Contests over Muslim identity

THE BATTLE FOR BRITISH ISLAM

Reclaiming Muslim Identity from Extremism

Sarah Khan with Tony McMahon

Saqi Books; 256 pages; £14.99

SOUTH ASIAN ISLAM AND BRITISH MULTICULTURALISM

Amir Ali

Routledge; 159 pages; Rs 595

The crisis in Islam has fuelled a boom in the so-called “Islamic” literature amid a growing popular interest in a subject, once regarded as the preserve of specialists. It’s not just the readership that has gone mainstream; more and more books are being written by generalists – media people, rights activists, even ordinary concerned Muslims — bringing diverse perspectives to the issue. Which, of course, is a good thing but publishers, eager to cash in on the boom, are up lapping up anything that comes their way. Inevitably, there's a lot of chaff to be separated from the grain.

The two books under discussion are among the more serious contributions to the debate; and meant for two very different audiences. While Sarah Khan’s study of the turmoil in British Muslim communities is aimed at general readers, Amir Ali’s take on South Asian Islam and British multiculturalism is a rather dense academic enterprise for eggheads. Both write with a great deal of passion and are not shy of being polemical. Especially Mr Ali who, for most part, sounds like playing the Devil’s advocate (the “devil” being Muslim fundamentalism) as he rails against metropolitan liberals over what he sees as their patronising and sneering attitude towards ordinary, less educated, unsophisticated and inarticulate Muslims unable to argue their case in propa'h English before the western media. 

Ms Khan, a British-born rights campaigner, has witnessed Muslim extremism from close quarters while her co-author is a journalist and counter-extremism consultant with whom she has worked on de-radicalisation programmes. “I have witnessed how Islamist extremism has wreaked havoc on the lives of British Muslims....I have seen at first hand how this ideology has ripped families apart,” she writes.

Being an “insider”, hers is an authentic and credible voice that will resonate with Muslims everywhere. Her book is packed with information — both in terms of statistics and anecdotal evidence. It is noteworthy, as she points out, that 68 per cent of Britain’s nearly three million Muslims are from the Indian subcontinent; and they’re particularly prone to extremism. Some might find Ms Khan’s account of the scale of the problem alarming, but as someone who has closely tracked the spread of British Muslim extremism for well over a decade I think she’s spot on though I hesitate to endorse her enthusiasm for the government’s contentious counter-extremism “Prevent” programme, which regards every Muslim as a potential suspect. 

Ms Khan also deals with the broader global crisis in Islam, but it’s her focus on British Muslims — a major recruitment target for militant jihadi groups in Syria and Iraq — that is the real meat on the bone. Good on information and analysis, it is an important book that deserves to be read widely.

Mr Ali teaches political theory at Jawaharlal Nehru University and his book derives from the research he did while he was a visiting Fellow at Oxford University.  It is not for the uninitiated, and lay readers are likely to struggle. Shorn of the minutiae and repetitive academic jargon, the book is a stinging critique of Western, especially British, liberals for their allegedly condescending attitude towards Muslims. Indeed, they almost come across as part of an unstated agenda to undermine Islam and humiliate its followers.

 Which includes a campaign to impose values of European Enlightenment on what liberals regard as “unenlightened” and “undemocratic” Muslim migrants, the book argues. Basically telling them: If you wish to live here, better do what we tell you to do.

Mr Ali spends a lot of time on the Rushdie affair as an example of what he sees as liberal intellectual arrogance and insensitivity towards Muslim religious sensitivities “hurt” by Satanic Verses. He accuses them of distorting the debate by reducing it to a free speech issue disregarding, he says, even the possibility that Muslims might have been genuinely hurt. As I remember, the liberal position was a lot more nuanced. It was not that they didn’t recognise the Muslim hurt; the issue was whether it gave the protesters the right to incite violence and hold the entire society to ransom. 

As a liberal myself, I found the Muslim reaction a touch hysterical and I opposed the Indian government’s ban on Rushdie’s novel. Not because I believed in the sanctity of absolute free speech, or didn’t care for Muslim sensitivities, but precisely for the reasons cited above. Plus the danger of setting a bad precedent. We’re still paying the price for that ban in the form of competitive clamour for censorship on grounds of religious “sensitivities”.

Finally, on multiculturalism, the book’s big hook, there are few fresh insights. For example, the Deobandi influence on South Asian Muslim migrants is well known and has been widely debated, especially in relation to extremism. The only new element is the connection it seeks to establish between multiculturalism and the “pattern of interaction” between Deobandi Muslims and the colonial British state in the 19th century.

Ultimately, though, my big disappointment is that perhaps without meaning to, the author ends up rationalising the obsessive Muslim sense of victimhood that has prevented them from any serious introspection. 

The reviewer is author of India’s Muslim Spring: Why Is Nobody Talking About It?