 |
| .................................... |
 Another Inconvenient Truth >> Aki Nawaz “Go Join Hezbollah!" >> Amina Nawaz So, You Wanna Change the World? >> Sarah Waseem 10 Books To Read Before Going To University >> Mujadad Zaman Still Learning to Tread on Hallowed Ground >> Omar Fraser A Prophet for All >> Abdul-Rehman Malik Emerging from the Rubble: A Letter from New York City >> Zeeshan Suhail and Muntasir Sattar Istanbul’s Illuminated Ramadan Nights >> Abdal Hakim Murad The Pain of Panjshir >> Chris Sands A People Coming Apart at the Seams >> David Lepeska A Cynical Plan to Rebuild Islam >> Louay Safi Suffer The Little Children >> Tasneem Osgood Dangerous Denial on Darfur >> Muhammed Abdelmoteleb Is the Glass Half Full of Hope or Despair? >> Fozia Bora The Mother of All Muslim Organisations >> Mullah Charles Bala Subramaniam Narasimha Rao A Pious Mole >> Mudasser Ali Living on the Edge >> Tauhid Pasha The Silly Season >> Dal Nun Strong Walk in the Old Paths >> Daoud Rosser-Owen A Modern-Day Ibn Battuta - A tribute to Thomas Omar Abercrombie (1930-2006) >> Shiraz Sheikh “How can you hear a million words from a million mouths at the same time?” >> Shan Khan A Triumph of Myth >> Abdul-Rehman Malik The Timbuktu Charter: “We will be like ferocious lions” >> Muammar al-Gaddafi Updike’s Terrorist: An(other) American Folly >> Raneem Azzam A Crooked Commission >> Sunny Hundal Aural Remembrance Whitewashing White Terror Veil-Gate - The End of Tolerance? Organic Iftars, Unholy Garbage iPod vs iMuslim Formula One Fatwas Vox Populi |
.. |
Is the Glass
Half Full of Hope or Despair? Page 59 An intensely personally exploration
of his own complex identity, Fozia
Bora finds that Rageh Omaar’s brave and powerful book achieves
much more than it sets out to do. In seeking a way out of the
two-dimensional portrayal of Islam and Muslims, Omaar is embracing the
dynamic tension that fuels his own creativity. The five chapters cover a broad range of encounters. ‘Two Lives, Two Visions’ chronicles the wholly divergent and yet strangely congruous paths taken by two ‘European’ Somalis – Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Yassin Hassan Omar (one of the four failed bombers of 21 July 2005). Both reject “a place where Islam and the West can co-exist.” ‘Coming Home’ describes Omaar’s return to a war-razed Somalia after many years away and finding it is still ‘home’ for him, as is Britain, thus demonstrating that ‘Britishness’ can only be a composite idea for so many. ‘Pilgrimages and Journeys’ portrays the Somali community in Britain, with its strong religious and cultural affiliations, and ends with the observation that “the things we share as British Muslims are much stronger than the things that divide us.” ‘The Catastrophic War’ is a profoundly moving meditation on the significance of Iraq in Muslim history, and conveys his deep sadness at the irreparable damage inflicted by the ‘war on terror’ there. And finally, ‘Hidden Lives’ takes us into the lives of British Somali individuals whom Omaar has known – particularly his aunt Asha and her nephew Mohammed, who was almost killed in a terrifying knife attack - who embody the pursuit of “integration” (the integration of the best of Muslims values with the best of British ones rather than the facile superimposition of one identity over another) in spite of the horrors of racism and undeniable Islamophobia. The main thrust of Omaar’s book is that, “If our societies are to thrive, our knowledge of the people who live among us has to improve.... Muslims are... seen as alien by so many people in this country, [and] their experiences as individuals whether working as a travel agent on a high street or living as a mother in a suburb, as a recently arrived refugee or as an educated woman in a youth centre,... are rarely heard. And yet, without allowing these voices in politics, on our streets, in our schools, in our newspapers and on our televisions, we are all lost. It is only when the voice of the individual is lifted above the waves of condemnation that all of us can begin to... realise that our worlds are not in conflict after all.” Yet in making the argument that we are at a crossroads in our development, and can choose a middle ground between the twin extremisms of either Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Yassin Hassan Omar, Omaar demonstrates how the odds are stacked against those who wish to engage, amongst both Muslim and non-Muslim Britons. It will certainly take some determination to overcome the misunderstandings, conflicts and tensions Omaar outlines in this book and which many British Muslims live daily. The main audience for this book is probably those whose protégé Omaar initially was: media moguls and employees (Omaar was the BBC’s ‘star’ reporter in Baghdad, and also covered wars in Somalia and Afghanistan, before moving to al-Jazeera this year), the ‘Establishment’ in general, and the white middle classes who seem to need more convincing now – of the creative equilibrium in which Muslim and British identities can be held - than ever before. And his ‘dual access’ means he is true to both his Muslim and Somali background, and to the world he later inhabits (Cheltenham College, Oxford University and marriage into the English aristocracy), and he thus transcends, by his personal experience, the narrow categories through which both tunnel-minded Muslims and non-Muslims often think. That said, Omaar left the BBC for al-Jazeera: this move symbolises the need he feels to tell the ‘other side’ of the Muslim story. The question that remains, and to which Omaar, an intellectually self-aware observer, will surely turn at some point in the future, is whether moving to al-Jazeera is swapping one meta-narrative for another. The whole point of this book is to draw attention to the specificities of individual encounters between Muslim and non-Muslim in Britain, and to avoid the undifferentiated ideological stances perpetuated by various media. Next to Fox News, and perhaps even the BBC, al-Jazeera appears a beacon of connectedness and insight. How deep is its commitment to the truth, however? This book transcends the parameters of its own discussion because it shows the reader that public discourse about Islam in general and about Muslims in the west in particular fail to take account of one crucial phenomenon: our minds and hearts are complex enough to accommodate more than one frame of reference, and to hold these in a state of dynamic tension. This is what Rageh Omaar does, and how he lives, and most if not all British Muslims also. Our identities, whether assumed (such as religion) or innate (such as race or gender), have always co-existed and need not pull us apart unless we are forced to privilege one over another (or the others) in the way that Omaar’s subjects often are. If inner harmony finds no mirror-image in society, and in the way different communities relate to one another, the result can only be intolerance on all sides. This is the tragedy that Rageh Omaar hopes, in this lucid and heartfelt book, to avert. Rageh Omaar’s Only Half of Me: Being a Muslim in Britain is published by Viking (2006). |