Dealing with anti-Muslim hatred
School and mosques vandalised with anti-Muslim graffiti in London
Under Conservative rule combatting Islamophobia — or anti-Muslim hatred to use the new official term — tended to lack substance. So the Labour Government’s recent commitment to funding protective Mosque security — and the Muslim Trust for its work researching data on anti-Muslim hate crime and its victim support — is welcome. Threats and attacks on mosques, imams and microaggressions against Muslims in distinctive dress — women in hijabs are particularly vulnerable — are growing. The Trust estimates that a hostile action against a mosque takes place every five days.
On 25 July, Muslim leaders, mosque councils, teachers and security experts gathered in Birmingham for a national emergency meeting. Meanwhile also in Birmingham the Department for Education is funding pilot school courses on antisemitism provided by the Archdiocese education service with the Catholic Education Service and the Board of Deputies of British Jews.
Our big cities and churches are noted for their diversity. St. Ignatius’, Stamford Hill, for example, is pure London. Recently resplendent with the flags of some 40 nations, irregular attendees might have thought them a tribute to the World Cup. Though the Vatican flag over the door to the presbytery would have given pause for thought – no notable strikers fostered at the end of the Via della Conciliazione. The 40 different nationalities/Londoners provided the display celebrating the annual parish festival.
Celebrating the significance of this religious gathering is not naïve romanticism. Muslims aren’t popular with Catholics from Nigeria, where Christians are persecuted in the Islamic North. And Hackney and Tottenham, like many inner city communities, have had their riots with different ethnic and religious groups on different sides.
Such complex UK realities fall into the sphere of both theology and sociology. They are mostly dealt with under the heading of “integration”, a catch-all word like “culture”, not often clearly defined. Baroness Louise Casey analysed what works and what doesn’t work in the integration of Britain’s Muslim communities in an official December 2016 study.
Integration is far more of a subjective concept than at first sight. Should integration be a “two-way street”, each meeting half way. Or, to stay with the traffic analogy, is an immigrant like a driver on the slip-road onto a motorway. The traffic on the inside lane of the motorway needs to give way and let the slip-road driver in, but, once on the motorway, the driver must obey the highway code and the overhead signs. The second analogy might better fit the reality. Neither option makes for an easy ride for the immigrant, least of all for the Muslim immigrant.
Take Palestinians for example. A Christian immigrant has an easier time than a Palestinian Muslim; they can integrate into widely accepted national bodies, the Christian churches. Nor do they have an alcohol ban limiting to some degree their socialising in pubs. Muslims joining a mosque find themselves amongst a worshipping community that may have arrived only a generation ago, and may still be seen as “foreign”. Worse, they daily risk encountering some degree of Islamophobia, influenced by perverse distortions of Islam overseas, notably jihadist terrorism or the persecution of women in Afghanistan.
The existence, and growth, of Britain’s Muslim population — now well over four million strong— is a highly politicised aspect of Britain’s demography. Islamophobia is a strong element in the xenophobia of far right-wing parties.
The Muslim Council of Great Britain (MCB) was formed in 1994 at Government instigation to provide a broadly representative organisation, some 500 affiliated Muslim bodies, with which to relate and give Muslims a public voice. Whilst the MCB spoke out against acts of terrorism, relations soured in 2009 when Daud Abdullah, its Deputy- Secretary General signed a declaration from the Global Anti-Aggression Campaign, an international grouping of radical Muslims with links to Hamas and with some members allegedly from extremist jihadist organisations. Hazel Blears MP, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, called for Daud’s resignation. The declaration had been a response to Israel’s assault on Gaza — with the customary rationale of curtailing rocket fire — over three weeks 2008-2009. Gordon Brown’s Government condemned Daud for promoting violence.
The MCB Secretary-General, Abdul Bari, was unwilling to sack Abdullah on grounds that such government intervention undermined the independence of a religious organization. This was both disingenuous and provocative, though he later willingly accepted capacity building help from the TUC. The Government adopted a policy of “non-engagement” towards the Muslim Council, temporarily restoring relationships for five months before the 2010 general election. This stand-off has continued since then, with the Government officially refusing to associate with the MCB for 16 years, though individual MPs — Sir Stephen Timms and Nick Clegg, for example — attended meetings even when holding ministerial office.
To find interlocutors for reports, consultations and advice, Government relied mainly on hand-picked Muslims who were mostly sympathetic to state-sponsored programmes such as Prevent, which is viewed as discriminatory by many Muslims. This had an alienating effect, but did bring into national prominence several significant figures from the Muslim community. The Churches sought similar partners for its inter-faith dialogue with Muslims.
One of these, the academic and author Professor Mona Siddiqui OBE, has become an important public intellectual figure and broadcaster. She gave the Gifford Lectures in 2016 and, as an expert on Islamic law, chaired a Home Office review into Shari’a councils. Another outstanding leadership voice, Leicester’s Shaikh Ibrahim Mogra, himself a former deputy Secretary-General of the MCB, visited Pope Francis on 5 April 2017 as Co-Chair of Archbishop Rowan Williams’ Christian Muslim Forum, one of four imams accompanied by Cardinal Vincent Nichols. His reaction was typically warm: “I think it’s going to be one of the most powerful messages that will go out to the Muslim world that the Christian communities are our friends….I think we should reciprocate.”
Rejection of the Muslim Council did not encourage integration. It contributed in part to an attitude of — reciprocal — rejection of Government’s interaction with all things Islamic. Prime Minister Burnham needs to put this right.
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