The Long and Winding Road

Page 28
Q-News, Issue 362
April 2005

Only when we become more serious about playing our role as citizens can we be sure of our political maturity, argues Abdelwahab El-Affendi. The community must do more than squander its limited political capital on marginal issues and get serious about dealing with real problems.

The distance traversed by the Muslim community in Britain between the Satanic Verses controversy in 1989 and the anti-war protests of the autumn of 2002 could be compared to the progress from childhood to adolescence.

It is not difficult to see that the incongruous and forlorn exercise of book burning in Bradford in 1989 and marching in Trafalgar Square amid the enthusiastic “rainbow coalition” of anti-war protestors are worlds apart. But it is also not difficult to remind ourselves that we have in the meantime seen the Bradford riots of the summer of 2001, not to mention the dreadful September that followed. We also had the rise of the Al-Muhajiroun and Abu Hamza al-Misri, the Madrid atrocities, and the setbacks multiculturalism has encountered here and elsewhere in Europe. The question of whether the Muslim community is progressing towards political maturity or sliding back into childish petulance is not, therefore, a straightforward one. Nor can it have a straightforward answer.

The Satanic Verses episode was a pretty lonely affair in which British Muslims had few allies. In fact, it is one in which the traditional allies of Muslims among the liberals and in the Left became the enemy. It also started the rise of bitter anti-Muslim sentiments, and could be partly responsible for the current fit of paranoia, which has gripped sections of the Labour party leadership under Tony Blair. It is no coincidence that the first stirrings of the hijab controversy in France occurred in 1989.

The episode also had the effect of crystallising a clear and distinct Muslim identity for the community, which began to emerge as a self-conscious entity on the political scene around that time, and around that issue. Muslims were no longer just “immigrants”, “blacks” or “Asians”, much less Pakistanis, Bangladeshis or Arabs. However, while the controversy accentuated Muslim self-consciousness, it did not exactly unite the community, which encountered new divisions and was polarized between two types of response. The first was symbolized by the emergence of the UK Action Committee on Islamic Affairs, which sought to engage the media and mainstream politicians into a dialogue around Muslim demands. The second crystallized around the Muslim Parliament, which wrapped itself into the rhetoric of separatism and “revolution”. The same period witnessed the not-so-puzzling ascendancy of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a party that combined incendiary rhetoric with a programme of complete inaction. No wonder it appealed so much to Britain’s frustrated and angry Muslim youth, who could proclaim the impending revolution in the evening, and go to their plum city jobs the following morning secure in the belief their proclamations would have no adverse impact on their security and welfare as British yuppies. This all had a therapeutic and cathartic effect, since it allowed the frustrated young to shift responsibility for curing the ummah’s ills on the absent Khalifah.

The Muslim Parliament, as is well known, has lapsed into obscurity following the passing away of its charismatic founder, Dr Kalim Siddiqui, and the waning of the revolutionary fervour which has inspired its founders. The Action Committee has metamorphosed into the Muslim Council of Britain, which continues to pursue the policy of engagement with the mainstream with partial success. It was joined in this by the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), itself an heir to the Muslim Student Society (MSS), another significant metamorphosis. The shift symbolizes an indicative shift in the identity of a section of the (mainly) Arab Muslim community in Britain, which used to be composed mainly of foreign students who come to Britain for short periods and were more concerned with preserving their Muslim identity and performing their religious duties while abroad. Its engagement in politics was directly mainly to the students’ home countries, and its engagement in British politics, including student politics, remained minimal.

All that has changed now, as the formation of MAB signals that the community has now put roots in the country and is turning its attention to specifically British concerns. MAB played a crucial role in forging the anti-war coalition, which signalled a key moment in British Muslim history. Far from being an isolated and foreign-focused fringe protest movement which was both xenophobic and the object of xenophobia, British Muslims became fully in tune with the nation’s heartbeat at that particular moment. It was not all a smooth affair, since the anti-war coalition did contain some groups which were vehemently anti-Muslim. But the very fact some Muslim organizations were able to work harmoniously with such groups even for this limited purpose, was very significant.

However, while this is an undeniable sign of progress, and certainly a great advance on the demonstration “against freedom and democracy” (I swear I did not make this up!) which Hizb ut-Tahrir called in August 1995, it is not a definitive sign of political maturity. To start with, the issue in question related exclusively to British foreign policy, and it was one which stirred deep sentiments among large sections of the British public. A huge number of protest groups, including veterans of the peace movement and the traditional Left, were involved and could have pulled off the event without Muslim participation. Therefore the Muslim community was as marginal to the protest as the protest was marginal to the core interests and concerns of the community.

In joining the protest and in using the war in Iraq as a focus of its demands, the community was expending part of its meagre political capital on a cause that was not going to benefit it directly, even if successful. Making the case for saving the Iraqi dictator the one on which the community should make its “principled” stance is indicative of a residual reliance on instinct rather than reason in shaping responses to events. Rather than transcending the Satanic Verses episode, this was in fact a replay of it. The performance has certainly improved, and the community could have achieved equal success if it had fought the Satanic Verses battle on an anti-racist, rather than a religious, platform. But, then what? What would have success indicated? Would banning Rushdie’s book have been such a great achievement even if it were feasible?

The same question can be asked in the case of the Iraq war: would averting the war but leaving the Saddam regime and the obscene sanctions in place have been such a great victory even if it had been achieved? And since even that objective had not been achieved, what does it mean to describe the anti-war protests as a “success” for Muslims?
This reminds me of a famous remark by the late Palestinian leader Issam Sartawi, who commented on slogans by some of his PLO colleagues describing the ejection of the PLO from Lebanon in 1982 as a “victory”. “One more victory like this,” he remarked wryly, “and we will be in Fiji!”

Similarly, one more achievement like this for the British Muslim community, and the subject of Muslim participation in the political process will be taught in history books, rather than in courses on politics. The Muslim community as things stand today, is impoverished, marginalized and politically inconsequential. It has next to no representation in parliament, and a negligible presence in the leadership of major political parties, the media, academia and business. It does not have any political capital to squander over yet more losing or unwinnable causes that are marginal to its interests.

The priority at the moment for Muslims is to build political capital, not squander it. Members of the community should be mobilised to improve the lot of the community in these key areas, in particular the presence at the top of the political hierarchy and at the centre of civil and business organisations. Then it can use this influence to further “pet causes” of its choosing. Above all, it should not create new losing causes by joining new rash ventures such the formation of Respect party (not to mention the Islamic Party of Great Britain!). In short, the British Muslim community needs to be more British, not in the sense of following Blunkett’s prescriptions on Englishness, but in the sense of being more concerned about what Brown, Blair and others are doing in Britain and to Britain, rather than of what they are doing in the name of Britain abroad. Only when British Muslim leaders become more serious about playing their role as British citizens can we be sure of definitive signs of political maturity. And that appears to be a long way away yet.