Amir Saeed describes the changing nature of his Islamic political identity.
I am a British citizen of Pakistani origin. If asked, I would describe myself as being Scottish-Pakistani. From a personal perspective I used to argue that I was part British, my argument being that I was literate in English, and had citizenship rights and responsibilities. In short, I had adapted to the ambiguous notion of ‘British’ culture, to a degree at least.
Religion was an element of my personal identity but not an essential part of my life. Unlike other Muslims, my faith was not of overwhelming importance. What was important was to have the right to practise (if I chose) my faith without fear, intimidation and ridicule. This willingness to put secular rights over religion mirrored my political maturity that was awakened in the 1980s. This was a time when, in Scotland at least, skin colour seemed more important than religion. In many respects my political identity was modelled around inclusive definitions of ‘black’. I understood the term ‘black’ as meaning people of Third World origin who were victims of European imperialism, whether they were Latin American, African or Asian; to me they were part of the colonised globe and deserved my support.
My citizenship responsibilities entitled me to be at least part British or Scottish. Indeed the notion of hybridity was my initial research area in academia. From national identity to sport to music, my research was initially focused on how minority groups adapted to, accepted, challenged and created cultures of both incorporation and resistance. But the events of 9/11 and the subsequent levels of hostility have made me question my own notion of hybridity. Increasingly I experience and see Muslims having to emphasise their Britishness. It seems they are given a stark choice: either be British or be Muslim. In short there is a demand that we assimilate, not just integrate.
The events surrounding 9/11, and especially the War on Terrorism (TWAT as I like to call it!), have made me pay closer attention to my religious roots. My secular outlook, in recent months, has been replaced by a more religious and (I say so hesitantly) more Islamic perspective. Rather than seeing Islam just as a religion, my closer examination of the Koran showed me that it also offered a political ideology that could provide a framework for understanding contemporary capitalist society. For me capitalism, in simple terms, puts ‘profit before people’. Whilst mainstream popular culture and public opinion seem to decry the inhumane nature of Islam following 9/11, the following passage from the Koran seemed highly relevant: ‘Whoever slays a soul … it is as though he slew all mankind, and whoever keeps it alive it as though he kept alive all mankind’ (Al Quran 5:35). In Islam it is clear that life is to respected and the right to life is to be accorded to all beings. Unfortunately those who appear to be strongest critics of Islam seem to have the weakest knowledge of it.
Part of my academic research has involved talking to a large number of Muslims from various ethnic, gender and class backgrounds. Whilst it was apparent that my interviewees had somewhat different commitments to Islam, they all agreed that Islam had become the new enemy. During the early 1990s media representations of Islamic fundamentalism mainly focused on the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Some events, like The Satanic Verses and the first Gulf War, produced domestic anti-Muslim sentiment, but an onslaught on British Muslims or Western Muslims was not sustained. However the events of 9/11, the War Against Terrorism and the public attacks on asylum seekers have resurrected latent stereotypes. These have been accompanied by debates about the compatibility of Muslims living in the West. Are Muslims the enemy within? Are Muslims integrating enough? Is Islamic culture democratic? What role do women have in Islam? Suddenly Islam is under a hostile scrutiny, and any defence of it seems to be met by further accusations of Islamic militancy.
It is against this background that I have to approach any further research I undertake in race and ethnic studies. Thus my work is clearly grounded in my Muslim identity - but I would argue that all research is grounded in personal identifications: it is just that some are more visible than others.
National and international concern
Recent polls suggest that immigration is now the third most important topic for British voters. Since 9/11 issues of race, religion and migration have become centre stage in society. The beginnings of a focus for hostility centring particularly on Islam were seen during the late 1980s and 1990s, when interest in the whole Muslim community in the UK increased significantly in the wake of the Rushdie affair and the 1991 Gulf War. Since then, new components have begun to appear in racist terminology, used to bait and ridicule Muslims. Old favourites such as ‘Paki’ are accompanied by shouts of ‘Taliban’, ‘Bin Laden’ and of course ‘terrorists’. This abuse is also directed at non-Muslims such as Sikhs, Hindus and Christian-Arabs. Anyone who looks like the ‘other’ is fair game for such abuse, but its overt focus is on religion rather than race.
The language of the media prompted the idea that British Muslims supported Bin Laden, Palestinian suicide bombers and Kashmiri separatists. This view was further fuelled by the disturbances in the North of England, which have been presented as a particular problem of the Muslim community rather than of the British-Asian community (or indeed the white British community) more generally. The far right saw a political opportunity to divide the British-Asian community by developing local election campaigns which attempted to fuse the War on Terror with immigration and Islam. In Blackburn, the British National Party suggested that the predominately Muslim area of the town was to have its own prominent symbol: a set of gates modelled on Saddam Hussein’s twin swords that heralded the entrances to Baghdad. The BNP had their first councillor elected in Blackburn in 2003.
Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities in particular have often been represented as separatist, insular and unwilling to integrate with wider society. Recent comments by a variety of mainstream politicians appear to substantiate these populist beliefs. David Blunkett and Peter Hain have both suggested that British-Muslims must make more of an effort to integrate into society. Blunkett has called for ‘oaths of allegiance’, ‘not marrying spouses from the Indian subcontinent’, and the introduction of ‘English Language Tests’. The stereotypical images of Asians used in support of such demands may have changed - in particular ‘Asian passivity’ is being replaced by representations of a more militant aggressive religious identity - but the implication of a ‘culture clash’ remains - and that British Muslims are at odds with mainstream secular society.
A new racism?
The far right, using Islamophobia as its main weapon, has now gained greater prominence all across Europe. Instead of robustly confronting this phenomenon, New Labour and European Social Democratic parties have pandered to the right to win votes. They have made little effort to counter the populist stereotype of Muslims as largely supporting terrorist tactics. Yet research in the area of national identity and ethnic minority communities totally contradicts the arguments of the right. For example, post 9/11 polls conducted by the British-Asian newspaper Eastern Eye (23.11.01) showed overwhelmingly that British-Muslims perceived themselves as loyal citizens - though they might oppose the US/UK bombing of Afghanistan. The right to disagree on this (or any other) question - a right which is one of the cornerstones of democracy - is often implicitly denied to British Muslims: one should consider whether white Britons who oppose government policy are routinely questioned about their loyalty.
Furthermore, the issue of asylum seekers has been conflated with the issue of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, thus further fuelling xenophobia and racism. This fear and hatred is often intensified by an argument that outgroups get more than they deserve, and more than native Britons. This veiled, populist, form of racism denounces government policies for improving the position of ethnic minorities - for example by quotas - as unfair, arguing that they give to ethnic minorities collective opportunities and rights that are denied to the white majority. This argument that Asians were being treated more favourably than whites was one presented by the fascists in the rise of the BNP in Burnley: they claimed that Asian areas of Burnley received extra funding compared to the white areas.
This revived racism is not always covert: it frequently echoes discredited biological assumptions about ‘race’ and the perceived superiority of the West. This link can be most clearly seen in the appropriation of Samuel Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilisations’ thesis.1 Huntington argues that that a new cold war is taking place, based not upon economics or politics but on culture: Islam, with its innate propensity to violence, poses a serious threat to Western civilisation. Huntington’s argument is based on an understanding that Islam - and Muslims - are inherently inferior. Whilst this argument is based on religion and culture, it resonates chillingly with the biological reasoning put forward in the nineteenth century to justify colonialism and imperial war. Furthermore, for Huntington Muslim migrants in the West pose a dangerous ‘enemy within’.
Not only does the media perpetuate this image, but it also uses the issue of asylum to ideologically link the War on Terrorism with the issue of immigration. Throughout 2003 its onslaught on asylum seekers seemed to gain new momentum alongside the demonisation of indigenous Muslim communities. What is striking is how so many different historical manifestations of racism have been represented in the media war on asylum. Sometimes the emphasis is on the unfair burden on health, housing and education that asylum seekers would bring. Sometimes the argument is focused on a biological racism arguing that asylum seekers would bring in ‘too many germs’ (see, for example, ‘Madness of Blair’s Imported Plagues’, Mail on Sunday, 26.01.03). The terminologies associated with asylum seekers - ‘bogus’, ‘floods’, ‘swamps’ - dehumanises this group and attempts to strip or dismantle any or all public sympathy for them.
The media’s war on asylum seekers and Western governments’ war on terrorism have become interwoven, and the panic induced by this lethal mixture has led to the serious erosion of human and civil rights. What is more discouraging is that both campaigns have enabled the far right to enter mainstream public conscience. Anti-immigrant parties appear to be gaining more political credibility across Europe. Encouraged by the assault on so called ‘undesirables’, the far right have managed to gain footholds in certain regions of Britain, and in towns like Oldham, Burnley and Bradford. The BNP currently has around 21 councillors elected across the country. Unsurprisingly, an increase in racial violence has accompanied the rise of popular support for these parties. Encouraged by this success, the BNP is attempting to build support in areas where there is little history of racial strife, or a negligible non-white ethnic minority presence.
Local concerns
In the summer of 2002 Payman Bhamani, a young Iranian refugee, was stabbed to death in Hendon, Sunderland. Many believe the attack was racially motivated, and thus the tragedy brought Sunderland’s record of race relations into the media spotlight - albeit briefly. Sunderland has recently seen a sharp increase in support for the BNP, and there is undoubtedly a connection between the economic and social make-of the area, its active far right presence and the increased incidences of racially motivated attacks and abuse.
Despite certain economic successes in the area, Sunderland remains a relatively poor city and in certain respects its relative position has worsened. The Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) for 2000 indicates six wards among the most deprived 5 per cent of wards in England, and eleven within the most deprived 10 per cent. The decline of the shipbuilding and coal mining industries on Wearside, coupled with limited investment and the emigration of educated professionals, has led to increasing levels of long-term unemployment and poverty. The city has also suffered from a legacy of poor health. These are classic socio-economic conditions for fostering resentment toward ‘outsiders’ who could potentially be seen to be benefiting from jobs, health and housing provisions at the expense of local people
According to the 1991 census, the North East of England has an ethnic minority population of roughly 1.45 per cent, as compared with 5.5 per cent in Great Britain as a whole. Only 1.1 per cent of Sunderland’s 294,000 strong population is ethnic minority. Official estimates from the Home Office put the number of refugees and asylum seekers currently living in Sunderland at around 1000. Yet despite these very small numbers, anger is growing amongst the population about the benefits allegedly received by asylum seekers. A Guardian report carrying interviews with local people provides an illustration of local white resentment:
*The government should be looking after their own. I work in a bar where the BNP meet every Thursday, and what they are saying is right. It’s about time somebody stood up for us. ‘Get them out’, she said, to nods from the other women around the pub table. ‘They come in here - they are shoplifting, robbing people, stabbing people. ‘Keep them out. Keep them out. Our government can’t look after us. If the government looked after us there wouldn’t be a problem.’ ‘We’ve lived here all our lives. We don’t get free mobile phones. They get free air flights. Sunderland city council are flying them out from wherever they come from (www.guardian.co.uk/farright/story/).*
The far right has capitalised on such sentiments, and fuelled the myth that Britain is a soft touch. For example, the Sunderland Patriot, a BNP-distributed local newspaper, described the ‘favouritism’ directed towards the Muslim community by the local council. Evidence of this included the installation of CCTV cameras outside a mosque after worshippers had complained about racist abuse directed towards them. The BNP also argued that money spent on minority rights organisations was a waste of ‘taxpayers money’, and questioned whether these community groups were in the ‘public interest’.
Though the proportion of non-white residents in Sunderland is small, the term asylum seeker is assumed to apply to anyone who looks different - i.e. not white. Recent research examining racism experienced by University of Sunderland students shows that even non-white students are abused with racial slurs based on asylum myths.2 For the vast majority of respondents in this study, racism and the issue of asylum had merged into a single issue. Out of the 33 interview respondents, all agreed that if they were not white they were regarded as an asylum seeker. Furthermore, this research showed that students were also subject to anti-Muslim comments even if they were not Muslims.
In the local elections of 2003 the BNP won 13,500 votes in Sunderland - a city with fewer than 2000 non-white residents. Asylum and religious myths were clearly one of the main reasons for the BNP vote. The large number of BNP votes cast also supports the analysis of a CRE report (for details, see www.guardian.co.uk/farright/story) which argued that the most fertile wards for the BNP appear to be those with a very small number of minority residents, or all-white areas that have minorities close by. (There are a number of other factors associated with BNP support: their voters are often people who do not normally vote, many of them are young and most of them are male; they have also begun to attract some of the lower middle-class vote - ‘Thatcher’s children’ who feel that their earlier support for Tony Blair was misplaced.)
My Jihad
It would be naive to assume that the resurgence of anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant racism is a solely a consequence of the War on Terror. Not would it be accurate to characterise the War on Terrorism as simply an anti-Islamic crusade: in my view it is an attempt by proponents of free market capitalism and the United States in particular to control resources in the whole of what it considers to be less civilised part of the world. The panic about East European immigrants, and US critiques of countries such Cuba and Venezuela, lend weight to the view that it is not only Muslims who are targeted by global neoliberalism.
However, as a result of the experience of being stigmatised by the media and popular culture as one of the ‘enemy within’, the last few years have seen a change in my social and political conscience. More and more I see myself as belonging to the ummah - the global Islamic community which supersedes nationality. There are two tiers to Muslim identity - one is related to faith and one related to country - but faith overrides any other component of identity. It appears that more and more British Muslims are now facing these challenging times by drawing strength from an Islamic faith-based identity which can provide solidarity with other Muslims, as well as an avenue of escape from being constantly identified in negative terms. This is a political process, and it implies a positive (re)conceptualisation of Islamic identity. Recent evidence in Britain suggests that British-Muslims, from a variety of different ethnic groups, are increasingly willing to assert an Islamic identity in the face of real and perceived prejudice. Indeed in some respects the concept of the ummah and the older conceptualisations of political Blackness draw upon similar feelings of exclusion and empowerment.
This Islamic challenge to prejudice, and the struggle to assert an Islamic identity, has been popularised in the media as being intrinsically violent. The term ‘Jihad’ is used to conjure up images of violent, irrational terrorism. However Jihad does not necessarily mean a call to arms and a prelude to bloodshed. A Jihad can be personal and may include debate, reasoning, marching and indeed voicing concern in a written format. My Jihad is a progressive Islam centred on the inclusion of all disparaged groups regardless of religion, ethnicity and even sexuality. At the genesis of Islam the main converts were slaves and women, the two most oppressed groups at the time. The fact that they saw something liberating and empowering within the Hadiths (sayings/teachings) of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) illustrates for me that Islam has a liberal and radical foundation inherent in its teaching. Unfortunately it is the fundamentalists’ interpretation of Islam that gets all the press: its conservative and exclusive interpretations are mirrored by an equally conservative media, which implies that cultural conflict is inevitable and natural.
Hopefully this new Muslim ummah can (and indeed it has already done so) draw links with anti-war and anti-capitalist movements to challenge the barbaric nature of globalisation and the US-led War on Terrorism. Public opinion can be mobilised to challenge the dominating powers. Furthermore, this challenge can be led by Muslims. For example, the anti-war movement in Birmingham is directed with great energy by a young Muslim female. So whilst on the one hand we have the negativity and hostility of the mainstream press and body politic, an alternative voice can be found which builds on the principles of social justice and challenging oppression. Indeed Islamic scholars may argue that social justice and challenging oppression are the cornerstones of Islam:
*What is wrong with you that you not fight in the cause of Allah and for those who are weak, ill treated and oppressed among men, women and children and whose cry is:
Our Lord! Rescue us from this town whose people are oppressors and raise for us from You one who will protect us and raise for us from You one who will help.*
Al Quran 4: 74
Notes
1. See Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Simon and Schuster, New York 1996.
2. Amir Saeed, ‘Northern Racism: A Pilot Study of Racism in Sunderland’, Unpublished Paper Presentation 22.11.2003, Department of Criminology, University of Sunderland.
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