Spirit21

I wrote a follow up on the theme of “we don’t need to get under the veil, we need to get over it” for The National, aiming at a Muslim and also a Middle Eastern audience.

You can read the full piece here: http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091226/WEEKENDER/712259830/1311

However, here is an extract which adds to the original piece which was written for EMEL magazine.

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This article was recently published in EMEL Magazine.

“Bring up your children differently to how you were brought up, because they live in different times to you.”

This is a famous saying of Ali ibn Abi Talib, the son-in-law of Prophet Muhammad. I grew up as part of a British-born Asian Muslim generation where trying to make sense of these competing identities was our primary concern. One of our main goals was to ‘fit in’ with mainstream society around us. Observing Asian customs and abiding by religious rules was something to be downplayed and hidden. Today’s young Muslims see their priorities differently.

They are much more confident, demanding even, about their place in society and their identities. For many youngsters, expressing your Muslim identity is a badge of honour, giving them a sense of belonging. The constant barrage of news about Muslims and the increasingly ferocious right-wing attacks on Muslims are likely to consolidate this identity. Even the world around us has been changing faster than ever before. I bought my first mobile phone in the mid-nineties, not long before acquiring dial-up internet access at home at the remarkable speed of 14.4k.

Today it is impossible to imagine living without either a mobile phone or the internet. The acquisition of life skills has changed too. Schools once emphasised subjects like domestic science, teaching children to cook and manage the budget at home. These skills are rarely taught at school, and in many cases have been lost to the home too. Yet television programming is full of shows trying to wean people away from fat-inducing take-aways and junk food by teaching them to cook.

Financial management is absent too from life skills training. Yet we now find that debt is higher than ever before, and that it is the poor who are bearing the brunt of the recession. Learning the value of money and how to manage it is an essential skill in the portfolio of education. I don’t want to indulge in nostalgia or take a pop at our education system. What I want to do is set the scene to that other area of life skills that has slowly been eroded from our communities – spiritual literacy. Individuals are losing a sense of who they are in society and what they are worth as human beings.

To compensate, the self-help scene has exploded indicating that individuals are craving these skills. In religious training, rote learning and rules for rules’ sake were sufficient for generations. One question in modern life has changed all this: “why?” Having information is no longer enough, it is having the tools to make sense of what is around us that is critical. Only this can re-connect us to the spiritual meaning that we complain has been lost to modern literalist Islam.

Spiritual literacy needs several components. It has an information element – exploring the range of moral codes and belief systems like religions and their place in history and society. There is no need to be afraid of other religions. Being equipped to meet and relate to different belief systems is the key in the modern world. For those who are Muslim, there needs to be an intimacy with the Qur’anic text and Islamic history.

This is to provide basic knowledge as well as a yearning in the heart. Spiritual literacy needs to inculcate a sense of spiritual worth in each human being. This is the common denominator across society, because whether you believe in religion or not, we are all connected through the worth of the human spirit. Only this belief will allow us to treat those of other faiths and none with respect and create self-esteem in the individual.

This spiritual literacy however is underpinned by learning tools which will help address the ever present question of ‘why’. These are the tools of analysis and critical thinking which will allow an individual to understand and shape their spiritual inputs, and manage them and regulate them in the best manner possible. Families and local community classes are on their way to offering these skills. We need to recognise that spiritual literacy is the most important of all life skills. It is vital for the health of the human individual. Just as our life skills must include the ability to shape our physical sustenance in food and finances, so we must have the skills to develop our individual human spirit.

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This article was published today in The Times Online

Gender separation is not inherently sexist. We have single sex toilets, stag do’s and hen nights, boys nights out and Anne Summers party nights in, as well as single sex schools, monasteries and convents.

Every culture has places and occasions where men and women find themselves congregating towards each other through custom, nature or by design.

I’m deliberately not using the word segregation – a word that carries far too much baggage with its connection to apartheid in South Africa, and the Civil Rights movement in the US. For segregation was premised on a lesser value being placed on those who were being segregated away, and that lesser value meant that they were deserving of less opportunity, respect and participation.

Separation in itself is not discriminatory because in theory – we’ll come on to talk about practice in a moment – it treats both genders equally. In the theory of separation men and women have equal respect and rights, equal access to opportunity and resource, but are also given the space to flourish or relax in a single sex environment.

India Knight wrote beautifully about how our culture has many moments of joy where men hang out with men, and women with women, and that we have no need to be in a mixed sex environment all the time.

The separation of the sexes is always a hot topic for debate. It was always widely held that both boys and girls gained better results in single sex education.

Boys and girls are more likely to take a wider range of school subjects including those which are not considered ‘typical’ of their gender when in separate schools – girls taking more sciences and boys taking more arts – and more likely to go onto careers less typical of their gender and more suited to their talents.

Women educated in single sex schools also go onto earn more money. In the working world the policy was always to encourage women to broaden their choice of professions out of the usually ‘women’s professions’ and get more men involved in things considered feminine.

In a recent study by the University of Cambridge, amongst a sample of 20 countries, those which have more occupations dominated by one sex have more equality in pay between the sexes overall, contradicting assumptions about the advantages of bringing men into traditionally women-dominated occupations and women into male-dominated occupations.

These examples are not to distract us from the topic in hand, nor to discuss the methodologies or accuracy of their findings and not even to suggest they are directly comparable to the issue we are about to discuss.

Rather they should set the landscape to a more sophisticated debate on separation and illustrate two points.

First, that this is a nuanced topic with many complexities. There is no simple right or wrong to policy and execution and the issue of separation permeates all aspects of society.

Second, this issue of separation is not limited to “Muslim weddings bad” as an MP raised last month.

Jim Fitzpatrick MP for Poplar and Canning town, which has a large Muslim population, was invited to a Muslim wedding but on arrival, finding that the men and women were to be seated separately, decided to leave, and tell the press about it.

I wrote about it at the time, disappointed that he was rude enough to make a fuss about a private matter, and surprised that he was ignorant that many Muslim weddings are separated, in both the UK and around the world, and have been as far back as I can remember.

Gender separation definitely is discriminatory when it normalises male behaviour as the “baseline” and the male side robs the female side of the equation of access, agency and participation.

This is an extremely problematic area in the Muslim community.

Let’s for the moment assume that there is no intent to discriminate, but that Muslims feel as though creating a physical boundary for gender separation is in line with Islamic principles.

Even from this starting point, even those Muslims who support it must acknowledge the reality that the physical arrangements exclude and diminish women’s participation simply because of the arrangement of physical space and location.

Those “holding the microphone” have control “from the men’s side” and it becomes a kerfuffle to make even a comment from the women’s side. This is not about social occasions of enjoyment like weddings, but serious civic institutions where decisions about the life of the community and its future take place.

Sometimes women aren’t even invited or told they “don’t need to be there”.

Herein are the clues which are more revealing about what really lies beneath. Sometimes the sound system is poor, there is no visual, or women are not even in the same room or building. The rooms are smaller, dank, poorly ventilated, or hurriedly found to plonk the women into.

Those Muslim men who don’t believe me should perhaps investigate these rooms for themselves.

Not all mosques are like this – the ones I attend have seating in the same room, or separate rooms but with excellent facilities for both men and women.

When the less favourable locations are challenged about the lack of facilities for women they say that there isn’t enough space to fit the men and women, or the women prefer to stay at home, or so on.

This makes it apparent that it is the same gender discriminatory attitudes that are often prevalent in wider society rearing their ugly heads here, but hiding behind the false statement that it is religiously “required” separation that makes it so.

I don’t buy it.

If it was important to have women there, if it was a natural instinct to include women as Islam dictates, then space would automatically be found.

The separation can cause other problems too if not carefully patrolled – women become anonymous and indistinguishable. When events are reviewed, their presence and participation is unrecorded. And of course their talents remain untapped for the benefit of the community, which is a great loss. Participation in the running and management of a community is then denied to women – when it never was in Islamic history.

In Islamic thinking, separation stems from the importance placed on modesty in public – this covers modest clothing (for men and women), modest behaviour (for men and women) and humility (for men and women). In a society which has sexualised almost every aspect of life this can appear a stark contrast or possibly even austere. But for many Muslims the call for modesty is actually a relief from adverts that hallucinate naked men and women in supermarkets after wearing certain deodorants, or the constant debates about body images of female celebrities (she looks like a pre-pubescent child vs. she’s put on a few pounds on holiday).

The debate on Muslim dress almost always seems to be hijacked by notions that men are uncontrollable lust-monsters who would ravage a woman as look at her, and that women are nothing but sexual objects that need such extreme protection that they can’t be in the same room.

Frankly I find the former insulting on behalf of men, and the latter infantilising and patronising on behalf of women.

By instituting a physical separation as the vessel for modesty-management the responsibility for modesty is devolved to the physical partition rather than necessarily imbuing the men and women with the social graces of modesty and respect in the way that they interact with each other.

Personally, I believe that there is a time and place for separation, and a time and place where a cohesive participation is required. In either scenario it is the behaviour that is primary, for me the physical separation is simply about allowing a space for both men and women to unwind, relax or flourish – as with all the examples I quoted at the beginning.

Those who insist on separation as a requirement of religious law in order to exclude women’s participation are actually hiding prejudice behind the law.

For law is always a product of the values and ethos of a community – the law serves a community’s vision rather than dictating how the community should behave. And the Islamic ethos is that men and women are equal creations, that have equal value and equal responsibility in the life of the community.

The Koran talks about men and women being equal “garments for each other” and “finding peace and tranquility” in each other.

Those who wish to uphold physical separation, as well as those who want to make clear that separation is not discriminatory, must make extra efforts to eradicate the difficulties of access and participation that usually come for the women. They need to make doubly sure that resources and respect are fully provided so that women can be fully functioning and valued members of society.

It’s a bit like thinking of the Yin-Yang symbol in representing the male and the female. They interact with each other, but don’t need to be constantly mixed up or in each other’s pockets. Neither can one be completely excluded. When you get the balance and the interaction right you achieve a fully functioning whole.

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This article was published recently in The National, which is based in Abu Dhabi, and aims at a Gulf and Middle Eastern market.

Contemporary changes to the Ramadan culture mean that the spiritual significance of Ramadan is slowly being lost. Abstaining from physical intake during daylight hours – which means food, drink, and sex – with the intention of getting closer to the Divine, has a myriad of philosophies and meanings.

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This article has just been published at the Times Online.

Politics.co.uk carries this report on Jim Fitzpatrick, the Minister for Food, Farming and Environment, who walked out of a Muslim marriage ceremony in his constituency, apparently in a state of shock that men and women would be segregated and sit apart.

Our guest blogger, Shelina Zahra Janmohamed, author of Love in a Headscarf, argues, with justification, that Fitzpatrick was extremely rude to the couple in question. What do you think?

Shelina writes: Fitzpatrick’s constituency, Poplar and Canning Town, includes Tower Hamlets which has a 35 per cent Bangladeshi Muslim population. He claims, rather surprisingly, that he was unaware of the custom of segregation at Muslim weddings. It worries me that the representative of a ward where a large minority are Muslim is completely ignorant of this tradition. I’m even more shocked that he is proud to profess his ignorance. Whether he likes or dislikes the custom is a different matter: surely he ought to be aware of how a significant chunk of his community conduct a central event in their personal lives. What else is he ignorant of?

Let’s start with the meaning of integration. Fitzpatrick says that separate seating for men and women is stopping integration. Yet here is a family who only knows him through a friend and possibly as their MP, inviting him to their most important day. That to me is reaching out and encouraging integration.

Then we can move onto good manners. Weddings have always been a very personal matter and as with all occasions, there is etiquette which the guests must follow. If there is one thing that the British can truly pride themselves on, it is (or at least used to be) excellent manners. We know how to respond to invitations, use the right cutlery, queue in line. In fact many a book over the centuries has been written on developing the right social graces. The bride and groom are under no obligation as to who they invite to the wedding, and to be invited at all is a great honour. And at a time when budgets are tighter than ever, and weddings are becoming increasingly expensive, it is a real privilege to be invited to someone’s wedding.

I feel very sad for the bride and groom that their special day has been hijacked by a rude ungracious guest who decided that their personal choices for the day were not to his taste.

But here is the rub of Fitzpatrick’s ignorance. Segregated weddings are extremely commonplace and have been so for decades. Only a handful of the many Muslim weddings I have attended in my life have not been segregated. And this is not just the case in Britain but all over the world. Women have their own celebrations, as do the men, and both of these are incredibly joyful vibrant occasions. A half-Iraqi half-English Muslim friend who married a British born Bangladeshi had her marriage celebration for women only, and enjoyed it thoroughly. Her husband is delighted that the women got to “let their hair down” (literally in some cases of hijab-wearers). A wedding I attended in Bahrain of a minor royal was held in a glamorous marquee catering for a thousand people. Nine hundred and ninety nine were women. The groom popped in briefly to give his bride the ring.

If we look closer to home, segregation is still prevalent in other wedding traditions too. Some orthodox Jewish marriages are segregated. And we still hold dear to our separation of the stag night and hen do. Would Fitzpatrick have wanted to take his wife along on a drunken weekend in Prague?

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This article was published in EMEL Magazine.

The internet has created an ummah that lives up to the Prophetic idea of a nation without boundaries. The Qur’an talks of “ummah wahida”, One Nation, which the Prophet described as a body that feels the pain that any other part of the body feels. Today, it is the e-ummah that feels the pain and joy of its brothers and sisters no matter their location, ethnicity or time zone, because it has dissolved the barriers of time, culture and distance.

During the era of Muslim empires there was a sense of geographical unity, even if information about far flung reaches of its geography took time to spread. This united geography, under the banner of one religion made the ummah an easily identifiable entity. But modern times have changed the shape and distribution of Muslims. No longer are they consolidated in one area. Instead, they are spread out widely not just as a diaspora reaching out from historically Muslim lands, but being born out of native ethnicities and cultures fresh to Islam.

In a world of nation states, nationalism and declining religiosity, the enduring sense of global connectivity to an ummah based on religious affiliation is an anomaly. Muslims are questioned about how they can show patriotism at the same time as being concerned about Muslims across the globe.

But the notion of Ummah has always allowed for this layering of multiple identities. The Qur’an is quite clear that human beings have been created in different tribes with different ethnicities and languages so that people can ‘know each other’, an explicit directive to rejoice in difference and affiliation. The notion of ummah has no conflict with this. Instead, the two paradigms support the human need that at once desires to be both unique and have a sense of belonging.

The internet has for the first time created immediate connections of communication to support the reality of a global ummah. News travels within seconds, and communities are created not by geography but by interest and purpose. When a Muslim in one part of the world expresses anguish, Muslims around the globe immediately and empathetically feel their pain, experiences and joy too. The rise of the citizen journalist and blogger means that more voices are heard from the grass roots than ever before.

The internet has fostered the spiritual pursuits of education, support and encouragement too. We have seen the rise of religious learning, study groups as well of course as online matrimonials. In particular, it is worth noting that those who have historically been excluded access or participation from arenas of discussion and decision-making likes mosques and community centres – specifically women and youth – have found a forum within which to express themselves. The internet has given them freedom to explore ideas in a non-judgemental way, and to actually participate in the workings of the ummah. For these individuals in particular the e-ummah offers belonging and meaning that is lacking in their ‘real’ surroundings. It also allows the ummah to take advantage of their skills, talent and creativity – resources which the ummah has squandered over centuries and is not in any hurry to rectify. Life is not perfect in Muslim cyberspace. Etiquette is readily thrown out of the window as people engage in insult hurling at each other over political and religious difference. Some invoke the internet’s anonymity to stir up trouble and even say things that they would never have the nerve to say in person. They feel as though the facelessness of the internet absolves them of their responsibility for respect and good manners. They feel they are not being watched. But a Muslim of all people ought to know they are always being watched: by the Watcher Himself.

The e-ummah has one other major drawback which it needs to understand and address: it isn’t really there! Islam is a religion of physicality which emphasises that social and spiritual development occurs through repeated action and ritual. The physical movements of the prayer are one such example. Rituals like the Hajj, the Friday prayer, the daily congregational prayers, and even smiling – all point to the importance of being in company with other people. What will be the impact on the individual as well as the community if we fully divert ourselves into e-tawaf and e-jumm’a?

The internet is here to stay, and the e-ummah is one of the great miracles of our time. The challenge is to make sure that we avail ourselves of the magical connections that the internet has offered us, but retain the importance of real physical interaction in our daily lives.

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This was published in the June edition of EMEL Magazine (apologies for the delay in posting it up).

Religion is not important; not in the daily life of almost three quarters of the British public. The French exhibit similar levels of irreligiosity. By contrast, the Muslim populations in both countries say that religion is important to almost 70% of them. Can this vast gulf in the belief of the importance of religion ever be overcome? Will Muslims along with other faith groups follow the wider public into religious oblivion? Or will the believers be able to persuade the public of the value of religion, and if so, how will they do it?

In May 2009, Gallup published the Coexist Index, designed to measure global attitudes toward people from different faith traditions. Spanning 27 countries across 4 continents, the report gave special focus to attitudes and perceptions among Muslims and the general public in France, Germany and the UK about issues of coexistence, integration, values, identity and radicalisation.

Religion is not important in the daily lives of the French and the British, and there is an indication that the general public’s view of religion is that religion itself is not of value. The UK, France and Norway, the three countries that came bottom of in rating the importance of religion in daily life, also showed lower ratings on two related issues: whether ‘religious faiths make a positive contribution to society’ and on the indicator of whether they had ‘learned something positive from a person of another faith’ in the last year. It seems they are becoming less and less respectful and impressed by religion.

There was a time in the near past when it was enough to point to something as condoned or recommended by religion to gain approval and understanding. Now, adding the label ‘religious’ seems a hindrance rather than a positive attribute. No wonder then that Muslims have gained little sympathy when they have stated that they have found certain books, cartoons and other incidences to be offensive. Religion itself no longer carries inherent respect. In fact, there is a palpable fear of religion, particularly visible in the UK where 26% of the public felt that people of different religious practices threatened their way of life.

Muslims, like others to whom religion is important, need to think carefully about how to express their religious values to the wider public, and how to convey how dear those values are to them. At the moment, the methods and language used do not seem to be working, and Muslims see themselves quite differently to how the wider public see them. 82% of British Muslims thought that Muslims were loyal to the UK. That figure fell to 36% amongst the British public.

Of course the fear-mongering whipped up in the media and by the far right must take a great deal of blame for this mistrust. They must be held accountable for the constant and lie-laden coverage of Muslims and for whipping up a frenzy of phobia and hatred. What the data also doesn’t indicate is whether this level of mistrust applies to other faith groups too, although my suspicion is it would be at significantly reduced levels, if at all.

Working with the mainstream media, politicians and policy-makers is essential in changing widespread opinion, and reducing this chasm of misunderstanding. However, there are other clues in the research as to how Muslims can make proactive change.

One of them is getting involved in civic society. Muslims polled significantly lower than the general public in France, Germany and the UK on whether volunteering in organisations serving the public was important. Shockingly, in the UK only 24% of Muslims versus 64% of the public felt this was important, the lowest across all three countries. If Muslims don’t invest in the public sphere then on a purely selfish level they will not weave themselves into the fabric of society. But this is not about being selfish: alongside belief in the Creator, a Muslim’s purpose is to serve other human beings and work towards social justice. Showing disregard for involvement in public organisations ought to be anathema to Muslims.

Muslims need to step up fully to the civic engagement and responsibility that are part of their faith heritage. They need to be engaged more in these activities – not just as much as their public counterparts, but more so. This is because they are people to whom religion is a part of daily life; and religion is about making a positive contribution not only to your own daily life, but to the lives of those around you.

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This article was just posted at the Guardian’s Comment is Free

The Muslim attitudes survey reveals a loyal community, keen on integration – far from the usual stereotypes

My British glass is half empty. According to a Gallup poll released yesterday, only half of the UK population identifies itself as very strongly British. And in Germany only 32% of the general public feels that way about being German. Who then identifies most strongly with their nation, reaching a whopping 77% in the UK? Muslims.

This refreshing piece of information is part of a wider picture that Gallup paints of a European Muslim population that is more tolerant and integrated, as well as more strongly identified with Europe’s nations than other communities. It is an excellent and much-needed study, capable of informing the ongoing debate about the situation and place of Muslims in Europe.

The report investigates the usual allegations levelled at Muslims. It establishes that religiosity is no indicator of support for violence against civilians and that in the UK and Germany Muslims are more likely to state that violence is not justified for a noble cause than the general public.

This vital information needs to be channelled immediately into policy, where Muslims are only ever seen through the prism of violent extremism and are falsely considered to be predisposed to violence when in fact the opposite is the case.

The idea that Muslims want to live in isolated “ghettos” is also untrue. Muslims are in fact more likely to want to live in a neighbourhood that has a mix of ethnic and religious people: 67% of Muslims vs 58% of the general public in the UK, 83% vs 68% in France.

Muslims also believe that it is nonreligious actions that will lead to integration – language, jobs, education. For example, over 80% of Muslims in the UK, France and Germany believe that mastering the local language is critical.
Whilst both the general and the Muslim populations believe these things are essential for integration, these are the areas where Muslims are found to be disproportionately struggling. They have lower levels of employment and lower standards of living. For our public discourse and for government, this is where the focus needs to be and funding need to be applied.

The really worry is the gulf between how Muslims see their integration into society and how the wider population sees them. Some 82% of British Muslims say they are loyal to Britain. Only 36% of the general population believe British Muslims are loyal to the country.

This has its roots in misinformation and miscommunication across society and means we all need to work hard to dissipate the dark cloud of fear that hangs above our heads. The Gallup report points to other countries like Senegal, Sierra Leone and South Africa which have a very high level of tolerance and integration across society and suggests that this may be a result of governments that actively promote religious tolerance, recognise multiple religious traditions in official holidays and national celebrations and enshrine religious freedoms in the constitution.

As a British Muslim woman who wears the headscarf, I was particularly proud to see that in Britain the headscarf is seen positively. When asked what qualities it was associated with, a third said confidence and courage, and 41% said freedom. Some 37% said it enriched European culture.

Instead of building on the platform for understanding and communication that this report brings, the mainstream media coverage has sensationalised the report by reducing it to one thing: Muslim opinions about sexual relationships.

To be sure, Muslims are indeed more conservative than the general population, but this is perhaps a trait shared with other religious communities. In fact, the areas which concern Muslims are in some cases those that we find socially contentious anyway: pornography, abortion, suicide, homosexuality and extra-marital relations.

French Muslims appear to be more “liberal” with regards to sexual mores than German or British Muslims. This is a red herring. It does not necessarily mean that they have “more integrated” sexual attitudes. All it seems to reflect are broader views on sexuality in those countries. For example, the French public considers married men and women having an affair far more morally acceptable than Brits or Germans, and this difference is reflected in the Muslim population across all three countries.

The danger in focusing on sexuality as a litmus test of integration is that in turns this into a one-issue debate. The point here is that it is that it is completely irrelevant to a discussion of integration and a happily functioning society, where mutual respect and understanding for each others moral codes – whether we agree or not – ought to be the foundations for a shared vision of a shared society. We see this in the statistics about homosexuality: it’s true that no Muslims in the UK found this to be morally acceptable (though there is a 5% margin of error for Muslims across all the statistics in the report). However, this needs to be seen in context of the fact that Muslims are more respectful of those different to themselves than the general British public. The important point here is not that we should have homogeneous social and moral attitudes, but that we can respect and live with those who hold opinions at different ends of that spectrum.

The message is this: we should use this report to silence those who spread hate once and for all. We need to move on from the monochromatic discussions of loyalty being either to the state or to religion, discussions that force a choice between “my way or the highway”.

Our glass is actually more than half full. There is much hard work to be done, and many aspects of economic and social policy that need to be addressed, but the status quo offers all of us much hope for an integrated future. It is a future that can be built on the evidence before us of ample scope for dialogue and understanding.

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This was published in the April edition of EMEL Magazine

I have been missing out on a lucrative business opportunity. Facing a credit crunch before us, and being encouraged by the PM to fight the recession, I have registered a domain name and created my own Cyberservice which I believe will plug a much needed gap in t he Muslim market.

I base my new venture on investigations into what appears to be a worrying trend in the Muslim psyche. As a set of global communities we are facing unprecedented change and challenges, one of the most significant of which is the nature and relationship of Muslims with Authority. I write it with an uppercase ‘A’ because it seems we are not sure what the archetype of authority should be, and given the various kinds of authority we all deal with on a day to day level, we are not sure how we should relate to it.

We have Muslim countries whose leaders do not necessarily seem to follow an Islamic ethos. We have others who seek to impose their interpretation of Islamic law with great vigour undifferentiatedly across their entire populations. We have some Muslims who argue that we must follow scholars no matter what, and others who argue the opposite that we must use our own minds and our independent thinking to reach the answers.

‘Twas ever thus, for the question of who has authority and how it ought to be exercised, questioned and obeyed lie at the heart of Islam. Even the Prophet’s own authority was constantly questioned, and Muslims under his watch lived under a number of different rulers including the Christian King of Abyssinia, the Meccans who had not embraced Islam, and in fact rejected it thoroughly, as well as leadership of the Prophet himself.

There are two major changes however that do raise new challenges in our understanding of authority. The first is the immediacy of global connectivity. Where once the religious leader you followed – or opposed – was determined by your geographical location, now we have a global marketplace of leaders who are accessible through websites, video clips and television. It sometimes feels like scholars have to go out touting for business, and ‘image’ is everything.

The internet has brought another trend with it – the democratisation of knowledge. This is a good thing – knowledge is the lifeblood of Islamic life, and the immediacy, depth and range of information that is now available for people to educate themselves easily and freely is unparalleled. But how to choose which information is accurate and measured?

The challenge for Muslims is to face the combination of all of this readily accessible information with modernity’s all-powerful individual and with an insecure – and unfounded – desperation to prove that their own understanding of Islam is always alwaysright. The outcome? A global nation of individuals who claim to have all the answers, unwilling to listen or to ask new questions, and who consequently are always stuck in the same debates: the veil, segregation, Islamism, the West.

With the constant spotlight on Muslims, we are expected to have answers to every question that anyone asks about Islam. But we are also guilty of not being able to just ask questions and spend time discussing them. We don’t need to have a fixed pre-determined answer for absolutely everything. There is a joy and a creativity in asking questions, allowing others to explore them and then engaging in a dialogue about potential answers.

We need to re-introduce to our vocabulary questions that begin “why” “how” “what if…” We must have enough space to ask questions. Enough time to sit and be with those questions and be able to explore them, and enough confidence and openness to listen to those who propose answers at first or even second glance we do not agree with. Our desperate need to have answers to absolutely every single question has led to an outsized proliferation of the fatwa, where any and all questions are asked. There is indeed a place to ask those who have more knowledge and more wisdom for guidance on matters which we are unclear about, but it is worrying that we’ll ask anyone anything, even things that appear to be common sense and in line with our fitrah, our conscience.

So, to make sure I cash in on this trend while it lasts, my new online business is this: DialaFatwa.Com. Am I being irreverent? It’s a good question to ask.

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This was published today in The National

By the same token however, the apparent indifference of Middle Eastern countries may be because they consider Darfur to be a tribal or “black” issue.

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