Big Questions Article
Last Sunday [31/01/16] the BBC programme “The Big Questions”
asked the question “Do we need a British Islam?”. The very asking of this
question automatically implies that the asker thinks that Islam does not really
belong in Britain. Let me show what I mean by asking a very similar question:
“Do we need a British Christianity?” The question makes no sense. Christianity
de facto belongs in Britain; it is by definition a British religion. And the
truth is that exactly the same thing now applies to Islam. Islam is now a British
religion. Nicky Campbell, the presenter, said in his introduction to the
programme that Islam was Britain’s fastest growing religion and the fact is
that Islam has now been firmly established in the UK for more than fifty years.
Yet there is clearly a general failure to understand this – not helped,
incidentally, by the way it is treated in the media and recent government
policy initiatives – and there is a public perception that Islam is an intruder
from elsewhere, that it does not really belong in these islands, and that we
might all be better off if it went back to where it came from. That may, of
course, also have been the prevailing attitude when Christianity first arrived
but, had its adherents been successful, what we know as British history would
never have taken place!
It is certainly true that Islam has taken on very
distinctively different cultural forms in the many varied parts of the world
where it has taken root. The Muslims of China live in a completely different
way to the Muslims of West Africa; those of the Caucasus have a totally
different culture to those of Southern Arabia. But, despite this, the religious
practices of all these people are recognisably the same; they are all Muslims
clearly practising Islam. The same can obviously be said of Christians
throughout the world, although there is in fact one noticeable difference. In
no country, where Islam has been established for any length of time, is there
any kind of cultural imposition from elsewhere; it is as if it had grown from the
soil of the place where it is established. Many lands, however, in which
Christianity is a major religion, even if it has been there for centuries,
still bear the cultural hallmarks of the particular colonial presence that
brought it there in the first place. Following on from this, it is certain that
Islam in the UK will gradually lose the differing cultural characteristics of
the various immigrant ethnic groups that at present make up the majority of the
Muslims here and will develop a distinctive British cultural identity derived
from their long term residence in Britain.
The “Big Questions” programme seemed determined from
the outset to show that Islam and Muslims were antipathetic to “the British way
of life”. One peripheral issue after another was brought up with the apparent
object of demonstrating Islam’s incompatibility with life in Britain today.
First off, a spokesman from an ultra reformist group, rejected by the vast
majority of Muslims in the UK, was brought in to provocatively raise the issue
of the Muslim position regarding apostates, people who leave Islam to join
another religion: “Was it not true that Islam condemns apostates to death?”
What has this to do with Islam in Britain today? Certainly there is a classical
position, drawn up in a totally different historical and cultural context,
where, in certain circumstances, this may have been the case. But Muslims in
Britain are, under Islamic law, bound to abide by the laws of the country they
live in; and, in any case, numerous instances of this occurring have already
occurred here without any suggestion of any violence whatsoever being inflicted
on those concerned. The issue has no relevance whatsoever to Islam in Britain
today.
The next thing wheeled out in the progamme as being
inimical to “our British way of life” was the “forced segregation” between men
and women that Muslims are supposed to impose in public places. I have attended
scores and scores of public meetings organised by Muslims in many different
types of public venues all over the country and have never been “forced” to sit
anywhere. It is absolutely true that, when Muslims gather in public, men and
women tend to separate by gender, women sitting with women and men with men,
usually, in the familiar setting of an audience facing a stage, with men on one
side of the auditorium and the women on the other. But this happens quite
naturally by free choice and is because Muslims feel more comfortable with this
arrangement. In the case that, as has often happened, there were also non-muslim
men and women present who have wanted to sit next to one another, they have
done so and I have never witnessed a single occasion in forty years where they
were prevented from doing that. The whole matter is simply a non–issue and why
it has been turned into such a contentious problem is puzzling to say the
least. More worrying, I would say, is the real “forced integration” going on in
a number of schools, where boys and girls are actually being coerced into
sitting next to each other in class when they do not want to.
As the programme went on a familiar litany of these
so-called Muslim aberrations was trotted out, one after another: subjugation of
women, mistreatment of women, shari’a courts, radicalisation of the young, etc.
etc. , all of which, on rational examination, turn out to be either problems
that beset society as a whole or are nothing whatever to do with the general
perception people have of them. I could go into all of them individually but
that would take up too much time and space in the present context. The vital
point is that all of these things are truly peripheral to Islam. They really
have nothing at all to do with the presence of Islam in Britain today.
First and foremost Islam is about only one thing:
the worship of God. Wherever they are from, whatever their cultural background,
central to the life of all Muslims is a profound awareness of the reality of
the Divine Reality, a Divine Reality, moreover, that is overwhelmingly
characterised by Mercy, Generosity, Forgiveness and Forbearance. And these
characteristics are necessarily reflected within the Muslim community and
manifested in the form of openhandedness, hospitality, awareness of the needs
of others and genuine warmth towards all and sundry. This is not just how
Muslims should be, it is how they actually are, and anyone who has traveled
among Muslims knows this to be true. Islamic law, contrary to the media fed
bogeyman image it has recently been given, engenders social justice, financial
probity, freedom from fear of crime, equitable distribution of wealth,
unparalleled toleration of other religions, care of the poor and a general
sense of security throughout society. This is evidenced by innumerable,
verifiable historical examples. Islam is not about abstract principles of how
things should be in an ideal world, it is a matter of practical good action and
active generosity. Most people today view existence as something fundamentally
untrustworthy, as something inherently threatening. Muslims, on the other hand,
see existence as the generous outpouring of an endlessly benevolent Creator who
desires the best for all His creatures. The difference between these two
outlooks is palpable and the effect of having a significant group of people
within the British population who have this positive attitude towards the world
they inhabit should not be underestimated.
However, by dint of his clever
manipulation of the group of carefully chosen mutually antagonistic Muslim
spokespeople, Nicky Campbell, by dwelling on the stereotypical side issues I
referred to earlier, succeeded in turning the discussion on the programme into
little more than an incoherent shouting match, thus bolstering the
unremittingly negative picture of Islam and the Muslim community the media
seems determined to portray. There was no possibility of a single one of the
overwhelmingly positive aspects of Islam I have just mentioned being brought
out in the context of such an acrimonious discussion. At the end of the
programme Nicky Campbell turned his back on the audience and faced the camera,
ostensibly to give the details of the next week’s programme, but as he did so
he raised his eyebrows as if to say: “If this is British Islam, no thank you!”
I was left wondering whether the real object of the exercise was what is called
“good television” or whether its actual purpose was to reinforce the negative
image of Islam that both present government policy and the secular liberal
orthodoxy seem hell bent on conveying. Nevertheless, despite the torrent of
anti-islamic propaganda, both past and present, it remains a verifiable and
undeniable historical fact that wherever Islam has been established in any part
of the world it has played an irrefutably positive role in the development of
the society involved. And despite the best efforts of Mr. Campbell et al to
denigrate it, it is almost certain that future historians will point to the
establishment of Islam in Britain as one of the most significant and beneficial
factors in the post second world war period of 20th century British
history.
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