How it feels to be a grown up. Courtesy of Grim and Proper Cards

In my heart, I am still four years old. I look at a picture of me at that age, glowing skin, exuberant smile, cheeky glint in my eye. I’m still that girl, running around the garden, kicking a football, laughing in the summer sunshine, looking for my parents’ approval as I explore nature.

I am still seventeen. Waiting for the results of my university application, tense with anxiety about how my future will unfold, studying hard to achieve the grades that will take me into my degree course. I’m full of hope and innocence that life will open its arms to me.

I am still twenty one, dressing for my first day at work. Savouring each day as I get up bleary eyed and commute across town to my job, my first grown up paid full-time work. I go because I am thrilled to be in the work force, not because they pay me. That’s just a bonus.

I am still twenty five, trekking across deserts to explore the world, arranging last minutes flights to unplanned destinations, free of responsibility but laden with hunger to experience as much as I can. I’m learning about myself, about the world; making friends that will last.

I’m still a child, still a girl, still a youth, still a young woman. In my heart, what I am not, is a grown up.

Yet when you look at me, you will emphatically disagree. You will tell me: you have a house, a mortgage, a car. And then eyes popping at me you will say firmly, and now you have a baby. You are most definitely grown up.

What exactly is a grown up, and do I have to be one? Inside I’m still the free, independent, unshackled young woman, who craves experience, joy and adventure. My happiness at playing in a beautiful garden, enjoying the adoration of those who love me, of laughing through sheer contentment still persists. But outwardly my shape has been moulded into the straightjacket of grown-up-ness. Children look at me and call me ‘Auntie’, the ultimate push into adulthood. How and when did all this happen?  Where did the days – nay, the years – go? And will I be asking myself the same thing as the golden days of my autumn set in?

These days – now I’m in the new mummy phase – life passes as more of a blur.  The morning wake ups, the feeding, the nappies, the crying, the cuddling. Each day is the same, but each different, observing the little life growing in front of me. Days pass by, and I lose track of the dates. But you have a new baby! You cry. You tell me that this is normal.

But this is not just about my current phase. This increasing blurriness of passing time just speeds up each year. Tasks and activities get planned, and milestones must be reached. All necessary, all admirable, all expected. We want to move house, go on holiday, visit friends and family, get a new job, look after our loved ones, drink a good cup of coffee, tend the garden, throw surprise parties.

In this routine which is made up of the wonderful, yet simple and mundane pleasures of living a good life, it is easy to forget the need to factor in living the good life.

Finding your place in the scheme of life is the first step towards doing that. For me, one of the moments of epiphany was seeing myself not just as a daughter, but as a mother, a link in life’s ongoing chain. The question is what kind of link do I want to be? And how will I ensure that what I pass on is worth perpetuating?

I can – and choose – to be contented, irrespective of the labels of child, youth or adult. Being a grown up brings certain privileges – the ability to choose how to live, the self-awareness to know your place, and the acceptance of who you are. But the best part is that inside, you can still retain the joy and free-spiritedness of being a child.

As for that four year old I was telling you about? She’s still running around with unbounded happiness in my heart, willing to embrace life and to love with abandon those around her.

Share on Facebook

Somewhat belatedly, here is my monthly EMEL column. Please note it was written at the end of February, so events have definitely moved on since then…

One ordinary individual can be the catalyst for change.

On December 17th 2010, a 26-year old Tunisian fruit seller set himself on fire in front of a government building. The graduate, who could not find a job, was trying to earn a living with his stall. On that fateful day, he was halted by a police officer who seized his goods, claiming that the man was working without the necessary legal permit. It is not clear what happened next: did the police officer slap him, or did he go into a centre for unemployed graduates to complain of his treatment only to be faced with laughter and insults? We will never be sure. But this much we do know: what the young man did next has sparked a regional revolution.

courtesy of paul-wakefield.co.uk

Eighteen days later, on January 4th, he died of severe burns. Ironically, he was even visited in hospital by the man he was protesting against, President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, and a photo was released of the meeting by the presidency.  The death of the young man, Muhammad Al Bouazizi, was seen as a symbol for all the young college graduates who were unemployed; a catalyst for the demonstrations that led to the fall of the President and his departure from the country.

Having seen what was possible in Tunisia, Egyptians gathered the courage to follow suit. An unknown young woman’s [Asma Mahfouz] YouTube video encouraging people to protest in Tahrir Square was one of the triggers for unrest in Egypt, and as I write this, the will of Egyptian people has led Mubarak stepping down. They were ordinary people, engaging in acts that a few months ago would have been extraordinary. Courage filled their bellies. The King of Jordan has also seen the writing on the wall and dismissed his cabinet, realising that if he does not pre-empt change, then he himself will be its casualty.

History has many names filling its books, of men and women who through their actions have brought revolution and improvements. These include familiar popular heroes like Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela. Individuals like these are held up as inspirations of what one person can achieve. However, it is those whose names may well be forgotten, but whose actions and their consequences will live on – like Bouazizi, like the video protagonist – which I find particularly motivational. These are ‘ordinary’ people, like you and me, with no label, pedestal or distinction. The risk with ‘great names’ is that we put them on a pedestal, and believe that we are unable to effect the change of these great personalities. The weight of history can intimidate us, feeling that we are not ‘great’ in our selves, that we are unworthy of making our mark on the human course of events. But this is simply not true. Al Bouazizi and countless others show us that one single individual can be a catalyst for change. I am not advocating that we go round setting ourselves on fire – self-harm is contrary to Islamic philosophy. However, a single action can have potent repercussions. Even a word said can resonate over time and place to create change. There is no more popular and oft-repeated phrase today than Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream.” These four words continue to evoke a passion for change.

Prophet Muhammad’s birthday in February also reminds us what an enormous impact one individual can make. None of them set out to be great, they all simply set out to do the right thing to the best of their capacity. It was the cumulative effect of each action going towards a better world that has set them up as individuals to inspire us, and it is the choice to make each action the right action – and for each action to count – that is important. One of my favourite children’s stories from Islamic history is that of Prophet Ibrahim when thrown onto the fire by King Nimrod for denying Nimrod’s divinity. The little ants scurry around trying to put out the fire. As a child, I recall how a conversation between one of the angels that descends and one of the ants that is busy ferrying drops of water from a nearby puddle onto the enormous inferno is played out. “Why are you bothering?” asks the angel. The ant replies very simply, “Because at least I know that I have done my part.”

Share on Facebook

This is my monthly column in the latest edition of EMEL Magazine.

What do we mean – if anything – when we ask what does an ‘Islamic’ country look like? This is the question that I puzzled over as I sat in a traditional dhow at sunset, sailing down the creek that lies at the heart of old Dubai.

On one side was the historic area of Bastakiyya, where little houses and minarets populated the water’s edge. As darkness fell, the adhan began to echo from both sides of the creek.  I felt at peace; the call to prayer in stereo around me and the beauty of the reddening sun reflected on the water.

The UAE is at its core an Arabic nation with Arabic language and the traditional domed mosques with minarets that we think of as typical for an Islamic country. Next door to Saudi Arabia, it lies barely 12 hours by road to Makkah and Madinah. Despite a large expatriate population, which means that many people who live in the Emirates are not actually Muslim, practicalities like halal meat, the observance of Ramadan and national holidays in line with Islamic events are the norm. But does all of this make it Islamic?

What about Indonesia? Eighty-eight percent of its 237m population is Muslim – which means in absolute terms there are more Indonesian Muslims than all of the Arab Muslims in the world put together. Unlike most of its Arab counterparts, Indonesia’s constitution is democratically based, and in principle at least allows for minorities to have their rights protected and participate fully in the nation’s civic and political life. Yet Indonesians don’t speak Arabic, don’t wear abayas and are comparatively liberal when it comes to women participating in the public domain.

And what of India? According to the Pew Research Centre, Muslims make up over 13% of the Indian population and 10% of the world’s overall Muslim population. Couple that with India’s vast and powerful Mughal heritage and you have to wonder: if numbers and heritage are important, then surely India is an Islamic country?

Then we have Turkey – home of the Ottoman empire, and once again held in positive esteem by Muslims as its leaders speak up about Gaza, defend women’s rights to veil and whose government is led by the AK Party – AK being the acronym for Justice and Development – but which has been dubbed an ‘Islamist’ party.

Is this the list of Islamic countries? Or does 'Islamic' or 'Muslim' mean something else?

But if we’re looking at size and history as markers of being Islamic, then there is a whole list that qualifies. A few surprising examples might include: China (21 million, early to mid 7th century); Kazakhstan (almost 9m, in the 8th century), and even the USA (6.4m and possibly as early as the 10th century via Spain).

Clearly, population size, history, Arabic ethnicity and language, or sub-continental origins and even proximity to the Holy Cities go a long way towards shaping our ideas of a country that we consider ‘Islamic.’  But do these criteria still stand when countries that we might consider ‘un-Islamic’ appear to offer more freedom to practice Islam, and that also expound what appear to be Islamic principles. Consider examples such as the welfare state to take care of the poor, or laws to prosecute racial or sexual discrimination.

So, the answer to our question is not so clear-cut – the idea of a checklist of qualities by which we can identify an ‘Islamic’ country doesn’t appear to hold water in the modern world. And this realisation has profound implications for the oft-repeated phrases of Dar al Islam and Dar al Kufr which are still used to shape Muslim thinking about world affairs. Those phrases relate to a time when religious identity was closely tied to citizenship. But even then, the Muslim empires had populations that were not Muslim but who held significant sway.

This means we need to think more carefully about glib categorisations of countries and populations as ‘Islamic’ or ‘un-Islamic.’ Today’s world is not so black and white.

As for my boat ride along the Dubai creek – one thing I realised is that whilst we may want be wistful about a traditional past, what lies beneath is the drive towards a modern multicultural reality. As Muslims, rather than hark back to romantic images of what once was, what we need to address is how to implement Islamic values for the future.

Share on Facebook

These remarks were prepared for a Policy Network debate in September at a Labour fringe event. A shortened version was subsequently published in print in EMEL Magazine.

These were my remarks at the Policy Network debate which looked at the issue:

The Left’s Trouble with the Burqa.

When it comes to discussing the burqa, there is almost always one missing constant in the debate: that is the woman herself who wears the burqa.

If, as the opponents of the burqa claim, it is a form of oppression, then it is doubly oppressing that the woman cannot represent herself, and put forward her own views.

So the other possibility is that there are in fact, very few women who wear the burqa, and maybe there are just not enough to go around and speak at the numerous events and media interviews discussing their clothing choices. In fact, in Western Europe there are probably only a handful who wear the burqa – the Afghan style of covering. Those few who do cover their faces wear a niqab, a simple face veil. This might seem a small visual and semantic difference, but it highlights the point that it is the most extreme instance that is used to polarise this debate – a debate which is already about an extremely small group of people in the first place.

Maybe the burqa is a red-herring? A red herring for those who want to return to a homogenised society by claiming that there is too much difference. And as usual it is the women – in this case the Muslim women – who are caught as the scapegoats, and are paying the price.

When it comes to numbers, the Danish government thinks there are 100 – 200 such women who cover their faces. In France it’s somewhere between 367 (a very spookily specific number – what have the secret services been up to to be so exact?) and 2000.  In Sweden, the estimate is around 400, Holland around 100, and in Belgium a paltry 30.

So, why is something so incredibly miniscule in number, size and shape, the source of so much angst?

I think the last time such a small amount of cloth made such a huge social impact was the mini-skirt. Was that controversy also caused because it was another instance of self-determination by women?  And I wonder if that analogy is co-incidental in any way?

That piece of cloth changed the way that women and society looked. And changes in women’s behaviour and clothing have always upset traditionalists.

Perhaps the face-veil is today’s challenge to our vision of how society looks – the most far reaching challenge put forward by the whole enterprise of multiculturalism.

When multiculturalism first set out, it couldn’t be envisaged at that time just how far it would change the way society interacts and the way society physically looks.

By protecting the right of women to dress in the way they choose, under the freedom of religion, some say that multiculturalism has gone too far, because the face covering is a sign of visible difference. I think it is the opposite. Women’s clothing in the 20th century fundamentally signalled a change in social attitudes much deeper than the mini-skirt itself, and was opposed by social conservatives for all that it represented. Today the face-veil engenders the same vitriol because it antagonises the same veins of traditionalism and conformity which constrain people’s freedom. The vitriol is not present because multiculturalism has gone too far. It is present because it has not yet gone far enough.

These are the squeams and squirms of those who do not want society to change in any way, but we just need to ride it out, and in time, society will adjust, just as happened with women’s liberation.

When people say that the face-covering is anti-western, or does not stem from European heritage, I would remind them that women’s covering (we’ll leave men’s covering to a separate discussion) was common till 50 years ago. Even less than a few weeks ago, Cherie Blair was snapped with her hair covered with a black veil during the Pope’s visit. The mini skirt too wasn’t a ‘Western’ or ‘European’ piece of clothing inherited from any kind of European civilisational values. If anything, in earlier eras, Europeans were horrified with seemingly scantily clad heathen women that they found in their imperial travels across the world.

Society adjusted, women determined how they would dress, and our society now accepts it as the status quo.

Back to the face-veil, because everyone loves to talk about it. Well, what do they say?

Covering the face, we are told, is a sign of separation. And yet the stories we hear of British women who do cover their faces are of those who go into Jack Straw’s surgery to engage in the political process with their MP; or the tale of the woman who despite wanting to be part of French society was denied citizenship in France.

Covering the face, it is also said, makes other people feel uncomfortable because those women deliberately look different. Well, I thought we’d understood that it is our own attitudes we need to examine when others look different to us – goths, punks, hoodies, blacks, Asians… the list goes on and on.

Or, the face covering is no good because such women are a security risk, it is said. Don’t know about the last time you were in a bank that was held up by a covered woman? Or mugged by one? Or had one destroy your pension by creating a banking crisis?

The most popular argument from the left is that it is a symbol of oppression. We need to ‘liberate’ these Muslim women from their poor deluded ideals. If they claim to be free in their choice, we tell them that they are brainwashed. And, so we’re full circle back to the oppression of these women  – but this time from the people that claim to be ‘freeing’ them.  The best thing is to respect the agency of such women and the way they choose to dress.

Under this analysis of the meaning behind the veil and multiculturalism’s support for Muslim women to dress as they choose, I am a failure of multiculturalism. This is because I wear a supposed marker of separation on my head. My choice of dress is a representation of how I have been supposedly ‘brainwashed’ into being oppressed, despite the fact that I have a strong education, and my professional opinion is respected in many areas.  I may have a bomb under my headscarf, which of course is a threat to security. Some people, and strangely that is men more often than not, feel uncomfortable with the absence of my hair and my curves from their gaze.  And some feminists in particular accuse me of betraying the sisterhood, and will say that my choice to wear it in this country is a betrayal of those women in countries where they are forced to cover, even whilst I oppose that force, and have actively chosen to cover.

What can I say to you? I’m not a failure. And nor is multiculturalism. I am an active part of our society, working to make it a better place, bringing together different heritages and perspectives. What my presence, and those of these women offers us, is the knowledge that we can live in the kind of society that allows us to be proud of the heritage, cultures and backgrounds that have made each of us what we are on the inside and allows us to express ourselves with tolerance, freedom and mutual respect on the outside.

Share on Facebook

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

There have been many days that I have wanted to declare my liberation from being an office slave. I have often envisaged – as many people do – after yet another ridiculously inane meeting, or an unreasonable weekend request to put together yet more Powerpoint slides, to stand up and yell the words “I quit!”

However, there is also something of the ice queen in me that has planned and re-planned a stroll into the manager’s office, a handing over of a crisp white envelope with the merest hint of a smile, leaving my badge on the desk and then a victory walk to freedom to rousing applause from my colleagues, out of the building’s front door.

I’ve never done it, and it’s not just because I still have the mortgage payments for the dream house and the dream garden, and the dream car parked in the drive, although the irony is not lost on me that my dream lifestyle is trapping me in a nightmare job. No, it’s not just about the money.

My job is who I am, and defines everything about me.  And if my job defines who I am – well, who would I be without it?

You think I’m wrong about how our jobs define us? Well, picture all those parties or tedious networking events…

“What is your name?” asks the stuffed shirt. And this is always, always followed by “and what do you do?” as though your job

is your entire life definition.  Even dating and marriage are governed by the rule that we define ourselves by our jobs. Bagging a doctor, lawyer or investment banker – although maybe not so much the latter during the current recession inspired by the collapse of the banking sector – let’s admit it, we still envy those with ‘proper jobs’ and in the Asian background I come fr

om, job status is everything.  It carries little weight to be an artist, philosopher, journalist, thinker or scholar.

We do bring it on ourselves. I think Office Slavery is like Stockholm syndrome. We’re trapped, but we fall in love with the idea of having the status, and definition – not just in the eyes of others, but in our own eyes. It’s hard to put ourselves under scrutiny, but we should ask ourselves the question – not ‘what am I?’ but, ‘who am I?’ and even ‘how am I?’ thinking about our behaviour towards others.

Instead of the narrow definition of our job titles, we should want to free ourselves.  Of course, I don’t mean to instigate a plague of resignations being handed in as you all arrive at work this morning.

As a person of religion, work is a must.  The example of the Prophet Muhammad is clear – you can’t sit around and wait for others to serve you. But ‘work’ doesn’t have to mean activity that is rewarded financially. It doesn’t need to predicate an individuals worth on how much income they derive, and how much ‘growth’ they pump into the economic system. If anything, that reduces the worth of a human being to their income generating potential.

But the current financial climate needs to instigate some deeper thinking within the Muslim community about the purpose of work. Is it for money and wealth? Do economies need constant ‘growth’? What are the responsibilities of corporate entities?

In my mind what is important in addressing the purpose of work is to see it not as an end in itself, but a component of developing the self and society. Yes, it helps to put food on the table – but that doesn’t need to be just our own tables. Yes, it makes us productive members of society, but such a perspective broadens out the meaning of work to include housework, childcare, poverty relief, artisanship and so many other occupations.  Work also lets us learn about ourselves by exposing us to challenge and people, as well as developing perseverance, endurance and a sense of self worth and dignity.

I’m simply asking the question: what about actually living life? Living life as who we are, to fulfil our dreams and aspirations, to be better human beings. We should own our jobs, and not the other way round.

Share on Facebook

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.

Share on Facebook

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.

Share on Facebook

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?

Share on Facebook

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.

Share on Facebook

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.

Share on Facebook