Undercover Wudu Area
Tonight on Dispatches – Muslim fundamentalists claim that cleanliness is next to Godliness,
Tonight on Dispatches – Muslim fundamentalists claim that cleanliness is next to Godliness, but our under cover investigation reveals an atmosphere of whiffiness spreading through Britain
Mullah Nasrideen: We Muslims have lost the mop
Abu Imran: Jif is bid’a
Sheikh Ahmed: If the toilet doesn’t flush, we throw in the towel
Part One
A Dispatches investigation has uncovered the stinkiest toilets in England, spreading from the basement of mosques run by major UK organisations which claim to be dedicated to the message of Islam, to cleanliness, good manners and civilisation.
Caption: Undercover filming
Our reporter went undercover last summer, joining thousands of worshippers. He’s staying anonymous. After his foot got trapped in the sink. The enamel had turned brown and smelt like chicken and rice.
Caption: 9 August 2006
Our undercover reporter discovered this toilet hasn’t been cleaned in three years. He asks the cleaner why?
Abu Imran: Why should I clean it? It has its own cistern. It automatically cleans itself when you flush. Brown is the new black anyway.
The imam didn’t want our reporter talking to the cleaner for long.
Mullah Nasrideen: This is exactly why we can’t afford toilet cleaning fluid. The man’s always talking. If he would just stop talking we might be able to afford some soap.
Shots of manual of Fiqh
This book contains a whole chapter on ritual purification. But our reporter filmed there in a mosque for over four months, and found that nobody cleaned the toilets once.
Reconstruction using actor
Fatima Khan investigates smelly toilets. She keeps her face hidden in interviews because of the dangers of her work; plungers and squat toilets are an explosive combination.
Fatima Khan: Muslims believe that cleanliness is half of the religion and that it’s next to Godliness, but nowadays the ummah is engaged in important debates about the kuffar, so we have to make compromises.
Not cleaning the toilet is opposed to the traditional beliefs of classical Islam, according to leading Muslim academic Dr Ali.
Dr Ali: We tell non-Muslims that our way of life is best, but they can smell that the stench coming from our bathrooms. We don’t understand the irony when we call them dirty kuffar.
Our undercover reporter discovered just how far the culture of leaving the toilets to clean themselves goes in mosques up and down the country when he dropped his hidden camera down the trap by accident. Find out what he discovered in Part Two.
Disclaimer: This is satire. It did not really happen, although, yes, it may sound familiar.
In days of old the tribulations faced by the pilgrim on his journey to Mecca included the assault of ravaging bandits determined to make quick profits by pillaging the winding desert caravans. In our own age, say some, the road to Mecca is easy, a comfortable voyage by jetliner to comfortable five-star accommodation. That may be so for some, but others of us unlucky enough to encounter the twenty-first century bandits know that all of us are tested by degrees according to our intention and will.
When I embraced Islam in 1998, one of the first pieces of advice I received from Muslim friends was to learn the names of three people, and then stay far away from them. They were Abu Hamza, Omar Bakri and Abdullah Faisal.
A few months after that, I received an angry email from my father, demanding to know whether I had passed his email address on to a group of Islamic extremists. He had received a mass email purportedly sponsored by a vast array of Muslim organisations which told him to convert to Islam or face the consequences. I most certainly had not passed his email address on to anybody and, glancing at the other email addresses – other public figures in the church – I surmised that his email address had simply been harvested along with others from Christian websites.
My father was a Canon at the time and in charge of all of the lay preachers in his diocese. Rather distressed by my father’s anger, I showed the email to a fellow student who had been involved with Hizb-ut-Tahir a few years earlier: he told me about Omar Bakri, the leader of al-Muhajirun, characterising him as a nutcase, and advised me that none of the organisations listed at the end of the email actually existed. The man, apparently, had a habit of making up names to make his little band of followers efforts seem more credible.
They plot and plan, but Allah is the best of planners. How little their trust in God: believing they had to send shocking emails to Churchmen, as if God could not guide members of their family without their intervention – like the arrogance of the Christian Right who rejoice in a Pentagon-led Armageddon, as if they can dictate their Creator’s timetable.
Over the next few years we heard a lot from the trio I was told to avoid. Around mid 2000, a close friend of mine found himself the focus of attention of an evangelical Christian colleague who spoke frequently of Islamic extremists in our midst; her husband worked for the Police force and apparently had much to say about Muslim radicals. Tired of her constant bombardment, my friend asked her to ask her husband why Abu Hamza was still free to preach despite frequent complaints from the Muslim community at large. That was a question that was never answered.
To be continuously told by the government, media and senior Police officers, therefore, that the British Muslim community is in denial about the existence of extremists amongst us is quite hard for me to grasp. The warnings I received were not from lapsed Muslims who were happy to compromise their beliefs for political gain, but from practising, active individuals. Prior to the attacks on the US on 11 September 2001, I listened to many Muslims lamenting the authorities’ refusal to deal with people well known to be creating community tensions. Indeed, witnessing this laxity, some members of the community even began to entertain conspiracy theories about these free men. The Muslim community complained about their outrageous statements and the authorities appeared to do nothing.
No, I don’t believe the Muslim community is in denial about the threat of extremism. Taking issue with sensational investigations in the media in not indicative of a culture of repudiation. There are good reasons to oppose the trend of smearing individuals and community organisations – even if we may not like these people very much personally. Just because others say jump, it doesn’t mean we have to. Our criteria should always be truth and justice. Not accusation and innuendo.
Is it just me, or is the secret service not what it used to be? (more…)
Much ado about nothing, I say. Before we can draw our team brief to a close this morning at work we have to cover preparations for Christmas Dinner. It’s all going swimmingly until the organiser thinks she should inform us of a problem. Apparently a certain employee upstairs cannot attend because it has been booked in a pub and her beliefs stop her from going to pubs. She’s a Muslim. That causes a few raised eyebrows and laughter. Someone points out that if it was a restaurant, they’d still be serving alcohol.
I start sinking in my seat, burying my eyes in the table top. The organiser adds, actually the lady in question wasn’t bothered too much, that it was another member of staff who was worried about it on her behalf. Who’s attended Equality and Diversity training, asks our Director, what should we do? My Manager starts saying that we should have thought about this. Yes, they agree, but now what are we going to do about the lady upstairs? Will we have to cancel our booking and arrange something else? I could easily say something – suggest that I’m sure she’s not even bothered about it – but I’m staying out of this one.
Except I’m not going to be allowed to let this pass me by; I’m about to be outed. We should have thought about this from the start, says my Manager, she’s not the only person in the organisation who wouldn’t be able to attend for that reason. There are at least two people affected. Who, asks the organiser, you don’t mean X (the Indian woman upstairs)? My time has come. I think she means me, I say, and all eyes are on me, a look of horror on six of the faces. Tim’s a Muslim, my Manager tells them.
Faces are red. It probably wasn’t the best timing; after the words exchanged moments earlier. Never mind, my Manager’s brought me in. So yes, I tell them, it’s true, I am a Muslim. Personally, I tell them, I wouldn’t go to the pub either, which is why I excused myself from attending. I don’t expect them to change their plans on my behalf. I appeal to the memory of my Methodist grandfather who similarly excused himself from alcoholic gatherings. I explain that the lady upstairs probably isn’t worried about the matter at all and wouldn’t expect anything to be rearranged. I point out that last year’s storm about a council allegedly banning the word Christmas in case it offended Muslims had absolutely nothing to do with Muslims, but was the product of some well-meaning official. And I say, yes perhaps my faith has implications for them when it comes to organising social functions, but I am not guilty of keeping a secret any more than they are; none of them had told me they were atheist, Catholic or whatever.
After the meeting my Manager sends me a one line email:
Tim, I didn’t mean to embarrass you in the team meeting. Sorry if I did.
I tell her not to worry about it, but I send an email of my own to my immediate colleagues, my Director and the organiser of the Christmas Dinner.
Dear all,
A clarification on today’s revelation during team brief… It is indeed the case that I am a practising Muslim – as I have been for about a decade. This was a personal choice, following a period of searching prompted by the discomfort of being the only agnostic in a very religious family – both my parents are Anglican priests.
I really don’t have a problem with people knowing that I am Muslim, but I did make a conscious choice when I started this job not to publicise it widely given the prevailing political climate. I am sure it won’t have escaped your attention that my religion has been receiving a lot of negative attention over the past few years, particularly after the massacre on the London transport system in 2005. Having experienced colleagues making wild assumptions about me because of my beliefs in past roles, I felt that silence was the best option. Thus I disappear off at lunchtime to do my prayers and make excuses for not coming to the pub with you.
I do not expect you to make alternative arrangements on my behalf. Generally I do not sit where alcohol is being consumed – partly for reasons other than religion – which I guess is rather an anathema at Christmas time. But don’t worry about it. At the end of Ramadan, I had a lovely Eid celebration – I don’t feel I’m missing out. Others may feel differently, but that’s my personal take. If in doubt, talk to the people concerned – whether it is someone with health issues or specific cultural needs.
Apologies to anyone who thinks I should have been more open about my beliefs – but you know the English way; we tend not to broadcast our beliefs. Hence I never knew that David is a Jedi Knight.
Thine,
Tim
Almost straight away, my director responds.
Tim, I apologise if you were put in an embarrassing position this morning. As a PCT I hope we are sensitive to everyone’s beliefs. Sometimes it is difficult to think of everything so I was appreciative of your understanding. Please don’t hesitate to come and see me if there is anything you want to talk about.
The organiser of the Christmas Dinner writes to me to say she’s sorry I won’t be attending, but now she understands why. Meanwhile, my colleague writes:
Good clarification, thanks Tim. And there’s nothing wrong with being a Jedi Knight! It is an official religion on a number of planets I visit as an ET Technical Projects Manager, including: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1589133.stm
As for the conversation which sparked gale force winds in our best china: a colleague of the lady in question casually mentioned it in passing that she would have liked her to be there for Christmas Dinner. The individual organising the dinner became very worried after this, even though the lady explained several times that she did not celebrate Christmas and did not feel left out at all. Having explained that she did not want any plans changed on her behalf, she left it at that. She tells me, “It’s all a storm in a tea cup.”
In British politics today, there is so much talk of identity, of what it means to belong, of shared values. Sometimes it is assumed that we must all trace our values back to Hellenic roots, as if this were the foundation of civilisation. Yet my heart has always felt comfort in the Semitic pathway. As a child, the Parables spoke to me, but Paul’s Epistles did not. As an agnostic it was the Letter of James. And now: well you know the journey I am walking, the road I am taking.
My burgundy-bound Bible from those days before faith is filled with scribbles in pencil, with scruffy underlining and highlighter ink: the etchings of a searching soul. But one book stands out. On the title page of the Letter of James there is a handwritten note which reads, ‘The most beautiful book in the Bible.’ I was yet to learn of Islam—yet to tread this path—but looking back now it seems clear to me that the author was a Muslim. A Muslim of the era before Muhammad, peace be upon him.
I’m not alone in reaching this conclusion though. James’ address of the twelve tribes dispersed throughout the land nods to the Judaic-Christian world, whose resemblance to another tradition has been widely noted over the years. Hans Küng et al point out in their work on the World Religions, ‘the traditional and historical parallels between early Judaic-Christianity and Islam are inescapable.’ Meanwhile, while I would naturally dispute the case of dependence given my belief in revelation, Hans-Joachim Schoeps writes in Theology and History of Jewish Christianity:
Though it may not be possible to establish exact proof of the connection, the indirect dependence of Mohammed on sectarian Jewish Christianity is beyond any reasonable doubt. This leaves us with a paradox of truly world-historical dimensions: the fact that while Jewish Christianity in the Church came to grief, it was preserved in Islam and, with regard to some of its driving impulses at least, it has lasted till our own time.’
When I put the teachings of the Letter of James and the teachings of Islam side by side, the similarities are striking. About six years ago I began work on a small text that would do just that, for I felt that the parallel presentation conveyed meanings that have sadly escaped many. Much is made of difference when we encounter the Other, but there is a great deal to be gained from highlighting the common ground.
The reality of the focus on identity, on what it means to belong, on shared values, is that what defines our present is a hugely diverse past. While the phrase ‘our Judeo-Christian heritage’ has emerged over recent years, that old focus on Hellenic and Grecian ancestry remains dominant. I have seen it in the current debates on multi-culturalism. That is wrong: Semitic pathways have had a huge influence on our culture. What is more, where would Britain be had the no one translated those ancient works held up so high?
So talk of identity, of what it means to belong and of shared values, but don’t give me a hard time when I say I am proud of who I am: a devotee to the Semitic way.
January 1998: this was my first Ramadan, half a year before I came to believe in Islam. It was an experiment, an experiment that went badly wrong. Around November I had stopped eating pork, telling everyone who knew me that I didn’t like the taste. The first phase of my experiment. In the popular vocabulary of the non-practising Muslim it is said that eating pork makes you unclean. So my first hypothesis: if I stop eating sausages, bacon, ham, gammon and pork chops it will make me a better person. No luck there for the selfish idiot remained; but I sustained the boycott any way. I persevered, just as I did with the Bible when I hoped to discover my handed-down faith.
Christmas came and I returned home, eventually. All of those questions I had to ask, but which I didn’t have the courage to articulate. I sidled them away instead. I was too embarrassed to ask that most fundamental question, for it was the pillar of our faith. Perhaps things would make more sense, I thought, if I knew that crucial answer. “Who is Jesus meant to be?” “He’s the son of God.” “Yes, but what does that mean?” No one ever answers in definite certainty. My holidays over, no questions asked, no questions answered, I returned to London with a prayer. A prayer for guidance and a prayer for help.
But a prayer in private, though I had no religion, somehow felt like hypocrisy. Like mocking words, I thought I should prove my sincerity. So Monday morning, breakfast early, I prepared myself to fast. One day became two, and then two became more. Dawn until dusk, a secret fast, concentrating and focusing, fighting to honour God. Wednesday, words recited all day, “In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful…” All day and an animated prayer at midnight. No religion, but imagining I was getting there. Thursday feeling focussed, then discussions about my thoughts. Twice in the evening, finally a late night, all night talk; admissions and confessions, and advice given, “Just keep on reading.” Friday morning, two new books, perspectives by non-Muslims. Now a final, smashing blow, from a Christian perspective on Islam, everything I came to know crumbled to the ground. Little trust in the words, but the fragility of my faith seemed an indicator of my error. No more prayers, just anger, and the buds of faith diminished like cities to dust.
No sleep in the night, I felt foul, perhaps deluded. As though I had committed a crime, I was distracted. No thoughts of God, I just felt angry, hoping that the night would take me away. The following day, nowhere to turn, a confession had to come. A telephone call home, itching conversation, my semi-confession at last arose. How I had been studying the Bible, attending church, trying to understand. How I had been reading, but none of it made sense. Genuine questions, full truths, but only half the story. Please explain this and this to me, I don’t understand this and that. Surprising acceptance, but no answers, more mysteries and confusion. Got the problem off my chest, but wondered how on earth it would help.
Fasting because of habit now, no more prayers to say, even my unreligious belief in God was quickly dissolving away. Down to the bar, I may as well drink; didn’t, but I thought about it. Hiding away from my advising friend, telephone switched off, smoke-screen around me. Off-putting characters making me detest what I respected, though perhaps that was only an excuse to justify my failure. Searching for the truth, I only learnt to despise my open mind. Midday Friday, the second week, my fast ended with a Mars Bar eaten, hidden in the Brunei Gallery. But by that time, already, the fast meant nothing at all. All faith had been crushed and destroyed, and not even a thought of God could be found. Fallen further than before, my faith was lost and gone.
At work I am involved in the local implementation of a complex government-driven national computer programme. In my particular region, every surgery and health centre has been kitted out with the latest technology, delivering over 300 new PCs, 50 printers and 20 servers. The aim of the national programme is to connect thirty-thousand doctors to three hundred hospitals for the benefit of patients. The goal is to create an efficient patient-centred health service, wherein high quality information is shared effectively between different teams and organisations.
Without a doubt, these are all very admirable aspirations, but there is a question which keeps on recurring in my mind… “What happens when the oil runs out?”
I’m not being funny — although whenever I ask this question at work, I find myself the immediate target of mockery. “What, this computer runs on oil, does it?” a colleague asked me sarcastically, prompting those around us to snigger at my ridiculous statements. I am the irritating voice in the office who must always inject a historical or futuristic reference whenever some piece of technology is not working exactly as it should. I have the misfortune to sit beside the noisy, clunky photocopier and am thus the first recipient of the expletives when the paper jams again. “I hate this thing,” is a frequent refrain; “This Bloody Machine” another. As I sidle across to assist the huffing and puffing victims of copier fart, I cannot help asking — as I retrieve the crumpled rogue sheet from flap five — how we got by in the olden days, why everything is such a hurry. The last time I told a colleague who was lamenting how long it was taking for the machine to wake up from its power-saving slumber that at least waiting on a monk with a quill could have been worse, the “you’re an idiot” glare was useful confirmation that my “it’s not that bad” optimism is getting on everyone’s nerves. Still, whenever there is a problem with the computer network and patience begins to fray, I continue to ask what we are going to do when the oil runs out.
No, I’m not being funny. I’m serious. “What, this computer runs on oil, does it?”
Well yes, in a way. The American Chemical Society (http://acswebcontent.acs.org) estimates that the construction of a single 32MB DRAM chip uses 1.5kg of fossil fuels in addition to 32kg of water, while the production of one gram of microchips consumes 630g of fossil fuels. Most of the keyboard, mouse, CPU case and monitor is made from plastic, which is a polymer derived from oil. It is estimated that the construction of the average desktop computer consumes ten times its weight in fossil fuels, while the US Environmental Literacy Council (http://www.enviroliteracy.org) states that the energy used in producing ten computers is enough to produce a car, largely due to the purity and sophistication of materials required to produce microchips. All electrical devices make use of silver, copper, and/or platinum, each of which is extracted, transported, and fashioned using oil-powered machinery. The production of one ton of copper requires the equivalent of 17.8 barrels of oil, while the energy cost component of aluminium is twenty times higher. In other words, the production of computers is an extremely energy-intensive operation throughout the cycle.
Take yourself off to the website of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (http://www.peakoil.net) and sober up. While I am sure that everybody is aware that oil is finite resource, what this means hasn’t really hit home yet. Every time we hear that production is peaking we learn that a new oil field has been discovered and so we relax; it seems the oil will just run and run. Last time I was in Turkey I met a BP engineer heading off to Trabzon. My wife laughed: there’s no oil down there. “Oh yes there is,” he replied with a smile, on route to his connecting flight. Out on a rig in the Black Sea, off the northern Turkish coast, they are drilling for more black gold. Why don’t the scaremongers just quieten down? Probably because they are right. We don’t know when the oil will run dry — in 1956, Marion King Hubbert incorrectly forecasted that world oil production would peak at some point between 1993 and 2000 — but we can be certain that it will. Hubbert was correct in his prediction that US oil production would peak in the early 1970s.
Some reports now suggest that the peak of oil production — which coincides with 50% depletion of our oil endowment — has been superseded and we will therefore begin to see production levels drop my 3% each year. Thus oil production in 2020 is likely to be equal to that in 1980, although demand for oil will significantly outpace production due to population growth and more widespread industrialisation. As CEO of Halliburton in 1999, Dick Cheney stated that, “there will be an average of two-percent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead, along with, conservatively, a three-percent natural decline in production from existing reserves. That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional 50 million barrels a day.” Andrew Gould, CEO of the oil services firm Schlumberger noted: “An accurate average decline rate is hard to estimate, but an overall figure of 8% is not an unreasonable assumption.”
Those who only consider the implications of a decline in the production of oil in light of our transportation and energy needs, must awake to the realisation that petrochemicals are actually key components in a vast array of applications, from the production of medicines to the distribution of water, and from the creation of plastics to the production of food. Indeed, in the case of the latter it is estimated that industrialised societies use 10 calories of fossil fuels to produce every 1 calorie of food eaten. In addition to the energy used in farming, transportation and packaging of the food we eat, oil is the building block of many related resources. Pesticides are made from oil, for example, while fertilizers are made from ammonia, which is derived from natural gas.
We are running, but where are we going? The growth in the popularity of consumer electronics in recent years has brought with it an acceptance of planned obsolescence and the perpetual upgrade, without any real appreciation of the implications. Last year’s status symbol was the Apple iPod, this year’s the Sony Walkman phone, next year’s the portable PlayStation? We move from hyper-threading chips to dual-core offerings within a matter of months. The traditional conservative approach towards electronic equipment (such as the Hi-Fi and TV) that anticipated longevity has largely been superseded by the idea that a product will need to be perpetually upgraded (mobile phones, computers, PDAs, MP3 players). Computers are vulnerable to this idea on two fronts: aging hardware and new versions of software. Indeed, the two link together in a perfect marriage: as computers get more powerful, so does the software, the next generation requiring ever greater hardware specifications. The result, unfortunately, is the creation of huge volumes of waste and consumption of limited resources. We know that much of this is unnecessary, but we just accept it as a fact of life. It is said that most of the consumer-level problems with computer software are not inherent in the technology. Rather, they are the consequences of user-hostile business models, which see the perpetual upgrade as its primary source of revenue.
But where are we heading? The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (http://www.millenniumassessment.org), which was drawn up by 1,300 researchers from 95 nations over four years, concluded that human activities threaten the Earth’s ability to sustain future generations. The way in which society obtains its resources is said to have caused irreversible changes that are degrading the natural processes that support life on Earth, and it is believed that this will compromise efforts to address hunger, poverty and improve healthcare. Its authors say the pressure for resources has resulted in a substantial and largely irreversible loss in the diversity of life on Earth; fisheries and fresh water, for example, are now well beyond levels that can sustain current demands. Thus the report suggests that society must alter its consumption patterns and promote better education, new technologies and higher prices for exploiting ecosystems.
We can communicate across continents in an instant for free, sharing files, sounds and video at ease. We can calculate financial forecasts faster than ever before using metre-wide spreadsheets with thousands of entries. We can share our thoughts with strangers in far-off lands. Our Doctors can view digital X-Rays on their computer as soon as a fracture has been photographed in a hospital twenty miles away. Software logarithms can now identify cancers within a CAT scan without human intervention. Technology is shrinking the world and allegedly speeding life up. Ears plugged into the iPod, eyes fixed on the computer screen, we are racing onwards as never before. But where are we going and what are we doing? My question is serious: what will we do when the oil runs out?
Those who are studying peak oil are not speaking about the last drop, only the downward slope of the bell curve. When demand outstrips supply, they say, the economy as we know it will probably collapse. And what will we do when that happens? How will we live?
Slow down. Learn how to live. Learn how to survive as those before us did. As another writer noted recently, some of us don’t know how determine when it is time to pray because we have become dependent on computer generated timetables. Some of us don’t know how to determine whether Ramadan has arrived because we are dependent on someone telling us on the phone. We have entered the on-demand age of e-Government, e-Banking, e-Commerce and e-Support, and we are apparently more connected than ever before. But do we know how to cook “real food”, or grow some vegetables, or conserve water and heat? Do we know how to conduct business? Do we know how to survive in the post-oil age?
It is possible that this apocalyptic vision is an exaggeration of our future reality – a dystrophic apparition more akin to that old film entitled Mad Max. I have read that scientist are developing new plastics based on polymers derived from corn and that theoretically circuit boards could be printed on sheets of lasagne pasta. Perhaps by the time oil is seriously on the decline, we will have developed efficient renewable sources of energy, or Mr Blair’s nuclear programme will be well under way. Perhaps today’s silicon based computer chips will have been replaced by organic processors. Perhaps the future will be rosy and my concern is misplaced. Perhaps.
But as we march onwards at an ever increasing pace, and I am invited to upgrade my computer and mobile telephone, to buy an MP3 player and download the latest version of Microsoft Windows, that question just returns. Our resources are finite: about this there can be no doubt. Isn’t it better that we slow down and question where we’re going? That we ask now, before it is too late? I think I can get by without an iPod. What about you?
The Friday prayer is meant to be a joyous event in the Muslim week, something which we are all obliged to attend as one of our religious duties. So why do I leave feeling so irritated, so unrefreshed? It is alienation. More precisely it is the use of language. Ours is a diverse community: while the majority of Muslims in our town hail from Pakistan, we have a population deriving from several continents. There are West African, Malay, North African, English, Bengali, Turkish and Arabic Muslim families living here. We are a diverse community, but all of us who do not speak classical Urdu (including a significant proportion of young people with Pakistani roots) are cut off from our faith week after week.
I believe that the Imam is a good man – I have listened to the sound of his oration and it is clearly lyrical, inspiring those who understand him – and I know the situation in our mosque is much better than so many other places throughout the country, but the language barrier really troubles me. Today I watched him as he smiled with amazement at the story he was telling about the Prophet, peace be upon him, his congregation repeating, ‘Subhanullah‘ over and over. Those who could understand him were clearly inspired, smiling too and nodding their heads – but there were many of us looking bewildered because we seem to be unworthy of benefiting from his sermon. It was just at that moment that my irritation peaked. Why do we have to put up with this week after week?
It is not that we have a large immigrant community that has only just arrived, for which excuses could easily be made. The first generation has been living in the town for over forty years – as one old man proudly told me when he mistook me for an East European upstart who had to be told his place. Personally I’m quite a patient individual, one who believes that change will come: it’s only a matter of time. I have moved to this community having experienced the ethnically-diverse, cosmopolitan mosques of London and have had the opportunity to witness the behaviour of Muslims from a wide variety of backgrounds: thus I’m hardly going to be attracted by extremisms and strange ideologies. But what of younger folk who haven’t been around all that much? Could we not say they are easy prey for eloquent speakers – no, not even eloquent speakers: just people who simply speak their language? I think we could.
I am not calling on people to abandon their rich lyrical heritage – a dear friend of mine often opined how English poetry paled beside Urdu verse – only to recognise that the common language of the land in which we live is English. We live in a multi-cultural society and this works both ways. The town council and local health service provide translations of publications and interpreting services, recognising that our population is linguistically diverse. It is time that the leaders within the Muslim community recognised this too. After racial tensions in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, many within the British establishment realised that something had to change, that accommodations had to be made. The result has largely been good, whatever the current retractors may claim. It would be nice if the leaders in our community learned something from this experience.
As an English speaking Englishman in England – not to mention an English Muslim who believes that the majority of Muslim values happen to be traditional English values – I fear I may be about to lose my patience. All I want is to be able to attend my local mosque on a Friday afternoon and be able to understand the sermon. Is that really too much to ask?
Weblogs have come under quite some fire recently in the newspaper I regularly buy. Janet Street-Porter‘s comment last week was followed a day later by an article by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. In both cases their generalisations are quite amazing. For me and many others this medium is a mere tool.
In the community in which I live I could not say that there is a problem of extremism amongst the Muslim youth. Not ‘Islamic Extremism’ in any case – jahil extremism maybe.
In this community, our concerns are with drug use, excessive alcohol consumption and anti-social behaviour. A friend tells me that some young Muslims are bringing drugs into the area to foster a previously non-existent trade in the town. Our local press has reported on a number of occasions about youths in our town being given ASBOs (Anti-Social Behaviour Orders); troublingly in each case the recipients have Muslim names.
Late on Friday and Saturday nights, young Muslims gather in the centre of town, smoking perpetually and ranting aggressively with sentences littered with expletives. This is probably not what the middle-class commentators have in mind when they call for Muslims to integrate with society; still here the Muslims certainly are adopting the culture of those they find themselves amongst.
Undoubtedly, British Muslims have a duty to tackle extremism in our midst, where it exists, but there is also an urgent need to tackle the vast array of huge social problems which have emerged.
A friend of mine is the head of department in an inner city London secondary school and he is often appalled by the behaviour of his students – more so, he laments, because the majority of them come from Muslim families. Apart from having no knowledge of their religion whatsoever, many of these young people have no manners, no respect for the people around them and are frequently members of gangs.
The Muslim community makes up barely 2% of the British population and yet 7% of the prison population. The Muslim Youth Helpline draws the following inferences from research carried out by Muslim organisations:
– Drug abuse and smoking are shown to have a significantly higher prevalence amongst Muslim youth between the ages of 16-25 years, despite the fact that an estimated 45% of Muslim youth have never used illicit drugs, smoked tobacco or drunk alcohol.
– Mental Illness occurs more frequently amongst Muslim youth, particularly those that enter Britain as refugees. Almost one-half of the Muslim Youth Helpline’s clients complain of mental anxiety, depression or suicidal feelings.
– Muslims make up 7% of the country’s prison population, a figure that is five times that of the total Muslim population in Britain today. Numerous clients of the Muslim Youth Helpline have been to prison and one client recently accessed our service from prison.
As I have noted before, I work with a national helpline charity which aims to help Muslim women in crisis. Domestic violence is rife, divorce rates are high and the issue of forced marriage is not going away.
My wife used to work as a social worker around the time she became Muslim and was sad to report that huge numbers of unwanted babies were being abandoned by Muslims in the care of social services, often by Muslim girls who became pregnant outside marriage. Meanwhile educational achievement amongst some sections of the Muslim community remains poor. All in all, as a community we have huge problems and the question of extremism is only one of them.
With the Prime minister’s words to the Muslim community this week about doing more to tackle extremism, the first response is naturally one of defence. We ask what power we have, given that the extremist groups quite deliberately do not frequent established mosques. If wider British society is understandably not asked to root out the extremism of the BNP, we ask, why should the Muslims be asked to take on the role of the Police and Local Government?
But once these initial objections pass, we are faced with a very uncomfortable truth: despite pockets of light – and there are many examples of the Muslim community making a positive and successful contribution to society – there are numerous issues which we as a community must address ourselves.
Merely resorting to the very un-Islamic sense of victimhood is not going to help any of us. Merely condemning terrorism is not going to help us either. Nor is my writing about social problems going to help. Like my friend who went into teaching or those running the various Muslim helplines, there is a realisation that we need to get out into the community to engage in social works.
There has been too much focus on establishing a Muslim media, believing that this is somehow going to improve our situation. But public relations exercises are always bound to fail when what lies beneath the surface is diseased. My experience of this media over recent months suggests that our priorities are confused – I might even say we have our heads stuck in the sand.
On several occasions I have been asked to write something about the nasheed business and listening to music. That’s right: at a time when Muslims have a disproportionate representation in prisons, when some Muslims believe it is acceptable to target civilians with bombs, when drug use and gang membership is mushrooming, the issue which is causing most debate in our community is listening to music. Has nobody heard the narration of the sahaba who was asked whether it was permissible to kill mosquitoes, at a time when righteous Muslims were being slaughtered in that early great fitna?
It’s time we extracted our heads and awoke to the realities facing us. Coinciding with the first anniversary of the explosions on the London transport system, there will be a lot of focus on the Muslim community this month. Some of it will be unfair, some of it deeply insulting, some of it untrue.
But let us not pity ourselves. We have a lot of work to do. If one of you sees something bad, we are ordered, you should change it with your hands, and if you cannot do that you should change it with your tongues, and if you cannot do that you should hate it in your heart, and that is the weakest of faith.
For years we have been using our tongues and our typing fingers, but we seem reluctant to use our hands. We are reluctant to get out there on the streets as youth workers, teachers, social workers. The time has come. This anniversary of 7 July should serve as a reminder of this. It is a wakeup call.
Defending The Transgressed By Censuring The Reckless Against The Killing Of Civilians
“To put it plainly, there is simply no legal precedent in the history of Sunni Islam for the tactic of attacking civilians and overtly non-military targets.”
http://www.livingislam.org/maa/dcmm_e.html
Today’s Guardian carries a story about the tendency amongst the ordinary man to believe in conspiracy theories, in this case focusing on the mass murders on the London transport system last July.
Muslims are not alone in harbouring this tendency, of course. The book Londonistan by a famous British commentator describes a vast conspiracy in which you and I are set on conquering this land against the back-drop of a liberal, anti-Semitic media agenda. Nevertheless, there is no denying this tendency exists amongst us too.
When in the afternoon of 11 September 2001 our production manager at work informed us that somebody had flown a plane into one of the towers of the World Trade Centre in New York, my initial foreboding thought was that Muslims were involved. I wasn’t aware of the scale at that stage: in my mind I had the picture of a tiny single-prop Cessna and the memory of the 1993 plot to explode a bomb underneath the towers.
When I returned home that evening and saw the images on the TV news, that initial reaction changed. Overtaken by emotion, I was almost physically sick, the repeated images burning my eyes, and I could no longer accept that initial conclusion of mine. This wasn’t the action of a single nutter, incinerating himself as his plane disintegrated as it crashed through the windows; here was a calculated, co-ordinated act of extreme brutality in which two commercial jets had been flown with absolute precision to their destination, massacring a civilian population.
As one who had looked into the concept of war in Islamic Law, which prohibits any action that would cause harm to non-combatants – even to the extent that Muslim soldiers may not interfere with fruit trees – I could not accept that Muslims were responsible.
So when an ordinarily sensible brother sent me a link to an article on a website entitled “What really happened?” I, like many other otherwise intelligent Muslims, found myself clinging to alternative theories and the many questions.
It didn’t help that the media had been reporting ridiculous stories about the terrorist mastermind’s passport being found in the rubble of the World Trade Centre, not to mention the “Smoking Gun” video featuring the fat Bin Laden.
For a couple of months I was scouring the web for “the truth”, looking for evidence that “we’d been set up”. Much of the speculation was clearly detritus originating with right-wing Christians, Milleniumist, Messianists, Supremacists and others united on pro-gun, anti-federal government, anti-UN and anti-Semitic politics, often with strong views about a move towards one-world-government and a new-world-order. Whackos in common parlance. Still, the doubts remained and all of us wanted to prove that Muslims had no part in that horrific act.
Along came the declassified document concerning Operation Northwoods which had been published on the National Security Archive‘s website in 1998 and featured in a CNN documentary on the Cold War in the same year. Contained within this 1962 document entitled Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba were various proposals or outline plans that could be used to garner public and international support for US military intervention in Cuba. The suggestions included staging sabotages and sinking an American ship at the US Military Base at Guantanamo Bay and blaming it on Cuban forces, hijacking civilian planes, sinking boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba and setting up terrorist attacks in Washington and Miami, blaming it on Communists.
Unlike the wild speculation of the internet’s gathering of eccentrics, most of whom had their own quite unpleasant agendas, here was a genuine declassified document which could be viewed independently of the united anti-something extremists. However unlikely it was that the actions of 2001 were part of some grand conspiracy on the part of the US government, this document was evidence that a precedent of past intent existed.
Somewhat naively I wrote to Jon Snow at Channel 4 News, pointing him towards the National Security Archive website. He wrote back, telling me that he would look into it. A week later he went off to New York to see the devastating carnage first hand where he would have concluded – as I did later – that Northwoods was just a long forgotten historical document. Soon afterwards Channel 4 broadcast a documentary debunking 911 Conspiracy Theories.
Over the years since then I have received my fair share of emails exploring one alleged conspiracy or other… cruise missiles disguised as passenger planes, passenger planes fitted with the same technology that controls the SkyHawk drones used to assassinate suspected Al-Qaeda militants in Afghanistan and Yemen.
But I’m an isnad junkie who likes to trace these kind of emails back to their source – those claims about computer viruses that not even the best brains of Symantec, Norton and Microsoft put together can fix have taken their toll on me – and so most of my friends have learnt not email cynical Tim. Occasionally I revert to thinking that things may not be as they seem, but I’m generally no longer interested. And in any case, we believe in the Day of Judgement when all truth will be told.
When the massacre occurred in London last July, I managed to avoid the conspiracy theories for a whole week. Most of us had been saying for ages that it was only a matter of time before one of the crazies in our community did something like this. Indeed, after the Madrid train bombings I found that even I was looking at my fellow passengers suspiciously on my way to work.
So when the explosions occurred last July, I desperately hoped it was the action of extreme Anarchists timed to coincide with the G8 Summit, but I somehow knew it wasn’t. I work in the National Health Service and, although I had moved out of London a month earlier, our organisation was put on standby for an evacuation of injured people as London hospitals filled up. The initial estimates of number of dead were scary, far outnumbering the eventual death toll. All normal work ceased as we went into emergency response mode.
For the days that followed I was extremely angry with the perpetrators. Selfishly my initial thoughts were around how I would have felt had it been my wife who had been cut to pieces. Selfishly my thoughts were about how until a month earlier, that shattered Edgware Road train took me to work every day. And selfishly my thoughts were about this spelling the end to Muslim life in Britain. At work uncomfortable comments were being made about Muslims all around me.
But then somebody sent me a link to an article about Peter Powers’ walk-through of a simulated terrorist act which had bombs going off simultaneously at the same stations that had been targeted. It was not long before I was listening to ListenAgain on the BBC website, catching his comments on Radio 5 Live. Soon I was saying to my friends, “things may not be as they seem”. But probably they were. Thank goodness we believe in the Day of Judgement.
Perhaps conspiracy theories are convenient for us, helping us to avoid taking ourselves to account. Seeing a plot were there is none – almost to the point wherein the plotters are considered omnipotent – is considered preferable to putting our house in order.
But, to be fair, there are some quite valid reasons why many of us chase after alleged conspiracies from time to time. It is not always tired anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism as is often alleged. It may just be that we know the current state of our community too well. Al-Qaeda is seen as a ruthlessly efficient operation, but we know the state of our mosques whose members often cannot organise themselves well enough to clean the toilets properly. A key characteristic of Al-Qaeda operations is said to be the use of synchronised bombing, and yet we live in a community famed for its laxity around punctuality. So bad are we that lateness is the first non-sunnah a convert pick up when becoming Muslim.
Sleeper cells are apparently able to launch operations on their own, and yet we have difficulties taking the initiative to clean the dishes left in the corner from iftar a year ago. I am being cynical, I know, but these are the kind of things that cross our minds every time we hear of these complex operations. But maybe this is just our ignorance.
There have been occasions when I would have been happy to believe in some of the conspiracy theories knocking around out there. The one-world-government new-world-order theory that makes much of George H. W. Bush’s speech on 11 September 1990 has its appeal: why get out of bed in the morning when you know that everything is being controlled by an all-powerful group of individuals.
Unfortunately, although its origin lies in fundamentalist Christian eschatology, Muslims are buying into what is at root a nationalist ideology. With each act of barbarity that seems to be the work of Muslims, some sort of need to explain it away arises. Seeking out conspiracy theories is the easy response, but we are people of truth… and if we do not know where the truth lies, we rely on our Creator with who lays all truth.
On that awesome day which will last fifty-thousand years, all truth will be made apparent. Thus in this age of confusion, we bide our time clinging to the Book of Allah and the way of Muhammad, peace be upon him. It is our only means of success.
This comes from a friend of mine…
// Start quote
I read recently in the Quran where God describes the muttaqeen:
And vie one with another for forgiveness from your Lord, and for a paradise as wide as are the heavens and the earth, prepared for those who ward off (evil);
Those who spend (of that which Allah hath given them) in ease and in adversity, those who control their wrath and are forgiving toward mankind; Allah loveth the good;
And those who, when they do an evil thing or wrong themselves, remember Allah and implore forgiveness for their sins – Who forgiveth sins save Allah only? – and will not knowingly repeat (the wrong) they did.
The reward of such will be forgiveness from their Lord, and Gardens underneath which rivers flow, wherein they will abide for ever – a bountiful reward for workers!
But not having the memory I once had, due to frying my brain daily in front of a VDU, I thought of words to summarise the ayahs. Here they are, please have them tattooed on the inside of your eyelids:
- Charitable
- Composed
- Clement
- Contrite
I thought if I can try to act on these daily then maybe I can too be counted among those being referred to.
char•i•ta•ble adj.
- Generous in giving money or other help to the needy.
- Mild or tolerant in judging others; lenient.
- Of, for, or concerned with charity: a charitable organisation.
com•posed adj.
- Serenely self-possessed; calm.
clem•ent adj.
- Inclined to be lenient or merciful.
- Mild: clement weather.
con•trite adj.
- Feeling regret and sorrow for one’s sins or offenses; penitent.
- Arising from or expressing contrition: contrite words.
// End quote
I am really quite tired of being bombarded with propaganda set on defining for me the realms of civilisation. We want “civil” in that word to refer to courtesy and politeness, but we know that it doesn’t. Instead, our dictionaries describe civilisation as an advanced stage or system of human social development. Of course, for us, politeness is a characteristic of advanced human social development, as is honesty, sincerity, kindness and generosity. Yet what it actually means in practice is something quite different. The British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, uses it to describe that same group of nations which make up the G8. Thus that constant bombardment of ideas.
But I am troubled. Why are the civilised nations spending so much on weapons? The United States of America’s Department of Defence alone – excluding research, maintenance and production – had a budget of $437.111 Billion in 2004. While it is true that US expenditure accounts for only 4% of Gross Domestic Product, as compared to Saudi Arabia’s 10% as the world’s ninth largest spender, its 2005 military budget was still greater than the combined total of the next 27. Interestingly, the United Kingdom – tiny beside the US, China and Russia – spends almost as much as Japan and only slightly less than Russia and China: something like $50 billion. The joint expenditure of these self-described civilised nations is 57 times greater than the combined total of Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria, and contributes to two thirds of the total expenditure of the entire planet. In the case of the US, these figures exclude their actions in Iraq and Afghanistan which are funded outside the Federal Budget.
Why are the civilised nations spending billions on killing machines, on developing the most hideous weapons ever conceived? Consider the BLU-82B/C-130 weapon system, nicknamed Commando Vault in Vietnam and Daisy Cutter in Afghanistan. This is a 15,000 pound bomb based on explosive sludge which is dropped from high altitude, producing a massive flash visible from long distances and intense boom on impact, destroying an area between 300 and 900 feet radius. Or consider Fuel-Air Explosives which disperse an aerosol cloud of fuel which is ignited by an embedded detonator to produce an explosion, causing high overpressure. And I am not even mentioning nuclear weapons. What kind of mind could conceive of such weapons, and what sort of nation would fund them?
Blessed are the peace makers, says the Bible, for they shall inherit the earth. A time comes when we must realise that the labels assigned by those around us are worthless. Spending $500 billion – even $50 billion – on a war machine is not indicative of advanced human social development. Far from it. Let the primitive nations rejoice. Blessed are the peace makers, for they shall inherit the earth.
