The meaning of minarets

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?

1001 Inventions exhibition: discover Muslim heritage and re-discover the excitement of science

Over the weekend I went to the see the "1001 Inventions - Muslim heritage in our world" exhibition at the Science Museum, which is based on the website and book of the same name.

The exhibition consists of a number of stands like the one in the picture, under different themes like medecine, market and town. There are intriguing exhibits like Al-Jazari's elephant clock, model wind-turbines pre-dating Dutch windmills, in Afghanistan to harness renewable energy (a lesson for today's green energy activists?) as well as plenty of information like Muslim scholars predicted the world's circumference to within 125 miles 8 centuries ago, and Muslim doctors pioneered cataract removal and the use of catgut around that time as well.

The whole exhibition is a revelation about the "Dark ages" where in fact many discoveries were made that have laid the foundations for today's modern science - dispelling the absurd myths that the Muslim world was devoid of creativity, invention or contribution. Quite the opposite. From this perspective, the exhibition is a must see for historical, cultural as well as of course scientific knowledge.

From a personal perspective though, it was the short film starring Ben Kingsley as a mysterious polymath from a golden age that captured my imagination. The film was broadcast at regular intervals on a huge screen in the exhibition hall. It re-ignited my childhood excitement for discoveries, and the incredible wealth of science that we have around us today. The story follows a group of school children spending the day at a museum investigating the science discovered in various eras of history. The teacher hands the assignment for "The Dark Ages" with pity to three children, warning them that they are unlikely to find much if anything. As they enter the library section they are greeted with the mysterious Ben Kingsley. He conjures up secrets from the period, and summons various scientists and philosophers to explain their secrets to the children. Once I'd got past the Harry Potter-esque introduction, I too was swept away by the enormity of the scientific findings and the graphics are magical enough to create a tingling about how science itself is magical.

The stories of these Muslim scientists and their myriad of inventions left me feeling inspired to discover the secrets of the universe... All in all, an afternoon well-spent.

Haiti - this report from the front line...

Haiti continues to break our hearts. I received this email from Irfan Akram, the Director of the Muslim Writers Awards and part of Muslim Hands, a UK charity that focuses on development and aid. He's been out in Haiti for ten days. Here are his words from the front line:



"Haiti, it's impossible to exaggerate the horror. Animals eating bodies on the streets, bodies wrapped in rugs or stuffed suitcases and left to rot. The stench is unbearable. The camps are made up of survivors who will most likely die as soon as there is no water. Even if they get past that, then disease will kill many more than have already died.

It's hard to stop crying most of the time while distributing aid, but we are getting food and water in and are racing hard to upscale the operation by liaising with the UN to facilitate the receipt of ships and more convoys, and to provide security for these incoming shipments As a Muslim charity, we are taking advantage of the mosque infrastructure to distribute to everyone regardless of religion. Again, we are working to build the capacity of Muslims in Santo Domingo and in Haiti itself, to ensure that local communities of whatever background are supported with the essentials. Staff and offices are in place too.

Security-wise, it's very scary – you need support to distribute safely and effectively while the UN machine gets geared up. Most of the worst-hit are not receiving aid: the World Food Programme needs 100 million food packages and has access to only 15 million in the pipeline, and there is a 2 week waiting time for hospitals. People are so desperate that un-coordinated food distribution in the street would lead to riots. Gangs are looking for opportunities to steal.For the scale of the disaster, the funds we’re getting in are woefully inadequate. We need help to get the messages out.

We want to do more work, get more food, more shelter, re-instate some basic services. But we need help."



If you'd like to donate to Muslim Hands (or any other charity of your choice) so they can continue with their work, you can make a contribution.
The link to Muslim Hands donations is here: http://www.muslimhands.org

Asian Women of Achievement awards - nominate now

The Asian Women of Achievement awards are now in their eleventh year, aiming to honour the vibrant contributions of Asian women across all aspects of life and unearth inspiring and humbling stories of achievement.

Nominations for the 2010 event are now open and you can nominate someone you know, or even yourself! Categories are: Art and Culture, Public Sector, Social and Humanitarian, Business Woman, Entrepreneur, Media, Professional, Young Achiever and the Asian Woman of the Year Award.

Nominations close on Friday March 5, 2010. You can see more info here, and download the nomination forms. It's a great chance for Asian Women to be recognised for all their incredible achievements.

(although where is the one we most expect Asians to honour - Mum of the Year??!! Is that too typical?)

The many faces behind the veil - in today's Independent

The Independent published this double page spread today, with stories from 5 different Muslim women about why they wear the hijab, niqab or not at all, including yours truly. It's a colourful and varied piece of coverage. The opening introduction runs as below.

"The many faces behind the veil
A symbol of female subjugation? These women believe their Islamic headwear is a
liberating way of expressing their identities.

Jilbab. Niqab. Al Amira. Dupatta. Burqa. Chador. Even the language used to describe the various kinds of clothing worn by Muslim women can seem as complicated and muddied as the issue itself. Rarely has an item of cloth caused so much consternation, controversy and misunderstanding
as with the Islamic headscarf or veil. For those Muslims who literally wear their religion on their sleeves, hijab (from the Arabic for curtain or screen) can be many things. For some it is a cultural practice handed down through the generations, an unquestioned given that is simply adopted. For others the need to dress and behave modestly can define a person’s relationship with God, their
religious devotion or even their politics. For others still hijab is a complicated journey, one with twists and turns where veils are briefly discarded on the ground or taken up with willing fervour.
“Muslim women wear hijab for many reasons including piety, identity and even as political statements,” says Tahmina Saleem, the co-founder of Inspire, a consultancy which helps Muslim
women become vocal members of their communities. “Most do so willingly, some unwillingly."

To its detractors
the headscarf – and in particular its more visible cousin the face veil – is
simply a form of oppression, regardless of whether modest clothing has been
adopted willingly or not. Why, the abolitionists ask, would any woman ever
voluntarily choose to hide her hair or face in public?
Later this month
France’s ruling party will debate a law that could see the face veils banned in
public, meaning any woman caught wearing a niqab or a burqa (the Arab and Afghan
versions of a full face
veil) could be fined £700. If the law is passed it
would represent a watershed moment in Western Europe’s relationship with its
Muslims citizens and could encourage politicians in neighbouring countries to
promote similar legislation.

In the
argument over whether to ban or not to ban, the polemicists usually reign
supreme. Hijab is either good or evil, wrong or right. The voices of the women
whose lives would be monumentally affected by any sort of curb on Islamic
clothing are rarely seen or heard from.
Today The Independent speaks to five
British women from different walks of life about what form of hijab they choose
to wear and why they wear it. From a graduate who became the first one in her
family to cover her face entirely, to the mother of four who chose to take
off her headscarf and sees no problem with remaining a devout and practising
Muslims – their stories are as varied and colourful as the scarves on their
shoulders. "

Now, regular readers of my blog will know that I have been advocating more recently (here and here) that we don't need to get "behind the veil" as much as we just need to get past it. However, whilst others want to talk about it, there is a duty to respond, explain and communicate. I think this piece makes a good effort to do so by letting Muslim women tell their own stories. By using their own
words, at least the thinking and decision-making behind the choices - the women's own free choices - is apparent.

It's quite a different approach to Yasmin Alibhai Brown's comment piece last week in the Evening Standard. I'm generally an admirer of Alibhai-Brown and have great respect for the trail that she has blazed in the media. I enjoy her writing, and her commitment to say it how it is. But in this particular case, I need to politely disagree. In this piece, she warns women that they should be "wary of romanticising Islam". By 'romanticising Islam' her concern is that these women are saying they are finding moral certitude in Islam from lives they see as having lost their compass.

She gives the example of Boris Johnson's ex-wife Allegra Mostyn Owen, who is now married to a British Pakistani man. She says about her: "... she is going for complete surrender, an uncritical acceptance of the most regressive practices of some of my co-religionists. " This is an assumption about this woman, her beliefs and her choices. We don't actually get to hear from Mostyn Owen about the nature of her marital relationship, the details of why she made the choice to (one assumes from Alibhai-Brown's article) become Muslim and what her feelings and thoughts are about various practices along the vast spectrum of liberal to orthodox Islam. The reasons for choosing to marry her now husband are also obscured. These are huge assumptions about someone's personal choices and beliefs.

Alibhai-Brown concludes: "Mostyn-Owen and other such submissive converts may think their new lives are excitingly exotic but their choices drag the faith back to the dark ages."

The notion that converts must be 'submissive', despite the fact that they have to generally create great change in their lives and in their personal relationships is absurd. Alibhai-Brown herself describes Mostyn-Owens as "clearly not a woman to shirk challenges". I only wish we'd actually got to hear Mostyn-Owens telling her own story, rather than assumptions about her motivations and beliefs.

Update (15-01-10): Allegra Mostyn Owen has come by the blog and left a comment for clarification (thanks AMO). You can read it for yourselves below, but she clarifies that she has not become a Muslim but has a "serene relationship with Allah ".

My point, however, still stands. She has her own story, beliefs and motivations and these were huge assumptions about these things without letting the woman tell it for herself, and let her explain for herself why she has made those choices.

And the snow fell...

I have been watching the snow this morning, from the window of my study. The tiny flakes so delicate, as to be almost invisible as they fall. There is something incredibly soothing about watching the constant cascade.

Now being a suburban-ite, I can see the snow settling onto the ground and turning everything white - a pleasure almost entirely denied me as one of those city-types last year, where the urban heat creates a whole separate climate.

It's incredibly quiet outside. The only signs of life have been the postman's visit this morning (hat-tip to the postman and his valiant determination in the face of the snow), and the paw-tracks of the incorrigible local cat.

Hopes for a post-veil society (part 2)

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

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

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

"...Four women elected to the Kuwaiti parliament found themselves at the opposite end of another discussion about veiling – an insistence that they should cover in order to be admitted to fulfil their constitutional roles.

Their election came after Kuwaiti women received full political rights in 2005. Since two of the women choose not to cover, an ultraconservative MP asked the ministry of Islamic affairs and endowments’ Fatwa department if Sharia obliged women to wear the hijab.When the ministry agreed that women were indeed obliged to do so, there was a movement in parliament to impose hijab on the national assembly’s female members, stating that it was incumbent on women in parliament to subscribe to Sharia.

[...] The constitutional court has upheld the right of the women to remain uncovered if they choose. We can hope that this will drive home the importance of what the women have to say, and the value they will bring to the political process, rather than reducing them to their clothing, as though they were vacuous Barbie dolls.
Wherever you are in the world – Muslim country or otherwise – the issue of veiling is a hot topic. Muslim women are bundled into a single-issue “problem”, and that issue is the veil.That is the problem with Marnia Lazreg’s recent book Questioning the Veil. Lazreg, an American academic with Algerian roots, lays the problems that Muslim women face at the feet of the veil. She claims to systematically demolish every reason that Muslim women give for wearing the veil. She highlights issues such as sexual harassment, men defining women’s bodies, gender politics in the workplace, the anonymity of women, men wielding full control over women and women as the vessels of male honour.
She then draws the tenuous conclusion that the veil lies at the heart of all these issues.I disagree. Even if the veil was removed, these underlying problems would still be rampant. The veil is the wrong symptom she is trying to treat. What we should be doing is tackling the underlying causes.She also adds that, if a woman truly believes that wearing a veil is the right thing to do, and she has made an informed choice to do so, then we should accept her decision. Simply put, we do not need to force women to veil, nor do we need to force them not to veil – what we need is education and free choice.

[...] Curiously, it is veiled Muslim women themselves who [are] fed up with seeing themselves portrayed as nothing more than the veil they wear. I feel it too as a Muslim woman, yet I feel compelled to write about it in order to create a movement to get over it. I have to keep writing about it till the Sarkozys of the world stop women gaining citizenship because of it. I am driven to keep highlighting the Marwa Sherbinis of the world – a woman stabbed in full public view in a German court, at the hands of a man who hated her for her headscarf.

It may shock both liberals who oppose covering of any sort, as well as traditionalists who would enforce mandatory veiling on women, that Muslim women more often than not have other priorities, and also want something other than their clothing discussed. For example, in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, where "saving"Muslim women is high on the list of justifications for invasion, the discourse on veiling is low on the list of women’s concerns. Security tops their needs, something that the "liberating" forces have denied them. We need to get past the veil, and into the business of living – education, employment, security, personal law and civic and political participation.

Aseel al Awadhi, one of the women elected to the Kuwaiti parliament asked: "Why do only women have to comply with Sharia law and not men? This is, by itself, discrimination." Her subtext: veiling and visible religiosity are used as gatekeepers and excuses to exclude women from public and
political discourse – that it has nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with power."

Faith buildings and urban environments: mosques, minarets and multi-faith

Towards the end of last year, the Arts and Islam programme held an intriguing seminar about the relationship between faith buildings and the urban environments that many of them inhabit.

My review:

The mosques that I went to as a child, were of two types. The first were ephemeral fleeting locations: hired halls, school rooms, community centres. They functioned as mosques only during the time that they were populated by Muslims, melting back into their ordinary functions as soon as the last worshipper had left.

The second kind were permanent structures, with the dedicated function of being a mosque; but somehow they were still lacking in confidence, constrained by lack of time, resources and vision. Purchased from owners who found the large buildings too costly to maintain as a result of disuse or disrepair, they were often old town halls, churches and even schools. They offered benefits such as being well located with large halls to accommodate worshippers. But the bathrooms were too small for the ritual ablutions, the floors too hard for prayers, the qibla that points the congregation to Mecca at a crooked angle to the building, and most likely in need of restoration.

What baffled me most – even as a child – was the crowning of these new buildings with a little green dome. I understand why it was done – a symbolic marking of the building’s new life as a Muslim centre. Was it necessary though, I wondered? And what was the impact of these and similar architectural changes on the aesthetics of existing – often historic – buildings? And did it enhance the worshippers’ faith?

These questions have been bubbling away in my mind for many years, so imagine my delight in finding a seminar hosted at a Muslim centre, and inspired by Muslims, focusing on the spatial relationships of faith buildings with their community and environment. Why had I never come across such a discussion before?

The seminar was prescient – coming only weeks before the Swiss referendum on whether to ban the building of minarets. 53.4% of the population turned out to a vote which carried the motion to ban minarets by 57.5%. The ban has provoked controversy, and has been called a violation of religious freedom and expression, but it highlights the significant meaning which people attach to faith buildings. Church spires are remarkably similar in size and shape to minarets, and Switzerland has plenty of them. Yet the population invests different interpretations to the two, even though the stone and mortar are very similar. It might be naive to wonder why this might be, but when
approaching this question from an architectural rather than a political perspective, it gets to the very heart of this seminar’s question about how faith buildings influence and interact with their surroundings.

The seminar was part of the This Is Not A Gateway (TINAG) Festival, a weekend of presentations, debates and forums on the city and urban citizenship. It was co-sponsored by Arts Council England’s Arts and Islam initiative, and in his introduction the director of diversity Tony Panayiotou made a bold statement: “Arts can help young people from turning to extremism.” I wondered whether, by extension, was the same true for faith architecture? I have always maintained that those who have been seduced by violence have not found it in mosques, but rather have been alienated from them. Was it therefore possible that a well-designed, well-built, well-implemented faith building could inspire souls and minds in positive ways?

You can read the full review here:
Faith%20buildings%20and%20Urban%20Environments%20%28Shelina%20Zahra%20Janmohamed%29.pdf
or here: http://www.artsandislam.com/pdf/Faithbuildings.pdf

Hopes for a post-veil society

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.

Muslim men, this one's for you...

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.

From Gaza with Love

In December last year, I travelled to Darfur as part of a multi-disciplinary group to visit the war-torn region and the camps that are home to hundreds and thousands of displaced people. The group I was part of visited the camp that is run by Islamic Relief, a British Muslim charity which celebrated its 25th anniversary this year. Their longevity and influence as one of the world’s leading Muslim charities was recognised by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office who hosted the quarter century celebrations.

The UK Director of Islamic Relief was part of the group, and along with the other delegates we travelled through Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar to raise the profile of the tragedy in Darfur. We were often asked “Why do you talk about Darfur, and not Palestine?” We answered “Suffering is suffering wherever we see innocent people dying. Death, destruction and poverty in one place do not make us forget it in another. The human heart is big enough to deal with all of the suffering.” The day that we returned to Britain, hostilities against the people of Gaza began, resulting in 1400 deaths, and the destruction of many places of civic life like hospitals and local institutions.

The same UK director of Islamic Relief, is currently visiting Gaza to see what work his organisation can do. He sent me this note today, and I wanted to share it with all of you.

As I retire to the comfort of my room in Gaza at the end of Day 2, I would
like to share my feelings with you all.

What I witnessed today is the reality of the horrors of the brutality of
war. It is the disintegration of basic values, the same universal values which
allow human beings to live with one another.

For us who are far away, on the other side of a television screen, last
December seems a distant memory. We may have seen crisis upon crisis across the
world, but for the people here in Gaza, what happened eleven months ago is not
forgotten. It has utterly changed their lives.

During my visit I have seen them living with death, destruction, grief,
misery, bad sewage smells, people locked in like cattle. Everyone has been
affected, every man, woman, child has witnessed with their own eyes the tragic
reality unfold in front of them. Physical and emotional pain is all around
us.

I wish I could tell you that my description is journalistic hyperbolae,
designed to tug at your heartstrings and maybe even make you feel guilty at the
comfort in your own homes. Simple human stories remind us, however, that this is
not a showbiz game, but that real lives have been affected.

I met Mahmud today. He is nine years old, and he has lost his mother. Like
many other children he has forgotten how to play, fearful of those attacks in
December. Broken by the loss of his family. An innocent child amongst many
innocent children, paying a horrific price. I witnessed children in our
psycho-social centre today with our excellent team actually being taught how to
play like children again. Imagine re-teaching your loved ones how to play a
game.

Mahmud broke my heart today. But has he lost his entire family? Or will we
help him to realise that Mahmud is our child and we are his extended
family.

Through all the devastation and turmoil, there is one thing that I have not
seen: hopelessness. The People of Gaza for me embody Inspiration and Hope.

They are a people that defy logic and stand tall with dignity &
resolve. They live not just narrate the verse: "With Hardship comes
Ease".

I ask you all to keep our team in Gaza in your prayers, so that they can
continue to reach our extended family.

Jehangir Malik from Gaza: the Land and People of Hope.

Submissions open for Muslim Writers Awards 2010

For the fourth year running the Muslim Writers Awards is calling out for creative, interesting and exciting submissions from writers across the country. So get your entries in before May 14th 2010.

The Muslim Writers Awards was set up to encourage more writers, and readers, from British Muslims. There is an untapped reservoir of talent waiting to be encouraged and nurtured to write, not to mention readers who are to be encouraged to spend their pennies (and they have plenty of them!) on books.

Read more about the Muslim Writers Awards here: www.muslimwritersawards.co.uk

And the submission guidelines here: http://www.muslimwritersawards.co.uk/submissions/submissions.html

BBC Radio 4 this Friday, discussing "Questioning the veil" by Marnia Lazreg

I've been invited onto Radio 4's Woman's Hour this friday to discuss Marnia Lazreg's recent publication "Questioning the Veil."

The book's description says:

Across much of the world today, Muslim women of all ages are increasingly turning to wearing the veil. Is this trend a sign of rising piety or a way of asserting Muslim pride? And does the veil really provide women freedom from sexual harassment? Written in the form of letters addressing all those interested in this issue, Questioning the Veil examines the inconsistent and inadequate reasons given for the veil, and points to the dangers and limitations of this highly questionable cultural practice. Marnia Lazreg, a preeminent authority in Middle East women's studies, combines her own experiences growing up in a Muslim family in Algeria with interviews and the real-life stories of other Muslim women to produce this nuanced argument for doing away with the veil.

Lazreg stresses that the veil is not included in the five pillars of Islam, asks whether piety sufficiently justifies veiling, explores the adverse psychological effects of the practice on the wearer and those around her, and pays special attention to the negative impact of veiling for young girls. Lazreg's provocative findings indicate that far from being spontaneous, the trend toward wearing the veil has been driven by an organized and growing campaign that includes literature, DVDs, YouTube videos, and courses designed by some Muslim men to teach women about their presumed rights under the veil.

An incisive mix of the personal and political, supported by meticulous research, Questioning the Veil will compel all readers to reconsider their views of this controversial and sensitive topic.

I've just started reading this, and will post a review in due course, but do blog readers have any opinions on this book (especially if they've read it) and the issues and contexts that Lazreg raises?

You can read the full introduction to the book here: http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/i8986.pdf

21st century spiritual literacy

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.

Bursary scheme for young writers aged 13 - 19 years

MyVoice write or wrong? is a bursary scheme for young people aged 13 - 19 interested in exploring themes of faith, diversity, violent extremism or freedom of expression in written or spoken form and who show a passion for words.


If you think that describes you then take a look at their website and think about applying. It's quite straightforward and just requires a small sample of your work (which as an aspiring writer hopefully you will have tucked away somewhere). There are a few conditions but if you meet those then you could be on your way to £100 in book tokens along with support and mentorship. Writing is a challenging, competitive and uncharted territory especially for young writers, and if you think that you have even a kernal of desire to get involved, then you couldn't wish for a better start than a mentoring programme like this.


Do it!

www.myvoicewriteorwrong.org

Taking some quiet time for the rest of Ramadan

Dear readers, I think it's time to invest in creating some tranquility and repose. As many of you will know, we've now reached the last ten days of Ramadan, and I feel the need to wind down some of the many activities I'm involved in. That means the blog is on holiday for a couple of weeks. Please carry on reading, but if you post comments, they may not be moderated, or responded to (this includes comments you may already have posted which are un-published as yet). If you need to contact me please do so, but it may take a little while to respond. If it's urgent, please mark it as such and I'll get back to you.

It's a strange feeling to "withdraw" (even though I'm not doing it fully), and in a way slightly scary - after all, what if I "miss out" on some big opportunities? What about 'profile'? Will people lose interest? What about keeping up momentum and being fully engaged?

These are some of the fears which plague us, particularly in our busy modern world. But when we contribute to create the rapid pace (is it really as rapid as we think, or do we like to pretend we are at the centre of the whirlwind and oh-so-in-demand), is the result that we simply get trampled by it?

When everything I do is facing outwards, what is left to nurture what is within and keep the energy overflowing from inside to out? That's why I'll be spending the next two weeks in a quieter, more introspective way. I wonder what will be on the other side.

Image from The Joy of Tech

Segregation: A Muslim woman writes

This article was published today in The Times Online

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is an extremely problematic area in the Muslim community.

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

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

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

Sometimes women aren't even invited or told they "don't need to be there".

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

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

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

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

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

I don't buy it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Idolising Islam

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.

The marital rights of the British Muslim wife

This article was published at Faith Central at the Times Online

Bess Twiston-Davies writes: Melanie Reid, our columnist, is merely one of many commentators who has asked why Britain's soldiers are apparently fighting for the right of Afghan men to mistreat their wives, in the wake of the new so -called "Marital Rape" Law (although the original clause permitting men to withold food from wives who refuse sex was eventually removed). Here Faith's Central's Muslim guest blogger, Shelina Janmohamed, author of Love in a Headscarf and the blog Spirit21 looks at the disturbing, related issue of the lack of legal protection for many Muslim women who marry in Britain

Shelina writes: One of the reasons Britain gives for its military intervention in Afghanistan is the liberation of Muslim woman from oppression.

But what if anything has really changed for them in the 8 years in which the UK and US have been present in the country? In fact, with laws like the recent legislation dubbed the "marital rape law" where a husband can supposedly starve his wife if she does not have sex with him, it's hard to see that Muslim women are indeed being 'saved'.

Let's look at the example of veiling where women are forced to wear the Afghan-style burqa. This is utterly wrong as it is a woman's choice as to how she should dress. Some in Afghanistan, however, who would argue that it is a more traditional society, where women being uncovered is 'alien' to the 'culture'. This really is about culture not religion because this is absent in the majority of Muslim countries bar a few exceptions.

Back in Britain, some Muslim women do face pressure to veil, but on the whole veiled Muslim women are exercising their own freedom of choice. This can be seen from the fact they tend to be younger, well-educated, British-born women, often decked out in the latest fashions. These women are exercising the same freedom of choice that Britain says it is fighting to give Afghan women.

Now let's look at marriage. Married Afghan women have little protection from mistreatment and abuse. The scale of magnitude in Afghanistan is clearly different to the UK, but British Muslim women can suffer from lack of protection by the law in Britain too. If we care about Muslim women's rights in Afghanistan, we must demonstrate clearly that we care about them here as well.

I'm referring to the 'nikah', the Islamic wedding ceremony, which is not recognised under British law as a legal marriage. For this, the bride and groom must undertake a further civil marriage ceremony. A Church of England marriage by comparison is automatically registered as a legally recognised marriage. For Muslims, as with many of other religions, it is the religious ceremony that is paramount, and once this is conducted the couple are considered married. Rightly or wrongly, the civil marriage is often not carried out.

If the marriage doesn't work out, or the husband leaves the wife, the wife is still married but has no legal protection under British law. Further, if the husband proves unscrupulous, he can marry another wife legally under British law without committing bigamy. Recognising the nikah as a valid British marriage with all the parameters of the civil marriage is the first step to solving this problem. Some mosques do insist that the civil marriage certificate is proffered before they will conduct the nikah, but these are too few. Tying the nikah into civil marriage has nothing to do with 'Islamifying' Britain, but is rather a small development which will offer much needed British legal protection to Muslim women in marriage.

Of course the Muslim community - mosques and Imams - who have conducted the marriage ceremony should be held responsible should a marriage break down, but this doesn't always happen. Ensuring that mosques and Imams are abiding by procedures which give both bride and groom their full rights is the next step, and for that we need to talk about those so called 'shariah courts.' In fact, a better description would be 'Islamic advisory panel'. At the moment they consist of volunteers with various levels of Islamic training, probably few social or counselling skills and even less legal training under British law. This is hardly surprising, since they state quite openly that their remit is to offer Islamic advice. Often faced with marital disputes Muslim women prefer to go to these panels because their faith is important to them and they want an Islamic resolution to their problems. Also, they live as part of a family and community, and any resolution agreed with such a panel is more likely to stick with the people amongst which they live.

By recognising the nikah as legally valid, these subsequent links in the chain will be forced to deal with such issues with higher standards and in line with legal norms, thereby respecting the religious wishes of the Muslim woman, and at the same time affording her full protection in the law. A standard of behaviour and guidance amongst mosques and Imams becomes normalised over time, and the woman becomes automatically protected.

If we are busy fighting in Afghanistan for legal protections to be put in place for Muslim women, then we need to do the same for Muslim women here. The issues are different in magnitude but are still about both choice and protection. Not only will implementing such laws and protection in Britain squash accusations that 'saving' Muslim women is just a pretext for war, not only will it actually protect Muslim women, but more importantly it will also demonstrate that in word as well as in practice we are genuine in our intentions and actions.

Culture of extravagance is robbing Ramadan of its significance

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

The Muslim world goes topsy-turvy in Ramadan. Eating, sleeping and socialising routines are turned back to front – the first meal is eaten as the sun sets. The initial morsel of food into our mouths will usually be a sweet, succulent date, according to the Islamic tradition. But are the hours that follow really that religious?

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

It allows appreciation of the suffering of the poor and hungry, a chance to devote less time to the physical and more time to the spiritual, a recognition that we can live happily and successfully with less than we have.Come nightfall, these good intentions are put to one side, as though Ramadan is for daylight hours only, and the revelling begins.

Mothers cook sumptuous meals for their families. The food is indulgently calorific to the point that many Muslims say they actually gain weight rather than lose it as one might expect. The philosophy of restraint and frugality adhered to during the day has its mirror image in the excessive culinary indulgence after dark.

One of the religious traditions of Ramadan is to feed others at the time of iftar in order to gain reward. Dinner invitations thus abound, and these iftar gatherings are warm social events. But in many places they turn into arenas for showmanship, outdoing friends and family with ever extravagant menus. “People will announce at the end of the meal how much it cost,” said one Egyptian woman to emphasise the one-upmanship that dominates what should be an occasion of sharing and community.

Once the iftar is over, there is a wide choice of entertainment. Those who are extrovert will find their way to newly erected Ramadan tents, to smoke shisha and chill out with friends for the whole night, going from party to party until dawn. Other families will stay at home to watch the multitude of soap operas which dominate Ramadan. In Saudi Arabia last year it was claimed that there were 64 such soap operas broadcast each night, staggered over time so audiences could watch as many as possible.

This is not a comment on the values or quality of the soaps, or the claims by some clerics that they are “debauched”. It is simply an observation that these soap operas prey on the communal feeling that is generated in Ramadan and profit from it. The audience is understandably drawn towards the high level of entertainment but inadvertently becomes distracted from the sweet pleasures of contemplation and social intercourse of Ramadan.

And let’s not forget the shopping. Shops are open later than ever, and it seems that Ramadan is not a time of midnight contemplation, but rather just a prelude to Eid, a day to show off your new clothes. Ramadan shopping festivals are becoming more common, as is the compulsion to purchase and give Eid presents to a wide circle of acquaintances.

Instead of cutting back on the desire to consume, we end up with heightened consumption in these 30 days, whether that be in restaurants or in retail.

This is not to say that the Muslim world has become a month-long consumerist orgy – far from it. The social and spiritual temperature of Muslim communities is high and mosques teem with passionate worshippers.What may surprise many who live in majority Muslim countries is that this sense of community and faith is particularly acute in countries where Muslims are minorities.

In these countries, if you are fasting you have to make an active choice to go against the grain of mainstream society. You still have to go to work where you can stare longingly at your colleagues drinking coffee, or attend meetings which run across the iftar time. You have to really know and understand why you are fasting, rather than just being swept up in the maelstrom. There is a sense of community purpose in these countries and an overwhelming push towards spiritual success.

The energy is so focused that I have known Muslims who come to Britain leaving Muslim countries behind in order to have a more spiritually profitable month.

As Ramadan’s religious significance is slowly eclipsed by its commercial and cultural status, then it is voided of its meaning, and ultimately of its importance. That is exactly what happened in 1960 when the president of Tunisia, Habib Bourguiba, wanted to cancel Ramadan. He felt that although Ramadan was a “beautiful custom”, it “paralysed our society”.

He appeared on national television with his cabinet eating during the day and tried to get senior Muslim clerics to issue fatwas to say that it was permissible not to fast. Of course, this did not happen, but it is a salutary tale of how, when religious occasion turns into culture, it becomes vulnerable to elimination.

There are some who will say I am being a killjoy and too pious. Others will say that if mothers want to spoil their families with delicious food after working hard on their fasts all day, then that is their right. There are those who will say that spending the night chatting away in shisha bars or comparing notes on soap operas, increases the sense of community and social cohesion.

These outcomes are all good things – part of the magic of Ramadan, no doubt. And of course there is no compulsion in how you spend Ramadan. You do not have to sit on a prayer mat all hours of the day. But I do see a worrying trend when you piece each of these actions together. Each one may be justifiable because everyone has choice, but if you step back, you start to see that the meaning and context of Ramadan is slowly being lost.

If we accept these justifications then we must be wary of opening ourselves to the charge of hypocrisy.

Ramadan and Eid are not the only occasions to have suffered this slow and insidious dilution of meaning and impact. Practising Christians in the western world complain that Christmas has been sucked dry of its religious meaning. Other festivals, too, have lost their meaning. Easter was about rebirth and renewal, but now focuses on chocolate eggs and cute bunnies. And Lent, which was a 40-day period of frugality and restraint – almost akin to Ramadan itself in its ethos – has been distilled down to Mardi Gras, pancakes and gaudy carnivals.

Some people will bristle at the comparison of the way that Christmas has been usurped by consumerism with the contemporary experience of Ramadan. But the similarities are striking as the evidence above shows.You do not have to be religious to appreciate that the social and ethical meaning of festivals such as Christmas, Ramadan and Eid have a great deal to contribute to the morality of human society.

For this reason, Muslims add their voices to these complaints, as part of the faith communities who share a concern about the sapping of meaning and moral compass from these occasions. However, it often turns into pointing fingers at the West for becoming “godless” or “decadent” due to the excessive commercialisation, while turning a blind eye to the same challenges in the Muslim world.

Is this a case of pot calling the kettle black?

Ramadan does not have to be, and should not be, sober pious asceticism. Of course not. Enjoyment, sharing and happiness in our togetherness are critical components of Ramadan. But Ramadan should be about more than gluttony, shopping and vacuous entertainment.

We do in fact need to recognise and acknowledge the place of Ramadan’s material pleasures. By being honest about the importance of the physical, we can de-prioritise it in favour of the spiritual and moral at least for the 30 days of Ramadan.

This de-prioritisation is what makes Ramadan special in the first place. By withholding the importance of the physical self, Ramadan is about recognising the importance of our individual spirit, and about finding our place as souls, not bodies, in the society in which we live.

The Muslim wedding, British manners and the Minister who walked out

This article has just been published at the Times Online.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Road from Damascus - review and author interview

The Road from Damascus, written by Robin Yassin-Kassab, is set in London, and follows the story of Sami Traifi, a tortured academic who struggles to follow in the footsteps of his brilliant atheist secular Syrian father.

The book opens in Damascus where Sami is visiting distant relatives in order to inspire his academic thesis, but he discovers a dark secret there that ought to shatter the perfect image he has of his father, but which pushes him deeper into crisis. Interwoven into his tale are the struggles of his neurotic but patient and devout mother Nur, his long-suffering and yet extremely balanced and new-to-discovering religion wife Muntaha, as well as his street-wise fundamentalist brother-in-law, and numerous other characters.

It is a dark, disturbing and challenging read. This is not a frivolous by-the-beach book, far from it. You have to be fully engaged intellectually and emotionally with this book. It rattles you in the way intense literature can. At times you feel physically shaken, at others, you marvel at the author's turn of phrase that shimmer jewel-like in the text.
At first glance it is a welcome addition to the writings about Muslim experiences, and in particular it offers an insight into a world that is even less familiar to British readers - that of the Arab experience in the UK. It delves into the history and attitudes that have been shaped by the rise of Arab Nationalism and secularism in the region, and the tensions that have been created - rightly or wrongly - between the notion of keeping religion whilst aspiring to modernity. Sami is a secular atheist fundamentalist who cannot comprehend why his wife finds fulfilment and solace in the faith she discovers long after they are married. He is repulsed by his mother who prays and excludes her from his life out of disgust. Yet they are far more centred and content than he is despite the fact he claims moral and intellectual superiority. He spurns them, whilst they shower him in love.

But whilst the book does much to inform readers of the "Muslim experience", it is about something other than making a contribution to the landscape of literature that tries to untangle the complexity of religion in our society. The book is much bigger than this and in some ways less about religion and more about the intersections of life choices of different people, and how at some points they veer towards each other, and other times they veer apart. the human skill is to be able to hold relationships together no matter where you are on the curve.

Sami is a deep, dark, miserable anti-hero, not realising that redemption comes not from remaining in the past, but by making sense of what has gone before in order to create the future. His are the darkest of human demons - disparaging the importance of emotion and spirituality in favour of the intellect. In many ways it is the portrait of the eternal questions that face human beings, and which are at the centre of our contemporary debates.

I caught up with Robin Yasin-Kassab after he returned from the Palestine Literature Festival.




Shelina: Where did the idea for your book come from?

Robin: I don't know. I just started writing. Which is my only advice to someone who wants to be a writer: just write.

Another answer would be: from the churning of ideas and experiences in my mind, having lived in London, Istanbul, Damascus, Rawalpindi and elsewhere, over the years. And from feeling the rising cultural tension after September 11th, the crushing of the second Intifada, the invasion of Iraq, etc.

And from reading novels, of course.

Shelina: In Britain, even though mainstream writing by and about British Muslims and Islam is relatively limited, what does exist tends to focus on the Sub-continental experience. Your book exposes a very different backdrop that many readers may be unfamiliar with like notions of Arab Nationalism, secularism and modernity in the Middle East. In what way do you feel the Arab experience in Britain has been different?

Robin: According to the old imperial definition of citizenship, the peoples of the subcontinent (and the Caribbean) were British even before they arrived in Britain. In most cases Arab immigrants don’t have the long cultural-historical link with Britain that some other groups do. They are (with exceptions such as the Yemeni communities) more recent and less well-established arrivals, fewer in numbers, and more likely to be political refugees. Proportionately, there is a high number of intellectuals, journalists, writers etc, as these people have often had trouble with Arab regimes or occupation authorities. Mainstream Anglo society is perhaps even less conversant with the ideas and cultural references of the Arabs than with those of the subcontinent.

In my book I didn’t intend to create a representative sample of British, or London, Arabs. I have spent most of the last fifteen years living in the Arab world, so my preoccupations while writing were not necessarily specifically British. I used a London setting to dramatise the preoccupations because I felt most comfortable writing about London. I still do feel most comfortable writing about London, and I’m not sure why. I’ve lived in other places much longer.

Shelina: Let's be honest, your main character Sami, is not the most likeable hero. And reading your book is at times a challenging emotional wrangle. Was this deliberate?

Robin: It’s always a risk to write about an anti-hero or a failure, but most of us are partial failures, some of the time. And there’s a great contemporary tradition of nasty protagonists – from Dostoyevsky to Philip Roth and John Updike. In these cases, the reader’s discomfort is compensated for by the strength of the writing and observation, and in Roth’s case by humour. I hope that Sami’s unpleasantness is usually compensated for by psychological observation, humour, interesting writing, and the satirical angle of the narration. As for ‘challenging emotional wrangle’ – I sense disapproval here! – I suppose this was deliberate too. I wanted to transmit the emotional wrangles that my characters are challenged by, and that the world was challenged by in september 2001. Again, there is a great tradition of the challenging emotional wrangle text, real great claustrophobic classics, like Notes from Underground or Wuthering Heights. Of course, I do not possess the skill or experience of these writers. I do what I can.

Shelina: The female characters in your book are much more centred, spiritual and accepting of others than the male characters. Why do you think this is?

Robin: Because they are, I think, treated less satirically and more realistically. And in a slightly more forced way, becuase I wanted to write against the contemporary stereotype of the passive, ignorant, oppressed Muslim woman. In my novel Muslim women choose to wear hijab for their own reasons, becuae they have an inner life. In most of the media, Muslim women are told to wear the hijab.

Shelina: As a female reader I felt frustrated by the female characters - they seemed too perfect, too right, too balanced. The male characters had much more leeway to explore themselves to their absolute limits. Do you think women are more constricted by culture and religion?

Robin: Do you really think Sami explored himself to his absolute limit, more than Muntaha did? Wasn’t he in fact only avoiding self-exploration through dramatic diversions? Sami learns a disturbing secret in the first chapter and then takes until the end of the book to admit it to himself. Everything he pretends is exploration is really a red herring. I think Sami is shown as far more constricted by culture and religion (although his is a secular nationalist religion) than his adaptable wife.

And I’m not sure that Nur is completely right and balanced. She’s a nervous chainsmoker for a start. And she is able to see through culture to the possibility that she may only be grasping at something unreal. Her justification for the hijab in the penultimate chapter is more Camus than Qaradawi.

I suppose I used testosterone as a literary device. I think there is a certain kind of silliness – like Sami’s ridiculous drugged night out, or Ammar’s flirtation with militant blackness – for which boys are more likely candidates than girls.

Shelina: Your main character Sami Traifi appears to be a secular fundamentalist who clings to his religion of unbelief with immense tenacity. His wife's younger brother is a fundamentalist of a different kind, born of the street, combining hip hop, reggae and a need to claim some kind of social identity. What light, if any, does this shed on current debates on religious fundementalism?

Robin: Well, it’s a satirical reflection of our world. I think the cultural arrogance, reductive simplifications and monomania of the ‘new atheists’ is as fundamentalist as Ayman az-Zawahiri. Other ‘religions’, in whose names people are ready to kill, include American manifest destiny, the civilising mission, ‘liberty’, and so on. In good ways as well as bad, religions surround us – by which I mean religion in the widest sense, a story and set of values and meanings which are bigger than individual human beings. But the culture often pretends that only systems like traditional Christianity or Islam are religions.

About Ammar, one point here is that he’s British. His hip hop-Islamist militancy (but he’s a gentleman really, just disturbed) could only be British. It’s like wearing a hood and saying innit, innit?

Shelina: What do you hope for your book?

Robin: I feel blessed with what has happened. I didn’t really expect it to be published. In the year since it’s come out I’ve met many interesting writers and been to Oslo, Milan, Dublin and Palestine. Being a participant in the Palestinian Festival of Literature was a great honour.

Shelina: What is your next project?

Robin: I’ve given up, for now, after a year and a half’s work, on my second novel. It was too complicated and self-conscious and wasn’t flowing. The difficult second novel. So I’m thinking about the third novel, and playing with three ideas. One involves an albino, one is a family saga, and one returns to Sami and Muntaha, later, and shows Muntaha in a period of weakness. Perhaps I should write that one for you, Shelina!

I also have a blog http://www.qunfuz.com/ and I’m a coeditor of Pulse http://www.pulsemedia.org/ , one of Le Monde Diplomatique’s five favourite websites.

Shelina: Thanks Robin for taking some time out to talk to me, and I'm looking forward to that third book in my honour. I wonder if I'll be mentioned in the dedication page! Good luck with your future writing, and I hope to read a lot more of your work in the future.

Where is the e-ummah?

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.

Looking for unusual books on Hajj

I have long held an interest in the social history of hajj and its spiritual, religious and artistic importance amongst Muslims. I have decided that it is now time for me to explore and research this area in more detail. And since the season of hajj is now approaching, it seems even more poignant to start collecting materials and reading more deeply on the subject. I'd also like to put together a collection of books on this subject.

That is where I am looking for help from you dear readers. I'm looking for books, writing and arts on all hajj related matters (and Mecca/Medina too) in English. This can be travelogues, histories, photographs, stories, maps, guidebooks, contemporary or historical, anything at all. Since I am investigating more of a social, historical and spiritual aspect, the only thing I am not looking for is fiqh books.

If you have any books like this, and are feeling generous (or no longer need them), please please do send them to me so I can put them to good use. You can post a comment on this article with details and then I will get in touch to arrange transfer of the book.

Many of these books are quite unusual, and can be difficult to find out about their existence, and hard to get hold of, which is why if you have any it would be a great deal of help to me. Thank you in advance!

The Fall and Rise of Religion

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.

Cinemas, mosques and the power of prayer

A little humour for a Monday morning. I don't know if it's true or not, but that it seems very plausible and that we believe from our instincts about human nature that it might be true, is telling in itself...

In a small town in East Africa, a person decided to open up a cinema showing films of disrepute, which was right opposite to the mosque. The Members of the congregation started a campaign to block the tawdry business from opening with petitions and prayed daily against his business. Work progressed. However, when it was almost complete and was about to open, a lightning bolt struck the construction and it was burnt to the ground.

The mosque folks were rather smug in their outlook after that, till the cinema owner sued the mosque authorities on the grounds that the mosque authorities through their congregation and prayers were ultimately responsible for the demise of his project, either through direct or indirect actions or means.

In its reply to the court, the mosque autorities vehemently denied all responsibility or any connection that their prayers were reasons to the cinema's demise.

As the case made its way into court, the judge looked over the paperwork at the hearing and commented:
"I don't know how I'm going to decide this case, but it appears from the paperwork, that we have the owner of a disreputable cinema who believes in the power of prayer and we have devotees from the mosque who don't!"

Sarkozy speaks out against Burqa in France

Yesterday the French president said "The burka is not a sign of religion, it is a sign of subservience. It will not be welcome on the territory of the French republic."

This follows the establishment of a parliamentary commission to investigate whether the wearing of the burqa should be banned in public.

Following his speech, he is due to meet the Emir of Qatar - I wonder if he will suggest to him that women there should also remove their veils? If his view is that it is wrong in France as it "reduces them to servitude and undermines their dignity" then he ought to make the same point to the Emir about women in Qatar.

Except he won't. His speech yesterday was held to the French parliament - a right he put into the constitution for himself last year. This is the first time that such a speech has been held in over a century. Following in the footsteps of his imperial predecessor at yesterday's speech, it seems that in a hundred years, little has changed in Mr Sarkozy's mind about imposing his version of liberal values.

Let's remember what Obama said in Cairo, ‘it is important for Western countries to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from practising religion as they see fit - for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear. We cannot disguise hostility towards any religion behind the pretence of liberalism.’

In the shadow of the sumptuous Versailles Palace, Sarkozy's comments seem little other than cheap shots at winning political points, without really addressing the heart of the issue. How can a politician determine what a woman should wear? If she is wearing it out of choice - as some women do - not that I necessarily agree with them - then refusing a women's right to choose what to wear is a form of oppression that women have long fought against.

If she is being forced to wear it - and this of course does happen - then what that woman needs is not a patronising president, but real tools to help her take control of her life - education and economics.

Besides, those women who wear burqa's are a tiny minority of Muslim women - why single those who are forced to wear it as sufferers of domestic oppression, when so many millions of women face domestic violence? A more holistic approach would reap greater benefits for women in both quality and quantity. It seems from his words that he cares more about his own popularity, then making changes for burqa-wearing women.

Hurrah!

Last week, my book Love in a Headscarf won the Best Published Non-Fiction prize at the Muslim Writers Awards. IslamOnline has described this event as the "Muslim Oscars" and it certainly is very glamorous.

I was extremely delighted to win the award, and hopeful that this acknowledgement will bring even more wonderful things in the future. (More awards please!)

Here's a pic of the trophy itself, sunning itself in the garden the following day...

And if you haven't bought a copy of the book yet, you can visit www.loveinaheadscarf.com to find out more, and purchase a copy. Happy reading :D

Is this an eco-epiphany?

I will be the first to admit that I have much improvement to show in making my living habits more environmentally friendly. Whilst there is a lot of chatter around us about how we all ought to be 'green', I have a sneaking suspicion that there is a lot more talk than there is action. I don't believe I'm the only one who talks green but doesn't go all out to act it.

This week we've had the plumbers in, and the water feed into the cistern in the loo has been disconnected, so we have to fill it up manually in order to flush. The first few times I tried filling it up from water bottles (running backwards and forwards to the temporary mains in the front garden to fill them up). Ten minutes later, (not to be too graphic about it), the cistern was ready for action. It was a lot of effort to answer nature's call. Later, we requisitioned a massive watering can for the job, and I could be seen teetering from front garden to bathroom with the filled vessel weighing about a third of my body mass.

I realised this very obvious fact: it takes a lot of water - clean water - to flush, and if you have to carry it yourself, it's a helluva lot of effort. What a waste of clean water! For the first time - and I'm being completely honest here - it occurred to me that perhaps those composting, old fashioned kind of loos are something we ought to seriously consider. The effort required really hit home.

I have been thinking about all this for a while, but this experience made me think a bit harder and may have created a tipping point. As a Muslim, it has occurred to me that the way we live is rather extravagant resource-wise and I ought to be more prudent and sensitive in my relationship with nature. Having recently moved from a city-centre flat to a house with a garden also seems to be helping with this earth-connection. I'll be asking for gardening tips soon.

Now, being an urban chick I think it will take me a while to make eco-adjustments, so I'm looking for simple straightforward suggestions for incremental changes that I can make. Any proposals?

Guest Post on Spirit21 from David Miliband, Foreign Secretary.

It's Friday today, Jum'ah, and as a special treat, the Foreign Secretary has written his first ever posting on a Muslim blog, here at Spirit21. David Miliband is no stranger to cyberspace and writes his own prolific blog over at the FCO website.

It would be fair to say that the relationship between the Foreign Office and the British and global Muslim community has been a tumultuous one (ahem, understatement), and many Britons, including British Muslims, believe that the Foreign Office needs to be held more strongly to account, and should adopt a more proactive and ethical approach to Foreign policy, working in partnership with Muslims and the Muslim world.

So here is your chance, people: our Foreign Secretary is reaching out and wanting to create dialogue, so take up the opportunity to question him - that's how we create change. I'll be posting my own comments a bit later, but dear readers - grill him, debate with him, criticise him, offer him positive and innovative policy ideas.

Foreign Secretary: here is your opportunity to listen and to make real change. And you should keep going with more direct engagement like this with the electorate - we like it when our elected politicians talk to us directly, really listen, and then make real the aspirations of the people of this nation.


David Miliband: Compromise and coalition of consent required

There is hardly a more important issue than how we build strong coalitions with Muslim majority countries on issues as diverse as non proliferation or climate change, or how we deepen understanding between people of different faiths. This was the theme of my speech yesterday in Oxford.

There is a need for humility in the West but there is also a need for responsibility from all sides rather than finger pointing. No speech can be the end of the matter. The speech focuses on the importance of politics and arenas for politics where compromise and communication are the order of the day. That is why I am grateful for the opportunity to engage through Spirit 21.

There are hard questions left unanswered in my speech and tensions within it. But if Gallup are right that the vast majority of people in Muslim majority countries say they admire the commitment in the West to the rule of law and free speech, but want to see these values consistently applied, then there is more than enough room for all of us to shape common rules for what the Prime Minister calls "the global society". As this morning's FT editorial says, if we are asking the rights questions, then at least we are on our way to getting the right answers.

David Miliband

Muslims 2.0?

I'll be speaking this evening at an event hosted by the Radical Middle Way entitled "Divan 2.0: Wired Warriors for the Soul of Islam". It will be a panel discussion and Q&A between some of the UK's most active cyber citizens.

So here are some of my inital thoughts: the web has certainly opened doors for Muslims - especially young Muslims - to have their voices heard and hold discussions that had very little space elsewhere. I'm one of those and my blog is testament to how the web helped me discover and shape my voice. But I do worry that there is a lot of yelling that goes on, and that we have lost the ability to discern wisdom and learning from polemic. And how does the invisible, intangible blogosphere fit into the social structure of a faith that is built around physical congregations such as the Friday prayers and the hajj? Are we destined to turn into two parallel ummahs, those who go to the mosque and those who go online?

Come along to the event to hear the panel talking about Wired Warriors for the soul of Islam

Date: Friday 22 May 2009
Location: Old Theatre, London School of Economics
Address: Houghton Street (off the Aldwych) London WC2A 2AE
Time: Doors open 6:45 pm; Starts 7:15 pm; Ends 8:45 pm

Save the Children's World Record Run this weekend...

I'm not one that usually advertises many other events on my blog, but this one caught my attention: Save the Children, and a new charity called IF which seeks to raise money for worthwhile causes through fun and innovative ideas, are staging a World Record breaking attempt for “the most people running 100 meters in a 12-hour relay.” (according to the Guinness book of records official title). I think the number will be around 3000 - 4000 people, who will run in relay at Mile End Stadium, and hopefully bring the record in for London. Each runner is being asked for £100 sponsorship minimum, which means that the run could raise upwards for £300,000, which will be donated to Save the Children's Humanitarian fund for Gaza.

It's great to see innovative ideas for fundraising, especially those which challenge the participants themselves. I wish all the runners well.

You can read more here, and of course, remember to get out your chequebook, or access your paypal account: http://www.ifcharity.com/gaza100.html

Muslims: beyond the caricature

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Moments in New York

I'm in New York city at the moment, taking a few days of sightseeing before attending the next conference of Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow. I'm on Day 2, and so far I don't feel like I've quite managed to tap into the rhythm of the city yet, but have been observing moments and experiences. I like the cosmopolitan nature of the city so far - nothing is quite what it seems, nothing appears to have a place, and yet everything has jostled into position and asserted its right to be here.

Take the visit to the Museum of Modern Art, where one of my favourite exhibits was the Huggable Atomic Mushroom Cloud which made me chuckle with its explanation of "we can embrace our fears, literally".

This morning's visit to the Statue of Liberty revealed this gem: at the unveiling of the statue (for liberty, obviously) the suffragettes hired a boat to keep campaigning for the vote for women, and also protested that almost all the official invitees were men. Oh, the delicious irony that liberty is represented by a woman.

Delicious "stir-brewed" coffee in Greenwich village sitting opposte a preppy twentysomething new york woman crocheting a shawl for herself, explaining her penchant for older men.

Mother and two sons on the Ellis Island ferry: older son punches younger son viciously and then turns to mother: "I beat him because he's got no respect." Mother turns to protesting younger son: "Shut the **** up".

Resisting the urge on the subway to experience a marriage proposal (re: Coming to America), or to save the train from oblivion and come screeching to the surface as the tracks end (re: Speed), or ensconce in the cloakroom (re: The pursuit of happyness).

John D. Rockefeller Jr invests during the Great Depression in creating the almost wildly outrageous Rockefeller Centre (note: English spelling of 'centre'), creating 75,000 jobs at a time of huge unemployment. A visionary to learn from today?

Back to the Museum of Modern Art, I ask the guide for directions, which he does not communicate clearly. I ask again, and in what appears to be typical new york style, he slows down to stupid-speed and explains child-like (with physical demonstration) the difference between turning right and turning left. Laugh or cry?

In London it is sunny and 18 degrees. In NY it is raining and 7 degrees. Irony. Or just annoying.

Tomorrow, the Guggenheim and Central Park.

Questions on a postcard please

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.

"Love in a Headscarf" shortlisted for Muslim Writers Awards

Exciting news! My book Love in a Headscarf has been shortlisted by the Muslim Writers Awards for the Published Non-Fiction category.

The competition is stiff, with some great books also on the shortlist, but I'll be keeping my fingers crossed. The awards will be announced on May 27th.

We must face the crisis in Darfur

This was published today in The National

One of the loudest voices raised in support of Darfur has been George Clooney's. He is one of a number of American stars, including Angelina Jolie, Mia Farrow and Macy Gray, who have been working to raise the profile of this crisis. Their actions have been met with cynicism in the Middle East and in Sudan. "Hollywood celebrities think they can come and be famous by claiming they support the people of Darfur," said one of the president of Sudan's advisers.

Whatever their motives, Clooney and co are at least doing something. Middle Eastern countries, by contrast, have shown a shameful lack of interest in the suffering of the Darfuris.The nation's crisis began just as the 20-year conflict between northern and southern Sudan looked to be coming to an end. Rebel groups in Darfur began attacking government targets, accusing Khartoum of oppressing "Black Africans" in favour of "Arabs".

The language of race used to describe the conflict has been virulent, and evoked rather simplistic passions. In the West race is a sensitive issue, which may be one reason why Darfur has become a pet cause of Hollywood stars.

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

But the conflict is not about race: closer analysis reveals that it began as a dispute over tribal lands between the nomadic tribes, referred to in shorthand as "Arab", and the permanent farmers, referred to as "African".

Famine, drought and changing land usage led to clashes about territorial rights which have yet to be resolved.

In addition, Darfuris became increasingly angry at the low level of services they received from the government by way of water, sanitation, health care and education and felt they had been left out while the government focused on Khartoum and the south.

I went to see Darfur with my own eyes at the end of last year. In the camps outside Al-Geneina, the capital of West Darfur, I saw families living in tents no more than three metres square, with rationed food and water.

Aid agencies were doing their best, but the Sudanese government is not keen on their presence and, with the crisis into its sixth year, donors are growing weary.

At one school I visited, scores of fidgeting youngsters dressed in white stood under the midday sun facing inwards to a small centre stage where their head teacher led them in vibrant song. Their joillity belied the pain many had endured, especially those old enough to remember the bloodshed, fear and crisis that began in 2003. I spoke to two young girls.

"I'd like to become a lawyer when I’m older," 16-year-old Fatima told me. "I want to be a writer," said her friend Layla. "Why?" I asked. "To make our country better," said Fatima. "So it doesn’t happen again," said Layla.

From Darfur, I went on to Cairo, Jeddah, Riyadh and Doha to highlight its plight. In these Middle Eastern cities, however, people were strangely angry that the conflict in Darfur was being raised as an issue. "What about Palestine? Why aren't you talking about Palestine?" they said.

But the oppression in Gaza and the West Bank does not outrank the suffering of Darfur, or vice-versa. Suffering is suffering wherever it takes place, and must be spoken about, fought against and stopped, no matter who the perpetrator, no matter where the location.Why should the suffering of Darfuris be diminished? Human hearts are big enough to remember and mourn the plight of many, not just one.

More than 1,400 people were killed in Gaza during Israel's recent onslaught, an event that can only be described in lay terms as a contained massacre, part of more than 60 years of killing and suffering.

In Darfur too, the numbers are heart-wrenchingly high. According to the UN, 300,000 people have been killed since the crisis began, a further 2.7 million people have been displaced from their homes, and five million people are living on aid. It makes for grim reading. Khartoum puts the figure of those killed closer to 10,000.

Whatever the number, the crisis is real, and the lack of instinctive empathy concerned me. It was as if people did not want to believe that such brutality could happen in another Arab Muslim country. Darfur is a complex issue, but this should not stop any movement for sympathy and aid to support the human beings who are suffering daily.

Middle Eastern countries, Arabs and Muslims, need to step up and start contributing to the aid effort. If they are serious about relieving suffering, then first they need to contribute financially. The amount donated so far has been pitiful, and has gone straight into the hands of the Sudanese government.

In addition, the Middle East needs to contribute human resources by training and dispatching more aid workers.

In terms of taking an active role in negotiating peace, Middle Eastern failures abound both for Palestine and Darfur. Only the recent Qatari initiative for peace in Darfur appears to have a measured, sustainable - and dare I say it - hopeful glimmer.

Last month the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a warrant for the arrest of the Sudanese president Omar al Bashir on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Many Darfur campaigners questioned the wisdom of such a move, fearing it would hamper their own efforts to resolve the crisis, especially when Sudan was moving with democratic elections and the Qatari initiative looked hopeful.

Mr al Bashir in response called the ICC "undemocratic", accused it of "double standards" and expelled 13 aid agencies from Darfur.

In defiance, he attended the Arab League summit in Qatar last weekend, which rejected the ICC warrant. "No Arab president will be let down," said a statement. "We are going to fight until the end."

The ICC along with aid agencies are seen to be pursuing a biased western agenda, leading Arabs to instinctively side with the Sudanese government without any real assessment of the situation. What Sudan actually needs is not blind support, but critical friends.

For the Middle East and for many Muslims, the contrast in approach to Darfur and Palestine is revelatory. Darfur is complicated.

Darfur means disentangling the moral rights and wrongs of all parties who are Muslim, and bluntly put, there is not the moral fibre nor the political will to do so.

Palestine is a simple moral judgment - them and us. The oppressor and the oppressed are clear, and the swell of public opinion is in one direction, making it easy to shout and protest. Both conflicts are horrific and are taking a huge humanitarian toll. Each life lost is a loss to all humanity, whether it be in Gaza, Darfur or elsewhere.

We must reach through the complexities of the political situations and apply universal moral standards. Only then will we be able to identify where in the conflict lies justice and ultimately peace.

To have the credibility and moral authority to do so, we must show an even and compassionate hand no matter where or against whom the suffering is being perpetrated.

When Clooney visited Darfur in 2006 as a reporter, he was accompanied by a man who is now president of the United States.

At that time Barack Obama said: "If we care, the world will care. If we act, then the world will follow." President Obama is sticking to his message. Last week he sent his envoy Scott Gration to kick-start peace talks between the Sudanese government and the rebels.

It is part of his wider outreach to the Middle East.

The time has come for the Middle East to reach out as well. An important first step will be to focus on achieving peace in Darfur.

Created from a single soul

This week, The Guardian's Comment is Free has been asking "Is religion good for women?" My response has just been published.

The Question: Is religion good for women?
Created from a single soul: If there is unequal treatment it is because those with power have forgotten the underlying principles of religion

I am irked by this question, the sense it carries with it that women are some kind of second best, an after-thought for religion, that require special attention. Women aren't a remnant, or an aberration whose existence is there simply to sweep up the leftover genetic code off the floor and perpetuate the species. Women are fundamental to successful human flourishing – both physical and spiritual. It comes as no surprise to me that with the constant oppression that women face – whether in the name of religion or the cultural codes that seem to exist across all societies – the result is human society as a whole lurching from one failure to another. How can the human environment we all live in blossom if half of its inhabitants suffer in so many ways because of their gender?

As a Muslim woman, I was annoyed by the opening blurb introducing the question "Is religion good for women?" that set the background to the question saying that the Abrahamic faiths "believe in a father God, ruling the world through a network of men". Islam emphatically does not believe in a father God. The divine is gender-neutral. The more I have discussed religion, the more I have found myself veering away from the word "God" for the very reason that it seems to carry historical baggage with it that in vulgar terms is very male, with a long beard and throne somewhere on high, which immediately engenders (yes, pun intended) a sense of exclusion in all of us who are non-male, or at the very least non-bearded, or non-throned.

Instead, I have found myself using other terms from within the Islamic paradigm like "the divine", or "the creator" or even borrowing from other mystical traditions with a word like "enlightenment", in order to get rid of the accepted male status quo within religion.

The fundamental way of knowing "the divine" as a Muslim are the 99 names which describe the qualities of the deity. Islamic scholars have grouped these broadly into two halves, male and female, and any comprehensive understanding and connection to the divine must understand and embrace both the male and the female attributes. By extension, human beings also aspire to manifest all of these qualities, which therefore underlines the critical importance of the female within any sort of understanding and practice of religion.

Men and women in Islamic theology were "created from a single soul", as quoted in the Qur'an, and are "made in pairs". The origins and relationship of men and women are therefore equal and equitable, neither one being able to exist or fully function without the other. The assumption behind the phrase "a network of men" is therefore also false. Every story related in scripture almost invariably has a man and a woman who carry the message together. Jesus and Mary, Moses and Miriam, Muhammed and Khadija. These stories are told in Islamic scripture with feisty, spiritual women who change the course of history.

Take the story of Mary as related in the Qur'an. Her father promised that his unborn child would be dedicated to God and would serve in the temple. He was surprised to find it was a girl – Mary – as only boys were traditionally dedicated for this purpose. He is instructed by the divine to continue with his dedication, and Mary went to live in the temple, shocking those around him with the idea that a woman could be worthy enough to serve the divine, a privilege previously accorded only to men. Mary's very presence in the temple was designed to crush oppressive and misogynistic ideas, but many of these are still perpetuated vigorously today. As an aside, I should mention that Islamic tale of Mary's birth of Jesus is told without reference to any male father figure. There is no Joseph, instead Mary is the epitome of the strong single mother whose neighbours gossip about her, but who raises a great child.

With such a powerful parable to draw on, and with the fundamental blueprint of gender relations in Islam being framed in the paradigm of "a single soul" I often ask myself why women are still treated as second best. I find it incomprehensible that women are excluded from some mosques, when by decree Mary was placed at the place of worship. I find it equally baffling that men treat women as lesser beings when the clear instruction is that both are created from the same spiritual fabric. All other actions must be carried out in the context of this basic human blueprint.

The problem is, those who have power will justify keeping it in any way they can, sometimes by conveniently forgetting the underlying principles of religion. The challenge is to reject black-and-white polarising questions like "Is religion good for women" and start from the basic fundamentals of equality. "Created from a single soul" seems a pretty good place to start to overturn the misogynists.

Googling Muslim Women

[This article was published in the March issue of EMEL Magazine]

I'd like you to try an experiment that I have conducted regularly for the last year: Google the search term "Muslim women", click on "images" and then have a look at the pictures that are returned to you by the search. The first time I did this, I was shocked, very shocked, but not surprised.

You'll find the first several pages are populated almost entirely by imagery of women in black niqabs, black burqas or black trailing cloaks. The others are unnerving pseudo-pornographic images with translucent veils that are best left un-described in a family magazine. The sad fact is that this result has changed very little over the time that I have been observing the phenomenon.

Google's mission statement is 'to organise the world' using algorithms that return the results to us that we were looking for. In any search we usually get a result that matches well what we were looking for, which is why Google has become an institution in our lives. When we are searching for information about Muslim women, the intelligent technology throws back these sombre anonymous uni-dimensional images assuming they are what we were referring to by 'Muslim women'. Worse still, perhaps that is all the imagery and information that it can find. If it is the former we can blame lazy stereotyping. If it is the latter, then it is we who are to blame by not providing alternative, compelling and more widely spread diversity on who and what Muslim women are.

Conduct a similar experiment on Amazon or in your local high street bookshop. The same images abound of books with subtitles like: "A heart-rending story of love and oppression", "sold" "burned alive" "honour killing". Even those books that tell of courage, struggle and freedom use this lazy visual shorthand of anonymous women's faces to adorn their books, despite the fact that the writers and protagonists themselves have gone to great lengths to make their names, ideas and voices heard.

The stories that are told in our public discourse about Muslim women are depressingly predictable. Most common is the Oppressed, as we've seen above. Some of these women truly have horrific stories, and it is absolutely right that they are at the forefront of our consciousness, and that we are working constantly to eradicate the attitudes and actions that give rise to these terrible experiences. However, these same images are used ignorantly as shorthand for the 'barbaric' and 'mediaeval' views that Islam is said to hold about women.

Then we have stories from the Liberated, who escaped from the Oppression, and have 'freed' themselves, and at one extreme of the scale have 'enlightened' themselves and even rejected Islam utterly, and yet peculiarly still continue to define themselves in relation to it.

And somewhere in between are the soft sensual tales from the 'hidden world' of Muslim women, the Exotic, which Eastern doe-eyed beauties inhabit and where secrets of desire, womanliness and oriental allure reside. This is a world of voyeuristic otherness.

In order to register in the public consciousness, Muslim women must fit themselves into one of these categories. But they don't. And they don't want to.

The challenge is that Muslims too have ideas about how and what Muslim women should be. They offer Muslim women a choice between hijab-religious or non-hijab-irreligious, making sweeping assumptions about a woman's moral and religious character based on what she wears. But this is a false dichotomy that is saturated with an irony that most Muslims are not even aware of: that the recommendations on modest dress in Islam are specifically in order to avoid defining people by what they wear, and yet we use religious clothing as a way to pigeon-hole women.

Whether Muslim or otherwise, the paradigms within which we understand Muslim women have been limited to these caricatured notions. In doing this, we ourselves have removed the freedom from Muslim women to express their own voices in a way which allows them to represent themselves as they wish to be represented.

We need to create a change in the perceptions about Muslim women, their rights and the way that they are treated. In order to do so we need first of all to create in our public discourse the possibility of different ways of being.

Islam says let love blossom

[I am posting this article belatedly. It was published in The National a few weeks ago to co-incide with the day which in Arabic is charmingly called Yawm-al-hubb, the Day of Love.]

Before reading this article I should warn you that it might be considered subversive. It may lead you into the paths of disbelief. Beware dear reader, for we are about to discuss Valentine's Day.Even though I am a Muslim, or perhaps because I am one, I will quite readily wish you "Happy Valentine’s Day" today. Even this simple act might land me in trouble with a handful of Islamic scholars such as the Egyptian cleric Hazem Shuman. He warned young Muslims this week that Valentine's Day was "more dangerous than Aids, Ebola and cholera". Wow, I had no idea that a red rose could be so lethal.

We enjoy such perplexing tales courtesy of the right-wing press, keen to promote the view that Muslims see Valentine's Day - and by extension love itself - as evil. Fox News last year covered a Kuwaiti MP who chaired a committee to prevent "such alien events from impacting on Kuwaiti society and spreading corruption". Britain's Daily Star tabloid newspaper elevated the former head of Al-Muhajiroun, Anjem Choudhary, to cleric status and quoted him saying that those celebrating Valentine's Day "would rot in hell".

Boy, if there is anything that Muslims are good at it, it is melodrama. But are Muslims such as these just as guilty as the right-wing press of confusing the celebration of love with love itself?

The origins of Valentine's Day lie not in the romance with which we associate it today, but in events any person of faith would uphold. The celebration is usually traced to a number of early Christian martyrs called Valentine who were persecuted by pagan rulers.

Another Valentine performed secret marriages for Roman soldiers forced to remain single by an Emperor who believed unmarried men made better soldiers.

Since these events happened well before the advent of Islam, it is notable that the individuals are remembered for standing up for their belief in God and upholding the sanctity of marriage, two fundamental pillars of Islam as a deen, a way of life.

There were already Roman celebrations linked to fertility, so it is possible the church decided to celebrate the feast of St Valentine at the same time to "Christianise" the festival. In the same way, Muslims in Egypt proposed to rename February 14 as "Prophet Mohammed's Day". One can only imagine that this was to defuse misconceptions young people may have about love and its various expressions.

Those who argue for moving to a more "proper" Islamic celebration are most likely the same who argue against a specific day for love in the first place, their objection being why should love be limited to Valentine's Day? But doesn't the same argument apply to celebrating Prophet Mohammed's Day? Shouldn't that be every day as well?

The connection with romantic love began with Geoffrey Chaucer, whose 14th century poem celebrating the king's engagement described it as the time when birds choose their mate. From then on romance and Valentine's Day become increasingly entwined. The French set up a "court of love" on Valentine's Day in 1400 to deal with love contracts, betrayals and violence against women, with the judges selected by the women themselves.

With the constant discussions about sharia courts, which deal mainly with women and personal law, perhaps they too should be renamed courts of love and aim to instil love and compassion between those in dispute? They could even allow female plaintiffs to choose the judges as in the French model - they would be selecting from a panel of judges, so all would be equally qualified. It seems a courteous and civilised way of resolving the current legal imbalances in many courts which do not allow women to be fully heard.

The modern Valentine's Day was created by Esther Howland, who mass produced cards of paper lace in 1847. Her seemingly innocuous act changed the face of the US greeting card industry which now credits Valentine's Day with the second largest sales after Christmas.

Approximately one billion Valentine's cards are sent each year, with women buying 85 per cent of them. Many are sent anonymously. It is a worrying echo of the stereotype that women ought to be shy in expressing their liking of someone, the hunted rather than the hunted.

Conversely, men spend twice as much as women on the day, suggesting that they too are under pressure to conform to a stereotype of wooing a woman with their wealth. Advertisers and marketers have turned love into a cosmetic, superficial experience.

On the other hand, Muslims seem to have reduced romance to a legalistic directive, determining their three words to be "it is bid'ah", a worldly innovation contrary to Islam. Expressing love on days such as Valentine's is "bid'ah". What is perplexing is not just this legal opinion, but that Muslims need to ask such questions. How did we reach the point where we ask legal authorities about matters of celebrating love? Consider other questions that are asked: "Is falling in love allowed in Islam?" or "Can a husband express his love to his wife?" They reflect the increasingly legalistic approach Muslims are taking in all matters of life.

These two polar opposites have both reduced love to a caricature of its true self, forcing us to choose between cheesy superficiality on the one hand and heartless rigidity on the other. It sounds almost like a "with us or against us" choice, and we all know the trouble that causes.

Presented with this stark absurdity, all human beings - which, of course, includes Muslims - will be forced to look into their hearts and realise that expressing love is simply common sense. Instead of fatwas on how, what and where to celebrate, we need legal scholars to decree a return to the way of the Prophet - common sense and humanity.

Those people of faith who oppose Valentine's Day are missing a trick. Faith is about celebrating love - love of the Divine, love of humanity, love of your companion. There is no need to reject a celebration of love; rather those who believe in the sanctity of marriage should recapture such events for their original celebration of marriage. And each Valentine's Day let us see love blossom and a thousand marriages bloom.

From blogger to author to blogger

The last few weeks have been exciting and enlightening to say the very least. My book "Love in a Headscarf" was published rather coquettishly on Valentine's Day (that's February 14th, for all those of you that oppose the essential existence of such a day). Despite being an utter and unfailing optimist, even I was completely overwhelmed by the amount of media coverage and interest it has raised.

The Guardian, BBC World, the Asian Network, the Turkish Media, the Daily Mail (yes! the Daily Fail even loved it - they published an extract which included a verse from the Qur'an - probably the first time ever outside an article commenting about the scary rise of shariah by the lovely Ms. MP), The Asian Writer, Eastern Eye, the lovely Muslimah Media Watch, IslamOnline, CommentisFree... the list goes on.

And you can leave your comments about the book or your own stories here: http://www.loveinaheadscarf.com/Story.html

In all the excitement, dear Spirit21 readers, the blog has gone somewhat neglected. But I return now to my first love, the InterWeb, and all of you who were with me before printed material came between us. So, a few pieces will follow shortly catching up with what has gone on in the last few weeks and which I haven't managed to post up yet. And more soon.

P.S. In teeny weeny writing, having said all that, do remember to buy the book! www.loveinaheadscarf.com :D

Love in a Headscarf - out now!

Exciting news! My book is out now, and available to purchase at all good bookshops and online. Yes, yes, it's shameless promotion, I know, but a first-time author's gotta do what a first-time author's gotta do. Click on the book cover to find out more. And if you like the look of it (and it seems quite a few people have), a couple of key-presses and postal delivery later you'll be the proud owner of the book, which is today covered in a double page spread in the Guardian.

You can also read more about the book at www.loveinaheadscarf.com

A Muslim Woman's Journey - "Love in a Headscarf" published today

The Guardian is joining me today in announcing the publication of my book "Love in a Headscarf"

I wanted to write about my experiences - not of oppression, or turning away from religion - but of love.

I sometimes wonder what someone who has never met ordinary Muslim woman thinks we are like. Perhaps they see us all as black-veil-wearing creatures in voluminous cloaks. Certainly those who search for images in Google under "Muslim women" are likely to think so.

Perhaps if you've never met a Muslim woman you might think we are all failing to "integrate", whatever that means, or to communicate with the people we live amongst, as Jack Straw would have us believe. It's possible that they think we are all opposed to freedom of speech and will use violence to attack it.

If you walk into any bookshop you will find stories of Muslim women with words like "oppressed" "sold" or "kidnapped" in the titles. Their tales of horror rightly need to be told, and the abuses which have been perpetrated need to be stopped. However, this genre of misery-memoir about Muslim women is fed constantly by publishers eager to confirm and exploit this stereotype. The tales are topped off with accounts of rejection of Islam and the nirvana of "liberation" from it. Both of these archetypal stories feature book covers almost exclusively of women with sad oppressed eyes staring out from behind a tightly wrapped niqab, camels and deserts in the background.

It is hard to tell whether publishers illustrate their books in this way because it reaps easy commercial rewards. Or is it that they themselves cannot see the complexity and variation amongst Muslim women, or are simply too lazy or cowardly to bring us new stories that avoid this one-size-fits-all approach.


I speak from experience - today sees the publication of my first book "Love in a Headscarf", a memoir of growing up as a Muslim woman. I was fed up of seeing the same old stories told all the time, and wanted to share one "from the inside", and in a way that itself was groundbreaking.

So I chose to write a humorous and light-hearted tale. I wanted to tell a story that touches each of us as human beings, looking at questions of love, life and meaning that we all share, but through the eyes of a Muslim woman. Most of all, I wanted to explore the contradictions and contrasts that we all face, and humour was the best medium for that. As Peter Ustinov said, "Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious."

I took the book to a number of publishers whose commissioning editors loved the story, but couldn't see it fitting with the existing mould of books about Muslim women. "We need an 'alias' of a book that is already out there so people understand how it relates to previous books," they explained, meaning it should be either a forced marriage story or one of escape from Islam.

With such black and white views about the stories that Muslim women are permitted to tell, how can it ever be possible to create an understanding of our diversity and complexity?

I hope my book brings a fresh perspective to the discussion about Muslim women. But there is a serious question to be asked – will it provoke the Muslim community to look into itself and wonder why these lazy stereotypes exist? Sometimes as Muslims we lack an intellectual honesty about ourselves, and are not brave enough to tell our stories as human beings on a journey, with all our flaws. If publishers are guilty of monolithic misery memoirs, then Muslims must also take some of the blame for not sharing our universal experiences in a language and context that everyone can relate to.

We need to connect to those around us at that very fundamental level of human experience. Today, on Valentine's Day, let's do it with love.

Spirit21 celebrates its 3rd birthday

Over the weekend Spirit21 was three years old, and it's been an exciting three years! This year has been packed full of new year resolutions, conferences and some thinking about Palestine and about love. You can read what happened in 2008, as well as a few thoughts I've had previously about birthdays.

Over these years since I first dipped my toe into the blogosphere, and into the wider world of the media, I've been asked constantly to write a memoir of my experiences as a Muslim woman. I've been asked to share the honesty, humour and insight that I try and put into my articles in a book. And this weekend, just as we celebrate Spirit21's third birthday, I will be announcing the publication of my first book, called "Love in a Headscarf".

You can read more about it at www.loveinaheadscarf.com

And for those of you who are in and about London you are invited to the launch on Friday evening at the City Circle.

What's love got to do with it?

This article was recently published in EMEL Magazine.

February plays host to Valentine's Day, and to the declaration of those 'three little words.' But what exactly are those three little words, and what do they reveal about our modern psyche?

A colleague of mine will be abroad, but will be sending flowers to his wife with the message: "I'm sorry I can't be there to take you out for an over-priced meal. Here are some over-priced flowers instead." He humorously conveys his love, but his words reflect a modern-day fatigue of being told what, when and how to feel, beholden to the manufacturing and commercialisation of emotion.

"Happy Hallmark Holiday" encapsulates our disillusion with modern angst for total perfection. Our very real, natural and rough-round-the-edges human processes are turned into flawless airbrushed ideals that do not resemble our lived experiences.

At the opposite extreme of expressing our feelings, we face another far too common three word phrase: "it is bid'ah", denying our natural fitrah to express love. Last year, the Saudi Vice Police were sent to all shops the week before Valentine's Day to ensure that nothing red-coloured was sold. Kuwaiti MPs declared that Valentine's Day was 'not compatible with our values.' The Internet is replete with questions asking whether Valentine's Day is haram, halal or bid'ah.

How did Muslims reach the point where we ask legal authorities about matters of celebrating love? Consider other questions that are asked: "Is falling in love allowed in Islam?" or "Can a husband express his love to his wife?" They reflect the increasingly legalistic approach that Muslims are taking in all matters of life.

Today, as Muslims, we have become servants of the law, instead of the law serving us in order to achieve higher spiritual perfection. Abiding by the law is not a purpose in itself: it is a means to an end. It is critical to respect the law, and our jurists and scholars, but we must be careful not to derive a false satisfaction from following the law for the law's sake over striving towards the underlying objectives of the law. Our current pre-occupation with legalities rather than ethos is directly connected to the fact that we have become unclear about our goals, our values and our principles as human beings who follow the faith of Islam.

Bluntly put, we focus on the minutiae instead of freeing ourselves to ask world-changing questions. Let's ask our scholars big questions that focus on Islam's concern for all human beings. If Islam is about social welfare for the whole of humanity, then let's ask: how do we use the institutions of zakat to put an end to world poverty? If the Prophet emphasised education by saying 'seek education even to China', then how do we ensure that every child goes to school? If Islam is concerned with physical as well as spiritual well-being, how do we ensure healthcare reaches all human beings?

What of those other three little words, "I love you"? We often hear that Christianity is the religion of love, but Islam - wrongly in my opinion - is characterised as far from this. Why is Islam portrayed in this way?

We must challenge the ideas that modern discourse - which includes Muslims themselves who have been brought up on a diet of legalistic directives - perpetuates that Muslims and Islam are lacking in love, or worse, are averse to it. The discussion of love - for Islam by its nature is predicated on love - is critical to our survival and contribution to the modern world. So much so, that I wanted to explore these forgotten ideas of love that underpin the very essence of being a Muslim, with humour, humanity and lightness of touch. The title and subject-matter of my forthcoming book, Love in a Headscarf, for these very reasons creates surprise at the juxtaposition of the idea of Muslims and love.

Muslims say that Islam is the religion of peace. Some go further and say that it is the religion of justice, and that justice underpins peace. I would go further still and say that Islam is the religion of Rahmah, compassion. For compassion to be exercised, justice must already be inherent. But compassion also expels the lurking remnants of hatred, fear and pain through love. Hate cannot push out hate, only love can push out hatred. Allah insists we know Him by His name Rahman, the Lovingly Compassionate. We too must reclaim our role as the people of Rahmah.

Beyond the bounds of religion

I had this published on the Guardian website today.

Beyond the bounds of religion
Muslims should see Gaza not as a tragedy for the Islamic world, but for all human beings

Obama is offering a hand of friendship to the Middle East and the wider Muslim world. This week he marked this new relationship, based in "mutual respect", by dispatching George Mitchell as his special envoy to the Middle East. Mitchell is a veteran of the Northern Ireland peace process and is widely held to be a fair broker.

"I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries," Obama stated. But is this enough to allow him to connect to the worldwide Muslim community which is watching to see whether his actions live up to his words?

The internet has exploded with Muslims expressing their anger, despair and frustration at the ongoing war. My inbox bubbles up with the emotion of email after email with photos of death, invitations to rallies and lectures, multiple Facebook campaigns and groups as well as the urgency of fundraising for aid.

For the first time since the rally attended by a million Britons just before the invasion of Iraq I have joined in protests. Held in London, around the country and across the world, they represented the people's voice in its most raw and purest form. Those who participated came from all over the country, from all ages, creeds, colours and backgrounds, including, but not limited to, Muslims. Those who raised their voices were all human beings, religious or not. But who was listening?

Not the BBC it seems, which has drawn huge criticism from across the board for refusing to air the Gaza appeal. Nor Lord Falconer who defended the BBC decision on Question Time on Thursday night by saying that seeing the suffering of Palestinians might make people "sympathetic to the Palestinians" and "hostile to the Israelis", implying that our instinctive moral judgment was wrong.

Muslims have expressed their feelings as members of the "ummah", sharing their anguish and heartbreak at the suffering of other Muslims in Palestine. The notion of ummah is embedded very deeply in the Muslim psyche. Its basis is Prophet Muhammad's observation that someone who does not wake up in the morning and feel the pain of other Muslims around the world is not a Muslim.

But Palestine is not a state populated only with Muslims; it encompasses those of Christian faith or none, all of them human beings. As well as the concept of "ummah", Muslims should be invoking the wider idea of humanity. There might be additional benefits in seeing the crisis in this way: evoking sympathy from the wider public and making common cause with those who support Palestine in order to achieve justice and peace, simply because it is the right thing to do.

Beyond the labels and stereotypes, Muslims, politicians, the people of the world, should know that this is a human calamity. Human beings are being killed before our eyes with nowhere to run, no food to eat, no water to drink. A Palestinian mother will see leaflets floating down from the sky to tell her that she and her children will be bombed and should leave. But where should they run? Egypt closed the border and places of refuge such as mosques are also hit.

This is a human crisis that the Palestinians have recorded on film, and which will haunt all of us as human beings. Once we said "never again". We must live by that promise.

Holding out for a hero

This is an article I wrote at Christmas for the Guardian, and realised I hadn't published the whole piece here. With the current political climate, I thought it might be worth asking the question again...


Jesus is probably the biggest celebrity in the messiah club. He gets a big celebration every year, with prickly trees, shiny baubles and fat chap in a floppy red hat. The nativity story goes that he was born in a manger, made a significant contribution to world theology, shook the Roman Empire and then made the final sacrifice for his people. It is a classic messiah tale - lowly origins, signs at his birth to portend his greatness, epic impact and change on an unimaginable scale, and heroic dedication till the very end. The messiah was the hope of the people, the one popular culture longed for. Think Gladiator, think Moses.

History is full of stories of such epic figures that saved people from injustice and oppression. Jesus is the best known, and the one we seem to hold onto as a timeless symbol in the western world. But symbol is all he seems to be in the early 21st century. A placeholder in an end-of-year Hollywood B-movie, a story of heroism without the hero. And let's not beat around the bush, yesterday's messiah, is today's hero.

The theories of the early 20th century that pronounced us to be "superman", told us about "ego" and gave us materialism, allowed us to put ourselves on a pedestal, and declare that the individual was a god. No longer would we suffer oppression or injustice - we had invented nuclear weapons in order to destroy those who threatened us. We had propelled ourselves into the impenetrable realm of the gods of yore as we sailed effortlessly to the moon and into the stars. We even had washing machines and vacuum cleaners to save us scrubbing and sweeping. We had all the answers and we could do anything we wanted. "They say that a hero can save us, I'm not gonna stand here and wait," sang Nickelback in the theme tune of the film of Spiderman. Why should we bother waiting for a hero when we could be our own saviours?

We're still very interested in heroes, as the latest TV hit series from the US proves to us: its title Heroes is the big giveaway. But we're less sure about heroism these days, and so are our heroes. The glamorous edge was taken off James Bond who was deliberately rewritten to be a less-than-glamorous gritty hero with serious emotional baggage in his latest film. And the epic hero Beowulf, brought back to life in this year's movie epic, is no longer the entirely noble character that he was defined as in the original writings.

In the early Old English story written about a legendary figure from around the turn of the sixth century, Beowulf was a more classic hero, a man to look up to and hail as a saviour. "I will kill your monster," he declares to the people who can no longer bear the beast's terror.

He does rid the people of the monster that is out there, but the monster within him, the child of his shame, continues to eat him alive from the inside and destroy him. We reduce our hero to the level of our own mundane and pathetic carnal trappings. The hero saves us in a burst of glory, but finds his own undoing in what he thought would save and elevate him. The hero and saviour that we once yearned for becomes a tragic figure. Is this a reflection of the hopelessness of our time? Does this mean we need a hero more than ever? This time does our hero need to save us from our own inner torment?

We thought we had all the answers, but now we discover that we are not as heroic as we once thought. Darfur, Abu Ghraib, rising poverty, the Iraq war and of course our own epic monster called climate change, to name a few have, shown us that we are still flawed, still yearning for the world to be a better place.

Are we too late? Will climate change spell irreversible doom? As with all messianic stories, we find ourselves battling against time. An independent film being made by a group of British Muslims to explore the idea of the modern day hero asks, "What if our generation is the last?" Like Beowulf, it turns the idea of the hero on its head, "Are we ready for a hero?" it challenges. The hero is no longer a stand-alone figure; he needs us. The film, 313 The Movie, is based on the concept that the Mahdi - the rough and ready Islamic name for messiah - will come to restore peace and justice to the world when there are 313 good people ready and willing to support him.

The student-protagonist of the film stamps his feet with our modern day defiance and pride: "You all need to wake up and stop dreaming, there ain't nobody comin' to save us." But his words also give voice to our present-day angst and despair: what if in reality nobody can save us, not even ourselves. Should we hope for a hero as our last resort?

Protest in London over the killings in Gaza

Yesterday I participated in the protest march in London, to show our outrage as human beings as the enormous and flagrant loss of innocent civilian life in Gaza, as numbers of dead have exceeded 800 in the last two weeks.

The atmosphere was electric, and the roads were absolutely utterly jam-packed. Human beings from up and down the country literally poured through the streets. Estimates vary between a paltry 12,000 up to 100,000. It certainly felt much closer to the upper end of that spectrum.

People completely filled Bayswater Road from Speakers Corner, to Notting Hill down Kensington Church Street and along Kensington high street. The presence was solid and full across the whole road for that whole stretch. The police was present in huge numbers right from the very beginning. Check out these photos. The first shows the vigour with which the police was present - this is right near the beginning, but they've already knocked over a protester. Also notice the huge range of people who attended, and the passion with which they came from so far away, to show this: that the killing must stop.

Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow

Today I'll be speaking at a press event at the Foreign Press Association for a conference to be held next weekend in Doha. 300 young Muslim leaders from 76 countries which include minority and majority Muslim countries, will convene, in an event which is totally unique.

The press release describes: "In an historic time of change and diversity, young Muslim leaders from a broad range of countries are convening to push for change from within the global Muslim community. An Italian imam, a Saudi fashion designer, an Iranian rapper, a Pakistani madrasa reformer, an American blogger, and a Dutch lawyer are among the participants attending the 2009 Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow conference. This new generation of community-based, forward-thinking Muslim leaders will come together to share a wide range of strategies and leadership styles, to 'make tomorrow a day when Muslims are known around the world as people of peace,' in the words of one invitee.

These young Muslim leaders - from Senegal to Somalia, Indonesia to Iraq, Britain to Bahrain, and Kosovo to Kuwait - will propose innovative solutions to challenges facing Muslims globally such as the crisis of religious authority, violent extremism, competing values, and strained relations with the West.

The Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow are answering a global call for change on behalf of the world's Muslim community and will communicate their shared message of tolerance and progressive leadership by authoring a joint statement addressed to world leaders."

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Now added: video clip from BSN on the conference

"New year, new you." If only.

EMEL magazine has invited me to be one of their commentators, starting in their January edition which is out now. EMEL is a Muslim lifestyle magazine distributed widely across the UK and internationally, and now entering its sixth year, it is the first glossy magazine of its kind in this country.

Twas' the night before Eid, and all round the house, there wasn't a sound... except for the phone ringing with a call from the distinguished editors of EMEL magazine. I put on my best suit, and my most posh voice, for one must give such distinguished callers their full due. Would I like to write for the magazine starting from the January edition? they asked.

As a long time fan of EMEL, I was delighted. I was particularly thrilled because it meant that as the year begins I will immediately be starting something fresh and exciting. New year, new me, I declared smugly addressing the self-help gurus who will be plastered all over our pages in January, giving us advice on how to make new year resolutions and stick to them. Ha! I've beaten you at your game, you patronising pundits.

Those new year articles explaining how the coming twelve months can lead to a smarter, brighter, more beautiful you, always make me feel bad. I read them last year, and the year before, and probably the one before that. I failed to achieve superwoman status then, and this year will most likely be no different. They worsen the mid-winter gloom.

In 2009, the Islamic new year is at the same time as the calendar new year, and this means that the pressure will be intensified. My intentions every year are much the same: read more, get fit, and spend more time focusing on spirituality. It's a simple strategy: one goal each for mind, body and spirit. These three are the foundation of a human being, and even though I recognise the importance of nourishing each of them, I feel frustrated that I can't seem to actually do it.

I know that I'm on the right track, and that at some point I will meet my targets because I have made a niyyah to achieve these goals. Islamic teachings pointed out the importance of intention well before we ever heard the term PMA, (positive mental attitude). I will get round to it. I will, I will. Eventually, that is. It's just that life is so busy. First the sales (pick up a few must-have discounted suits for work); then engage in some spring cleaning (it all went to pot during the festive season); also need to re-inject some momentum into work (shake off the bad habits of the slow holiday period); plan a holiday for the spring (make the most of the Easter days off); and before you know it, it's almost summer and I'm still thinking I'll get to address my resolutions at some point. I console myself with the thought that at least I've held onto them, instead of resigning myself to failure.

And therein lies the rub: the being busy. It gets in the way, without us even realising. I must meet this urgent deadline, I think, and then one more, and in the blink of an eye, we wonder where it has all gone. How long were you in the world, we'll be asked. A day, or maybe half a day, we'll respond. These words of the Qur'an cast a shadow over my life, especially at a moment where we turn back to review the months past, and prepare ourselves for the year to come. It is a sickening feeling to reach December and wonder what happened since last January. The busy-ness and the ease of procrastination are our greatest enemies. That's what happens between niyyah and 'amal, action; the difference between those who simply believe, and those who believe and do good deeds.

This January, much will be written about Barack Obama, as he is sworn into office. If there is any one person of our time who embodies the enormous change that can be created in twelve months, then Obama must surely be a contender. Last year he was barely considered a challenger for the Democratic nomination: this month he will become arguably the most powerful man on the planet.

Will his Presidency herald a new era for the world? Will this mean a new beginning for the USA? Much hope rests on his shoulders, but he will only be as good in leadership, as his constituents are in followership. If we feel swept away by his passion for hope and renewal, it only means that we've finally pushed aside all the delays, distractions and excuses, and got round to actually making the change. New year, new you? It's there for the taking, if only we actually do something.

Black Heart, Red Hands, Clear Smile

You ask for it, you are a tease,
I know your wish
For me to crack your jaw
To slap your face
To scratch your skin
To leave my mark.

You're pushing me,
Unlocking your wrists
"You have no right,"
Your words are hissed
Through broken teeth
"You have no right."

You make me laugh,
Cheap homeless witch
With talk of 'rights'.
Our friends know me,
My sovereign strength,
They know I'm right.

Who'd hear your words,
Pathetic semite
Our friends know what to say:
"Stop pushing, girl,
It's not his fault,
But sovereign defence."

Sit quietly in your corner,
I've closed the walls,
The Pharaohs are my friends.
The sea is sealed
You have no rights, no worth,
Admit you long for me.

You look at me with children's eyes,
You ask for it
You bare your mother's breast to me,
Still asking for it
Your hands of tormented youth push me away,
You drive me to it.

Can't you see, it's not my fault,
You invoke my suffering on you.
Can't you see, it's not my fault,
You attack, I defend.
Can't you see, it's not my fault,
You make me do it, you make me do it.

Turkey's Bridge that should bind us together

I travelled to Turkey and found myself asking, is this country really the bridge between civilisations, and do we need a bridge anyway?

One of the great cliches about Turkey is that it is the bridge between Europe and the Middle East, the connection between Christendom and Islam. When you stand on the bridge over the Bosphorous, the river that runs through the centre of Istanbul, you feel a profound sense of geographic importance. You are told that on one side is Europe, and on the other you are told is Asia. Cross the bridge, and these oft-repeated words make you feel as though you are stepping across cultural, historic and civilisational tectonic plates. Is this really true, or do we simply think it is the case because the mantra of "the bridge" has been repeated so many times?

Turkey has a long and ancient history of peoples and empires. In the nearer past, it was taken by Alexander the Great in 334 BC. It fell to Rome in the 1st century BC and remained under Roman rule till Constantinople was named as the capital of the Byzantine Empire in 330 AD.

In the 7th century, Islam began to rise to the east of Byzantium. The Arabs took Ankara in 654 and by 669 they set siege to Constantinople. It is said that one of the companions of the Prophet, Ayub Ansari, was buried in Constantinople. They brought a new language, a new civilisation and of course a new religion called Islam.

There was considerable cultural engagement between the Muslims and the Byzantines. The Byzantine emperor Leo adopted the Islamic view that pictures of human beings should be banned. When the Arabs saw the domes on Byzantine churches they adopted them for Islamic architecture of buildings like mosques. The Arabs also translated classical Greek works of science and philosophy into Arabic.

As the Muslim empire grew and came under the control of the Abbasids centring on Persia, the Turks - who were a nomadic people from Central Asia - had been moving westward and under the Turkish Seljuk clan they took the sultanate in Baghdad. By the 11th century they had taken Anatolia from the Byzantines. In the thirteen century they were overrun by the Mongols, but were united in 1300 by Osman who established the Ottoman dynasty.

In 1923 the modern secular state of Turkey was founded by Ataturk. Despite the country's centrality in the Muslim world to this point, and in spite of what is still considered in parts to be a religious people, Ataturk confined religion to the Ministry of Religious Affairs, the mosque and the private domain at home, where it has remained ever since. One of the great ironies of Turkey is that it is a Muslim country that does not permit its women to wear the hijab in an official public space such as a university or in parliament.

More recently, Turkey applied to join the European Union, and in 2005 began accession talks. This seems to have been met by a mixed reaction both in the EU and in Turkey. With a population of over 70 million, the world's 17th largest economy and a geographically strategic location, Turkey is asking itself is it Turkey that needs the EU or the EU that needs Turkey? With thorny phrases like "Christian club" being bandied about recklessly, Turkey along with the Muslim world is asking itself whether it is the fact that it is a Muslim country that is creating resistance in some European quarters.

Given the fluidity of history, culture and trade across the landmass that is modern-day Turkey, it seems strange to think of it as anything but Europe. Visit Istanbul and you certainly feel like you are in a European city. It is quite different from Damascus, Jerusalem, Cairo or Baghdad. Travel west across the country and you feel a change in granularity and perspective as you near the borders of Syria and Iraq, but it is slow and gradual. The attitudes, cultures and peoples change gently rather than with the abruptness of stepping over a bridge. And that seems perfectly natural - why should a country change suddenly in the middle of its territory?

The same question can be applied to larger areas of geography, history and culture. Why do we think that Europe and European ideals (however you choose to define them) end at a fixed geographic point? This has never been the case previously, and nor should it be. Our European world does not end abruptly with a glass wall hemming us in like the globe that enclosed Truman in The Truman show. Real life doesn't work like that - it didn't in the past, and it doesn't need to in the future. Unless we say it so many times that we start ourselves to believe the corrosive propaganda.

Ask those who repeat the mantra "the bridge" about how they see that role being carried out, and the answers are tenuous at best. That's because the very notion of bridge implies separation and division that must be stuck together with a plaster. Our geographic and cultural connections are not like that. There is no chasm that yawns ominously between us like an infernal abyss. They are much more fluid and tightly interconnected. Our architecture, our intellectual roots, our commerce, genetics, and history all overlap and inter-relate. There is no epic gulf that requires spanning physically or metaphorically. It would be better to see Turkey as weaving together the strands of our interconnections. We don't need to bridge the divide, what we need is to be bound together.

This article was published in The Muslim News

Spirit21 in 2008 - a year in review

We are nearing the end of the year, and it is the traditional time to look back and see how we fared over the last twelve months. In particular, it's been a year since I won Best Blog and Best Female Blog at the Brass Crescent Awards. Much to my excitement I've been nominated again. It's not the only recognition the blog has received. I won Best Non-Fiction Writer at the glamorous Muslim Writers Awards, and was named an 'influential blog' by the BBC.

Shari'ah was big news this year. The Archbishop of Canterbury made some comments about Shari'ah courts which created a national controversy, and which reverberated round the world. I tried to get underneath the dense text with a detailed analysis of his speech. I mentioned a few other words too to highlight that we need to have a conversation about real meaning, not just tabloid screaming. (I used words like Shariah, fatwa, hijab, apostasy, niqab, cousin-marriage, Imam, Muslim women. I think some readers had anxiety attacks after that.) Separately, the Lord Chief Justice re-ignited the debate started by the Archbishop, and I commented that we had a significant problem with the S-Word.

I spent a lot of time writing about Muslim women, and declared that it was Time for a Womelution. It is time for things to change, and I kept up the pace demanding "Let Muslim Women Speak" both here at Spirit21 and at the Guardian. It seems that everyone out there is happy to tell Muslim women what they should think and say, but won't let them say it for themselves. It wasn't the only thing that made me cross. I was riled by the book Jewel of Medina, written by an American author about Ai'shah the wife of the Prophet. It wasn't about blasphemy or censorship that the author annoyed me, but rather at her delivery of a sex-obsessed Mills and Boon frippery, about a woman and a period of history that was crying out for a high calibre text. What a wasted opportunity. I read the book and wrote a review for the BBC. It was painful. Watch paint dry, I advised readers, it is more fascinating than the book.

I was still fascinated by hijab, niqab and modesty and wrote several articles trying to understand the different perceptions of modesty and hijab. Modesty is not a black and white issue got some interesting feedback - some people told me in person that it was the best piece I've ever written, others said they didn't get it at all. I also asked, whose body is it anyway, and wondered why it is considered inflammatory by some for a women to cover her hair or face. I made reference in the former article to the rise of the muhajababe, the fabulously stylish and sometimes skimpily clad be-headscarfed Muslim woman, and posted a cartoon asking, what is the meaning of hijab, and wrote a piece considering, can you dress provocatively and be religious? It should all be based around a woman choosing her clothing for herself, but is it really a free choice, and what exactly is she choosing?

The amazing Muslim women who often are considered oppressed and forgotten inspired me to create The Magic Muslims, ordinary Muslims with Extraordinary superpowers, foremost amongst them being SuperJabi. They also included MagicMullah, HipHopHalalMan and WonderBibi. Watch out for them, there will be more in the coming year!

I was also published in the book Conversations on Religion, alongside other high profile dignitaries in the field of faith (or absence of) such as Richard Dawkins, the Chief Rabbi, AC Grayling and the Archbishop.

On the subject of conversations, I had some amazing dialogues with people in Indonesia and Turkey, where I spent a good amount of time this year. Indonesia prompted me to think of sun, smiles and spirituality, whilst in Turkey I found myself asking, what does a Muslim country look like? Hopefully I made some fans whilst out there too...

My comments about Valentine's Day being banned generated some interest as i was asking if it was the day or love that was being prohibited; just as exciting was an interview with the charming and sparky Riazat Butt for the Guardian about hajj. They also enjoyed posting a piece exploring our modern ideas about what kind of hero, messiah or mehdi, we are looking for these days. Do we really need one?

Most controversial were two pieces related to what was happening on the political scene. I had people respond to them with enormous prickliness (or excitement, depending) even months later in person, so they've hit a chord! I tried to separate out the political agendas that have confused the need for social cohesion with preventing violent extremism, and seems to see Muslims only through the prism of (potential) terrorism. Later in the year the political insinuations that Muslims were not wanted in politics appeared to grow stronger, and I wrote with much passion that it seems that we Muslims were being told that "The only 'proper' Muslim is a non-political one." The article proliferated wildly and despite a certain level of anonymity as a writer, i had people 'in person' searching me out to comment on it.

Phew! What a year! And inshallah, 2009 is going to be even more exciting - there are already some fabulous things in the works - watch this space!

(p.s. vote for Spirit21 Best Blog and Best Female blog at the Brass Crescent Awards to show your support!)

Armchair spirituality is not enough

If the hajj teaches us anything, it is that you have to get involved spiritually and physically in order to make lasting and impactful change.

Muslims from all around the world will be travelling to Makkah in early December to take part in the hajj pilgrimage which takes place in the first ten days of the month. All the pilgrims dress in stark white clothing, indistinguishable from each other, as their clothing levels out the differences of prince or plumber. Their white brilliance contrasts with the Ka'bah which is draped in black cloth and around which they circulate to perform the duties of the pilgrimage. For many, it is a dream come true to visit in person the place which they face every day as they perform their five daily prayers. Each person is simply a soul, undifferentiated by wealth, status or colour. You can no longer hide behind clothes, make-up or social status. It is a sobering experience to come face-to-face with the grim realities of the bare souls of others, as well as your own.

The pilgrims then move to a desert expanse known as Arafat which represents the starkness of the Last Day. It is a place to ask for forgiveness, and make peace with oneself and the Creator. With no distractions, and a clear uncluttered head and unencumbered body, the change that is needed becomes apparent in your heart, and resolutions for making life better are quick to emerge. Pilgrims comment about the profundity and solidity of the change that occurs in this barren setting, which somehow frees the inner spirit. The physical presence in a challenging environment stimulates personal growth and development. No matter how much someone explains the environment and sensation, it never has the impact of being there in person. You have to taste it, breathe it, live it.

The journey passes through the night towards Mina, where Abraham was asked by God to sacrifice his beloved child and to show that he was willing to give up what was dearest to him. The pilgrims make a symbolic sacrifice of an animal, to represent the surrender of something of utmost importance to them for the sake of God. Still following Abraham's actions, they throw seven pebbles at stone satans, as though they are stoning the devils of their own inner desires.

Exhausted, the pilgrims return to Makkah, physically broken, but spiritually elated. The hajj pushes the human being to the limits of physical and spiritual endeavour. The lasting impact that hajj creates, and its success in creating change is down to the fact that it address both the physical and the spiritual. The body and the spirit are integral and interconnected parts of the human being that need nurturing. They must both go on a real, symbolic and ritual journey together in order to make change.

The images of these pilgrims is broadcast across the world on television networks, and we can watch the painstaking journey that each person is experiencing as they go through this most rigorous and gruelling of physical and spiritual challenges. Going through the event, and feeling the pain and elation at every moment is what cements the spiritual experience.

We sit and watch the journey of hajj from the comfort of our armchairs, enthralled by the experience, but not able to access the benefits for ourselves. We cannot create the same impact as walking those footsteps and tasting the sweat and tears, whilst we sit ensconced in the soft sheltered environment of our own homes. So it is with developing our own communities and our own spirituality. We like to shake our fists at community leaders, the state of the Ummah, and the ongoing problems we face, from the sanctuary of our sofas. It is like expecting your cheers whilst you watch your football team play on TV to have an impact, or as though shouting at the television set will change events as they unfold. It is like walking the footsteps of the hajjis watching through the live TV coverage: this can never create that type and strength of change.

If we believe that by sitting at home and engaging in armchair protests that we can make an impact, then we are deluded. Muttering astaghfirullahs whilst propped on a comfortable cushion with no connection to the outside world cannot create change. The hajj gives us that very evidence - you have to be right in the centre of things to make an impact.

It is the same with spirituality. To refine our souls and our ethics we have to interact with the world around us. It is only through participation and relationships with other human beings that we can truly learn what it means to be the purest of souls. Muslims are quick to point out that asceticism is rejected by Islam - physical separation is prohibited in that sense. Sitting on our sofas, and complaining about the world around us, is only one step away from that.

Proceeding with patience and prayer is the hallmark of a human being, and that is because the spiritual relationship with the Divine can only flourish through interaction and participation with society. This requires us to extract ourselves from the cushioned comfort of our armchairs, and to step out of the front door to take part in the world.

Brass Crescent Awards, nominations now open - please vote (for me!)

The nominations for the Brass Crescent Awards for 2008 are now open. I'm pleased and honoured that Spirit21 has once again been nominated for Best Blog and Best Female Blog. There are some great sites that have been shortlisted, so do spend some time reviewing them all and enjoying the diversity and expanse of the 'Islamophere'.

And of course, if you feel that Spirit21 deserves it, please nominate it for Best Blog and Best Female Blog.

Closing date is December 19th, so get yourselves down there and happy voting!

The one about the priest, the rabbi and the mullah...

I have a theory, and I'm hoping you can help... I'm hoping that a bit of intercultural and interfaith humour can help bond us together and ease tensions. So I'm looking for jokes to bring together faiths.

Here is a starter for ten:

A priest, a rabbi and a mullah walk into a bar. The barman says "What is this, a joke?"

What does a Muslim country look like?

I've been in Turkey for the last few days, spending time between Istanbul, Ankara and Gaziantep, which is Turkey's sixth largest city, located in the south-east of the country.

Although Turkey may not be the UK's closest Muslim country in geographical terms (I believe Morocco may be closer), I think that historically and culturally it may be the closest as part of our European heritage.

The people I've met here are passionate about describing Turkey as the 'bridge' between Europe and the Middle East. Nowhere is that more poignant than here in Istanbul, where the residents point to the bridge across the Bosphorous that links Europe to Asia symbolically as well as physically. The architecture, landscape and climate feel at once both European and Asian, interwoven in an inexplicably successful manner.

The melange is on the one hand confusing. What is Turkey? What is its place? Is it European, or is it Middle Eastern? Does it rest on a history of fluid cultures, peoples, invasions and empires? Or is it embracing and driving forward the 21st century?

On the other hand, the paradoxes that face Turkey are the same ones that face the rest of the increasingly globalised borderless world, except Turkey's history and geography force it to face the seeming contradictions front and centre. Do affiliations relating to one part of a nation's identity, trump other ties, or can they co-exist? Or - and this is where Turkey's real potential for the future may lie - is a multifaceted and complex nation like Turkey which has several connections, going to drive forward a sustainable and peaceful global future?

These questions and challenges make Turkey a Muslim nation different to any other. It is at once traditional Muslim heartland, but also part of the European family. Its secular political system, which keeps religion firmly in the private domain, whilst its people are fervent about calling themselves Muslim, is quite distinct from other Muslim countries that I have visited.

I asked myself the question "Why does Turkey feel different to other Muslim countries that I've visited?" The answer may lie in examining our own expectations of what a Muslim country should or should not be. Or it may lie in Turkey's continuing volatile debate to understand its own identity as a European Muslim.

Audacity of a non-American Dreamer

Audacity of a non-American dreamer

Yes we can
Make a change
Yes we can
Find a way
Yes we can
Have a dream
Yes we can
Make it real

Is it words?
That may be
Is it words?
We will see
Is it words?
It's in our hearts
Is it words?
That's where we start

It's not one man
That brought us here
It's not one man
That made it clear
It's not one man
That said it's now
It's all of us
That showed us how

Change can come
Our eyes have seen
Change can come
But does that mean
That change will come?
We'll wait and see
For change to come
Change we must be

Shelina Zahra Janmohamed

Rahmah not Rubbish

We love to tell the stories of the life of the Prophet, but have we really learnt to apply them to our daily lives?

One of the favourite stories that Muslims like to recount is that of the woman who threw rubbish at the Prophet. We like it because it tells a simple human tale of compassion that wins out over malice. It is the triumph of patience and good manners over hatred.

The Prophet walked along a particular street every day on his way to conducting his affairs. From one of the windows, a woman who was angry at him for preaching the message of one God, would throw rubbish at him. Each day he would walk past, and each day she would throw her fetid refuse at him. One day, as he is walking past, there is no rubbish thrown at him.

Let us pause for a moment, before completing the story, and really truly think about what it must have been like to face this daily occurrence. We recount it very glibly, and don't really feel it in our hearts.

Dear reader, please take a moment to create this situation as though it is real to you, and feel the emotions that rise up within you. You are walking under a window, and a pile of stinking vegetable peelings, rotting banana skins, three day old meat trimmings and some used toilet roll hits your head. You live in a hot environment, and so the mixture of putrid waste is particularly disgusting. A voice rings out above you: "******* Muslims! Terrorist! Osama lover!" and the abuse continues. We can all easily fill in blanks of the insults that Muslims face everyday. I would feel angry, furious. That is the natural human response.

Now we return to the behaviour of the Prophet himself. One particular day, there is no rubbish thrown at him. He is concerned and so he enquires after the whereabouts of the woman. When he is advised that she is unwell, he goes to visit her to see the state of her health. She is shocked when he arrives, knowing full well the extent of her abuse. His kindness and patience in dealing with her cruelty wins her over, and she accepts the message that the Prophet has been preaching.

How much we love to tell this story! How proud we are of the Prophet's exemplary character! But we fail to apply this in our daily lives. Let us return to our imaginary scene above. Would we have asked about the well-being of our abuser? Would we have taken time to get to the bottom of why they abused us? Would we have dealt with compassion and reason with them?

Many Muslims today already do suffer this kind of abuse, from simple rude comments on the street, to derogatory content in the media, to smearing in political circles, to books which cause offence. Sometimes we find it hard to connect it to the stories of the Prophet because we have not internalised the human experiences of the individuals whom we rightly venerate. And this is because we have not put ourselves in the shoes of their real human experience.

When we see an attack on Islam or Muslims, we ignore the example of the Prophet to return violence with rahmah, compassion, and concern, and instead return it with anger, protest and in a handful of cases with violence. It is easy to wax lyrical about the Prophet's patience, but have we really ever imagined ourselves in the situation, as we did a moment ago? Can we now imagine how hard what he did was? When scorn is poured upon Muslims, upon Islam and heartbreakingly on those whom we respect, we must rise above the instinctive response to retaliate with base violence. Defending yourself, and asserting your rights is indeed critical. It is right and proper to rise up to the full extent of law and justice. But we have to also bear in mind the vision that Muslims ought to have for society: to create an equal, fair and tolerant world that is based on knowledge and compassion.

A visionary can only take a dream and turn it into reality by meeting abuse with knowledge. And when those who are thirsty to know about all the values that can make us the best of human, they will look to wherever they can find that knowledge. If Muslims are not offering accessible knowledge, then that thirst will be quenched wherever even the mirage of truth appears. Where there is abuse, it must be replaced with knowledge and compassion, rahmah. That is what happened when the Prophet stepped into the woman’s home. As the Qur'an says, when we face those who are ignorant, we should return it with peace; that is the spirit that leads to quantum change.

This article was published in The Muslim News

The Jewel of Medina - Sherry Jones meets Bridget Jones

The following review that I have written of the book has just been published by the BBC

A romantic telling of the life of one of the wives of Islam's prophet has caused controversy among some Muslims - and its publication has been indefinitely postponed in the UK amid fears of a violent reaction. But is The Jewel of Medina actually any good? Blogger Shelina Zahra Janmohamed is one of the few people in Britain to have read it.

The Jewel of Medina is a chest-heaving, brassiere-busting book of outrageously tacky historical romantic fiction.

Some parts of the media are suggesting that this book is at the forefront of defending free speech. The author wants it to reach out to solve our global problems of intercultural dialogue. Between them they had me rolling around on the floor laughing.

The book claims to tell the story of Aisha, the wife of the Prophet Muhammad, through her own eyes, from the age of six, through adolescence and into adulthood. But although she lives through one of the most dramatic periods of history, the narrative conveys little of the enormity of the changes of the era, and of which Aisha was a huge part.

Sherry Jones, the author, says she wanted her book to be "at once a love story, a history lesson and a coming-of-age tale".

In order to do so, she fabricates a storyline about a lover, Safwan, whom Aisha runs away with - but then decides to leave and return to Muhammad.

But this invented plot dominates, leaving barely any room for the real history and importance of her story.

Whether you believe her to be fact, fiction or fantasy, and Muslims believe her to be very real, Aisha is of great significance in global history. The one fifth of the world population who are Muslim regards her as the wife of the Prophet Muhammad and a "mother of the believers".

She is said to have been a leading scholar and teacher and recounted many of the traditions about the personality of Muhammad.

Muslims hold Muhammad, Aisha and other religious figures very close to their hearts, dearer to them than their own parents, and just as much to be respected, protected and defended.

Muslims believe they went through enormous hardship in order to keep the spiritual message of faith intact, and in return wish to honour their contribution. This is to be carried out in a measured and peaceful manner, in keeping with the spirit of Islam that advises returning harsh words with good ones, and malice with mercy.

With this in mind, I would have ignored this book and let it fade into obscurity. Allowing the book to be remembered only for the lack of interest it generated would have been the ultimate poetic justice. The original publisher pulled out - and those parts of the media who wanted to stir things up said Muslims wanted it banned.

So, in order to find out what the (manufactured) fuss was about, I found myself spending 12 dreary hours reading this cringe-worthy melodramatic prose. Even if you feel that it is your duty to read it in the defence of freedom of speech, don't do it, I beg you. Go out and enjoy the last sunny days of autumn, play with your children, watch paint dry. You'll thank me for it.

Bodice-ripper

So let's deal with its literary merits. If you're a man, you'll probably hate this bodice-ripper. If you like well-written prose, then you should steer clear too. What it does have going for it is pace and saucy pre-TV-watershed romance.
Open it randomly and you read churning phrases such as: "His eyes like honey flowed sweet glances over my face and body," or "Is your young bride ripe at last?" Grab a crumbling Flake and a pot of ice-cream.

The author claims she wants to humanise Aisha, to reach out to the Muslim world and to create debate. I found the opposite of this spirit in the book. Muslims will not recognise the characters and stories here because they vary so wildly with recorded history. As the copyright note makes clear, this is a work of fiction.
Take, for example, the night of "Hijrah". This was the moment when the first band of Muslims left the hostile city of Mecca to move to Medina where Islam flourished - a turning point in Islamic history. But the book changes events to place Aisha at the house of Muhammad.

Jones changes the very essence of these individuals, so their characters are at odds with historical traditions. Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet, as well as one of the great leaders of early Islam, is portrayed as conniving, hot-tempered and lascivious. The Islamic texts document him as a consistently staunch defender of truth and justice, an upstanding character.
So, if you drive a wedge between Muslims and others by fictionalising core characters, how can the book be a platform for debate?

Jones admits that she has introduced concepts that were absent from the period and place to help to create her story. For example, Aisha is put into purdah, seclusion, as a child, but this is an Indian sub-continental idea then unknown to Arabia.

A huge focus of Aisha's energies is to become the hatun, the lead wife, and make all the other wives bow to her. But hatun is a Turkish concept - and bowing is contrary to all Islamic teachings.

What we end up with is an outdated Orientalist reading of an exoticised woman.
Aisha's angst is the angst of 19th Century western writers who couldn't understand the culture they were observing. And when they couldn't understand, they maligned the ideas they found unfamiliar, such as veiling of women like Aisha.

The result is an awkward unconvincing story, created to fit a pre-existing pre-determined idea of what life for Muslim women ought to be like. The cover art is The Queen of the Harem, a 19th Century Orientalist painting of a European-looking woman.

Sex, sex and more sex

The most irritating thing is its constant obsession with sex. The author sees it everywhere and in everything, and makes Aisha do the same. Her life is reduced to a parody of a smutty Bridget Jones diary.

I lost count of the references to "child bride". Even till relatively modern times, marriage for women in their early teens was completely natural and common in parts of the world, including Europe.

Many Muslims will indeed be offended by this book, and they should make clear why they feel hurt. If our society upholds the right to offend, then the right to be offended goes with it. But it is respect and empathy for their feelings that Muslims want, not fear.

What we need for debate and discussion are accessible histories of all the key figures in Islamic history. As Muslims, instead of honouring these individuals blindly, we will accord them much more respect by opening our eyes to their achievements through critical re-examination of their lives. This cannot be done in an atmosphere of fear and intimidation.

Some Muslims oppose a style of writing and analysis that offers insights into the very human lives these individuals led.

I believe this opposition is misplaced, because that is what we already do with the words and deeds of the Prophet, known as the hadith: we read, empathise and re-apply the essence of those day-to-day experiences.

The crucial issue in creating positive understanding and dialogue through such writings is that they must be historically sound, and see the world through the experiences, morality and realities of the protagonists themselves.

Brass Crescent Awards - Nominations for 2008

Spirit21 was the winner of Best Blog and Best Female Blog last year at the Brass Crescent Awards. Nominations have now opened for 2008, and I'd ask readers and visitors to pop along and have a look. It's an exciting and vibrant initiative, which they describe in their own words as "an annual awards ceremony that honours the best writers and thinkers of the emerging Muslim blogosphere (aka the Islamsphere). Nominations are taken from blog readers, who then vote for the winners."

The first stage is for people to make nominations on the site. This phase is open till October 24th, after which the judges will create a shortlist.

If you've enjoyed reading spirit21, and you feel that it has made a positive contribution to the blogosphere, then I would humbly (and in true cheeky style) ask you to make a nomination in the Best Blog and Best Female Blog categories, to see if I can win again. Do remember to write a few words as they all help the judges to come to a decision.

Do you love this blog? Or like it? (or have at least a slightly warm fuzzy feeling when you come by?)

Place your nominations now... www.brasscrescent.org

Make Eid, Not War

Ramadan is a celebration of togetherness and tolerance, so let's break out the Eid sweets and put away the bitterness for good

The best Eids are those you experience as a child. You are elated with tingles of excitement which send shivers of pleasure and anticipation through you. That inner excitement as Eid approaches never disappears because in its essence Eid is a very simple matter. You have fasted all month, suffered headaches and growling stomachs, re-arranged the routine of daily life, read more Qur'an than in the whole year most probably, tried your best to be nice to friends and family, and reflected on your own life and where it is going. You have been working hard, physically and spiritually and so the joy of Eid is simple because it is a celebration of an achievement that looks daunting and unachievable. The joy is pure because the task was undertaken in order to get closer to the Divine. Eid is exciting because it celebrates renewal, refreshment and rejuvenation.

The physical and spiritual stretch has been enormous and as the month draws to its finale, you feel both exhausted and elated. It is the triumph of the achievement of spirit over body that makes Eid such an amazing event. As a community we experience more togetherness and unity than at any other time during Ramadan: we've all been in it together. Suddenly there is an explosion of love and trust. Until night before Eid. And then our spiritual and community synchronicity fizzles away under the weight of disagreement about the moonsighting.

After a month of tolerance and understanding our togetherness vanishes oh-so-suddenly. Is it sapped by the multitude of phone calls round the world to establish if a sliver of crescent has been spotted? Is it the plethora of text messages that ratchet up our bills to the mobile network companies? Is it the uncertainty of whether to cook Eid breakfast or not?

Ramadan is about unity of spirit. We reject the physical so we can concentrate on our connections as souls. As with hajj, when we fast, the outer is irrelevant. Each human being we come across who is in this state of worship is a beautiful thing for us to appreciate. Ramadan is the epitome of love, peace and goodwill to humanity. We know that "Allah cannot be contained anywhere in the universe except in the heart of the believer", and "there are as many ways to know Allah as there are human beings". Yet we insist on squabbling over our differences whether they be about Eid, the specifics of how to pray or do wudhu, what time the fast breaks, or how long or short out trousers, beards or headscarves should be.

We then approach the final days when Eid is almost upon us, and as soon as we see the exit gates back into the dunya, the spirit of unity that we worked so hard to cultivate is lost. Worse still, we we take pleasure in returning to the intolerant bickering like an ex-smoker returning to his beloved cigarettes. Was the peace, harmony and unity of Ramadan so transient and painful that we longed to return to the disagreements and divisive behaviours that we experience all year round?

If so, then it reveals more about us as a Muslim community than we might like to admit. If we had truly learnt to be as happy for our brothers and sisters as we are for ourselves, and if we had internalised the notion that we must celebrate difference, then we would not fall out over Eid the very second - and yes, it is the very single second - that Ramadan ends.

If others are celebrating Eid before us, we should be joyful for them. They have reached their triumphant end. But we too have joy, for we are blessed enough to have an additional day of Ramadan. Who would wish to pass up even a single minute of this month? If we are celebrating Eid before others, then what better blessing than to prepare the way for those who are still to come and join us to start our fresh journey into the year? It's Eid, let's relax and chill out. We managed to keep it together under the physical duress of Ramadan, let's not lose it over deciding which day is Eid, and then return to the mire of un-ending disputes the year-round. The Prophet says that any day that is better than the previous one is a day of Eid for the believer, so why not make it Eid every day?

On a more practical note, if we celebrate all of our Eids together, then we can have up to three days of festivities, joy and of course highly delicious and calorific sweets. Instead of being stingy and tightening our belts towards Eid, let us be joyful, generous and above all happy enough spend a trio of exuberant days celebrating not only the completion of Ramadan, but also the immense achievement of learning to accept, support and celebrate our differences.

This article was published in The Muslim News

What is the meaning of hijab?

Let Muslim Women Speak

This just posted on the Guardian website at Comment is Free. Swing by and leave a comment.

The last few weeks have been particularly eventful for Muslim women on Comment is Free. We would have felt extremely exhausted by all the excitement, were it not for the fact that - with the notable exception of Samia Rahman and Reefat Drabu - we were spared the ignominy of having to participate in the debate ourselves.

AC Grayling started us off by equating the headscarf with an iron shackle and stating that Muslim women are complicit in their own oppression. In the process of attacking the abhorrent denial of freedom that Muslim women can wrongly suffer, Grayling (in)advertently takes away the very same freedom of choice to decide to wear the hijab if we choose.

Julie Burchill bigged up Christianity, and in the process scathingly dismissed Islam and Muslim women. The only "Muslim" women she suggested as role models - Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Irshad Manji - were those she claimed had rejected Islam and were no longer Muslim.

Cath Elliott on the other hand says she's not holding out for women to emerge empowered from religious communities. She asks some good questions, such as why does God always appear to be a "He"? Why are the decision makers in politics and economics still predominantly male? But let's not be weasely as some pundits are: Muslim men often wriggle out of addressing these difficult questions by deflecting attention away from themselves; and it needs to stop.

Islamic theology has a strong framework for a blueprint of gender equality. I know that this is a deeply unfashionable thing for a Muslim woman to say, but let me explain.

In Islam, God is not gendered, not physically located, nor carnal. There is no original sin – the two genders were "created from a single soul" which is entirely pure and good. God is "like nothing else" we can imagine, and in that sense is neither male nor female. However, in order to know God, there are at least 99 qualities or names, that are characterised as masculine and feminine, and both are equally critical in learning about and approaching the divine.

Both genders have their own free will and have their own minds and must make their own contribution. Qur'anic and Islamic narrative has plenty of examples of such women: Mary's immaculate conception is a strong vision of a woman raising a child as the head of the family without any men present. Hagar raises her son while her husband is away, Aasiya the wife of Pharaoh stands up to her dictatorial bloodthirsty husband. All of them are celebrated as role models for both men and women.

Neither is marriage supposed to be a subjugation for women, but a completion and partnership for both man and woman. Every man that is held up as an example has a woman by his side (or you could argue it is vice versa) who is exemplary in her own right: Adam with Eve, Rachael with Moses, Mohamed with his wife Khadijah.

With such a framework and strong and robust archetypes to inspire Muslims, what went wrong? How did we end up at a place where Muslim women are not fully empowered and find themselves at the unprotected and miserable end of cultural oppression endorsed in the name of Islam? There is no denying that Muslim women do suffer and have not been granted the freedoms, choices and opportunities that are the right all human beings, and guaranteed by Islam. But somewhere between the ideals of faith, and the pleasure of patriarchal power, that respect and those rights were lost.

Which brings me neatly to the latest set of discussions about the proposed Muslim marriage contract. The idea of having a contract between the two parties is embedded in the very notion of Islamic marriage. The goal is to allow both parties to be clear about each other's expectations of the relationship. It would probably help most couples – Muslim or otherwise to have such an agreement.

The basic rights are guaranteed with or without the written document. These are that neither party can be forced to marry – they must do so of their own free will; that both parties may divorce should they choose, and that neither a woman nor a man can be prevented from marrying the person of their choice. As Reefat Drabu of the Muslim Council of Britain put it, the contract "is not a re-invention of the shariah."

So why the hoo-ha about the document?

Ed Husain flags up the core of the real problem beautifully by recounting the tale of an imam who refused to conduct a nikah in the absence of the bride's father's permission. But he draws the wrong conclusion in thinking that the contract papers would have saved the day. Since the imam's actions were clearly out of line with the principles of Islamic marriage it is unlikely that the document would have changed his mind.

Instead, what the document champions is the notion that the behaviour of the people who hold authority needs to be questioned, or as Drabu puts it, the need of a "change in behaviours". No authority should ever be too humble to be challenged. What it also highlights is the extreme need for accessible and easy to understand information.

What is most important about the concept behind the marriage contract should be the reiteration to Muslim women – and to Muslim men – that knowledge is a powerful thing, and that empowerment and questioning are two fundamental components of the Islamic spirit.

Knowledge is about learning and about being brave enough to ask questions, and about getting your voice heard: education and courage. Laying down challenges for the status quo can be a transformative rather than antagonistic activity.

What that means for many commentators is that we may say, believe and do things which don't fit in with the caricature of a Muslim woman who would be desperate to be "liberated" from Islam if only she knew it.

You may find our voices reverberating with the view that we like being Muslim women, we just want to make our lives better and in line with true Islamic principles. It would be nice if those who debate vociferously about Muslim women would therefore move over and give us the seat at the table that we're demanding

The MagicMuslims solve the Ramadan moonsighting issue...

The MagicMuslims are here again, using their cartoon superpowers to make the world a better place. They bring levity and humour to a world that needs a smile. They are 'Ordinary Muslims, with extraordinary powers.' Brought to you by Spirit21, if you haven't seen them before, you can read more here.

Muslims follow a lunar calendar, and the beginning of each month is signalled by the sighting of the new moon. This becomes a particularly frenzied and controversial affair for the highly auspicious month of fasting, Ramadan, and leaves many confused over how such a simple matter ever got so complicated...

Enjoy the cartoon.

Re-interpreting Ramadhan

Ramadhan seems to mean being hungry by day, and laying tables full of fatty fried foods and high calorie treats by night. Have we completely missed the month of fasting's messages of moderation and spiritual liberation?

As the credit crunch takes us into its firm grip, you might be forgiven for thinking that Muslims would be particularly prepared for tightening their belts. I put forward this bold thesis, as we get ready to begin fasting in the month of Ramadhan, a month highlighted for physical restraint and a rejection of excess. With years of experience in control and temperance, Muslims should be well-prepared to exercise moderation and eschew extravagance, but is that really the case?

The Qur'an advises those who believe, that fasting is prescribed for them, as it was for those who came before them so that "...you become of those who are conscious of God." Physical restraint in all spiritual traditions - which includes but is not limited to Islam - is directly related to a blossoming of the spirit, and therefore a closer relationship to the Divine.

If you listen to any explanation of the spiritual and physical meaning of Ramadhan and why Muslims fast, one of the key reasons that features will undoubtedly be along the lines of... to remember those less fortunate than ourselves who have less to eat than we do. It makes perfect sense as an explanation: Muslims deny themselves food and drink (and other physical pleasures) during daylight hours, which create painful hunger pangs and a parched state of dehydration that offers a mild and temporary hint of the traumas and difficulties that people suffering food shortages, droughts and famines around the world must suffer. But this very weak and brief pain is tempered by the knowledge that within some hours- even if the number of those hours reach double digits - we will be tucking into food and drink again.

It is of no doubt that the hunger and thirst that we experience during Ramadhan is something we would never ordinarily feel. And in that sense it allows us a peek into the lives of those who are truly suffering and can have no respite from the shortages of food and comforts that we take for granted. Our experience is incomparable in magnitude and it would be arrogant and patronising to complain that we now 'know how it feels'. But it can soften our hearts and at least give us a glimpse of the suffering that others go through, within the parameters of our own lives.

However, whilst we may be living the physical experience - albeit briefly - have we really grasped the meaning and spiritual experience? As soon as the adhaan rings out at maghrib time as the sun sets, we all settle down to heaving tables of our favourite foods. Tables buckle under the weight of specialities made for each individual's palette. Every child is cooked their favourite, starters are multifarious and highly calorific and main courses include several varieties. Not to mention the many sugar-filled and fatty desserts which slip so easily and pleasurably past our lips. For those from the sub-continent, think samosas, bhaajis, halwa, kebabs, pakoras. It comes as no surprise that many people leave the month of Ramadhan heavier and more rotund than when they started.

This is not to mention the hours and hours that are ploughed into culinary production. You might imagine that the reduced number of meals, and the reduction in appetite might mean that less cooking needs to be done. Instead, the kitchen is on full alert for a greater stretch of the day - and night. It is usually the women who lead the culinary preparation and it is right that the cooks want their families to be well-taken care of. But if we started to look holistically at the purpose of Ramadhan - to free ourselves from our physical indulgences and open up possibilities of spiritual exploration that we otherwise deny ourselves - we might find that all that additional time spent cooking could actually be used to maximise our gains from Ramadhan. By not eating, and by having to cook less, Ramadhan suddenly offers a huge amount of extra time (at least three hours saved by avoiding breakfast and lunch and perhaps more if dinner was a light simple meal) which could be devoted to activities we all claim we do not have time for - lingering over prayers, reading Qur'an, community service, mediation and reflection. If you don't cook that extra plate of samosas will it really make that much difference to the iftar experience? But if you spent all that extra time to read a few pages of the Qur'an – especially in the month of Ramadhan when the value and merit is so much greater - imagine what impact that could have.

Eating and drinking in the hours of dark becomes a festival of indulgence at the polar opposite of the hunger and thirst we underwent for a few paltry hours. We acquire bipolar disorder - riding high in the daylight hours and then binging at night. What does that say about our understanding of the very meaning of hunger as empathy, hunger as freedom from the physical and release into the spiritual? We have followed the literal rules of Ramadhan, but what about the meaning? Instead of physical restraint and spiritual freedom, we have greater indulgence and have blinded ourselves to the spiritual opportunities. Ramadhan is not only about feeling the pain of those less fortunate, but about being able to distinguish and implement the very concepts of moderation rather than excess.

In conversation with God...

As we approach the month of Ramadhan, it's time to get my head into shape, and my soul more tender so that they spiritual days of fasting can work their magic. At a prep-lecture last night, the speaker talked about the importance of engaging in munajat (moo-nah-jaat) with the Creator - intimate conversation. I was moved to think about how little we (for which read 'I') focus on creating space for ourselves and in dialogue with the Divine. Sadly, I think a lot translations of the Qur'an (and other Holy scripture) create the sense of distance, grandeur and scariness of the Creator, when perhaps we should be think more along the lines of best friend?

In that spirit, I rather liked this animated short by Matthew Walker called 'Operator' where a man calls the operator to get the number for God so he can have a chat. Spot on. Enjoy.

Temporary note: there seems to be a problem with the video running which i'm looking at fixing, in the meantime click on the link above, or please come back when the video is running properly. Sorry!

The Problem of the S-Word

Let the tabloids and politicians spend their time foaming at the mouth over words like Shar'iah, we should be spending our time pioneering services and solutions to meet our community needs

Shari'ah is once again big news. The Lord Chief Justice has said that, "There is no reason why Shari'ah principles, or any other religious code, should not be the basis for mediation or other forms of alternative dispute resolution." His comments follow a speech earlier in the year by the Archbishop of Canterbury who had been discussing the role of faith in the public sphere and had used the issue of Shari'ah courts as an example of where this could be done. The Lord Chief Justice commented about that speech: "It was not very radical to advocate embracing Shari'ah law in the context of family disputes, for example, and our system already goes a long way towards accommodating the Archbishop's suggestion.

Predictably, the tabloids went berserk, and sadly some of our sound-bite simplistic politicians followed suit. What a furore! This was a simple discussion about civil arbitration, a provision that is rooted deep in English law. As Madeleine Bunting wrote in the Guardian, "Because of the provision for mediation by a third party in English civil law, there is already a degree of accommodation for Shari'ah law in our legal system." In fact, she argues, if we don't want Shari'ah we would have to remove the "fundamental option of mediation outside the legal system when agreed by both parties… [which]…will require a pretty radical reform which would stir up a lot of opposition."

Clearly then, our politicians and media are not concerned with the actual essence of what the mediation process will be, but more upset about the word 'Shari'ah' itself.

The Shari'ah courts were a solution that Muslims created to deal with life for their new communities in the UK. It is important that we are clear that it is absolutely right and proper that a community should be able to create structures and institutions to support its individuals and families to operate smoothly and according to its principles and values. Of course those structures should and do operate within the law of the land. However, their creation was based on models familiar to the communities from their countries of origin, where the decision-making role of the 'court' was its primary purpose. The courts in those countries would have been supported by more accessible and prevalent mosques and Imams, and a community that was most likely majority Muslim. Most of these support services - which acted as buffers to problems and disputes before the final limit of legal jurisdiction - are not easily available to us in Britain.

So today, Muslims turn to bodies like Shari'ah courts as much for their Islamic decision-making status, as increasingly for their pastoral services. However, dealing with disputes requires counselling, therapy and support before a case can reach any final definitive verdict, all of which are an extension of a legal court's traditional role. Individuals who are trapped in a dispute - whether marital or of another personal nature - want both support and recognition for their distress, which today they find may not be available elsewhere. They wish to feel the supportive hand of guidance and authority in resolving their pain based on the same principles by which they try to govern their own lives. It is therefore exactly in this grey area between civic dispute and any mediation ruling that an arbitration service based on Islamic principles can add tremendous value to our community.

Those who participate in the existing Shari'ah courts give a great deal of their time and energies, but in order to achieve this goal they need more skills and resources, more focus, more participation from the community to meet the growing needs for pastoral care. We need more women, more counsellors and more youth workers to name but a few of the skills required.

Most importantly what they need - what Muslims need - is to give themselves the freedom to think more freely about the purpose and function of such resources within the community. We must not diminish the need and importance of such mediation and resolution centres. They are a vital component of Muslim community institutions. But thinking of them within the prism of decision-making only, carries so much history and expectation with them that sometimes it can become impossible to create new models of operation.

Will we ever find the freedom to dive into the very essence of our needs and pioneer new tools and methodologies to meet our changing times and circumstances? Ali ibn Abi Talib, the fourth Caliph says, "Do not bring up your children the way that you were brought up, because they live in different times." We live in a different time, and we need to pioneer new solutions.

Note: Cartoon is taken from Spirit21's own MagicMuslims superheroes, visit www.spirit21.co.uk/magicmuslims

The only 'proper' Muslim is a non-political one

Last week Hazel Blears has announced that the government would fund a "Theology board" for Muslims in the UK. In an interview with Radio 4, she said lots of nice - and true - things about Islam: that it is peaceful, that it is a religion of compassion, and then Kaboom! She claimed that this board will allow for a "proper interpretation" of Islam. I felt like I was stuck in the blurry screen waves of a bad 1970's sitcom which was transporting us back to the Middle Ages, to a time when the Government dictated to the public what is and isn't proper in religion. And this was indeed, about as funny as aforementioned sitcom.

The government has stated that it is doing its best to tackle Islamists who are the source of extremism. According to the government, Islamists are all without exception terribly violent and bloodthirsty. Islamists are apparently the cause of the world's problems - earthquakes in China, climate change, food shortages, the fuel crisis and poverty and malnutrition to name but a few. The only good Islamist is an ex-Islamist. The government has then used this premise to go on to define its entire policy about Muslims in the UK around the issue of security, ignoring issues of economics, society, education and deprivation.

The term 'Islamist' was once applied to anyone who used Islam as a political ideology. Muslims who do not have a political ideology of any sort are okay and need not be worried about being infected by Islamism. But the problem is that the term 'Islamism' has now been stretched to mean any Muslim who is political.

Blears insinuates that Muslims who are not politically active are the preferred kind of Muslim. She said in a speech to the Policy Exchange: "The fact remains that most British Muslims, like the wider community, are not politically active, do not sit on committees, and do not attend seminars and meetings. They are working hard, bringing up families, planning their holidays, and going about their business." Jack Straw was also quite clear about this two years ago: you can't be a Muslim woman in niqab and visit your MP to engage in the political process.

So if you are a poor confused brainwashed Muslim who cannot tell the difference between someone who is peddling violence and someone who is rocking their head with Britolerant chanting, then the government is going to help you decide your opinions, don't you worry, poor little Muslim.

The stance of the government takes the handful of criminals who have engaged in violent activity and states that this is a perverted interpretation of Islam, and needs to be exposed as such. Tony Blair said in a discussion with young Muslims "we have to accept that this is therefore a Muslim problem, and a problem with Islam." I reject this utterly.

This is a criminal issue, which needs to be exposed and rejected as such. The criminals are invoking the mantle of Islam as protection. The only way to get rid of them is for everyone together - including Muslims and the government - to isolate those horrible violent activities as outside the philosophy of Islam. There is no need for a 'proper' interpretation of Islam, because these activities are not to do with Islam. Rooting the problem falsely within Islam has created a hostile and prejudiced environment where the criminal activities cannot be properly attacked. The government doesn't like to hear this being said, but this is the only sensible right-minded way forward.

The recent refusal of ministers to attend IslamExpo is a case in point. Irrespective of their opinion of the organisers, it was a chance to engage with forty thousand Muslims who want to create and settle into a comfortable peaceful British Islam. It smacks of an increasing confusion on the part of the government who are now not only failing to engage with Muslims, but are actively disengaging with those Muslims who are working to a positive peaceful agenda. Blears is playing a dangerous and - in my opinion - futile game which can only backfire as it will leave the vast majority of peaceful Muslims feeling resentful at being singled out for undemocratic dictatorship of their religious views, something with which the government has no business.

My government - the one that I dutifully pay my taxes to, the one that I actively engage with through support and through criticism as part of my duties as subject and citizen, the one that I cast my vote for (or against), the one that I have represented abroad on official business, the one that I support through my labour resources and contribution to the economy - this government tells me that I cannot be a Muslim and engage in politics. Government you have failed to understand that it is I, and millions of others who engage in political activity, that have put you into a position of power. And this statement refers not just to the Labour party, but to any party in power, so Conservatives take note too. Your holding of the reins of power is at the behest of those who vote you in.

If our government makes a statement that a Muslim with a 'proper interpretation' of Islam is one that does not engage in political activity then our government does not have a 'proper interpretation' of its role and authority.

I wrote a piece a year ago stating "Five Things I love About Being a British Muslim Woman." In it I emphasised the importance as a Muslim of contributing to the nation that you are part of, and that part of being a contributing member is to be proud of what is good in that nation and to offer positive criticism to make the country a better place.

I continue to be committed to the people of Britain and to making our country a flourishing, forward-looking nation. In return the government has made a mockery of Muslims like me who want to engage in the political process by the rules of democracy, shared values and freedom of speech that the government claims underpin our shared vision of society. And the government is also making a mockery of the claims of democracy and freedom of speech by illegitimately excluding from political participation those whose opinions the government does not like. The government needs instead to think clearly for itself and avoid pandering to any which old voice which is popular in fear-mongering circles for their actions are undermining both the positive goals of social cohesion as well as the political process.

Blears said that "You can't win political arguments with the leaders of groups... who believe in the destruction of the very democratic process of debate and deliberation". By excluding the Muslim opinions that the government doesn't want to engage with through the devious method of saying that being a political Muslim is unpalatable, it is the government itself who is destroying the democratic process of debate.

The Global Ummah Needs to Start Local

Muslims are rightly proud of the diverse global ummah, but we should be more willing to embrace the diversity of the British Muslim communities, and channel it to drive forward new ideas

Outside of the period of hajj in Makkah, the UK is home to the most diverse Muslim community in the world. The extraordinary mix of ethnic origins and opinions from across the theological spectrum make it a unique moment in the history of the Muslim world, representing a microcosm of the diversity that Islam has always aspired to.

Islam and Muslims have travelled fluidly through history - across the Arabian Peninsula on horseback, by boat along the Eastern coasts of Africa and across to India and into the South Indian seas. It was often trade, by sea, or across the Silk Road, that flung Muslims eastward to China and Indonesia and west towards Morocco and Spain. In fact, records of the slave trade to the Americas suggested that Muslims had made it across the Atlantic long ago.

The re-drawing of national boundaries, wars, post-colonialism and the ease of travel and communication which have been the driving forces of the twentieth century, have once again shuffled Muslims around the world. Their movement has been mostly into Europe and North America, and nowhere has this redistribution and melting pot of Muslims been more apparent than in the UK.

In 2001, the British census estimated that there were 1.6 million Muslims in the UK, a number which is now forecast to be close to 2 million. This makes Muslims the second largest faith group in the country, and Muslims make up more than half of the non-Christian faith community. Almost three quarters of Muslims in the UK are from an Asian ethnic background. Those from Pakistan make up 43 per cent, from Bangladesh 16 per cent and Indians and other Asians make up 14 per cent. We probably could have guessed that. But did you know that 17 per cent consider themselves to be from a 'white' background, whether that is White British, Turkish, Cypriot, Arab or Eastern European? And did you know that 6 per cent of Muslims are of Black African origin, from North and West Africa, particularly Somalia.

We also know that all these figures are out of date, and show little of those of Middle Eastern origin who have joined us on this green and pleasant land in the last few years. If you haven't spotted your country on the list, then you make up that great overlooked fact of British Muslims - that they come from all the blessed corners of this God's great earth.

But so what?

First, it is important to take note of these astounding facts. We live in an historic time and place for Muslims. We have more ideas, cultures and perspectives in a concentrated space than ever before, to inspire, motivate and produce more than ever before. If ever we were to create something overwhelming, tumultuous and inspirational, then the time has never been more ripe. The great age of Muslim learning flowered because minds were open to new ideas, perspectives and cultures. Thinkers would wait eagerly for new books and learnings to travel across the ethnicities and languages of the Muslim world.

Islam is also about appreciating different people and knowing them. The Qur'an is quite clear about this, and Muslims love to quote that Allah created people into "tribes and nations" so that we may "know each other". We take positive pride in the diversity across the global Ummah. We claim that we love all our brothers and sisters, and that we feel their pain, wherever and whoever they are! Of course, this statement of bravado only lasts as long as we don't have to go to a mosque that 'belongs' to those of a different ethnicity. As long as we don't have to marry them. As long as we don't have to have children with them. As long as we don't have to work in communities together. There are exceptions, but they are relatively few.

We will protest vehemently for the Palestinian cause, and we may deplore the terrible situation in Iraq, but do we know any Palestinians or Iraqis here in the UK? It is easier to care for those thousands of miles away, then to look after those on our doorstep.

Nowhere in the world do we have more opportunity than in the UK, to put into action the ethos that the Prophet taught us - to treat all human beings as equal in worth, and to appreciate our variations and differences. At no time in history have we had the opportunity to infuse so much culture, so many ideas and so much vivacity into the future of Muslims.

History will judge us harshly if we remain enclosed in our ethnic and ideological bunkers. Our future generations will be even less forgiving if we fail to create the magic of cultural fusion and intellectual development that history has shown is in the DNA of the Muslim spirit.

This article was published in The Muslim News
Statistics quoted can be found in greater detail at the National Office of Statistics