, stairways and corridors to the office of the chief immigration official at the top of the port from which we could see the whole port. We were asked to wait outside. Eventually a young man who was not that much older than myself walked up to us and asked me to enter the office. I asked my family to remain outside as I went to answer the usual questions. The same young man sat at the main desk and asked me to take a seat. I sat down. And he proceeded to in a very cold and angry way ask me questions about what I was doing in Jordan and why I had visited Egypt. I told him that I was learning Arabic in Jordan and had visited Egypt for tourism purposes. He continued to ask me some questions, after about five minutes an older man came in and tapped him on the shoulder. This older man then took the seat at the main desk as the younger man left. He continued to look through my passport and asked me the same questions again. After my third or fourth answer, he began to relax and asked me how life was in Britain. I told him it was alright. And the job situation in my city? I said, it was difficult, Bradford used to be a centre for wool trade but was now struggling. He gave his thanks and told me I could leave.

Another time I was with my family in 2008 at the border between Canada and the United States as we were returning to Chicago from Toronto after attending my cousin’s wedding there. I was with my wife, three young children, my mother and my grandfather’s brother. Again, I was called for questioning.

‘Please follow me sir’.

‘Okay’. I turned towards my family and said I’d be back in a few minutes. I have in recent years prepared a plan of action in case of my arrest which I had informed my wife about and she knew what to do in the circumstances. I didn’t trust the competence of the US immigration authorities. Again, I walked in to an office. A very young man was sitting at a desk behind a computer staring at my passport. He was flicking through it and shaking his head at the same time. He looked as if he had left high school a couple of years ago. I though to myself: ‘Dumb down, he will not understand, don’t be fooled by the uniform’. And sure enough, he seemed very fresh. ‘How long have you lived in the UK, sir?’

‘For about thirty years’.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes.’ I realised, my passport was full of stamps from Arab countries. ‘I lived in Jordan for about a year between 2002 and 2003’.

‘Right. You’ve got a lot of visas here’.

‘I was crossing borders to renew my visa in Jordan’.

‘What do you do in the UK?’ I had been asked this previously on entry into the US when again I had been pulled aside, I had answered ‘I work in the national health service’ which didn’t mean anything to the person asking the question.

‘I work for the British government, I’m an advisor’.

He nodded. ‘Who are you travelling with?’ He was shaking his head. I think that he was thinking that how can I let this man pass when he has travelled so much?

‘I’m travelling with my family’.

‘Kids?’

‘Yes’.

‘How old are they?’

‘Six, four and two’. It was about midnight on a Sunday night and we had already been waiting for about four hours.

He shook his head. I think that he was imagining what the kids would do to his office if he decided to detain me.

He waited a while. Shaking his head, ‘Okay thank you sir, please wait outside’.

And that was it, a few minutes later they returned all our passports and told us that we were free to go. As I was waiting in the immigration centre, I remembered Martin Amis’ request for Muslims to be harassed.

Farewell to the Bush Years - Part 3

2009-06-17T15:36:00.000-07:00

Going back to the Bush years and your experience of them. Did it feel like a war on Islam?

The immediate answer to your question is that yes, at times, it did feel like a war on Islam. And certainly many people that I spoke to said that they also felt like it was a war on Islam. That doesn’t mean that I actually thought there was a war on Islam, but it certainly felt like it. This is because I could not understand what a war on Islam meant? What would it look like? Would everyone have to stop reading the Quran? Would all biographies of the Prophet be called back? Would all Muslims have to openly refute their allegiance to the Islamic creed? This was obviously not the case. It was a war against some Muslims, namely those of the jihad movement that openly called for terrorist attacks. Some people used this war as an opportunity to further their own ends and so attached cultural anti-Muslim perspectives to the arguments as a whole, this made it feel like a war against Islam.

Was it possible to ignore it?

It was impossible to ignore it. There had to be a concerted effort against any terrorist groups within the community. These had to be persuaded to change their minds, or if they were about to engage in a terrorist attack, then they had to be handed over to the police. After 2004, things began to take the form of a cycle. There would be a bad Muslim news event every three or four months, sometimes across the world. If it was quiet for too long, then you began to expect the next event. A war, an attack, or as began to happen, a bad news story about the lack of integration of Muslims into British society. This was an important development. Though several of us from within the community were constantly making the case for separating out the two policy areas of counter-terrorism and integration, there were others who were working to merge the two in the public mind to make one uber-narrative: the reason behind terrorist attacks is cultural isolation. To me, these were separate problems that were not empirically linked. Many people are culturally isolated but not politically motivated and many others are politically motivated but culturally integrated. However, in terms of a response from the community it was clear to me that we had to as a community make as many bridges with wider society as possible and across all levels of interaction: individual, family, community, local, regional, national, faith-based, political, academic, journalistic, male, female, old and young, left and right. I think many in the community began to adopt this as a counter-measure to the continuous media stories and it has certainly worked. Those who know Muslims are much less likely to be prejudiced against Muslims.

The other site of resistance has been the internet. And this is something that marks a dramatic and structural shift from previous situations in which Muslims were on the receiving end. E-mailing became an instant way of organising one’s messages and mass distributing them. Websites that gathered information and then published it became popular. Counter-narratives were quickly developed. Counter-examples were mass distributed. Blogs also began to appear at this stage and provided also a site for resistance to any narratives in the national media that were overly demonising the community. The mainstream media has also moved over to the net so here is in one sense a great equalisation that has occurred. Though papers like the Guardian and the Telegraph still have huge resources to support their webpages, they are nevertheless all the same one click away from every internet user as a blogger that gathers the argument and the evidence to challenge their positions. Interestingly, looking at the press, there are still very few Muslims who write for the mainstream press after so many years of extensive coverage of Muslim affairs. It is only the Guardian that has challenged this by opening up its Comment is Free pages to many Muslim commentators and within the national press this is the place that one turns to to read Muslim views on the political topic of the day.

Who are the main voices of resistance?

I don’t know how these things historically began but I would guess that it began with e-mailing a few friends which then developed into an e-mail list which then developed into a website. This form of political activism was related to events. The officials no longer had a monopoly on the channels of communication. Where people felt frustrated with the official account of events they could link their contacts through e-mail to counter-narratives. This then developed into fully fledged websites. The prototypical example here is MPAC UK. Bloggers have emerged as well as have numerous websites which describe political events and provide analysis.

Farewell to the Bush Years - Part 2

2009-06-07T02:45:00.000-07:00

How did you cope?

I think it became very difficult to cope. I think that many adopted an approach of cynicism towards the whole political situation. They saw it as a conspiracy or a planned attack against them and their faith. Others just continued with their lives with a sense of political anger while also ignoring the events around them as if nothing was happening. It was a kind of learned political fatalism. I don’t think that many have coped well with the Bush years, we’ll know when we look back in the future. At present, I don’t know if anyone has done any work on how the Bush years affected employment prospects for the Muslim community or on for example increased incidences of mental illness. Having said all of that, looking back now at where the community is today, I do think that the community has been fairly resilient and this is to be applauded. Especially since the July 7 attacks. I don’t think that anyone in the community expected there to be a terrorist attack in the UK by British-born Muslims. We certainly knew that there was a possibility of a terrorist attack. We knew that the invasion of Iraq made this more likely. But I didn’t know of anyone who remotely called for such a terrorist attack. It would have been a fringe of a fringe, people unknown to others. And so it was.

How do you think the community responded to the July 7 attacks?

I think that there was initially some shock, some denial and some defensiveness. We obviously didn’t want it to be British Muslims who were behind this but as the news was released of the identities of the bombers then the community had to face up to the harsh facts. I think this is one instant in which Tony Blair is to be applauded for his leadership. He pulled as Prime Minister the community very close to him in the immediate aftermath of the attack by publicly inviting leaders to Downing Street and by making statements on television about not blaming the community. This was an important moment, and he acted as a leader should. The community was very clear in its condemnation of the attacks and this was important. It was after the July 7 attacks that the prevent strand of British counter-terrorism began in earnest but then with this came the whole question of political representation and leadership of the community. This has been very problematic and strained and I can’t say whether it has to this day been satisfactory resolved.

Why is that?

There is a central paradox at the heart of Britain’s counter-terrorism strategy. The primary function of any counter-terrorism strategy should be the prevention of any terrorist attacks. Initially, this began as a co-ordination of approaches but as the prevent strand gathered pace so spending commitments increased such that those that were helping in countering terrorism would begin to receive financial assistance – usually because it was logistically necessary. However, this then became a question of patronage, more specifically, who should the government support through its patronage? And further that the government should not support those that are deemed to be ambivalent on these issues or those that can not be regarded as socially progressive. There is one line of argument that suggests that the government should only work fully with those that are totally clear in their rejection of terrorism and those that are socially progressive. The specific problem here is the influence of Islamist-inspired organisations on the Muslim Council of Britain in particular. The government fairly soon after the July 7 attacks decided that it didn’t wish to prioritise the delivery of its counter-terrorism strategy in the Muslim community through its Islamist-inspired associates. The question here then becomes whether this makes British counter-terrorism less effective. This remains a moot point.

Indirectly, it also becomes a debate about who should lead the Muslim community and because the prevent strand seems to be the main point of contact between the British state and the Muslim community at present, then the outcome of this debate has profound consequences for the community and its holistic development. The government has tried to work with two rival organisations to the MCB: the Sufi Muslim Council and the British Muslim Forum. Both of which have received considerable financial support and both of which are still developing their infrastructure. And so it appears that though the community responded in a firm way to the July 7 attacks it does seem that the argument over political representation and recognition has side-tracked this development and it is difficult to say whether there has therefore been much progress since then, especially in the constituencies that matter. In fact, the government’s behaviour over political recognition may have been counter-productive in that it may have helped to reduce goodwill from the Muslim community as a whole towards Britain’s counter-terrorism strategy. This is linked to the formation of the Quilliam Foundation but I’m sure we’ll return to Quilliam later.

The other matter to consider is the pursue strand of British counter-terrorism. This also has a chequered history during the Bush years. There have been some catastrophic errors such as the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, the arrest of Lotfi Raissi as a key link to the 9/11 hijackers, the arrest of about a dozen men in August 2006 in relation to an airline plot which was supposed to be bigger than 9/11, the arrest of 11 Pakistani nationals in 2009 on suspicion of being involved in a big terrorist plot and the failure to prevent actual terrorist attacks including the July 7 bombings and the 2007 terrorist attacks by two doctors. The pursue strand has therefore made many errors of huge proportions. However, since the pursue strand is in the main related to the activities of the security services and the special branch then it cannot be subject to public scrutiny in the same way that matters related to the prevent strand are. When reports are published such as the recent report from the Intelligence Scrutiny Committee in the House of Commons or the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism’s report on arrests since 9/11, the pursue strand comes under heavy criticism. Two outstanding issues that remain seem to be the very slow pace at which the structure is being made fit for purpose and secondly the lack of involvement of Muslims as scrutiny of the pursue strand – one can only assume that this is because of a lack of trust. For example, the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism was only very recently formed in the Home Office to supervise British counter-terrorism and Muslim involvement in the OSCT came at a very late stage of organisational formation. The pursue strand does need to be subject to much more scrutiny.

Farewell to the Bush Years - Part One

2009-06-04T14:43:00.000-07:00

What do you remember of the Bush years?

It probably is still too early to tell and this may be an exercise in wishful thinking but one can only hope and pray that now that George W. Bush has left office that we can perhaps say goodbye to what could be characterised as ‘the Bush years’. It’s very difficult looking back over the Bush years to hold on to a few memories. It just seems as a long moment of pain that lasts and lasts and will not go away. At different times, different aspects of it rise to the surface to heighten the pain and these may then go away but the pain nevertheless remains. A numbness, a haze, a feeling of powerlessness while nothing seems clear or visible except that we were vulnerable and under attack. Subject to fate, we hoped that there would not be another terrorist attack and yet simultaneously watched anti-Muslim politicians, writers and journalists take some unfair advantage of this situation as we wallowed in our depressed situation. The Bush years – specifically from Sept 11 2001 to November 2008 when Barack Obama was elected – seem like a fuzzy haze. If Dickens said that the time of revolution was the worst of times and the best of times then it felt like this now as well. Yes, it was the worst of times. But at the same time many things happened which suggested that it could be the beginning of something. It was the worst of times because we felt humiliated and cornered. So many people have died, Muslims and non-Muslims. In the frenzy of the continuous chain of events, we have probably lost count of who died and where. There were so many incidences. The Mumbai massacre in which terrorists attacked major hotels in Mumbai killing tourists. The riots in Gujarat in which 2000 Muslims were killed after some Muslims had burned a train which contained many Hindu passengers. The bombing in Bali which killed over 200 tourists at a nightclub. The killings in Jenin in which over 50 civilians were killed by Israeli soldiers as they fought Palestinian militia. The fall of Saddam Hussain from being one the strongest leaders in the Arab world to someone who went into hiding and then was caught and executed. The second intifida which included the return of suicide bombings to Israeli soil and the assassination of the Hamas leadership in Gaza by Israel. The arrests of hundreds of Arabs in the States in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. The increasing use of expanding powers through legislation as a response to the war on terror which now includes being able to hold people up to 28 days before they must be released. The practice of ‘extraordinary rendition’ which actually meant the kidnap and then transportation of individuals across the world, sometimes to places where they were handed over to third parties which were known to use torture. The take-over of a school in Beslan by Chechen separatists and the consequent murder of over 200 children in that school. The portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad in a series of cartoons published in a Danish national newspaper which were then published around the world and this lead to mass rioting including many deaths. The ban of ostentatious religious symbols in France which meant that Muslim girls could not wear the hijab at school. The associated ban in certain German states on wearing the hijab in public places. The rise of the far right across Europe which specifically focused on the Muslim community as the source of contention. The debate on the Shariah in Britian and more specifically the Archbishop of Canterbury’s comments that the shariah was inevitable in Britain. The July 7 bombings in London in which over 50 people were killed. The niqab debate in Britain in which a senior politician asked for Muslim women to remove their niqabs as he felt it was not appropriate in British public life. The bombings of trains in Madrid in which over 200 people were killed by Moroccan terrorists. The capture of John Walker Lindh who became known as the American Taliban and is now in a high security American prison serving 20 years for taking up arms against the United States. The setting up of special camps at Guantanamo Bay which were outside any global legal scrutiny. The pictures that emerged from Abu Ghraib prison of the torture that had taken place there. The many trials of Muslim suspects including Dhilon Barot, Richard Reid, Sajid Badat in which the Muslim suspects were found guilty and the many trials of Muslim suspects in which they were released either by the jury or on appeal. The shooting of a young Muslim man in Forest Gate as police raided his home and the shooting of a young Brazilian who was mistaken for a suicide bomber by police at the Stockwell tube station. The many terrorist attacks in Iraq as a form of resistance against the invasion and the battle in Falluja which was fierce but unreported because of the difficulty that journalists faced in accessing the city/town. The building of the Israeli wall to divide up Israel from the West Bank and the bombing and then the invasion of Gaza by Israeli forces in which over 1,500 people were killed.

What were the lowest moments?

Everyone will think back to their own worst moment of the Bush years. For me, it was in 2004. The bombings in Madrid meant that terrorism had become a possibility on European soil within a post 9/11 context. This was a major development for European Muslim communities and the British Muslim community. The siege of the school in Beslan and the consequent murder of 200 children was a very disturbing moment. A second intifida was fully underway and Israel had described its continuing occupation as its own version of ‘a war on terror’. I was deeply disturbed by the assassination of the Hamas leadership. Many times, several innocent bystanders were killed in the assassinations as well and this was never mentioned. British counter-terrorism strategy was poorly developed and there was hardly any communication with the Muslim community. The Prevent strand was non-existent and the Pursue strand was run by people who had very little knowledge of the new threat and how to deal with it. British Muslim parliamentarians were Mohammad Sarwar and Khalid Mahmood and both were incapable of providing leadership to the community. The Muslim Council of Britain had been vociferous in the national media but had very little reach in to the community itself. The blogs, websites and satellite channels that we have at present were all absent then. The Hutton enquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly had reported in the early part of the year. Dhiren Barot was arrested in the middle of the year and sentenced for seven years for conspiring to cause terrorist attacks in the United States. Iraq had been invaded in the previous year and most of 2002 had been spent in the run-up to the Iraq war but in 2004 this now looked like it was not going to be a matter of one major terrorist attack followed by an invasion of two countries, instead it was at this point looking like it was turning into a major clash of two civilisations. And there were very few people crossing the divide. If Francois Burgat had spoken about ‘bilateral radicalisation’ in Egypt between the state and the jihad movement, then this was bilateral radicalisation on a global scale. At least, it began to feel like it was and there was no end in sight. But perhaps most worrying of all were two facts that are perhaps related. The first was the response of many to the killings of school children in Beslan: a shrug of the shoulders: ‘they killed many Chechen children, the Chechens are killing their children’. The second was the complete feeling of helplessness, ‘events are beyond our control’. I didn’t think then that there was a large group of people within the Muslim community who were intent on terrorist attacks, but I did feel that events were forcing our community into a politicised corner out of which we could only escape through more radicalisation.

Can the Geneva Conventions become our Hilful Fudul?

2009-03-23T13:32:00.000-07:00

The talk, as Contest 2 is released tomorrow, has been of 'Shared Values'. I am going to desist from engaging in some polemic but will ask the one question, can the Office for Security and Counter-terrorism release the names of the stakeholders whom it consulted with in order to ensure that its strategy is fit for purpose?

I've been thinking about the episode of the Hilful Fudul from the Prophetic Seerah. This was the time prior to Prophethood in which the Prophet had agreed to be a part of an agreement with various tribes and leaders which was a pact against lawlessness and for the upholding of justice especially for the weak and oppressed. The Prophet said during his Prophethood that if the Hilful Fudul were to occur again then he would have taken part in it again. This statement is used by some scholars as evidence for Muslim enagagement in beneficial pacts with non-Muslims.

Can the Geneva Conventions - which were put together in order to regulate war-time behaviour - become the Hilful Fudul of our time? Can Muslim states, organisations and individuals sign up to the principles of the Geneva Convention because they protect the weak and the oppressed? And thereafter, can we call for the upholding of the Geneva Conventions? And if so, would this make the world a safer and securer place for all of us? I don't know, these questions are asked here for the scholars to consider.

Five Questions for the Israelis

2009-01-02T12:19:00.001-08:00

Five questions for the Israelis:

1. What is the position in international law and Jewish law on a state firing a missile at a police station knowing that fifty policemen will be killed without knowing the opinions of any of those policeman?

2. What is the position in international law and Jewish law on a state firing a missile into a house in which women and children are sleeping? That is, why is the daughter of a Hamas leader as guilty as her father? How many innocent people can be killed before the act is declared forbidden?

3. Is there a difference in opinion (say between reformist and Orthodox positions) in the legitimacy of these acts within Rabbinical law?

4. What position does Ehud Barak hold?

5. Could Israelis point to credible and important Rabbinical figures that hold to the opinion that the taking of all innocent life is forbidden and therefore the bombing of Gaza and the economic embargo are forbidden by Jewish law?

And one question for everyone else:

1. Why don't you ask the same questions of the Israelis as you ask us? Are they more moral or so totally amoral that it is pointless to even begin a question on the point of morality? Is Israel the one country to which international law concerning human rights do not apply?

This situation is deeply troubling because it is an argument against the upholding of rights. Might is right. 'You see this fist. This is my moral authority'. This is exactly why we are where we are. Israel is a militarised and demoralised state. Its leaders can only assume the posture of a conviction politician when they are killing people, especially just before an election. Two ways to respond are to pursue these matters in international law and increase the pressure for clear, unequivocal moral stances on the sacredness of the rights of Palestinians as human beings like the rest of us.

Remember Saturday 27 December 2008

2008-12-29T14:32:00.000-08:00

We must not let Saturday pass. Israel crossed a line on that day and it must be held to account for it. At least fifty civilians have been killed and there must be some justice for them. They can not be forgotten in this pathetic, endless search for peace in the Middle East. Ehud Barak has some questions to answer, as do the Rabbis who justify this kind of action. Two aphorisms come to mind. The first is the line at the beginning of Schindler's List: 'Whoever saves a life, it is as if he has saved the whole of humanity'. And the second is from a Rabbi I heard at an interfaith conference about twenty years ago who said that the Golden Rule of Judaic law is 'deal with others as you would expect to be dealt with yourself'. I asked him then if this meant that Israelis were not living up to the teachings of their faith and he agreed. Come on Rabbis, speak out.

Even if the others were wearing uniform, I cannot but notice the resemblance between sending a missile into a police station in which fifty policemen are instantly killed (were they all supporters of Hamas? Can one be a supporter of Hamas and disagree with their policies? Does being a supporter of Hamas mean that you can be killed? Does this logic sound familiar?) and the suicide bombers in Iraq who kill Iraqis training to be policemen. This is indiscriminate slaughter and approximately 200 were killed on Saturday and Ehud Barak has some questions to answer.

Is Ehud Barak a war criminal?

2008-12-28T13:08:00.000-08:00

It is shameful that the British government can't find the moral fortitude to condemn a massacre.

I am not too clued up on international law but here are some questions for experts in international law and war crimes:

a) what is the position in international law on a government firing missiles into civilian areas if the action has not been sanctioned by the United Nations?

b) what is the position in international law on a government that fires missiles into civilian areas and this results in the deaths of civilians including women and children?

c) what is the position in international law on the defence minister, in this case Ehud Barak, who has spent months preparing this attack and then argues for its commission?

It would be useful to get on record all the buildings destroyed in yesterday's attack and the names and occupations of all those killed.

These are some questions that come to mind and I hope that there is justice available within international law for the innocents who were murdered yesterday.

There has been an ongoing debate within the Muslim community about the permissibility of suicide bombing within Israel. Scholars like Shaykh Qaradawi amongst others have stated that it is permissible and people like myself and others have questioned this ruling because there does not seem to be any clear shariah justification for the exception that has been made for actions carried out within Israel. And this is why I have asked questions of the British Board of Deputies in my previous post. It is time for the Board of Deputies to provide answers to the questions around moral and religious justification for assassinations and massacres according to Hebrew law. I cannot imagine how yesterday's actions could be permitted. One analyst has suggested that for every 1 Israeli death from the rockets there have been 150 Palestinian deaths in the last three years. I am against comparing deaths in this manner but this figure does give the lie to the Israeli spin on this being some kind of revenge for rocket attacks. It is about the peace process, the forthcoming Israeli elections and the new American administration. And this is why it is all the more shameful for Israel because it carried out this massacre. We look to senior Rabbis in this country to offer some moral leadership.

'You see this fist...'

2008-12-27T07:39:00.000-08:00

'You see this fist. This is my moral authority'. This is Harold Pinter on American hegemony in his speech of 2005 upon receiving the Nobel Prize in literature. Hearing today that Israel has assassinated about 200 people without a judge, a jury or a case for the prosecution for any of the individuals involved, I call for the condemnation of the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza who have already been subject to another form of collective punishment, the blockade. One rule for one, one rule for all. It is astonishing and totally unacceptable that this is being described as the beginning, as if it is somehow not enough - that we can tolerate it and tolerate more - and can perhaps be explained again by Pinter when describing the US in the same speech:

'It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis'.

It is time for the Board of Deputies to make a statement on its moral view on the using of airplanes to launch missiles into civilian areas. Is this allowed? Is it morally justifiable to kill seven Palestinians in order to kill one Palestinian?

A suggested response to the Moral Maze

2008-12-20T05:06:00.001-08:00

I've put the following together as a response to the Moral Maze's letter in response to our initial complaint (see earlier posts). I'd appreciate any advice on this and if you would like to add your name to this letter that I will send them in early January then please e-mail me on bradfordmuslimatyahoodotcouk.

Dear Moral Maze,

Thank you for your response to our complaint about the appearance of Melanie Phillips and Kenan Malik on the Moral Maze. We raised the point with you that Melanie Phillips has called for the ‘taming’ of Muslims and that therefore we regarded your continued patronage of her as a panellist as unacceptable in that you are allowing her the privilege of state-sanctioned power. We also raised the point of Kenan Malik’s recent involvement in the Moral Maze. It saddens us that the first Asian that you have chosen as a panellist on the Moral Maze is someone who publicly asserts that anti-Muslim prejudice is severely exaggerated.

In your response, you stated:

a) That you have only covered Muslims and Islam on three occasions in the last two years.

b) That the programme achieves balance through the invitation of Muslims as witnesses.

c) That Melanie Phillips’s views were not broadcast by the BBC

We wish to take you to task on these three aspects of your response.

First of all, you have stated that the Moral Maze has only covered Muslims and Islam on three occasions in the last two years. You mention the Archbishop of Canterbury’s speech on the Sharia, the government’s approach to language in counter-terrorism and the counter-terrorism approach in general as three themes that have been covered. But this is the central ‘conceit’ of your programme and the fundamental moment in which you are discriminatory in the most powerful of ways against us. These moments are times of national debate and conversation: the debate is heated and serious and has huge consequences for everyone including us Muslims as the objects of this discussion. At this moment, you stage a debate in which you have empowered one person who holds extreme perspectives in this debate to act as a regular panellist – inquisitor – of us who have to represent ourselves, and can only represent ourselves, as witnesses. The closest analogy is the court, and because of the way you have set up the debate, we can only appear on one side of it. The side which is guilty or not guilty. The inquisitor is someone who has publicly stated that the problem is with our religion itself and that we should be ‘tamed’. You state in your response:

And in doing so, you miss the above point. You have set up a panel which is unfair and discriminatory towards us. We feel it strongly and are telling you that it is the case.

Secondly, while remaining on this first point. You have mentioned three occasions in the last couple of years in which you have directly discussed Islam and Muslims. But some of us remember that you have also discussed the legitimacy of torture at the end of the last season in which Melanie Phillips argued for the legality of torture as part of the war on terror. You have not included this programme in your list. It was around this time that Melanie Phillips called for the ‘taming’ of Muslims.

You have also only gone back to the beginning of 2007. We feel that it would be more appropriate to go back to 2001 and count the number of programmes that discuss Islam and Muslims and then the number of times that Melanie Phillips has participated in these programmes. We also feel that it would be more appropriate for an independent person to analyse the topics, indeed, we think it would be most appropriate for an independent person to conduct a discursive analysis on all of your programmes that have discussed Islam and Muslims since 2001 as this would provide the most objective and fair analysis of the data. We are willing to recommend some academics to you whom we regard as fair.

Combined, we are suggesting that the number of times that you have discussed us would be more than you suggest, and even if proven otherwise, the act of representation that is ‘The Moral Maze’ is not a matter to be belittled.

Finally, you state in brackets that Melanie Phillips did not broadcast her remark on ‘taming’ Muslims on the BBC. We remind you that the BBC cancelled ‘Kilroy’ because of Kilroy-Silk’s comments made about Arabs that were published elsewhere. So we do not hold to this point and wonder what BBC editorial policy is on this?

To conclude, we do not accept your points. We still regard your programme as discriminatory towards us, in fact your choice of Kenan Malik seems to confirm this. We certainly feel that your programme is unfair. But in the first instance, we wish to provide you with the opportunity to make the programme fairer than it is at present.

In summary:

We do not believe that your programme is balanced as a whole because of the power difference between the panellist and the witness.

We do not believe that you have accounted for the frequency of your coverage of matters that affect us directly as a community in the most transparent of ways.

We seek to call in an independent academic to study the programme since 2001.

We ask you to change the structure of the programme in order to make it fairer in its treatment of us.

We look forward to hearing from you,

The Moral Maze's response on Melanie Phillips

2008-12-13T06:27:00.000-08:00

This is the response from the Moral Maze on the complaint that was previously sent by some of us to them about the inclusion of Melanie Phillips and now Kenan Malik as a panellist:

"Thank you for your letter about the Moral Maze and I'm sorry that you feel unhappy about the series. I too feel that the best way to answer your concerns is to look at the editorial decision making process behind the series.

The conceit of the programme (broadcast live 25 times a year) is that the panellists are NOT objective about the subjects of the week. They are chosen because they come with clear positions, passionately held. However, balance is achieved over the 43 minutes of each programme and over the run of a series because of the differing views of the panellists and of course the conflicting views of the witnesses. In addition, Michael Buerk, as chairman, is allowed to take the panellists to task if he believes they are over-stepping the mark. You may passionately disagree with Melanie Phillips's or Kenan Malik's views, and indeed the views of any of our panellists, but they are entitled to hold them and express them, just as you are free to object to them. (I notice that the quotes of Melanie Philips that you cite were not broadcast on the Moral Maze).

It is indeed true that at the moment we do not have a Muslim panellist on the programme, but that is not unfair, nor does it amount to discrimination against Muslims because when we do discuss subjects that affect Muslims in Britain, we have Muslim witnesses. It would be wrong for the programme not to discuss a subject unless we have a member of the panel who has direct experience of the issue. I feel your argument over representation might have had more merit if the Moral Maze did, as you say, "spend a considerable amount of time discussing Muslims in Britain" but going back nearly 2 years to the beginning of 2007 the Moral Maze has discussed subjects which touch on this issue only 3 times in a total of 55 programmes. For your records those editions were: 13/2/08 after the Archbishop of Canterbury's speech on Sharia Law, 6/2/08 on new Home Office guidelines for civil servants and police advising them not to use phrases such as "Islamist extremism" or "jihadi-fundamentalist" and on 4/7/07 after the Glasgow Airport bombing on how far is it morally right to engage with those who plan and carry out atrocities in an effort to understand their causes".

I'll be posting up a preliminary response that I am putting together in a few days. Any advice would be most appreciated: bradfordmuslimatyahoodotcodotuk.

Religion and the public sector duty

2008-12-06T12:38:00.001-08:00

Calling all bloggers! There is a piece of legislation which I would hazard to suggest is more important in its implication to the Muslim community than any counter-terrorism bill. This is because counter-terrorism law affects in the main a few individuals - and though I do not wish to denigrate the seriousness of any flouting of basic human rights such as the right to a fair trial etc. I don't think that a comparison against this forthcoming bill would find that counter-terrorism legislation is more deserving of attention.

I am of course referring to the Equality Bill which was announced in the Queen's Speech this week. This Bill follows on from the equalities review and the discrimination law review. The intent of this Bill is to declutter the law - that is to simplify all equality legislation and hence make it easier and hopefully more effective for public sector organisations to meet their equality duties.

I should provide some brief history: The Race Relations Amendment Act 2000 moved race relations law in the direction of tacking institutional discrimination. That is, what is it about public sector organisations like Councils or the Police that prevents them from providing a good enough service to ethnic minorities in employment practice and service delivery? The DDA 2005 and the Equality Act 2006 made similar improvements to disability law and law in relation to gender. Three further 'strands' began to request for inclusion as public sector duties - that is that tax-funded organisations should show how they are dealing institutionally with these strands: sexual orientation, age and religion.

The Equality Bill is about extending the public sector duty from race, gender and disability to include religion, sexual orientation and age. However, there has been a real behind-the-scenes debate about whether the public sector duty should include religion at all. The main campaigners for the extention of the duty to include religion have been from the Muslim community because they have suggested that there has been a distinct deficit that Muslims have experienced because of their religion. Including religion in the public sector duty is therefore very important if discrimination against Muslims is to be prevented and more importantly if there is to be a form of public and legal accountability on discrimination against Muslims. In fact, the prevent strand of the government's counter-terrorism strategy would be rendered useless in one moment if there was to be no accountability on discrimination against Muslims. In fact, it would be plain stupid. A massive campaign to win hearts and minds through symbolic, community development type projects while simultaneously permitting any form of service delivery or employment discrimination across all public sector organisations. How's that for joined-up government? (Could all members of the Young Muslims Advisory Group and Muslim Womens Advisory Group raise this issue at their next meeting?)

At this moment in time, religion is still being considered as a strand for the public sector duty. This means that if somebody were to be stigmatised at work because of his/her faith, then they could under this duty hold the organisation to account. Examples include all those instances when somebody has discriminated against you because of your faith in the past. I can quote a few in relation to myself. However, the Equality and Human Rights Commission that is charged to protect our rights has shown that it is wavering on this issue and I have some serious concerns:

a) the Commission has paid for some research to be extended to be conducted on 'Religion and faith in employment, education and services' by Marie Macey, Alan Carling and Sheila Furness from Bradford university. Who is Marie Macey? Well, her publications include: ''Class, Gender and Religious Influences on Changing Patterns of Pakistani Muslim Male Violence in Bradford". Would the Commission have funded a researcher to examine the case for race as a public sector duty if they had previously written on 'class, gender and racial influences on changing patterns on African-Caribbean male violence'? There are no Muslim academics in this country.

b) the Commission and the Government Equalities Office (which is the govt department that funds the Commission) have organised a conference on the implications of the public sector duty for the civil service. Guess who is giving the speech on respecting religion in public service delivery. Try three names and then click here to find the answer.

c) The joke is most definately on us. But it's not over yet. The Commission is funding a series of conferences on religion and human rights, especially 'what happens when rights appear to conflict and what sort of accommodation for religious practice is acceptable in the workplace'. Which organisation has been funded to organise these conferences? Click here for more information. And who is the only person with a Muslim sounding name speaking at these conferences? Maryam Namazie of the Council of Ex-Muslims.

The Bill is due to go through the Lords and Lord Lester is one of the main architects of the Bill. One of the main problems that we face in the Lords is that we are under-represented in it. Lord Lester said in the House of Lords on 26 June 2008 that 'All the strands, as we now call them, of discrimination are very well represented in this House'. As a campaigner, I do not hold this to be true. Here is an example of an unequal debate. There are hardly any equivalent Muslim voices in the House of Lords. We are under-represented and this means that as a community we are unable to defend ourselves as equals which we most certainly can. Please, keep an eye on this bill and get in touch with anyone you know in the House of Commons and the House of Lords to make them aware of the religion section of the equality bill and to work to ensure that the religion section is not diluted. Also, please ask the Equality and Human Rights Commission about what it is doing in relation to discrimination against Muslims.

On the new American President

2008-11-11T14:43:00.000-08:00

Thank you, America.

Some of us have been writing against American policies for quite a while now and in the process of doing so have been accused of being anti-American. I have always insisted that I am not anti-American and have referred to my various sources of religious inspiration and guidance that are American in origin. Much of what is happening within 'Western Islam' is American in origin: intellectually, culturally and spiritually. It was always a strand of the American experience that people like myself have argued against. That strand has now been consigned to the dustbin of history. I hope that history will be fair in its judgement on Cheney, Rumsfeld and co. 'You fool me once...'

America has reasserted its greatness through the election of Barack Obama to its Presidency. It's been a long time since I have felt inspired by political events - politics or news has in the main meant bad news. But this week, politics became good news, for several reasons. I am still considering the importance of this election and wondering whether there has been any singular more important political event in my lifetime, and I cannot think of one. So let's work through this.

First of all, though he may not read this, thank you to Barack Obama for daring to dream. This is good news for dreamers. I have - I can now proudly say - been accused of being a dreamer on many occasions - the Pakistani insult is 'Shaykh Chilli'. But Obama brings good news to the dreamers. He began as a dreamer and it is really eye-opening to watch his early speeches again after this election. His rawness, his sheer 'audacity of hope' - this was clearly a man who had seen something of the future in his imagination and decided that he was going 'to get there'. There are very few dreamers around today, let's hope that this victory will inspire some more.

Secondly, thank you to the democratic party for choosing Obama as your presidential candidate. The party could always have said that the country would not vote for an African-American to be President, but they didn't. This has been Labour's great failure on race equality. It has not believed that it could convince its own electorate to take race equality seriously. That is why they shied away from it in their second term and that is why they have little to show for it after ten years. The argument goes that it is the white working classes who will reject Labour if they appoint senior, serious ethnic candidates. This is why the Democratic party is to be applauded and thanked. It did not bow down before a milder form of racism.

Thirdly, thank you to the American people who voted in a clear majority for an African-American. The great danger for Obama was not McCain but not-Obama. Obama is to be congratulated here for articulating a vision that was beyond-race and the American people are to be congratulated for choosing a man who comes from one of their ethnic minorities as President.

It is difficult to state at this moment how much will change but which mean-spirited soul will deny that this election is one giant step forward in making the world a fairer place?

And then to Grant Park. Here is an account I've received from an associate who was there on the day:

'The atmosphere at Grant Park was a mixture of excitement and anticipation. I think everyone knew that this could be one of those days that would go down in history as a turning point. However, I think people were not entirely convinced or couldn’t believe that this was actually happening until Obama won Pennsylvania and his electoral vote was more then 270. The crowd at Grant Park can be drastically contrasted to McCain’s crowd in Arizona when he was giving his final speech. Nine or ten jumbo train TVs were set up all around Grant Park and they were all showing CNN. McCain supporters all looked like upper class, elite, conservative 'Caucasian' families. CNN showed the crowd at Grant Park and even the CNN commentator recognized the diversity of the Grant Park crowd. It was one of those few moments in history where all races, religions and cultures, regardless of status or income, came together for a common purpose. I mean, it’s not everyday that you see different nationalities, Muslims, foreigners, Hispanics, African Americans from the south suburbs and Caucasian’s from Wrigleyville, all in ONE location! I would say a good percentage of the population were young, between 18-29 years old. I even saw French tourists holding signs that they love Obama! A few of my friends had tickets to enter Grant Park and some of them came out before Obama even began to talk because they felt too crowded. There were people literally inches away from you. I was outside Grant Park with about 150,000 other people. We could hear Obama’s echo when he was talking. Reporters were everywhere asking people their opinions. A few of us got interviewed as well! After Obama’s speech, everyone was heading back walking on Michigan Avenue and it honestly reminded me of the Muslim pilgrimage. I would never say the experience is similar, but just seeing a diverse crowd walk together peacefully gave me that image. I’ve been to protests and demonstrations before, but nothing in this magnitude'.

Spike Lee in an interview after the election said that everything will now be BB or AB: Before Barack or After Barack. I thought that this was Spike being his hyperbolic self, until I read Mathew D'Ancona (the most astute conservative commentator) this weekend who said pretty much said the same thing, but in relation to British politics. That if before last week, the uber-fugure in British politics was Tony Blair and we could only tell who you were and where you stood in relation to him (so Cameron calls himself 'the hier to Blair'), well today, now, people like Cameron, Gordon Brown, Sarkozy etc. will all need to define themselves against, in line with or behind Barack Obama.

And if this is not about his personality, then it is about his message. And one final, important aspect of his victory. The use of the internet. The media - the print media, the US television networks - was weaker in its influence in the most important election on this planet. The internet - websites, Facebook, youtube, e-mailing - has allowed the masses to bypass media gatekeepers. It has made the marketplace of ideas more equal and in doing so has given power to the individual. This election in its result and in the way that it has been won is one great leap for mankind.

Letter of Complaint to the Moral Maze

2008-10-11T14:26:00.000-07:00

This is the letter to be sent to the producer of the Moral Maze. Please read it and if you would like to add your name then e-mail me at bradfordmuslimatyahoodotcodotuk with your name and city of residence such as 'Tony Cameron, London'. I will collect the names til Saturday 18 October after which I will send the letter.

Dear sir/madam,

We are writing to you about Melanie Phillips’ appearances as a panellist on Radio 4’s The Moral Maze. We believe that the decision to continue with Ms. Phillips as a panellist seriously undermines the credibility and authority of the programme. This is for several reasons which we will explain.

Ms. Phillips, it would be fair to say, is a controversial figure in the British media. This in itself is not problematic. What is problematic and damaging for the programme is if a panellist crosses the line of acceptability by pushing a range of discriminatory viewpoints. We would suggest that Ms. Phillips has done this recently in two ways which seriously undermines the integrity of The Moral Maze.

Our first concern relating to Ms. Phillips’ appearances centres on her disagreement with the British government’s counter-terrorism strategy which holds that the problem is with an ideological and distorted form of Islam, not Islam itself. Ms. Phillips wrote in The Daily Mail on 8 July of this year that

“[t]he Government believes that Islamic radicalism can be countered by teaching authentic Islam to Muslims. But since Islamic radicalism is based upon those very authentic religious precepts, this will undoubtedly have the effect of radicalising people who otherwise would never have thought in this way”.

This quotation, and its simple and lucid message, is in explicit contradiction to the following correction to an article written by Ms. Phillips for The Observer newspaper, dated May 26 2006:

“The extract below may have given the impression that Ms Phillips's book connects all British Muslims to a campaign of violence, whereas she stresses that the vast majority are peaceful and law-abiding. She also draws a distinction between Islam, which should be respected, and Islamism, which, she believes, is the use of that religion for violent ends”.

To put it simply, Ms. Phillips now believes that the problem is with authentic Islam itself.

Secondly, Ms. Phillips in the article on 8 July 2008 stated: “The reason so many older British Muslims are traditionally moderate is that they were brought up in the Asian subcontinent under a tamed form of Islam…” It is wild animals that are tamed or domesticated. This opinion is not only untrue, but also deeply offensive.

Our contention is that while it is perfectly acceptable for Ms. Phillips (or anyone else who shares such extreme and unpalatable views) to appear as a witness on The Moral Maze, it undermines the credibility of the programme when she appears as a panellist. Not only is it totally disenfranchising to Muslims like myself, it is actually unfair to a range of debates, some of which focus acutely on Islam, Muslims, multiculturalism and integration. This is especially true given that The Moral Maze does not have a Muslim panellist, has never had a Muslim panellist, and now includes an Asian panellist who has publicly stated that Islamophobia is a myth (Prospect Magazine, February 2005). We fund your programme through the license fee, but because of the way you have decided to structure your programme in content and design, we unfairly receive the returns of your work because of our faith.

How can a programme which spends a considerable amount of time discussing Muslims in Britain continue like this with one panelist who believes that Muslims should be tamed, another that Islamophobia is a myth and no actual Muslim representation? We contend that the way in which the programme is set up is unfair, offensive and discriminatory towards Muslims. What is your response?

Yours sincerely,

Andy Disgruntled, Tunbridge Wells;

cc:

Mark Damazer, Controller, Radio 4.

Roger Bolton, Feedback, Radio 4.

More on Mel P, the Moral Maze and the BBC

2008-10-04T00:42:00.000-07:00

I recently asked the BBC under a freedom of information request about the number of times Melanie Phillips has been on the Moral Maze since 2001, how many times she has spoken about Muslims and Islam and how much she has been paid to do so? I asked this question because I could not believe that the BBC - a tax-funded organisation - was paying someone who believes that Muslims should be tamed as 'we did in the Raj' and that the problem with Muslims is to do with Islam itself, not some ideological version of Islam.

She appears on 'The Moral Maze' which is one of BBC radio 4's main programmes tackling the critical issues of the week. Responding to the major moral dilemmas of the day, the programme invites numerous witnesses - usually people directly involved in the debate - to answer questions from a series of panellists. Melanie Phillips is one of these panellists. This puts her into a tax-funded position of authority and because many of the debates and programmes since 2001 have been about Muslims, she has been placed in a position of authority in these debates by the BBC. But Muslims are tax payers too. Muslims have never appeared (as far as I know) on the Moral Maze as panellists but we have appeared as witnesses, numerous times. So in this court of public opinion, the BBC has decided to set up a situation in which we are regularly judged upon but can never take part in (be integrated into) the judgement making. This is while the BBC has run presumably thousands of stories over the years about 'the lack of integration of Muslims', alas, if only they could see the beam in their own collective eye. I will return to this cultural beam later.

Muslims are tax payers too, and the BBC in its wisdom has refused to answer my questions on how many times she has appeared, has spoken in a position of authority on Islam and Muslims and how much she has been paid. The Daily Mail - for which Melanie Philips writes - recently complained about Alistair Campbell being paid by the BBC, insiders estimate that he has been paid £50,000 by the BBC over the last two years. Well, since the BBC won't tell me how much Melanie Phillips has been paid over the last seven years, I am going to guess. I guess that a nationally syndicated journalist appearing as a panellist on a flagship programme for radio 4 at peak times for about an hour is paid about £1,000 per programme. There are approximately forty Moral Mazes per year, so that's £40,000 per year. This is then multiplied by seven so that's £280,000 since 2001 from tax payer's money. It's a guess, so it could be more than this and it could be less than this. I believe though that this guess is wrong and that we have the right to know since she she publicly calls for taming people like me, changing the way I practise my religion and the legitimacy of torture. I call for a collective complaint against the Moral Maze by Muslims of all professions and persuasions. It is not acceptable that the BBC uses tax payer's money to put someone into a position of authority like this. Those who would like to be a part of this, please get in touch with me. Many Muslims I know get very upset by stories that they hear about torture carried out by US forces such as the alleged torture of Aafia Siddiqui, well, Melanie Phillips argues that it is legitimate as she has recently done on the Moral Maze.

As if to make matters worse and to prove the point, radio 4's Moral Maze decided to invite an Asian person on as a panellist: Kenan Malik, who has recently started. Kenan Malik is only really involved in one debate in this country and that is the 'race and multiculturalism' debate. He also has a healthy interest in Muslims, though is not far as as I am aware a Muslim. In fact, his involvement in this debate includes a programme for Channel 4 (a channel which was created to make cultural space for Britian's minorities!) on - wait for it - 'the Islamophobia myth'. Kenan Malik wrote this week for the Guardian in which he suggested that Muslims should put up with the pain of being offended. This is the multicultural addition to the Moral Maze, a brilliant example of the assimilationist ethic at work.

Anyway, in this article, Malik refers to numerous examples of self-censorship at work. What surprised me, and I suppose didn't surprise me, was the number of instances of anti-Muslim representation in culture - which if one treats culture as some form of organism shows that anti-Muslim representation is alive and well, whether it is open or not. Is this important? Of course it is. Is someone seriously suggesting that culture and violence are not related?

Anyway, back to the complaint. If you would like to contribute to a letter to the BBC Trust and the Department of Culture, Media and Sport which funds the BBC against the Moral Maze then please get in touch with me. The Moral Maze has no credibility in Muslim eyes and it is time for it to change.

You should also keep in mind that another section of the BBC is at present being investigated for anti-Muslim bias by Stephen Whittle. I would suggest that anti-Muslim bias is not solely located within one department. The Moral Maze and radio 4 may retort that there are no middle class Muslims who are capable enough to take part in these debates. The Guardian has proved this to be a lie through its Comment is Free pages which have allowed many Muslims to enter into debates which affect them and argue their corner in fair terms. The Guardian, though it is not tax-funded, is fairer than the BBC in this regard. I am sure that if the BBC tries hard enough, may be even trains a few people, it will find that there are people out there who can step into these positions. This is after all the great lie in the freedom of speech debate. Freedom of speech without the power and ability to get your point across is of no use to anyone. Kenan Malik may complain of a lack of free speech, but it is he who occupies a position of power in a debate that affects others.

Rumi on fasting

2008-09-28T04:23:00.000-07:00

I found this poem by Rumi on fasting, it has helped me reflect on Ramadan now that it is almost over:

There's hidden sweetness in the stomach's emptiness.
We are lutes, no more, no less.

If the soundboxes stuffed full of anything, no music.
If the brain and belly are burning clean with fasting,
every moment a new song comes out of the fire.
The fog clears, and new energy makes you run
up the steps in front of you.
Be emptier and cry like reed instruments cry.

Emptier, write secrets with the reed pen.
When you're full of food and drink,
Satan sits where your spirit should,
an ugly metal statue in place of the Kaaba.
When you fast, good habits gather
like friends who want to help.
Fasting is Solomon's ring.

Don't give into some illusion and lose your power,
but even if you have, if you've lost all will and control,
they come back when you fast,
like soldiers appearing out of the ground,
pennants flying above them.

A table descends to your tents, Jesus' table.
Expect to see it, when you fast,
this table spread with other food,
better than the broth of cabbages.