Commentary

Accentuate the positive

We all feel legitimately aggrieved when newspapers lend disproportionate coverage to fringe provocateurs in the Muslim community, magnifying the significance of their actions far beyond realities on the ground. We frequently beg for reprieve in the face of negative reporting concerning Muslims and their faith, demanding fairness in its place. Whatever happened to balance, we demand, petitioning anyone who will listen to give us the benefit of the doubt.

Encountering swathes of the volunteer Muslim media — websites, blogs and free newspapers amongst them — generates a not dissimilar ambivalence. My irritation with the perpetual obsession with documenting every instance of alleged Islamophobia whenever it occurs anywhere in the world, even if it means trawling the online press twenty-four hours a day, has already been forcefully noted. It is tiring having to sift through reports of every misdemeanor of The Other, presented as they are to induce instant gloom. But of greater concern is the habit of some websites insisting on giving such prominence to an insignificant extremist fringe, amplifying their importance out of all proportion: Pamela Geller is the Muslim media’s equivalent of the tabloids’ hook handed mullah.

The picture foisted upon us is, they’re all out to get us — which is presumably the same picture that a regular reader of the Daily Express or Daily Mail forms of Muslims. We are suddenly living in a very polarised world, split succinctly into us and them. Given a bit of push and shove, the wrong economic conditions and the collapse of the Police force, and we will all be at each other’s throats in no time.

Absent amidst all the dreary pessimism is a record of the positive contributions of human-beings to one another, of Muslim and non-Muslim alike. Just as the press cannot find anything to say about the role of Muslim doctors in sustaining the health of our nation, we can only dwell on the light lacking in The Other. We heard there was a bitter pill and we swallowed it.

Yet here I have a flier that was thrust into my hands as I left the mosque last Friday. The (non-Muslim) Mayor of our little market town is organising a sponsored walk to raise funds to assist in the relief efforts for victims of Pakistan’s massive floods this year. It is supported by the town’s Churches Together group as well as Muslim-run businesses. A positive story at last, of communities working together with care and foresight. But of course it’s not the only case: we just need to accentuate the positive.

Surely then this is a sign for you: one of the most melancholic individuals you know is demanding a fundamental attitude shift that requires us to constantly seek out the good.  For I am told that if you seek out goodness, this is exactly what you will find.

Google Maps

The Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline is a proposed natural gas pipeline being developed by the Asian Development Bank. If the project is successful, the pipeline will transport Caspian Sea natural gas from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan into Pakistan and then to India.

The 1,040 mile pipeline will run from Turkmenistan’s Dauletabad gas field to Afghanistan. From there it will be constructed alongside the highway running from Herat to Kandahar, and then via Quetta and Multan in Pakistan. The final destination of the pipeline will be the Indian town of Fazilka, near the Pakistan-India border.

I asked for directions from Google Maps. You may recognise some of the names on the southern end of the route .

Women and Children

As sections of the media and governments worldwide congratulate themselves for telling Israel off for shooting civilians on the Mavi Maramara earlier this week, I am struck by the absolute lack of outrage at that hideous by-product of America’s robotic assassinations: the incidental deaths of women and children.

In the course of the war on terror, we have slipped into the alternative fictional world of 2000AD in which Street Judges sentence and execute offenders instantly in their effort to enforce the law. We have lost all sense of moral proportion, shrugging off the actions of the squadron of MQ-9 Reaper “hunter-killer” drones as some kind of norm. Judge Dredd now sits at a computer terminal at a military base in Nevada, sending his robotic army wherever he wills. All the world is Megacity 1: Pakistan, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq. In this alternative reality—now our tragic actuality—the world is his oyster. And we dumb clones.

How can it be that the deaths of wives, children and grandchildren are all considered an acceptable side effect of a policy of assassination? We no longer even talk of collateral damage: it is only necessary to mention that the target was an Al-Qaeda militant and anyone around him is suddenly non-human, whose death is inconsequential.

Some would point out that this is nothing beside the German blitz of British cities during World War Two, or in light of the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What is the death of a few children to the massacre of 50,000 civilians and the destruction of the entire city of Hamburg during one week in July in 1943? It is the way of war, is it not?

Not last time I checked. While it goes without saying that the targeting of civilians is absolutely prohibited in Islamic Law, with clear conditions laid down to avoid accidental civilian casualties, the Geneva Convention also makes plain the status of combatants and civilians on the battlefield.  Civilians may well have borne the brunt of military action over the past century, but under humanitarian law they are supposed to be protected people.

It is claimed that a man said to be a leading militant in Al-Qaeda—that great spectre of the war on terror—was killed last week by a missile fired from a robotic drone in Pakistan’s North Waziristan, near the town of Miran Shah. Nobody advocates capturing those charged with terrorism or rebellion and bringing them to trial, for this is war; indeed to even make such a suggestion is to admit some sort of sympathy for the worst of the worst.

Dare we speak up for those killed alongside him though? For it is claimed that his wife, three of his daughters, his granddaughter, and other men, women, and children, were also killed in the missile strike. They were collateral damage? They were guilty by association? Or is this a new post-patriarchal age when we dare not speak of women and children for fear of patronising the victims of war? Must we remain silent in reverence to the new wisdom of our age?

If not now, when will we awake? Last July, the US Air Force released a report entitled, “Unmanned Aircraft Systems Flight Plan 2009-2047,” in which it proposes a drone that could fly over a target and then make the decision whether or not to launch an attack, all without human intervention. The drones are not going away, nor the so-called war on terror.

So I see those crocodile tears for Israel’s actions this week are already dry, for if the nations truly cared then, surely they would condemn these other breaches of international humanitarian law too. Isn’t it this the death of civilisation?

Spam in the way of your Lord?

We are all used to receiving spam messages, but its use in promoting online Qur’an tuition must be quite an innovation. When I recived this comment overnight, I must say I was momentarily touched…

I have seen many blogs and have don research on many but most of them lack of good substance but I would say that you are doing a great job and keep the good work on

…until it occured to me that it had a familiar ring. I scooped it up wholesale and plopped it into a Google search. It seems I’m not alone in receiving such wondrous praise. A marvel to behold!

Wounded hearts

Friends are allowed to have blue moments, brief falling-outs, disagreements and the odd depression. Because a friend shouts at me, or takes issue with something I say, it doesn’t mean the friendship’s through. But even it was and we were suddenly enemies to one another, it would not change God’s sacred law. Back-biting is still back-biting. There’s no point recounting another’s mistakes, whether friend or foe, because we shall be held to account regardless. Wouldn’t a prayer for them be more fitting than a melancholy lament on what went wrong? We all makes mistakes. May Allah reunite our wounded hearts.

To inquire

In her rage at Tony Blair on Friday as he sat before the Chilcot Inquiry she accidentally dashed over a goblet of red wine. To his crimes of forging war and invading a sovereign state, she added the painful stains on the beautiful wooden floor. Thus acts the modern Muslim, scared to take the self to account, always ready to blame another, to upbraid imperialism and the fanatic. The enlightened Muslim seethes at the woman in hijab, the bearded youth and all who embrace a practical faith and eschew the politics of identity, screaming of the intolerable shame they shower upon her. We shall not speak of our abandonment of prayer, of our poison tongues, our short-selling, our aggressive anger. God will not change the condition of the people — recalls the Muslim so chastised, turning back to their faith ever so slightly — until they change the condition of themselves. But the modern Muslim censures everyone but herself. Today, Tony Blair, white imperialism. Yesterday, white liberals, veiled women, Muslim converts. We learn nothing from the upturned goblet.

Any Answers

Dear Jonathan,1

I agree with Daniel Hannan about misrepresentation and the disproportionate coverage of Anjem Choudary’s gestures in the media.2

When Mr Choudary announced his plans to carry 500 empty coffins through Wootten Bassett, all our journalists were required to do was a little maths. Unless we are talking about matchbox coffins in a carrier bag, a gesture of this kind would require around 2000 coffin bearers. Yet it is well known that his followers number just a few dozen. Despite the widespread coverage their Luton escapade received last year, all the photos I have seen of that stunt show no more than ten of them.

Why so much attention then? The feeling I get is that those of us opposed to the war are supposed to feel guilty by association. For a while now — listening to neighbours and colleagues, reading the newspapers and overhearing the chatter at the supermarket — I have noticed a growing sense of militaristic patriotism in the air. Those who question the war — even gentle Quakers — are beginning to be characterised as raving Anjem Choudarys.

He may not be an agent provocateur in the traditional sense, as many suspect, but his actions do nevertheless serve to silence dissenting voices.

Yours sincerely,

etc.

  1. Jonathan Dimbleby, chairing Any Answers, Saturday 9 January 2009, 2.00pm, BBC Radio 4. ↩
  2. On last night’s Any Questions – http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qgvj. ↩

Respect the absent

Instead of leaving snide remarks about departed writers in the comment fields of others’ blogs, why don’t you remember them in your du’as? Pray for their iman, their health and their wellbeing. Pray that Allah reward them for the good they put forth and for all that benefitted you, and ask that He forgives them their shortcomings, and our own too.

Chasing wild geese

I opened The Independent this morning to find a photograph of someone I once knew staring back at me. An entire decade has passed since we last set eyes on one another, but this article by Johann Hari brought memories flooding back. Not because his article resonated with me, mind you, but because his narrative troubled me. In Renouncing Islamism: To the brink and back again, Hari presents that old acquaintance as an ex-Jihadi—or he presents him as presenting himself that way. But the fellow I knew back then was nothing of the sort.

I cannot say I was ever a close associate of his—and so it is quite possible that I missed the portion of the tale that Hari recounts in his article—but we did encounter one another frequently between 1997 and 1999, as we were both students at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in central London.

I first encountered him in the student common room in the SOAS halls of residence on Pentonville Road, where he would play pool and chain-smoke cigarettes. He wore designer clothes, had a very fashionable hairstyle and was always cleanly shaven. His rhetoric constantly concerned neo-colonialism, but this never had much impact on me as a student of International Development, where the post-colonial discourse was already commonplace. At SOAS, his assault on the mischief of the West was nothing extraordinary, for the socialists’ arguments were the same.

Even as a non-Muslim I found myself socialising with him quite frequently through my Muslim pool-partner, whom I had met going to a bizarre comedy show at the student union earlier in the year. Our gatherings often took place on Friday evenings in the cafes of Edgware Road, where we would drink bitter black tea and smoke fruit-flavoured tobacco. Again, the talk was of neo-imperialism, of western-proxies ruling the Islamic world and the Khilafah, but memorably the sources were Noam Chomsky, Edward Said and John Pilger.

Those social meetings ceased when I became Muslim in 1998, as I considered the smoking and time-wasting un-Islamic, but I continued to encounter him on campus. I largely kept company with a group of apolitical Salafis at the time, who were fiercely critical of HT whom they considered to hold heretical beliefs. The Salafis believed that the Muslim world would only be reformed by individual Muslims reforming themselves and adhering to the sunnah, whereas HT had a Leninist view that change would come about upon the establishment of the State. Thus I frequently stumbled upon arguments between this fellow and my friends, with the latter mocking HT as the Socialist Worker Party for Muslims.

I am puzzled, therefore, when Hari writes that my acquaintance, ‘wanted to be at the heart of the jihad’, for I never heard him talk about this even once, even theoretically. Instead he was perpetually obsessed with the idea that ‘intellectual argument’ would be the driver for change in the Muslim world. He went on about ‘intellectual arguments’ to such an extent that it became something of a joke amongst the other students.

I have no idea whether the tale of a coup plot involving junior Pakistani army officers is in any way true. However, it is the case that he was involved in an attempted coup in 1999 rather closer to home: not in dusty Karachi, but in the tiny second-floor prayer room at SOAS. Here he intended to wrest control of the Islamic Society from the Iqwanis, who had wrested control from the Salafis earlier in the year.

I know this, because he thought this quite amiable, decent chap would help him. His great talent, as I recall, was not so much in being able to convince people and win them over, but in talking them into submission. He would go on and on at you with circular arguments so that in the end you would agree with him just to be able to change the subject.

And so it was one day when he came over to my flat to argue that something had to be done about the Islamic Society, which he claimed was corrupt and unrepresentative of the Muslim students: he talked at my flatmate and me for ages until we finally agreed to put our names to his vote of no-confidence. Unfortunately he did not get the message when I rang him back to tell him I had changed my mind and the next I knew about it was when members of the Islamic Society came for me, demanding to know why my name was listed on a petition pinned to the notice board in the prayer room.

Alas, I never had the privilege of reading the notice, but was in any case called on to attend a special meeting of the Islamic Society to explain what it was all about, for the instigator had disappeared and was unreachable on his mobile phone. As in Hari’s article, he was never drawn on the details of this coup plot either, but it did make my remaining days at SOAS somewhat uncomfortable where the Islamic Society was concerned.

Meanwhile, he continued to organise lectures on campus, inviting academics like Fred Haliday to duels where he would demonstrate the power of his ‘intellectual arguments’. Nobody I knew ever considered him a jihadi, but only something of a friendly bore. Rather than taking him seriously, people dismissed him as a caricature socialist wrapped up in Muslim garb.

Reading Hari’s article, however, he sounds like a great Missionary, steaming off to one Muslim country and then another as if on an adventure inspired by Indiana Jones. Hari writes that he ‘decided to move on to Egypt’. Yet to say that he decided to move on to Egypt is to stretch language a little far. In reality he was undertaking a degree in Arabic at SOAS and was required to spend a year in Alexandria as part of the course, like every other student.

Even there his capacity to talk people into submission was well noted, even by his lecturers, who advised him to reign in his tongue. But he was not one to listen to such advice and was soon arrested for belonging to a banned political party. Upon his release several years later, he appeared on Hard Talk on the BBC News channel, still eloquently and passionately defending HT, once again talking of those ‘intellectual arguments’.

All these memories signal my trouble with Hari’s article. Yes, he was indeed a recruiter for HT and he was dedicated to this cause. But to claim he was a jihadi is to stretch the truth too far. Granted I never attended any of HT’s gatherings to learn what may have lain beyond the mockery of my friends; perhaps, if I had, I might have formed a different picture of him. But in the ordinary interaction between us, and in witnessing his debates with friends and his famous debates with secular academics, I believe I framed a fair picture of the man. He was a passionate and eloquent disputant, absorbed in the kind of post-colonial rhetoric common to many students of the time, like my many socialist acquaintances.

I am not dismissing his devotion to HT or excusing it. I am merely suggesting that the article I read this morning was full of exaggerations. I am not in denial about the threat of extremism within the Muslim community—indeed, I have noted elsewhere the advice I was given to steer clear of known extremists when I first became Muslim. My objection to Hari’s article is that for me it raised more questions than it answered.

Why, I find myself wondering, is it necessary to build oneself up as a great sinner who saw the light—like Paul on the road to Damascus—in order to denounce what is wrong? There are many, many Muslims who have been quietly, modestly, cautiously working on the ground to counter extremism for years and years. Theirs is a thankless task. Condemned by the extremists and ex-extremists alike, their work is ever more difficult. These men and women did not need to venture to the brink and back to realise that it was wrong; they had already delved into their faith and forged a forward path.

Should I be grateful that I saw that face peering back at me from the newspaper this morning, for reminding me of all of this? I’m not sure to be quite honest, but of one thing I’m pretty sure: Johann Hari has just been sent on a wild goose chase. I hope he realises this before he invests too much hope in his new found friends.

Extinguishing the fires of fitna

On his arrival in the UK last week, Geert Wilders hailed it as a victory for freedom of speech. Funny that—as comedian Jeremy Hardy pointed out on The News Quiz last year—given that he wants to ban the Qur’an. And with that thought, his presence escaped me.

It was left to our Qur’an teacher to inject some insight on the topic just before he drew our class to a close on Sunday morning. With the fresh round of news coverage, he had been pondering on Mr Wilders’ widely-discredited film, Fitna.

The word fitna, he told us, is of the Arabic root alfatn. In the olden days, when men would mix lesser metals with gold in order to make a quick profit, genuine coins would be distinguished from counterfeit change by tossing them into the fire. This process of separating true gold from false using fire is know as alfatn.

In every tribe, nation and country—he went on—you will find pious people working for peace. Yet at the same time you will find the war monger, the backbiter, the slanderer. You will also find the one whose sole job is to cause contention between individuals, communities, countries and beyond. Of both types you will find people of high ranks in societies, just plain commoners and those in between.

To know a man of peace, it is not by his race nor by the outer garment he wears, nor by the nice promises he makes, nor his rank in society, nor by his education. Is it not written: ‘by their fruits you shall know them’?

It is the law of God—the Creator—to put people through tribulation to separate those made from gold from the rest. The Man of Gold strives for peace and harmony. The False Man of Gold shines only in front of the blind.

Before us, our teacher opened an English rendering of the Qur’an and turned to Surah al-Ankabut1. Usually he asks us to read from our respective translations to compare them side-by-side, but this time he read the Arabic and English in turns himself:

2. Do the people think that they will be left to say, “We believe” and they will not be tried?

3. But We have certainly tried those before them, and God will surely make evident those who are truthful, and He will surely make evident the liars.

4. Or do those who do evil deeds think they can outrun Us? Evil is what they judge.

5. Whoever should hope for the meeting with God—indeed, the term decreed by God is coming. And He is the Hearing, the Knowing.

6. And whoever strives only strives for the benefit of himself. Indeed, God is Free from need of the worlds.

7. And those who believe and do righteous deeds—We will surely remove from them their misdeeds and will surely reward them according to the best of what they used to do.

8. And We have enjoined upon man goodness to parents. But if they endeavour to make you associate with Me that of which you have no knowledge, do not obey them. To Me is your return, and I will inform you about what you used to do.

9. And those who believe and do righteous deeds—We will surely admit them into Paradise among the righteous.

These words ring in my mind a lot, but it is true that often we do ponder them as deeply as we should. The tribulations of the day—be they the renewed babblings of Mr Wilders, the rantings of the BNP or the hideous bloodshed wrougt by Muslim hands—serve to separate the wheat from the chaff, true gold from false gold.

And—making his closing supplications and rising to his feet—with these thoughts our teacher left us, reminding us of our homework for next week. By our fruits shall we be known.

  1. Surah 29:2-9 ↩
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