FEB 2006 | MUHARRAM| 427 | No 365

FEB 2006|MUHARRAM 1427|NO.365 UK£2.50 | US$5.00 |RM10.00

HASAN LE GAI EATON

The Radical Middle Way LEILA ABOULELA Just don’t talk to her about love ISLA ROSSER-OWEN In search of a Muslim literati OMAR SHAH Denmark’s Cartoon Firestorm TAHIR ABBAS British Islam’s Annus horribilis MUHAMMAD KHAN Kashmir’s ‘Dammed’ ADAM GOREN France’s Banlieue Uprising PLUS The Qalam Prize Winners

Shaykh Dr Zaki Badawi 1922 - 2006

Abdal Hakim Murad, Ayisha Ali, Rabbi Jonathan Magonet, Rev Marcus Braybrooke, Shareefa Fulat, Nureen Shah-Kazemi, Fuad Nahdi and others remember a man whose “daily effort was for God”

FAREENA ALAM

EDITORIAL

FROM THE PULPIT W

hen Jyllands-Posten first published the outrageous caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessing be upon him, last September, there was a low hum of outrage. Danish Muslim were rightfully upset and hurt at the cavalier attitude taken by Denmark’s intelligentsia at the spiteful portrayal of their Prophet, peace be upon him, and their faith. It was the latest and to-date the most egregious volley in a long line of public attacks and ridicule of Muslims in a country that has been in grip of rising xenophobia for well over a decade.

When Q-News met with Danish-American professor Jytte Klausen (who recently completed a landmark study of Muslim political elite in Europe) in October, she was furious and embarrassed that the political discourse in her native country had fallen to such putrid depths. The caricatures - hateful, ignorant and provocative - reminded her immediately of the images of European Jews popularised by the Nazis and their sympathisers in the 1930s and 1940s. Those images served to prepare public opinion for antiJewish edicts and ultimately, “The Final Solution”. The cartoons then and now - are frighteningly similar. Klausen mused openly about the impact such images would have on public perceptions of Muslims, their faith and the man they hold so dear.

The matter has now developed into something completely different. News travels fast in our globalised, media-obsessed world.

Make no mistake - these caricatures were intended to cause offence. The editors at Jyllands-Posten did what they did, simply because they could. Their freedom of speech meant to them also the freedom to offend. Little attention was paid to the value of these images or their impact. It was the worst kind of arrogance.

The news that Jyllands-Posten rejected cartoons depicting Jesus three years ago on the grounds that they would be offensive to readers, made their current apology look miserly and cynical. The reprinting of the cartoons in other European newspapers was equally ill-thought out and simply fanned the flames of mistrust between Muslim minority communities and their fellow citizens.

The right to free speech doesn’t abrogate social responsibility.

Simon Jenkins, in his typically incisive style, wrote, “These cartoons don’t defend free speech, they threaten it... For Danish journalists to demand ‘Europe-wide solidarity’ in the cause of free speech and to deride those who are offended as ‘fundamentalists... who have a problem with the entire western world’ comes close to racial provocation. We do not go about punching people in the face to test their commitment to non-violence. To be a European should not involve initiation by religious insult.”

Muslim deeply love the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him - it is at the core of our way of life. We seek to emulate his character and his way in everything we do, because he represents the very best of what it means to be human. In the Holy Quran, he is described by God as ‘a mercy to all the worlds’ - he does not ‘belong’ to me or the Muslim next door but to humanity. Muslims in turn aspire to become agents of mercy and compassion. Our anger is justified, but that does not give us the licence to behave without the dignity, restraint and intelligence that are the hall-

marks of his character.

The behaviour of some Muslims over the past week, I fear, has done as much if not more damage to the name and honour of the Prophet. While previously unknown Danish cartoonists are now international martyrs for “freedom", the hooliganism of Muslims has now taken centre-stage.

Protest - peaceful, forceful, moving and creative - is the hallmark of a vibrant civil society. Conduct at the demonstration by the Hizb ut Tahrir for instance, was exemplary and the group’s condemnation of the debacle the day before, welcome.

Defending the honour of the Prophet is one thing, the antics of some demonstrators is quite another. Dressing up as a suicide bomber, waving placards calling on Muslims to “Butcher those who insult Islam” and shouting “7/7 on it way” - the inhumanity of it all is so utterly shameful and depressing. Clearly, it’s not just Danish cartoonists and their apologists who are ignorant of the Prophet. As families of the 7/7 victims no doubt watched in horror, I wonder how the parents of the child wearing the I Love AlQaeda cap would have felt had their son or daughter been sitting on the No. 30 bus on that day.

In fact, many of those who so violently took to the street claiming their love for the Prophet belong to the same heterodox, literalist school of thought that criticises Muslims for venerating the Prophet, peace be upon him, ‘too much’. These people condemn the mawlid - the celebration of Prophet’s birth - and seek to silence those who honour the Prophet through sacred music, art and poetry. One zealot, recently invited to deliver a sermon, declared he would refer to the Prophet as “Brother Muhammad” because he saw the Prophet as ‘no more than an ordinary man who received God’s revelation’.

The protests reveal other deeper frustrations. Many Muslims genuinely feel alienated, marginalised and besieged by ‘an Islamophobic media’. These perceptions cannot be ignored. We need to tackle these issues together before crises happen.

It is times like this that many will wish that the late Dr Zaki Badawi was still with us. His wisdom and directness were invaluable. His absence is felt greatly and deeply.

At last year’s first national mawlid gathering in Wembley our publisher Fuad Nahdi called on Muslims to dedicate the year to the celebration of the Prophet and to making his message of mercy, compassion and service a central feature of our lives and our communities. That call is more relevant today than ever. As we go to press, Muslims across the country are organising gatherings of education and celebration to counter the violent protests held by a small but noisy minority.

We cannot forget that the Prophet, peace be upon him, was insulted and vilified during his life and in fact, throughout history and yet, his example has survived and his message for humanity is as relevant today as it was fourteen centuries ago.

The Prophet was once asked by a companion, “Give me some advice by virtue of which I hope for good in the life hereafter", and the Prophet repeatedly said, “Don’t get angry.” The Prophet also said that anger is like fire, which destroys you from within, and it can also lead you to the fire of hell by your own unjust expressions of anger. In whatever way we choose to protest and engage in the issues stirred up by the current controversy, this is advice that we should truly hold dear.

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CONTENTS 7 Classic Q Feeling very let down Noshaba Hussain has been doing some thinking about the narrow way Muslims define halal and haram. Isn’t it time that we realised that eating halal doesn’t make our ill-conceived actions alright?

8 Upfront Publisher Fuad Nahdi Managing Editor Fareena Alam Contributing Editors Abdul-Rehman Malik Nabila Munawar Fozia Bora Art Director Aiysha Malik Administrative Assistant Rizwan Rahman Events Coordinator Waheed Malik Featuring Tahir Abbas Najad Abdul-Aziz Ayisha Ali Irshad Ashraf Raneem Azam Roger Boase Fozia Bora Marcus Braybrooke Affan Chowdhry Jose Correa Hasan Le Gai Eaton Layla El-Wafi Shareefa Fulat Adam Goren Corey Habbas Jibril Hambel H.A. Hellyer Jeremy Hanzell-Thomas Rashid Itani Muhammad Khan Safurat Lasoye Jonathan Magonet M Mahroof Fatima Martin Rebecca Masterton Abdal-Hayy Moore Abdal-Hakim Murad Isla Rosser-Owen Ovidio Salazar Omar Shah Dal Nun Strong Pamela Taylor Nureen Shah-Kazemi Sidney Shipton Saraji Umm Zaid

Visual Griots: Mali, Beyond Timbuktu Mali is a nation of devotion - passionate, beautiful and powerful. A new exhibit features the work of young American and African photographers as they explore the hidden faces of this great West African nation.

9 Diary Affan Chowdhry on misjudging distances, wedding day devotions and waiting for angels in Istanbul.

10 Q-Notes 15 Scrutiny Young and Angry: A Year in British Islam. Tahir Abbas takes a look back at a year that proved to be a dramatic turning point in the future of the British Muslim community. A Tale of Two Siblings. With both British and French models of multiculturalism in crisis, Dal Nun Strong finds it hard to see which

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political system is hurting most.

Marooned in the Banlieue. Adam Goren reports from the frontlines of France’s embattled suburbs and find that a generation of angry, excluded young Muslims are finally getting some much needed attention. Trouble Down Under.

Last November’s dramatic anti-terror arrests were just the beginning of Australia’s troubles. Najad Abdul-Aziz reports on the aftermath of the arrests and the political divide that is tearing Aussie Muslims apart.

Something Rotten in the State of Denmark. Oh, the hypocrisy!

With the cartoon firestorm ablaze across the world, Denmark has gone from a country better known for its beer, bacon and the Little Mermaid to being the “frontline in the cultural battle between Islam and the West”. Omar Shah traces the roots of the controversy while Rashid Itani argues the Danish apology came for all the wrong reasons.

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Mali, Beyond Timbuktu, Page 8

Leila Aboulela on love, Page 48

Kashmir’ss ‘D Dammed’ As a bitter winter deepens the devastation of earthquake affected

Kashmir, locals are bracing themselves for another disaster: the 2007 raising of the controversial Mangla Dam. Muhammad Khan explores the traumatic relationship between his community and the dam that has shaped the destiny of Kashmiris.

30 Wanton Violence in Muslimdom H.A. Hellyer looks at the deviation of modern radicals and finds a powerful antidote based on traditional scholarship that is at once contemporary and rooted in Islam’s rich intellectual heritage.

33 The Radical Middle Way With young people seeking so-called radical solutions to spiritual and political crises, Shaykh Hasan Le Gai Eaton explains that the real alternative is a principled return to the “Middle Way”.

48 Let’ss (Not) Talk About Love Award-winning author Leila Aboulela speaks to Aiysha Malik about finding her voice, writing as conversation and why the story of Imam Shamil Daghestani has got her so excited. Just don’t ask her to talk about love.

Raneem Azzam finds Aboulela’s new novel Minaret authentic, lyrical and captivating.

36 Portfolio: Remembering Shaykh Zaki Badawi, 1922 - 2006 Fuad Nahdi on a special man who always tried to do the right thing. Abdal Hakim Murad remembers a man of impeccable scholarship who was never afraid to confront controvery. To Ayisha Ali, Dr Zaki Badawi was just “good old Dr Zee” charming, gracious, and loving. Rabbi Jonathan Magonet salutes a pioneering visionary.

Shareefa Fulat recalls his unfailing compassion and his infectious humour. Sidney Shipton on a gifted mentor who touched the hearts and minds of Muslims and nonMuslims alike. M Mahroof recalls the gentle genius of skilled diplomat. Rev Marcus Braybrooke mourns the loss of a great friend and an Inter-faith pioneer. Jeremy Henzell-Thomas on a scholar who was committed to welfare of all. Nureen ShahKazemi remembers a deeply pious and compassionate teacher whose daily effort was in the service of God.

compelling.

Film: The Alchemist of Happiness Fozia Bora on the modern relevance of Ovidio Salazar’s sensitive and intimate portrait of classical Islam’s greatest personality.

55 The Qalam Prize Isla Rosser-Owen’ss search for a Muslim literati has her feeling like she is on the cusp of starting a literary revolution. Fatima Martin warns that extraordinary writing is the result of exacting and painful effort. Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore urges new poets to bravely enter a sensual world where passion is found in fresh metaphoric leaps. Plus this year’s short story and poetry winners.

68 Review Music: Rhyme with Reason Omar Mouallem on a rapper whose startling talent is more than skin deep. Introducing Brother Ali.

72 Vox Populi Q-Readers challenge our coverage of the Holy Land, examine Sadiq Khan’s voting record and remember the late, great Moustapha Akkad.

74 A scholar’ss ink and other winners of the Qalam Prize , Page 55

Books: A Patriot’ss Ordeal Layla El-Wafi finds Captain James Yee’s account of his ordeal

Write Mind: Confessions of a Pilgrim Jose Correa collapsed into an uncomfortable transit lounge chair realised he was almost home from his Hajj. Exhausted, but undaunted, he tries to capture the experience in (unsatisfactory) words.

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C O N T R I B U T O R S AYISHA ALI

ABDAL-HAKIM MURAD

ISLA ROSSER-OWEN

has a BA in Politics & Sociology. Iraqi born, she manages the UK operation of an American company, whilst studying for her CIM qualifications.

Director of the Sunna Project at the Centre of Middle Eastern Studies at Cambridge University, is currently on sabbatical in Istanbul.

is founder of the Qalam writing club. She entered journalism at the age of 17 and proceeded to become the youngest member of the Chartered Institute of Journalists.

CHARLES LE GAI EATON

LAYLA EL-WAFI

is one of British Islam’s most eminent authors and scholars. He is author of Islam and the Destiny of Man, Remembering God and King of the Castle.

has worked in the human rights sector in the US, the Middle East and the UK. She currently resides in London with her English husband and works for Amnesty International.

IRSHAD ASHRAF

MUHAMMAD KHAN

is an award-winning writer, featured in this issue’s Qalam Prize section. He received his first writing award at the age of six for a story about a robot in his attic.

is currently attached to the School of Education at the University of Birmingham and is guest editor of the journal Youth and Policy.

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TAHIR ABBAS is a Senior Lecturer in the Department for Sociology, University of Birmingham and Director at the Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Culture.

PAMELA TAYLOR is featured in this issue’s Qalam Prize section.

She is Acting Director of the Islamic Writers Alliance. She’s a mother of four and has been writing since she was in primary school.

CLASSIC Q

Feeling very let down ne more day of daal, chawal and tarkari (lentils, rice and vegetables); one more day of extreme anger against the crooked shop-keepers and con-men who have inflicted this disgraceful state of enforced vegetarianism onto ardent meat eaters. These characters have been lining their pockets, buying posh houses and cars, giving us all an inferiority complex for being financial failures; while they have been betraying our trust… fooling us by selling haram as halal. Those of us who spent hours negotiating with Education Authorities lobbying for children to have halal meat in school now have egg (halal) all over our faces.

I recently heard a Head teacher patting himself on the back because he hadn’t succumbed to pressure from the Muslim community. He had not served halal meat to his school children who are 90 per cent Muslim… he had stood his ground. He was now justifying his decision by saying he would not have known for sure what the meat was. “Had I been serving ‘halal’ meat," he said in a very contrite tone, “I would now be feeling very guilty.’

What a laughing stock this has made us!

The whole halal scandal has certainly given us food for thought (if not food to eat). I think about the freezers full of haram meat, which we travelled about 40 miles every 2 weeks to buy. One house was in an all white area and because the nearest “halal” meat shop was about 40 miles away; we invested in a giant size freezer. Every fortnight, we made a round trip of 80 miles to spend our hard earned cash on haram meat being passed off as ‘halal'…what cheats and liars these people are… no wonder Allah has said that people who do these haram things will not have their prayers answered.

Knowledge of the impending Divine Justice gives me a degree of comfort and, I have to admit, sadistic satisfaction.

Recently, more and more signs have started appearing in shops saying, “100 % halal guaranteed.” Only in the last few months, one of the largest abattoirs, supposedly selling halal meat, was being investigated by the City Council Health Inspectors because they had been import-

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ing radioactive sheep from Eastern Europe-sheep, which had been exposed to nuclear fall-out in Chernobyl. Could this meat, even if slaughtered in the Islamic way, ever become halal? Could battery hens fed meat waste products of other chickens-a sort of chicken cannibalism, ever become halal? The same applies to “mad-cow disease". The cause is the feeding of meat based products to the most innocent of creatures: the cow. This was the basis of the Currie(d) egg salmonella scare too. Animals are also given large quantities of steroids to increase their weight so that the farmers can double their profits. The steroids affect the animal’s hormone balance- the process that regulates height, weight, and emotional stability, rate of growth and onset of puberty. Could this sort of meat ever become halal? I doubt it very much.

Thinking around the narrow way in which the issue of halal and haram is being discussed at the moment, one would begin to feel the concept is only related to food. But consider the scenario - children being given “free samples” of heroin and crack outside schools “to get hooked". This trade is rife in the North, South-East and Midlands and many Muslims are involved. What do they do with the laundered proceeds of this inhuman and sordid trade? Do they then

invest in shops and restaurants with counters of off-licence alcohol? Even if the meat in these places were 100% halal slaughtered would it really be halal?

Halal is broader a concept than just eating meat; it goes to the heart of what is right and wrong, allowed and forbidden.

To treat it in the simplistic context of just food seems to me to be missing the point.

However, our deception in this field appears to be symptomatic of the decay in our morals. Who are we kidding anyway?

The numbness I feel about the scale of this deception in the Halal trade again takes hold of me when I hear debates issues like homosexuality and other sex education topics. In the House of Lords this week members were congratulating themselves because the age of consent was kept at 18. The dimension of “sin” was not even mentioned. However, in schools - sex education is compulsory, as is the teaching of AIDS/HIV- all done within the “safe” framework. The silence from all the large numbers of Muslim councillors throughout the country is deafening; but then rocking the political boat could be costly.

In Midland schools, the raging debate is over the age of giving sex education: is 7 years better than 10 years? Again, silence. Jewish lawyers have threatened to take legal action against the government in the Court of Human Rights because of the current requirements for compulsory Christian collective worship and religious education. They argue that the deification of Christ is offensive to Muslims and Jews and to impose this on children is an infringement of human rights. Again silence from our “brothers” and “sisters” in the legal profession.

Silence also on the issue of discrimination within the Race Relations Act 1976.

Malcolm X’s warning about all such social devices for oppression is well worth considering: are we a means to a predetermined end. Why do we all fall for it every time?

For Muslims, spiritual weakness has historically been linked with political weakness. And remember our prayers will not be answered when our actions are haram.

Noshaba Hussain, in Q-News, Vol 3 Issue 14, 1-8 July 1994 Q - NEWS

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VISUAL GRIOTS MALI, BEYOND TIMBUKTU ali is the heartland of West African Islam. From the Grand Mosque of Djenne to the famed madrassahs and seminaries of Timbuktu, Mali is a nation of devotion – beautiful, passionate and powerful. Griots are those people – men and women – entrusted with the task of passing on the stories of the elders and the ancients to new generations. It is through the griots that Mali’s spiritual heritage is sustained. These storytellers speak and sing their tales, but a new generation of Malian artists along with their American collaborators are set to become a new kind of griot. Visual Griots is an innovative project that supports young photographers and encourages them to tell the story of contemporary Mali through pictures.

Mali, Beyond Timbuktu is a groundbreaking exhibition, organised by Washington, DC based International Visions, that brings together the work of five young photographers.

Alioune Bâ was born in Bamako in 1959 and is director of the Seydou Keita Association, a photographic gallery and resource center named after the legendary Malian photographer. Bâ ‘s work was first encountered by the west in 1994 during the Bamako arts summits. He photographs his subjects from unexpected angles and focuses on details to create pictures that transcend reality. Amadou Sow is a young, emerging artist in Mali’s photography scene. He is currently employed by the House of African Photography in Bamako which is instrumental in organizing the biennial festivalAfrican Photography Encounters. His work has been included in the exhibit presented by “Acte Sept”, and shown in Switzerland at the Mudac Museum in Lausanne, and the Photography School in Vevey.

Shawn Davis is a graduate of American University whose passion for documentary photography developed while volunteering for the Peace Corp and the World Food Program in Mali and Guinea, West Africa. His images and writing have appeared in national and international publications and he has exhibited in Washington, DC and Havana, Cuba. He received the Young

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Emerging Artist Grant from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities for Coming Home, a documentation of life in a hospice for formerly homeless men living with AIDS and cancer in Washington, DC. Sora Devore is a fine arts and commercial photographer based in Washington, DC. She studied with Mary Ellen Mark in Oxaca, Mexico, has received various awards including being named one of the top 100 photographers in the 1997 Ernest Haas Competition, and has taught both here, and in Mexico and Cuba. Her initial passion stemmed from photographing people, but she has more recently begun photographing architectural details of Washington, DC monuments and statues, and this work has been installed in the Hay Adams and Willard Hotel, and the Washington Post Conference room as part of Donald Graham’s personal collection.

Nestor Hernández is a Washington, DC-based, free-lance photographer of Afro-Cuban descent. He has a long history of working with youth in photography through the Centro Nía Multicultural Learning Center, the Capital Children’s Museum and in Cuba, Mali and Ghana. His personal projects span from his documentation of the Mount Pleasant neighborhood, to his photographs of spinners and weavers in West Africa. His major photodocumentary project, “Cuba Reflections: A Photographic Journey,” is the result of over 20 trips to the island nation.

Hernández’s work has been exhibited and collected locally, nationally and internationally. He is the 2001 recipient of the Photographer of the Year award from The Exposure Group, African American Photographers Association, and from the DC Commission on the arts and Humanities he received the “Outstanding Emerging Artist” award in 2002 and an Artist Fellowship Grant in 2003.

This exhibit will run January 18- February 25, 2006 at 2629 Connecticut Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. (212) 234-5112 (www.inter-visions.com).

DIARY

DIARY AFFAN CHOWDHRY

n one side a group of teenage boys in school uniform laugh loudly and try to push each other down, or in to the waters of the Bosphorus. The tallest among them, the least mischievous, is a gentle giant and is therefore, the butt of jokes, as well as the punching bag. On the other side, a group of girls in school uniform sit on the concrete eating their enormous sandwiches from the kebab stand, as the waves from passing ferries and tankers crash against the wall, causing the girls to scream and escape getting wet. It is a sunny early January day in Istanbul, and I am carrying my winter jacket. There is a hint of spring in the air, though spring is still distant. From Besiktas, on the European side, I wait for the ferry from Kadikoy. Before me, orange and grapefruit peels. Inside the bag at my feet are strawberries, apples, bananas and more oranges and grapefruit. I love this city. I loved it the first time I arrived exactly six years ago. I stayed for two months. Back then, I took Nietzche’s words to heart: “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.” I would set out from my hostel near the Blue Mosque and walk several hours sometimes unaware of where I was heading or why - until I was utterly exhausted. I told myself that I was mapping the city, walking its streets, until what was strange became familiar and welcoming. I once walked from Sultanahmet to the old crumbling Byzantine wall, and then carried on all the way to Eyup Sultan and the mosque built at the resting place of Abu Ayub alAnsari, the prophet’s companion, peace and blessings be upon him, who had the honor of hosting the prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, at his home in Madinah. I would never walk that distance again - especially when you can take a bus or taxi. Restlessness has given

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way to common sense, thankfully. hen the taxi arrived at Eyup Sultan, I gave the cabby a five lira note. It was just after maghrib, and there was still a bit of light in the sky. The area was abuzz with people and traffic. It was New Year’s eve. And as we entered the mosque, young men handed out leaflets warning Muslims against celebrating Christmas. Inside the courtyard, I made wudu using frighteningly cold water and then entered the mosque. All of these things I did the first time around, and yet six years ago I stepped in to this same mosque as a very different person. What was it that set me on the road in the first place, to leave my home and family, and to travel these lands years ago? It was the search for an answer to a question I could not even articulate. So much has changed, but the struggle is still the same, I find.

Every time I set out, I wonder: My Lord, will you send me angels to aid and guide me? It is a struggle to trust one’s Creator and creation. Tawakallulah, they say.

Easier said than done. I stepped out of the mosque, into the courtyard, and said fatiha at the grave of Abu Ayub al-Ansari.

Swallows swooped over head.

My friend told me that a bride in a full white wedding dress had just swept through and made dua outside the tomb before disappearing again. She said she had pictures to prove it. We walked up the side of the hill, through the graveyard.

It was dark now and the climb was steep.

It was an unusual place to walk through, but I promised that there was a lovely prize at the end of it. When we finally arrived at the Pierre Loti café - with its romantic views of Istanbul’s lights twinkling - I noticed that other visitors were also arriving. And that is when the cable cars - a new addition to Istanbul, I

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swear - appeared out of nowhere from below. Why walk 20 minutes up a steep hill in the middle of the night when you can take a two-minute cable car? he boisterous school boys are now bartering with an old man, trying to get more snacks for their money. I lift my head from the guidebook every now and then to keep track of the ferries. My Lonely Planet guidebook has been somewhat of a disappointment. Its restaurant recommendations have been hit and miss. The Konyali restaurant at the Topkapi Palace served up over-priced and mediocre food. And yet, in the guidebook, it was ranked among the top restaurants. I ought to write the editors a letter. There are so many places I wish I could still see but there is no pressure to see them all on this trip. I know I will come back to this city. It is an old friend.

Tankers silently sail up the Bosphorus, and next to them, the passenger ferries look like toys, spewing black smoke in to the air. I wonder why the gentle giant among these pimply teenagers doesn’t lift them one by one and toss them in to the water. He has not tapped into his anger yet. Hopefully he never will. The school girls have long since gone. There is an atmosphere today of a city on the cusp of a long holiday. Eid is only a week away.

And I am surrounded by people sitting on benches and concrete, laughing, smoking, staring quietly on to the waters. The sun is warm on my back. I see the ferry from Kadikoy sail past the Besiktas pier and then turn sharply towards the shore, as it glides at an angle towards the dock. I can see from a distance, people inching towards the edge of the boat, eager to jump off and catch their bus connections on the Besiktas side. I wait for my friend, my angel, to step off and make her way to where I am sitting.

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Q-NOTES Bombers and bedrooms With at least three major Hollywood blockbusters planned to be released in advance of the fifth anniversary of 9/11, this is might well turn out to be the year terror rung in records at the box office.

With 7/7 so fresh a tragedy, British filmmakers have limited themselves to television documentaries. Controversial Bollywood producer/director Mahesh Bhatt (known for such salacious schlock as Jism and Nazar) is wasting no such time and plans to start shooting Suicide Bomber in June for a December 2006 release. It will star his son Rahul in the title role of a young Asian Muslim planning to trigger the London blasts and is expected to cost 50 million rupees to make. Speaking to AFP, Bhatt explained: “I plan to highlight that Islam is a religion of peace and not dreadful as it is perceived by the world. I will attempt to bring out the virtues of Islamic living and also show how the state can sometimes be a demon. The film will delve into the heart and mind of a suicide bomber.”

Bhatt is no soft touch director and his “bold” filmmaking has landed him into hot water recently. Glamsham.com reports that along with Suicide Bomber, Bhatt is also at work on four new films - Holiday, Blue Film, Show Business and Actress - which he says will tackle thorny issues around the murky Indian sex industry, but (just to please the plebs) the films “will certainly titillate”. We hope that sentiment doesn’t extend to his other, more serious, project.

Egyptian Director Ahmed Khaled might want to ask Bhatt about how to deal with such controversy. Khaled’s short film The Fifth Pound follows the weekly bus journey of a young man and woman who dodge the suspicious glances of other passengers and exploit the unused back seats to indulge in physical intimacy. The twist: the woman is wearing a headscarf and is a willing participant in this dangerous liaison. For Egypt’s notoriously liberal film industry even this is too much.

While some conservative commentators have condemned the film, according to Reuters young Egyptians say the story is entirely realistic. The film shows the young couple board the bus and pay the driver four Egyptian pounds for two tickets before shuffling past other suspicious passengers on their way to the back seats. ''The mirror which looks over the bus is used by the driver to see what happens in the back,'' the young man says in the film, addressing the audience. The bus driver keeps looking at the couple through the mirror as if waiting to catch them indulging in illicit activity. As the couple leave the bus, the young man hands the driver an extra, fifth, Pound. ''He knows nothing, and you did nothing,'' the young man adds in the narration.

The trouble is God knows everything.

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The Muslim Face of AIDS

Anticipating Kosovo’s Freedom Year

Behind the Veil of a Public Health Crisis is a shocking new report published by the National Bureau of Asian Research that warns of surging rates of HIV infection. October’s edition of The Atlantic Monthly opined: “HIV infection may soon join the myriad issues facing the Islamic world [as]... the virus threatens to move through Muslim majority nations along the same pathways followed in sub-Saharan Africa. The report is largely speculative, because few Muslim countries collect systematic data on HIV and AIDS. With the exception of Bangladesh and (surprisingly) Iran, Muslim nations have not mounted significant public health campaigns to combat AIDS, in part because authorities assume that few Muslim engage in behaviours such as premarital sex, homosexuality, prostitution and drug use. These assumptions did not hold true in sub-Saharan Africa.”

According to the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, there are about 61,000 people infected with HIV in Iran; 180,000 in Indonesia; 150,000 in Pakistan. In the Islamic countries of Africa, the numbers are far higher: Mali alone has 420,000 infected people. But the latest U.N. data are telling for its lack of information - a handful of cases here, empty columns there. And absence of information has too long been interpreted as absence of infection.

In parts of Iran, nearly 60 percent of those infected with HIV kill themselves within a year of diagnosis. In Kerman, in southern Iran, an enraged father not long ago took an axe and chopped his 23-year-old to pieces for bringing AIDS into his family.

Some are heeding the call for action. Malaysia had initiated a controversial programme worth $40 million. The government will distribute birth control, needles and provide methadone treatment for drug users. Opposition parties are having none of it. “When you give free condoms and free needles, you give drug abusers the motivation to engage in risky behavior," said Mahfoz Omar, a leader of the Islamic Party of Malaysia, an opposition political party. “Why should we give the people’s money to those that do not have the will for life?”

The government is dealing with what is now feels is a national crisis. About 15,000 children have already been made orphans by AIDS in Malaysia and while, according the International Herald Tribune, Health Ministry has identified 64,000 people with HIV/AIDS, the United Nations fear that the number of HIV cases is closer to 300,000.

Meanwhile, The Guardian reported a study which followed infection rates in more than 3,000 heterosexual men over two years. It found that circumcision reduced a man’s risk of acquiring HIV by 60%. The reasons aren’t fully understood but researchers know that the part of the foreskin that is removed in the operation is rich in Langerhans cells that the virus strongly attaches to.

The British government’s foreign policy hasn’t exactly inspired confidence as of late, especially among British Muslims. Even the brains at Saatchi & Saatchi would find hard to get over that four letter word: Iraq. Yet, it is the current situation in the Balkans - overlooked by most - that might provide an unlikely arena to celebrate some of Britain’s achievement overshadowed by the Iraq debacle.

With final status negotiations looming for Kosovo in 2006, the British government has repeatedly asserted, in spite of protests from other EU members and Russia, that Kosovars have the right to choose independence in a poll to be held under the auspices of a the international Contact Group. With 95% of Kosovo’s population ethnic Albanian (and Muslim) the result of the vote is almost a foregone conclusion. Desire for independence from Serbia is strong, but Serbian government recalcitrance has slowed down the process.

With a historic (some would say mythic) ties to Kosovo, Serbia is bound to drag its heels for the time being, trying to recapture some ephemeral Serbian empire which was always more fiction than fact.

While the scattered news reports have concluded that the differences between Serbia and the Kosovar Albanians appear irreconcilable, there has been significant movement on the ground to preparing Kosovo for the independence its majority so desires.

“Only an independent Kosovo that provides multi-ethnicity, protection of minority rights and regional stability is the solution for this long lasting dispute. The British Government will support the will of the people and as the majority are Muslim Albanians who want independence from Belgrade, this should be respected by the International community too,” Lord Ahmed of Rotherham declared on a recent visit to Pristina. Promoting the need for faith communities to work together to preserve the peace in the embattled region, Lord Ahmed met with Muslim, Catholic and Orthodox leaders.

The influential Mufti of Kosovo, Dr Rajab Boja expressed his thanks to the British government for supporting the Kosovans during Serbian attacks as well as affirming their right to self-determination.

After meeting Lord Ahmed and British Kosovar Imam Zumyr Salihi, the Catholic Bishop Mark Sopi declared, “We have lived together with the Muslim communities for over 500 years and have no fears of any discrimination against our community, he said that we have to forget the past and live now and for the future.”

Meeting Serbian Orthodox Bishop Sava Janjic at the Deqan Monastery, Lord Ahmed confirmed a breakthrough of sorts: “I am delighted that Bishop Janjic has agreed to attend a summit in London later this year with the Mufti of Kosovo and the Catholic Bishop.”

Bishop Janjic avoided making any political comments however and said the final decision had to be made in Belgrade, but he was at pains to suggest that that a principle unity on the basis of faith was more likely than an immediate political compromise. After all who can deny that historic Serbian sites had for centuries been protected and left untouched by the Muslim majority. Overshadowing the Kosovo situation has been the continuing search for war criminals from the Bosnian genocide.

A sticking point in the negotiations, soon to be handled by former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, is the representation of minorities in the new parliament. Britain is asking for at least 5% of the seats to be set aside for ethnic Serbs and Catholics, but the French are insisting that 18% of the seats be earmarked.

What a curious request. Perhaps the French would like to offer the same to its North African Muslim minority, who also make up - surprise, surprise - 5% of the population?

Non, merci? I thought so.

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With apologies to BBC.CO.UK - this spoof has obviously nothing to do with you. Please don’t sue us!

So, who’s the most charming Muslim miss? how a little skin, call yourself Muslim and wait for the publicity to follow. It’s an old formula for attracting plenty of attention. When Q-News carried a cover story on Canadian-German supermodel Yasmeen Ghauri back in the mid-1990s, the hot and bothered kept their phone calls and letters of outrage coming in for months. But we knew we were on to something. Our correspondent in Montreal, Ghauri’s home city, told us how the supermodel’s father - a local imam - was run out of his mosque by fuming elders for not “keeping his daughter under control.” While the pious gnashed their teeth in disgust, we learned that the young women who knew ‘Yasmeen baaji’ when she was an after-school student at the mosque’s madrassah kept fastidious track of her career, carefully cutting out ads for Cosmo and Vogue and taping her runway appearances on Fashion Television. The fact that these admirers wore hijab and Yasmeen usually wore very little did little to dissuade their fascination. Fashion sells and Muslims are clearly not immune.The fascination with what Muslim women wear (or don’t wear) now borders on obsessive. These days it’s tough to distinguish who is more incorrigible: media pundits, naysaying scholars or model Muslims. That brings us to the strange events of the past few months that have shot “model Muslims” to worldwide attention.

The race for this year’s Miss England title became an unlikely battleground for the fixated. Hammasa Kohistani, an Afghan Muslim born in Uzbekistan, was crowned after a close race with another Muslim contestant, Sarah Mendly, a British Iraqi Muslim. As legions of leering yobs salivated watching the contest on TV, serious news reports made much of the showdown, praising the contestants’ high level of “integration” and what “progressive” role models they were for a new generation of young Muslim women. Progress equals beauty equals role model… so much for women’s lib. Said Mendly, “I wanted to show that there are attractive British Iraqi girls who are proud of being both British and Iraqi.”

Well, blogger Junaid Quadri (jquadri.blogspot.com) had this to say on his Prima Facie site: “What about all the proud BritishIraqi girls who will go on to serve both their inherited and adopted cultures admirably in any number of ways? Well, their contributions will fly under the radar because they simply aren’t attractive enough to make the news.”

Turned off? It seems that the whole controversy got the mojo of some Muslim leaders going. The Liverpool Islamic Institute declared, “There is no way a Muslim girl should be playing any part in this competition because it is unlawful.”

Not to be outdone, the vice-chairman of the Lancashire Board of Mosques, was inspired to this fatwa: “There are plenty of Muslims who don’t follow the Quran, who don’t pray and drink alcohol. But they are not true followers of the Islamic faith... This includes taking part in beauty competitions for money and exposing your flesh to the world. If she has chosen to take part in this contest, she immediately goes out of the circle of Islam.”

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Nothing like a little takfir to spice up an otherwise dull week.

While the models and their critics were competing for the title of “worst Muslim role model", it was the curious case Michelle Leslie that captured everyone’s attention.

While many young westerners partying in Bali find themselves on the wrong side of Indonesia’s strict drug rules, Leslie - a 24 yearold lingerie model arrested for possessing ecstasy tablets - revealed a rather creative defence: she declared she was a Muslim. She arrived at court wearing a headscarf and later, a full shuttlecock-burqa. The trial ended with her release.

As altmuslim.com put it “her wardrobe reverted to tank tops and jeans, provoking accusations among Australians (Muslim and nonMuslim) that Islam was used to sway Indonesian authorities.”

The Age’s Neil McMahon reported that on her flight out of Bali, “she was…plainly happy, despite the presence of two TV crews. She enjoyed a glass of wine, read Vogue - and as she flew over Bali, waved the island goodbye.”

Back in Australia, allegations mounted that AU$130,000 collected for her defence fund had gone missing. Leslie maintained, “It was never my intention to offend anyone in the Muslim community. I am a Muslim and I do understand the significance of wearing the burqa. I should have thought more carefully about wearing it in that situation and I apologise for any offence I have caused. It was an extreme situation.”

At least Australian Muslim leaders were generous. “You can’t see what is in someone’s heart," said Waleed Aly, spokesman for the Islamic Council of Victoria. “Muslims regularly do things that are contrary to the requirements of Islam. Islam is not a fashion parade. I think it’s a bit tragic there’s so much focus on that.

If she is using [Islam] - it’s between her and God.” Perhaps Leslie might want to redeem herself by entering “The Most Charming Muslim Miss” beauty contest. It’s a special pageant for girls observing all principles of Islam presented courtesy of the Akcharlak newspaper in Tatarstan. The first part of the halal pageant will be held at Kul Sharif Mosque, where girls will have to perform their skills in reciting Quran. The contest will then move “festively” to the nearby House of Tatar Cuisine restaurant. The organisers of the contest emphasize that the jury is female only not to violate principles of shariah and not to confuse Muslim girls.

In the meantime, a breath of fresh air finally came across the Atlantic. Ghofrane Benghanem (pictured), 19, student at New York’s Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute was named one of the 10 Women to Watch in Glamour magazine’s latest survey of top college girls. “At age seven," the magazine reports, “Benghanem’s family fled Algeria, later coming to the U.S. Missing her grandparents, she volunteered at a geriatric hospital in high school, where she saw Alzheimer’s debilitating effects. Now she’s set on a career in biomedical research. A devout Muslim, she’s president of the Muslim Women’s Association at a school that has three men for every woman. ‘I don’t go through life thinking, oh, I’m a Muslim woman, so I won’t be able to do this.’”

Now there’s a Muslim woman worth celebrating.

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YOUNG AND ANGRY: A YEAR IN BRITISH ISLAM Tahir Abbas takes a look back at 2005 and finds it a dramatic turning point in the immigration, settlement and adaptation of Muslim communities. ot since the Rushdie Affair of 1989 have British Muslims or even British Islam for that matter become such a focus for attention. And with all the attempts the state has made to try and engage with leaders (political and theological), young people (invariably through a roadshow aimed at ‘connecting with the youth'), and with commentators, writers, scholars, theologians and critics aplenty, it has been an especially productive year, certainly in terms of exposure Islam and British Muslims have got and for discussions in relation to what might emerge future for this community might hold. So what do we now know and can safely say reflects who we are as a community? How secure is our existence and what are our prospects?

At the beginning of 2005, the war on terror in Iraq continued apace, with the possibility of the cessations of conflict and the promise of a constitutional democracy spoken of in grand terms.

Irrespective of the rhetoric, innocent Iraqis have continued to die, while American and British men perish as a result of surreptitious attacks, with maximum impact using minimum tools, often human bombs. At the turn of 2005, the events of Fallujah were only a month old, and yet bodies, burnt to cinders, barely recognisable, lay on the streets, unattended. Two thousand American and one hundred British servicemen, and well over one hundred thousand Iraqis have perished in this unnecessary, illegal war. The world all but watches and waits while the US and UK hang on in desperation, hopeful of an eventual but uncertain withdrawal. In the hearts and minds of Muslims, home and abroad, Iraq continues to be the equivalent of open heart surgery of the human body that is the Ummah. With the geo-political attentions of the few turning towards Iran and Syria - as many commentators would have us believe - the Muslim world holds it breath while the final stages of the game are seemingly being played out.

There has been much talk of Islamic political radicalism since 9/11, but clearly well before that too. Theo van Gogh was brutally slain in broad daylight in November 2004 and in 2005 Western Europe was still coming to terms with its own apparent failures of multiculturalism in relation to how it has managed its Muslim minorities. With Saajid Badat pleading guilty to ‘would-be’ shoe bombing, the signs did not bode well for the potential of the threat or indeed the reality of terror to Britain, while many critics suggested that this threat was merely rhetoric and misinformation in a climate of fear and authoritarianism. But the events of July 2005 proved that the problem was much closer to home that anyone could have imagined. No one could have presaged that Britain would be home to the first ever suicide-bombing on European soil. The demented, twisted fools who carried out this attack did so not in my name or the other Muslims who live and work in this society, but yet certain elements of the media and an increasingly isolated state sought to target the ‘evil ideology’ of Islam, focusing on the enemy within. Liberals were quick to denounce multiculturalism, and certainly the European presses were of the view that the events of 7/7 were because of the cultural and religious space given to Muslims beyond a level deemed acceptable or considered appropriate. Radicalism has finally come home - from British

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Muslim bombers abroad (Tel Aviv, 2003) to 7/7 in two years.

How could we as a British Muslim community have been so blind and careless to let this happen? In as much the war on Iraq has helped to make angry young men even more impassioned, we could never have foreseen that they would be prepared to act in the way they did. As British Muslims, it was as if we had been hit twice: first, as a British Muslim community still trying to seek recognition, acceptance, appreciation, representation and equality and then again as Londoners, tube travellers, tax-paying citizens of a state which has, with all its failings, the strongest anti-racist legislation anywhere in the world. There is no other more liberal, open or tolerant society than Britain anywhere, but one that has now been forced to eliminate habeas corpus in an attempt weed out wickedness in our society.

The Home Office, panicked, unsure, directionless, set out to understand the Muslim community - as clearly they had missed something. But when the Task Force reported only last month, it is apparent they had missed something too. The continued concentration on external pressures and influences masks what has been a failure of a community to organise itself. As Shaykh Hamza Yusuf and Professor Tariq Ramadan painfully remind us, as Muslims we need to take responsibility and we must do it now.

One of the solutions proposed by the Home Office is the idea of Iman training, accreditation, certification, etc. Our Imams have failed our young men because we have failed our Imams.

Popular discourse shaped by media and spinned politics continues to emphasise the perceived problems of a religious community in Britain that is undesirable, repellent, bigoted, intolerant, and dangerous. I lost count the number of episodes of BBC’s ‘Spooks’ that featured Islamic political radicalism, while the media in general determines typologies of unacceptable/acceptable, insider/outsider, favourable/adverse Muslims. Obscuring a religion and caricaturing groups, sects, regions, genders, ethnicities, we are led to believe that Muslims who do wear beards or Hijabs are objectionable, while others are tolerable if they maintain their loyalty to the state. In reality, there are quite series local area tensions that leave a bitter aftertaste. In Lozells, there were violent clashes between police and ethnic minority groups over two nights. Nothing new in Birmingham you might ask but the difference here was that we were dealing with inter-ethnic conflict, too. The causes are complex, but largely a problem of informal and informal economic competition, poor leadership and direction based on hearsay, and the fallacies of an urban mythology.

This did not stop some suggesting that it was an Asian Muslim vs.

Black Christian problem. In Paris, we had eleven nights of clashQ - NEWS

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es between North Africans and the Parisian authorities - problems of largely a structural (economic) and cultural (French assimilation model) nature. It did not prevent the right wing Europeans to put forward that that these Muslim youths were now susceptible to Islamic political radicalism and, as such, a further threat to society.

In the midst of all this there was a general election in 2005, with New Labour losing around 100 seats and the introduction of two new Muslim MPs, for all their worth. It also led to genuine successes for RESPECT, which heralded a new dawn in representative democracy. Broadly left-socialist alliances and an anti-war ticket resulted in the success of George Galloway in Bethnal Green and Bow, unseating the resident Labour MP, Oona King, and in Birmingham, my native playing ground, Salma Yaqoob was close to removing Roger (Raja) Godsiff from his protected seat. Labour had lost a considerable degree of trust in their Muslim voters, and many switched to alternative political parties where they appeared a realistic alternative. And with Labour recently losing its ‘90-day internment’ vote in the House of Commons we can all rest assured that democracy is returning to this country.

The threat of terror from Islamic groups has permeated how we look at all sorts of debates in relation to ethnicity and culture.

The problems of immigration, integration multiculturalism, interethnic conflict, citizenship (read nationalism), identities, gender, and religious minorities all refer to Muslims, directly or indirectly. The year 2005 has changed the landscape for British Muslims, theologically, sociologically, politically and culturally. And the changes will remain afoot for quite some time, while two things happen, with perhaps 2006 the year in which they might.

Internally, there are elements in the community that are rising from the ashes of 7/7 - a beautiful phoenix is emerging, representing a young, professional, savvy, articulate and forward-looking British Muslim population that is culturally, politically, and intellectually aware. They espouse universalistic Islamic principles that transcend the mundane, pronouncing an exiting message that unites rather divides. Externally, Labour will have to listen to parliament and, dare I mention it, the people of this country far more than they have ever had to in the past.

As the eminent play write Harold Pinter, in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, reprinted in The Guardian on 8 December

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2005, stated, the American empire is on the wane. A ‘brutal, scornful and ruthless’ US cannot sustain itself as the people of America will not accept it any more. But more importantly, he is optimistic, just as Muslims are expected to be. He closes his speech by asserting that “I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory”. I would add that it is an absolute must. We Muslims are part of a parliamentary democracy - we have rights, but responsibilities too.

Dr Tahir Abbas BSc(Econ) MSocSc PhD, is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Sociology and Director of the Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Culture, University of Birmingham.

A TALE OF TWO SIBLINGS These are heady days for multiculturalism. 2005 saw major defeats for both the leading European “models”. Britain and France - those insufferable but inseparable feuding siblings - both received political slaps in the face from poor brown people: suicide bombs in London placed by young British men, petrolbombs in Paris thrown by young French men.Tales of Muslim insurrections and intifadas filled the 24-hour television news, with the requisite responses from spluttering, incoherent politicians. As the New Year dawns, Dal Nun Strong thinks it’s hard to see which political system is hurting most. ritain and France have been like schoolboys kicked in the behind in a sneak attack. They spin round to confront the assailant, but he’s already scampered. Shock and humiliation in front of their peers. Impotent rage at their loss of face. Which schoolboy could not sympathise with such reactions? And yet,

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“White flight” is a reality which few want to talk about and fewer have the nerve to admit. Plaid Cymru MP Dafydd Iwan recently said English people were moving to Wales to “avoid all the Pakistanis and Indians who have moved to English towns…” Whether they admit it or not, white middle-class parents don’t trust schools in “ethnic” areas to provide a decent education, based on a belief that children of immigrants are lazy and disruptive. which schoolboy would not love to see his playground rival similarly humiliated?

Welcome to the world of the Anglo-French rhetorical war, 2005 edition. One hardly needs to mention this historical rivalry.

British commentators love to talk about how France is state-dominated, strike-ridden, inflexible, and customer-unfriendly. French commentators never tire of saying that Britain has sold its soul to multinational companies and the White House, accepts low standards of living and suffers from eroding social protection. We’ve had many fabulous examples of Anglo-French niggling over the past 12-months: Jacques Chirac on how Britain has the worst food in the whole of Europe, bar Finland; Tony Blair mopping away crocodile tears after France rejected Chirac’s European Constitution; and the whole world got to witness the bitter Paris versus London beauty contest over the 2012 Olympics.

But since the early summer, things have got steadily worse for both countries, as their social and security policies look like they have imploded. Worryingly, both the liberal and authoritarian approaches to social exclusion have been found lacking. How should politicians react if their existing policies are proven failures, but the alternative is uncomfortably close to their dogmatic opponents? If both the carrot and the stick have failed to solve the frustrations of young second-generation immigrant men, what is the future of immigration and integration in Europe?

The failures of excess liberalism A short time ago, most British people thought they had the right answer to the colour question. In 1999, only 5% of Britons thought race-relations or immigration were one of the most important issues facing the country. It policy seemed obvious: vigorous action to monitor the performance of minority groups and prosecution aginstthose guilty of organised discrimination.

Politicians of all stripes stressed a liberal approach - at least in rhetoric - encouraging people of colour (and later faith minorities) to lead whatever lives they wanted, integrated or separate.

Since September 11, 2001, and even more so since 7/7, such optimism has vanished. Security experts have long been concerned about Britain’s policy of double-think on terror and extremism.

We have been tough on overseas perpetrators of violence and intimidation (and since 2001 even invaded two countries perceived as security risks), but ignored the fact that many extremist intellectual leaders live in the UK - and sometimes even receive social security benefits from the UK taxpayer. As long as extremists sought to uproot perceived corruption in the Middle East, our

spooks turned a blind eye. Alas, on 7 July and 21 July, the perpetrators of the four (tragically) successful suicide bombs and the four (curiously) unsuccessful bombs, were British Muslims Asian, African and Afro-Caribbean - bombing Britain. Something clearly had to be done.

At the same time, the mood has changed about the success of British multiculturalism even in abstract terms. The head of the Commission for Racial Equality - the high priest of diversity - has now declared that multiculturalism is “dead”. His evidence: the failure of second and third generations to “integrate” into mainstream life, continued separatism in housing and schooling patterns, continued under-performance in English language and other national curriculum subjects; and the prevalence of foreign cultural practices such as arranged marriage, and female economic inactivity.

Oh, and the failure of British Asians (read Muslim, because most people simply can’t figure out the difference) to embrace secularism and relativism.

It remains to be seen what precisely the government proposes to do. But the initial signs are that there will be a much more activist approach to religion. “Glorifying terrorism” is to be made into an offence, and places of worship could be closed if “extremism” is suspected to be taking place within them. The Conservatives urged the government to “look to train, or to encourage the training of, more imams here in Britain, so that their teachings will be consistent with the society in which they preach.” Local MPs have launched noisy campaigns to end de facto segregation in schools.

All sound very similar to the policies adopted in France, but given recent events in the Paris suburbs, who now believes an activist approach can do any better?

The failures of enforced secularism France also thought it had the right answer to dealing with immigrant communities. If a country gives an individual a visa or a residence permit, the state should continue to treat him or her as an individual, and not as a member of his chosen cultural/religious/social group. There should be no false distinctions between amorphous groups, or special treatment for one person vis-à-vis another. Why should one person have a right to special treatment from the state, simply because he says he is a Muslim, or a union member or a homosexual? If the People as a whole want to change the norms of society, then they will say so via the normal democratic means of majority voting by elected representatives.

There is logic to such firmness and the French are baffled when they look across the English channel. How can Britain claim to treat everyone equally, but nevertheless classify them as White/Black/Asian/Other? How can it simultaneously offer comprehensive education in one school, and allow churches to run public schools just across the road? How can it connive in further “social exclusion” by paying for “regeneration” projects in community languages rather than English? And where is the democracy, ask our French friends, if minority groups are treated with kid-gloves while the majority population is made to go on “diversity training courses"?

The French model has long been successful at moulding foreigners such as Portuguese, Poles and Vietnamese into good French citizens. As a case in point, Nicolas Sarkozy the interior minister is a second generation immigrant from Hungary. The technique is simple - equality of opportunity, complete parity with other French citizens, and a fundamental belief that Republican values allow people to make the best of their lives as individuals.

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If people fall on hard times, a generous social system provides for those who need it, black or white without distinction.

Except that recent events show how optimistic these claims can be. No one really knows how much institutional racism and prejudice there is, because the state refuses to measure statistics about minorities. There is no sure way of knowing if the poorest Paris housing estates are filled with ethnic minority families, or if they have been long-term unemployed or if they might possibly feel bitter about the way they have been treated by French society. But even the quickest look around reveals that French people with brown or black faces are disproportionately unemployed; they do live in the worst quality housing in areas which are only sporadically policed by the national authorities, and they patently don’t have faith that the democratic process will grant them the respect they feel they deserve.

This is not to say that France has not succeeded with many people. Interviews in the French media with people in the rioting areas have overwhelmingly shown that the French educational system has done well - young people really do talk and reason in perfect French, and are in full command of Republican vocabulary.

But although almost 10% of the French population is from a Maghrebi or African background, there are almost no examples of them succeeding in anything other than sport. How many MPs, ministers, magistrates etc have emerged from the banlieues?

Instead, Maghrebi children know that even if they struggle through school to obtain the relevant certificates, their way to social advancement will still be blocked. There are hardly any jobs at the best of times, but even where there are, Rachid and Ali will find their CVs in the bin while Richard and Alain get invited to an interview. Because collecting racial statistics is illegal, there is no proof of racism and few employers can be prosecuted. Young people return home to kick their heels, while an almost entirely allwhite police force (who has most decidedly not taken diversity training courses) either harasses them or abandons them to whims of local gangs.

The recent riots in Paris might have made this clear. But they didn’t. Nobody has really learned anything from the riots. The French government was shamed in front of the lenses of the world - but why, and by whom? What did the rioters actually want?

Who represented them? Where were the leaders on national television, asking for better policies, for better-quality policing, for more understanding of minorities or even for attention?

Lessons for both sides of the Channel The danger is that rattled governments on each side of the Channel fail to learn from each other’s experiences. No doubt the British government must be seen to protect its citizens from bombings, and the French government to ensure law and order. But it would be wrong to look merely at the “criminal elements” responsible for televised destruction, as if that was enough.

The key conclusion from recent events is that both British and French governments need the courage to use their considerable powers to combat intolerant behaviour.

Differential statistics about sub-sections of the population are helpful and not inflammatory. Some parts of the French government now realise this. On 18 November, the French Equal Opportunities Minister, Azouz Begag (incidentally the only Minister from a Maghrebi background) said that “we have to call a spade a spade, and a black person a black person…we should measure the presence of immigrant children among the police, magistrates, civil service and the private sector.”

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This is a start, but courage is needed to break other taboos too. Half a century after immigrants first arrived in Britain and France, they are still living in relative “ghettos”. Ethnic minority attitudes are perceived as a serious problem, with the report on the 2001 Oldham riots talking of people leading “parallel lives", while it has become a television cliché that the Paris banlieues are solely populated by coloured people. Yet the serious point is that “ghettos” are due not to ethnic minorities sticking together, but by white people leaving. “White flight” is a reality which nobody wants to talk about, and which is therefore going unresolved.

Only a few politicians have had the nerve to admit it, such as Plaid Cymru MP Dafydd Iwan, who said English people were moving to Wales to “avoid all the Pakistanis and all these Indians who have moved to English towns… That is the truth of it, ask them.

They are coming to Wales to avoid immigration.” Whether they admit it or not, white middle-class parents don’t trust schools in “ethnic” areas to provide a decent education, based on a belief that children of immigrants are lazy and disruptive.

Governments need to be brave enough to demand results from minority communities. France, perhaps surprisingly, is ahead of the game in this regard. The government forced the creation of democratic, representative bodies for faith communities such as the French Council for the Muslim Faith (CFCM). However flawed the experiment, French Muslims are nevertheless very aware that their government wants them to set their own house in order, by training their home-grown imams, restraining inflammatory preachers and helping immigrants settle into a modern secular society. If they don’t, they only have themselves to blame if governments take actions they don’t like. British Muslims, through their representative organisations don’t appear to have grasped this point yet. Genuine leadership must take on the challenge of delivering results. Anything less is a bad deal, and merely stores up trouble for the future. After all, God does not change the condition of a people until they change that which is within themselves.

MAROONED IN THE BANLIEUE Adam Goren reports from the frontlines of France’s embattled suburbs and finds a generation of young Muslims angry, excluded and undermined.

After nights of violence, burning cars and looting, at least someone is finally paying these invisible youth some much needed attention. acine looks out of the fourth storey window of his parents’ flat, but it’s not the view that depresses him. “None of this is important," he says, nodding dismissively. And that’s the problem.

Wherever he might be in France, this 23-year-old French Moroccan, son of first generation immigrants, would say exactly the same.

His suburb or Banlieue is not the kind of place you would immediately associate with the neglect and poverty of London’s Elephant and Castle or a Glasgow estate. Bois de L’etang is a typical inner-city-looking development of eight blocks, complete with unimaginative landscaping and a children’s playground. It faces on to the regional railway line and main road to Paris.

Incongruously though, it also backs straight onto pretty countryside with woods and single-track roads, and nestles next to a bijou

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village of detached houses. The surrounding département is history-rich and affluent: more Somerset than Southwark, and a favourite with French cyclists and tourists. Chartres cathedral and the Palace de Versailles are less than half an hour’s train journey either way.

This is a typical French estate of the kind so much in the news last month for nights of sustained rioting, looting and burning.

They are looking neglected, but government money is being invested in regeneration projects, replacing outdated high rises and building community and sports centres. So why is it that the young are burning the wheelie bins and community facilities that improve their standard of living?

A clue may lie in the semi-rural locations they were built in.

Long before the Banlieue were constructed, the French conceived of aire urbaine, as a response to industrialisation and population increase. An aire urbaine is a metropolis, like Paris or Lyon, with suburbs and with satellite towns, separated from it by agricultural land, whose inhabitants feed the demand for city workers. With les trente glorieuses - the industrial boom time of the 1950’s to 70’s - France embarked upon its most ambitious social project, a huge expansion of the welfare state and national infrastructure, including the impressive transport system of which it is so proud today. It also resulted in a massive influx of North African migrant workers and the biggest ever development of satellite towns and Banlieue to house them.

By 1976 the economic bubble had burst, unemployment was rising and the grand housing projects of les trente glorieuses began to look misconceived and ugly. The effect on Banlieue communities was catastrophic. Without employment, residents lost the link with the city - the cosmopolitan heart which sustained them and fostered assimilation. They were left marooned in a traditional French rural landscape.

This stymied cultural integration and produced ghetto poverty, but it was not the only, or even the main reason for Banlieue youth like Yacine becoming so angry. Over a glass of mint tea and a plate of chebakia, he tells me how he lost the part-time job, as a lunchtime canteen supervisor in the local secondary school, that was helping finance his Arabic degree. “One day, during the rioting, my supervisor came up to me and asked me why I was wearing a beard? I said nothing. There is no French law telling me how I should wear facial hair. So he told me ‘Anyway, a beard is not compatible with working here'. He said, ‘Being a Muslim brother is not compatible with working here. Either you shave it off or don’t bother coming back'. I had never discussed my religion with this man. That was that and I left”.

Institutional racism and anti-Muslim discrimination of the kind that would be shocking here is commonplace in France. SOS Racisme, a non-profit organisation, proved as much by sending out identical CV’s with French and non-European sounding names on them. Predictably, the latter were consistently discarded. The French state has a history of political secular idealism that dates back to the Revolution. This is supposed to foster an egalitarian and meritocratic society of citizens with equal opportunities, free of religious or other discrimination. Instead its political classes and state institutions are deeply suffused with the kind of elitism that would have made the French aristocracy proud; and with this it claims a faux-inclusivity whilst subtly excluding members of its minority ethnic population, so that very few immigrants, or their children, hold any high public office, or executive positions in industry or the media.

It is this dissembling double message of belonging and nonbelonging that is so psychologically disturbing to Banlieue youth.

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“One day, during the rioting, my supervisor came up to me and asked me why I was wearing a beard. I said nothing.There is no French law telling me how I should wear facial hair. So he told me ‘Anyway, a beard is not compatible with working here'. He said, ‘Being a Muslim brother is not compatible with working here. Either you shave it off or don’t bother coming back'. I had never discussed my religion with this man.That was that and I left”.

French citizens are repeatedly subverted and undermined.

Teenagers go through a turbulent time; they’re attempting to construct a positive identity and role in society. They are particularly psychologically vulnerable. Experiences of racism and other forms of social rejection, especially by significant adults, are potentially pathogenic to the developing personality. In 1959 a psychoanalyst called John Bowlby presented a groundbreaking paper, in which he observed that when an infant or small child is repeatedly threatened with parental rejection or abandonment, it experiences what he called “Separation Anxiety”. The child’s initial response to this threat, he called “Protest”. After protest comes “Despair”. Now read the black rioter’s testimony on the Watts race riots in 1965 America: “Violence is an alternative to despair. Through violence you can rid yourself of the torturing feeling of helplessness and nothingness”. A useful analogy may be drawn. Just as with a neglected child, negative attention is better than no attention at all. Whilst positions are polarised and hardened, the media makes comments and political discourse is kickstarted. Someone finally pays attention.

The riots, like many before, have been taken to represent, amongst other things, a fierce separatism, a religious fundamentalist uprising and, as the interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, so delicately put it, the doings of urban criminal racaille or “scum": anything but the persistent symptom of a chronic maladie d’état.

Perhaps what they really show is positive, if destructive, rage against intractable circumstances and social impotence: against exclusion and abandonment. This is not a rejection of being French.

So how is it that Yacine and his friends have avoided violence this time round? “Many more kids are into religion now", he says.

“We feel responsible for our community”. Then he pauses. “Also, the Mayor, he tries to get us jobs, he gave my sister a job, and my mum. She’s got a year left until she collects her pension”.

Yacine says that his core identity is in Islam and that his ambition is to live and work in Saudi Arabia. His says he is convinced his faith is not compatible with French secular society, but his anger suggests he is still looking for justice as a French citizen, and still hopes to get it.

TROUBLE DOWN UNDER The November sun had barely risen above Sydney’s iconic harbour, when Australian police and security 20 | Q - NEWS

service swooped down on what has been called alQaeda’s “down under” cell. 18 men were arrested, accused of planning a massive terrorist strike against several urban targets, including the famed opera house. Najad Abdul-Aziz reports on the aftermath of the terror arrests and the political divide that is tearing Aussie Muslims apart. s international coverage focused on Australia’s thwarting of home-grown terror, the Howard government’s sweeping antiterror measures - controversially introduced in the wake of the London bombings - seemed to be presciently appropriate. In the months before the November arrests, London’s terror turned into Australia’s fear. The 7/7 attacks were the result of a desire for “Islamic domination” and al-Qaeda revenge, or so the press claimed. If Britain, as America’s key ally in Iraq wasn’t safe, then Australia, a junior coalition partner, too was threatened. This made sense to mainstream Australians. Their way of life was vulnerable to attack and interfaith dialogue, forums, conferences, and the odd conversation at the bus stop could only do so much to build tolerance and understanding.

A routine schedule of press releases and statements of condemnation followed for weeks, as Australian Muslims reiterated their opposition to the killings on London’s transport system. Just as the hysteria was beginning to die down, Howard needed to hear it all one more time. On 23 August 2005 Muslim community leaders gathered in Parliament House to publicly announce their condemnation of terrorism. The 11-point statement of principles agreed upon by Howard’s 14 hand-picked “moderates” included a decree where “all Australians must work together to ensure that everything is done to prevent the scourge of terrorism from coming to Australia”. It was a truly binding idea.

Everything should be done to protect our “freedoms", but asked peace activists: doesn’t that also refer to Australia’s involvement in foreign wars that fuel terror? Not according to the Prime Minister. The Muslim leadership tacit acceptance of Howard’s insistence that Iraq played no role in raising local tensions, lent a surreal and phoney edge to their dialogue with the government.

Community advocacy groups, painfully aware of growing antiMuslim prejudice and discrimination, were not amused.

“It kind of shuts the door on an open discussion about solving a problem that is very serious…any intelligence organization will tell you that Australia’s susceptibility to attack by terrorists has been increased by what has happened in Iraq," says Waleed Kadous, co-convenor of the Australian Muslim Civil Rights Advocacy Network.

While Iraq was not on the agenda, attempts to reassert Muslim loyalty to Australia was. “Moderate” dialogue had been established and observers of ethnic politics knew the formula well: pick a tame group of ambitious “representatives", give them some limited authority and narrow terms of reference and watch them reproduce your agenda. Howard had bought ethnic consensus under the guise of national unity.

Binary visions of “moderate” and “extreme” are thus articulated in attempt to establish allegiances. Waleed Aly, media spokesman for the Islamic Council of Victoria believes this idea is just too simplistic: “Upon entering public contemplation, every Muslim must immediately be reduced to a one-dimensional fiction. The moderate is good (or at least benign), the fundamentalist is nasty, and there’s little, if anything in between.”

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The question of allegiances plays a huge part in maintaining the public perceptions of “the Australian way”. To many nonwhite citizens, the dominant culture traces its roots to the brutalities of colonial Australia. In fact, there is nothing worse than being “un-Australian” in Australia. In the popular history of Australia’s history there are stock references to “the Australian character", and platitudes about a “nation forged through collective adversity”. Non-Christian and non-white names and faces don’t figure prominently in the narrative.

While the Prime Minister may want Australians to think he believes the teaching of history should begin with the “noble sacrifice” of the ANZACs, and end with an appreciation of Sir Donald Bradman’s triumphant batting average, in his quest to define what “Australia” really means, he has waged a collective war on the history of the Aboriginal community, and the vital historical contribution of racial and religious minorities.

“The role of Muslim Afghan Cameleers who contributed to every exploratory expedition into central Australia was written out of the history books," says Bilal Cleland, a historian who has conducted a comprehensive study of Australian Muslims, dating back to the 19th century.

It is not only “un-Australian” to blow the whistle on the nation building mythology, simply to be one of those who have been abused by the Australian nation is to be “un-Australian”.

This includes Aboriginal peoples, asylum seekers interned in camps and activists challenging the legality of a Australian citizen - David Hicks - being held in captivity for the past four years at Guantanamo Bay. On the day of the terror arrests, friends of the accused clashed violently with a television crew outside Melbourne Magistrates Court, repeatedly punching and kicking a cameraman. The national media went into overdrive, as one reporter called it a “mini-jihad”. These men had done something that was very “unAustralian”. They had publicly expressed their grief and anger at their friends’ treatment at the hands of Australian government officials and the guilt-before-innocence approach of the press.

This act of rage echoed issues of alienation and disenfranchisement, invariably chipping away at all those textbook clichés about the idyllic sun-soaked, beach-obsessed Australian life.

Many who know the accused fiercely contest their innocence.

Many of the men come from respected Muslim families, all of whom are at a loss to understand what has happened. “He’s not an extremist, he’s been targeted for practising his religion, for being a Muslim," pleaded Maryann Raad, wife of accused man Ahmed Raad.

The arrests came on the heels of announcement by the Prime Minister, a week earlier, that the government had received “specific intelligence and police information which gives cause for serious concern about a potential terrorist threat.”

Muslims reacted with scepticism, especially as the role of the Australian Security and Intelligence Organization has been criticised by intelligence insiders. According to former military intelligence officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Lance Collins, the government’s use of ambiguous warnings to achieve political aims in times of fear was a cause for national concern. A hero of Australia’s military campaign in East Timor, Collins went public last year over what he felt was the “political corruption of Australia’s intelligence services”. He believes the present intelligence leadership is captive to the Howard government.

“It is a conspiracy against Muslims," declares Shaykh Mohammed Omran, head of the Melbourne branch of the AhlusSunnah Wal Jamaah Association. His comments - as exaggerated

as they might appear - reflect what is widely felt by an angry community suspicious of the government’s motives. Needless to say, Omran was not invited to the Muslim summit. While extremist rhetoric resulted in his exclusion, many have accused Howard of whitewashing political dissent.

Spokesman for the Australian branch of Hizb-ut-Tahrir, Wassim Doureihi says what Muslims do in Australia is not the issue. Draconian legislation, Doureihi believes, is an act of desperation. “It is an admission that all previous efforts to win the hearts and minds of Muslims in the West through intellectual means has been a complete failure," he says. Hizb-ut-Tahrir, not banned in Australia, has played a significant role in fuelling political debate among Muslims, similar to role of leftist movements, “the difference however is that we are neither reactionary nor unIslamic”.

While the Prime Minister views Hizb-ut-Tahrir as an “extreme minority", the so-called fringe groups of the Muslim community say they are not prepared to sugar coat the realities of what they allege is an Islamophobic agenda intent on silencing opposition.

There are however, opposing views. Ameer Ali, President of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils (AFIC) has staunchly defended Howard’s stance that Muslims are not targeted in anti-terror operations. “The Prime Minister has said this is not about the Muslim community, this is about the lawbreakers [and] I agree with him", he told The Age newspaper. Ali also called on the government to ensure Muslims are not victimised by the wider community. His comments fuelled debate as to why AFIC is asking the government for protection now, when they explicitly agreed to “sell” anti-terror laws to the Muslim community.

Is AFIC out of touch with Muslim opinion? Amidst the hysteria of the bomb plots, the presumption of innocence was effectively overturned. The Australian media completely obliterated due process. The arrested men were tried and convicted before the judge had taken to the bench - a textbook case of trial by media.

Australia has one of the most politically aligned media in the Western world, and many senior journalists are seen as very close to the authorities, reflected by the “tip offs” they received of the terror raids. At Muslim gathering and in the mosques, there is growing mistrust in the “free press”.

Defence lawyer Rob Stary has lost all hope of a fair trial.

“There is no presumption of innocence ... these people are presumed guilty.”

Themes of crime and “contamination” by ethno-religious minorities have come to the forefront of neo-conservative and far right discourse in Australia. The policy options for this political group are clear: fortress like barriers must be erected; solitary confinement must be imposed on those currently detained; Australia must be protected. This resonates deeply with historical anxieties of the White Australia Policy currently viewed from the lens of asylum seekers in this country, who were the first to bear a deliberate campaign from the Howard government, to associate refugees with fanaticism, terror and inhumanity.

It is now the turn of Muslim citizens who are keenly aware of Australia’s shameful human rights record in regard to minorities.

The historical abuse of Aboriginal people continues. The treatment of refugees is marked by internship. Now after the November arrests, there is a growing and frightening consensus that Australian Muslims collectively pose a threat which, more than being based on any material evidence, is seen as a threat to a way of life erected on xenophobia, and a fear of difference. While the immoderation of some Muslims doesn’t help, the lack of leadership by the Prime Minister will only make matters worse.

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Something Rotten in the State of Denmark The uproar caused by the Danish broadsheet Jyllands-Posten’s publication of a number of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad has put Denmark firmly on the map, but it’s the kind of attention the country would have been perfectly happy without. With Muslim ambassadors being recalled from Copenhagen, Danish embassies burning in Beirut and Damascus, angry protests from London to Lahore and a consumer boycott across the Middle East, the case has now escalated to a point where it’s gone from being another far from atypical event in an increasingly xenophobic little country - better known for its bacon, beer and the Little Mermaid - to an international crisis with Denmark now being referred to as the “frontline in the cultural battle between Islam and the West". So how did it come to this? Danish Muslim commentator Omar Shah traces the roots of the controversy. or most Muslims in Denmark, accustomed to an increasingly hostile climate, in which both the press and politicians have quite a liberal view of “freedom of expression” (at least when it comes to Islam), the drawings were just another in a long series of provocations and had it not been for a foolhardy decision by the Danish Prime Minister it might have stayed that way.

In September 2005, Kaare Bluitgen, a leading Danish critic of Islam announced in Jyllands-Posten that he had written a “children’s” book about the Prophet Muhammad but could not find any artist to illustrate the book out of fear of the violent Islamists.

Though widely perceived by Muslims as being a publicity stunt to get attention, Jyllands-Posten, perhaps deeply touched by Bluitgen’s predicament and the “great threat to Danish freedom of expression", invited 12 artists to submit drawings of the prophet in order to demonstrate to “fanatics” that the freedom of expression in Denmark is absolute and far above irrational, archaic sensitivities.

The author of the book - which was released at the end of January - describes it as a historical account based on the Quran, Sunnah and the famous Seerah by Ibn Ishaq, written for a young Danish audience. In a recent interview, he explained that he wanted to show the “human side” of the Prophet, and that one of the incidents described in the book “entirely from Muslim sources” is the one “where the Prophet fell in love with his daughter in law [the wife of Zaid], got her divorced from her husband and conveniently received a revelation allowing him to marry his adopted sons wife.” He went on to explain that Muslims are immensely proud of the Prophet “being a real man who could get any woman he wanted.”

In view of this, it’s hardly surprising that several artists (one

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would hope out of decency rather than fear) had reservations about illustrating his book.

Had Jyllands-Posten been a tabloid - Denmark’s equivalent of The Sun perhaps - the stunt might have been understandable, but Jyllands-Posten is the broadsheet with one of the largest circulations in Denmark. Although its right wing sympathies are no secret, as it often functions as a mouthpiece for various reactionary personalities, the latest incident marked a new low point.

The drawings caused an uproar, particularly due to the derogatory nature of the caricatures informed be a combination of old orientalist stereotypes and modern Islamophobic imagery. One drawing depicted the Prophet with a bomb in his turban, while another depicted him as a fierce looking man with a dagger in his hand and four niqab-clad women behind him.

As expected (and intended) the reactions from the Muslim community were heated, complete with demonstrations, fierce condemnations and even a bomb threat from a 17 year old boy.

All the while the newspaper could gloat at its role as “protector of Danish values” and publish new editorials and commentaries lecturing Muslims about freedom of expression. Several politicians also banged on the drum of how the Muslim community supposedly did not understand sacrosanct Danish values and how this could pose a threat to the stability of Denmark.

The fact that a leading “quality” newspaper had so clearly violated the sensitivities of the Muslims citizens of Denmark seemed irrelevant. The Muslim reaction was widely misreported in the press, as anger over the flaunting of the Muslim prohibition against drawing the Prophet, rather than anger over the shameless and derogatory way in which he had been depicted.

A number of ambassadors from Muslim countries (with the

FEATURE

Egyptian and the Turkish representatives at the forefront), concerned by this public ridicule of the Prophet and vilification of the Muslim community, asked Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen for a meeting and called upon him to distance himself from the actions of the newspaper.

The Prime Minister however publicly humiliated them by not only refusing to meet them, but also lecturing them (again) on freedom of speech in Denmark and on the independence of the Danish press.

Following this arrogant refusal to even acknowledge that Muslim feelings had been hurt, the diplomats and a number of Danish Muslims organizations decided to seek support abroad, a course of action which was to prove to be even more controversial than the original drawings themselves.

All the world’s a stage The case was raised both at the Arab league and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference and calls were issued for Denmark to apologize. These reactions were widely derided in the Danish press. That that such backward countries could have the audacity to criticize Denmark was simply unheard of. This strong belief in the infallibility of the Danish model and the perception of it being a beacon of liberal light in a dark world has incidentally been one of the main obstacles to meaningful dialogue in Denmark.

Following the international attention a rumour arose (originated by the same newspaper that published the drawings) that the Jamaat-i-Islami of Pakistan had issued a bounty on the head of the drawers invoking fresh memories of the Rushdie case, and the artists subsequently got police protection, which led to further protests about how Danish freedom was being threatened.

In addition to the diplomats, a number of local Muslim organizations had also tried to engage the government, but were met with similar responses. Thus shunned by the government and ridiculed by the press, a delegation of Danish Muslims (of primarily Palestinian origin) associated with the largest Ikhwan congregations in Denmark went on a tour of the Middle East to raise awareness of the issue, and visited officials and scholars in countries such as Lebanon and Egypt. This coupled with the OIC and Arab League’s stance on the case led to it being widely reported in the Arabic press.

The level of reactions from abroad and the potential dent in Denmark’s “nice image” has taken Danish politicians by surprise, and veteran politicians have criticized the current government for jeopardizing Denmark’s long term projects in the Middle East such as a “democratization initiative” in Yemen, Jordan and Egypt. This was also the position of a number of former Danish diplomats who delivered a petition to the Prime Minister.

Furious about the negative attention, a campaign has been launched by right-wing MP’s (from the Danish Peoples Party)

accusing the delegation of treason and of deliberately misinforming the Middle Eastern press to blow the case out of proportion in order to harm Denmark’s international interests. Rather than being lauded for making use of their “freedom of expression” a number of newspapers have jumped on this bandwagon. Additionally leading Danish “terror experts” have accused the delegation’s reckless behaviour of increasing the terror threat against Denmark, which has already participated militarily in both Iraq and Afghanistan with widespread public support. However while other “crusader nations” might have attacked Muslims no other country has overtly endorsed such ridicule of the Prophet Muhammad.

In early January the regional prosecutor stated that it did not find any reason to take legal action against the newspaper over the drawings, a decision which has now been appealed to the High Court, while the group of Muslims accused of treason have launched a libel case against the Danish People’s Party. In the Middle East the boycott of Danish products is spreading day by day and “militant” groups have started issuing threats against Danish interests. As of going to press the situation has become so critical that the Danish papers hardly write about anything else, and The Danish Chamber of Commerce as well as opposition politicians have started putting pressure on the Government and the paper to apologize once and for all. It seems that condemnation from governments across the Muslim world and the potential loss of hundreds of millions of pounds worth of agricultural exports, especially the Gulf countries, have somewhat modified at least some Danes’ views of freedom of speech, and helped them find a tolerance and concern that local Muslim protests could not.

On the 30th of January Jyllands-Posten after intense pressure from several Danish politicians and industrialists (especially Arla with annual sales of dairy products to the Gulf exceeding £300 million) finally issued an “apology", stating that while the caricatures were not illegal under Danish law and the paper was not sorry for publishing them, they were sorry for any offence caused. A position diametrically opposed to their own stated aim in publicizing the drawings in the first place, and a position it took four months to arrive at.

Hath not a Muslim eyes To a reader unfamiliar with the climate in Denmark the whole situation may seem grotesque and shocking: why would a broadsheet want to engage in such senseless provocation in the first place and why would the Danish government take such a foolish and arrogant stance without even acknowledging Muslim sensitivities?

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“a slanderous people". the last half a decade, a battle with a stated Had Jyllands-Posten aim to “revive Danish values” and to stop the been a tabloid To be or not to be, that is the question encroaching Islamism and “Islamisation” of In a country where referring to Jews as society.

Denmark’s equivalent of slanderous gets you an, albeit suspended, It is hard to perceive how a minority comThe Sun perhaps - the prison sentence, but referring to Muslims on prising 4% of the population could Islamise stunt might have been the other hand as a “cancer that should be society but in Denmark Muslims are already operated away", terrorists and people who vilified and deemed too sensitive and demandunderstandable, but consider it their “right to rape Danish girls ing. Any concessions to Muslim sensitivities Jyllands-Posten is the based on the Koran” (as expressed by several are seen as accommodating fanaticism and broadsheet with one of the Danish MPs) is apparently not racism, one “harming integration". could perhaps excuse the Muslim youth for It is also worth noting that Venstre, the largest circulations in being a little more than disillusioned. party leading the current government, is heavDenmark. Although its The attitude of the establishment reinily dependant on Dansk Folkeparti (Danish Peoples Party) a rabidly anti-Muslim and anti- right wing sympathies are forced by the cultural battle has not done much for community relations, on the conimmigration party which holds 14% of the no secret, as it often trary if anything it has made immigrants more seats in Parliament, for its mandate. Several of its members have been accused of racism for functions as a mouthpiece insular and created a staunchly anti-Danish “immigrant” subculture especially amongst making statements not dissimilar to those for various reactionary the second generation. Any British politicians which have currently seen the BNP’s Nick personalities, the latest worried about lack of social cohesion or the Griffin in court. In the UK, such statements would have meant the end of any serious incident marked a new low “failure of the British model” should visit Denmark. When asked to describe their affilipolitical career, but not in Denmark. point. ation many Muslims would say “Denmark is While politicians increasingly pay lip servwhere I was born” instead of saying “I am ice to Christianity as part of the Danish herDanish". A not so insignificant minority would stumble on the itage (much to the chagrin of many who like one left wing comword Danish. The term for immigrant, “perker” (Danish racist mentator detest the new “I am not Muslim, hence I am Christian” slang for a brown person") is in fact used as a badge of honour. attitude), the only thing which is religiously guarded is secular There is also a very strong multiethnic unified immigrant subculdemocracy - ridiculing democracy is considered a grave sin while ture even across religious lines and there are not many countries ridiculing religion is not. Secular fundamentalism has been elevatin which an Albanian, an Iraqi and a Cuban would largely define ed to the status of religion in a way perhaps surpassing even themselves as belonging to the same group. In Denmark, Danish France. Unfortunately for the Muslim immigrants the result is one means a white ethnic group, not a citizenship and the same, whether its criticism for not adhering to Denmark’s The stigmatization of Muslims has also fuelled not only a “Christian values” or Denmark’s “secular values". marked increase in the practice of Islam but also the rise in a what With this increased polarization, the boundaries for what is I would term secular Islamism, where adherence to a political acceptable to say have been steadily moved and expanded to a aspect of Islam is promoted without strict adherence to the relipoint where some statements bring chilly memories from gion. Over the last decade immigrants have increasingly started to Germany in the 1930s. In addition to the general aversion against define them as Muslims (as this is what society calls them) and “demanding Muslims” a further problem when it comes to a case Islam has become a strong identity marker even where it does necsuch as the drawings is that Danes despite their immense pride in essarily lead to a deeper practice of the religion.

Denmark have very few tangible symbols they hold sacred.

There is something definitely rotten in the state of Denmark Religion is freely made fun of and not even the queen or the flag where the stage has been set for a tragic play where the roles of is held in the esteem leading to an inability to relate to the hurt the Muslim antagonists and secular Danish protagonists have and anger Muslims feel. been firmly defined in advance, with the majority of Muslims still This manifested itself clearly in the Danish reaction to the Van playing the role of extras. The plot is laid out, but it is now up to Gogh murder case which saw Denmark gripped by hysteria, the the Danish establishment to decide whether to follow the script case making headlines in Danish newspapers for several weeks, punctually, deliver a good stage-show complete with a disastrous and being discussed almost as had it happened in Denmark. Sadly, ending, or whether there is courage to depart from the script, most Danes were oblivious to what Van Gogh had in fact done, redefine the roles, include the extras and achieve a happy ending only horrified by the fact that a man was killed. The perception of before curtain call. As for now the very likely economic conseright and wrong in the case was summed up when Ayan Hirsi Ali quences of a stunt gone far too wrong might be viewed as poetic - Van Gogh’s collaborator on the film which led to the murder justice and will hopefully make future events of the same type less was later given the “freedom prize” by the Danish Prime Minister likely.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen. When vilification and ridicule of Islam is deemed to be synonymous with freedom, the reaction to the Omar Sayyid Shah is of Danish-Afghan origin, born in Denmark drawings is not very surprising. Again and again “freedom of and now residing in the United Kingdom. He has participated expression” is hailed as a universal right, with no one seemingly extensively in the Danish debate on immigration and religion worried that this is used as a freedom to offend. Sadly this through political commentaries in leading Danish broadsheets, grandiose attitude is not expanded to include people who are conand has contributed to two books on the subject; Islam, sidered “Islamists” as the Danish spokesman for Hizb-ut Tahrir Christianity and modernity (2004) and With other eyes (2003), realised when he received a suspended sentence of two months in both published in Danish. prison for a leaflet found on the HT website referring to Jews as

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Call for Papers for International Conference Citizenship, Security and Democracy Istanbul, Turkey. Friday, 1st September - Sunday, 3rd September 2006 The Association of Muslim Social Scientists (UK) and Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research (Turkey) in conjunction with

The Association of Muslim Social Scientists (USA) The Association of Muslim Social Scientists (France) Patron: The International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) The time for an international gathering of Muslim social scientists is at present a necessity. Global political upheavals have created an insatiable demand for studies, information and analysis of Islam and Muslims. The Muslim social scientist is not only being asked to be academic, objective and dispassionate about critical issues related to the Muslim experience, faith, culture and philosophy, but is also being called upon to “represent” a community misrepresented in monolithic terms.

The inherent diversity of the Muslim experience across regional, national, ethnic, theological and social divides defies the homogenising logic of mass media, popular culture, and governmental politics.

The events of 9/11 in the US and 7/7 in the UK have created within circles of Muslim social scientists, especially in North America and Europe, an opportunity for research to explore the Muslim experience in multi-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary ways. We need now to create overlapping, synergistic discourse that will both examine the Muslim experience, and provide the necessary research, analysis and understanding to those who wish to enact social change. Social scientists must be acutely aware of the role they play in the future development of Muslim communities in the West and beyond.

In this conference, we will begin to build a network of social scientists who understand the utility, applicability and importance of such research.

The notion of citizenship and security as they relate to democracy and freedom lie at the heart of discourses centred around the presence of significant Muslim communities in the

West. In addressing these themes, we will consider these terms in their broadest way. The issue of ‘citizenship’ can represent a confluence of identities - legal, political, social, religious and spiritual. ‘Security', in comparison, has legislative, policy, political, economic, theological and social implications, but can also be used to examine human rights, trust relations, community cohesion, social exclusion, and marginalization. The new critical tendencies on the capacity of ‘democracy’ to safeguard the human rights of minorities and collective identities give us a framework for understanding and gauging the status of a pluralistic cultural identity. Further, if anything, the presence of significant Muslim minorities and the emergence of new Islamic discourses regarding modernity have begun to challenge the restrictive and exclusive notions of culture. We need to question ‘for whom’ these rights are.

Muslim social scientists need, therefore, to develop evidencebased and policy-oriented research that delineates and represents issues of concern to Muslims in current social and foreign policies. This conference then, welcomes papers that are forward-looking and provide the basis for conceptual, critical and strategic thinking for the future.

Turkey is an ideal location to host this conference. Sitting along the presumed ‘fault-line’ between ‘East and West', ‘Christendom and Islam’ and given its unique status as the only Muslim-majority country being able to make a case for inclusion in Europe, Turkey’s internal and external struggles will provide a challenging and creative locus and a significant historical backdrop for a conference of Muslim social scientists.

Papers are invited along the following themes: 1) Citizenship: New Paradigms and Challenges Challenges of plural citizenship.

Status of minorities in multicultural societies in a transnational world.

Transnational Muslim organisations Political participation of Muslims in Europe and USA Muslim women citizenship, empowerment, and discrimination.

From tolerance to recognition: The processes of integration within the integrity of collective identities.

Faith and secularism.

Muslim youth: Experiences, realities and challenges.

Islamic ethics across multiple cultures in a global environment.

European models of unity: cultural and political challenges.

Turkey’s cultural identity and EU membership.

2) Security, Violence and Peace Security, Integration and Muslim minorities.

Alternatives to violence: Dissent in civil society.

Communities’ conflict and coexistence.

Security and Islamophobia.

Terrorism and extremism in Muslim societies.

Violence : transnational and national.

State violence and urban violence Islamophobia in the Muslim World?

3) Democracy, democratisation: Prospects for Civil Society Unity without unification in future cross-cultural society.

Models for peace in fundamental texts of faiths and cultures.

Muslim scholars in the West: prospects for renewal and mediation.

Imagining a Europe with Turkey.

Revival and reform in a fragmented Muslim world Europe and the Middle East: Historical and strategic issues.

The Nation-state and its Future.

The experience (s) of democracy in Muslim countries.

Democracy and democratisation : Imposition or persuasion?

Deadlines: Abstracts: February 2006 Papers: June 15th 2006

Submissions: Submission of abstracts (150 words) to be sent to: From Turkey: setavtr@gmail.com, From the Arab World: confamss@yahoo.com From North and South America: conferences@amss.net From Europe and the Rest of the World: csd@amssuk.com Please supply a short biographical profile (150 words) with your abstract.

Conference Languages:

Turkish, English

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Oh, the Hypocrisy!

The Danes have finally apologised for the offensive cartoons but as Rachard Itani argues, the apology was for all the wrong reasons. n many European countries, there are laws that will land in jail any person who has the chutzpah to deny not only the historicity of the Jewish holocaust, but also the method by which Jews were put to death by the Nazis. In some of these countries, this prohibition goes as far as prosecuting those who would claim or attempt to prove that less than 6 million jews were slaughtered by the Nazis. In none of these countries are there similar laws that threaten people with loss of freedom and wealth for denying that large percentages of gypsies, gays, mentally retarded, and other miscellaneous “debris of humanity” were also eliminated by the Jew-slaughtering Nazis.

Quickly now: what defines a hypocrite? Answer: a person who follows the letter of the law, but not its spirit. The laws against anti-semitism are just that: laws against anti-semitism enacted by hypocritical Europeans with blood on their hands from the genocides in their recent and distant past, and much guilt to atone for in their hearts and minds.

The spirit of the law, which would extend this protection to Muslims as well, if not indeed other religious groups, is nowhere to be found in the Western legal code. You can curse the Prophet of the Muslims at will and with total impunity. However, approach the holocaust at your own risks and perils if you do not include in your discussion the standard, ritualistic incantations about the six million Jewish victims of the European Nazis. There is a word for this in the English language: hypocrisy.

I used to have a lot of respect for the Dutch, the Danes, and the Norwegians, and still do. However, I cannot claim that this respect is not more nuanced today. The coloring started when the Dutch, who are invariably and automatically described as being amongst the most “tolerant” people in the West, if not the world, proved that their tolerance was little more than skin deep. Their reaction to the murder of Theo Van Gogh was anything but driven by tolerance. They behaved as a mob in reaction to the criminal, despicable action of an extremist and murderer, by painting the whole Dutch muslim community with the same broad brush that Vincent Van Gogh would have eschewed. They burnt Muslim schools and mosques. They directed opprobrium at Muslims in their midst, calling on them “to go home” though many had been born in the Netherlands. No subtlety in the Dutch reaction. Just collective anti-semitism which they directed not at the Jews, but at the Jews’ cousins, the Muslims.

Then the Danes, who must have felt left out, decided to go the Dutch one better: a Danish paper published cartoons that are no less offensive to Muslims than anti-semitism is to Jews. The cartoons were described by Danish politicians and the press as not provocation, but a principled case of free speech, although many Danish and Scandinavian newspaper editors are on record stating that they published the cartoons as an act of defiance against “radical Islam.” This is akin to these ignorant morons recommending that the U.S. ought to nuke Tehran because that would teach Iranian President Ahmadinejad a lesson.

What free speech are we talking about here? The law says thou shalt not utilize or publish anti-semitic language or imagery.

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Consequently, Danish (and other European) papers will refrain from doing so, lest they fall foul of the law and offend Jewish sensitivities. The law does not say: thou shalt not offend muslims or use imagery that may be deeply offensive to them. So Danish papers will not refrain from doing so, in fact they will go out of their way to offend Muslims both in Denmark and around the world, in the name of “free speech.” And the Norwegians? Well, they just decided to follow the Danes down perdition lane, all in the name of holy hypocrisy, so a Norwegian paper also published the offending cartoons. The statement about “confronting radical Islam” was in fact made by the Norwegian editor of a newspaper that is described as a “Norwegian Christian Paper.” And now that other European papers and Magazines have also followed suit, if there was any doubt that this affair is one of anti-Muslim bias, it was swept away by the statements of the Editor in Chief of Die Welt, the German magazine, who declared that the right to publish the cartoons was “at the very core of our culture” and that Europeans cannot “stop using our journalistic right of freedom of expression within legal boundaries.” It’s the “legal boundaries” qualifier that gives the game away: there are no legal boundaries in Europe protecting Muslims from the same ignominies that the law protects Jews from.

And what further argument does Die Welt put forward to justify its “legal” action? “ It pointed out that “Syrian TV had depicted Jewish rabbis as cannibals.” You can imagine how helpful a similar argument would hold up in a court of law: “But your honor, I only killed one guy and raped two women: the other guy killed four and raped 10!" That a German editor-in-chief of a major German paper should use the “legal” argument to justify offending the religious sensitivities of Muslims, when that same “legal” framework would see him thrown in jail faster than he could spell the word legal if he offended the sensitivities of Jews, may be a testament at least of his own deep-seated contempt for Muslims. That so many European papers have now reprinted the offensive cartoons is an indication that the contempt for Muslims does not stop with the editor-in-chief of Die Welt.

This whole affair is nothing but an over-reaction to a simple cartoon, you say? Not if you remember a certain other cartoon that appeared in the British newspaper, The Independent, on 27 January 2003 (pictured). It depicted Prime Minister Sharon of Israel eating the head of a Palestinian child while saying: “What’s wrong? You’ve never seen a politician kissing babies before?"

Jews in Britain and around the world erupted with indignation, arguably because the depiction reminded them of millennial charges levied against them by Christians who accused them of using the blood of babies in ritualistic killings. You see, Sharon can actually kill, maim and spill the real, actual blood of Palestinian babies: that is not offensive to Zionist Jews and their apologists in the West. But let Sharon be depicted in a cartoon metaphorically as the ogre that he has proved to be in his real life, symbolically eating a Palestinian child, and the world will erupt in offended indignation. A cartoon that is offensive to Muslims, on the other hand, is depicted as nothing but an expression of “free

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speech.” There is a word for this in any language: hypocrisy.

Before the Danish cartoon incident started to evolve into a growing international crisis, the Danish Prime Minister and the publisher of the Danish newspaper that first published the offending cartoons both declared that they would never apologize on grounds of free speech and because publishing the cartoons had not broken any Danish laws. (Yes, the “no law broken” argument again.)

Yesterday, however, they both ended up apologizing in the face of a growing tsunami of protests on the part of Arab and Muslim governments, some of whom withdrew their Ambassadors from Copenhagen. The Danish prime minister did not apologize because his moral compas suddenly found True North again. The real reason, of course, is that he understood, though a tad too late, the potential economic consequences of a widespread boycott of Danish goods on the part of one billion people. There is a word for this in the Danish language: realpolitik.

Muslims and other reasoning people around the world understand well that European laws against anti-Semitic speech, writing, and behavior, were enacted for two reasons. The stated reason was to protect the Jews from the continued onslaught of anti-Semitic attacks, both verbal and physical, which culminated historically in the repeated pogroms that Christian Europeans launched against Jews repeatedly through the centuries. (Historically, it was the Arabs who protected the Jews and took them in whenever they fled Christian barbarity, especially in the Middle Ages.) The real reason, of course, is to protect the Europeans from the pangs of their own conscience, which has very good reason to feel guilty indeed, given what Europeans did to Jews in the last millennium, especially in the 19th and 20th centuries, not to mention what they did to the indiginous people of the Carribean and the Americas since the 1600s, and to the people of Asia, Africa and Oceania as well. I have long thought that it’s European Christians, more so than Jews, who ought to observe Yom Kippur, or adopt a similar atonement observance of their own.

While the spirit of the law is that Europeans shalt not offend any ethnic or religious groups including Muslims, this seems to be lost only on the Europeans themselves, or at least the Danes, the Germans and their ilk amongst them, who only care about, or fear, the letter of the law. Why should we therefore be shocked when Muslims depict Europeans as nothing but a bunch of hypocrites? Why shouldn’t Governments of Muslim countries recall their Ambassadors to Denmark in protest, as some did? The only disappointment is that no Western or non-Muslim government, the meek complaints to a French newspaper by the French Foreign Office excepted, had the moral and ethical courage to publicly, unequivocally and forcefully condemn an act that is as deeply offensive to Muslims as the desecration of a Torah scroll, or of a Jewish cemetery, is offensive to all civilized people in the world, be they Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Animist, or Atheist.

There are two ways for Europeans to redeem themselves: the immediate temptation would be to call on their national parliaments to extend the protections of the laws against anti-Semitism and Holocaust denying to Islam and Muslims, as well as any other religious group . That would be the wrong recommendation however. The right recommendation would be to repeal the laws that

govern holocaust denying and other laws that favor one group over another, so that the issue truly becomes one of free speech. And if Europeans are the civilized people they claim to be, then their politicians and newspaper publishers ought to find it easy to immediately apologize when they have unwittingly offended the taboos of any human community, be it religious or otherwise.

Muslims and Arabs have suffered enough hypocrisy on the hands of European Christians, just as Jews suffered in the past on the hands of these same Europeans, and as Palestinian Muslims and Christians alike are suffering today on the hands of Americans, Europeans and, of course, Zionist Jews, both Sephardim and Ashkenazi. If Europe thinks of itself as a civilized society, then it ought to do its utmost to redress the wrongs that too many people around the world have suffered as a result of European misbehavior and often outright criminal actions, most especially since the 1400s.

Muslims deserve nothing more nor less than for Christians in the U.S. and Europe, and Zionist Jews in Israel, to simply abide by the golden rule: treat others as you would have others treat you.

So far, Christians and Zionist Jews have proven that they only abide by the alternative definition of this rule: “They who have the gold, make the rule.” The gold in this case is a combination of economic and military might. Of this, Europeans, Zionist Jews and their American overlords have aplenty in reserve. Were it that they also had an equal reserve of un-hypocritical, civilized morality and ethical behavior to underpin their feelings of sanctimonious superiority.

And the other measure that Europeans can adopt to redeem themselves? The European people can start by throwing out of office, and initiating criminal proceedings against, any politician responsible for sending a single soldier to invade, occupy, and initiate pogroms against the people of Iraq: these politicians have been guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, which makes them unfit for the honors that continued office holding bestows upon them. Europeans can also give the boot to any politician who has approved or turned a blind eye to a single rendition flight that sent any person to the torture chambers of the Americans or their surrogate torturers in some Arab or Muslim countries. These are the same countries whose religious sensitivities we should all respect as strongly as we respect Jewish sensitivities when it comes to the Jewish holocaust, not because the law says so, but because it’s the right thing to do. These are also the same countries whose human rights trespasses Europeans ought to condemn as equally and vehemently as they should condemn the continued human rights abuses and state terrorism perpetrated by the Israeli government in Palestine/Israel, and by some European governments in Iraq, Afghanistan, and in other out-of-sight/outof-mind places like Haiti, Africa, and elsewhere.

In other words, Europeans can start by applying the simple rule of one weight and one measure to both friends and foes, equally to themselves and to the rest of the world, because policy and politics, both domestic and foreign, ought to be based upon and subject to principled moral considerations, not expediency of the economic, financial or religious kind.

Is that such an unreasonable moral proposition to consider?

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Kashmir’s ‘Dammed’ The construction of Kashmir’s great Mangla Dam destroyed hundreds of villages and began the process of migration that lead thousands to settle in the United Kingdom. As a bitter winter deepens in earthquake devastated Kashmir, locals know that another quake is still to come: the expected 2007 raising of the Mangla Dam by the Pakistan government. Muhammad Khan explores how deeply his community has been affected and shaped by the building of the dam. egend has it that Alexander the Great stopped just a few miles from my village in Kashmir and declared that he had arrived at the end of civilisation. I wonder what would have happened if Alexander and his army had gone riding for just another hour. Maybe some of his troops did stay - it is difficult to say. The shades of colour and variety of tradition suggest others have also passed this way rather than turning back. The brown, blue, green, grey and hazel eyes that are in my family allude to a diverse ancestry. Not that they would admit to this. According to them it would appear that the world had circumambulated our village (and still does), rather than passed through it.

I always found this story very funny, the idea of my village being seen as the end of civilisation. The sword has always had difficulty penetrating through these hills and mountains. It is meant to have been the mystics, the Sufis, who brought Islam to Kashmir whilst the rest of modern-day Pakistan required the sword, it appears nothing much has changed.

As you make your way through Pakistan towards Kashmir making regular donations to subsidise the police and a variety of other ‘public services’ along the way you notice a change as you reach the foothills of Kashmir and start to climb . The air becomes cleaner, there is less traffic on the road, then again there is ‘less road’ and what exists is so bad that even the dead bodies that are frequently brought for burial from Britain sponsored by aptly named ‘death committees’ complain. By the time you reach any destination it feels as though your innards have been through a slanging match with Gordon Ramsay. There are more potholes than road, but it’s the potholes in the potholes that bugger you up.

Today it can take up to two hours to make the 10-mile journey from Mirpur to Chakswari.

It is only when you go there that you are aware of the magnitude of the journey made by my father and others like him. Before the journey to Britain he had been on the seas with the East India Company after having walked to Bombay looking for work. Most of this was during the Second World War and he used to tell of how many men died jumping off the ships from the panic and the claustrophobia induced by the work in the ship’s boiler rooms. I was amazed at the thought of my father and countless others who moved from Kashmir’s villages to Britain. For many what made it possible was the creation of the Mangla dam and the compensation they received for their land which paid for the tickets that brought these pioneers here. Theirs was a generation of overachievement not underachievement as is so often portrayed.

Moving to a land unfamiliar in customs and language, making it

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home within the space of two generations was an amazing achievement, based on values that have become unfashionable.

They invested in an infrastructure that made life and death bearable and manageable in an alien and sometimes hostile land but also offered opportunity and a welcome.

Sometimes it was the ‘demonised white women’ that enabled settlement in cities like Birmingham and Leeds. Like Om Puri in East is East my dad’s maternal uncles ran a chip shop in Leeds that for many was the first stop in finding housing and work and it was these women who enabled this to happen. I know my ‘bawa’ took his wife to Kashmir because they talk about her going around taking photographs, as it was her that I was compared to when I did the same when I went a few years ago followed by the usual colourful expletives from my elders. I grew to enjoy hearing the ‘richness’ of these expletives as evidence of a lust for life in bodies worn by work and care.

In Birmingham, it was Choudhary Zamana, married to an English woman, who made the building of the Central Mosque in Birmingham possible, yet there is no acknowledgement of this contribution anywhere in the mosque or any where else in Birmingham. It was his integrity and the sense of service of others like him that drew hundreds of thousands of pounds from the pockets of poorly paid Kashmiris and others to finance this and other projects. He and his ‘gori’ wife ran a small clothes shop nearby to where they lived in Balsall Heath in Birmingham. To them there is a debt of gratitude that has never been acknowledged, always quietly swept under the carpet as the community began to set the boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable behaviour aided and abetted by the clergy and the families thereafter.

But it is a contribution that needs to be celebrated rather than airbrushed out of our historical narrative. The construction of the dam set in motion this and much more.

So many stories lie under the surface of its waters, emerging to remind us what has been and what is possible. There is a Gurdwara that emerges from under its waters every year as the dam’s waters recede. The water has not penetrated the stone and brick despite spending most of the year underwater for the last fifty years or so. I asked a Muslim scholar of this and he replied that wherever God has been worshipped truly that cannot be destroyed. I liked this story. The crops grown on the land temporarily made available as the dam waters recede exceed anything grown nearby.

I guess that there must have been some comfort for those that remained in Kashmir of the thought of those who had travelled to

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Britain returning - ill equipped and out of date, dependent and awkward, simple in their sophistication, returning as they had left.

There were some who valued us waiting to embrace a semblance of grandfathers and grandmothers that had passed away but had left their fragrance on the exiled. For others the ‘dependency’ created a resentment that made the generosity and care given to them indigestible. The thought of the sacrifices made for brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, uncles and aunts: no toys or much time for the children, the same clothes washed anew and ironed if there happened to be an occasion; the milk crates that were turned into bright flowery stools as colour was always cool. Back in Kashmir (and here)things were changing; status was what you owned or achieved rather than what you had contributed.

The dam has brought its own justice, its raising in the next few years will for many usher in another type of relationship with the ‘motherland'. For many its repercussions will be hard. The fragmentation of a village is the destruction of an ecosystem based on dependency, familial ties, status and esteem, land rites and a communal narrative that goes back generations. But it can also mean the end of other cycles and relationships based on guilt and obligation, enmities and feuds.

There is a cruel metaphor in the raising of the dam. Many cemeteries will now also be under water. Some graves there are less than a decade old, the grief and grieving still waiting to subside. For those that remained in Kashmir dislocation by the dam is inevitable. In waiting for our return they themselves will experience exile, dislocated from the kith and kin - living and deceased, near and far.

The first question asked of you often when ever you go there is not how you are but how long you have come for and when you are going back. There was a time when the arrival of a walaytiaa - a visitor from Britain - was an event for the village. Today it goes unnoticed. They look more “English” than those that go from here - exhausted and withdrawn, frozen out by the subtext in every conversation.

Kashmir is 84,000 sq miles which is larger than 110 countries of the world but to find such a lack of infrastructure in such a large and historic terrain is noticeable particularly when tit is experienced through death or illness.

Two years ago I accompanied my uncle to Kashmir following the death of his son, my cousin. He became ill whilst there and we had to get him to a hospital in Mirpur, the nearest town to our village. This meant driving for nearly two hours through near nonexistent roads to take him to a ‘hospital’ only to find that there are not really any hospitals in Mirpur that would be worthy of the name, but rather a number of medical enterprises that provide accommodation for patients while they are ill. This was not a matter of limited finance just a matter of limited services and investment. Mirpur has some of the most expensive real estate in Pakistan and the wealth generated abroad lubricates an economy based on land, construction, death and marriage and a few other unmentionables. To lay the total blame for this lack of infrastructure on the Pakistani government would be justified but also avoids what could have been done by people themselves, after all if somebody gives you a bag of shit to hold, you don’t hold it for fifty years blaming those that gave it to you.

Epilogue I have watched the aftermath of the Kashmir earthquake unfold. As the news broke on Saturday morning, the television cameras remained fixed on Islamabad’s “Blue Area”. Listening to the comments of surprise that only one building succumbed in the

The first question asked of you often when ever you go there is not how you are but how long you have come for and when you are going back.There was a time when the arrival of a walayatian - a visitor from Britain - was an event for the village.Today it goes unnoticed.They look more “English” than those that go from here exhausted and withdrawn, frozen out by the subtext in every conversation. capital; the death toll rising from single to double digits and then a hundred or so by the afternoon, whilst being told that the epicentre of the quake was in Kashmir. I knew the destruction that was possible there. Kashmir is no more than an hour or so helicopter journey away, but it was definitely not Islamabad or its “Blue Area” - designed and designated for Pakistan’s local and overseas elite. Government officials made it sound like Northern Pakistan and Kashmir and its devastated villages were light years away, and they were right. For them, it was.

The elitism and patronage, so endemic in Pakistani society, is evident in the response to the quake. The quake also demonstrated the incredible humanity of the local, affected populations, evidenced by the long lines of people walking towards the quake zone with pickaxes, blankets and whatever else that they could carry whilst fasting. It is this humanity that will bring healing. It is this humanity that is diverting the anger of victims away from the government in acknowledgement of the generosity of their neighbours and those from overseas. The humanitarian response to the quake has not been because of any government organisation but despite it.

To hear that it is because the infrastructure is damaged that the relief effort is delayed is difficult to accept as there was little infrastructure in the first place. The quake is revealing much about the connections that exist between Brits of Kashmiri and Pakistani heritage and the land of their parents and ancestors.

There are those that are phoning their relatives, who are then organising trucks to take aid where needed - as is the case of so many people I know. This aid has been immediate except where the army has intercepted, then there is no means of verification.

Then there are those that are pledging to relief agencies since for some the direct contact with ‘the motherland’ has been lost and it is relief agencies that are mediating this giving relationship to their country of origin. In this way Kashmiris and Pakistanis in Britain have ‘translated’ themselves into British Pakistanis and Kashmiris (for those that still hold or see this heritage as relevant). They no longer need a tangible, physical connection to Pakistan or Kashmir for a Pakistani or Kashmiri identity in Britain.

The earthquake revealed ineptitude born out of lack of concern of consecutive Pakistani governments and so many others like it but also revealed the humanity that sustains places like Pakistan and Kashmir which in its darkest hour finds the light in itself. In all this it must not be forgotten that this earth uake was an act of nature that has displaced so many. There is a further quake being planned by the Pakistani government in the raising of the Mangla dam which will impact on many Brits of Kashmiri origin and those that remain in Kashmir having survived one earthquake already. The trauma of this new quake is yet to be experienced.

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Violence in Muslimdom

Wanton

Religious imperative or spiritual deviation?

Despite what has unfolded in the aftermath of 9/11 and 7/7, it should be clear that ‘violence’ is not specifically a Muslim problem. On the contrary, as Muslim propagandists never cease to point out - ad nauseum - historically, non-Muslim perpetrators of wanton destruction leave Muslim terrorists in their proverbial dust.

This, however, is not the point. H.A. Hellyer explains.

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developed: in a spirit of scholarly inquiry, enjoying a plurality of opinions. In so doing, they were not unmoved by emotional or personal concerns, but they were not controlled by such traits; they were subordinate to the desire of honest scholastic scrutiny.

The Deviation of Modern Radicals Fortunately for us, the contemporary inheritors of that tradition disavow gratuitous violence, encouraging constructive social contribution, but with the classical scholastic authority back to the elemental Prophetic community that “Jihadists” and others lack. For a thousand years, this is how the classical tradition

Al-Akiti’s fatwa against suicide bombing Shaykh Muhammad Afifi al-Akiti’s juristic verdict (fatwa) represents how a progeny of that classical tradition might engage with the current situation of Muslims. As a product of a thoroughly classical Muslim educational system, he does not limit himself to merely issuing an apologetic hymn, nor even a simple rebuttal of some of the poorly constructed “legal opinions” that instigated the publication of this work.

Rather, it is a scholastic refutation of not just the conclusions (which are secondary in the framework of this tradition) but the very methodology of the “pick and mix” style of the unqualified and the uncertified. As the author notes: "[This is a] fitna (civil unrest) reeling this mercied ummah (community), day in and day out, which is partly caused by those who, wilfully or not, misunderstand the legal discussions of the chapter on warfare outside their proper contexts which have been used by them to justify their wrong actions.”

In responding to this internal fitna the author thus identifies the points of Islamic law that have been misread or misinterpreted, and clarifies them with a pedagogic penetration that leaves little room for doubt for both Muslim and non-Muslim readers.

Without reluctance, the text elucidates the position of Islamic law on attacking non-combatants, and how any military engagement must take place through a lawfully recognised political authority - in other words, negating any kind of anarchy or vigilantism. This much is hardly a surprise to any student of classical Muslim jurisprudence, but the references are useful to understand the methodology employed reaching such a conclusion. Al-Akiti is not presenting his own “feeling", but, rather, reflecting and reporting the intellectual inheritance he possesses through his edu-

istorically, seldom did the erudite of the Muslim community continually point the finger of blame at non-Muslims.

Today, current mantras of “Islam is peace” have become trite in their repetition. This is a curious departure from how previous Muslim communities faced their problems. Scholars of the past did not hesitate to engage in pointed self-criticism: that delicate censure that the Muslim tradition calls muhasaba. That type of reflection has been unusually limited by a number of recent writers to cover deep spiritual woes and resulting traumas. Yet, muhasaba is a tool by which all kinds of abnormal phenomena are examined, and expunged.

A recent article in a British publication denounced the existence of “moderate Islam” as a myth, asserting that although a majority of Muslims are non-violent, they are so only by treating the Quran as a “pick-and-mix selection”. The article’s subsequent analysis revealed a “unique” methodology; picking and mixing not only the Qur’an but also the whole corpus of fourteen centuries of Muslim scholarship in a decidedly selective fashion. It is ironic then that this is precisely the type of unqualified engagement radical “Jihadists” (sic) enjoin.

The Muslim and the non-Muslim need to engage in a bit of muhasaba in this area, for this methodology is a type that ignores the measures in scholarship that generations of Muslim academic dons painstakingly took, articulating the finer points of practise, theology and spirituality, in an unbroken chain of academic intellectual inheritance (the Muslim alternative to an ecclesiastical hierarchy or Church), and it bears examining their way of thinking.

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cation. That form of Muslim education represents the refinement and evolution of legal tradition more than a thousand years old.

Martyrdom in Palestine However, perhaps one of the most useful parts of this portion of the verdict is its explanation of one of the most controversial issues in modern Muslim communities: the tactic of “martyrdom operations” in general and in Palestine in particular.

For years, proponents of this method, regardless of the target, have employed the image of the “lone charger” as justification; alAkiti, referring directly to the source books of Islamic law, through the matrix of a classical education, dispels any confusion.

Despite the passions surrounding the issue (universally evident whenever Palestine is discussed amongst Muslims), al-Akiti approaches the issues without uncontrolled emotion or sentiment.

He firmly distinguishes between the “lone charger", who may be placing himself in jeopardy but is ultimately killed by the enemy or circumstances, and the “suicide-bomber", who takes his own life. Al-Akiti removes any legitimacy from the latter in an unequivocal fashion.

Israeli men, women and children - and off-duty soldiers In so doing, he does not limit himself to the theoretical situation of targeting nameless categories of civilians, but identifies, clearly, Israeli men, women and children. Off-duty soldiers are, as al-Akiti notes, considered as “non-combatants", and thus out of bounds for attack.

A poignant question he poses: “Why was this [type of operation] not done before 1994 [the first HAMAS bombing], and especially during the earlier wars, most of all during the disasters of 1948 and 1967?”

Elsewhere he writes: “Yes, we are one ummah such that when one part of the macro-body is attacked somewhere, another part inevitably feels the pain.”

The use of his language leaves no uncertainty regarding his obvious concern for the people of Palestine, but in matters of what he regards to be the domain of sacred law, he can only permit sacred motivations of accuracy and precision. There is no pretence of piety under the guise of “defending one’s own"; there is only a firm engagement with the questions in the light of law, for this is a legal affair. Prior to this publication, no such writ of equivalent legal calibre could have been found in the English language, despite the urgency of addressing such a significant issue.

In his analysis of the relevant portions of classical jurisprudence in this area, al-Akiti does not limit himself to these discussions, but opens (and closes) related issues that are incredibly pertinent to contemporary Muslims: the use of bombs, commentary on the Qur’anic verse that refers to the killing of idolaters, collateral damage and the oft-cited different classifications of land in Muslim jurisprudence, dar al-harb and dar al-Islam.

A Community of Purpose?

This last treatment leads us into a discussion on perhaps a far more pertinent issue to the Muslims of the “West” than suicide bombing: the issue of “integration”. Muslims have long been demographic minorities in non-Muslim lands, but perhaps for the first time in history they are now viewed as the proverbial “fifth column” - a proverbial cancer in Western societies. Empirically, this seems difficult to justify, and there has been fine research from a number of authors on the connection between European societies and Islam and Muslims going back centuries.

But more damaging is the sentiment amongst some Muslims

that they themselves do not really belong in the “West"; in other words, pockets of individuals in the Muslim community help foster this notion of estrangement and difference themselves. The impulse to regard oneself as distinct and alienated from one’s neighbours, seeking to ghettoise oneself: this is a reality for some and it is a divisive ideology of “us” against “them” which contemporary Western societies cannot accept without challenge.

Identity too must be restored to its traditional and classical place, which modernity seems to have entirely misunderstood. In the wake of this bewilderment, many Muslims in the “West” have been left grappling with who they are and what they are.

Not content to satisfy the questioner only on the aspect of denouncing violence and rejecting other negative actions, al-Akiti takes on this concept of alienation. He notes: "…they (Muslims) should as a practical matter remain in these countries (of the EU), and if applicable, learn to cure the schizophrenic cultural condition in which they may find themselves - whether of torn identity in their souls or of dissociation from the general society. If they cannot do so, but find instead that their surroundings are incompatible with the life they feel they must lead, then it is recommended for them to leave and reside in a Muslim state.”

There is no theoretical waffling, or inconsistency in his breakdown of the matter: Muslims should remain in these countries, but without suffering from a jumbled psychological condition.

A Failure of Education and Etiquette In the final examination of this verdict, there is the inescapable conclusion that Al-Akiti is deeply soaked in the tradition of Muslim scholarship. It is also hard to ignore that this richness and depth is lacking in many of Muslimdom’s madrassahs. The point behind this verdict is not the verdict itself, but rather the fact it is intellectually sound and juridically unassailable.

Al-Akiti is not unique in that he emerges as a product of classical Muslim education. Rather, he is a modern day continuation of the accomplished system that historically protected Muslim jurisprudence from fragmentation and divisive intellectual anarchy. If he is rare, then part of the explanation is down to his brilliance, but the more pertinent factor to take into account is the failure of modern Muslim educational systems. That breakdown is what produces a popular Muslim discourse that does not have more like him.

One of the great thinkers of Islam in the 20th century identified the failures of modern Muslim communities as one deficiency: a lack of adab (manners and etiquette). In classical Muslim communities, it was understood as a matter of course that there was certain etiquette to be observed when one approached the ritual prayer, etiquette to be observed with other human beings, and etiquette to be observed when drawing near to the Divine.

Etiquette cannot be sacrificed on the altar of ‘pragmatism’ or ‘modernity'; our greatest victory is in upholding the highest standards of decency and integrity, for it is against those same standards that war is being waged. With forbearance, there remains an imperative duty; to renew and restore respect for the etiquette to be observed when approaching the classical tradition of this religion. Previous generations knew this before this one, and, indeed, it is needed now more than ever. A full engagement with tradition through the appropriate etiquette focuses the intellect in a manner that al-Akiti epitomizes, and reveals that the heritage of classical Islam may be more than adequate to the challenge of modernity.

The contrary alternatives on the market at present invariably result in muddles and upheavals, the 7th of July being only one chaotic manifestation.

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EXCLUSIVE

From fanaticism and terrorism to mass consumption and global environmental disaster - ours is an age of extremes that is threatening our collective survival.With more young people seeking so-called radical solutions to social, spiritual and political crises, SHAYKH HASAN LE GAI EATON

says that the real solution lies in a principled return to the “Middle Way”.

At the launch of a year-long series of programs aimed at reviving a rigorous moral and ethical approach to our current malaise, he calls for an end to excess and indulgence.

ne of the definitions of Islam is that it is the “Middle Way” because it is a religion of peace and peace is only at the centre of things and never at the extremes. There are many ways of understanding the concept of the Middle Way. The first one I want to deal with relates to two different forms of excess: one is fanaticism, violence and terrorism, and the second is consumerism.

Both are forms of self indulgence. It seems odd to define the path of violence as a form of self indulgence. Anger, just like lust, begs to be released and begs to find expression and those who are consumed with anger but must kick it out in the some way or another. This may be apply to suicide bombers who are so possessed with fury and dismay that they must find a way of expressing it and in the end the only way that they it is through self destruction.

I would like to share an example of this from my own experience. As many of you know, in 1982 the situation in the Lebanon took a turn for the worse and Palestinian refugees were massacred in Sabra and Shatila camps. It happens that at the time I was working at the Islamic Cultural Centre and there was a colleague of mine working with me, who was the mildest of men: moderate, gentle and certainly not aggressive. But on the day the news of the massacres broke, he said to me, “I dare not go out into the streets today because I know I am going to hit the first person I pass.” This was

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FEATURE

something that is easy to forget because we will a clear demonstration that anger, unless it is We have to try and not see the disaster of this course of action - it is thoroughly controlled must find an outlet. That limit our needs, which is our children and grandchildren who will suffer. outlet may well be to strike at someone or peoWe have used up the world’s resources in the ple who may have nothing to do with the case at particularly difficult hand, hence the very ready and all too frequent because temptation lies past century in a way that has never happened in the past and yet we continue to pollute the killing of the innocent as a way of expressing the on every side and the earth. One example is travel, as we dash from anger that some of our brothers feel.

Anger is a form of drunkenness. Alcohol is encouragement of excess one place in the world to another in aircraft.

During the war, I remember, there were notices prohibited because it makes us drunk but we is prevalent. After all, posted all over the place saying “is your journey often forget that there are many forms of drunkmoderation is a principle really necessary?” I wish those signs were still enness and they all have something in common.

The drunkenness of anger is just as misleading as feature of the Middle Way. there. Most journeys are probably not necessary and yet every aircraft that is taking off is adding the drunkenness of alcohol. It is just as liable to to the pollution that is so dangerous to the planet. upset judgement, to make us incapable of effective action, because This all means that There is another characteristic of the Middle effective action relies on sober judgement. In practice, those who are Way which people will mention and that I am going to challenge. seized by such anger, lose logic and rationality. They become inefThat is tolerance. It struck me recently because we are always telling fectual and less effective in achieving their ends. people that Islam is a tolerant religion. So I looked up the word in That leads me to a digression. When I look back on the destructhe dictionary and found out that it comes from a Latin word which tion of the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, I often shock peomeans “to endure evil” and in classical English usage it means to ple when I say that it was like a pinprick - no more than a pinprick. put up with things that we don’t like, but also to put up with things It is extraordinary to me that people have forgotten that a short that we put up with that we shouldn’t put up with. That’s not what time ago all of us lived under the greatest threat that human beings most people today understand as tolerance. As Muslims we are have ever faced: the very real and very actual threat of nuclear war. commanded to be compassionate, to be understanding, and to use And this is why I tend to dislike the term “terrorism” and references our intelligence in understanding other peoples. We are certainly to “terror” because I think that it is extremely important to use not commanded to take an entirely helpless attitude in the face of words with their correct meaning. evil.

Terror is a big word. If somebody is terrified, they are trembling, One of the terms use to describe the Quran is “the Criterion” they are sick in the stomach, they turn white, they cannot sleep, they the criterion of good and evil. We, as Muslims, are required to make cannot eat. Do we know anyone who is ‘terrified’ by the prospect judgements. That is a delicate task as we are human and our judgeof a possible bomb on a bus or in the Tube? There are people who ment can be fallible and often unreliable. Nonetheless, we must worry but they are not terrified. Terror is too strong a word for this. have some opinion when we face what is palpably evil, because we Again the comparison is obvious. are commanded that if we can change it by hands, then we ought to When we lived under the threat of nuclear war, and especially use our hands. If we can change the evil by speech, then we must during the Cuban Missile Crisis, where we came - as is well recoguse speech. If we are so powerless as to only change it by our hearts, nised now - within a whisper of nuclear destruction, were we terrinonetheless we must change it by our hearts by condemning it. fied? We had good reason to be, but were we? We were not. People This is a huge responsibility. In the early days of Islam, it is said went on with their lives normally. The misuse of words is dangerthat those who were called upon to act as judges for the communious and because terror is a big word, it can justify a big reaction. ty, when asked to make judgement, often trembled when required 9/11, which I have suggested was a pinprick, has been used as an to give one, fearing it might be the wrong one and be condemned excuse for the invasion of Iraq and the above all curtailment of libby God for not exercising their responsibility properly. We must erties dear to British people and the American people. If you can acknowledge an element of doubt, but seeing a scale between yes persuade people that something absolutely dreadful is threatened and no we must dwell in the centre and in all humility make judgethen you can make them complacent, as you deprive them of their ment as best as we can. liberties.

Finally, an essential feature of the Muslim soul and mentality is So on one hand we have the extreme of violence. On the other a sense of proportion and we are helped in this by the example of hand we have consumerism. The world, especially the West, is conMessenger of Allah as this was one of his great characteristics: a sumed by consumerism. The Quran refers to the greed for more and perfect sense of proportion, to put things in the right order and more and condemns it absolutely. We today are encouraged to be where they belong. That is extremely difficult and to do that we greedy through advertising. The government wants us to spend, need his example, just as we need the counsel and guidance of the spend, spend, because that, we are told, is good for the economy.

Quran.

The world is flooded with unnecessary goods which we are encourMuch then is required of us as Muslims. But that is the price we aged to buy. One reason that we have people, particularly in pay fro the privilege of being Muslims. We cannot shrug our shoulEngland, working appallingly long hours, with little chance to be ders and we have to hold firmly to the Middle Way which is Islam. with their families or energy to be spend time with their children is In doing so to hope that we will please our Creator. not only to “make ends meet” but also to buy a better television, a better this and better that - things that are not essential and not necThis is the edited transcript of a lecture delivered by Shaykh essary. Islam clearly condemns excess and excessive greed is cerHasan Le Gai Eaton at Kensington Town Hall on 16 December tainly and very powerfully condemned. But we don’t recognise that 2005. This program as well as future programs in the series are we have become greedy people. It has become normal to want to organised jointly by Mahabba Unlimited, Q-News, FOSIS and the better things. But in demanding them and buying them, we are conYMO UK. tributing to the depletion of the resources of the planet and this is

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Photographs by Zaheer Anwari and Rizwan Rahman

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REMEMBERING

SHAYKH MOHAMED ABOUL-KHAIR

ZAKI BADAWI 1922 - 2006 n Friday, 27th January 2006, Britain Muslims buried an institution. Mohamed Aboul-Khair Zaki Badawi was a special man: a creator of institutions himself, a combative scholar, a warm human being and a very good teacher.

Of the many things I learnt from him is the qualities of leadership in Islam. Leadership, he once told me, is not ‘about being popular or bending to ignorance: it is about doing the right thing - strategically.’

He loved Q-News as both an idea and a venture: a community publication which is robust, engaging and dynamic was also part of his dream. But he did not endorse the magazine totally. For years he kept saying that ‘it was not witty or humorous enough’. Of course he was one of the legions of people who could never come to terms with the sad demise of Muslimwise, Q-News’ predecessor.

His support towards our work was unparalleled: from editorial contributions to efforts at fund-raising. Here I have to remark that Shaykh Badawi was good in everything he ever attempted to do but fund-raising. He was ever prepared to use his good offices, his influence and contacts but never his integrity or that of the project in question. ‘Better a struggling entity that is full of dignity than a prosperous one without.’

Whenever the Muslim College had a bit of resources QNews would know: he would call and say ‘I have some money. Let us find something to advertise.’ No other organisation or individual has extended us such generosity or care.

For that we salute him.

When we were approached last year to be involved in the Radical Middle Way Project I went, as usual, to seek his advice. He was not only supportive but terribly excited.

Only two days before he passed away I had a long telephone conversation in which he came out with some brilliant ideas and suggestions. Like always, his underlying message was: if it is right and appropriate, do it. ‘What we need to survive in this society,’ he said, ‘is knowledge and wisdom - and appreciation of the universal attributes of humanity; love, tolerance and compassion. We should not expect people to love us just like that: we should earn that love and respect by being good people through our actions.’

Essentially his message was that we need to take responsibility for the affairs of our communities. As the struggle for his legacy resumes it would be wise for all those who would want to claim it to remember the kind professor’s adage in a long and fulsome life: delivery is everything.

We at Q-News are going to seriously miss Shaykh Badawi’s inspiration, humour and encouragement. We pray for his soul and for patience for his family, relatives and friends across the world - from all faiths and those with none.

Fuad Nahdi

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MEMORIAL

A LIFE LIVED WELL haykh Mohamed Aboul-Khair Zaki Badawi, PhD, OBE, KBE was born in Sharkia, a small town outside Cairo, Egypt, 14 January 1922 and passed away on 24 January 2006

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EDUCATION Attended Al-Azhar Primary and Secondary Institutions before joining Al-Azhar University where he obtained from the Faculty of Theology the degree of Al-A’liyah (equivalent to BA First Class): he was awarded the King Fuad First Prize for the best graduate of the year in 1945. In 1947 he obtained from the Faculty of Arabic Studies the degree of Al-Alimiyah (MA) and received the King Farouk First Prize for the best post-graduate student of the year.

He was chosen to pursue further studies in Britain. He joined the University of London in 1951 and chose to study Psychology at University College London where he was awarded a BA Hons Degree in 1954. Later he obtained a Ph D from London University in Modern Muslim Thought.

PROFESSIONAL CAREER On his return to Egypt he resumed his post at Al-Azhar

University to teach Muslim Thought and Scientific Research Methods. He was delegated by Al-Azhar University to Malaya to establish the Muslim College of Malaya. From there he joined the University of Malaya in Singapore to teach Arabic and Islamic Studies. Later he moved to the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur in the same capacity.

In 1964 he was appointed Professor of Islamic Studies in Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Northern Nigeria. He then moved to Bayero College (later Bayero University) as Professor of Islamic Studies and Dean of Arts where he stayed until 1975.

In 1976 he was appointed research Professor at the Hajj Research Centre of King Abdul University, Saudi Arabia. He was stationed in London.

From 1978-1981 inclusive he was appointed Director and Chief Imam of the Islamic Cultural Centre and London Central Mosque, Regents Park, London.

In 1982 he was appointed a non-executive director of the Islamic banking system in Luxembourg and joined its delegation in the negotiation with the Bank of England. A licence was obtained for the first Islamic financial institution The Islamic Q - NEWS

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Finance House in 1983. He was in charge of it until 1986. In 1987 he was consulted by the Malaysia Securities Commission with regard to dealing with the then financial crisis. His suggestions coincided with the policy successfully followed by the Malaysian Government. Since 1995 he has been a member of the Shariah Board of FAIM, ANZ Bank. From 1998 till now he advises the Badr Bank, the first Islamic Bank in Russia.

In 1984 a National Conference of Imams and Mosque Officials of the UK held in Wembley elected him Chairman of the Imams and Mosques Council UK, a post he holds to this day. In 1986 he established the Muslim College in London following a unanimous decision taken by a full Council session of the Tripolibased World Islamic Call Society (WICS). For more than two decades - until his death - he was a key member of the Council and represented it in different national and international forums.

The Council envisaged the College as a postgraduate seminary to train imams and religious leaders for the West and also to encourage intra- and inter-faith dialogue. The College began to function fully in 1989. The Council appointed Dr Badawi as the Principal of the College. In the last two decades the College has worked and cooperated with numerous similar academic institutions across the world including the University of London.

During his period of work at the Islamic Cultural Centre he established also the Muslim Law (Shariah) Council UK to resolve conflicts of law between Muslim and the Civil Code. When he left the Islamic Cultural Centre he transferred this Council under the auspices of the Imams and Mosques Council UK. The Muslim Law (Shariah) Council consists of twelve Muslim scholars of different Schools of Muslim Law and three practicing lawyers. They elected him Chairman.

PUBLICATIONS Dr Badawi was the author of numerous articles in scores of publications across the world. For four years he was the editor the Islamic Quarterly. He published books on the Islamic Background to Malaya Culture, the Muslim Reformers of Egypt and co-edited a special issue of Encounter Magazine that included proceedings of an inter-faith conversation he had with the Archbishop of York and the Chief Rabbi. He also co-edited a book on the Hajj.

For many years he wrote a regular weekly column for the London-based Al Arab. He also wrote a monthly article for the Islamic Banker, a magazine that specializes in Islamic financial affairs. He participated in many conferences dealing with topics as varied as Islam, Interfaith, Business Ethics, Medical Ethics, Economics and Finance.

Dr Badawi contributed to work at Duke University in North Carolina, USA and he was the author of many fatwas (religious edicts) concerning issues affecting Muslims in Britain. He was the first to respond to the fatwa of the Ayatollah Khomeini on Salman Rushdie, proving it to be illegal under Muslim Law. His reply was issued the day after the Fatwa and published thirteen days later in the Guardian Newspaper.

INTERFAITH ACTIVITIES Since his student days he has been interested in the issues of relationships between different faiths. He participated in Egypt as an undergraduate with meetings between Muslims and Christians, which were arranged informally by his French teacher.

In Malaysia he formed with Swami Satyananda the Interfaith Council of Malaya that brought together Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims and Christians of all denominations. This was a unique venture in

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Malaysia where people of different religions experienced led a parallel existence, coexisting peacefully but with little contact. In Britain he joined the World Congress of Faiths for which he gave the Younghusband Lecture in 1964.

When Director of the Islamic Cultural Centre he instituted dialogue between Christians, Muslim and Jews with Rabbi Goldberg and Rev John Wales. It was this and subsequent initiatives that established interfaith dialogue as an orthodoxy rather than a heterodoxy in the Muslim community. He has participated in numerous dialogue meetings: in Spain in 1986 between Muslim; Christians and Jews to discuss peace in the Middle East; in Istanbul several times between Muslims and Christians; and in London in 1993 a conference between Muslims and the Orthodox Christian Church. The Muslim College holds regular interfaith meetings with Leo Baeck College. It also participates in the Westminster Interfaith Initiative between Muslims, Christians and Jews for which he puts forward Muslim nominees. The College also participates from time to time in annual residential interfaith seminars in Bendorf, Germany.

AWARDS Dr Badawi was awarded OBE in 1998 and on 7 April 2004 was awarded an Honorary KBE. On 6 July 2005 he was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Law from Glasgow Caledonian University.

MEMBERSHIP OF ORGANIZATIONS Member of High Council of Islamic Affairs, Egypt Member of the World Islamic Congress, Pakistan Member of the Board of Religious Advisors to the Malaysian Government Vice Chairman World Congress of Faiths Patron of the Institute of Business Ethics Patron of Prisoners of Conscience Patron of the International Sacred Literature Trust Advisor, John Templeton Foundation Member of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Hajj Advisory Group (advises organization of the annual Pilgrimage to Mecca) Member of Council of St. George’s House, Windsor Visiting Professor of the newly established Islamic University in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Member of Unite for the Future - post September 11th American initiative to further better understanding between people of different cultures in UK Member of CRAC (Central Religious Advisory Committee) which monitors BBC and the ITC Trustee of UNICEF (UK) Trustee of Muslim Social Scientists Association

CHAIRMANSHIP OF ORGANIZATIONS Chairman of Imams and Mosques Council (UK) Chairman The Muslim, Law (Shariah) Council Chairman The Abrahamic Forum (an international organization) Chairman The Islamic Religious Council Co-Chairman - The Three Faiths Forum Chairman of the Shariah (Muslim Law) Chairman of FAIR (Forum Against Islamophobia and Racism).

MEMORIAL

UNIQUE MAN FOR DIFFICULT TIMES ABDAL HAKIM MURAD

assively out of place in an age of conformity, Shaykh Zaki resisted all categorisation. He wasn’t an Islamist, a secularist, a typical Egyptian, or a typical integrated migrant. Not fanatically opposed to serving religion in an official capacity, he nonetheless would resign rather than obey the unreasonable demands of the Arab embassies. Sympathetic to Sufism, he nonetheless advocated reform on many social issues. In short, there is no adjective which really fitted the man. He charted his own, unique path through life.

I remember how, in 1982, he graciously gave a profound lecture to a group of only three Muslim students in Cambridge. A much larger number had been expected. His presence, as a witness to an older, more forgiving style of Islam, was in the background whenever students flirted with radicalism, since his personal qualities, and his scholarship, could not reasonably be doubted by anyone. He was never shy of confronting extremists: on a live AlJazeerah broadcast he demolished the self-taught Jordanian preacher Abu Qatadah, on the basis of impeccable scholarship.

The resulting threats from Abu Qatadah’s disciples he dismissed with hardly a second thought.

Last year I walked around Sarajevo in his company, and we visited the graves of some of its scholars and martyrs. In that city full of monuments to Muslim reasonableness and the fanaticism of neighbours, his conversation was neither triumphalist nor aggrieved: he simply took the city’s history for granted, and passed lightly over the offenses of enemies who, only ten years before, were carving crosses on the chests of their victims. Such a city needed such men who, unlike many other Muslims today, recall steadfastly the lesson of the conquest of Mecca: reconciliation, forgiveness, a new beginning.

Shaykh Zaki was more interested, religiously, in collective Muslim self-criticism than in listing the faults of non-Muslim rivals. This traditionalist turn of mind irked many younger

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Muslims, who saw the tragedies of the modern Muslim world as the doing of wicked unbelievers, rather than the consequence of Muslim sin and foolishness. He understood that mentality well; indeed, he was full of anecdotes about his encounters with the Egyptian extremist Sayyid Qutb, and of Qutb’s arrogance towards Hasan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood (he had been the go-between between the two men on several crucial issues). He rejected it out of hand as unQur’anic, and rooted in a psychological weakness unworthy of Muslim believers. In its place, he recommended self-scrutiny, and a respectful engagement with representatives of the dominant civilisation. Only thus, he explained, could the word of God be made available to those who would be only repelled by abrasiveness. ence his extraordinary energy, maintained long after most men have retired, in the field of inter-religious encounter.

‘Wisdom and goodly exhortation’ is the Qur’anically-mandated style for dealing with the People of the Book; and he sought to obey this divine commandment in every way he could, in engagement with the Three Faiths Forum, the Maimonides Foundation, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s ‘Building Bridges’ seminars, and many other platforms both humble and distinguished.

Prince Charles’ various interventions on behalf of Islamic civilisation owe much to his encounters with Shaykh Zaki (‘Zaki’s a very nice chap’, as the Prince once remarked, ‘but you can never get a word in edgeways!’); and it is probably fair to say that wherever there is a positive view of Islam in the British establishment, and willingness to concede to Muslim needs, the Shaykh’s influence is somewhere in the background.

Given the Arab embassies’ support for more intolerant voices, and the confusion in our communities, it is unlikely that we will see his like again, though we must pray that God wills otherwise.

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MEMORIAL

“TO ME HE WAS GOOD, OLD DR ZEE” AYISHA ALI o most he was Dr Badawi, Shaykh Zaki, or Sir Zaki. To me, he was good old Dr Zee - the man who shared my love of sweeties, smoked salmon, and most of all, perfectly ripe bananas (and anyone who knew him well, knew about the bananas). Through the grief and tears at the hospital on Tuesday, we couldn’t help but laugh when his daughter-in-law reached into her pocket for a tissue, and pulled out a banana he’d given her the night before.

His presence was magical and a blessing. Although 57 years my senior, I never got bored of his company, or his endless religious, intellectual and worldly insight and knowledge. When the mundane drone and constant lecturing of other adults made me want to whack my head (and theirs) through several walls, Dr Zee’s company was never repelling. He had an amazingly sharp and witty sense of humour, and was constantly on a roll with it. He was immensely fun to be around, and he forever wore a genuinely happy and magnetising smile.

His ability to draw people towards him was effortless, and many adored him. The gob-smacking, national and international outpouring of grief, pays tribute to this. Genuine and personal condolences have come from, not only Muslims across the board, but also (amongst others), from liberal and orthodox Christians and Jews, and atheists. He has deeply touched, not only the communities he served, and those he lived around, but also royalty, politicians, bankers, academics, religious leaders, and ambassadors, world-wide.

He could interact with anybody, irrespective of their age, gender, background, status, or beliefs. He didn’t patronise, judge or preach at people. He didn’t need to. He led by example, and his example glowed. He portrayed Islam so perfectly, peacefully and appealingly - like no-one else I’ve ever come across. He was my religious source, and my parental defence shield. If I disagreed with mum and dad on something, I would turn to Dr Zee for back-up: “Dr Zee, sort my parents out, they are being unreasonable.” He would then turn to them with a mock scowl on his face, and defend me: “Stop harassing this poor girl. She is right and you are wrong, so let her do what she wants.” Go Dr Zee! I never heard him utter any unkind word about anyone. Not even those who used to maliciously and jealously back-bite against him, and then fire daggers at him through their fake smiles and sickening lies. Had the same hypocrites knocked at his door, he would have genuinely welcomed them with the same innate warmth and politeness that was part of his nature - and then offered them a cup of tea.

His overwhelmingly humble character meant he didn’t sit on a throne of self-love, and even when knighted in 2004, he didn’t insist upon the title of Sir. Others in his place would have ordered golden plaques, tattooed SIR on their foreheads, and taken out a double spread in a national paper. I would teasingly call him Sir. Dr Zee. “Ayisha, stop this nonsense of yours,” he would say, “you don’t need to call me Sir.” He was also amazingly humble as a host. He forever fussed over

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people, making them tea and coffee, bringing them fruit, dried nuts, and biscuits. During a particularly rough patch, he would always phone me to ask if I was alright, and then invite me to the college for lunch: “My dear, I’ve just bought smoked salmon. Come and let me make you a sandwich. I can also offer you cheese!” And make the sandwiches he would - then forget to eat his own because of how busy he was. here wasn’t anything I couldn’t talk to him about - from the super-serious and contentious, to the embarrassing or the insignificant. Whether it was dream psychology, Islamic history, diet and weight loss (his, not mine!), or my personal issues, he was the man. With the exception of when he spoke in his Egyptian-Arabic (which I can’t understand), everything he said made sense. I think he’s the only man on the planet I haven’t been able to argue with on a difference of opinion. But then again, it wasn’t always easy to get a word in edgeways!

We once even conversed over the agonising dilemma of having to wet my hair for wudu, after having spent ages blow-drying it straight to remove the frizz. Thank God for Dr Zee. He saved the

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MEMORIAL

day on this one too! And before anyone mocks my wudu/hair query, he told me that many women had asked him the same question. Whereas others would have lectured airily on the sins of vanity, the supreme authority of hijab, and the necessity of Muslim women to look as unattractive as possible, he didn’t.

When people scorned me for wearing outfits they deemed “not appropriate” or “too colourful”, he would tell me how lovely he thought I looked. Women felt comfortable talking to him on many levels, and he never criticised or judged on the basis of what they wore or didn’t wear. He was adamant that young Muslim women needed to engage more within the social and political life of the country, and always encouraged me to partake in conferences and projects.

I know he would have done anything for me (as he would have for many). Even with the tightest of schedules, he would always slot me in. I could call him up at home, at the office or on his cell, at any time of night or day, and he would always be happy to talk.

One of his amazing qualities was that he never said no to people, whether he knew them well or not. No matter how exhausted or busy he was, he made time for all. I used to call him my fatwa-ontap. But in hind-sight, I acknowledge that I, like many, must have taken liberties with his time and generosity.

I once needed to speak to him, and he insisted on treating me to dinner at his gentleman’s club whilst we chatted. He was very excited about it. I however, brainlessly turned up wearing jeans and sneakers (forgetting the dress code), and was thus not permitted access. He jokingly scolded me and laughed it off, not in the least bit bothered that, because of me, he was subjected to bitter coffee and bad food elsewhere. He was beyond easy-going and always went with the flow. adored him, and his simple, yet meaningful “hello my dear how are you today?” was enough to cheer me up no matter how down I felt. He was like the grandfather I never really knew, and would always greet me with a warm hug. I joked this would result in a barrage of criticism from many a Muslim. His response was typical of him: “Frankly my dear, let them say what they want. I’m ancient.

I’m not doing anything wrong.” He didn’t seek to impress and he didn’t put on pretences.

The main visual image I hold of Dr Zee, nurtured by years of close family friendship, is that of an adorable old man, wearing thick rimmed glasses, and walking down the road towards the bus stop. In one hand he is carrying his briefcase, and in the other, a shopping bag filled with nuts and dried fruits.

No-ones death has ever affected me like his. I miss him immensely, and I have no doubt that he has forever etched a permanent mark on the hearts and lives of many. I feel a profound sense of loss, not only on a personal level, but also as a Muslim.

Amidst the grief of his death, I’ve heard repetitious ponderings coming from young and old, from those who knew him well and those who knew him briefly, from the religious and the secular: “who are we going to turn to now?” or “what are we going to do without him?” His death is a devastating blow to Muslims everywhere, and more so, to those in the UK. Individually many will suffer through lack of his being, and collectively, many of us are left in a sad disquiet, very anxiously aware of the vacuum that’s been left behind.

Dr Zee was extremely unique. Although this is what made him so amazing, it’s also the reason why we, as Muslims, will experience severe disadvantages without him.

He was and is, without a doubt, irreplaceable.

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A PIONEERING

VISIONARY RABBI JONATHAN MAGONET t is extraordinary how many people speak of Zaki Badawi as a friend. He had a warmth, a mixture of directness and empathy, that won you over. You felt valued and important in his presence.

We first met in the early years of interfaith dialogue.

Just as a few rabbis in the UK became increasingly called upon to ‘represent’ a sympathetic Jewish voice to the outside world, so Zaki became one of the first Muslims to take on that role on behalf of Islam. It is a tricky position. Both Jews and Muslims in Europe feel themselves as minorities under siege and prefer to show an idealised, ‘official’ version of themselves to others. Those willing to show the complexity of their own community, warts and all, meet suspicion from within, and often disbelief from the outside world that prefers to remain with its stereotypes. Zaki was able to tread that delicate, narrow path because of his wisdom, experience and obvious integrity. He could embrace ‘dialogue’ with Jews, and enjoy their friendship and love.

But at the same time he would be open and challenging in his views on Israel and the desperate plight of the Palestinians.

When we shared a public platform I soon discovered his technique. It was not simply politeness that made him insist that others spoke first. Rather it was his extraordinary ability to think on his feet, to understand the essential features of what others had said and find the words and sources that built upon them, to teach without ever being ‘preachy’. Part of his success lay in his wit and humour.

Given the reputation of Jewish jokes, we would sometimes tease one another and compete for the last word and the last laugh. He invariably won because it was such a pleasure to yield to him.

We compared notes on our respective roles as heads of seminaries, both beset by financial worries, both trying to raise up new generations of spiritual leaders who could offer a healing role in a society so fragmented and conflicted. He often said the he had tried to model the Muslim College on Leo Baeck College, and that was a source of great personal pride.

There is a line in the Jewish liturgy that would be a fitting epitaph for him. I am sure Zaki could trump it from a Muslim source, but sadly on this occasion I am the one who will have the last word. ‘We should be in awe of God in private as well as in public; speak the truth aloud and mean it in our heart.’

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Rabbi Professor Jonathan Magonet, Former Principal, Leo Baeck College-Centre for Jewish Education

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MEMORIAL

A LEADER OF HEARTS

GREAT FRIEND, GREAT TEACHER

SHAREEFA FULAT

SIDNEY L. SHIPTON

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he loss of Dr Badawi is irreplaceable both for the Muslim communities of Britain and wider British society. I have always admired and respected Dr Badawi as one of very few scholars in the west who are able to understand the teachings and spirit of Islam as well as the workings of western secular society. he apparent conflict between the two is something that young Muslims struggle with on a daily basis. And yet Dr Badawi had the unique and rare ability to effortlessly negotiate between the two and communicate the message of Islam in a manner that all could understand.

I first met him whilst working for FAIR, of which he was Chairman. I was initially slightly overwhelmed to have contact with such a reputable figure and someone I had held in high regard for so long. I was surprised to find that he treated me with the same warmth and respect as colleagues he had been working with for many years.

In a community where deference is expected of young people and disagreements often taken to be a sign of disrespect, Dr Badawi was open to hearing the views of all people, young or old. This made him uniquely approachable and no question too small for his attention. His unfailing sense of humour and gentle manner would reach out and warm you at every meeting. Despite all the organisations he was involved with or leading, the pressures on his time, the dignitaries and notables that had his attention, Dr Badawi always had the time for the average young person. Whether it was a brief salaam or a lengthier enquiry about health, family and work, Dr Badawi never failed to notice you as he passed.

Dr Badawi combined a clear pragmatism with unfailing compassion - a rare combination in the best of men. Where a deep and traditional scholarly background led others to be rigid and inflexible in their views, Dr Badawi was always open to questioning and reformulating answers to suit the needs and lives of real people with every day struggles. It was these qualities that led him to challenge the Muslim community on cultural attitudes and behaviours that were at odds with the spirit of Islam and in this, was one of our leading lights.

His unfailing energy in tackling the problems of society was unparalleled and an example for us all. What never failed to impress me was his ability to remain above party politics, and the internal wrangling of the Muslim community and seemed to me to observe them with a smile. At a time when basic etiquette seems to be failing in wider society, Dr Badawi always treated his fellow beings with complete dignity and respect, regardless of whether they agreed with him.

I know that for years to come, I will find myself facing questions that I would have liked to have asked him. May Allah (swt) grant him peace and the best of places in Jannah, and strength to those of us left behind to continue our struggles without his wisdom and kind counsel.

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Shareefa Fulat Director, Muslim Youth Helpline

Sidney L. Shipton OBE Co-ordinator of The Three Faiths Forum

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he sudden passing of Shaykh Dr MA Zaki Badawi has come as a great shock. I and indeed all of us who are involved in bringing “The People of the Book” together found his advice and leadership essential and so very apt.

When I became the Co-ordinator of The Three Faiths Forum, Muslim-Christian-Jewish Trialogue, my knowledge of the Muslim community was superficial (although I had been involved in interfaith work since my student days as a member of the Council of Christians and Jews). It was only since the beginning of 1997, when The Three Faiths Forum was established that I found myself on a learning curve which continues to this day, regarding Islam, the Muslim community in the UK specifically, and the ummah generally. It was Shaykh Dr Zaki Badawi (who I had the privilege of knowing as Zaki) who became my mentor.

In constant discussions and conversations with him and whilst travelling with him to national and international conferences, he gave me an insight into Islam, which I would never have obtained anywhere else. Zaki was my inspiration and my “guru”.

In life, it is said that no one is indispensable. To me Zaki is the exception that proves the rule. Who will replace him? Who will measure up to his wisdom, his humour and humility?

He was not only the Principal of the Muslim College where he taught his moderate philosophy to so many, but to so many others worldwide he was an example as well as a teacher. Zaki had decided views on many matters, and often disagreed with the so-called “Muslim Establishment”. He deplored Salman Rushdie’s infamous book, but did not agree with the fatwa that was put upon the author. He felt that Muslims should attend the National Holocaust Memorial Day commemorations. He felt that together we must fight Islamaphobia and Anti-Semitism. He knew that togetherness was the only way forward. He preached understanding and mutual respect. The appreciations and obituaries in the national press and the religious press, together with the flood of condolence messages we have received in The Three Faiths Forum office, are phenomenal. I cannot use the hackneyed expression, “He will be sorely missed,” because it is much more than that. Even His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, paid tribute to him when he addressed the conference of the Islamic Development Bank, which I attended in London on Thursday 26 January, a conference that Zaki was to have opened and chaired.

His funeral at the Central London Mosque was overflowing with so many, not only of the leadership of all faiths as well as large numbers of the Muslim community, but also of politicians, government officials, Ambassadors, and members of the Diplomatic Corp. Yes, Zaki touched so many hearts and minds.

Where will we find another Zaki Badawi? At this time, I do not know.

Zaki, we must try to live up to your standards. It will be difficult but I will try.

MEMORIAL

BEHIND THE PUBLIC MAN M MAHROOF f course they will be many memories of Shaykh Badawi as befitting a person of his stature. But many people like myself will cherish - and sorely miss - the personal touch and meaning the Shaykh gave to our lives. For the most dramatic moments with him were the private and intimate ones. I thank Shaykh Badawi for being there when we needed him most and for his nasiha (counsel) which he gave with much gusto and sensitivity. How many times has he helped rescue the weakest of hearts from the brink of insanity in this insane world.

For those of us who are in public office he was indispensable - a leader who provided both spiritual and practical guidance. In my 16 years in public office, nearly every other so-called representative of the Muslim community who walked through the doors did so with petty personal or organisational agendas and with little or no foresight or appreciation of the wider issues facing Muslims. Many have sat through entire meetings with influential, senior officials without uttering a single word, then had their tea and biscuit and left, only to go to another meeting on behalf of you and me! Little did they realise that those of us on the inside took hope in them and expected them to deliver some inspiration to those of us on the inside.

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ake some examples of us Muslim employees and the post 9-11 pressures, from within and without, facing many of my own colleagues. Attacked not only by fellow Muslim citizens for merely associating with authority, but also under increased contempt and suspicion from some of their own “friends” at work for being Muslim.

Imagine the intense atmosphere in a lift when a bearded Muslim walks in wishing to ascend to the upper floors of a secure government building, and the looks of contempt and suspicion that arise.

The cumulative effect of regular experiences like these often results in a helpless vacuum, devoid of any contextual spiritual guidance.

At times like these your average local Imam runs away in case he becomes implicated and does nothing to ease religious, moral, or ethical dilemmas that one can become trapped in at work. Whilst the world continues to go crazy with bombs going off on our own doorsteps, Muslims are busy accosting other Muslims in the streets and urging them to repent for the sin of working in public office.

Your average Imam continues to nod in apparent sympathy and shake his head in acknowledgement without a clue of what you are talking about, just like some of the mutes busy drinking tea on the inside whilst claiming to represent you and me.

It is at the most distressing of times that Shaykh Badawi’s perceptive assessment of situations and wisdom shone through each time. With the war on terror creeping ever closer to the doorstep of ordinary Muslims in Britain, so-called leaders are busy actively disengaging from dialogue with the police. Shaykh Badawi was one of the few men of any spiritual credibility who encouraged more dialogue not less. Having said that, let there be no doubt in anyone’s mind that Shaykh Badawi was no poodle to anyone in authority. He was a diplomat of the highest calibre and in his own style he was equally critical of official policies that ail young Muslims as anyone 60 years his junior. He could articulate the same sentiments as any one of them with only one difference; the Shaykh was on the

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inside achieving something whilst the others were busy waving fists and burning flags.

Shaykh Badawi captured the attention of the most senior of audiences and achieved more for the safety and security of ordinary Muslims than entire delegations can show in return for their regular meets and Earl Grey teas. aving been confronted on many occasions by the brainwashing rhetoric of the radical few who are eager to renew your Shahadah, Shaykh Badawi was one of the few people who you could turn to and bring contextual understanding to your dilemmas. He would quickly neutralise any rhetoric and bring reason to the unreasonable and instil rationale against irrational blurb of the few. Many of our remaining “representatives” who will continue to meet officialdom on behalf of you and me either don’t know the meaning of these words or simply cant’ spell them.

Others will continue to nod their heads in acknowledgement without a clue of what’s being said. Believe me I know - I’ve been there at those same meetings!

Without the Shaykh many of the meetings will be devoid of a certain charm and wit, and anyone who knew the work of the Shaykh behind the scenes will know that his departure is the loss of ordinary Muslims.

I will also miss his chastisements for not referring to myself as a “Moulana”. Whenever and wherever we met he would call out “Moulana!” and greet me with a hug and chastise me for not taking the title! I would beg him not to bestow on me an honour that this “faqir” did not deserve but he would still take my hand and announce to those that were present “this man is a Moulana”.

This is testimony of the great individual that he was. That a man of his spiritual stature never once felt a superiority complex, even when amongst mere “faqirs”.

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May Allah grant him Jannat-ul-Firdous.

M Mahroof Secretary General Asssociation of Muslim Police

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MEMORIAL

GREAT LOSS TO ALL REV DR MARCUS BRAYBROOKE

arlier on the evening when we heard the sad news of Dr Zaki Badawi’s sudden death, Mary and I had been looking through our Christmas cards. Among them was one from Z. and M. Badawi - and it was a Christmas card. Zaki was so confident in his own faith, that he could treat the faith of his friends with complete respect. He was, for example, prepared to participate in Holocaust Memorial day.

Friendship is at the heart of the growing interfaith movement.

Zaki was an interfaith pioneer and like many other pioneers he faced sharp criticism from some in his own community, but this did not deter him and he developed a great circle of friends from many faiths, who will miss him sorely.

Mary and I first got to know Zaki and Mavis nearly thirty years ago, when we invited him to speak at a conference of the World Congress of Faiths, of which later he became a VicePresident. I also asked him to preach at Christ Church, Bath, where I was vicar. Zaki was the first Muslim to preach to preach there.

Subsequently, the Mayor of Bath asked Zaki to speak at the city’s annual ‘Call to Prayer.’ As a result some Christians boycotted the event, but those who came were deeply moved by his charm and his words of peace.

Zaki soon realised that if Muslims were to feel at home in Britain, they needed leaders who understood the culture of the country. He established the Muslim College, so that imams could train in Britain. Zaki also insisted that they should learn something about other religions and I count it a privilege to have been asked to lecture on Christianity at the college. Zaki was also gracious enough to write preface for my book What Can We (Christians)

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Learn from Islam.

Indeed I have learned much about Islam from Zaki, especially at many meetings of the Three Faiths Forum, which with Sir Sigmund Sternberg and myself he helped to found. Interfaith dialogue takes many forms. Sometimes it is good if members of all religions meet together - for example for the annual Week of Prayer for World Peace. Sometimes members of two faiths - perhaps Christians and Muslims or Christians and Jews need to speak together. It is, however, particularly importance today that the three faiths, which honour Abraham, should understand each other and by dispelling ignorance and prejudice help to ensure that members of each faith community contribute to the well being of this country. I found it very moving after the London bombs that Jews, Christians and Muslims, came together in synagogues, mosques and churches, to share their grief and to pray for the bereaved and injured.

That this was possible is because Zaki and others have had the courage to offer the hand of friendship to people of other faiths.

We shall best honour Zaki’s memory by reaching out ours hands in friendship and ensuring that no one in our society feels marginalised or undervalued.

I pray that Mavis Badawi will find comfort in her sorrow from the knowledge that friends around the world share a sense of lost and hold her in their prayers.

Rev Dr Marcus Braybrooke, President of the World Congress of Faiths Co-Founder of the Three Faiths Forum.

MEMORIAL

AN AUTHENTIC REPRESENTATIVE OF

THE MIDDLE WAY JEREMY HENZELL-THOMAS had the enormous privilege to work with Dr Zaki Badawi through various organisations with which we were both involved, notably FAIR and the AMSS. In a way, it was fitting that I heard about his passing on my way to London last week to meet with Dr Anas al Shaikh-Ali, for it was through the AMSS that I also first met the man whom I came to love and respect as a living embodiment of so much that had first drawn me to Islam.

The occasion was the AMSS Muslims in Europe Conference in London in 2000, and Zaki had chaired the final session at which I had been asked to deliver the concluding remarks. I was struck not only by his immense authority and presence, so firmly rooted in knowledge, but even more so by his warmth, approachability, humanity and humour, his respect for the rights of women, his sheer good sense, balance, fairness, and fiercely intelligent and refreshing dismissal of pomposity, arid formalisms, rigid authoritarianism and parochial intolerance.

busy planting, giving freely and selflessly with an open hand, in the spirit of Qur’an 2:195: “And spend freely in God’s cause, and let not your own hands throw you into destruction; and persevere in doing good: behold, God loves the doers of good.”

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will leave it to others more qualified than me to chronicle Zaki’s matchless record in the field of public discourse as an authentic representative of the “community of the Middle Way” and as an exemplar of the finest expression of the Qur’anic spirit of pluralism which enabled him to bridge so many divides and find a place in the hearts of so many people, irrespective of their faith or culture.

I prefer simply to try to convey what he exemplified for me in the brief time that I knew him.

I started out with the impression he made on me when I first met him. But his sudden departure from this world affected me even more profoundly.

In the manner of his passing, he exemplified most perfectly the hadith of our beloved Prophet that “Should the last hour fall, and one of you has a date tree in his hand, he should plant it if he can manage to do so before the hour falls.”

In the last moments of his life, with his final breaths, Zaki was

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aki embodied for me and so many others that generous perseverance in doing what is good, in acting, interacting, relating, collaborating, consulting, engaging in discourse, participating, finding time for everyone, always ready to urge us to go beyond a narrow identity of exclusivity, withdrawal, isolation, confinement, radical detachment and disenchantment, and to expand beyond an introspective sense of victimisation into that greater identity which enables us to be with the greater community of our fellow human beings, both Muslims and nonMuslims. Above all, to contribute positively to our own society and to the welfare of all mankind. As our Prophet said: “The best one among you is the best one towards people.”

He taught me to avoid the trap of what he called “Scripturalism”, the study of texts subject to human interpretation yet divorced from context and circumstance, a process which can shackle us to unbending formalisms and inflexible conservatism, to sterile disputes about the law, its interdictions, prescriptions, prohibitions and rulings, ultimately the reduction of Islam to the beard and the scarf, and to the mountain of details which has been likened to looking at Islam through the wrong end of opera glasses.

The measure of the Zaki was that people loved him. I loved him as a friend, exemplar and mentor, as will so many people from all over the world who will surely throng to remember him.

May Allah bless and reward him and bring comfort to his family.

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Jeremy Henzell-Thomas St. Michel de Montjoie France

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MEMORIAL

“HIS DAILY EFFORT WAS FOR GOD” NUREEN SHAH-KAZEMI n these pages you will read about Sir Zaki Badawi’s many qualities; his sparkling intelligence, his quick wittedness, his tremendous foresight, his political acumen, his compassion, his depth of knowledge: a dazzling array of qualities worthy of praise and rare to find in one man -but what made him almost unique in this country, and in this day and age, was that Dr Badawi placed all these qualities at the service of his Maker. He was a deeply pious man; a man who - you were confident when in his company never forgot God. And when you understood that, you also understood that Dr Badawi knew that his many talents had to be for the benefit of enabling others to worship God; not for his own selfish or secret worldly ambition.

He never lost sight of the fact that his daily effort was for God, and not this or that short-term benefit. Among those mourning him are not only world leaders, religious authorities, but also, without exaggeration, thousands of men and women all over the world who benefited from his actions.

I had the great privilege of almost daily contact with him for three years when I was conducting my research on the Muslim (Law) Shariah Council, (MLSC). I would benefit from his insight into the political events of the day, and his remarkable ability to place them in context, and to understand their far-reaching impact on the Muslim community: his understanding of the potential pitfalls and strengths of our community have not been understood better, and his insights into our community, to which he was utterly devoted, will provide inspiration for many years to come; his reactions were fast and accurate, but not knee-jerk. He could think ahead, whilst taking stock of all the ramifications. But apart from this incisive global intelligence, he manifested a wise compassion, and a deep piety.

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he very fact that he was instrumental in setting up the MLSC is one of many examples of the above: in the early 1980s he had the courage to face head on the problem of marriage breakdown in the Muslim community, when to this day imams of many mosques bury their heads in the sand of iniquity. Despite the unpopularity of the issue (from the point of view of denial by the community and disfavour in the eyes of ‘sponsors’ in particular), Dr Badawi was compelled to do something for these Muslims, and Muslim women in particular; for the sole reason that he knew with a deep certitude that the Almighty God whom he worshipped could not condone such oppression. The seeds of his actions back then are still bearing fruit today at a time when many are waking up-albeit for many through selfinterested spin-to the benefits of speaking out for the oppressed of our community. I could read for myself when researching the files of the MLSC, how again and again, women (and men) poured out their hearts to him when faced with the trauma of marriage breakdown, and again and again, he counselled them in such a way as to strengthen their faith by reminding them of the true substance of their religion. He enabled them to benefit from the sunnah of the Prophet, which he knew so well and loved so deeply, by nourishing them with hadith, and was ever reinforcing his opinions by quoting Qur’anic ayah that allowed them to understand the true meaning of that fundamental Muslim description of the qualities of Allah: Al-Rahman and Al-Rahim. He was one man who could help me understand what Sayyiduna Ali wrote : “A true faqih is he who does not make people despair of the mercy of God’.

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LET ’S (NOT) TALK ABOUT

LOVE With a critically acclaimed new novel and BBC radio play, Sudanese-born Leila Aboulela ought to be resting on her laurels.

Not a chance.The award-winning author speaks to AIYSHA MALIK about finding her voice, writing as conversation and why the story of Imam Shamil Daghestani has got her so excited.

Just don’t ask her to talk about love.

EXCLUSIVE

eila Aboulela has trouble talking about love. She grows quiet, she looks away, she fumbles over her words - you think she is going to make a run for the door. For an author who is able to write about love - alternatively subtle and dangerous, tender and aching - with such restrained beauty, the reaction takes me by surprise. What’s wrong, Leila? She smiles, opens her mouth, closes her mouth and stops - again.

Her last novel, The Translator, explored the growing romance between a Scottish professor and a young, devout Sudanese Muslim widow. Aboulela wrote their relationship through conversations on the telephone, uneasy exchanges in the office, a chance brush of a hand against the fabric of hijab. In Minaret, she deals with the struggle of Najwa who fights against her attractions and her guilt and. Romance again is central to the story.

“In Sudan we were not allowed to speak about love and the

novice writers to be open minded about what you can write. You might not be good in a particular field or there may not be a market for it. The fiction I wrote got good response and so I decided to continue.”

Coloured Lights, her first collection of short stories, was published to critical acclaim in 1999 and the The Museum - the story of a young Sudanese student, her Scottish classmate and their uncomfortable attraction to one another - won the inaugural Caine Prize for African Literature. The stories in Coloured Lights were filled yearning and nostalgia, heartbreaking and often without resolution. The title story explored the overwhelming emotion of a woman on a London Routemaster remembering the painful loss of a relative in Khartoum told against the backdrop of the Christmas lights on The Strand. It is the bus that Aboulela herself took during her years studying at the London School of Economics.

Aboulela’s work often I like using things that only Muslims will understand like the Bismillah at explores a past that in unrecoverable and time that has long the beginning. Other readers won’t understand but it means a lot to passed. Coloured Lights is such a powerful collection precisely Muslims. It’s like I am sharing a secret with you guys. because it doesn’t hanker after a resolution to such longings.

We have all been on that cold, rainy day London bus when the three letter ‘s’ word was certainly out of the conversation. My windows steam up and the mind wanders. The character in children say it to me now and I say it’s a rude word and they say Aboulela’s story looks out on to a world that suddenly seems it’s not a rude word. But in Arab culture, we are encouraged to be strange. She takes the same route everyday. She ought to belong, shy. Hence why I don’t really speak about it and would rather but she doesn’t. write about it. I don’t use explicit things. Being too explicit is I ask Aboulela what she longs for. “We all long for jannah. overkill. There must be sweetness in love.”

You sense a glimpse of it when you are thinking about your homeAboulela is the antithesis of a commercial writer. She needs to land or when your parents approve of something that you do and be moved by her own words. She doesn’t have a formula for writthen you want it even more. I miss Sudan, but I haven’t been back ing emotions, but insists that when her characters feel intensely, in a long time. My children are growing up here so I have to see “it should make me cry as well. That’s how I judge it.” life through their eyes and they have not been to Sudan. The Her journey as a writer began in during her childhood in the yearning for my ‘homeland’ is my own.”

Sudan where she attended an American school. “I was 7 and it There is a simple honesty in Aboulela’s answers and was very unusual for a Sudanese girl to go to an American school, demeanour. At a recent reading at London’s South Bank Centre, but my mother was very attracted to the American educational Aboulela was interviewed on-stage by a literary critic who asked system,” she says laughing. “There were few Sudanese children long, complicated questions about postmodernism, theology and there. The first books I read were titles like Harriet the Spy, The identity politics. She answered without pretension and didn’t conDiary of Anne Frank, and A Wrinkle in Time - titles which almost trive responses on areas she was clearly not comfortable addressall North American schoolchildren know. Later I went to an ordiing. The interviewer was frustrated. Some audience members mutnary private girl’s school and then Khartoum University, but all tered. Leila Aboulela smiled. She’s not keen to play the part of the my education was in English and while I didn’t write during this tortured migrant writer that so appeals to urban literary set. period I loved reading English literature.”

Journalists can be cynical too, but Aboulela’s writing breaks Aboulela lives between worlds - Sudan, Britain, Dubai and through the reader’s cynicism. She makes a connection. beyond. Like so many writers it was the experience of migration “Having lived here since 1987, there have been a lot of times and war that got her thinking about writing. “I got married, came when Muslims have been angry about certain issues, but anger here, had children and this movement between continents and this doesn’t seem to work and you are left with sadness because you transition to a new life made me want to write. It was the time of couldn’t change what you wanted to change. I reflect that struggle the first Gulf War and there was a lot of anti-Arab and antiin my work.”

Islamic sentiment in the media. I was young and I was angry. I wanted to write back. I wanted to respond and I couldn’t, because I felt I didn’t have the knack to pull the right words together. I ith her colourful hijab, stylish jacket and skirt and wanted to write like Ziauddin Sardar but I couldn’t. I started to an A-list publisher (Bloomsbury) some would see write anyways and out would come fiction and internal dialogues.

Aboulela as a poster woman for the “Muslim novI tried anyways to write non-fiction and even sent an article to Qelist” - a head-scarfed activist wielding the pen as News which got rejected - it was a piece about Khadijah, the her sword in the fight to represent Islam.

Prophet’s wife. So if Q-News was going to reject me, I hardly On this point she is adamant. “No. I want to reach as large think the Guardian would have been interested. So I went down audience as possible but I don’t know who will like the book. the fiction route.”

Sometimes it’s a personality thing. Some people may like very poetA rejection from Q-News? I told Aboulela that I would take it ic, complicated prose. Whereas Minaret is very simple, down to up with the publisher. There are no hard feelings, she insists. “I tell earth. I just offer it to the world and whoever enjoys it will enjoy it

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EXCLUSIVE

produce high quality work. You must be aware of your audience and but at the same time I will have little things that some people will not use every opportunity for pro-Islamic propaganda.” appreciate.”

As a mother Aboulela is deeply concerned about young British “There was a terrible review about Minaret, where the reviewMuslims. Her own son now studies in Aberdeen. Her own children er says ‘Leila does not make it clear whether religion is a good thing as more British, than they are anything else. “Young people must or a bad thing.’ She was terribly confused and couldn’t understand resist polarising themselves - living two lives, wearing two faces. what the book was about. I see no reason to make things like reliThat is difficult and conflicting and it can be very difficult. They gious identity simple, when it isn’t. Muslims will find things in the need to try and make it fit together. The problem with young people book which other people wouldn’t be able to find. I like doing that. is that they care what others think of them. And you don’t realise I like using things that Muslims will understand like the Bismillah until you are much older that that it doesn’t really matter. It requires at the beginning. Other readers won’t understand that but it means maturity to get over that and not care what other people think about a lot to Muslims. I like having different conversation with different that. Parents need to get over the disappointment that their children readers - it’s a juggling act. It’s like I am sharing a secret with you are not going be like them. Nothing hurts the child more than guys which I am not sharing with others.” parental disappointment. It’s crushing. They have to encourage their I mention a scene from Minaret where Najwa is tidying up tapes children in a very difficult situation.”

by Egyptian preacher Amr Khaled. Aboulela eyes sparkle, “Exactly.

All the readers don’t have to know everything. That’s part of the enjoyment I get out writing.” boulela has been busy since completing Minaret. Her I decide that it’s time to try the love question again: is that why radio play on the life of Imam Shamil Daghestani predo you choose to explore forbidden love in your novels? miered on BBC Radio 3 in July and she now plans to “I am not sure it is forbidden love in Minaret so much as it is in turn the story into her first work of historical fiction.

The Translator, where you could say it was forbidden there because The radio play turns around the kidnapping of a Russian princess he was non-Muslim and it’s not certain he would convert. In in retaliation for the kidnapping of Imam Shamil’s own son when Minaret, Najwa had this relationship with Anwar. They could have he was just an 8 year-old. The romance and grandeur of the story got married but he couldn’t be bothered but they lived together has her excited. which is forbidden. It was forbidden love but more forbidden rela“Imam Shamil’s son was raised a Christian and he was hearttionship.” broken. He resisted Russian advances for thirty years and in the The same kind of forbidden relationship was explored in end they finally surrounded him and gave him an ultimatum: surMonica Ali’s Brick Lane, but Aboulela feels that she is doing somerender or we kill all the civilians loyal to you. He had a choice thing different. between martyrdom and surrender, and he chose the latter for his “From the bookshop point of view, my books are in the same people. Eventually, he got the permission to do the hajj by the category as Brick Lane and Reading Lolita in Tehran. I am very Russians and he died in Madinah and is buried in al-Baqi cemetery. aware of this genre. I’m also aware what I am doing is different. I It’s like he went back to his spiritual home. When Christian writam not a secular person writing about religious people. I address the ers write about him they say that he is buried in Madinah but his characters as a Muslim. The issues are shaped by what Islam teachspirit is in the Caucuses but we knows that it is not true. Madinah es me. It’s the same with Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. He was a Christian writer. She The problem with young people is that they care what others think of commits adultery, she dies them.You don’t realise until you are much older that it doesn’t really underneath a train. That’s his logic. Nowadays, secular writmatter what other people think. ers talk about women who commit adultery and then afterwards they say she is liberated. There is a logic to the narrative that is where he wanted to be.” comes from the belief of the narrator. So if a practicing Muslim We finish our coffee and Aboulela begins gathering her papers, writer writes a story about an adulteress, she cannot be liberated by fixing her hijab as we wander outside for photographs. American the end of the story. The story has to have a logic. My logic comes talk television queen Oprah Winfrey has a unusual way of ending from my faith.” her interviews. She chooses seven words and asks her guests to Did she ever feel pressure to fit into this genre of writing? respond with the first thing they think of. It’s often very revealing.

“Never. What people want is a good story. When you despair and Aboulela readies herself. get rejections, you feel depressed. You think, ‘this is happening because I am a Muslim.’ Is that true or not? Frankly, I don’t care.

“West,” I say. “East”, she responds.

You have to be good at your craft first. I didn’t have anything to Woman. “Interior.” model myself on as a Muslim writer in English. Islamic artist can Writing. “Pain.” model themselves on master calligraphers. In English, you have Sudan. “Space.” many Christian writers like C.S. Lewis who were devout and London. “History.” showed their faith in their writings. People don’t notice a lot of Prayer. “Begging.” overt Christianity in his fiction. We can do the same and have other Q-News. “Colours” people read them.”

“Love?” I try one last time. She smiles and says nothing.

In some ways Aboulela is a quintessential product of Britain.

“In this country I began to think about my religion for myself and Minaret is published by Bloomsbury. Leila Aboulela now lives for my children. I wanted to be Muslim. There is fairness here. with her husband in Dubai.

People are willing to give you a chance if you are sincere and if you

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BOOK REVIEW

DISTORTED DESIRES Raneem Azzam finds Leila Aboulela’s new novel authentic, lyrical and captivating - a story of religious transformation that is a welcome stitch in the growing tapestry of Western Muslim culture. ometimes it seems as though every Muslim is born smack in the middle of a pre-existing ideological debate. Conceived in colonialism, a trying labour ejects us into a world of class politics, national displacement, religious uncertainty, and we are left to choose our positions. Maybe the search for what is commonly called “identity” is in fact a search for security, a return to the womb that “sheltered us, gave us warmth and food.”

In her second novel, Minaret, Leila Aboulela’s protagonist Najwa, finds herself weaving through the modern Muslim’s ideological maze. In this story about loss and falling, pride and shame, estrangement and security, Aboulela explores how a single woman’s trials resign her to a humble working-class life, made peaceful only by faith and community.

Najwa is raised in the affluent world of the Sudanese bourgeoisie.

The daughter of a high-ranking government official, she lives her youth in the privilege, decadence and security of upper class Khartoum. Although her life is comfortable and happy, she finds herself on occasion remembering “pain like a wound that had healed, sadness like a forgotten dream.” Her complacent outlook is intermittently shaken by her attraction to a young Marxist named Anwar and by her bewildering envy of the religious students in her university, but it is not until the coup of 1985 that her life faces major upheaval. Her father is imprisoned, family forced into exile in London, and she “comes down in the world.”

The plot carries us powerfully through recollections of her breezy days in Khartoum, her first bleak years in London, and her strained yet hopeful present. Najwa’s journey is honest and compelling.

During her youth in Khartoum, she attends swanky parties and listens to Western music. She gossips with her best friend Randa and hopes to be perceived as modern and daring. She starts seeing Anwar, a young man beneath her family’s class standards and a member of the left-wing Democratic Front. When he asks of her political views, she says, “I don’t have any. Everyone seems to blame everyone else.”

Beneath what would seem to be shallowness, however, there is compassion and a longing for a deeper experience that she can’t define. As a child she was inclined to give money and jewellery to the less privileged (while she gave less when under the critical eye of her brother, who “hated beggars”). She mentions feeling awkward around the “modest grace” of the provincial girls who observe hijab, “pure white cotton covering their arms and hair.” Sometimes she is struck with guilt for not praying and feels a “stab of envy” while watching others in prayer.

When the government in which her father serves is overthrown, Najwa’s life is uprooted. While plummeting through social and spiritual degradation after her family’s exile, Najwa’s story becomes even more absorbing. Her feelings of isolation are compounded by the anonymity of London. Reflecting on the absence of judgment in Western society, Najwa observes that “A few years back becoming

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pregnant would have shocked Khartoum society, given my father a heart attack, dealt a blow to my mother’s marriage… And now nothing, no one. This empty space was called freedom.” After the deaths of each of her parents and the incarceration of her brother for serious street crimes, she must accept her modest station as a subdued and deferential house maid. Her loneliness leaves her longing to be the family’s concubine. Amazed at her own “warped self and distorted desires”, she wants “life-long security and a sense of belonging”.

The story is permeated by imagery of decline. “The earth we were standing on split open and we tumbled down and that tumbling... seemed to have no end, as if we would fall and fall for an eternity without ever landing.” Najwa loses family, wealth, status and finally, honour. Tradition and virtue are disintegrating from the canvas of her life. She becomes sexually involved with her boyfriend, saying “I knew that I would give in to that side of me that was luxurious and lazy, that needed to be stroked and pampered.” She is demoralised by feelings of guilt. Shame lowers her to a new depth of hollowness when she realises she has forgotten about Ramadan and, finally, she begins to make adjustments.

Finding stable ground in her life isn’t easy. She struggles through feeling “bleak” and “numb” at hearing the Quran or the adhan. After her first visit to the mosque, she says, “I sat hunched on the floor, knowing I wasn’t good, knowing I was far away and just taking the first step in coming here still wasn’t enough.” Gradually her visits to the mosque energise her and give her hope, in spite of her regrets: “I would leave the mosque refreshed, wide awake and calm, almost happy.” She finally finds her long desired comfort in the community of women at the mosque and also in the companionship of her employer’s young religious brother, Tamer. Their friendship raises a final question that she must reconcile, carrying her story to a startling conclusion.

Aboulela presents a poignant commentary on political Islam through the type of devotion exemplified by her religious characters specifically Najwa and Tamer. They complain that “unless you’re political, people think you’re not a strong Muslim.” They identify themselves only as Muslims, to the exclusion of other national or political affiliations. They are “too simple for this time and place” and want to go back to “a time of horses and tents; swords and raids.” Their innocent and idealistic answers to complex ideological questions are characteristic of the newly faithful. Like Najwa, many of us have sought belonging and sanctuary outside of sectarian clutches, political clashes, and social confusion.

Aboulela’s characters have a familiar yet fresh resonance. If we are not Najwas or Omars, Anwars or Tamers, we’ve met people who have journeyed as they have. They are human and distinct but present to us a range of archetypal Muslim perspectives and experiences.

With Minaret, Aboulela brings a long-anticipated work of fiction.

This novel is an important stitch in the growing tapestry of Western Muslim culture. Like all good art, it presents with beauty and insight the things we already think and feel. Aboulela’s achievement is impressive - a story of religious transformation that is authentic, lyrical, captivating. It explores the spiritual and political themes with which we’ve all been challenged and concludes that maybe all we want is to feel secure.

Qalam 2005 PRIZE FOR LITERATURE

IN SEARCH OF A

MUSLIM LITERATI

JUDGES DR ROGER BOASE is a Research Fellow at Queen Mary College, University of London, and formerly a Professor at the University of Fez, Morocco, with research interests in Muslim Spain, Spanish fifteenth-century poetry, and interfaith relations. He has recently edited Islam and Global Dialogue: Religious Pluralism and the Pursuit of Peace (Ashgate, 2005) and is the author of The Origin and Meaning of Courtly Love and with Aisha Ahmad, Pashtun Tales from the Pakistan-Afghan Frontier.

“I have recently read After Terror: Promoting Dialogue among Civilizations, a collection of essays by leading world figures on ‘the causes and implications of 9/11’, edited by Akbar Ahmed and Brian Forst (Polity Press). At the moment I’m reading The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain

by María Rosa Menocal (Little Brown).”

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When Isla Rosser-Owen first thought of starting the Qalam initiative - an online discussion forum for aspiring and established Muslim writers, poets, playwrights, and those interested in literary pursuits - she had no idea how popular or widespread Muslim creative writing in the English language was, or would become. Now with the awarding of the first Qalam Prize for Literature, she feels she is on the cusp of starting a literary revolution.

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t had all started one autumn day in 2002 when, frustrated by my own experiences signing on at the Job Centre, I ended up writing Monologue of an Unemployed Ghost, the first short story I had written in some years. Intended to be a rather cynical, if satirical, commentary on our current social state, it ended up evoking a whole spectrum of unanticipated feelings.

After my cathartic effort, which in hindsight could do with an extensive re-write, I remembered the internal benefits that could be gained from creative expression: you could share something of yourself, something that came from the heart, but from being positioned in a protective bubble, having some anonymity. You get to say what you really want to say through someone else’s mouth. You can be as subtle or as obscure as you wish, and feel less vulnerable and less reluctant to share those feelings when you can put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard.

Having rediscovered my love of writing in this way, following years of journalistic work which had become stale and with which I had become disenchanted, I wanted to join some creative writing groups but within the cosy nest of Muslim hospitality. It was not that I dismissed non-Muslim initiatives, but as someone just beginning I felt a bit too shy to wear my heart on my sleeve and declare myself to the world. Much like others who now join Qalam, I was looking for a starting point and a place where I would be nurtured, and not judged.

I searched the internet for a place where I could share my work, and also get advice and feedback. I couldn’t at that time find any website or discussion forum for Muslim writers or poets. And so, mainly for selfish reasons I’m ashamed to say, I founded the Qalam forum in order to find out what kind of scope was out there for creativity in the Muslim community. I had no idea that there were many experienced Muslim poets who had been writing for years, and slowly I came across more and more writers from vari-

ous backgrounds dabbling in all sorts of literary pursuits: poets on our condition, on love, war, pain, betrayal; playwrights, novelists, and short story writers.

Having studied classical and modern Arabic literature at university, it wasn’t exactly a revelation that creativity existed within the Muslim community, but what was surprising was the extent to which Muslims were beginning to write creatively in the English language, and not only that, they were mainly what could be termed writers from the ‘diaspora’: the second and third generation children of migrants, writers in exile, and a great number of converts. I was beginning to discover, and hoped to become a part of, a growing trend in writing - one which is still largely unrecognised: that of Muslim creative writing in the West or about the West. An inevitable consequence of our modern condition.

Qalam has no monopoly on this trend. We cannot claim to be doing everything that needs to be done to support this emerging genre, but we continue to grow and to learn from each other. One thing I have noticed is that while the forum may occasionally be quiet - the creative hand cannot be forced and daily life often interferes - the website that showcases some of our work for public consumption (www.qalamonline.com) has a heavy through-flow of cyber traffic. It seems to have filled a gap, requests for new material rarely cease, and we are being increasingly sought after by related groups to take part in collaborative efforts. Although it has met some resistance from certain parties now is the time, they claim, for reality and not fiction - interest in Muslim creative expression is growing, and not only within Muslim circles. We now receive submissions from non-members and from all parts of the globe.

One thing that is becoming more and more evident is the real lack of literacy skills within the English-speaking Muslim communities, and, by extension of that, the great lack of confidence that many Muslims have with regard to self-expression, and not only in a creative sense but in everyday life. To what extent this is a general phenomenon, or whether it reflects a specific situation within minority communities who tend to be from more deprived backgrounds, is hard to say. I personally have received countless requests to review statements, articles, press releases, stories, poems, or even personal letters, in order to check that they make sense, are grammatical, or that they’re fit to be read.

Many of them don’t need any work with the author simply requiring reassurance, but many do reflect a poor grasp of basic English, and I sense a growing frustration within some writers who have many brilliant ideas but who often lack the tools to express them as they would wish to.

While some of those hoping to become poets and fiction-writers are simply too lazy to read, research and learn from other writers first, I would say that the main obstacle to this striving for Muslim creative literary expression is a fundamentally low self-esteem at an individual and a community level, which has manifested itself in so many other ways.

These sorts of issues have opened up new and important roles for groups like Qalam, which is no longer relevant simply as a quaint website for showcasing occasional poems, stories and book reviews (plays rarely feature). Its sphere of influence needs to expand into far more proactive initiatives which will encourage and improve Muslim creativity, and which will, at a very basic level, help Muslims to gain the confidence and skills they need to express themselves for day-to-day purposes. This negligible level of literacy is fundamental in holding back Muslim communities from becoming a more empowered and less marginalised element of their host societies.

LEILA ABOULELA is the author of critically acclaimed The Translator and a book of short stories, Coloured Lights, which contained her story The Museum, which made her the first winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing.

Her latest novel, Minaret (Bloomsbury), is reviewed on page 33. Leila’s radio play The Lion of Chechnya aired on BBC Radio 3 in July 2005. She lives between Dubai and Aberdeen. Back at home after a busy book tour, Leila is reading Dostoevsky’s Crime & Punishment and The Sabres of Paradise by Lesley Blanch a fascinating biography of a Muslim hero - the 19th century warrior Imam Shamyl who united the tribes of the Caucasus to fight a jihad against Russian colonial expansion.”

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK is a contributing editor at Q-News and recently completed an MSc study of the Muslim voluntary sector in Britain at the London School of Economics (LSE). He is a experienced journalist who served from 1998 to 2003 as a religion columnist to The Toronto Star and has worked for a number of media organisations. His radio documentary Ramadan at Ground Zero was nominated for a prestigious Peabody Award.

He recently re-discovered the pleasures of reading The New York Review of Books.

JIBRIL HAMBEL is Managing Editor of Islamica Magazine, based in Amman, Jordan.

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his is why visions for Qalam’s future will include its formal formation as a charity in order to work with established writers, poets, and playwrights to plot the way forward. Literacy workshops, particularly amongst our youth, need to be held on a regular basis. Moreover, there is a wealth of literary heritage just waiting to be appreciated. Those writers who have already found their voice will also need help in getting published. This year’s prize was the first step in this direction. It was intended not just to source new writing, but to find ways of raising the standard of literary expression within the Muslim communities, and to create opportunities for otherwise ignored Muslim writers.

The prize was very well-received, and even those who failed to enter still sent in supportive messages pleading for more such projects. Most of our entrants were young, most of them reflecting marginalisation in some form or other. Many took it as an opportunity finally to say what they truly felt, often expressions of deeply-felt emotions or experiences, which they had otherwise not been able to articulate. In other contexts Q - NEWS

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FATIMA MARTIN studied Arabic and Islamic Studies at Vienna University. She worked as a translator and teacher before completing an MA in Creative Writing at Middlesex University. Her novel (unpublished) When the Mountains are Scattered as Dust has been short-listed for the Dundee Prize of Fiction 2004 and the New Writing Ventures 2005. She lives in Surrey with her husband and three teenage children.

“I have just finished reading Vienna by Eva Menasse in German (the English translation is out soon), a novel about identity featuring an Austrian family with partly Jewish roots. I think ‘who am I?’ is one of the most important questions to ask. I am now reading A Short History of Myth by Karen Armstrong who argues that Mythos must be given its true recognition within our society as an equally valid and complimentary means to knowledge as Logos.”

OVIDIO SALAZAR is a director/producer with Matmedia in London.

A native of California, he has been involved in documentary films for over twenty five years. His recent film Al-Ghazali: The Alchemist of Happiness recently won prizes at the Trento International Festival for Cinema and Religion and the Golden Minbar Festival Kazan, Russia.

“Amongst the books I am currently reading are a new translation of Gulshan-iRaz - The Garden of Mystery of Mahmud Shabistari (soon to be published by Archetype). I am also going back over Sergei Eisenstein’s Film Form: Essays in Film Theory. He wasn’t only one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, but also a brilliant film theorist. To keep developing as a filmmaker, it is always good to keep thinking seriously about it as an art.”

they would probably not have been listened to. Governments, community elders and mosque committees are rarely moved by fiction and poetry.

I chose the theme “Pens and Swords” because I thought it adequately reflected our current condition, dominated on the one hand by propaganda machines and on the other by conflicts. This perhaps accounts, however, for a resounding air of melancholia that seemed to dominate most of the material submitted, particularly the poems.

Submissions focussed on frustration over war and conflict in the Muslim world; some entrants dealt with disaffection towards Western society, the way people dressed or behaved; others were simply more poignant messages of love, or of self-discovery; and, as is to be expected, a large number spoke of nature, Islamic values, the Prophet Muhammad, and Allah Almighty.

Our current post-9/11, post-7/7 existence as Muslims living in the West inevitably came up. I enjoyed this extract from Sarah Mauthoor’s entry Bag at the Station: Mr Policeman, I know I look suspicious, With a scarf on my head And a big bulgy bag. …I have nothing to hide.

It’s summer, So you’ll find a pair of sunglasses And an umbrella of course, A bottle of water, maybe an apple.

In her poem Somewhere, Raneem Azzam wrote: Somewhere we learned to be cradled by despair We learned to throw tantrums and grenades We learned to lay down our lives before standing for justice Somewhere our virtue imploded (along with buses and towers and planes)…

Others, like Afifa Sutherland’s The Heron, took on a more mystical tone: A heron finds it hard to walk easily in this world but when we fly, my brother when we fly it is all happiness from Him who loves us.

The poem that perhaps left the most lasting impression on me came from Bosnia.

Pens and Swords was dedicated to Mirza Sarajkic’s grandfather, who was killed in the conflict: Beneath hill-full of lilies, On a green spring grass, Remembrance of you lies Telling me that you are a hero Killed by neighbour’s sword. …They changed swords for pens Telling us: “Nothing happened” Turning our people To plain numbers That somehow on this planet remained.

Heart-wrenching stuff.

When I was judging for other competitions run by the Andalusia Prize for Literature (Canada), and by the Islamic Writers’ Alliance (America), I noticed similar themes and techniques. The occasional flash of brilliance, but for the most part there was work to be done. It is probably safe to say that these characterise popular Muslim writing in

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English for the time being, perhaps inevitable as writers tend to focus on what is going on around them, or on what is important to them, and use the modes of expression that they are familiar with.

With the short stories, while some of the writers seemed to have difficulty in maintaining quality of style and originality, I was able to enjoy some of the best opening paragraphs and one-liners. Probably my favourite entrée came from Paul Sutherland’s The Mosque Attendant. Its concise style and use of language captivated me from the very first sentence: “By the Lefke Mosque I met a man. His wide drifting hands shook mine over a low wall. Browned, we exchanged greetings - me in un-Turkish, he un-English. He knew I was English and from his pocket took a many times folded, perfectly squared piece of lined paper. I opened it like a strange flat flower. I glanced up at him inside the Mosque’s sacred ground with its adhan’s minaret right behind him, just taller than whitish green leaves and a high palm’s barky tower.”

Many of the stories were themed around the writers’ travels. Ismaeel Nakhuda’s Journey on the Bombay Express was another story I liked: “Smooch! The large Indian woman dressed in traditional attire landed a sloppy kiss on my sweaty exhausted face.”

Seeing how people phrase their sentences and how they come up with evocative, clever descriptions for otherwise banal things never ceases to fascinate me, and there were some gems to be found in this year’s submissions. One of the best examples came from 14-year-old Nawab Omara of Banbury, Oxfordshire. Nawab’s sentence, “darkness chases them like a flock of eagles”, I think is one of the most imaginative phrases of this year’s offerings. Another opening I found poignant was from Yasmine Khadija Hussain of UAE, who in Learning About Swords and Pens talks of post-9/11 reactions, one of the few short stories to do so: “I remember precisely when the taunts started, the blank stares, the downright dirty looks, the feeling of being different”.

Daoud Rosser-Owen - my own father, who entered the prize anonymously ‘to show willing’ - claims to have invented a whole new genre with his entry: that of the ‘reviewshort story’, in his musings on one of Terry Pratchett’s latest books (Terry Pratchett being his favourite person in the world at the moment). I’m singling out this paragraph, though, from his Caffe Thoughts, as I do really like the slightly quirky use of language here, and the bizarre association of ideas: “His mind wasn’t so much ‘chewing the cud’ as drifting over ideas, taking a casual peek at each as it floated past. In between sips of tea, and bites of panettone, it had a good gander at some of the more predictable ones. “The Pen is mightier than the Sword” came in for a fairly irreverent treatment, personified as it was to him by a broadsword wielding Viking squaring up to a Lindisfarne monk complete with quill.”

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he important factor, I feel, that has emerged from this and other such prizes is that so many people are striving to find a voice, an outlet for their frustrations, or indeed far more positive emotions and world views. What we as a community have to do is to help them get there, otherwise what other outlets will they find? And as I noted above, creative or reflective writing can be a much-needed catharsis, a therapy, as well as a useful skill to harness; something an aggrieved individual, or indeed community, could no doubt benefit from.

Another thing that this prize has shown is the sheer delight that the winners and those given honourable mentions have expressed, and the sense of achievement that they have felt. One of them, Yasmine Messaoudi, is just 16 years old, and I truly hope it has given her the boost of confidence she may have been looking for to encourage her to carry on writing, as I think that she will go far if she does.

Writers like Leila Aboulela, and poets like Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore, both of whom Qalam was privileged enough to have as its prize judges, show us the kind of award-winning talent that we do have in our communities, and the kinds of standards that can be achieved once we try hard enough.

We need our own literati - there is a conspicuous dearth of decent ‘Muslim literature’ in the English language - and they will inevitably develop, one day. We currently have the people and the ideas to form the basis of a literary movement, and we have pricked the public’s interest. We now need to develop the mechanism and networks to carry it forward. But much more than that, we need to equip our youth with the basic literacy skills they will need to succeed in life. We can either help them or hinder them.

I choose to help.

DANIEL ABDAL-HAYY Moore’s poetry has appeared in such magazines as Zyzzva, The City Lights Review, and The Nation. His recent books include The Ramadan Sonnets (City Lights) and The Blind Beekeeper (Syracuse University Press). To date, he has over 50 manuscripts of poetry. Also a playwright, Moore’s work can be found at www.danielmoorepoetry.com.

“I am reading The Pilgrimage of Ahmad, an account of a 19th Century pilgrimage from Mauritania to Mecca (a lucky Xerox I made years ago, since it’s way out of print); and the poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, for those doses of linguistic and spiritual ecstasy that keep the heart supple and the mind athletic.”

YAHIYA EMERICK works with The Islamic Foundation of North America. He converted to Islam in 1989 and has since devoted his time to writing books for children, including novellas and school textbooks.

Yahiya has worked in full-time Islamic schools for almost fifteen years now. Besides the Quran, which he reads daily, Yahiya recent reads include Starfarers, a classic science fiction novel by Poul Anderson, and the Anthology of Islamic Literature by James Kritzeck.

SARAJI UMM ZAID is an acclaimed blogger and writer in Boston. She loves a fountain-poured Dr Pepper and a halal cheeseburger and is currently at work on new poetry and a guidebook for converts to Islam. You can visit her blog at www.sunnisisters.com.

“I have recently been reading Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare by Philip Short and 20th Century Russian Poetry: Silver and Steel, an Anthology selected by Yevgeny YevtushenkoYevtushenko and edited by Albert C. Todd and Max Hayward.

Russian poetry has it all and I need something to jump start my own writing.”

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TAKING AN AXE TO THE FROZEN SEA Fatima Martin and her fellow short story judges had little difficulty deciding the winners for the Qalam Prize, but they commiserated at length about how to push eager and imaginative young writers to respect the writing process.

Armed with Kafka and a commitment to the craft, Martin warns that extraordinary writing isn’t the result of just inspiration, but exacting, painful and consistent effort.

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fter reading the short story entries I was expecting a lot of discussions and disagreements over the winning stories. We all know that literary taste is utterly subjective.

However, to my surprise, we more or less agreed which were the stories that touched us most. The biggest discussion we had was whether to disqualify entries that had not stuck to the 1,000 word limit. In the end we decided it would be unfair not to. It is easier to write a good story in more words than less.

The majority of you selected serious and compelling themes, engaging frequently with the tensions currently experienced by Muslims the world over. You knew what you wanted to say but unfortunately you were not always able to say it. Fiction writing has its own rules. In fiction there is no place for a lecture, for an opinion piece, or for a self-righteous or pompous authorial voice. Fiction deals with the big themes through the specific, the individual. Every story has to be grounded in time and place. We want to know details: are they sitting in the dentist’s waiting room or the beach hut, is he wearing his suit or his skateboarding trousers? We want things to happen, but we are not looking for melodrama.

Most of the time it is better to make the ordinary appear extraordinary. We do not want events portrayed in the voice of a journalist but the voice of the character or the narrator who is right there watching every movement of the protagonist.

Many of the stories we read could clearly be classified as a first draft. Sending them to a competition indicates that the writers were not aware of their shortcomings. It was obvious to us that most of you are not reading enough.

Reading is a prerequisite to writing. We want to tell all of you: read, read and read some more. Read the classics, read contemporary fiction, read good translations of the classics of other languages. Never choose your authors by their religion but only by their literary merit.

Kafka who expressed succinctly fiction’s main purpose: “A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.” Maybe I would give it a gentler metaphor, “A book must be as powerful as the sun, melting the frozen sea inside us,” but the demand remains the same. Something in the reader has to

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move, has to change, after having read your book or story. It is exactly in this moment of thawing that the pen becomes mightier than the sword.

How do we achieve this quality in writing?

Some writers want to make us believe that it is a question of reading a lot, and inspiration will do the rest. I don’t agree with that. Writing, and I am talking here specifically about prose writing, is a craft that most writers have to learn. Would you teach a carpenter by telling him to go and look at beautiful furniture? At least an apprentice carpenter could watch a master at work, but no aspiring writer will ever find out how writing is done by watching a writer in action. I would advise you to join writing classes and courses, where you will be given the tools for your craft and shown how to use them. You can make a start by reading books such as The Art of Fiction by David Lodge, or Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande, although these books by themselves will not be enough. You need somebody to give you feedback on your writing. Don’t ask your family or friends, unless they are writers or have a degree in English literature. Feedback needs to be specific, needs to tell you exactly what is wrong with a piece. In the past the editor of your publishing house would have been the one to teach you, to suggest the cuts and the rewrites, to point out overwriting and underwriting, both of which contribute to boredom in the reader. Nowadays publishers don’t want to know writers who need too much editing, they expect you to learn your craft somewhere else.

In my opinion writing is ten percent inspiration, the rest is hard work. Whole chapters, whole stories have to be abandoned, or rewritten many times before they appear in their final form. Continue reading and writing, and take comfort in the old wisdom that to learn a new skill takes seven years of full-time dedication. The most important thing is to accept that no first draft is ever perfect, that rewriting is the most commonly used tool of the writer.

Fatima Martin wrote this submission on behalf of the her colleagues on the Qalam Prize 2005 short story jury: Leila Aboulela, Yahiya Emerick and Abdul-Rehman Malik.

SHORT STORY FIRST PRIZE

The Snow Shaker Irshad Ashraf

n the southern tip of Spain, where Europe meets Africa, is a small town called Tarifa. The beach is too windy to sit on, the sea too violent to swim in. Tarifa attracts windsurfers but no sunbathers. It’s a good place to come for reflection, to watch the waves crash in, to forget about a failed marriage proposal.

I come here a lot - when the buzz of London turns in to a drone, grating my brain with claxon and traingrind, when that dead wasp in the Halal butchers still hasn’t been cleared, and the pang for friendship threatens all symmetry, I board an easy jet to Malaga. By bus past Gibraltar to Algericas where I connect over the mountains, descend past the wind farms and by afternoon I’m gazing across the straits to Africa - Uqba bin Nafi galloping into the Atlantic, sword ablaze, deafening my ears with his victorious roar.

Tarifa is not a hospitable beach. Before the tide comes in, channels of water seep inland ahead of the ocean, making walking a navigational chore. When the wind whips sand into my face it is painful and unpleasant. I reach a channel and wade in. Two steps later I’m up to my knees. I should have rolled my tracky bottoms up …now I’m chest deep, holding my rucksack over my head. It’s going to be a swim if I want to carry on. I turn around, green t shirt caked in sand. I look like a giant baklava.

Heading towards the town, I recite against the roll of the ocean, wondering if the sound waves of recitation can vibrate molecules in a certain way… one of the first conversations we had was about molecules. She was studying Islamic geometry and working part time at the same film company. I had work to do, but she wouldn’t shut up about molecules. Like me, she knew Spanish history. Like me, she was from Manchester. Like me, her parents were working class Pakistani. Every box went tick tick tick tick tick except the box that asked: does he practise? Which she crossed with a big fat X. Sand under my nails, in my ears, behind my eyelids. I try to wipe it off but it smears and scratches my face. A new sound - the panting of a dog. A stare that stops me dead. I always forget about the wild dogs in Tarifa. They emerge from a sandpit - the local scallies, nine ten eleven twelve of them, teeth bared, ears taut, poised. The sun comes out.

Their shadows move and sharpen. I’m circled.

In Army Cadets I learnt that dogs can smell fear, so I fix the leader with a stare and try not to be scared. Sand blows off me like Lot’s wife in old films, turned to salt, dispersing through the air. The leader backs off. The dogs disappear towards the mountains. I notice the wind turbines on the

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mountains catching sunlight like giant candles and wonder how the Moors must have felt looking at those mountains in this light.

Perhaps they felt like I did when, aged 14, I saw mountains reflecting sunlight in Afghanistan. Dappled green iridescence blurring into shadowy granite hues yielding exquisite glacial springs where I couldn’t stop drinking the icy water. We had stopped there for wuzhu.

Someone asked to inspect my toiletry bag, found my razor and threw it away.

The clerk at my hotel in Rawalpindi, Abu Sabr, had fired my imagination with tales of riding wild stallions across rugged mountains. With a beautiful pen, he carefully wrote instructions on how to get there. I asked to use the pen so I could write a fancy letter to my friend Daniel in Tottington and revelled in the heavy flow of ink from right to left. I can’t recall the last time I wrote a letter. Even my father doesn’t receive the monthly “letter from Pakistan” any more. Last year I was off work with a fractured skull, and she emailed to say she would pray for me. Emails get deleted; letters live in shoe boxes, fluctuating in meaning.

When I recovered, she treated me to masaala chai in Whitechapel. I never actually asked her to marry me.

Somehow I just thought that’s what would happen. One day there was an email saying “We’re friends and that’s all” Abu Sabr hovered as I wrote, criticising my handwriting.

I told him the pen scratched when I wrote in English. He got defensive, announcing Ronald Reagan had given it to his cousin when he visited The Whitehouse in 1985 - a Mont Blanc Solitaire, “With rhodium tip!” I didn’t believe him, but followed his directions to Peshawar and slipped into Afghanistan with some green eyed Pathaans in a Datsun pick up. I stood at the front, lucid from the light on the mountains, watching the narrow ledges crumble beneath the tyres. The moment lasted as long as it takes a bubble to pop but I have it gripped - tight - never to pop and disperse its molecules in to the infinite geometry of the universe.

I’ve decided not to come to Tarifa again. I’ve been standing next to the statue of Jesus at Punta Paloma - the southern most point of mainland Europe - wondering why I keep coming back - another snow shaker escape to Tarifa “to watch the ocean roll in”. The statue of Jesus looks out to sea, its back turned on all of Europe. I remember the dream I had this summer about a butterfly as big as my hand, as beautiful as an orchid, slowly dying in a clear plastic box in my hand and realise I have a problem letting go. I turn to the statue, Jesus facing Africa, me facing Europe and take my first step back to London.

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SHORT STORY SECOND PRIZE

The Ink of the Scholar ince his retirement from teaching, Ibrahim had taken to studying the great figures of Islamic history and to writing about them in a way that might be easy for his grandchildren to understand. This task had becoming allabsorbing and only the sound of the adhan took his attention away from his work. The adhan emanated from the sanctified precincts of Sayyeda Zaynab’s shrine and resonated through the streets, almost stirring the dust, penetrating the thin walls of Ibrahim’s apartment, and he noticed, too, that the birds were always silent at that time.

Since he had retired, he had been able to concentrate on prayer. His son deposited a little salary into his bank account, which he was able to live on if he was careful. He had found, since he had become more deeply engrossed in prayer, that the world had ceased to mean very much to him, and that, even if some rude young boys might bump into him in the street, or someone might impatiently beep their horn at him when he was crossing the road, none of it mattered very much, or was of any great consequence; and soon he would be gone, and soon he would be forgotten.

He had noticed, too, that there was often a brilliant light in front of his eyes, when his forehead was pressed to the ground in sujud. He did not tell anybody about this, for fear of sounding as if he was bragging. Then sometimes when he entered the shrine of Sayyeda Zaynab, with its crystal-like ceiling of fractured mirrors that echoed with the sobbing of women, he would sit quietly in a corner, reflecting, and a tremendous power would enter him which melted his heart utterly and he would press his hand to his forehead as tears soaked into his cotton shirt.

What was to happen next to Ibrahim, however, he was unable to keep to himself. It was one morning, after fajr, as the sky was turning blue and the air was growing hot, and he sat at his wooden desk, head bent closely over the page, stacks of history books and papers piled up around him, that he arrived at the moment where Sayyedna ‘Ali was about to be martyred.

It was a terrible thing to write about. He felt his whole being gripped with apprehension and he squinted through his glasses with intense concentration. He wanted to put it in simple language. It was important to make it clear and easy to understand. Ibn Muljam, the assassin, was sitting amongst the men as Sayyedna ‘Ali came out to lead the fajr prayer. In an instant, before anyone knew what was happening, Ibn Muljam had leapt to his feet, at the same time raising his sword high above his head. He brought it with full force down upon Sayyedna Ali’s skull and blood gushed down Sayyedna ‘Ali’s face.

And blood gushed down Sayyedna ‘Ali’s face… As Ibrahim wrote these words his pen appeared to leak suddenly. A pool of ink poured from the nib and smeared across the

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Rebecca Masterton

page. Then Ibrahim realised that it was not ink, but blood, for it was red. He cried out, threw down the pen and flew back from the desk so quickly that he knocked his chair flying.

Without any further thought he rushed to living room, picked up the phone and dialled his son’s number. His son was just about to leave for work.

“Ahmed!” Ibrahim cried. “Come quickly! Something’s happened!”

“Baba what is it? Are you all right?”

“Come quickly! Something’s happened!” gasped Ibrahim.

There could be no denying that the substance smeared across the page was blood. When Ahmed saw it, his whole body went cold and he shivered violently.

“Ahmed”, whispered Ibrahim with eyes wide, “What does this mean, do you

think?”

But Ahmed could not reply, for at the sight of the blood, the full impact of Sayyedna ‘Ali’s assassination hit him as it had never done before in his life and he hurried from the room, sobbing.

News of the incident spread quickly throughout the neighbourhood and Ibrahim found that there was a constant knocking on his door by those who wanted to see what had happened. He let people in to look at the sight of the pen left abandoned, the pool of blood, still strangely red, smeared across the page, and it had the same effect upon them as it had done Ahmed. It was as if they were experiencing the event of Sayyedna ‘Ali’s assassination for the first time, and they immediately left, covering their eyes with the ends of their scarves or their hands, crying as if their hearts had broken.

Some days later, as Ibrahim was reflecting that he must put the pen and page in safe keeping with Sidi Abu Zayn, the imam of Sayyeda Zaynab’s shrine, he heard somebody knocking on his door. He opened it to find two men with kind, smiling faces. They greeted him with great respect and said that they had heard about the extraordinary event. They humbly asked if they might come to see the pen and the blood on the page for themselves. Ibrahim welcomed them warmly and invited them in, leading them upstairs to his simple study, which was filled with morning sunshine.

“Here, my brothers, you can see for yourselves. Sayyedna Ali’s blood…”

Those were the last words that Ibrahim uttered, for, in a flash, one of the men pulled a knife from his sleeve and plunged it into Ibrahim’s chest. Ibrahim felt as if his body was filled with a burning light. He saw the face of his assassin: eyes like black ice, mouth pulled in a grimace filled with hatred, but as he lost consciousness he felt himself enveloped in somebody’s arms and he was carried away to an ocean, where he heard the gentle recitation of the Qur’an: ‘wa illallah il-masir’: ‘and to God is the return’.

AGAINST

MEDIOCRITY POETRY AND THE POINT OF INSPIRATION

Acclaimed poet Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore and his fellow judges poured over and picked apart a hundred poems while adjudicating the 2005 Qalam Prize for poetry. What he found was plenty of sincere and energetic submissions with little craft and skill to match. Hadn’t these writers read Darwish, Whitman or even Kerouac? Give up the tired rhetorical tropes, he urges new poets, and bravely enter a textured, sensual world where passion is found in the taste of experience and startlingly fresh metaphoric leaps.

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n every ritual operation, the seeking after a specific end is never but one amongst a number of its operators’ motives: these motives derive from the whole of reality, its religious and sensible (aesthetic) sides alike. In every case, they imply what has always been art’s purpose: to create a sensible reality whereby the ordinary world is modified in response to the desire for the extraordinary, for the marvelous, a desire implicit in the human being’s essence.” - Georges Bataille As Muslims more and more expand into and come of age in the West, we both confront and assimilate western cultural expressions in all the arts. Today there is both a vast pool of English-speaking Muslim talent which has enormous potential, and at the same time a deeper need for exemplary creativity to give full artistic expression to our world perspective, our experience as believers in Allah and His Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be

upon him, as well as all the sent prophets, messengers and saints of our glorious deen. In literature especially, we must find aesthetic ways to go beyond the dry, dogmatic treatises and tracts, and the by-rote mimicking of the tenets of our faith, which we find in so many booklets at conferences and in the foyers of mosques in the English-speaking world.

One of the sad conflicts in our own psyches as Muslims is that for many years, inculcated predominately by truly fundamentalist interpretations (or misinterpretations) of Islam, many people with huge talents who have either become Muslims as adults or have been born into severely puritanical households, have been made to feel guilty for expressing their artistic impulses, subjugated on all sides by hard rules and restrictions that go far beyond the simple halal/haram paradigms of Islam. Consequently, little cultivation of artistic talent has been developed, and it almost seems that only mediocrity is accepted as squeaking Q - NEWS

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past the harsh gaze of the halal/haram police, since mediocrity at least is evidence that not much time has been taken away from worthier study and worship. Many young people have been told that such things as keeping diaries of their inner feelings and experiences, or writing poems or making drawings, are useless diversions, wastes of time, of no account, and are simply vain expression of their egos. They should better spend their time in the mosque learning Quran and Hadith and doing prayers!

While recognizing the need for balance, and in no way denying the profound worth of traditional devotion, this melancholy suppression flies in the face of centuries of the exquisite poetry and art actually intended as devotion and glorification in itself, as evidenced by Islamic museums such as the Topkapi in Istanbul, and the vast literature of eloquent Muslim scholars, poets and sufis throughout our history. The classical curricula in Muslim schools and universities included the study of poetry, grammar, rhetoric, and even, I believe, various modes of music!

The consequence of this squelching of the “feeling” arts - the arts of imagination and the fashioning of worlds of perceptions and sensitivities into poetic verisimilitudes and the harshly judgmental condescension toward anything not strictly Islamic, is that our ummah suffers from a paucity of writers and artists of both talent and a real commitment toward the full flowering of their art, of literature and all the rest. We even have a dearth of calligraphers, seemingly the only allowed art in this very Spartan and strict palladium of acceptable expression.

Which brings us to the 2005 Qalam Prize. I, for one, was impressed by the evident energies and sincerities of the hundred poems and the four plays submitted, but also, unfortunately, by the general insouciance of the writers toward literacy, their craft, or even a sense of the possible depths and heights of where real poetry or theatrical writing can go. Had the poets never read Shakespeare, Keats, William Blake, Walt Whitman, translations of Garcia Lorca, Arthur Rimbaud, Hafez or Darwish? What about Emily Dickinson, Jack Kerouac (for goodness sake), Frank O’Hara, Elizabeth Bishop? Don’t forget the great poet from Martinique, Aime Cesaire, or the modern Slovenian poet, Tomaz Salamun, just to name a few. Aside from being seemingly written by poets who may not really read much poetry, many of the works submitted suffered from grammatical, metrical and other problems of prosody, or were not quite finished or fully fleshed-out. Rarely could we enter a textured, sensual world of ideas and perceptions in these poems, noticing particular details of experience or happily startled by unusual or fresh metaphoric leaps. The poems seldom reached deeply into the consciousness or heart to present some human secrets, some human realities, relying more on somewhat shopworn rhetorical tropes that might win audience approval rather than to more exploratory modes of freshness and ingenuity.

Automatic piety or religiosity doesn’t necessarily make good poetry, but a certain musicality, passion and ignited imagination can.

Although many of the more Hip-hop or Rap poems were skillful, they belonged more in a performance category, where the personal presentation by the poet of his or her poem may bring it stunningly alive. While Rap poetry seems to be the bust-out explosion breaking free of funda-

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mentalist restraints on Muslim artistic expression mentioned above, filled with skill and rage, and often amazingly complex rhetorically, the contestant poets inspired by Rap lyrics more than poetry per se still show a need to more deeply cultivate their poetic sensibility to fully exploit or transcend this generally oral genre.

The four plays submitted also showed a rather surprising non-awareness of the basic mechanics of theatrical or screenplay writing, and were more imagined sketches with little dramatic development or skill, which is why none seemed worthy of a prize this year. Short plays can be many things, and in English (as paralleled in other languages), we have a spectrum that arcs from Elizabethan drama to Samuel Beckett to this year’s Nobel Prizewinner for Literature, British playwright Harold Pinter. But for a play to come alive, even in the first few seconds, something has to take place before us that rings true, or is of such imaginative power that it sails into our consciousness.

Dialogue must move along, be gripping in some way, naturalistic or surreal and poetic, to fully justify its existence as a play. And with such a proliferation of skits and dramas on television, it seems strange that none of the plays partook of these influences, which, after all, are not all uniformly bad, and are, at least, dramatic.

As writers and artists, we shouldn’t be afraid of reading and being influenced by non-Muslim poets and playwrights, in English or in English translation from world literature, or even from our reading directly from original languages: Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, or any of the Romance languages (Robert Bly’s advice to me back when I was 21), both contemporary and old . But English is the language in which we are writing, and monumental numbers of writers have equally monumental things to teach us. Reading widely and avidly, even voraciously, can amplify our sensitivity to the very real dimension of language, the “language” of poetry or drama, which is perhaps an artificial construct that must somehow be acknowledged first in order to finally become our “voice.” From the point of view of literature, we should be writers first who very deeply happen to be Muslims if we really wish to create a living literature that has universal validity and appeal.

From the point of view of Islam, however, we should be Muslims first, who just happen to be writers, amorously absorbed by an Islamic sensibility to the point of true inspiration.

All in all, I’m grateful for the opportunity to read these poems and plays - it is always like putting our hearts out there on our sleeves, and our lives on the line to submit a strongly felt artistic creation for “objective” judgment. I pray that these comments be taken in the spirit in which they are intended, as encouragement to writers, poets and playwrights, prose writers and essayists, to go further.

Study and write. Write and then write some more - bravely, daringly, yet humbly and open-heartedly… remembering that the Prophet said, “We are always either teachers or learners,” and at the same time admonishing us to not be idle or satisfied with ourselves, but, as he said, peace be upon him, to “always be on the increase.”

May Allah guide us all, and give us both the courage and skill to excel in both our worship and our art, to dignify the hearts of humankind and present in the best light the universal wealth that we have been blessedly given.

POETRY FIRST PRIZE

POETRY FIRST PRIZE

Olives Under Stones

Solidarity

Corey Habbas

Pamela K. Taylor

Flint escapes this land of Bani Na’im, the flicker that her eyes once held when rubbed dim with ash isn’t me yet.

Oh my brothers, my sisters!

My ink has been spilt in the halls of Congress, The offices of the New York Times, the Washington Post, But the only thing it has darkened Are the hearts of elected officials and executive editors.

My words have sunk unseen, unheeded into the grain of their desks, Into the blackness that resides in their souls.

Who churns the olives now that caterpillars have ground the homes to paste and butterflies don’t dance.

I knew of a Climbing-tree full of fruit where blossoms pushed olive meat out over seed a black cocoon stuffed with promise.

Do not think that I have not written for you, Though you have not seen my words on the printed page, Do not think that I have not plead your case, Though my representatives act as though my letters were never sent.

I could be any woman now encased within a wall, looking out through thorny barbs and metal brambles, a butterfly not meant to escape.

My cries have echoed off the white-washed walls of the President’s House, The marble colonnades, the sandstone dome of the Capitol, But the only thing they have awoken Is the ire of the patriot, the disdain of the enemy.

My pleas have faded unheard, unnoticed into the traffic noise of their morning commute, Into the deafness that hardens their consciences.

The stones that come for her from Pene Hever, as the groves convulse, won’t welcome her into the gates of Saragossa.

Do not think that I have not cried out for you, Though you cannot hear my slogans on your radio.

Do not think I have not spoken up for you, Though my country acts as though it has never been told truth.

Allah, maintain the peace in our hearts, that with the olives they pilfer, show me the path within my soul that leads to righteousness.

My tears have washed the paving stones that stand before the United Nations, The sandaled toes, the bedraggled hem of the Statue of Liberty, But the only thing they have cleansed Is the protective dirt that concealed the shame of a hypocrite nation.

My sorrow has seeped unfelt, uncared for into the cracks of their concrete sidewalks, Into the silent clefts that decimate their honor.

Show me in your nature, in her harvest, in the twisting of charred olive branches, the path to take forgiveness, that caterpillars, which burnish women to sand Fly over me as butterflies might as she casts her eyes to The Sacred Rock and we will invite them all into the gates of Saragossa in the spirit of a shared Jerusalem.

Do not think I have not wept for you, Though you cannot taste the bitter salt in the saccharine peace they offer you.

Do not think I have not grieved for you, Though my tears have been drowned in the ocean of your pain.

For my sisters and brothers in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Kashmir…

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POETRY SECOND PRIZE

POETRY THIRD PRIZE

Like

Ghalib Day at the Library

Safurat Lasoye

Shabana Mir

Like a thunderous sound I hear it roll, higher and higher and higher still

Sitting all alone in a back row, listening to a poem by Ghalib, time seems to slow down - I think I can breathe.

After ages I can feel my soul climb, with the flexible voice repeating words that have moved hundreds to ecstasy, and which stuns the rushing cascade of time into a cessation, and shocks me into realising that the years for me have swept past in a fever of doing something or nothing, of something happening, or nothing happening, chewing the endless gum of every day. We unstick it from under the table, grey and hard and stale though it may be (we must continue from yesterday), every day unthinking --- Lord, slow me down; remove me from the pointless race of every day, and let the ceaseless rattling train of routine fears, joys, sorrows, hopes, stay its deafening motion, - stop, and let me see the landscape of eternity and see each individual moment bloom like a flower, and wither naturally.

Like a maddening cry that pierces through, I hear it coming, it’s coming soon The sounds are echoes of the light that I see, I see the light, I see it following me Like the clouds in formation as they prepare, I stare and see, I see it all very clear Like a man on his last, running and gasping, releasing that sound, he’s fiercely rasping Like a deafening blow, I know it is strong, here it lies strongly within Like a riding beast that lacks air, panting and panting as it stops and stares Like me on a summer’s day, knowing it won’t last, no it won’t last, not today Like the rest of the world saying it now, they all surround and bring me down, Like the rest of the world, ignorant folk, the bullies are out and rearing to go Like the night air smelling so sweet, as I embrace it and all that I greet Like the night air feeling so sharp, like a knife I fear from the racist lout Like an hour, a minute, a moment, you were in it Like time standing as still as it will, peering at all and seeing it wilt Like me deafened by all the sights, by all the madness, but they won’t let me in Like me stuck in this place, in this space with the thunderous night It’s the thunderous sound, I hear it roll, lower and lower and lower still.

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Rhyme with Reason any rappers claim to be Muslim, including Busta Rhymes, Nas, Rakim, and Beanie Sigel, but their faith remains hidden under a cluster of dope-smoking, gunslinging, womanizing messages. Their religion only becomes apparent when flipping through the CD booklet and they thank, “first and foremost," Allah. But with Brother Ali, an emerging underground rapper from Minneapolis, USA, his piety is far more than a footnote. He pulls insight from the Qur’an and uses Allah’s words to stimulate thought. “Islam is a tool, here to better ourselves," Ali says, and so uses it to nail his words to the beat.

Born with Albinism, Ali has no pigment to his skin and hair, thus making his race indistinguishable. Nor does he disclose his ethnicity, because in this industry an audience will judge you for what’s in your blood not what’s in your lyrics. As a child this made no sense to him. He was torment by other kids who knew he looked different, but didn’t care to understand why. In Picket Fence, Ali raps, “Every mirror that I saw back then had the ugliest human being in it.” But the wise black folk from his neighborhood told him differently. “You’re supposed to do something special, otherwise why would you look like this, talk like this, and go through this?"

Brother Ali was always spiritual, making him the black sheep in the family. His father never cared about God and his mother took him to church “because that’s what good people do.” He was never taught the specifics of Christianity. Around Easter, he heard the Easter stories; around Christmas, the Christmas stories. As Ali grew up, he probed into his religion and found that the more he learned, the more it irked him.

“The main thing I did not like [was] the concept of ‘original sin'. The idea that I need something outside of myself to cure me of my human nature. Like my human nature is bad.”

He continues with childlike frustration, “I just felt stupid, because when it was explained to me I didn’t get it and I felt like it was my fault.”

But there were aspects of Christianity that he connected with, like the Black Gospel churches, the energy and rapport between the preacher and the congregation. The interactive repartee that made praying an

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activity - not one of somber lecturing but of joyful dialogue. It inspired Ali to study all religions - Hinduism, Judaism, Taoism - but the one that he connected with was Islam.

At the time Ali was slowly discovering a music that would change the course of his life. He was mimicking the beats with his mouth, reciting the rhymes, and writing his own. He had heard remnants of Islam from the 80s rap era. Rakim, Afrika Bambaata, Grand Puba, “So many emcees in the late 80s were leaders and important social figures. They spoke of peace, self control, and a deity named Allah.” So Ali picked up the Qur’an and Hammudah Abd Al-Ati’s Islam in Focus.

By fifteen he was preaching to the youth about the civilities of Islam. It took him a while to distinguish between Islam and the Nation of Islam. He just called himself a Muslim and did what (he read) Muslim people do. He gave up drinking, pot smoking and dice playing days. He recalls family dinners when his refusal to eat pork would agitate his parents.

Irritated, but supportive, his mother looked up mosques in the phone book and located one in their neighborhood. It was a faction of W. Deen Mohammed’s American Society of Muslims. It set things in perspective.

Before long he was doing the adhan. He worked at the mosque for four years teaching Islam to children. But he was always broke. Around this time Ali’s wife was carrying his son. Now he had a family to support so he went back to doing the thing that he was best at: rapping.

He recorded a demo called Rites of Passage that he produced, printed, and distributed out of the trunk of his car. He looks back at some songs with regret, “I was trying to be the Muslim emcee.” He let his religion dictate his music and wrote songs that reprimanded society. He says he meant them but wishes he articulated them differently, with less judgment and more tolerance. "[I was] trying to find a market for myself.

Make myself useful. When a Muslim steps up to do something they want to be the best at the thing they’re doing. My goal as a Muslim artist is to make the best art that I can. The most honest, real, and sincere art that comes from a real place.” Three years later he came crashing with Shadows on the Sun, an album hailed by many as the best of 2003. Shadows is like an introductory

handshake where the calluses of stress and adversity are felt in the palm. His improved style is cutting, clever, and at times, intimidating.

Storytelling, perhaps his greatest skill, is used to illustrate some of the most critical sagas of his life. With Win Some Lose Some he replays a high school day when three bullies attacked him. Dorian is an encounter with the wife-beater from the apartment across the hall.

With a growing fan base, a record contract and a fourth album on the way, Ali spends half the year touring - the primary source of income for independent musicians. On the tour bus Ali is surrounded by hedonism.

The way of life of his label-mates is the antithesis of what Islam stands for. “They just have some habits that I don’t practice. It’s not that they’re bad people. I don’t look down on non-Muslims.” To Ali sex, drugs, and alcohol pose no temptation. "[They’re] not as much a challenge for me as they are for other people. I don’t find it hard. Not to say that I haven’t made mistakes.”

Ali’s most self-destructive behavior is his aggression, bottled up since his elementary days of torment and frequently spilled during his first tour. “That was my main test.

[But I had to learn that] people are different, [with] different social rules about communication and personal space.”

In The Undisputed Truth, Ali plans to release his most introspective album to date.

“It’s the most raw, personal, realized album.” With little effects on his voice, keeping many original takes including ones where he falters but moves on, Ali is by no means trying to impress. “I don’t write these songs to be the best emcee in the world. Just trying to be what I am.”

A man of modest and humble wisdom, Ali is trying only to progress as an individual and be the best Muslim, the best rapper, and - more importantly - the best father he can be.

Keep my son’s heartbeat in my sleep, I’mma walk the Planet Earth with his name carved deep in my feet.

Chain Link, Champion EP.

Written by Omar Mouallem

BOOK REVIEW

A Patriot’s Ordeal A Muslim and self-confessed patriot, Captain James Yee found himself in the middle of a frightening Orwellian saga after being accused of spying for Al Qaeda at Guantanamo Bay. Layla M El-Wafi finds Yee’s account of his ordeal compelling - the courageous story of a truly American Muslim. or God and Country reveals the ugly underbelly of America’s ‘war on terror'. Not only does Yee’s story explain how even the most patriotic American can become the victim of post September-11 hysteria but also gives a first hand account of the illegal and inhumane treatment suffered by the detainees held at Guantanamo Bay and the discrimination faced by American Muslims serving in the military who signed up to risk their lives to defend the rights that they were themselves denied.

James “Yusuf” Yee is a third-generation Chinese-American and a 1990 graduate of the prestigious West Point military academy.

He subsequently served in various countries including Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War. Following his conversion to Islam in 1991, he left the Army and undertook studies in Arabic and Quran in Damascus for four years. While there he married a Syrian woman and has one daughter.

After returning to the US, Yee rejoined the military and in 2001 was commissioned as one of the first Muslim chaplains in the US Army with the rank of captain. During the aftermath of 9/11 he became a frequent spokesman for the US government and provided numerous education workshops about Islam throughout the military.

In 2003 Chaplain Yee was commissioned to serve at Guantanamo Bay and did so for 10 months receiving numerous awards. While he was on his way to visit his family for a routine two-week leave, he was secretly arrested and detained in solitary confinement for 76 days threatened with the death penalty accused of spying for Al Qaeda. The accusations then turned to charges of adultery and computer pornography and were eventually dropped. Even though his record was clean, his military career was in ruins and his personal life was in tatters. Throughout his arrest and detainment, distorted facts and allegations were leaked to the media by the military and the Defense Department that served to smear his reputation and judge him guilty in the court of public opinion.

Yee’s account certainly adds to the evidence released by declassified US military documents, lawyers who represent detainees and reports by the Red Cross and

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A m n e s t y International that the conditions of the detainees in Guantanamo are almost unbearable.

He describes witnessing routine use of excessive violence by heavily armoured guards and repeated attempts to provoke and torment prisoners including the use of Islam against the detainees who are all Muslim in what he calls “Guantanamo’s secret weapon".

Several prisoners he encountered appear to have had complete mental breakdowns, with most others exhibiting various signs of distress. What military or intelligence value the detentions have Yee cannot say, having no contact with that side of the operation.

An example of the Orwellian rules governing the camp occurred when the detainees en masse requested that all copies of the Quran be removed from their cells to the small prison library in order to prevent any inappropriate handling or damage to them ('accidents', Yee says, that occurred repeatedly). The camp authorities ordered that the copies remain, in order to maintain the military’s self-declared respect for the religious practices of the prisoners.

This was exactly the type of problem Yee hoped to ameliorate as chaplain. By helping the military avoid unnecessary provocations and tension, he reasoned, he would make conditions more bearable for prisoners and guards alike, and facilitate the camp’s ultimate mission of intelligence gathering. He was commissioned on various occasions to draft specific additions to the camp’s standard operating procedures in order to achieve this.

But he gradually realised he had underestimated the extent and strength of antiMuslim sentiment within the camp, and by implication its military and political commanders. Guilt by association reached such

a level that Yee and other Muslim military personnel came under suspicion for forming some kind of secretive clique. They often held isha prayers or met to eat pizza and talk while other personnel enjoyed the more common relaxation of drinking at bars or house parties.

Such was the suspicion that just two days after receiving a glowing job review from his commander, Yee was arrested on orders authorised by the same officer.

Other personnel were also arrested - men who had similarly devoted their careers to serving their country but happened to be Muslims. Whether it was incompetence, prejudice, malice, or some combination of all three that led to this treatment is unclear.

The eventual demonstration of Yee’s innocence - with the determined support of his family, community organisations and complete strangers - is the only happy aspect of the whole story.

For God and Country is a quick, compelling read. Yee refrains from making broad accusations and doesn’t force his conclusions on his readers. In fact, the final chapter invites readers to reflect on the questions the story provokes. Although he names and shames, he also gives credit where it is due.

Throughout the narrative both the inspiration of Yee’s religious faith and his patriotism are clear. Perhaps it is the sense of his deeply shaken respect for American ideals and institutions that makes his story so credible.

One is not surprised to learn that this book is his first public account following his highly publicized arrest and detainment as it comes across as the product of long reflection and deep thought in relating the damage done to his family, career, and American identity. Although many questions are still unanswered, the strength and wisdom Yee has acquired from his experiences is apparent. Although he is disappointed that he can no longer pursue a career in the military it is apparent that his leadership skills will continue to serve him well.

For God and Country: Faith and Patriotism Under Fire by James Yee (with Amy Molloy) is published by Public Affairs (USA).

FILM REVIEW

The Alchemist of Happiness Ovidio Salazar’s film exploring the life of Imam al-Ghazali is a sensitive work that gives the viewer an intimate insight into the life of classical Islam’s greatest scholar and saint. But, as Fozia Bora explains, the film’s historic subject matter and quiet majesty doesn’t take away from its modern relevance. aving already garnered acclaim at several international film festivals, Al-Ghazali: the Alchemist of Happiness is a beautiful new film by Ovidio Salazar that tells the life-story of Imam al-Ghazali, known to us as the renewer of the fifth Islamic century, the Proof of Islam and the author of the forty-volume Revival of the Religious Sciences. Shot on location in Iran, with a gifted Persian-speaking cast, the film dramatises Imam al-Ghazali’s life, and provides commentary and analysis of the important events of his career and spiritual journey, including his two famous periods of doubt. Much of the visual power of the film comes from this setting: the sheer beauty of the architecture (mosques, courtyards), the interiors (wood-carved chambers) and the costumes (traditional tunics made of what looks like jute or hessian, with sumptuous silks for the Imam’s wife’s khimars) point to the high aestheticism of Imam al-Ghazali’s age, and provide a counterpoint to the intellectual confusion perceived by the Imam in that milieu.

Yet it was only by the end of the film that its title made sense to me, for it depicts Imam al-Ghazali’s search for the divine, and ends with his death as a true knower of Allah, in a state of quiet, inward ecstasy.

The subject of the film is this process of ‘alchemy': al-Ghazali’s journey from the outward religious sciences, including a long-lived engagement with philosophy, to haqiqah. Alongside the medieval journey, in which al-Ghazali’s life story is told, we travel with director Ovidio Salazar through Iran, in search of the traces of the man himself, especially his final resting place (in its way, this too is modern a search for the haqiqah).

Briefly, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (10581111 CE) lived, studied and taught in Tus and Nishapur, in modern-day Iran, before being discovered by Nizam al-Mulk, the Seljuq vizier famous for patronising learning in 11th century Baghdad. Then, after some years (1085-1095) following an illustrious career teaching the Islamic sciences in Nishapur and in the celebrated Nizamiyya madrassah in Baghdad where he famously refuted the arguments of the philosophers,

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Imam al-Ghazali underwent what appears to be an intellectual and spiritual breakdown. He questioned his own knowledge, the means to knowledge, including sensory perception and reason, and felt that he no longer had religious certitude. An earlier period of doubt had eventually been dispelled by a ‘light from God', but this time the collapse was more complete. In 1095 Imam al-Ghazali left his job and his family in order to find the true meaning of existence. Living incognito as a dervish for some years, in which time he made the pilgrimage to Makkah and visited Jerusalem, he finally reaches the certitude, or yaqin, he seeks which is attained through dhawq, or tasting, by following the experiential Sufi path. Having thus gained marifah or gnosis, Imam al-Ghazali then returns to Tus and to his family in 1098 or 1099, where he teaches again, writes his most famous works (including the Ihya Ulum al-Din or the Revival of the Religious Sciences) and most importantly systematises the Sufism that leads him to his enlightenment.

The film begins at deathbed of Imam alGhazali’s father, who entrusts the care of his two young sons to a local scholar. Some time later, Abu Hamid and his brother Muhammad, a fully-fledged mystic from the start, study the religious sciences in their home city of Tus. The narrative unfolds in three ways: through the reconstruction of Imam al-Ghazali’s life with sets and actors; through the first-person voiceover which is taken from Imam al-Ghazali’s own autobiography; and finally through the contributions of T. J. Winter, Hamza Yusuf, Seyyed Hossein Nasr and various other luminaries the director encountered during his sojourn

in Iran. The interplay between dialogue, voiceover and analysis is clever, because it sustains the viewer’s interest, and a complex intellectual life (and context) is thereby made accessible. What I personally loved most were the moments where Imam al-Ghazali’s and Salazar’s paths cross (fictionally, of course) - this was an amusing cinematic sleight of hand, which also served to point up the ‘modernness’ of al-Ghazali’s spiritual and intellectual enquiry.

The idea of a journey, which represents ‘seeking,' is a powerful Sufi metaphor, and is used to great effect in the film.

Throughout this portrait of Imam alGhazali’s life, until he reaches his spiritual illumination, we feel the pain he feels as he looks for an explanation of man’s true purpose. Ovidio Salazar experiences a similar yearning while he travels through Iran on buses across sandy plains and through splendid, dusty cities. This is what the Sufis have described as the need of contingent being (us) for necessary Being (God), for while Allah is nearer to us than our jugular veins, He is nonetheless Exalted, Transcendent, and this yearning is what fuels Imam al-Ghazali’s wayfaring.

The beauty of Imam al-Ghazali’s journey is that it ends not in sorrow but in the joy of understanding.

The most moving moment of the film for me was the penultimate scene, where the Imam wakes up one day knowing that his life will come to an end before nightfall. He asks for his shroud, dresses himself in it, and prepares himself for his meeting with his Lord. His whole life is in a sense a preparation for this moment, for as Hamza Yusuf points out, Imam al-Ghazali’s time in the wilderness was when he had ‘the true existential crisis of the human condition, which is our own mortality.’ That his inward struggle, and his life’s efforts, resulted in this deep attunement with Allah’s will and with profound acceptance of it, demonstrates the only real alchemy this world offers. Salazar’s film captures this process with insight and a quiet majesty that will certainly resonate with modern viewers. www.matmedia.org Q - NEWS

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V O X

P O P U L I From the West Bank Letter of the month

Got something to

SAY? We have something to

GIVE! The writer of the Letter of the Month receives a DVD copy of Le Grand Voyage by Ismael Ferroukhi, on general release from 27th February 2006.

Write to Q-News, PO Box 4295, London W1A 7YH or letters@q-news.com Letters may be edited for length and coherence.

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In Q-News Issue 359, Yvonne Deutch asked for an open discussion on the future of Israel and Palestine. While such dialogue is rare amidst an atmosphere in which the language of violence prevails, I will participate in it as an insider - I live in a small town near Jenin in the West Bank.

Deutch seems sincere in her feelings of sympathy and justice towards the Palestinian cause. She admits that her voice is hardly heard in militarised Israeli society.

She bravely condemns the Israeli occupation for Palestine and sympathises with the Palestinian refugees who were expelled from their lands in the tragedy of 1948.

This is good, but on the other hand Deutch finds the answer in “the two-state solution”. It is this point I couldn’t understand.

Deutch seems to contradict herself. How can a state built on occupation exist side-by-side with one established by the original inhabitants of the occupied land?

Israelis are occupying Palestine and the Golan Heights after expelling the original inhabitants from their lands and finding a solution on the basis of this status quo is not acceptable to us. I would be dishonest if I tried to speak a neutral language that does not represent my beliefs.

How can this predicament be solved? Is there a sort of magical compromise that can resolve everything?

I believe that the Israelis don’t have the right to have a state ruling Palestine. So, what about the Jews who are already living in Palestine under Israeli rule? Does the liberation of Palestine mean the extermination of the Jews?

We are not the European crusaders who slaughtered more than 90 000 Muslims after they occupied Jerusalem. The Prophet Muhammad declared a general amnesty in Makkah for those who fought him for more than twenty years. Saladin, following in the footsteps of the Prophet, also declared general amnesty

after he had liberated Jerusalem in 1187 and did not avenge the massacre of Muslims. Forgiving and being merciful to our enemies comes from Islam.

If the People of the Book were illtreated by some unjust Muslim rulers, Muslim citizens themselves were also suffering from injustice.

Jewish historians themselves recognize and demonstrate that the golden age of their people was situated geographically and historically in Muslim Spain. It is far from the modern Israeli “democracy” which has demonstrated to be a system for subjugating people, and has proved to be a source of hatred and pain not only for Muslims, but also for Jews and Christians.

The ordeal of Palestine tests not only the faithful Muslims who are supposed to implement justice on earth, but also the humanity.

Our differences and hatreds vanish when we realise that we are very weak creatures who were created by a Merciful God. The Prophet Muhammad mentioned that the true submitter is he from whose tongue and hand people are safe.

Advancing towards Islam (and not going back to Islam, because Islam is ahead of us) is not only the solution for the problems of Muslims today, but also the solution for the problems of all creation. We pray to Allah to help us actualise justice and do good in the best of manners.

Feras Abdelkhaleq West Bank, Palestine

Anti-Terror laws “The MCB and the MAB are hypocrites,” said one young British Muslim woman at a recent halaqa I attended. An older woman said, “What do you mean? Our people are doing their best.”

“Their best is not good enough. It is designed to protect their own!

Check the MPACUK website and read the article ‘MPACUK wrong about Sadiq Khan,’” the sister said defiantly.

After half an hour of heated discussion, I was determined to write this letter.

On 9th November 2005, Tony Blair suffered his first defeat in the House of Commons in his eight years as Prime Minister. The defeat was on the controversial issue of whether a person arrested on suspicion of planning a terrorist act could be detained for 90 days without charge. An amendment to this vote had been put forward for the time of detainment to be brought down to 28 days, and up from 14 days.

In British Muslim circles, what followed the Blair’s historic defeat was the hero-ization of the young London MP Sadiq Khan as some sort of saviour of the ummah by organisations such as the MCB and the MAB. And why? Because he had voted against the 90 days. What Muslims were not told by those seeking to popularise Khan is that while he had voted against 90 days, he had actually voted for the lockup of Muslims for 28 days. Muslims like Khadija, in the know about the implications of this type of draconian legislation, the hypocrisy was left ‘reeling with anger.’

At one stage, MPACUK joined the bandwagon and applauded Khan and continued promoting him despite being warned repeatedly of the truth about his vote.

One brother, Dr Awaaz ended his letter to MPACUK with, ‘Your political naivety is astounding.

May Allah grant you some intelligence.’

It was not until a sister by the name of Yasmin wrote in and corrected the well-meaning, but frequently impulsive MPACUK team, did the truth emerge (see MPACUK’s website for the full letter). Why was Sadiq Khan being protected by the MCB and MAB? Sher Khan, the political representative of the MCB was quoted in the Muslim News as having said, “The popularity and credibility of Sadiq Khan will increase in the Muslim community for having voted against the government on

matter of principle.” Alarm bells anyone?

The MAB website also urged Muslims to write letters of support to Khan ‘for being brave enough to defy Labour whips.’

Khan was the Chair of the Legal Affairs Department at the MCB, a senior position close to Sir Iqbal.

Now I am not one to begrudge Muslims who have power, but what infuriates me, and sisters like Khadija and Yasmin, is when the MCB decides to betray the ummah in order to protect their man on the inside.

The press releases and the grass roots campaign that was launched by the MCB and the MAB focused not on the details of the Terror Bill which included the draconian details on ‘glorification and encouragement of terrorism’ - all of which Khan’s vote essentially endorsed - but on hailing Khan as a hero for voting against just one aspect of the Bill.

Khan should have voted against the entire bill. This detail was explained by Zubair, on the MPACUK site: For those Muslims who say that 28 days is better then 90 and Sadiq is a hero - it goes like this: Sadiq Khan voted for the war on Iraq on the grounds that Britain would only kill Iraqi Muslims in their own land for one year instead of three years. Would Muslims accept that? No I don’t think so. So why accept that he voted for the terror law and not the 90 days?

And: I am disappointed in the MCB and the MAB who seem to operate a system of double standards... If their friend MP Sadiq Khan does wrong in their eyes it will not be so. Yet if others do wrong with whom they have no relationship they are traitors. I’m afraid your actions and deceit on this important issue of terrorism have shown yourselves (MCB and MAB) to be the true traitors. We look to you for genuine information, we rely on you to tell the whole truth and you have misled us, nay you have betrayed us. Irrespective of your

views on the terror bill all readers will want unbiased facts - we are not 100% dumb and we will be able to establish our own conclusions. Not only do you (MCB and MAB) think we are dumb but your actions demonstrate that your object is to make us dumber.

This episode is a crucial reminder that when we view websites, and sadly, especially so called Muslim ones we ought to digest them with a pinch of salt. - Umar Patel Zareena Begum (pseudonym) London

Danish Cartoons As much as the insulting cartoo4ns of Prophet Muhammad are hurtful to me, it is disturbing to see the reaction of some Muslims. Just as we expect westerners to avoid treating us a monolithic group after 9/11 and other horrendous acts done by Muslims, it is important not to paint all Danes, Europeans and Westerners with the same brush.

Moreover burning of Danish flags which by the way has a cross on it (revered by Christians) is hardly the Islamic response to an insult. It must also be said that ‘Muslim’ suicide bombers killing Iraqi children or Pakistanis burning churches in Lahore brings more bad name to Islam than any cartoon can.

Haris Aziz Warwick

Amman bombings I am so shocked to read of the death of Mustafa Akkad. Every death is significant of course but it was this man’s film The Message that was recommended to me by a young brother when I was first being introduced to Islam. He is a martyr and the people who commited this act of wanton, cruel, destruction are mere murderers. God willing his creativity will continue to educate and enlighten humanity.

Paul Carvajal United Kingdom

WRITE MIND

Confessions of a Pilgrim A year ago Jose Correa collapsed onto the uncomfortable seats of an airport transit lounge and realised he was almost home. Overwhelmed and exhausted he had just returned from the greatest spiritual journey of his life the Hajj. Here he offers some (almost poetic) fragments of his memories. eated in an airport terminal lounge by a broad windowpane, bright glowing sunshine engulfs our vision’s lane.

While some of us chew on our hot melting pizza, symbolic offerings are renewed - Coffee anyone? Sleepiness lurking. Exhaustion plainly revealed. Bodies aching. “Coughing anyone?”

Our itinerary has us transiting in Washington D.C., one stop shy from Montreal - my home. Our final destination seems but an ironic reversal of course. How can we be flying home? Didn’t we just leave home? Our hearts confess nostalgia for the rawdah dome.

Reminiscing, the mood turns intimate. Everyone in the group is just about to share their most precious, precious instants. Glory be to the Infinite. A handful of anecdotes adorn our heart-held discussion. The fragments of memories we swap seem more filling than our lunch. All praises be to Allah who gave us memories without any might or power from ourselves. We gather our thoughts and recollect:

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FG The frenzy builds up without remorse. We are now just seconds away from first sights of the doors of the sacred sanctuary. Its first glimpse, we hope, will enchant and overwhelm - and yes, Thank God, as projected, it finally does… The group disperses as we reach the gates of haram al-sharif. An individuated rush, it seems, has overtaken each and everyone it mates… and yet the Day of Judgment still awaits.

FG Dressed as white as brides on their wedding day, we hold together our ihram by hand, though what we truly grasp to hold together is our self-restraint. Hearts swelling, elation overflowing at last, we cast our virgin eyes onto the stunning Kaaba… mesmerising. Our minds contract; our minds freeze; our minds expand. The moment, like most of inner life, is actually what you make of it. We’ve prayed before as though we saw, but now we truly see. “How does it feel?” - The uninitiated are eager to unveil the mystery. This is but the beginning of the end of a life-long journey. The frail that come here will soon end. How does it feel? The initiated, reassured, respond: “We feel Loved, we feel Sent.”

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FG Making dua on Arafat “like never before in one’s entire life”. Dots and clusters of white decorate the mount from a distance. Arms pointed up in passionate, meaningful display towards the heavens. Genuine pleading cries, we pray, still echo in the heavens. The Forgiving, The Most Merciful, we know, hears all His servants’ prayers.

FG Embracing the black stone in the midst and height of religious ecstasy. Exotic rules emerge. (Un)reasonable aggression develops into the norm. Look and you will witness the pilgrims’ faces in adoration, yearning for their Love’s Face.

“Make dua for my family!" one face rejoices. Fortunate are those whose faces Allah places gently before the stone. “With this kiss, I fulfill my worship to you Lord” - not once but twice, for I bring my brother with me, whom I love for Your Sake Alone.

FG As we stare into the endless sea of diversity - awash on pilgrims’ faces, Assalamu Alaykum we rehearse a million times and more, rehearsing for the Hereafter and for the mercy of our Lord. Colours fused into a dense, flowing montage - a clear testimony of Allah’s Glory - leaving us soaked in awe and wonderment: how does He know and love each and every one of us? And yet every pebble cast He surely counts - “Was that six or was that seven?” we ask.

FG And there, as we recollected, drenched in marvel, we appeared to one another full of joy at our most recent and cherished travel. We feel Loved, we feel Sent. Boarding (prayer) is now. We must depart. But you must depart too, so if you must, go without delay or risk not ever feeling Loved or Sent.

Jose Correa is a recent law graduate from McGill University, Montreal, Canada.

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