Farewell to the Bush years - Part 8

What did you find shocking and unbelievable?

Like I have hinted at earlier, the Bush years were one long surreal moment in which it seemed that anything could happen. This moment began with a terrorist attack that could have never been imagined and ended with the election of a young African-American President which was also previously unbelievable. The attacks in Madrid were unbelievable. The anti-war March in London on 15th February 2003 in which 1 million people marched was unbelievable. The invasion of Iraq was unbelievable. It was as if we were in some world or realm in which the impossible became possible. This is how it felt at the time, but at the same time the calmer voice within me urges me to resist ‘the Bush years as exceptional’ argument. There had been a previous Gulf war. The US had previously attacked Grenada. The Irish experience of internment was much worse than what the Muslim community experienced during the Bush years. So in many ways, the Bush years can be characterised by a series of unbelievable events, but also it was in many respects business as usual.

The other aspect of the Bush years which was genuinely shocking was the widening of the boundaries of acceptability in relation to what one could say about Muslims. ‘Islam as an opportunistic infection in Europe’, ‘Muslims, like all dogs, share certain characteristics’ and we should tame the Muslim community as we did during the Raj (I have paraphrased this) have all been written by anti-Muslim spokespersons during these times. That they passed without wider comment is shameful and that it remained for Muslims to question this language is also shocking. Reading material like this, I did feel at times that I couldn’t believe that this was happening. These kinds of statements about any other community would have been regarded as unacceptable and condemned but they appear acceptable when ascribed to the Muslim community.

This makes me think that there were some that used the Bush years as an opportunity. I can think of two sectors here that had close but troubled relations with the Muslim community prior to the Bush years. The first is the race industry. Within the race industry there has been a variety of response. Commentators like Gary Younge of the Guardian and Karen Chouhan of the 1990 Trust have been at the forefront of support for the Muslim community whereas activists like Trevor Philips have used the Bush years to criticise the Muslim community for adopting a segregationist approach. His speech ‘Sleepwalking to segregation’ just after the 2005 attacks was probably one of the greatest acts of brinkmanship against the Muslim community in this period. The Anglican Church has been an institution that has developed relations with the community but this did not prevent leading members of the Church such as Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali from criticising the Muslim community through arguments that again presented the community as a problem, seeking to isolate itself and refusing to engage. There certainly was some opportunism during this period and it was revealing as to the true intentions of those who previously had painted themselves as friends of the Muslim community. Please note the links being made by anti-Muslim spokespersons from terrorism to politics through culture to religion.

What has changed and what will be the long-term impact of the Bush years?

Thinking about the Bush years I am taken back to the Rushdie affair. The main event was the issuing of the fatwa by Ayatollah Khomeini against Salman Rushdie in 15 February 1989. The book burning which is something associated with the fatwa is something that gathered significance retrospectively. At the time (early January 1989), it didn’t receive that much coverage in the press. The Rushdie affair though has been described as the origin of the ‘Islam problem’. Some commentators have attempted to force this narrative. For example Kenan Malik has titled his new book ‘From Fatwa to Jihad’ as if there is some clear link between the two. There may be, but only in the minds of those who wish to construct a powerful anti-Muslim prejudice that preys upon the deepest fears of an already fearful Western population. The Rushdie affair can’t really be described as the origin of the ‘Islam problem’. The halal meat episode and the Honeyford affair are perhaps important first experiences of the tensions around multiculturalism and the war in Bosnia was the formative event in the development of the more radical trends in British Islam rather then the Rushdie affair. ‘From Bosnia to Jihad’ would be a more credible account of the narrative and it makes much more sense: the jihad movement gained strength directly because of the weakness that many Muslims felt as a result of the murder and rape in Bosnia.

The Rushdie affair at the time though seemed to last for eternity and many of us who were there then felt that it was a really bad period to live through. However, as in the Sufi understanding, reality may contradict appearances. The Rushdie affair became a time of great soul searching within the community and considerable discussion as to the future of the community itself. Out of the Rushdie affair emerged therefore an approach towards understanding Muslim identity that was strident and yet focused on the naturalisation of a Muslim presence within Britain. Many people discovered themselves as Muslims thereafter and found ways to contribute towards such a natural Muslim presence within Britain.

The Bush years I think will have the same kind of effect and in fact I have already seen it happening. There is a large proportion of the third generation that is now politically focused, aware and strident. The difference between now and then is that then – twenty years ago - many of us had to make do with poor resources, many questions were left unanswered and we had very little means to figure out what we were going to do next. This is no longer the case. In publishing, the books that are available now are an amazing source of information and guidance. In terms of lecture series, there are many, many educational products available for Muslim young people which can help them through faith spiritually, intellectually and practically. These services rendered by leaders like Sh Hamza Yusuf, Dr Umar Abdallah, Sh Zaid Shakir and Sh Abdal Hakim Murad are a great service to the Muslim community and have been incredibly helpful. The internet through youtube and e-mail contact and online shops also makes all of these resources instantly accessible. The facilities and resources are therefore great and I sometimes marvel at the lack of appreciation from some 18 year olds that I have come across to the resources that they have available and that we never had then.

The other main difference between now and then is that the move in the nineties was towards cultural isolation and political oppositionalism. The move today is towards cultural and political engagement. The politicisation of the Bush years has therefore rapidly speeded up the development of a Muslim identity in Britain and the West in general and it has done so by politicising Muslim youth, that is marking their identity, which has then forced them to explore this identity through a much wider variety and better quality of resources that are now available and in the direction of engagement. This means that today and henceforth there is a much greater presence in the public sphere than before. That is to say, that where the doors have been opened such as in the Guardian’s comment pages, then there is a sizeable Muslim presence that is seeking to respond to the various challenges that we face and where the doors have been closed such as in the Telegraph’s comment pages, then Muslims are few and far between. One example of this shift from protest towards engagement is the Muslim student body FOSIS, the Federation of Students Islamic Societies. The nineties were a time in which FOSIS was either excluded from the deliberations of the National Union of Students or engaged in some antagonistic altercation with the NUS. Today, FOSIS representatives have been elected on to the national NUS body and there is in the main a strong and mutually beneficial and constructive relation between the NUS and FOSIS. In this sense, one could say that Muslim politics is maturing.

If there are several layers of representation: academic (e.g. university professors), media (e.g. journalists and commentators), policy (policywonks and civil servants) and political (members of the House of Commons and the House of Lords) and the representation has been continuous and intense then the story of engagement is very far from complete. There are only four Muslim members of parliament, the Muslims members of the House of Lords are not as strong as other members (their contributions to debates are lacklustre), there are very few national Muslim commentators and also very few professors in the human, social and political sciences. But the numbers are slowly increasing.

The extent to which this period has had a transformative effect upon the community can be envisaged by the changes that have occurred to some its leading individuals. Sadiq Khan began this period as a lawyer working with Louise Christian on cases that were taking the government to task on its counter-terrorism strategy. Sadiq Khan then became an MP and then a Minister for the Department of Communities and Local Government which leads on race equality and cohesion matters. Salma Yaqoob was transformed through her experience of anti-Muslim prejudice and has since become a leading political voice for the community, appearing on national television and speaking in front of thousands in numerous occasions. Majid Nawaz began this period as a leading member of Hizb ut Tehrir. He was arrested in Egypt and then found guilty. He was released, returned to Britain and began to appear on satellite Muslim television and then announced his departure from Hizb ut-Tehrir to lead a counter-extremism think tank that is heavily backed by government.

It’s still too early to tell what all of this will lead to and this is probably why we are currently engaged in a war of positioning and have been so since 9/11. What is clear though is that where there is under-representation of Muslims in public life, it’s not because of a lack of ambition or aspiration or even talent, it is instead due to the fact that the doors through which one has to enter in order to gain a foothold in any of these arenas are firmly shut.

There has been real resistance from policy makers and commentators to respond to the terrorism question simply as a political issue and there has instead been a real readiness to move towards defining the problem as a cultural problem and so policy makers and commentators have lead on the war of positioning by putting forward the examples of Ed Hussain, Anjum Choudhury and even Shami Chakrabarti as leaders for the community to contend with. Salma Yaqoob, Inayat Bunglawala and others have also fought to carve a political position that retains some critical edge while remaining integrationist in principle. That Ed Hussain has been actively supported by the government and Anjum Choudhry is given instant access to the mainstream media – something which is almost impossible for most intelligent, coherent, sound, decent and generally persuasive Muslims – shows that the matter of the future of Muslim identity is actively being contested by several actors. The Muslim community has to keep a close and perceptive eye here on developments and the kinds of people that receive patronage and why. This story though is still in the making.

Farewell to the Bush Years - Part 7

Who did badly in the Bush years within a British context?

When one begins to think about who did badly in the Bush years and who did well, then it is clear that of those on the national scene it was those who were able to provide some kind of persistent leadership through example which represented good judgment and political nous that came out as winners in the Bush years. Lord Nazir Ahmad was for example the de facto Minister for Muslim affairs in the first Blair administration but his influence declined in the second administration. This was because he was perhaps a bit too vociferous against the government of which he was a member. His political position was in effect right in my opinion i.e. that someone had to take a critical stance towards what the government was doing from 2002-2004, however his manner of execution was too abrasive and risky. Tariq Ramadan was also a voice that was poised to become an influential player in the Bush years but he has not been able to attract a mass following perhaps because his interventions have been too general. Leadership during the Bush years too often centred and depended upon the specifics and outlining a response to specific developments. The Muslim Members of Parliament Muhammad Sarwar and Khalid Mahmood also lost ground during the Bush years. They were unable to articulate any vision for the Muslim community which the community could adopt and follow.

The Muslim Council of Britian has also emerged weaker from the Bush years. Their initial position prior to 9/11 was as Labour’s only Muslim interlocutor. Word had it that Iqbal Sacranie the Secretary-General of the MCB had a direct line to Tony Blair. However, the influence of the MCB began to decline as the Bush years wore on. This is for two reasons. The first is the two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Ultimately, the MCB took a position against both wars (though it was slow to condemn the invasion of Afghanistan) and this included being part of a huge coalition against the invasion of Iraq. This soured relations between the MCB and the government. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly the MCB was slow to respond to the needs of the government. From 9/11 onwards the government needed a partner with which it could work and upon which it could rely for the delivery of key policy objectives. The two key areas were community cohesion (or the integration debate) and counter-terrorism (and what later became the prevent strand). On both agendas, the MCB didn’t really respond in any way that could be regarded as offering some form of direction to government and leadership to the Muslim community. If the government was frustrated uptil July 7, the terrorists attacks of July 7 2005 highlighted this great absence and the government effectively decided to instigate its own proto-Muslim leadership through the establishment of seven working groups themed around key policy areas. In one step, the MCB was sidelined and it was perhaps necessary at the time for a government whose priority was the safety of its citizens. Rival organisations such as the British Muslim Forum (headed by former Labour activist Khurshid Ahmad) and the Sufi Muslim Council (headed by former Labour activist Azhar Ali) were formed and these began to challenge the MCB on the national stage. In effect though, the MCB remains the main player because of its large number of affiliates and the other two organisations remain weak. The MCBs influence has however declined and with the advent of the prevent strand in full measure across the country and the formation of the Young Muslim Advisory Group and the Muslim Women’s Advisory Group by the DCLG, the MCB has been sidelined altogether. This could have been regarded as a price worth paying if the MCB had gained concomitantly in its support within the Muslim community but this hasn’t happened either.

Other people whose influence has declined are the anti-Muslim extremists. Straight after 9/11 there was a great deal of interest in the anti-Muslim position, however, as the years have gone by the positions of the anti-Muslim extremists have begun to appear more and more absurd, especially because the solution that they offer is of further polarisation. Since the moderating tendency within the Muslim community has increased and become more vociferous during the Bush years, their position seems less accurate and therefore more paranoid. Their influence has certainly declined.

Who did well in the Bush years? Who came out as winners?

The Bush years have been very good for Muslim moderation (unfortunately, they have also been very good for extremism). This was for two reasons: the first is the moral repugnance that many Muslims felt towards the terrorist attacks and their justifiers. This did genuinely move many Muslims to realise that we had a problem within the community. Secondly, Muslim moderation became a political necessity in response to terrorist attacks. Terrorist attacks lead therefore to a strong revival of moderation simply because the opposing path was too politically fraught with danger. Those who therefore articulated a Muslim moderation with a clear and consistent approach emerged as winners from the Bush years. The Muslim community was seeking some direction and further polarisation was not a part of it so those leaders and spokespersons that articulated a moral response and political direction that exhibited some spine and some substance were those that were held in high regard. Sadiq Khan and Salma Yaqoob emerge here as two important voices that articulated this position very clearly.

One point that I’d like to add here though is that the Bush years were a very challenging time for people who were leading the Muslim community in that the Bush years had this habit of throwing up scenarios which most people were not prepared for and probably had never thought about. Immediately, we, as a community, would be thrown into the eye of a major storm and we’d have all of three hours to respond with conviction and good judgement. This was asking a lot of most people and the first generation shied away from this responsibility, probably because they didn’t have a clue as to how to respond. Many in the second generation stepped forward and I commend them for their bravery. Many have also made the occasional mistake. And this is where I think we should provide some breathing space for those who were brave enough to stand up for the mistakes that they may have made during this period. Which brave soul is going to suggest that they could have done a better job? Perhaps, he who is without fear should cast the first stone, but I’m sorry to note that most people were afraid, but not too afraid to criticise. Having noted this, I would also state that internal criticism is a very useful corrective measure if it’s done in the right way. We need internal criticism (of individuals), but we also need bravery and good judgement.

Where do you think Quilliam foundation fits into this?

I think the Quilliam foundation has been a real disaster. This is not because I disagree with their political position, in essence I agree with their political position. That is that we have to question some of the influences upon British Muslims and ensure that we help develop an approach that is conducive towards the preservation of Muslim identity as well as outreach towards the wider community. The problem during the Bush years was that internal critique (of aspects of the community) became almost impossible during times of heightened politicisation. The community was on the defensive though it had and has many issues that it needs to face head on. We were coming from a point of political oppositonalism and cultural isolation at the same time. To help lead or navigate the community from this point towards one in which the community is politically engaged and culturally confidant is a delicate, sensitive process. There were several Muslims who were leading this trend and it was moving slowly but surely. However, the Quilliam foundation has almost totally discredited this position not because of the position itself (or what it means) but because of their tone and approach. The community could be seen as a young teenager that was being coaxed out its teenage rage by a loving parent towards a mature take on the world. The Quilliam foundation instead appeared as the angry parent who belittled the teenager and moralised against him. The teenager at this point of course walks out of the house. If the community does need some form of leadership which seems very similar to a kind of paternalism, then it should be a form of paternalism that helps the transition not one that confounds it.

I have been talking a lot about positionality and this is because the Bush years did in one sense foster a war of positioning in the Muslim community. This can be seen time and again as major players such as government departments like the DCLG or think tanks like the Policy Exchange or commentators like Timothy Garton Ash have spent much of the Bush years engaged in some exploratory anthropology-like exercise towards the Muslim community. Timothy Garton Ash’s search has been for a liberal Muslim that can be reconciled with his version of liberalism. He began by extolling the virtues of Ayaan Hirse Ali as ‘the new Voltaire’, then moved on to Tariq Ramadan who now works with him in Oxford university and Ash is now an advisor to the Quilliam Foundation. Similarly, the Policy Exchange has published a policy paper on ‘being careful as to who one chooses as friends’. This leading think tank for the new conservatism feels the need to help map out a pathway for conservatives in their relations with the Muslim community.

Farewell to the Bush Years - Part 6

What do you think of Bush himself?

The arrival of Bush himself was an interesting moment. Many Muslims were angered by Bill Clinton because of the sanctions against Iraq and many Muslims in America had supported the Republicans in the 2000 elections as compassionate conservatives. The group of politicians around Bush were called neo-conservatives after the movement that was based upon Leo Strauss’ political philosophy. The neo-cons were described as political activists who wished to spread liberal democracy through force and that this was the justification for the Iraq war. This logic turned what began as a political war into a cultural war. A closer look at Leo Strauss’ political philosophy revealed however that he was anti-liberal and his political philosophy was a conservative critique of liberalism. This was a strange discovery because it seemed that Leo Strauss was adopting a position that was fairly similar to a Muslim critique of modern society. And so it seemed that what was originally a political philosophy with which Muslims could engage and perhaps even partially agree was being used to justify a war that was being waged against Muslims. Unfortunately, very few people picked up on this and the problem of Muslims finding an intellectual location for themselves within a Western context remains. Bush’s presidency came to be characterised by his personality, his group of advisors and a political philosophy that justified their ambitions. Bush himself was characterised as a buffoon, somebody whose job it was to read the autocues at press conferences and public speeches. The group of advisors were to provide the steel and substance to his presidency. They were the individuals of past administrative experience who could provide the strength to Bush’s presidency that he needed. Bush will unfortunately be remembered for his gaffes, a president who really should not have been president of the most powerful country on earth. He did not make his country proud and the world wondered what was so great about a political system that conjured up such an obviously inadequate candidate as president.

And Blair?

Blair is also a huge personality from the Bush years. He will be remembered for his ability to communicate, especially his great speeches. He knew how to convince an audience, a country, he relied upon the trust that he asked for to win his arguments. But that was his downfall as well. It was an ‘et tu Brute’ moment when the country stared back in to his eyes and realised that he was in fact being economical with the truth on the most serious of matters. Blair will be remembered therefore for the enthusiasm, the hope and the trust that he inspired as well as the massive loss of trust that he generated after the Iraq war. He worried towards the end of his time as Prime Minister as to how history would judge him. I think history will judge him as someone who was not brave enough to stand up to the US administration in the lead up to the Iraq war. This could have been forgiven if he had then not gone on to become one of the great supporters of the invasion. History would have judged him differently if he had stood up at the time and spoken against the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq.

And Osama bin Laden?

The last thirty years could be described as the rise and fall of the jihad movement. The jihad movement has to be divided into three strands: the largest strand includes those engaged in freedom struggles for Muslims in minority situations such as Chechens in Russia, the Kashmiris in India and the Bosnians in Yugoslavia. The second strand consists of those Islamists who criticise more mainstream Islamist organisations for being too soft and argue that the Islamic state can only be achieved through violent means within Muslim countries and usually through waging a war against the government itself. Khalid Islambuli who assassinated Anwar Sadat may be considered to be from this strand. The third strand is those that have said that the war needs to be taken from Muslim countries to those that back the regimes in these countries and specifically the United States. The jihad movement was represented through these three strands but the second and third strand only really began to gather momentum in the seventies and then through the eighties as the third strand emerged as a dominant perspective in the nineties. Many of the individuals involved in the jihad movement actually went through the three strands in a personal, psychological developmental way. Osama bin Laden and Ayman Zwahiri can be seen as examples of this psychological trajectory. This was mainly because of the increasing desperation of the jihadi movement as it began to find that it had very few avenues left to achieve its ends. The attacks on September 11 though lead to two developments. The first is the actual tracking and assassination of jihadi leaders throughout the world. The destruction of their training camps in Afghanistan and breaking up of the financial support mechanisms that were in place. This had a practical, disruptive effect on the movement. A second development though and perhaps a much more important development was the turning of the tide of Muslim opinion against the jihad movement. Uptil September 11, there was a considerable amount of support for the jihad movement in the Muslim world, and this was in the main because of their work in countries like Bosnia and Kashmir. However, if September 11 was the turning point, then further terrorist attacks and support and justification for them from jihadi leaders turned Muslims away from the jihadi movement. They now began to regard it as a corruption of Islamic teaching and perhaps also a political miscalculation. Today, there is still considerable support for Muslim communities that are experiencing difficulties because of their minority status however the other two strands are much weaker in their representation within the community when compared to before.

The only group of people that have shown a level of support for terrorist groups like al Qaeda now seem to be ‘the newly practising’. These are people who seem to have become religious fairly quickly and internalised a radical, politicised identity version of religion which incorporates a violent method of retribution as part of its understanding. They tend to mature out of it though as they begin to meet with scholars and develop a deeper understanding of their faith, something which based upon the religious texts rather than a quick interpretation of media depictions of political situations involving Muslims throughout the world.

Farewell to the Bush Years - Part 5

What were the important cultural moments?

The Bush years have had a huge effect upon our common culture, in the US and here in Britain. That is to say that the politics of the time has not been ignored by the culture of its time, in fact one could say that there was a running cultural commentary on events; one that was not univocal though: it did represent different perspectives as the political arguments and positioning found their way into the screenplays of films and the writings of leading writers. Sometimes, the cultural world waits, and reflects, and then comments through artistic production after the event. This was not the case for the Bush years.

It began with the attacks on September 11 itself. This terrorist attack was described on the day like something from the movies. But the commentary from the cultural quarter came not on the terrorist attack itself but instead the commentary was focused upon the US administration’s response. The arguments about freedom of association, the permissibility of torture, the right to a fair trial – essentially the argument about the relation between politicians and the judiciary in a time of war dominated cultural responses to the Bush years. In Britain, there was also much agonising over the position of the Muslim community and how it was receiving the war on terror.

‘24’ – an American spy thriller set in present day United States of America – began to air in the States in the autumn of 2001. It captured the zeitgeist and enthralled audiences while playing on their very real fears of an impending terrorist attack. The twists and turns, the unexpected, the double-crossings, the pressure of time – all served to make terrorists and the whole threat of terrorism look interesting and disturbing at the same time. Its legitimation of torture, the ease with which suspects were tortured and killed were unsettling. The BBC commissioned and then aired its own drama ‘The Dirty War’ in September 2004 which depicted the aftermath of a dirty bomb attack on the city of London. I remember one scene in this film which still shocks me as I recall it as this was the murder of a Muslim inmate by fellow prisoners. Shahid Aziz had been killed in Armley prison in the months prior to the screening of this programme. It was also shocking because it was a footnote to the major story-line, it was passed over as a detail in the bigger story. This was the nihilism of the Bush years. The BBC did also produce the documentary ‘The Power of Nightmares’ which focused on the climate of fear that the war on terror was generating and the series ‘The State Within’ which was a fictional story about a conspiracy within a American government to take the country to war.

Channel 4 was to air ‘Yasmin’ written by Simon Beaufoy, ‘The Bradford riots’ directed by Neil Biswas, ‘The road to Guantanamo’ directed by Micheal Winterbottom and ‘Britz’ directed by Peter Kosminsky. Theatre was not far behind. David Hare’s ‘Stuff Happens’ and ‘The Vertical Hour’, Richard Norton-Taylor and Nicholas Kent’s ‘Justifying War’, Victoria Britain and Gillian Slovo’s ‘Guantanamo’ and David Edgar’s ‘Playing with Fire’ were all staged during the Bush years. Many of these television and theatre productions were important cultural events at the time receiving coverage and comment in the press.

The literary world has also responded to the Bush years. Don De Lillo wrote ‘The Falling Man’, Martin Amis wrote ‘The Last Days of Muhammad Atta’ and John Updike wrote ‘The Terrorist’. ‘Saturday; by Ian McEwan focused on the march against the Iraq war in 2003. The film industry similarly responded to the themes thrown up by the Bush years. Ridley Scott directed ‘Kingdom of Heaven’, Michael Moore directed ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ and critics noticed the influence of the Bush years on ‘V for Vendetta’, ‘Star Wars Epsode III: The Revenge of the Sith’ and ‘The Dark Knight’.

As you can see, much has been written or produced on ‘the war on terror’. I don’t want to provide an analysis of all of this but I would like to say that the cultural commentary has been consistent and mostly it has been critical of the dominant political narrative, some of the literary interventions excepted. Though this cultural commentary has been critical of ‘the war on terror’, there have been fewer films, books or plays that have attempted to get inside the mind of a Muslim unless he happens to be a terrorist. There has therefore been plenty of criticism from a political position perspective but simultaneously cultural responses to the Bush years have in the main refrained from attempting to humanise or normalise a Muslim presence, this is while the domineering ‘other-ising’ discourse has continued to send out messages and stories that paints the Muslim community in stereotypical colours. This period has also seen very little cultural production from the Muslim community itself. Very few Muslim writers have been able to make it in to the mainstream as cultural brokers for their communities. This has meant that although there may remain widespread agreement with the community on matters of policy such as torture, Guantanamo and the Iraq war, there remain real gaps in the understanding of Muslims and the Islamic faith. Muslims may need to step up to the plate on this issue to describe who they are and how they feel.

How do you think the Muslim community responded to this culturally?

The Muslim community’s response in matters of culture has been fairly variegated. A new magazine was published in Britain: Emel, a Muslim lifestyle magazine. Probably the most famous Muslim artist in Britain is Mohammad Ali, a graffiti artist who combines street art with Islamic and political themes. Sami Yusuf has emerged as an immensely gifted singer. He has become very popular over the whole of the Muslim world. Outlandish a hip hop group from Denmark has also become very popular. And there has been the emergence of Muslim comedians such as in the ‘Allah Made Me Funny’ tour which includes Preacher Moss, Azhar Usman and Mo Amer. But it has probably been the genre of nasheeds that has proved to be the most developed and popular. There are now countless nasheed artists, many with good voices but few with good song writing abilities. Two that stand out here are Dawud Wharnsby-Ali and Kareem Salama. In many ways, it seems as if the Western Muslim community has responded to the Bush years through song. The literary side has been weak though: there are hardly any poems, plays, novels or short stories written as a response to ‘the Bush years’. There is now the Birmingham-based Muslim Writers Awards but this is still in the early stages of development and Muslim writing has a fair way to go to match the quality or populism of Sami Yusuf. Most popular novels on the British Muslim experience have been written from an outsider perspective, for example Zadie Smith’s ‘White Teeth’ or Monica Ali’s ‘Brick Lane’. Young Muslim writers are emerging but their voices have yet to hit the mainstream of the Muslim community or British society itself.

Farewell to the Bush Years - Part 4

What was the greatest moment?

The greatest moments were when the smallest rays of hope began to appear. One of the biggest problems was that the Muslim community was and perhaps remains so far away from being the least bit prepared for the challenges it faces. There is no national functioning organisation that can authoritatively present the community’s case to government and wider society in an institutional and professional way. There are very few national leaders who command the respect of the community and wider society. There seems to a real schism between religious leadership and non-religious leadership whether this be business, academic or political. There are hardly any functioning regional organisations and very few local organisations. In short, the community is severely dysfunctional. One of the reasons for this is the lack of unity or understanding what unity means or should mean for the community. In many senses, there is perhaps not even a sense of a unity of purpose for the community. Amidst all of this, when it seems that so much of what the community is doing is so wrong, the greatest moments came when it appeared that at least some sections of the community had managed to get it right. Sami Yusuf’s first album was one such example. The recent establishment of the Cambridge Muslim College is another. The emergence of Salma Yaqoob as a political leader was another. These were moments when the rays of hope began to appear.

These are all important, but in terms of the grand scheme of things then the big turnaround was the election of Barack Obama to the office of the President of the United States of America. The most important moment for me here was the Iowa caucus. By the time of the presidential election itself it was clear that there was a strong chance that Obama may become President. But it was at the Iowa caucus that this first became a possibility. They said that a white state would never vote in an African-American for President so when Obama was the leading Democratic candidate in Iowa for President then this meant that for the first time in the campaign he was an actual possibility for President. Up til this point I had seen him as an interesting candidate and not much more. I didn’t think that he had a chance. I’d seen his speech to the Democratic party from a few years prior to the nomination contest and he was a powerful young speaker, full of energy though I wasn’t sure where he was going with ‘the promise of America’. I was far more interested, intrigued even, by his choice of Samantha Power as a foreign affairs advisor. I had been following Samantha Power’s work since 9/11 as an American academic in the area of human rights who had made public interventions into the debates on human rights in the war on terror which contrasted with the interventions of Alan Dershovitz and Michael Ignatieff. All were based at Harvard and Power and Ignatieff were both based at the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard university. Ignatieff had made a case for the legitimacy of torture whereas Power was clearly against torture. But it was at the point that Obama became an actual possibility for President that must represent the greatest moment of hope for myself in the Bush years. That the Bush years could be coming to an end. But not in a slow, whimpering sort of way. They could end in a bang with an almost total reversal in policy. It was as if Obama was a possibility and could only have been a possibility because of the Bush years. It was at this time that I began to take a much closer level of interest in the American elections.

But hope is also spiritual. And I don’t want it to sound as if hope and despair are bound with our material and political circumstance. Yes, it was very difficult to ignore the events that surrounded us. But the way of the religious person is to rest his hope in the eternal spring, and to let the immediate problems pass away because they too will pass as they did. In the life of the heart therefore there is this constant struggle between the immediate and the eternal as one’s quiet religious life is violated if that is how it was felt by the immediacy of political events which were beyond the control or influence of most of us. Hope is always present for those with their eyes on eternity, but the rapid rush of one event after another made it such that our gaze could not but ignore what was beginning to happen around us in ever decreasing circles.

Did the war on terror affect you personally?

The war in terror in the main and for the majority of Muslims was a news event. By this, I mean that it affected others. Others were killed, tortured and arrested. The majority of Muslims were therefore not directly affected by the war on terror, except when it came to travel. Even here, many Muslims will have travelled during the Bush years without any difficulty. This was however not my experience. I was questioned on many occasions while crossing borders during the Bush years. I did feel that the war on terror gave immigration bureaucrats an excuse to pull me aside. On each occasion, and especially when I was pulled aside, I remember looking at the official who was asking me these questions and wondering whether he or she really was in a position to make an informed judgement as to my innocence. It seemed very arbitrary. I fitted the profile: a young British Muslim of South Asian heritage travelling.

I was stopped in Aqaba in Jordan as myself, my wife and my son returned from Nuwaiba in Egypt. We had crossed the border to visit Egypt and then renew our visa for Jordan. We had spent a day in Nuwaiba and had caught the fast boat – a hovercraft - back from Aqaba. We had taken the slow boat – large ferry – to Aqaba and the wait had been long and the journey slow so we had decided to take the fast boat back. We arrived in to Aqaba and were taken into immigration services. As the fast boat was that bit more expensive the majority of people on it were Americans, Europeans and Australians. We all sat down in the waiting area and were called up nationality by nationality by the immigration officials. When it came to the British, they began to call us by our names. I was surprised by this but then realised that we were the only ones left. Eventually, the only people remaining in the waiting area were us. I had said to my wife earlier that I did not expect us to leave Aqaba port before the arrival of the slow boat, but I was half-joking at the time. And sure enough, the slow boat had appeared on the horizon. We waited. After about an hour, when the slow boat was much closer to the port we were called by a policeman who then asked us to follow him. He took us through offices, stairways and corridors to the office of the chief immigration official at the top of the port from which we could see the whole port. We were asked to wait outside. Eventually a young man who was not that much older than myself walked up to us and asked me to enter the office. I asked my family to remain outside as I went to answer the usual questions. The same young man sat at the main desk and asked me to take a seat. I sat down. And he proceeded to in a very cold and angry way ask me questions about what I was doing in Jordan and why I had visited Egypt. I told him that I was learning Arabic in Jordan and had visited Egypt for tourism purposes. He continued to ask me some questions, after about five minutes an older man came in and tapped him on the shoulder. This older man then took the seat at the main desk as the younger man left. He continued to look through my passport and asked me the same questions again. After my third or fourth answer, he began to relax and asked me how life was in Britain. I told him it was alright. And the job situation in my city? I said, it was difficult, Bradford used to be a centre for wool trade but was now struggling. He gave his thanks and told me I could leave.

Another time I was with my family in 2008 at the border between Canada and the United States as we were returning to Chicago from Toronto after attending my cousin’s wedding there. I was with my wife, three young children, my mother and my grandfather’s brother. Again, I was called for questioning.

‘Please follow me sir’.

‘Okay’. I turned towards my family and said I’d be back in a few minutes. I have in recent years prepared a plan of action in case of my arrest which I had informed my wife about and she knew what to do in the circumstances. I didn’t trust the competence of the US immigration authorities. Again, I walked in to an office. A very young man was sitting at a desk behind a computer staring at my passport. He was flicking through it and shaking his head at the same time. He looked as if he had left high school a couple of years ago. I though to myself: ‘Dumb down, he will not understand, don’t be fooled by the uniform’. And sure enough, he seemed very fresh. ‘How long have you lived in the UK, sir?’

‘For about thirty years’.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes.’ I realised, my passport was full of stamps from Arab countries. ‘I lived in Jordan for about a year between 2002 and 2003’.

‘Right. You’ve got a lot of visas here’.

‘I was crossing borders to renew my visa in Jordan’.

‘What do you do in the UK?’ I had been asked this previously on entry into the US when again I had been pulled aside, I had answered ‘I work in the national health service’ which didn’t mean anything to the person asking the question.

‘I work for the British government, I’m an advisor’.

He nodded. ‘Who are you travelling with?’ He was shaking his head. I think that he was thinking that how can I let this man pass when he has travelled so much?

‘I’m travelling with my family’.

‘Kids?’

‘Yes’.

‘How old are they?’

‘Six, four and two’. It was about midnight on a Sunday night and we had already been waiting for about four hours.

He shook his head. I think that he was imagining what the kids would do to his office if he decided to detain me.

He waited a while. Shaking his head, ‘Okay thank you sir, please wait outside’.

And that was it, a few minutes later they returned all our passports and told us that we were free to go. As I was waiting in the immigration centre, I remembered Martin Amis’ request for Muslims to be harassed.

Farewell to the Bush Years - Part 3

Going back to the Bush years and your experience of them. Did it feel like a war on Islam?

The immediate answer to your question is that yes, at times, it did feel like a war on Islam. And certainly many people that I spoke to said that they also felt like it was a war on Islam. That doesn’t mean that I actually thought there was a war on Islam, but it certainly felt like it. This is because I could not understand what a war on Islam meant? What would it look like? Would everyone have to stop reading the Quran? Would all biographies of the Prophet be called back? Would all Muslims have to openly refute their allegiance to the Islamic creed? This was obviously not the case. It was a war against some Muslims, namely those of the jihad movement that openly called for terrorist attacks. Some people used this war as an opportunity to further their own ends and so attached cultural anti-Muslim perspectives to the arguments as a whole, this made it feel like a war against Islam.

Was it possible to ignore it?

It was impossible to ignore it. There had to be a concerted effort against any terrorist groups within the community. These had to be persuaded to change their minds, or if they were about to engage in a terrorist attack, then they had to be handed over to the police. After 2004, things began to take the form of a cycle. There would be a bad Muslim news event every three or four months, sometimes across the world. If it was quiet for too long, then you began to expect the next event. A war, an attack, or as began to happen, a bad news story about the lack of integration of Muslims into British society. This was an important development. Though several of us from within the community were constantly making the case for separating out the two policy areas of counter-terrorism and integration, there were others who were working to merge the two in the public mind to make one uber-narrative: the reason behind terrorist attacks is cultural isolation. To me, these were separate problems that were not empirically linked. Many people are culturally isolated but not politically motivated and many others are politically motivated but culturally integrated. However, in terms of a response from the community it was clear to me that we had to as a community make as many bridges with wider society as possible and across all levels of interaction: individual, family, community, local, regional, national, faith-based, political, academic, journalistic, male, female, old and young, left and right. I think many in the community began to adopt this as a counter-measure to the continuous media stories and it has certainly worked. Those who know Muslims are much less likely to be prejudiced against Muslims.

The other site of resistance has been the internet. And this is something that marks a dramatic and structural shift from previous situations in which Muslims were on the receiving end. E-mailing became an instant way of organising one’s messages and mass distributing them. Websites that gathered information and then published it became popular. Counter-narratives were quickly developed. Counter-examples were mass distributed. Blogs also began to appear at this stage and provided also a site for resistance to any narratives in the national media that were overly demonising the community. The mainstream media has also moved over to the net so here is in one sense a great equalisation that has occurred. Though papers like the Guardian and the Telegraph still have huge resources to support their webpages, they are nevertheless all the same one click away from every internet user as a blogger that gathers the argument and the evidence to challenge their positions. Interestingly, looking at the press, there are still very few Muslims who write for the mainstream press after so many years of extensive coverage of Muslim affairs. It is only the Guardian that has challenged this by opening up its Comment is Free pages to many Muslim commentators and within the national press this is the place that one turns to to read Muslim views on the political topic of the day.

Who are the main voices of resistance?

I don’t know how these things historically began but I would guess that it began with e-mailing a few friends which then developed into an e-mail list which then developed into a website. This form of political activism was related to events. The officials no longer had a monopoly on the channels of communication. Where people felt frustrated with the official account of events they could link their contacts through e-mail to counter-narratives. This then developed into fully fledged websites. The prototypical example here is MPAC UK. Bloggers have emerged as well as have numerous websites which describe political events and provide analysis.

Farewell to the Bush Years - Part 2

How did you cope?

I think it became very difficult to cope. I think that many adopted an approach of cynicism towards the whole political situation. They saw it as a conspiracy or a planned attack against them and their faith. Others just continued with their lives with a sense of political anger while also ignoring the events around them as if nothing was happening. It was a kind of learned political fatalism. I don’t think that many have coped well with the Bush years, we’ll know when we look back in the future. At present, I don’t know if anyone has done any work on how the Bush years affected employment prospects for the Muslim community or on for example increased incidences of mental illness. Having said all of that, looking back now at where the community is today, I do think that the community has been fairly resilient and this is to be applauded. Especially since the July 7 attacks. I don’t think that anyone in the community expected there to be a terrorist attack in the UK by British-born Muslims. We certainly knew that there was a possibility of a terrorist attack. We knew that the invasion of Iraq made this more likely. But I didn’t know of anyone who remotely called for such a terrorist attack. It would have been a fringe of a fringe, people unknown to others. And so it was.

How do you think the community responded to the July 7 attacks?

I think that there was initially some shock, some denial and some defensiveness. We obviously didn’t want it to be British Muslims who were behind this but as the news was released of the identities of the bombers then the community had to face up to the harsh facts. I think this is one instant in which Tony Blair is to be applauded for his leadership. He pulled as Prime Minister the community very close to him in the immediate aftermath of the attack by publicly inviting leaders to Downing Street and by making statements on television about not blaming the community. This was an important moment, and he acted as a leader should. The community was very clear in its condemnation of the attacks and this was important. It was after the July 7 attacks that the prevent strand of British counter-terrorism began in earnest but then with this came the whole question of political representation and leadership of the community. This has been very problematic and strained and I can’t say whether it has to this day been satisfactory resolved.

Why is that?

There is a central paradox at the heart of Britain’s counter-terrorism strategy. The primary function of any counter-terrorism strategy should be the prevention of any terrorist attacks. Initially, this began as a co-ordination of approaches but as the prevent strand gathered pace so spending commitments increased such that those that were helping in countering terrorism would begin to receive financial assistance – usually because it was logistically necessary. However, this then became a question of patronage, more specifically, who should the government support through its patronage? And further that the government should not support those that are deemed to be ambivalent on these issues or those that can not be regarded as socially progressive. There is one line of argument that suggests that the government should only work fully with those that are totally clear in their rejection of terrorism and those that are socially progressive. The specific problem here is the influence of Islamist-inspired organisations on the Muslim Council of Britain in particular. The government fairly soon after the July 7 attacks decided that it didn’t wish to prioritise the delivery of its counter-terrorism strategy in the Muslim community through its Islamist-inspired associates. The question here then becomes whether this makes British counter-terrorism less effective. This remains a moot point.

Indirectly, it also becomes a debate about who should lead the Muslim community and because the prevent strand seems to be the main point of contact between the British state and the Muslim community at present, then the outcome of this debate has profound consequences for the community and its holistic development. The government has tried to work with two rival organisations to the MCB: the Sufi Muslim Council and the British Muslim Forum. Both of which have received considerable financial support and both of which are still developing their infrastructure. And so it appears that though the community responded in a firm way to the July 7 attacks it does seem that the argument over political representation and recognition has side-tracked this development and it is difficult to say whether there has therefore been much progress since then, especially in the constituencies that matter. In fact, the government’s behaviour over political recognition may have been counter-productive in that it may have helped to reduce goodwill from the Muslim community as a whole towards Britain’s counter-terrorism strategy. This is linked to the formation of the Quilliam Foundation but I’m sure we’ll return to Quilliam later.

The other matter to consider is the pursue strand of British counter-terrorism. This also has a chequered history during the Bush years. There have been some catastrophic errors such as the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, the arrest of Lotfi Raissi as a key link to the 9/11 hijackers, the arrest of about a dozen men in August 2006 in relation to an airline plot which was supposed to be bigger than 9/11, the arrest of 11 Pakistani nationals in 2009 on suspicion of being involved in a big terrorist plot and the failure to prevent actual terrorist attacks including the July 7 bombings and the 2007 terrorist attacks by two doctors. The pursue strand has therefore made many errors of huge proportions. However, since the pursue strand is in the main related to the activities of the security services and the special branch then it cannot be subject to public scrutiny in the same way that matters related to the prevent strand are. When reports are published such as the recent report from the Intelligence Scrutiny Committee in the House of Commons or the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism’s report on arrests since 9/11, the pursue strand comes under heavy criticism. Two outstanding issues that remain seem to be the very slow pace at which the structure is being made fit for purpose and secondly the lack of involvement of Muslims as scrutiny of the pursue strand – one can only assume that this is because of a lack of trust. For example, the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism was only very recently formed in the Home Office to supervise British counter-terrorism and Muslim involvement in the OSCT came at a very late stage of organisational formation. The pursue strand does need to be subject to much more scrutiny.