12/01/2004|||110186137745184749||||||

BELEAGUERED IN BRITAIN?

I've been trawling through the Guardian's lengthy special forum, "Young, Muslim and British". Although I haven't had time to read all the extra on-line content, I'm struck by the tone of the participants in the newspaper report. There's no shortage of references to Islamophobia: one thirtysomething entrepreneur plans to move to Dubai so that he can "practise my religion freely". But I can't help noticing that very few of them address the enormity of the 9.11 atrocities. Or if they do, it's only as a cue to recounting the backlash from dim-witted racists. I'm not a Muslim, but I'm sometimes mistaken for one. Having been called a "Paki" and "one of Bin Laden's lot" by an idiot who launched a pre-emptive debate on my doorstep, I sympathize with the paper's respondents. But still...

Guardian writer Sarfraz Manzoor, who watched the forum's proceedings, seems a little troubled too. Sorry for the length of this post, but his brave and incisive piece is worth quoting at length:

"It has become a commonplace to note that British Muslims, like Muslims everywhere, have felt victimised since September 11 2001. To actually hear some of the experiences made for grim listening, and perhaps it is not surprising that when a community feels embattled it becomes defensive....

"There were the usual complaints against the portrayal of Muslims in the media and the British government's foreign policy, and a general grumble that anyone even dared to ask about the loyalty and commitment of British Muslims to their country. This reluctance to be self-critical may be partly a result of feeling embattled and not wanting to wash dirty laundry in front of others, but I think it is also owing to a failure of creative thinking from British Muslims. Put simply, there is a tendency to want to have the cultural cake and eat it too: to say yes we are different and no we are not different at the same time.

"The fact is that many people in the UK and elsewhere have concerns about British Muslims, and to just argue that they are misguided will neither reassure them nor provide a route towards conciliation. "Too many of the self-proclaimed leaders among British Muslims seem more keen on furthering other agendas of politics, self-interest and self-promotion than in chiselling away at the tough questions. That requires a more rigorous degree of thinking and, thankfully, there were some signs of it in the hall....

"The parents of the group who gathered in that hall could never have attended such a meeting; that such a forum can now take place is a sign of progress. These young men and women are eloquent and not short of confidence. The challenge they, and all British Muslims, face is to not withdraw into defensiveness or a predictable reheating of old complaints, but instead to think deeper and harder about some of the issues that were discussed and to have the courage to offer some new answers."

UPDATE: Melanie Phillips has a critique, and takes aim at scholar Tariq Ramadan.

|||Clive|||http://clivedavis.blogspot.com/2004/12/beleaguered-in-britain-ive-been.html|||12/01/2004 01:34:00 am|||||||||

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