DAR AL HARB - U.K.: A 'BRITISH' ISLAM?!?

A very British Islam
by Joanna Sugden

In a back street in the East End, a seven-foot map of the British Isles looks down over a small, spartan office where a few men are typing feverishly. This is the headquarters of the Muslim Council of Britain, the organisation that wants to put the mosque at “the heart of British society”.

Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, the Secretary-General, has been at the helm for an eventful year that began with the Forest Gate shootings and ended with the recent failed terror attacks in London and Glasgow. He has steered British Muslims through a Holocaust Memorial Day boycott and protests at Salman Rushdie’s knighthood, but retains his enthusiasm for the role. “We can only thrive and prosper if there is ease and peace. That can only happen if Muslims are at the heart of the wider society … I want young Muslims to feel emotionally part and parcel of Britain, that’s my passion.”

When we meet, he is on the way to his day job, teaching children with special needs. A former Royal Air Force engineer with a PhD in Physics, his position in the MCB, liaising between the Government and the country’s most powerful Muslims, is voluntary.

“There is too much expectation on the MCB,” he says, “We are expected to do everything on behalf of our community - to be the voice of British Muslims, address the issue of terrorism, address all sorts of things. As a voluntary organisation, it’s just not possible.”

The MCB will celebrate its tenth anniversary in November. From humble beginnings in a town hall in Wembley, it has become the Government’s first port of call for Muslim opinion and leadership, representing over 400 Muslim groups. After the botched terror attacks earlier this month, the MCB were quick to convene a conference of 200 imams, denouncing the perpetrators as “criminals”. But would he call them Muslims? “If some Muslims create some violence, the community shouldn’t be blamed,” he responds. “Every criminal will use certain language; because someone uses Islam that doesn’t mean Islam should be blamed.”

Dr Abdul Bari says there is “tremendous pressure from Neocons and Islamophobes” to use Islamic texts against Islam. But, he argues, “Islamic texts, like Biblical texts, can be misinterpreted … At the end of the day it’s a social crisis and we are at the forefront of this difficulty, at the sharp end. We know there is a tremendous amount of fear in the wider society and people cannot live with this fear for very long. There will be a backlash.”

The answer, he says, lies in the mosque. “Mosques have to be the hub of the community. It’s not just a plain prayer place.” If they reach young Muslims who feel vulnerable and rejected, he argues, mosques could be a “source of regeneration for the community”.

He admits though that unless the number of imams who speak English is raised, that aim is never going to be realised. A recent survey showed that fewer than eight per cent of imams in Britain spoke English as their first language. “When they [young people] hear Arabic, Urdu, Bengali, and Gujarati they haven’t a clue, they switch off and cannot relate to the mosque”. Once separated from the mosque community young people are more likely to fall prey to influences on the Internet and from certain teachers in the street, Dr Abdul Bari, says. “They might get wrong information and that could lead to radicalism. Politics and religion could mix up like fuel and oxygen. Some people always try to blame religion for making them radically extreme. To some extent this is true because the interpretation of religion by half-educated people could be explosive.”

In a population of two million Muslims can the MCB really bring together such a theologically diverse community, which includes Sunni and Shia groups? “In the past we have been lacking in unity in our diversity, but I think diversity could be our tremendous strength. We don’t discuss those issues that divide and make us different … The thing that binds us together is our Muslim interest in this country, how we can bring the Muslim communities into the mainstream society.”

What about those groups that set themselves against mainstream society, like Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), which works to re-establish an Islamic Caliphate and has expressed anti-Semitic views? “I personally know some of the leaders and they have changed a lot”, he insists. “They used to always call ‘Khilafah, [Caliphate] Khilafah, Khilafah,’ without charity work … many of their activists are now engaged in all kinds of charity work.” Isn’t this like a wolf playing fancy dress with a sheepskin? “We can’t suspect people’s opinions. If some people want to do good positive work we take this at face value … we cannot be thought-police on this. We don’t have any love for HT but we thought that if they were banned that would be worse.”

He laughs at accusations that the MCB’s aim is the Islamicisation of Britain. “That’s the new thing we sometimes hear. No. MCB is an umbrella organisation, and we have groups which speak in the language of Da'wah, or preaching of Islam. Islam is a very broad church, if I can borrow this term. Apart from someone going away from Islam through direct denial, everyone is in the fold of Islam.”

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Pertinent Links:

1) A very British Islam