The paranoia within sections of Britain's Muslim communities is toxic to integration
I understand that there is a genuine fear within Muslim communities around the counter-terrorism agenda. I also understand that the fear is based on mistakes that have taken place within the counter-terrorism agenda and that we need a genuine debate about this.
However there are sections of Britain’s Muslim communities that believe the world revolves around bizarre conspiracies. For them, seeing the wood from the chaff is increasingly difficult.
For example, a legitimate attempt by Faith Matters to engage with young people across the country – to see what impacts far-right and Al Qaeda or ISIS influenced rhetoric has on them online – has been portrayed by such groups as a ‘spying exercise’.
In reality it is an initiative to develop a report which can give young people at a grass roots level the opportunity to have their voices heard at a policy level.
It does not matter that the initiative will be resourced and organised independently by Faith Matters with no funding from the government; according to these conspiracy purveyors it is, as mentioned, a ‘spying exercise’.
This seems to be the over-riding narrative for them: that Muslim communities are hard done by and that progressive organisations that want to work with government – as critical friends – are the problem.
Such paranoia feeds a dangerous victim narrative. It also affects a sense of identity, integration and dare I say it, injects a desire in some Muslims to leave the UK.
About four months ago I was quoted in this article, leading to a flurry of bullying, abusive and slanderous comments from sections of Muslim communities which had previously praised the decade of work we at Faith Matters have done on cohesion, integration and supporting faith communities.
Some of these critics had used and quoted material from TELL MAMA, a national project I founded to support victims of anti-Muslim hate. This project which was supported for two years by central government (between 2012- 2013) provided material, data and information that many of these individuals, groups and activists used to shore up the fact that anti-Muslim hate and bigotry exists.
However after the Telegraph article their conspiratorial mind-set kicked in. This led to a campaign of smears, intimidation and hate directed at TELL MAMA – and directed at me in person.
These are the sorts of individuals who today attempt to hold sway and play to a victim narrative within Muslim communities. I regard such people as being part of the problem we have to deal with. These are the ‘Del Boys’ who trot out half-truths and peddle condiments that sicken and weaken Muslim communities through disengagement and introversion.
Instead of supporting the only project nationally that has produced tangible evidence of anti-Muslim hatred, these ‘Del-Boys’ of the Muslim world are only interested in the one occasion when we were invited to speak on a TELL MAMA report at the Quilliam Foundation – which we did, given that we will speak at any platform, (apart from extremist groups and those who have used prejudiced terms against whole communities).
This example sums up what they do. They are the Pied Pipers whistling a tune leading to further misunderstanding, greater barriers and a political cliff where disengagement becomes the norm.
This is certainly not the Britain I want, nor a future I want to see for Muslim communities and co-religionists. My view is one of confident Muslim communities and citizens, equals who do not feel victimised but who are willing to be critical when required and constructive for the greater good.
The Quilliam Foundation is the bogey man used by these groups to smear anyone who does not dance to their tune (if only the Quilliam Foundation were that connected and powerful). Some of those pushing this line are characters who developed ‘media personalities’ through Twitter and who, thankfully, have been outed as the manipulative ego-centric people they are. Today they hide in the shadows posting items anonymously on Islamist blogs.
The time has come to take a stand against such groups. This does not mean there have been no problems in how counter-terrorism work has been developed and implemented at community level. There have; but what is the alternative proposed by the government’s critics? They simply have none.
Lastly, this does not mean practitioners like me have not made mistakes in our partnership choices on occasion. We are human and, sadly, mistakes do take place and we have to be honest and open about these when they take place since we have placed ourselves into the public sphere.
But the future is not all doom and gloom. It is – and should be – one where Muslim communities stand tall and engage with government.
Fiyaz Mughal is the director of Faith Matters and the founder of Tell Mama, a project which records and measures anti-Muslim incidents
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37 Responses to “Muslim communities must stand tall and engage with the government”
damon
”Is it any of your business how people dress their children?”
Well it could be yes. I’m told that a hijab is worn to deflect attention away from a female’s sexuality.
That without it and seeing women’s hair, men tend to feel lustful.
That’s pretty stupid for a start in my opinion, but people insist on it.
We let Somalians into our country because their own was totally disfunctional.
They were fleeing for their lives we were told.
Fair enough. But is it OK to hope that they might leave most of their country’s culture behind and make new lives in Britain that are looking forward and much more secular than the one that imploded into clan warfare?
Do Brits have a right to like or not like the way society changes? Not liking that it becomes more religious and divided along cultural lines, so you can end up with a house of bable effect?
As for being concerned about what was in that link. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of these so called sexy clothes for young children. Because one doest think of a child in little shorts and tops as anyway sexual in the first place. It would be awful if people from other cultures were tut-tutting at the way we let children be children and free from all that nonsense about covering up and being modest.
And its terrible if parents won’t let their children do PE and sports at school because they can’t stop thinking of a sexual aspect.
As for madrassas, what they do is teach children the Koran, almost by rote. As a secular person I don’t like that. I’ve been in several Muslim countries and the culture is pretty messed up.
One hour a week would be fine. More than that gets too intrusive and turns people into unthinking headbangers. Just look at Afghanistan and Pakistan for example.
lancastrian1
Sharia is a totalitarian political system with a some religious bits tacked on the side as that ECHR judgement makes clear, a position that is backed by plenty of evidence. As it happens, I’ve just being reading this on the fate of one man who tried to oppose sharia in Sudan and was hanged for his troubles:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/09/11/the-moderate-martyr
As for not what is taught in madrassa in this country, that contradicts what I have heard from ex-muslims and what things like the BBC Panorama programme showed in “British Schools, Islamic Rules” which taught amongst other things that non-muslims should step out of the way of muslims and disgusting things like “List the reprehensible qualities of the Jews”.
I accept that won’t be all madrassa but one is far too many for that final echo of Der Sturmer. Also from your comments, I suspect you are a muslim so the sect is important here. Ahmadiyya’s are relatively peaceful but only circa 1% of muslims worldwide. Shia and sunni make up the remainder and both use sharia as a form of political control via guardian councils in Iran and other countries.
Finally, any ideology (and sharia is definitely a political ideology) that permits death fro apostasy, amputation of limbs and other such barbarous acts needs to be opposed and banned. Your facile attempt to tie terrorism and democracy together is frankly, laughable.
Patrick Nelson
As well as having that meaning it is also a fashion item, a cultural symbol and when cold something that keeps the head warm or when something that keeps the sun off the head. You are assuming you know peoples motivations, yet without even knowing them.
As for messed up Muslim sh**holes, Afghanistan was a rather nice hippy destination back in the seventies before it became a living nightmare through first brutal Communism, then long and bloody revolution, then under (mostly criminal) warlords, then under Islamists then under warlords again. Any country would be pretty messed up after all that.
As for Pakistan, well it is a country dominated by a ultra rich westernized elite who have been manipulating religion in a divide and rule policy for half a century. Meanwhile south Asian Islam is still messed up firstly by the divide and rule policy used by the British Raj which encouraged the development of a harsh sectarian approach to religion, whilst the Wahhabi influence over many years also introduced elements that were totally different from the predominantly laid back spiritual Sufi Islam that was manly dominant earlier.
There are indeed some Muslim sh**holes but at the same time there are great places to live in the Muslim world like Malaysia, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Oman, Indonesia, Jordan Morocco, the Maldives etc. Your argument is a bit like if I bring up North Korea as an example of a secular atheist state.
damon
I don’t agree on the hijab. Maybe men should wear them too.
I have sometimes had the bizarre thought of what the world would look like if everyone wore one. Men and women. The niqab too. That would be totally mental. You wouldn’t be able to recognise anyone. I know it’s cultural as well as to stop lustful looks when people put children in hijabs – but they’re not in them countries anymore and I would just prefer it if they knocked that silly practice on the head. Even Yasmin Alibhai-Brown thinks it’s an oppressive piece of material. In many Muslim countries it’s practically obligatory for girls and women to wear it.
Afghanistan was like you say I believe, but the world has moved on and the Wahabis and Salafists have superseded the Sufis by the look of it.
We should discourage practice of religion as much as possible.
Some of it is pretty benign, but fundamentalism is rife now.
Of the Muslim countries you named, I’ve been in a few of them.
Only Malaysia actually charmed me. I was there three months a few years ago so saw a lot of the peninsula. Very nice people.
Indonesia also, but it has some pretty messed up ideas too.
Jordan is OK – but not a place where as a European foreigner, your not treated as anything other than a total alien. Even when people are being friendly.
Morocco is hard. After six weeks travelling about there, I breathed a huge sigh of relief as I left the country at the border crossing into one of those Spanish enclaves.
As for Dubai, I spent a week there and that place sucks so much. It’s horrible.
Practically a slave state. I don’t think I met one Emirati. They are so rich they are aloof form cheapo backpackers like I was. And the majority of the people who live there are just exploited labour.
Generally Muslim societies are messed up. I was in Egypt last year and its hard to respect people in a country where rates of FGM are so high. But it would have been a totally taboo subject to ever ask and Egyptian about.
If large numbers of these kinds of people want to come to the UK, I think we really have to try to encourage them to become more secular and less into their old culture.
It’s just a view.
Mike Stallard
9/11 – 7/7 – the Madrid bombings – the recent Ramadan seaside shootings – the appalling publicity offered by ISIS when they behead innocent people…
There is no excuse for this.
The importance, of course, is that now Imperialism has collapsed and the West is no longer able to defend itself, barbarism comes back, first in Africa now in the Muslim world.
I personally, being a Catholic, would like to see a Christian revival. The last time that happened (Wesley brothers) we were able to produce lots of things and abolish slavery too.
But we mustn’t upset the atheists and the secularists and the humanists and the Muslims must we?