This week Muslims have again featured prominently in the media. It began with a religious look forward to the events of the coming year on Radio 4’s religious programme “Sunday”. There was Stephen Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle representing our Semitic brethren; Paul Vallely, a columnist for the Independent on Sunday speaking for Christianity; and Sarah Joseph was the Muslim representative.
Sarah Joseph is editor of “Muslim lifestyle” magazine Emel, which can probably be best described as the confused love child of The Guardian and Vogue Living who has been brought up in a hippy commune by the cast of The Good Life. In short, lots of glossy pictures of clothes you wouldn’t be caught dead wearing, cars you can’t afford to drive and house ornaments seemingly looted from the grave of Salvadore Dali – all adorned with a slight sprinkling of “Muslimness”, for a bit of Eastern promise.
It inevitably leaves one underwhelmed and longing for the old days of Trends magazine, immature yes but in those days politics was politics, Islam was Islam and people like Inayat Bunglawala had their heads screwed on properly.
Whoever thought that it was a comparable match to pit Sarah Joseph against the editor of the JC had obviously overindulged in the liquid version of seasonal good cheer. The result reminded me of those images of baby harp seals being clubbed to death by fur traders: fluffy innocent creatures looking at the world with big trusting eyes – until they are brutally bludgeoned with a hakapik.
The other two panellists bore in mind the title of the discussion – “a look back to the big stories of 2010 and a look forward to what will be important in 2011” – and correctly realised that they were there to provide a time-based analysis of what was affecting their religious communities for BBC Radio 4’s premier religious programme. However, Sarah Joseph obviously thought she was there for a chat and a bit of lightweight “interfaithing”. So we heard all about anti-Semitism and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism on university campuses from the editor of the JC, the Pope’s visit and the rise of secularism from the Catholic journalist. What was Sister Sarah’s contribution?
In her world, apparently the most noteworthy happening for Muslims in 2010 was Wikileaks. Whilst I agree that the earth-shattering importance of Colonel Gaddafi’s buxom blonde Ukrainian nurse must not be underestimated, I would humbly suggest that British Muslims have had bigger fish to fry in 2010. Oh, and her ideas for 2011? Perhaps the continuing rise of the far-right, or further European bans on niqabs, hijabs and minarets, or possibly the reshaping of the Prevent strategy by the coalition government? No, rather two words: electric cars. That is the big story for British Muslims in 2011. I can hardly wait.
By Tuesday, The Times had the media dialogue back on track with its sex traffickers front page spread. Young white girls – with a particular emphasis on the “white” – were being trafficked by gangs “up North” made up largely of British Pakistanis. They even had a policeman saying that it was happening because of, wait for it, “political correctness” inhibiting any real investigation due to fears of being labelled racist.
I would love to know where this mythical political correctness and quavering fear of being labelled racist evaporates to when the police stop and search Asian Muslim men at a rate 7 times that of white people, or when Asian Muslim men are arrested or even worse detained without charge on terror offences amid much fanfare and character assassination before being released; or the brutish “kettling” of Muslim protesters coupled with draconian custodial sentences for such outrages as throwing an empty plastic drink bottle during a demonstration. Perhaps they should get those sorts of police in to investigate these Asian gangs and retrain the police currently in charge of these investigations to be florists and ballet dancers. Or perhaps the sad reality of the situation is that these girls were targeted not because they were white and thus “infidels to be exploited” but rather because they were mostly in care or foster homes and were vulnerable with no one looking out for them.
They were thus first failed by their real parents who abrogated their parental responsibility, they were then failed by the care system who did not provide enough supervision and left out exposed to any filth that came their way, and then they were failed by the police force who depressingly seems to be trying to cover up their inadequacies by blaming it on a characteristic that we know they don’t possess – touchingly delicate sensibilities on the dainty feelings of Muslims.
The fact that criminal gangs who exploited them were in possession of Muslim names seems entirely beside the point. Any cretin in possession of the neural powers of a cabbage would be able to realise that a scenario in which a child is plied with alcohol and drugs before being raped by a “Muslim” man also consuming vast amounts of alcohol and drugs can have nothing to do with Islam. It simply beggars belief that even a skewed Murdoch paper could possibly contemplate linking the two whilst also allowing disgraceful comments on its “moderated” comments section linking the age of marriage of Aisha (ra) with the filthy actions of these criminal gangs.
Any decent newspaper should have also quoted the latest Ministry of Justice statistics on the ethnic breakdown of crime in the UK in order to provide a factual basis for their reporting. These statistics have been picked up on and highlighted by blogger Chris Dillow and contain some interesting findings:
“Table 5.4b of this pdf shows that, in the latest year for which we have data, Lancashire police arrested 627 people for sexual offences. 0.3% of these were Pakistanis. That’s two people. 85.5% were white British. In Lancashire , there are 1,296,900 white Brits and 45,000 Pakistanis. This means that 4.163 per 10,000 white Brits were arrested for a sex crime, compared to 0.44 Pakistanis. If you’re a journalist, you might say that the chances of being arrested for a sex crime are nine times greater if you’re white than Pakistani.”
Then again, The Times report was the work of one Andrew Norfolk, a reporter that many in the Muslim community have long suspected of having an agenda when it comes to Islam.
And just when I thought it was safe to open the newspaper again, in wades former Home Secretary Jack Straw, determined it seems to ensure that if there was anyone left in the country who hadn’t made the mental correlation between young Muslim men and child abuse they should have the point hammered home immediately, with his crude analogies of Pakistani men seeing white girls as “easy meat”. Newsnight sallied forth at this point with a round table discussion involving the academic who did the initial research, the Muslim social worker Mohammed Shafiq and Douglas Murray from what must be the most inappropriately named think tank in modern history “The Centre for Social Cohesion” or, as I prefer to think of it as, “The Centre for promoting hysterical anti-Muslim stereotypes to near phobic levels”.
The discussion started with the researcher from University College London dropping the biggest bombshell of the week – there was no statistical evidence that British Pakistani men were any more likely to engage in this kind of abusive behaviour than anyone else. She went on to add:
“When you jump in with thinking about race too quickly, you can miss a whole load of other things that are happening in other areas… So by racially stereotyping this early on without a national scoping project… we don’t know what the situation is in other areas around the country… you might be leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy of if people are looking for Asian offenders, they will only find Asian offenders.”
At this point, any self-respecting news organisation would say, “Yes, you are quite right, let’s just abandon this discussion before making more fatuous claims based on no evidence that stigmatise an entire community.” But in this 24 hour media echo chamber, any facts that don’t stick to the script are conveniently ignored, just as this academic was for the rest of the discussion. Instead, we were treated to a vintage Douglas Murray performance. In stoking up the fires of moral panic, half truths were mixed with hints that even more “unpleasant things” were out there because forms of sexual deviation were “endemic” and it all boiled down to the way Muslim men viewed women.
Job done, stereotype implanted, automatic subconscious link created in the minds of the public between Muslim men and the disgraceful treatment of women. No amount of research will undo that neural connection.
That takes me to the final Muslim story of the week: The Independent and its scaremongering headline “The Islamification of Britain: Record numbers embrace Muslim faith”. The study underlying the headline was a bit on the tenuous side given its heavy reliance upon the extrapolation of statistics based on a small sample population. One would think that this was hardly ground breaking news, but again there was a significant amount of noise created from the idea that not only had these converts to Islam somehow betrayed the identity they had grown up with but they were in the mortal peril of embracing an identity based on violence and discord.
Three dissimilar stories about Muslims in one week. One about Muslim criminality, one about Muslim converts and one, oddly enough, involving electric cars. Yet they are linked in a way that may not appear obvious at first.
As Muslims, our lifestyles define us in every way. From the way we dress, to the food we eat, even extending to the way we wash ourselves and which shoe we put on first. This is not some after-hours hobby that can be stuffed into the cracks and corners of our lives.
These three stories are inherently about the choice we all must make as to how we wear our Islam. The Muslim gang members who exploited young girls have demonstrated to the world that being in possession of a Muslim name is not inherently protective of your soul. They jettisoned their Islamic identity completely and the disgusting excess of their lifestyles was the exaggerated caricature of what they thought secularism was about. The failure is also on the part of this new irreligious society that all these young men could think to do when they had abandoned their religion was not to become “thinkers” freed from “religious fairytales” who quote Proust and Jung whilst discussing memes and the evolutionary ascent of man, but rather criminal scum who engage in drug and alcohol fuelled orgies with terrified children.
Sarah Joseph found out to her peril that regardless of whether or not she wished to identify herself in terms of her Muslim identity alone, she and we are often defined solely as such. She may, as the editor of a lifestyle magazine, have felt that she should be allowed to chat about electric cars and interesting bits and pieces on the news and not have to delve into those uncomfortable stereotypes and clichés.
The hard reality is that when the only thing that is known about Muslims and Islam are unfair clichés then it is our responsibility to our Islamic identity to speak up for Muslims and Islam. For Sarah Joseph, this should have been manifested in her articulating what are the real issues affecting Muslims as well as defending us against unfair stereotypes. Instead, she sat mute like a dying swan and it was left to the Catholic journalist to speak up for the Muslims.
New white converts to Islam have yet another challenge for their Islamic identity. They are hemmed in by some in society who view them somehow as traitors to their upbringing, whilst others feel that they are dangerous fanatics. How should they express their Islamic identity?
We should all approach this question by realising that our Islamic identity is a blessing and not a burden. It is the essence of what we are and who we are. It is a gift to you from Allah. It will protect us, nurture us and ultimately be our salvation. We should embrace our Islamic identity and let it define us and pay heed to the advice of Allah:
“O you who believe! Enter into Islam whole-heartedly; and follow not the footsteps of Satan; for he is to you an avowed enemy.”
(Quran 2:208)
“And strive in His [Allah’s] cause as you ought to strive (with sincerity and discipline). He has chosen you, and has imposed no difficulties on you in religion; it is the religion of your father Abraham. It is He Who has named you Muslims, both before and in this (Revelation); that the Messenger may be a witness for you, and you may be witnesses for mankind! So establish regular prayer, give regular charity, and hold fast to Allah! He is your Protector – the Best of protectors and the Best of helpers!”
(Quran 78:22)
