Spirit21

This article was first published in EMEL Magazine.

I remember the day that I first fell in love. I was thirteen, and the film Grease was playing on TV. And there he was. Cool, trendy, good looking and ready to do anything for his girl. He was of course John Travolta, and I had no doubt that he would turn up on my doorstep and ask me to marry him. Things didn’t quite work out like that – he went on to become a scientologist, and I set off on my own quest for love.

The stories and legends we grow up with though, make it tough for reality to live up to those kind of epic romances. I thought back to the fairytales that I had grown up with; these were the stories which shape the ideas of our culture about love. Without even realising it, the innocent tales had whispered into my ears, and those of my peers, were simple words that influence the way that we see the world.

To find true love, I would have to be as beautiful as sleeping beauty, which meant that my prince had to be a strong testosterone fuelled hero who could chop down forests… which seemed a bit, well, neanderthal to me.

Or, to find true love, I’d also have to be as lovely and caring as Cinderella who was nice even to her wicked step sisters, but then I wasn’t sure I wanted to be with a prince who was so fickle that he could only recognise me when I was all dressed up. What! He needed a fancy designer shoe to identify that I was a real beauty inside and out?

And on both counts, I didn’t feel like I needed to be rescued or saved from household drudgery or from a century long snooze. I was – still am – a modern woman, who is quite capable of saving herself. But just because I can, doesn’t mean that I want to.

The thing is, I rather like the idea of having someone around – not from financial or social necessity, but to support, love and encourage each other. Love for completion, love for fulfilment. Love for spiritual wayfaring.

It might be fun to play at princes and princesses, but once you’ve taken away the pretty frocks, glass slippers and big castles, that’s when you know who both of you really are, and what you bring for each other. When you take away the wrapping paper and ribbon, is it still love?

It’s worth remembering as we enter the wedding season:  Love isn’t perfect or airbrushed, it can’t be. In fact, we should be strong enough to assert that love should not be so hideously plastic or saccharine.    It is easy to love in the moments of beauty and happiness.  The challenge for us is to still love when it is difficult,  because I believe that is when love is  at its most rewarding .

It is at that moment that our human essence fulfils its purpose to selflessly serve another. And at that very same time, despite our own imperfections, we are intimately recognised and cherished for our own essence.

Love takes time and perseverance, not just weeks or months, but years – even decades – through those clichéd good times and bad, the proverbial ups and downs. Love starts out as exciting, full of the heady rush of romance, and we must celebrate new couples and help them enjoy the phase of red roses and moonlit walks. Even those who have made it through the journey of life together, can share a moment of exquisite romance and the pure joy that it brings.

Collecting those early experiences in a memory bank can anchor the moments when love becomes hard work. A memory bank is love’s rainy-day-fund. A memory bank brings the rewards of the investment that all those who wish to love, and be loved, need to make. But those investments must be carefully selected, and cultivated with care and attention.  Love is certainly the enjoyment of the rose, but it is also the pleasure of seeing the plant grow. And that, of course, takes time.

In our age of speed and convenience – or as John Travolta would have said – the age of ‘Greased lightening’ -  love is the one thing that continues to beat to its own patient rhythm.

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This article was just published in EMEL magazine.

Yes, it’s true, you too can be perfect. L’Oreal can give you the perfect hair, Oil of Olay can give you perfect skin, and Ralph Lauren can dress you in the coolest clothes.

You too can be like the perfect models in their adverts. You just need to believe in the dream, and oh yes, cough up a few pennies to buy the products. Thick glossy hair created by L’Oreal products, demonstrated by Cheryl Cole. Smooth wrinkle free skin under your eyes courtesy of Oil of Olay, as seen on model Twiggy, and a hip outfit demo’d on skinny models at Lauren.

Cole spends up to £200,000 per year to achieve her beauty, of which hair extensions are a regular cost. L’Oreal don’t feel it is misleading for her to promote their products even though their shampoo could never give the look of Cole’s extension-enhanced hair. The Advertising Standards Authority said this level of deception was acceptable because for two out of the thirty seconds of the TV advert, in small writing, it indicates that ‘some’ extensions may have been used. Twiggy’s advert for wrinkle-reducing eye-cream had all her under-eye wrinkles airbrushed out in post production.

Ralph Lauren's model looks impossibly ridiculous

Ralph Lauren’s model had been photoshopped so that her head was bigger than her pelvis. When criticism of the adverts was posted online, their lawyers sent round threatening letters to silence the critics. 

The beauty industry justifies airbrushing because it claims it is selling a dream. But their products are sold based on a deception and incapable of delivering the advertised airbrushed perfection.

These are con artists – people who set out to sell a product to meet a state that has been manufactured to be unattainable. And con artists have always existed.

Yet we are deceived today into believing this perfection is attainable through a number of more modern tools. We have a more visual culture now, where images visualise on giant billboards the perfection that our lives ought to be. Of course, those lives are airbrushed and carefully staged, impossible for the products to deliver against. However, because we can now actually see the utopia that the products will turn our lives into, the impossible dream reaches a new dimension – suggesting to the believing innocent eye that the impossible is in fact possible.

But the bigger problem is this: selling dreams that can never be realised is now sanctioned. Corporations have now established as legitimate ‘right’ to sell impossible-to-achieve dreams.

The financial sector sold things that were never real, products that were derivatives of products and not real actual things. We were told this was good for us and for our economy. But what was sold was so vapid and intangible that it took but a blink of an eye for it to disappear. No wonder ordinary people with ordinary common sense were left baffled as to where did all the money suddenly go? The boom was built on fluff that never existed and as soon as one part of the manufactured dream was exposed as an ephemera, the whole thing vanished in an instant.

Political parties are doing the same – they create a brand like “Broken Britain” and then ’solve’ it with their own branding and puff. The Conservative party will solve Broken Britain with Big Society.  It’s all just so much upper case branding, and so little real product.

Even extreme religious leaders sell the ‘dream’ of paradise to persuade innocents into killing themselves and others. They say: it’s us or them, and then offer a solution of violence and criminality, where the death of innocent people is airbrushed out of the equation, and utopia is created from an act of violence.

We’ve institutionalised the legitimacy of selling a dream that can never become reality. In fact, selling dreams has been made to seem to be a good thing because shopping for a dream life is supposedly in the interests of consumers. We’ve been told that what consumers want most is to buy into a dream. No matter the hollow feeling that’s left when failing to achieve perfection from oversold products.

We’ve been told that the fluff and stuff is important in creating our dream lives. Fluff is not fulfilling. And aspiring to something impossible simply results in heartache.

Our institutions are condoning selling ephemeral intangible fluff, rather than real things that will make things better in real terms. But it is to producing and selling real things, that can achieve real outcomes, based in reality, that we must return.

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This article was published in the latest issue of EMEL Magazine.

What is the difference between a church spire and a mosque minaret? This is a question that has pre-occupied me since late 2009, when the Swiss voted in a referendum to ban minarets, carrying the motion by 57.5%.

The ban has provoked controversy, and it is likely to be taken to appeal on the grounds of being a violation of religious freedom and expression. Church spires are remarkably similar in size and shape to minarets, and Switzerland has plenty of the former. Yet the population invests different interpretations to the two, even though the stone and mortar are very similar. What is the meaning we ascribe to such materials, and what is it that gives them their different meanings?

Given the political climate and increasingly strong anti-Muslim sentiment, this difference in reaction to minarets and spires comes as no surprise. It is one piece of a jigsaw puzzle of seemingly small and disparate trends: proposals to ban the niqab and the hijab; the pride in calling yourself ‘Islamophobic’; or the recent proposals for profiling. Politics to one side, what is it that gives a faith building its sacredness? Whether Muslim or otherwise, is faith really to be found in the confines of four walls designated as ‘place of worship’?

The Muslim populations in the UK arrived in stages from the beginning of the 20th century. Mosques were immediately set up primarily to meet the spiritual needs of prayer. They were ‘virtual’ mosques – hosted at community centres, schools or other hired buildings for the duration of the community needs. Their temporary function reflected the fact that many Muslim immigrants saw their own presence in the UK as temporary.

As time passed, a sense of permanence was invested in the worshippers’ lives as well as their place of worship. Buildings were bought and converted, and more recently purpose built. Many converted buildings are topped with a small green dome, or other physical attributes that denote the traditional typology of a mosque – large dome with minaret. The immediate needs of the community, along with constrained budgets mean that the functions offered by the mosque are prioritised over its form.

Although this is understandable, it is very sad. After all, one of the functions of the mosque ought to be for the beauty of its form to inspire worshippers, to engage them with the sublime, to create a connection to the transcendent. More than anything, the mosque ought to resonate fiercely with the worshipper’s surroundings and the culture that they are steeped in. This allows the individual to understand their own status as a unique individual while at the same time being part of the wider community. It allows the community to understand its own relationship to its surroundings and express its own nature amongst a community of communities. After all, human beings look different, speak different languages, dress differently – shouldn’t the mosques where they gather communally and worship communally, show variation in keeping with their local cultures too?

It is the people that make the faith building sacred. If you have ever stepped into an empty place of worship, the overwhelming energy and sparkle is electrifying, as you, the human being, bring meaning into that place.

That is why a minaret that looks so much like a spire can cause such anxiety and prejudice – because it is not the building that is the issue, it is what the building represents. Those who voted for the ban are expressing their negativity to the people who bring it to life.

Under this analysis, we must be conscious of the fact that some Muslim countries also show immense negativity towards places of worship for other faiths, although there are promising signs that this is slowly changing. The constraints placed on churches, synagogues and temples are against the spirit of respect inherent in Islam for other religions.
Even more significant however, is the fact that these constraints indicate that Muslim countries also see faith buildings simply as expressions of political meaning. Whether it is Switzerland or Saudi, Italy or Egypt, we need to see places of worship not as expressions of ‘otherness’ but rather as places where human beings can spark their own spiritual connections, and resolve the very human tension between individuality and being part of a community.

Far left image: Fraunmester Church in Zurich, Switzerland.

Left image: Mahmud Mosque in Zurich, Switzerland.

Other than age, the church spire and mosque minaret look remarkably similar, so why do they mean such different things?

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We don’t need to get under the veil, we need to get over it.

Earlier this year, the head of of Al-Azhar Islamic university found himself in agreement with Italy’s extreme right-wing Northern League, the BNP’s anti-immigration anti-Islam stance and Turkey’s rampantly secular constitution. The subject was the veiling of Muslim women, a topic that makes for unlikely bed-fellows.

Al-Tantawi, the senior sheikh at al-Azhar, was visiting a girl’s school when he told an 8th grade student to remove her face-veil saying, “the niqab has nothing to do with Islam and it is only a mere custom”adding bluntly, “I understand the religion better than you and your parents.”

At his insistence she removed the veil. He said shockingly: “You are actually like this (this ugly). What would you do if you were a little bit beautiful?”

Whether you agree or disagree with his intervention, it surprises me that a scholar -and role model -feels that he can use public intimidation on a young woman, and that he has a right over a woman’s clothing, defining and commenting on her intelligence, her family and her looks.

French president Sarkozy used the historic occasion of his first speech in the French parliament to pick out the veil as an issue of primary concern to the French public. It was subsequently reported that only 367 women in France’s population of over 62 million wear the face veil. This raises questions about why the veil is of greater concern than other issues relating to all women, across all social groups. For example, why not raise the serious topic of domestic violence, whose victims numbered a heart-rending 47,000 in France in 2007? Further, I found it spooky that French intelligence could offer such a specific number of niqab-wearers – were these women being monitored?

Sarkozy’s speech follows a ban on the headscarf in French schools and universities since 2004, not unlike a similar ban in Turkey which labels the headscarf as contrary to the country’s secular principles. Turkey finds itself in the peculiar situation that the out-of-power secular party is advocating against freedom of religious expression, resulting in women who wish to veil being denied high school and university education as well as public sector jobs.
Italy’s Prime Minister Berlusconi is a man who is not known for his dignified treatment of women. He too is advancing proposals with the anti’immigration Northern League to ban the veil in Italy, overturning a historic exemption in Italian law that allows the veil on grounds of freedom of religious expression.

Wherever you are in the world – Muslim country or otherwise – the issue of veiling is a hot topic. Proposals to wear, discard or ban it are put forward for political reasons that vary depending on the country. But this much is certain – Muslim women are bundled into a single-issue ‘problem’, and that issue is the veil. I’m not even going to elaborate on the many variations in veiling – headscarf, niqab, jilbab, burqa – because that is irrelevant to the discussion. This debate is centred around the interchangeability of ‘Muslim women’ with ‘veiling’, as though a Muslim woman and her veil are one and the same thing. To make matters worse, complex issues underlying the inflammatory political positions of people like Sarkozy and Berlusconi – issues like integration, unemployment and identity – are blamed on the veil. This is simplistic single issue politics at its worst – offering a bland and unintelligent analysis of the very real problems Muslim women, as well as society at large, are all facing, grouping them altogether as caused by ‘the veil’ and producing the wrong ignorant solution: ‘ban it.’

This obsession with the veil as the source of contention is illustrated by the constant stream of news and opinion pieces with titles like “uncovering Islam” “behind the veil” “beneath the veil” and “under the veil”. We don’t need to get under the veil, we need to get over it.

If Obama believes that a nation torn apart by race issues can become a post-racial society, then there is legitimate hope for a post-veil society. It is a society where a Muslim woman can get on with the task of living her life – in education, employment, security and safety in the family, private and public spheres. It is a society where who she is, rather than what she wears is her definition and her contribution. In such a society, the veil is no longer her only definition, no longer even her primary definition. This is a society where a woman’s choice to veil or not to veil is her choice and hers alone.

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This article has just been published in EMEL Magazine.

Muslim women are changing the world. Fed up with voices on all sides telling us how we should dress, what is ‘right’ for Muslim women, and how we should be defending Islam or in other cases dismantling it, Muslim women are getting themselves together and initiating change. But what does this mean if you are a Muslim man?

I should make two statements here: first, that I am an advocate for Muslim women and the changes that they want to make to traditional structures within Muslim communities, from within the faith. I believe Islam has a blueprint that offers liberation for both genders. Second, whilst there are some great changes afoot, an unspeakably huge amount still needs to be done in order to redress the oppression that Muslim women face from all sides.

With this in mind, I ask again, what if you are a Muslim man? It is a challenge being a Muslim woman, but I imagine that it is also a challenge being a Muslim man. There are plenty of books, talks and articles produced about “Women and Islam” but what about “Men and Islam.” It even sounds strange, doesn’t it?

Muslim women are constantly torn between the competing tensions of faith and multiple cultures. Men must be as well. For example, there is much talk about the difficulty that Muslim women face in finding marriage partners. Muslim men, what are your thoughts on this experience?

What notion of fatherhood can a Muslim man shape when battling traditional external notions that it is a ‘woman’s job’, a concept that exists in both western and eastern cultures?

When it comes to ideas about modesty and Muslim dress, what thought processes and support do Muslim men have in determining what they wear and whether this conforms to any standard of modest dress? And when it comes to the traditional notion that the hijab is there to save men from their uncontrollable cave-man sexual urges, do you have any opinions or more to the point, do you take offence at this? I think you should, and I have argued previously that hijab should not be explained in terms of denigrating men as licentious monsters.

When it comes to identity and stereotyping, Muslim men are typecast as today’s ‘angry young men’, with a beard and rucksack as labels for ‘terrorist’. What are the challenges that Muslim men are facing? What support do you want to address these?

If we want to create a change for women, then men need to be engaged. It’s the right thing to do, and it is the inevitable thing. It’s right because if Muslim men truly believe that Islam liberates women, and that it is built on the foundation of both genders being ‘created from one soul’, then they will – they must – stand in support of the changes women are advocating. More significantly, it is inevitable because any change that affects Muslim women must by definition affect Muslim men because the two occupy interconnected spheres of influence. Put another way, if men proactively make changes in conjunction with women, then problems affecting both genders will be solved much more quickly and effectively.

This is not about detracting from women, or diminishing their cause, nor is it about re-instating men as more important, or going back to patriarchy. It is about helping women, and helping the balance of our society as a whole.

Actually, this still sounds very Muslim-woman-centric, and there is a reason for framing my outreach to Muslim men in this way. I don’t want Muslim men’s needs to be hijacked by the same unyielding voices of traditional patriarchy that drown out Muslim women’s voices by telling them that they know better than Muslim women what it is exactly that Muslim women need.

By framing up our need to hear men’s voices from within the paradigm of the changes Muslim women are creating, I’m hoping to give space and freedom to Muslim men to be honest about the challenges they face. Young men can suffer at the hands of tradition, culture and patriarchy too, their needs being overlooked, unheard or dismissed as rebellious immature youth.

All of us need to make space for men to speak up about their concerns. There are two critical components of this space: that men can speak honestly about their issues; and also, that men and women can talk to each other, openly, sincerely and productively.

Muslim men, we need to hear from you.

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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 was published in EMEL Magazine

Do you want to be the next Islamic Idol? An Egyptian TV programme earlier this year pitted 12 hopefuls against each other in an American Idol-style singing contest in order to achieve that most perplexing of accolades: “Islamic Idol.” Yup, go ahead with the double take on the title. I did the same, unable to imagine two concepts so diametrically opposed to each other being brought together in a serious manner.

The show aimed to find talent for a new Islamic pop channel in the Arab world, 4shbab, For the Youth, which appears to be a sort of halal MTV for an upcoming generation of young Muslims who are conscious of observing their Islamic faith. Ahmad Abu Heiba whose idea lies behind the channel says his mission is to spread the message that observant Muslims can also be modern and in touch with today’s world.

Muslims are not alone in wanting to create alternative choices to the mainstream in order to meet their beliefs. Those who keep kosher, observe a vegetarian diet, or make efforts to live an environmentally friendly life are amongst many others trying to create product options. If by creating “Islamic” options we also create opportunities for Muslims to live their lives at their most spiritually fulfilled level, then this is a good thing.

However, something still niggles with some of these “Islamic alternatives”. Remember the rise of “Islamic cola” a few years ago? Brands like Mecca Cola, Zamzam Cola and Qibla Cola sprung onto our shelves during a period of great encouragement in the Muslim community to boycott mainstream brands. They sold millions of bottles across the world to a cola-thirsty ummah. The political situation had made Muslims conscious of what they were drinking, so why didn’t Muslim entrepreneurs take the opportunity to introduce different beverages in healthier and more innovative flavours instead of mindlessly aping a high-calorie drink which rots your teeth?

Not only would boycott-conscious Muslims have been helped to support their efforts, but such new products might have served a wider audience all of whom are looking for new alternatives. The political opportunity would have been the perfect platform to highlight not only the political change Muslims were demanding, but also the social value they were adding to everyone. By thinking only within the confines of the label “Islamic”, products are not necessarily designed to be good from the bottom-up for the benefit of all in the long run. Instead, they focus on a short-term need.

You will tell me that there is nothing wrong in meeting an urgent short term requirement that meets the technical specification of your need, and you would be absolutely right. Except for the following facts: if all you ever do is focus on today, your future can never be any different to your yesterday. If all you ever do is tweak the products and paradigms of others to conform to your technicalities, you will only ever be a follower, never a leader.
So, whilst we must support the efforts of those who try to help us live more Islamic lives by giving us “Islamic” options, we must at the same time push harder for original thinking in the civic, social and business spheres which will create a better future not just for Muslims, but for everyone.

One very obvious example is the eco-industry. Islam at its very core is about maintaining respect and balance with the environment. Whilst we are busy spending all our time on getting the technicalities right, (remembering that they are indeed very important) we forget that other extremely important point: Islam is a big-picture way-of-life, concerned with equilibrium at a cosmic level. Muslims therefore have a great deal to contribute to setting the very parameters of this nascent debate. Muslim thinking and entrepreneurs are well-placed to shape this new paradigm, contribute to its development and then to capitalise commercially.

There is one bigger, more critical worry when we focus on creating me-too products with the label “Islamic”. When we tick off the list of requirements for something to be “Islamic”, we must be wary of serving “Islam” itself rather than the Creator and that ‘Islam’ itself does not become an idol that must be placated. Is our intent “for the sake of Islam” or is it for the sake of the Creator? When “Islam” or being “Islamic” are the end goals, then we find that titles like “Islamic Idol” are easily created, and that must be a cautionary lesson for all of us.

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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 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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