Spirit21

This is my op-ed published in The National today

The last year has been no laughing matter in the Middle East. But its epic events – especially its use of peaceful protest and national unity as resources towards building self-determination – have made the wider world realise that Muslims are not as alien as they might have thought.

Image: Pep Montserrat for The National

Amid the darkest moments, the world also saw another glimpse of the universal humanity of Muslims – through comedy. Reuters reported that before his death, eastern Libya was full of anti-Qaddafi humour. Graffiti showed the colonel in a Superman costume with a dollar sign instead of an “S” on his chest. Another showed him in a dustbin labelled “history”. A particularly damning cartoon urged him to “surrender himself to the ‘national council of hairdressers’”.

It’s a secret that needs to be let out: Muslims have a deep-rooted sense of humour and are not afraid to use it.

Let’s get these important points out of the way first. I know there are deeply miserable people out there who can’t possibly believe what I’m telling them: that Muslims both have and appreciate a sense of humour. Their argument is that Muslims will slap a fatwa on anyone who tries to make a joke or poke fun.

And we will. But only on anyone who makes a truly terrible joke. Substandard comedy, no matter where it comes from, should never be tolerated and deserves every fatwa it gets.

There isn’t any place either for dressing up prejudice, aggression or sheer ignorance as comedy. We are all too familiar with those misery-boots types who make barbed cracks, then throw up their hands to say: “What? You can’t take a joke?” Comedy is not a clever way to be rude or offensive. We can see straight through that.

In an entirely unscientific poll of friends, tweeps and Facebook fans, I asked what the funniest things were that they had been asked as Muslims. While wearing a pink headscarf one woman was asked: “Why do Muslim women wear black all the time?”

A rather baffling question that is often put to Muslims – who generally belong to quite sociable communities – is: “If you don’t drink, how do you meet people?”

And what is one to make of the question: “Is it true that light green is the official colour of Al Qaeda?”

Perhaps my favourite of all time, is: “Now that you’re engaged, will you have a forced marriage?”

These questions project such a one-dimensional, stereotypical understanding of Muslims that it is hard not to laugh. But we don’t. And that’s probably why some people think we are so serious and earnest all the time.

In the face of such questioning, Muslims place upon themselves the onerous burden of answering in the nicest possible way. Also, we’re never sure how non-Muslims will respond to humour. I’ve tried being funny when replying, and mostly the reaction is a blank stare. We like that people want to understand, but forgive us if you catch us suppressing an occasional smirk.

Since 9/11, a crop of young, feisty Muslim comedians have made it onto the scene. This has been accompanied by a growing number of comedy festivals, films, internet videos and blogs. Abu Dhabi last week month hosted an international comedy festival featuring the Lebanese stand-up Nemr Abou Nassar.

In the United States, a group of stand-up comics call themselves “Allah Made Me Funny“, comprising a black American, an Arab American and an Asian American. In the UK, acts like Imran Yusuf, an East African Asian, and Shaista Aziz, a British Pakistani, vie for attention. We also have stand-ups such as Riaad Moosa in South Africa.

Slowly but surely we are seeing Muslims depicted on western screens in comedy, rather than just as scary terrorists. Mainstream productions include such films as The Muslims Are Coming!, which follows a Muslim comedy troupe around the American Deep South. The Infidel tells the story of a Muslim who finds out he has Jewish roots while his daughter is being courted by the son of a deeply conservative Muslim family, and Looking For Comedy In The Muslim World follows the actor and comedian Albert Brooks to South Asia. But perhaps the most widely known movie is Four Lions, an acclaimed British comedy about four young Muslim men who plot to carry out a suicide bombing, which was directed by the ever controversial Chris Morris.

In 2010, the American journalist Katie Couric suggested that what her country needed if it were going to normalise its understanding of Muslims was a “Muslim Cosby Show”. Her wish may be about to come true as Preacher Moss of Allah Made Me Funny is attempting to pilot such a show, currently titled Here Come The Muhammads. He says that “by making it funny, you make it accessible. People can say: ‘You mean I can actually laugh at that?’”

Yes, it’s true that Muslims and others can in fact joke about Muslims.

At a preview of Four Lions, I found myself the only Muslim among 30 very serious film critics. While others looked around nervously, I was cackling with laughter (no doubt to their annoyance). The film worked because it showed a deep understanding of Muslim cultures, and the break between expectation and reality, both of which are rich seams of humour. It was intelligent, not offensive.

The film opens with the would-be terrorist cell recording their suicide video. The idiot of the group is centre stage and is being mocked for holding a small gun. “Not a small gun,” he protests. “Big hands.” Even suicide-video production is subject to the inflated egos common in the media.

Muslim humour and self-deprecation are, of course, not recent phenomena. There must be thousands of tales of Mullah Nasruddin, one of the great entertainer-comedian-wisemen of Muslim history, dating back to the Middle Ages. I particularly like this one: A certain conqueror said to Nasruddin, “Mullah, all the great rulers of the past had honorific titles with the name of God in them. There was, for instance, ‘God-Gifted’, and ‘God-Accepted’, and so on. How about some such name for me?” “God Forbid,” said Nasruddin.

Comedy also serves different purposes within different Muslim communities. While one group of young comedians is using humour to introduce Muslims to a world apprehensive about their faith, another is using it to point out the challenges of their cultures and politics.

In Saudi Arabia, YouTube comedies address religious and political pressures alongside social observation. On The Fly, for instance, has tackled subjects such as the Egyptian uprising as well as TV coverage of Arabs Got Talent.

The internet allows usually unmentionable subjects to be tackled. A mainstream TV show, Tash Ma Tash uses humour to explore social convention. One particularly controversial episode addressed the cultural taboos around discussing polygamy by having a woman with four husbands.

Such developments are the hidden gems of Muslim cultures today. The most powerful thing about their humour is its universality: while the cultural contexts may vary, they take down human foibles and misadventures in ways that all cultures can connect with.

After all, the funniest jokes are the ones that you see yourself in, and which connect to your own experiences.

So here’s a multi-faith one to sign off with. A priest, a rabbi and a mullah walk into a bar. The barman says: “What is this, a joke?”

Shelina Zahra Janmohamed is the author of Love in a Headscarf and writes a blog at www.spirit21.co.uk

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This is my weekly newspaper column published today in the UAE’s The National newspaper.

Reconnecting with past friends can be a good thing, even if it only reminds you to be happy with the present.

Have you ever wondered what happened to those around you as you were growing up? About three years ago a compulsion of unknown origin overtook me, forcing me to start looking up people I had known at university. It was a period where the person I am today first took shape. Whether it was the people or the pivotal experiences that I wanted to reconnect with, I don’t know.

Image courtesy firstpalette.com

There were friends that I had started off close to, but time, distance and circumstance had slowly eroded the immediacy of our relationships. Some I had heard about through mutual acquaintances. Some I bumped into on the street. While browsing in bookshops, I saw the names of authors and recognised them as people I had once spent a great deal of time with. I even spotted one hosting her own television series.

The urge may have come upon me because of age. Now in my early thirties, I had acquired a sense of nostalgia at what had passed. I suppose I had lived enough years to be able to look back over a substantial period of time. I had come to a natural pause in my life where things were becoming more permanent: a career under my belt, I’d recently got married and bought a home.

Some of it was a practical response to the fact that it is hard to find new and meaningful relationships. It is almost impossible to invest freely of ourselves and the time that is needed to forge friendships as close as the ones we do as students or in our early twenties. It is simpler and more fulfilling to go back and rejuvenate the ones from our past.

Neither was it coincidence that my urge became more insistent around the same time my first book was published. I now had the confidence that I had something worthwhile to say in conversations with lost acquaintances, something to show for myself. Nine global editions, a trendy flat in central London, and plenty of travels including a period living abroad gave me enough conversation fodder behind which to hide the insecurities of my younger years and my feelings that I hadn’t done much in the intervening decade since I’d seen my friends, and that they had gone on to lead more successful and more exciting lives than me.

Part of it was that it was suddenly easy to reconnect, as Facebook gained widespread popularity. I could not resist peeking at home pages of lost friends to see a snapshot of their lives; and from there it was one painless click to reconnect. If it didn’t go well, it could easily be dissolved and the status quo restored.

What left me reeling was that two emails were sufficient to exchange the news of 10 years. When you strip out the mundane daily details that populate our lives, what is left of a decade? Spiritual epiphanies and self-development make for poor writing material, so instead all that remains is a summary of jobs, key travels, marriage and children. The more of those I wrote, the more I wondered where the years had passed.

Some reconnections have worked. Some had a burst of life, and then faded away again. And some spluttered out, reminding me that they had already run their course years ago.

The emotions they stirred were a powerful remembrance of a youth past, but also that I’m quite contented with the skin I live in now. My past made me who I am, and it was worth reconnecting with it as a reminder of how far I’ve come.

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This is my weekly newspaper column published in The National today. It’s no secret that I’m just back from my travels to Singapore and Langkawi!

Book in hand, legs outstretched, feet perched on a small stool, I’m sitting on a balcony overlooking a white sandy beach. The sea is clear, with the gentlest of waves slowly bringing the tide in. The sun is bright and golden hot, its fierce edge softened by a light tropical breeze and a glass of the freshest juice beside me.

It was not a kind of heaven that I had ever imagined for myself.

Squashed in between travelling for work, and immersing myself in the vibrant city-state of Singapore, a couple of days at a beach resort had been almost an afterthought, booked only hours before departing from London.

I chose the Malaysian archipelago of Langkawi mainly because the flights fitted into my schedule. I hadn’t researched the hotel, but took second-hand advice from someone who had stayed there. It was, in short, not the kind of holiday planning that fits my usual meticulous and detailed holiday regime.

Boarding the flight for Langkawi, I flung myself onto the airplane with a gusto that only the overworked and under-rested can muster. Asleep with exhaustion before the flight had even taken off, my eyes opened as we glided into a lush green island.

A little later, I walked into the hotel lobby and gazed over the resting guests through the far window that framed the sea into the horizon. I was smitten.

I’ve seen beaches and coastlines before, so this in itself was not new. I had always pitied those who wasted away their days lying still by a square of water, sleeping extravagantly while their skins burnt under the sun. I had always been puzzled as to why someone would travel far away from home, only to lie down and do nothing for several days, on one chair. In my view, holidays were to be savoured to the fullest by seeing everything, talking to everyone, visiting every sight, and enjoying every cuisine. Sleeping was dispensable. I considered going on holiday just to lie down or sit still to be a debilitating malady.

As I swam in the infinity pool, its waters blurring into the distance and turning into the sea and then the horizon, I reflected on how my search for calmness had replaced the craving I had once felt to dispel quietude and embrace loud and vibrant travel experiences.

No doubt age is a factor, as is the increased intensity of work and family life, in yearning for rest and pure pleasure. I have less inclination or energy to be constantly rushing from tourist trail to tourist trail. I’ve escaped from a seven-day-a-week schedule, to realise that there is nothing lovelier than feeling sun and breeze and hearing the rustle of trees.

However, I still couldn’t lie down on a recliner by a pool for a whole day, just lying or sleeping. I need interesting and unusual activities in which to engage. I need to know that I did something new on my holiday. I need to create a bank of sustainable and substantial memories that will survive me into my older years.

And I still doubt I could spend a full week in only one resort. After just two days I was itching to see what the island had to offer.

And I know that this is the quiet period at the beach. If the resort was swarming, my holiday paradise would quickly turn nightmarish. After all, no Eden can withstand endless people with no attractions.

Given my caveats for earthly paradise, I’m already planning my next visit.

I declare myself a convert to the beach holiday.

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Here’s my weekly column from The National.

Men are poor helpless creatures who can’t control their feelings or libidos, or so it seems they want society to think. I’m a believer in the general goodness of most men, but baffled by the attitude that they are helpless in the face of womanly charms and must therefore refer to themselves in derogatory and weak ways.

Take this comment – a mild one compared to many – I came across while reading about a new line of Islamic fashion: “If a girl attracts other males even unintentionally, it will end up to be a sin [sic] … So style in Islam is OK, but it should be limited to an extent that won’t create new feelings within the pervert males of today.” Baffling that it’s not the “pervert males” responsible for their warped feelings.

This is on the same dimension as arguments against women being educated, or driving: that they will spread “corruption” by entering the public space. Or recent comments by the former head of the women’s studies department at Bangalore University telling women how to dress to avoid rape, but no edict telling men not to rape.

We get it: men think women are the source of corruption and that in order to stop the world coming to an end you must tell us what to think and how to act (and what to wear) because of course we have no brains, no sense of social responsibility, no spirituality and no reason. Oh wait – you say we do? Because that is just logic? And because it is our human fitrah to have all of those? And because the Quran says that we are all equal in spirit? Oh right.

Women are constantly preached to about social responsibilities even though we are not the ones responsible for most domestic abuse, violence, crime, rape or “corruption”. It’s time for our menfolk to preach to themselves about social responsibility.

It takes two to tango, so even if your outrageous idea that women are responsible for “corruption” is true, why don’t you stay away from them? Too weak? Oh dear, how can you run a society if you are too weak to resist a woman?

So now you have a choice in the arguments you employ: are you too weak in the face of women’s “corruptive” influence, which therefore means you are too weak to “lead” them? Or are you strong enough to lead, which means that it should be water off a duck’s back if women participate in society. Which is it to be?

I want to emphasise that I believe both men and women have responsibilities to act and dress modestly. To achieve social harmony, creativity and spiritual ease, both must participate fully but be equally modest and respectful.

So brothers, fathers, male colleagues – extend a little respect to the womenfolk around you. They are not toys, slaves, maids, objects or chattel to be bought, sold or bartered. Women are people. Yes, people.

And if you are a man from a society that isn’t majority Muslim in culture (note my use of the word “culture” and not the phrase “Islamic in religion”), please don’t look smug. There is plenty of oppression, abuse, violence and discrimination against women in all societies that no man – and no society – anywhere can be holier than thou.

So for men and societies everywhere, here are your mantras for 2012: be nice to women, be respectful of women’s intelligence and change yourselves instead of blaming women for the “pervert males”.

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Here is this week’s National column published on new year’s eve.

As the year comes to a close, one of my perennial resolutions rears its head and commands me: take better control of the household budget. The talk at a global scale of bankruptcy, poor credit and downgrading has made the resolution ever more urgent. Where are my slippery and elusive pennies going?

Don’t tell my Dad about this confession, he will give me a stern look and tell me that he taught me better, that money doesn’t grow on trees, that a man one penny in the red is a poor man, and a penny in the black is rich. I know I ought to know all this, but before you make me blush, are you able to account for your expenditure down to the last penny, cent or fils?

The pessimism I feel about my financial management is exacerbated by the fact that it seems ever more important to get a grip on it. Somehow, the fact that the world’s leading economists, and in particular the European leaders, found themselves in difficulty this year while trying to manage a successful budget for their countries, suggests that I should try to do a better job in my own little domain.

But if all those clever people overlooked the flaws in their financial systems, how am I supposed to manage any better?

I’ve done what all aspirational budget managers have done: I’ve created an extensive and detailed spreadsheet to list out all the outgoings. And there are a lot of them.

It’s easy to spot where I can get better deals on regular household expenses – although it will take some time to work through the changes. But the main struggle is in adjusting lifestyle: do I want to give up the enjoyable holidays? I love buying pretty clothes for my baby. And what harm is there in a pleasurable if slightly overpriced cup of coffee a couple of times each week?

Therein lies the crux of my challenge: getting the best deals is a straightforward if tedious task. My bigger challenge is deciding what kind of life I’d like to live: frugal to the point of asceticism? Cautious and sacrificing some pleasures of daily life? Sensible but enjoyable? Carefree, tomorrow will take care of itself?

To me, these questions raise the issue of identifying a deeper truth about who I am and who I aspire to be.

I often think that we could easily live in a much smaller abode, with fewer things and less obligations. Isn’t that the right approach for someone who wants to spend time nurturing their spirit rather than their bank balance?

On the other hand, our home offers sanctuary for the family, a place of exploration for our child and an enjoyment of the good things in life.

There’s no profligacy or extravagance. A car, a good school for baby, smart clothes (but not designer) to be well presented, the education of seeing the world on our travels: I see these as blessings we are able to afford. I see these as to be balanced with work for the community, charitable giving and constant thankfulness for all that we have.

My spreadsheet may help me to balance the books. A spreadsheet can never help me to build a balanced life: for that I need constant reflection, a generous helping of wisdom and a selfless love of those around me.

Most of all what I need is an appreciation of the value of all that I have, and I am fortunate to have a great deal. What a wonderful way to start 2012. Happy New Year!

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Another column I’m posting a little belatedly from my weekly ‘Her Say‘ column in The National.

On the top shelf of an old cupboard in my parents’ spare room is a collection of aged, fraying bags that hold the memories of our family. I have to stand on a stool and stretch into the cupboard’s dark corners, feeling my way with my fingertips to grasp the tatty plastic filled with decades of old photographs.

As the winter holidays approach, nostalgia percolates the family conversations, and inevitably someone will wonder about a distant relative, a half-forgotten baby photo, or a snap from a wedding. I will fly upstairs to retrieve the bags, returning triumphantly to the conversation and spilling out our collective memory across the carpet.

We’ve seen the photos a hundred times, but each one elicits a gasp of excitement, as though greeting the old relatives themselves. “Look, it’s granny! She’s so pretty.” “This is me when I was younger. I’ve become so old!” “Here you are at your graduation!”

The most exciting pictures are in black and white, fragments of an earlier time when photographs were rare, usually formal, marking special occasions. “This one,” says my mother, “was sent by your uncle after he proposed to your aunt”. He looks like Cary Grant. “And this,” she carries on, pointing to a grainy picture “is my grandfather”. He is serious, almost stern.

Our family archive lives on in these four bags. Everything else is lost and therefore forgotten. What remains defines what came before us, and therefore what we are now. The camera has preserved and thus shaped our family history.

This was on my mind this week as I faced up to the growing mountain of photographs of my baby. Although not even a year old, I already possess more than 5,000 pictures of her.

I have been creating a photobook for her. Websites offer software in the format of a book, which you populate with your own choice of photographs, in any layout and with any captions you choose. Once completed, the online creation is sent to be printed, arriving a few days later in the form of a glossy publication like a coffee-table book, entirely to your specification. At the cost of about $40, it is a modern marvel. Your photographs become official. Viewing them becomes slick and manicured. Family and friends flick easily through the edited highlights, enjoying the best moments, avoiding polite boredom.

I spent hours, probably days, selecting pictures to chart Baby’s progress from tiny newborn through each of her milestones. I decided who would feature in her life story. I selected which pictures would make the cut, and therefore how she would be remembered.

My editorial process says as much about me as her. It reveals how I wish her to be seen. I am conscious that how we describe babies affects others’ perceptions of her for many years, even a lifetime. After all, what will remain after our memories have faded are these photographs. We will continue to discuss the photobook in the same way as the fragments of my parents’ haphazard photo collection. But this time, I’ve already consciously shaped the story and the collective memory.

The pleasurable act of photography is in fact a weighty responsibility. By creating her earliest account I have shaped how she begins her own story. In doing so I have shaped how she will carry on the family history, mine included.

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You’ve probably heard about the controversy over the reality TV show “All-American Muslim”. The Florida Family Association is campaigning against it because it’s too ordinary, and various advertisers are pulling their spots. What other option is there but to just laugh at the absolute ridiculousness of their position?

In my weekly column in The National, it’s time for some fun to imagine the show that the FFA really want to see…

When it comes to reality television, most right-thinking people wish it would disappear into oblivion. But the actions of the little-known extremist group, Florida Family Association (FFA), are having the opposite effect. In response to the series following the lives of five ordinary American Muslim families going about their ordinary lives, it has declared: “All-American Muslim is propaganda that riskily hides the Islamic agenda.” As a result, Lowe’s hardware store pulled their adverts from the show.

The problem, the FFA says, is that the show “profiles only Muslims that appear to be ordinary folks, while excluding many Islamic believers whose agenda poses a clear and present danger to liberties and traditional values that the majority of Americans cherish”. It’s all too dull. Instead, what they want is more suicide bombers, virulent niqabis and Sharia-takeover plots. And they want it in reality TV format. Now that’s a show I’d like to watch …

The programme opens with a woman dressed all in black, face covered, holding a copy of The Anarchist’s Cookbook, turned to the “How to make a bomb” page. (FFA’s Muslim checklist: preparation to blow up the US, check.)

The camera zooms in on her face-veil. Suddenly we hear in an Arabic accent: “Sharia Sharia, jihad, jihad” (face-veiled woman, check; spewing Sharia and jihad, check; “scary” accent, check).

Six children play with dynamite (Muslim takeover by stealth through population growth, check).

“This is Sara Valin,” says the voice-over (a pun on “veiling” but rhymes with Palin, geddit?).

“In the garden, Accchhmed (the pantomime pronunciation of Ahmed) compares beard-lengths with some beardy friends.” Ahmed strokes his copious facial hair like the Bond villain strokes his cat (world domination intent, check).

Next door at the mosque, a group of young men record a suicide bomber video. They are having trouble making the camera work. “Told him to buy the warranty,” mutters one. “But he was too tight. Typical immigrant. Saving to import a wife.”

The cameras follow Sara Valin to a Chai Party meeting. Outside flags with the words “death to America” flutter in the wind. Sara drags a 10 kilogram bag of fertiliser behind her. A woman with a “Sharia4USA” badge opens the door. “Fertiliser is Buy One Get One Free at Lowe’s,” remarks Sara.

The Chai Party meeting begins by discussing strategies to destroy America, how to make all turkeys halal and whether having a Muslim Miss America wearing a bikini was a clever tactic.

“First order of business: the programme Friends. It shows only ordinary Americans and is clearly propaganda for the USA. Friends does not represent America properly and so we must complain. There are no crack addicts, no soldiers abusing their prisoners, no Tim McVeigh character, and not even a hint of political sex scandal!”

Cut to commercial break sponsored by Lowe’s.

Such a programme could save the FBI hundreds of millions of dollars in security and surveillance. After all, no need to hunt out prospective bombers. All they’d have to do is turn on the TV and watch “reality”; well, the kind of reality that only warped and bigoted minds constantly inhabit. How sad for them to live in a world they are trying to fill with so much hatred.

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This is my weekly column published today in The National (UAE) and a tribute to a friend who I lost this week.

There are many things that we fear in this modern age of ours, but none more than the loss of youth. Our celebrities never age, skin creams ward off the signs of ageing, television clothes shows help us dress 10 years younger. And yet this week I was confronted with a stark loss of youth. A beautiful young woman, a new mother, not even 40, was taken by cancer.

When death visits the young, we have many clichés to express grief: a life snatched away, the loss of potential, the unfairness of life. But she wasn’t a cliché, she was a person.

I can’t trace the exact time I met her. She was one of those people I have always known, a beautiful, charming and effervescent individual. I see her in my memories smiling, working on community projects, excelling in her profession.

They found the cancer while she was expecting her first child.

After hearing the news of her death, I spent the day overwhelmed by the intensity and volatility of conflicting emotions. First, there was an almost frantic hysteria to get as much done as quickly as I could. Then, I felt abandonment. Nothing was important, nothing needed to be done. I felt numb. Then, I surrendered to the sheer sadness and wept, kept on weeping.

I even felt guilt, at the depth of my melancholy, feelings that I felt should be reserved for her close ones. I can’t claim sadness, sympathy or trauma for myself. That is the right of her immediate family.

I wonder why this death has affected me so deeply. I think about the cycle of life being broken, a daughter passing before the mother, a baby being left without a parent. Is it sentimentality?

I gaze at my daughter, an innocent and entirely helpless creature, not yet a year old and only slightly younger than the woman’s own little girl. Do I fear for my own precarious situation?

We imagine families with two parents, and bouncing children. It is easy to be lost in that fairy tale, immersed in a utopia where death follows old age. It’s frightening when reality is not so Disneyesque.

Such an out-of-the-ordinary event makes us stop and reflect. But the surprise is that this is not as extraordinary as we might think: the risk of a woman contracting breast cancer is one in eight. And cancer among the young is not so unusual, as campaigns such as Breast Cancer Awareness month in October try to highlight.

The loss of youth is not just about cancer. Add to this other illnesses, accidents, violent crime and in some places even famine and war, and suddenly our refusal to face up to death in youth becomes stark. In the developed world we pretend we are immune from early death, that it only happens elsewhere.

The loss of one person changes the course of an entire family. Watching the news I am confronted with reports of thousands of people – individuals – killed in natural disasters and man-made conflicts. We rarely talk of the fact that the deaths of thousands of individuals actually mean thousands of families whose futures have been radically altered, often destroyed.

I attended my friend’s funeral, an occasion filled with a community’s sadness and love, bearing a communal loss. What we don’t see, and what fills me with even greater sadness, is the grief of families in their own homes, once the last mourner has gone. All we can offer at a distance is prayer, and hope for their hearts to be healed.

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Yesterday my op-ed was published in The National newspaper in the UAE.

Millions of pilgrims from around the globe will converge on the holy city of Mecca in the coming days for the pilgrimage of the Haj, the world’s most diverse gathering. Last year some 2.8 million Muslims from 181 countries made the voyage to Saudi Arabia. It’s a crowded, emotionally intense, physically challenging and spiritually demanding experience.

Arriving at the Kaaba, the pilgrims fall to their knees weeping. Since they first performed their daily prayers as children they have faced towards it in worship. Their dreams of Mecca are powered by wishes to step on the sand that has seen the footsteps of the Prophet, to feel the wind that has overseen the revelation of the Quran, to be where the promise of Islam was delivered. To be in this most blessed of places, they may have saved painstakingly over decades. And finally, here they are at the doors of the House of God.

Geography and history have laid the mantle of responsibility on the shoulders of Saudi Arabia, within whose borders lie the holy cities of Mecca and Medina known together as the “haramain” and from which the king of Saudi Arabia draws his title, “Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques”. The honorific brings with it a heady responsibility. Modernisation and the age of the jet plane have multiplied the thousands of pilgrims who once embarked upon the road to the Haj into millions. To accommodate the pilgrims, there are ambitious plans for the expansion of the areas around the haramain, flattening almost the entire surroundings to construct multiple high rise luxury hotels, shopping centres, and access roads.

It’s easy to criticise the Saudi authorities for these plans but pilgrim management is a challenging task. Muslims want to go to Mecca, and rightly so. But on arrival, they complain if facilities are not good enough, if hotels are not near enough, if paths are too crowded, if travel is too slow. Visitor numbers are rising annually, and quotas are deeply unpopular. With 1.8 billion Muslims in the world – and growing – conditions are unlikely to improve in the near future. Improvement efforts are continuous. The building around the Kaaba is multi-storeyed to increase capacity. Last year, a monorail was built to transport 70,000 pilgrims an hour. This year, pilgrims will be issued with digital smart cards to make the processing of visitors faster and smoother.

Expansion will allow Saudi Arabia to increase the number of pilgrims. Muslims will benefit through greater access and the country will increase its tourism revenue. In 2009, 12 million pilgrims brought in US$7 billion. By 2013 the goal is $15bn. Last month the chair of the Tourism and Antiquities Commission talked about tourism as a way of generating income, relieving poverty, and creating jobs. There is talk of an “Umrah Plus” programme to open up travel for Umrah visitors, who currently are not permitted to venture outside the holy cities. The commission speaks of sites such as the ancient Nabataean city in Madaen Saleh and the 300-year-old village of Rijal Alma. It is heartening to see that the Saudi authorities are realising the value of their heritage.

This is not the case for sites of Islamic religious historic importance say detractors. They point to news stories about sites in the vicinity of the haramain being bulldozed in minutes. These precious morsels of Islamic heritage will be replaced by towering luxury hotels. No wonder the global media has likened Mecca to Las Vegas.

The sites date from the time of the Prophet, his companions and the early Islamic empire. Experts say some even date back to the time of Abraham. The Quran repeatedly exhorts believers to “travel the world” and “see the fate of those who have gone before”. The implicit conclusion from this is that there is a religious duty on believers to preserve historical remains.

The bad news, say critics, is that so many important sites have been destroyed that only 20 or so remain from the period of the Prophet. An example is the graveyard of Jannatul Baqi in Medina, which contains the graves of the Prophet’s companions, his daughter Fatima, his wife Khadija and his grandson Hassan. It was bombed in 1926 to make the earth flat and undistinguished, all markings of these key individuals gone forever. Another site is the birthplace of the Prophet himself, which has been hidden beneath a library.

Saudi Arabia is a powerful member of, as well as the headquarters of, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, whose 57 members represent the majority-Muslim nations of the world. It was founded in 1969 in response to an arson attack against the Al Aqsa mosque.

The OIC continues to object vociferously to the destruction of Islamic sites in Israel. At its December 2005 meeting in Mecca, the preservation of historic Islamic sites in Jerusalem including the Al Aqsa mosque was raised as an issue of grave concern. Documents talk of steps to “safeguard the city’s cultural and historic landmarks and Arab-Islamic identity”.

The secretary general Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu warned of “illegal Israeli practices” and “ aggressions” that aim to alter “historic landmarks”. He wrote elsewhere that the OIC should “spare no effort to preserve the Islamic historical and religious identity of Al Quds Al Sharif”.

In response to calls to preserve Islamic heritage sites, the Saudi religious authorities say that their destruction is to avoid shrine-worship. The Haj authorities say it is to accommodate the ever growing numbers of pilgrims.

But the Muslim world says that it wishes to see its religious and cultural heritage preserved. I say that Saudi Arabia has a religious duty – which nobody denies is a challenging one – to balance the needs of pilgrims with the need of the ummah to retain its history. For many, historic sites are a key part of the pilgrimage experience. It may be at odds with the purist Saudi Salafi tradition, but these actions are accepted within the wider Muslim heterodoxy.

Saudi Arabia needs to be cautious about giving the impression that it does not care what the global Muslim community feels – even if that differs from its own specific tradition. The more damaging impression is that it cares more about commercialisation and less about historical legacy.

Saudi Arabia also needs to ensure that the increasing cost of pilgrimage avoids pricing out the majority of the Muslim population. Even if pilgrims can scrape pennies together and use one of the low-cost Haj agencies the authorities have licensed, the “premium” focus of the tourism industry will affect the Haj experience in a profound way.

Consider that in the immediate proximity of the holy sites all the accommodation will be in luxury hotels. Only the rich will stay there, the poor shunted out of view. Haj will become a two tier experience, in opposition to its ethos of creating equality between rich and poor.

Saudi Arabia bears a heavy responsibility for the care of pilgrims and a religious duty mandated in the Quran to preserve historic religious sites. And we must not forget the responsibility of maintaining the egalitarian ethos of the Haj itself. If it can achieve all of these, then it will win the hearts of the world’s Muslim population, and do justice to the pinnacle of Islamic rituals.

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This was my weekly newspaper column published yesterday in The National

Image from the Tricycle Theatre

The UK prime minister has been having women trouble recently. First, David Cameron told a female MP to “Calm down, dear!” mimicking the strapline from a television commercial. He called another “frustrated”, and then joined in with smutty schoolboy giggling with his male colleagues. Accused of being sexist and patronising, he apologised, saying the pressurised environment meant his words came out wrong. But pressure is what reveals your true colours.

At this week’s Conservative Party conference he was constantly accompanied by female MPs, hoping no doubt that this would make him seem more women-friendly and less of a “chauvinist pig”, as one journalist suggested.

The female MPs have also come in for criticism, being accused of being used by the PM as “eye candy”. But I say to them: make the most of the opportunity. All ambitious individuals wait to get the ear of the boss for 30 seconds. Go for it, take your chance, make a pitch and make a difference. This isn’t a favour to you – you have every right to be there.

Men should be cautious of selecting women purely because they are women, in order to claim they are promoting the rise of women or to capture the female vote. John McCain did that in the US elections in 2008 by selecting Sarah Palin as his running mate. Boy, did he get it wrong.

Women are not pawns in male power plays. Women are smart and cynical too. Cameron should know that a few photos with the women of his party won’t count as evidence that he’s in tune with Britain’s women, especially as his austerity measures affect them disproportionately.

The media has dubbed Cameron’s female MPs as “Cameron’s Cuties”. This echoes the label given to 101 female MPs elected in 1997 as “Blair’s Babes”. Blair did nothing to pull up the media on their own sexist patronising descriptor, basking in the glory instead. Cameron should be wiser and challenge the cutie titling.

The Pakistani PM has taken pride in the appointment of Hina Rabbani Khar as the first female minister of foreign affairs. She was elected into her father’s constituency when new candidate guidelines meant he could no longer stand. She’s had a different start, but now in office, like her British female counterparts she ought to take advantage by exhibiting the right competencies, and quickly move away from the token female positioning bestowed upon her in her case by Daddy’s reputation and the overly proud words of her PM.

My worry for Khar is that she may be playing herself into the “cutie” role. In a trip to India it was her sunglasses and Birkin handbag that dominated headlines. It did win her some friends among the elites for being a style icon, however, it underscored the fact that she was in her position on the back of family money, some window dressing for the powerful men of Pakistan.

Pakistan is a country that has gone through one devastating crisis after another in the last few years, and her pricey fashion makes her appear out of touch with her nation. She must avoid living up to the title of eye candy.

As a woman in politics it’s difficult to strike a balance between taking advantage of opportunities that are given to you as a result of being a woman, without being treated like an empty-headed opportunistic mascot. The trick is to brush off the patronising labels and make sure that when given an opportunity, you do the best job possible, using the best skills and intelligence.

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