Indigo Jo Blogs

The Guardian: Less Cookson, more Ali: Tyneside town finds hidden Muslim history

The Guardian today printed this feature on the history of South Shields, a town in the conurbation of Newcastle in England, which has a history of settlement by Yemenis going back to the 19th century when an Arab sailors' boarding house was opened there (and there were Arab soldiers in the area during Roman times as well, from Iraq of all places, helping to guard Hadrian's Wall). The town's mosque was where the boxer Muhammad Ali held his religious marriage, on a visit to support a local boxing club. However, a pleasantly interesting part was how integrated the community became:

[Tina Gharavi, director of a film about Muhammad Ali's visit] said the most striking thing about the Muslim community was how peacefully integrated it had become. "It's hard to make a film about nothing happening but that's the truth, not much has happened because the integration has been successful. They are the first Muslim settled community in Britain and there were a few letters to the paper, but when you follow and read the discussions it was all about integration. Local women were marrying Yemenis and they were saying it was because they didn't drink and they made good husbands. There's certainly not a debate about the fact that they are Muslims.

While I'm not suggesting that all Muslim men today should follow these sailors' examples, it's nice that they were known (back in the dark ages!) as good husbands - unlike some yobs from Algeria who were busted in Finsbury Park last week for running a criminal empire out of a street near there, who were known for harrassing "unsuitably dressed" women. However, the community also spread to Cardiff, and the imam at one of the mosques in the Cardiff Bay district is (or was, in 2000 when I visited) of Yemeni origin (his daughters married in Yemen) and comes from Newcastle. It's one of the most pleasant and peaceful mosques I've ever prayed in.

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Recently it's become fashionable for people concerned about the state of our country to talk of something called segregation. Trevor Phillips, in a famous speech in 2005, which touched off the phony debate on multiculturalism, told us that we were "sleepwalking into segregation". The day before yesterday, Dr Anthony Seldon, a biographer of our former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who also happens to be the headmaster of a famous "public school" (meaning an elite private school), alleged that schools like his perpetrate some sort of educational "apartheid" in a speech to a headteachers' conference, and this includes state-run grammar schools, which still exist in a few places like Kent.

Continue reading "Segregation and apartheid ... in the UK?" »

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BBC - Radio 4 - News and Current Affairs - Recruiting Muslim Spies

This is a BBC Radio 4 programme about attempts by the British security services to recruit Muslims as informants, supposedly to help them track down terrorists. People allege that they have been pressured to join by threats related to their immigration status or past criminal activities, and on one occasion setting up an arrest in Pakistan as an attempt to force them into joining. The reasons why Muslims are reluctant to become spies is obvious - it's against Islam and specifically forbidden in the Qu'ran, which is made clear in the programme, but another aspect not discussed in the programme is the fact that employees of the security services are required to lie about their occupation to even their close family, by telling them they work for the Foreign Office or the Government Communications Bureau. Given Muslims' past experience with the security services elsewhere, particularly in the USA where people were set up by government agents recruiting for fake terrorist plots, I don't believe MI5 et al will have much luck in recruiting Muslims to inform on each other.

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Regular readers will know that I rarely use this site to preach, preferring to use it as a column in which to defend both Muslims' rights and also other causes I support. However, the recent Policy Exchange report, which relied on the work of "Muslim" researchers who were conveniently unavailable, supposedly on a spiritual retreat in Mauritania, when the BBC exposed the basis of the report as unreliable, has aroused one of the more unedifying tendencies of some of our Muslim youth - that of suspicion against other Muslims, in particular of drawing connections where none might exist and of presuming guilt where there is merely association.

Continue reading "Suspicious Muslim minds" »

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The BBC yesterday reported that a Muslim dentist in Bury, near Manchester, has been brought before a disciplinary tribunal accused of demanding that a Muslim woman wear a hijab to his practice if she wanted to be treated (HT: UZ). He allegedly told her she could not register with his practice unless she covered her hair, a rule he apparently only applied to Muslim women. There is more on this at the Manchester Evening News, which I found via Dhimmi Watch, having expected that he would pick up on this.

Continue reading "Dentists as moral arbiters" »

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BBC NEWS | UK | Radical books in London libraries

A report by the so-called Centre for Social Cohesion, a project of the right-wing think tank Civitas, has found that libraries in Tower Hamlets, the London borough with the densest Muslim population, have Islamic book collections they say are dominated by "radicals" and Wahhabis. The report, entitled Hate on the State and written by James Brandon and Douglas Murray ([1], [2]), can be downloaded in PDF form here.

Continue reading ""Radical" books in east London libraries" »

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Holocaust Denial Undermines Islam (By Shaykh Hamza Yusuf) at HAhmed.com

This is a brilliant article ma sha Allah on Holocaust denial, to which I've noticed a lot of Muslims are susceptible, and the Islamic notion of tawatur, of an event being known of through a multitude of witnesses, so it is proven to have happened beyond reasonable doubt:

In the case of the Holocaust, the facts are clear and transmitted from multiple sources. Tens of thousands of Jewish and other individuals who survived the death camps and other horrors of Nazi Germany lived to tell of it. Nazis were brought to trial, evidence was presented in court, and they were convicted. Mass graves were found, and gas chambers were discovered, which were clearly not delicing rooms as some callously claimed. The ovens exist and cannot be reduced to an efficient way of preventing cholera outbreaks or disposing of victims of starvation. I have personally met many Holocaust survivors and their children. I have seen tattoos. I have also heard firsthand accounts of the horrific events. The numbers and details of such events may be legitimate areas of research and inquiry for scholars, but questioning whether the events took place at all undermines the epistemological basis of our collective knowledge. Muslims, of all people, should be conscious of this as their religion is predicated on the same epistemological premises as many major events in history, such as the Holocaust. To deny such things is to undermine Islam as an historical event. That a “conference” examining the historicity of the Holocaust should take place in a Muslim country hosted by a Muslim head of state is particularly tragic and, in my estimation, undermines the historicity of the faith of the people of that state.

I should add that, with what I know of the society I grew up in, I do not believe that the entirety of western society could have chosen to believe a lie for sixty or more years, such that it becomes established as fact without any serious questioning. The only people who have questioned it are those with an axe to grind, usually relating to continuing racism against Jews or relating to the exploitation of the Holocaust in advocacy for Israel, and their alternative explanations are almost as damning of the Nazis as the Holocaust itself (they do not address the issue of why Jews were in camps at all, or else they justify it). I also don't believe that the conference in Iran to which Shaikh Hamza refers was intended as a serious piece of honest debate, even if Ahmadinejad really does believe that the Holocaust was not real or was seriously exaggerated; it was intended merely to cause shock and outrage in the west in response to the Danish cartoon affair. In reality, it made him look ridiculous and made him a greater embarrassment for the Muslims than he already was.

Posted by Indigo Jo at 12:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (20) | TrackBacks (0)

Technorati Tags: alan+craig, mega+mosque, christian+peoples+alliance, tablighi+jamaat

BBC Radio last week broadcast a programme called Turning Right, which probed the British National Party's lame attempts to hide the thuggish and criminal natures of a number of its major activists, including its leader, Nick Griffin. Griffin made little effort to conceal his real opinions, asserting that he now believed what he had to, because he would otherwise be extradited to France ("otherwise", for example, includes maintaining his devotion to Holocaust denial). The programme also gave airtime to an outfit called the Christian People's Alliance, which they claim drove down the BNP's support in its white, working-class east London "heartland" by concentrating on local issues. However, the CPA and the BNP are on the same side on one issue: opposition to the so-called "mega mosque", which is proposed for a site near to the main Olympic stadium. An examination of material issued by the CPA, however, reveals its reliance on misinformation and bigotry.

Continue reading "United bigots of the "mega-mosque" campaign" »

Posted by Indigo Jo at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

BBC Radio 4 - I'm a Muslim, Get Me out of Here!

This programme (to which you can listen until this time next week) examines the phenomenon of educated, professional Muslims leaving the UK, both for the Gulf, particularly the UAE, and their old homelands, particularly Pakistan. A number of people are interviewed, including a couple who are not of immigrant stock and have no obvious bolt hole, but still want somewhere better to bring up their children than the UK.

I must say I feel a little uneasy about all this, not least because many of those leaving are the wealthier Muslims, who may well end up leaving the less well-off behind. However, since a favourite hijrah destination is the Emirates, how long do British Muslims really have to live the high life there? The place may not be as repressed and repressive as Saudi Arabia, but it (or parts of it) still has a reputation as a place where you can get in serious trouble for getting on the wrong side of the wrong people, and unless the laws are changed in the next few years, neither you nor your children will get citizenship unless you are a female who married a local, which means that as soon as they decide there's not enough money to go round, they will chuck you out. I appreciate some people's urge to do hijrah, but it's not as easy as taking a highly-paid job in Dubai (or going to teach English) and thinking you're secure.

Posted by Indigo Jo at 11:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (1)

Recently, Umar Lee attracted the attention of the notorious frothing bigots of Little Green Footballs and Jihad Watch with three postings ([1], [2], [3]), the first two comparing them to the lynch mobs who murdered African Americans in the early and mid 20th century, such as those in the notorious public hanging picture, which he dubbed a "1950s Little Green Footballs gathering". I have no idea what motivated him to bring up the issue; I've glanced at LGF a few times since I first saw it in late 2003 or early 2004 and rarely glance at Jihad/Dhimmi Watch anymore either. Interesting that this takes place just as the controversy over blogging conduct hit, with Tim O'Reilly (of O'Reilly computer books fame) attempting to get everyone to sign up to a code of conduct (see previous entry). In today's Guardian, Jonathan Freedland suggested that the "blogosphere risks putting off everyone but point-scoring males" and offered what he sees as a representative slice of online debate:

So you're at a public meeting on, say, the war in Iraq and the main speaker has just sat down. Someone in the audience rises to declare the speaker is talking crap, but that's typical of him because he knows nothing and it's a scandal that he's paid for the rubbish he turns out. A second man agrees that the speech was trash, but tells the first man he should crawl back under his stone because he never says anything worth listening to. A third man wonders why the speaker didn't mention Israel, especially given his Zionist-sounding last name.

The first man is now shouting at the second man, insulting him for insulting him first. A woman gets up to make a point about the war in Iraq, but she is rapidly drowned out by a fourth and fifth man now debating Israel and the Palestinians. A sixth man compares the speaker to Hitler and proceeds to read out a 1,500-word article he read somewhere six years ago. If that has an oddly familiar ring, it may be because you're spending a lot of time online, specifically in the new and still lawless world known as the blogosphere.

Continue reading "Muslims, Jews, "punks" and bigotry" »

Posted by Indigo Jo at 12:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (17) | TrackBacks (0)

BBC NEWS | Politics | Marriage visa age to rise to 21

The Government have announced that they are raising the minimum age for acquiring a marriage visa to the UK from 18 to 21, ostensibly in order to reduce the number of forced marriages which go on. They may also have to pass an English test. Sunny at Pickled Politics agrees and said he'd "go as far as preferring 24".

Continue reading "Marriage visa age to rise" »

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In the past couple of weeks, three events led to much heated discussion about the idea of "communities" in the West, and "community leaders" in particular: a Policy Exchange report (PDF) suggesting, among other things, that Muslim organisations were unrepresentative and that the Government has "been listening to [Muslims] in the wrong way", a speech by David Cameron comparing "those who want to separate British Muslims from the mainstream" with the BNP, and a statement by Independent Jewish Voices, "a group of Jews in Britain from diverse backgrounds, occupations and affiliations who have in common a strong commitment to social justice and universal human rights", against what they see as the misrepresentation by established Jewish community bodies of Jewish opinion as being in support of Israeli policy. The full list of signatories is here.

Continue reading "An attack on the idea of communities" »

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Umar Lee recently posted a ten-part history on the rise and fall of the "salafi da'wah" in the USA (last post, with comments and links to the other nine, here). The whole series made me thoroughly glad that I was guided away from it (alhamdu lillah); although I was aware that "salafis" were fighting amongst themselves and that attacks were being posted on various "salafi" websites, such as the infamous Salafi Publications and TROID (who are blamed, to a large extent, for causing the acrimonious schism which took place around the turn of this century), I did not realise how bitter it was and how much social dislocation it caused.

The last post in the series is certainly among the most commented-on articles in the history of the Muslim blogosphere; other comments from Tariq Nelson, Ginny Quick, Kashif, Jinnzaman and Austrolabe, with an interesting perspective from Jinnzaman: that the persuasive effects of traditional Islamic websites and web forum contributions were important in reducing "salafi" influence.

I have a few comments of my own to make, which are too long to make at Umar's own blog.

Continue reading "Reflections on Salafism's rise and fall" »

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The Conservative Party leader David Cameron wrote in today's Observer about the "British values" issues which were under much discussion this past week. Of merit is his debunking of stupid suggestions like having a Veterans' Day (when we already have Remembrance Sunday and have done for decades) and putting flags out on the lawn. On the other hand, he and his party's vice-chairwoman, Sayeeda Warsi, are on the offensive regarding Muslim girls being forced into marriages and being denied education by their families. I wonder how they intend to tackle this - perhaps they might do away with tuition fees and re-institute grants for promising students whose parents just don't want to pay? Or perhaps he just prefers to lecture.

And the Observer can think of no better way of illustrating this than ... a picture of a woman in niqab on the front page of their website (view image). It's not really illustrative of women being denied education, though, because you'll find plenty of women in niqab in many British universities. I intend to complain to their readers' editor (reader@observer.co.uk) and suggest you do as well. Besides the fact that a lot of white Brits aren't all that patriotic anyway, the Muslims who most offend "British values" are the idiotic men with their offensive placards and slogans.

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How racist is Britain? Julian Baggini on why he doesn't believe most white Britons are racists - even though he heard racist language almost everywhere he went (from today's Guardian)

This was in the Guardian today, and follows the author when he lived for six months in Rotherham in south Yorkshire. What he found was that local white and Asian people saw little of each other and that white people commonly called the Asians "Pakis" without apparently intending it as a term of abuse, but rather as "simply a matter-of-fact description of the ethnic origins" of the person referred to.

The article barely touches on the fact that Asians as well as whites use the term, but does not show anything of the extent to which they do. In some sections of the Asian community, particularly among the younger generation, the term is used quite commonly and certainly not as an insult, and a similar term "Guji" exists to mean Gujarati. I was once in a British Pakistani friend's house and was eating his mother's food (lots of it) with a Gujarati convert to Islam from Jainism. Referring to the food, he said "I wasn't cut out to be a Paki", meaning to eat so much! Nobody took the slightest offence. When my friend said that he was "an English Paki, not a Paki Paki", his mother did reprimand him though.

I wouldn't compare it to the "N word", even though some black Americans have "reclaimed" that term, and even though it's just a corruption of the Spanish for black, because it has a much longer history and carries particular offence for some people. Even so, I've got the impression that some people think they can avoid being offensive simply by avoiding dropping the "N word"; a notable example being Roger Roots' infamous Hundred Facts and One Lie pamphet which likened black people to apes over and over again, "backing it up" with citations which actually mostly traced back to pro-segregation and otherwise racist tracts. He didn't use the "N word" either.

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