The Muslim News - From Another Shore

Issue 200, Friday 16 December 2005 - 15 Dhu al-Qa'dah 1426

From Another Shore - Re-branding Muslims

By AbdoolKarim Vakil

One joke doing the rounds has it that a group of Muslims frustrated by all the bad press we are getting took a leaf from New Labour and called in at the Saatchis for a bit of advice on how to improve the public perception of Islam and Muslims. ‘Nothing to it’, come the reply, ‘re-brand.’
The story so far.
On the November 10, a group calling itself Progressive British Muslims (PBM) staged its formal launch with a press briefing held at the House of Commons. A press release of the 15th describes the launch - “at which the Government was represented” - and the enthusiastic support on show from a number of MPs and Peers from across the parties who recognised the “vital role”’ of the PBM. Justifying the decision to set themselves up, the founding document explains that the group had “been formed in response to statements from the mainstream media that they are not able to represent articulate, progressively minded Muslims in the media because they don’t know how to find them.” More importantly, though, it attributes the decision to the need for “a platform to provide a voice for progressive British Muslims who feel unrepresented by the existing faith-based Muslim groups.” As PBM spokesman, Dr Shabaaz Mahboob, explained: “We feel that religion is an individual’s private matter.” Secondly, “We do not believe in self-imposed segregation and also do not believe in an exclusive society for Muslims.” For all that Selman Ansari, another of the Group’s spokesmen, sought to spike a little political piquancy and urgency, social relevance even, into the genteel proceedings by conjuring up the apocalyptic spectre of riotous French youth and the “dangers of having a segmented society,” the PBM’s noble aims - to advocate gender equality, and non-discrimination on the grounds of sexual preference and disability in the community; freedom of speech; respect for all faiths; human rights and democracy - seem about as relevant and carry about as much conviction as his epic finale will be of comfort: “Our cause is progress; our country is Britain; our culture is Muslim. Progressive Britain, Progressive British Muslims.”
The episodes you may have missed:
The PBM appears to come out of nowhere. Some have looked to their programme of equality, tolerance and respect and decided to give these idealists the benefit of the doubt. Others read self-obsolescence into their “we speak only for ourselves,” irrelevance in their avowed privatisation of faith, and have decided to ignore them. But there’s a little more history to them. At the very least more context to their texts. Firstly, these are not wide-eyed naives, they are effective political lobbyists. Farmida Bi was, after all, a Labour candidate in Mole Valley constituency in the 2005 General Election. The Westminster launch and Government representation at the launch, bespeaks clout.
Second, the PMB’s claim that they speak for the silent majority, and that they articulate, the “true image of British Muslims” and the issues which matter to them in their everyday life, claims to speak for us. For all their lament of voicelessness, their voices have been heard before, and their diagnosis of the problems of Muslims and Muslim communities makes it our concern. The sole article that appears on the PBM website as a more expansive engagement with the issues facing the Muslim community in Britain post 7/7, is an article by Fermida Bi, which first appeared in a blogg called ‘Progressive British Muslims’ back in July and offers her response to the bombings. The causes of terrorism are found in the loss of identity of second and third generations, who find orientation in Islam, the generational breakdown in communication with parents attached to the ways of the old country and whose rote learning of the rituals of religion leaves them unable to police the politicised and vernacular Islam of their children. Isolation in ghettos prevents integration. And overvaluation of male children contributes to the narcissism that feeds the suicide bomber personality. The way out of the impasse is for the well integrated passive minority to speak out. And to do so now, because “we can’t assume that” “the great restraint that the British public has shown in not blaming all Muslims for the acts of a few” “will continue if the attacks are repeated.”
The attack on the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) introduces the third and most important reason the PBM agenda matters. No doubt emboldened by the impact of the BBC’s A Question of Leadership Panorama programme, Dr Mahboob sent a letter to The Times (August 24), proclaiming that “Just because someone does not practice religion as strictly or openly as is prescribe by religious organisations, does not mean that he or she should be deprived of rights to be represented nationally and their issues taken into consideration by the Government.”
An ordinary Muslim cannot but be touched by the way in which Western plutocracies have taken to conducting da’wah on the behalf of Muslims. The only problem is that the Muslims that they undertake to promote are those who want to labour under labels such as progressives and secular - that is, Muslims who do not want to be identified by reference to Islam. Of course, the incongruity of the idea of Muslims without Islam, can only be mastered by producing an Islam without Muslims. An Islam without Muslims then becomes a museum piece rather than a living faith.
AbdoolKarim Vakil is a Practicing Vegetarian Muslim…and a Lecturer in Contemporary Portuguese History at King’s College London

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