Citizenship, Security and Democracy: Muslim Engagement with the West

CITIZENSHIP, SECURIT~Y and DEMOC CY MUSLIM ENGAGEMENT WITH THE WEST Selected papers from the Citizenship, Security and Democracy conference held in Turkey on 13 September 2006, and jointly organised by the Association of Muslim Social Scientists (AMSS UK) and the Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research (SETA Turkey). Edited by Wanda Krause
Selected papers from the Citizenship, Security and Democracy international conference held in Turkey on 1≤3 September 2006. The conference was jointly organised by the Association of Muslims Social Scientists (AMSS UK) and the Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research (SETA). The Association of Muslim Social Scientists (AMSS UK) is an Association based in London committed to the development of Islamic thought through research, scholarship and publications. The AMSS (UK) aims to keep scholars informed about current conceptual, methodological, and analytical developments and promote greater interdisciplinary co-operation, in an effort towards generating informed, critical and creative views and opinions on topical and emerging issues of relevance to community relations and social cohesion. The Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research (SETA Turkey) is a non-profit research institute dedicated to innovative studies on national, regional, and international issues. Through its reports, policy briefs, panels and conferences, SETA seeks to foster collaborative and interdisciplinary research and provide decisionmakers both in the public and private sectors with authoritative and independent information, analysis and proposals for action in Turkey and beyond. SETA publishes Insight Turkey, Turkey’s most prominent English-language journal on Turkish and international affairs. Website: www.setav.org
CITIZENSHIP, SECURITY AND DEMOCRACY Edited by WANDA KRAUSE association of muslim social scientists (uk) Muslim Engagement with the West
© Association of Muslim Social Scientists (UK), amss uk p.o. box 126, richmond, surrey, tw9 2ud, uk www.amssuk.com This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of the publishers. isbn 978–1–56564–443–4 paperback isbn 978–1–56564–444–1 hardback The views and opinions expressed in this book are those of the contributors and not necessarily those of the publishers. The publishers are not responsible for the accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites, referred to in this publication, and do not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.Web addresses change over time and those referenced in this work may have either been revised or discontinued from the time at which they were cited. Typesetting and cover design by Shiraz Khan Printed in the United Kingdom by Cromwell Press Group

CONTENTS

islam and principles of citizenship anwar ibrahim: Expanding our Intellectual Vision: The Quest for a New Islamic Worldview h.a. hellyer: From Tolerance to Recognition to Beyond: The Dynamics of Defining Muslim Space in Europe jeremy henzell-thomas: Beyond the Tower of Babel: A Linguistic Approach to Clarifying Key Concepts in Islamic Pluralism negotiating citizenship and identity anas al-shaikh-ali: Public Opinion and Political Influence: Issues in Contemporary Popular Fiction elmira muratova: Crimean Tatar Revival: National Identity and Islam mohammad siddique seddon: Global Citizenry Ancient and Modern: British Yemenis and Translocal Tribalism us-uk ‘war on terror’: implications to security charles e. butterworth: Blinkered Politics: The US Approach to Arabs and Muslims tahir abbas: British Islamic Culture After 7/7: Ethnicity, Politics and Radicalisation

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

CONTRIBUTORS

INTRODUCTION

alternatives to violence imad ad-dean ahmad: Alternatives to Violence in Muslim History: Parallels to American Cases and Prospects for Future Applications raana bokhari: Places and Perspectives: Gujarati Muslim Women in Leicester lucy michael: Securing Civic Relations in the Multicultural City political islam abdelwahab el-affendi: Islamic Revivalism and the Elusive Ethical State: Revisiting the “Damascus Model” Notes Index

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

On September 1–3, 2006, the Association of Muslim Social Scientists (AMSS UK) and the Foundation for Political, Economic, and Social Research (SETA Turkey) held a three-day international conference to explore the challenges of democracy and security with special reference to issues of citizenship and identity of Muslim communities in the West. Political discourse concerning Muslims has largely been dominated by a narrative that has wavered little beyond the context set by 7/7 and 9/11 and focus on the possibility of repetition, of a new terrorism that can strike at will, has come to govern much analysis of Muslim communities, governed primarily by issues of faith based radicalism and extremism. Further, increasing concentration on invasive and controversial security measures has curtailed civil liberties and strained relations globally, leading to rising levels of tension and a marked sense of alienation felt particularly by Muslims residing in the West. It is imperative therefore that a climate of mutual respect, safety and dialogue is nurtured, giving recognition to the ‘other’ and meeting the challenge of living and working together in diversity. The conference aimed to address these and other issues of relevance as well as to explore some of the many challenges faced by governments in this regard. This conference marked a major milestone, bringing a large number of scholars and experts from a wide range of disciplines and professional backgrounds together to address one of the most important issues confronting society at the turn of the 21st century. In addition, the important academic and cultural collaboration between AMSS (UK) and SETA, underscored recognition of the convergence of the various issues and challenges facing both Muslims and governments throughout Europe, both East and West. The empty chair approach of former times is being effectively challenged and negotiated through conferences such as these, which allow good space for unique and valid perspectives to be brought to the table, and give impetus to initiatives focusing on strategic and confident dialogue.
AMSS (UK) and SETA would like to thank the Conference Secretariat as well as all those involved in organising the event for their hard work and professionalism. These include Dr. Fauzia Ahmad, Dr. Mehmet Asutay, Dr. Kamran Bokhari, Dr. Talip Kucukcan, Abdul-Rehman Malik, Dr. Fathi Malkawi, Dr. Mohamed Mestiri, Dr. Bobby Sayyid, Dr. Muhammad Siddique Seddon, Ahmet Selim Tekelioglu, and Umare Yazar. We also thank the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality for hosting the Conference, as well as the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) for their strong support and collaboration. The publishers also wish to thank AMSS (France) and AMSS (USA), as well as the ICYF-DC, for their collaboration. Finally, we are indebted to El-Rahma Charity Trust for their support in publishing this work. This book has been the result of a team effort, and we would like to thank all those involved in its production. Primarily we acknowledge the skilled and painstaking work of its editor, Dr. Wanda Krause, who had the difficult task of collating, editing, and reviewing the papers to produce a thorough and consistent manuscript. We also acknowledge the valuable editorial advice of Dr. Jeremy Henzell-Thomas and Professor Charles E. Butterworth. Finally thanks go to Shiraz Khan, Dr. Maryam Mahmood and Tahira Hadi, for copyediting the finished manuscript. These papers have been published to widen discourse, stimulate debate, and hopefully pave the way for further research. Doubtless readers may agree with some of the issues raised, and disagree with others, but it is hoped that overall both general and specialised readers will benefit from the perspectives offered and some of the more focused issues examined in the book. dr. anas al-shaikh-ali dr. ibrahim kalin Chair, AMSS UK Director, SETA, Turkey Academic Advisor, IIIT London Office Faculty Member, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Georgetown University, USA

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

october, 2009

CONTRIBUTORS

Tahir Abbas BSc(Econ) MSocSc PhD FRSA is an academic researcher, social commentator and consultant to government. He was Reader in Sociology and founding Director of the University of Birmingham Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Culture, UK (2003–2009). His area of expertise is the study of race, ethnicity, multiculturalism and Muslim minorities. He has published over sixty single and joint authored articles in internationally respected journals and specialist edited collections. He is author of Race, Ethnicity and Multiculturalism (Sage, 2010), Islamic Radicalism and Multicultural Politics (Routledge, 2010), The Education of British South Asians (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2004); editor of Islam and Education (Routledge, 2010), Muslim Britain (Zed, 2005), Islamic Political Radicalism (Edinburgh University Press, 2007, ed.); and co-editor of Islam, Honour, Violence and Women (Routledge, 2010, with M.M. Idriss and R. Abbinnett) and Immigration and Race Relations (I B Tauris, 2007, with F.W. Reeves). In 2007–2008, Dr. Abbas was Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. He is currently Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and Honorary Fellow of the Exeter Centre for EthnoPolitical Studies, Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter. Abdelwahab El-Affendi is Reader in Politics at the Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster and Co-ordinator of the Centre’s Democracy and Islam Programme. Educated at the Universities of Khartoum, Wales, and Reading, he is author of Turabi’s Revolution: Islam and Power in Sudan (1991), Who Needs an Islamic State? (1991), Revolution and Political Reform in Sudan (1995), Rethinking Islam and Modernity (2001), For a State of Peace: Conflict and the Future of Democracy in Sudan (2002) and The Conquest of Muslim Hearts and Minds: Perspectives on U.S. Reform and Public Diplomacy Strategies (2005). He has also contributed to many leading journals, and is contributor or co-author of works including: The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1998), Social Science and Conflict Analysis (1993), Islam and Justice (1997), Islam and Secularism in the Middle East (2000), Islamic Thought in the Twentieth Century (2003), Understanding Democratic Politics (2003), American Power in the 21st Century (2004), The Arab
Human Development Report (2004), and The Blackwell Companion to Contemporary Islamic Thought(2006). Dr. El-Affendi was a member of the core team of authors of the Arab Human Development Report (2004) and a member of the Advisory Board and a contributor to the 2005 report. He is also a member of the Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia, member of the Board of Directors of Inter-Africa Group, and a trustee of the International Forum for Islamic Dialogue, and on the AMSS UK Advisory Board. He is the 2006 winner of The Muslim News Allama Iqbal Award for Creativity in Islamic Thought. Imad ad-Dean Ahmad graduated cum laude from Harvard in 1970 and in 1975 obtained a PhD in Astronomy and Astrophysics from the University of Arizona. He holds a position as Senior Lecturer teaching honours courses in Religion and Progress at the University of Maryland in College Park, MD. Dr. Ahmad is a frequent guest lecturer on Islam at the Foreign Services Institute and an Adjunct Lecturer for the Joint Special Operations University’s Middle East Orientation course. He is currently President of the Minaret of Freedom Institute, an Islamic think tank in the Washington DC area, USA. He is the author of Signs in the Heavensand The Islamic Rules of Order. He is also co-editor of Islam and the West: A Dialog, and co-author of Islam and the Discovery of Freedom. Raana Bokhari is a PhD student in Religious Studies. She has lectured on Islam and Muslim women in particular, and worked as a Research Associate at Lancaster University in education and social exclusion. She is the author of several articles in interfaith publications and on Gujarati Muslim women in Leicester in edited works. Charles E. Butterworth is Professor Emeritus of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, College Park. He specialises in medieval Arabic and Islamic political philosophy. Professor Butterworth’s publications include critical editions of most of the Middle Commentaries written by Averroes on Aristotle’s logic; translations of books and treatises by Averroes, al-F¥r¥bÏ, and al-R¥zÏ, as well as Maimonides; and studies of different aspects of the political teaching of these and other thinkers in the ancient, medieval and modern tradition of philosophy. He has also written monograph analyses of the political thought of Frantz Fanon and Jean-

CONTRIBUTORS

CONTRIBUTORS

Jacques Rousseau. He is a member of several learned organisations and past President of the American Council for the Study of Islamic Societies (ACSIS) as well as of the Société Internationale pour l’Étude de l’Histoire de la Philosophie et la Science Arabe et Islamique (SIHSPAI). Hisham A. Hellyer is Fellow, Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations (CRER), University of Warwick, UK, Director, the Visionary Consultants Group (VCG), member, Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies (OCIS) of the University of Oxford, UK, Visiting Fellow, Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS), Malaysia, Fellow of the Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations (CRER) at the University of Warwick (UK) and Principal Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies (Malaysia). Dr. Hellyer is an internationally acclaimed writer and commentator. Until recently Ford Fellow of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution (USA), he also taught as Visiting Professor of Law at the American University in Cairo (AUC) (Egypt). A UN Alliance of Civilizations Global Expert, he received his PhD from the University of Warwick on a legal and political study on European minorities. He also holds a law degree from Sheffield’s School of Law, and a Master’s degree in international political economy from the University of Sheffield. In addition to his academic contributions, he engages in popular mediums such as the Washington Post and the BBC Doha Debates, and also speaks authoritatively on his subject areas to forums such as the OSCE and the Royal United Services Institute for Defence. He was also an ESRC Placement Fellow at the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office, examining state-minority community relations in Europe. At present, he focuses his research on Muslim minority communities throughout the globe and on Muslim world – West relations. His book on European Muslims (“The European ‘Other’”) is due to be published by Edinburgh University Press in 2009. Jeremy Henzell-Thomas is Executive Director of the Book Foundation, a registered UK charity with worldwide projects working with partner institutions in the UK and the USA to improve understanding of Islam in the West. He was the first Chair of FAIR (Forum Against Islamophobia and Racism) and has served as a member of the Executive Committee and the Advisory Board of the AMSS (UK). He holds degrees in

CONTRIBUTORS

English and Linguistics from London and Edinburgh universities, and a PhD in the Psychology of Learning from the University of Lancaster. He has worked at many levels in education both in the UK and overseas, as a teacher, academic director, curriculum development specialist, schools inspector, university lecturer, doctoral research supervisor and educational consultant. He speaks widely on the themes of education, society and spirituality, and writes regular columns for Islamicaand Emelmagazines. He is a member of the Advisory Board of Islamica and a contributing editor of The American Muslim. His recent international conference papers, including plenary addresses, have been delivered at the Gustav-Stresemann Institut, Bonn (2002), University of Surrey, Roehampton (2003), University of Indiana, Bloomington (2003), University of Edinburgh (2004), Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, Aga Khan University, London (2005), and the University of Durham (2005). His keynote address, “Beyond the Tower of Babel: A Linguistic Approach to Clarifying Key Concepts in Islamic Pluralism” was delivered at the AMSS conference on Citizenship, Security and Democracy in Istanbul (2006). Anwar Ibrahim is a former Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister of Malaysia. He is also one of the founders, together with the late Professor Ismail al-Faruqi, of the IIIT (International Institute of Islamic Thought). In 1998, Newsweek International named him Asian of the Year. He is currently a Senior Associate Member of St. Anthonys, Oxford University, and Visiting Professor in the Centre for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Georgetown University, USA. Anwar Ibrahim has published two books Menangani Perubahan (Managing Change, Berita Publishing, 1988), and The Asian Renaissance, (Times Publications, Singapore, 1997), and more than a dozen articles including: “The Ardent Moderates,” Time magazine, August 1996; “Who Hijacked Islam?” Time magazine, October 2001; “We Muslims Must Reform our Own Politics,” The Asian Wall Street Journal, October 2003; “There is So Much to Do” Time magazine, September 2004; and recently “The Quest for Social Justice” Global Agenda magazine (of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting), January 2005. Wanda Krause is currently teaching politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), UK. Krause has a doctorate in Politics from the

CONTRIBUTORS

University of Exeter, UK. Her research dealt with civil society development, gender politics, and Islamism. Her background studies, which she conducted in Canada, Germany, Egypt, and the UAE, include international relations, linguistics, social-psychology, and Arabic studies. Krause’s recent book is Women in Civil Society: The State, Islamism and Networks in the UAE, (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2008). Her current research focuses on the relationship between politics and spirituality. Lucy Michael received her PhD in the Research Institute for Law, Politics and Justice at Keele University. She graduated in Law from University College Dublin and then went on to complete a postgraduate degree in Criminology at Keele University. Her doctoral project is based on research in the Pakistani communities of Stoke-on-Trent and Manchester. Dr. Michael’s research explores the nature and performance of leadership within ethnic minority communities facing problems of conflict and cohesion. The project has been supported by the Economic and Social Research Council UK, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and Keele University. Elmira Muratova is a Docent (Associate Professor) in the Department of Political Science at Taurida National Vernadsky University (Simferopol, Ukraine) where she teaches on the Islamic World in Modern Politics and Political Islam in the Post-Soviet Space. Dr. Muratova is also Director of the Crimean Institute for Peace which deals with interethnic and interfaith relations in the Crimea (Ukraine). In 2007 she was awarded the Erasmus Mundus Fellowship to conduct research on ‘Ethnic Conflicts in Kosovo, Bosnia and the Crimea’ at UCL. She holds a PhD in Political Science, thesis titled, “Political Analysis of Islam’s Revival in Crimea” (2004). Her research areas include political Islam, ethnic and religious clashes, and Islam’s revival in the post-Soviet space. Mohammad Siddique Seddon obtained his PhD in Religious Studies at Lancaster University and is currently Lecturer in Muslim Studies at the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Chester. He has previously worked as Development Officer at the Centre for the Study of Islam in the UK, Cardiff University. He is a former Research Fellow at the Islamic Foundation and is an Executive Member of the Association of Muslim Social Scientists (UK). His research interests are historical and

CONTRIBUTORS

contemporary issues relating to Islam in Britain and British Muslim communities. He has published a number of related works and books including, British Muslims: Loyalty and Belonging (2003), and British Muslims between Assimilation and Segregation: Historical, Legal & Social Realities (2004). Anas Al-Shaikh-Ali has a PhD in American Studies and has taught Literature and Translation at universities in the Middle East. Dr. Al-ShaikhAli is a Founding member and current Chair of AMSS (UK), and Academic Advisor to the IIIT and Director of its London Office and Translation Department. He is a Founding Trustee of FED 2000 UK (Foundation for Education and Development), a Founding Trustee and former Chair of FAIR (Forum Against Islamophobia and Racism), former Chair of the Board of Governors of The Avenue School, and Founding Executive Director of Legacy Publishing Ltd. His research interests include Islam in Western Popular Culture, Islam and the Media, Muslim Education in Europe and Muslim Discourse in Europe. He has lectured and published in both Arabic and English on these topics. Among his recent papers being published is “Islamophobic Discourse Masquerading as Art and Literature: Combating Myth through Progressive Education.” His expert advice was instrumental for the production of the joint British Council /AMSS UK publication British Muslims: Media Guide. He was awarded a CBE in June 2009 for Services to Community Relations. He is currently a Research Fellow at the Department of History, Royal Holloway, University of London, and member of the Management Board of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Centre of Islamic Studies, University of Cambridge.

INTRODUCTION

the edited book entitled, Citizenship, Security and Democracy provides greater analysis of and seeks solutions to the challenges of citizenship, security and democracy through fresh and more varied perspectives as is related to Islamic discourse and Muslim communities and their activism in the West. These concerns have never been more pressing than today. Democracy has been a global endeavour and concern, as in its ideal form, it gives promise to liberty, freedoms and rights. However, after especially 9/11 and 7/7, securitization has become a more immediate goal, making security the driving discourse today. But, both security and democracy are becoming ever less attainable in today’s climate of increased division and cleavages along ideological lines and Islamophobia – an acute problem for citizenship in humanity. On September 1–3, 2006, the Association of Muslim Social Scientists (AMSS) and the Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research (SETA) held a three day conference to explore the challenges of democracy and security and, importantly, explore issues around citizenship and identity of Muslim diaspora. Given the backdrop to a growing political discourse on the Muslim ‘Other’, framed through the events of 9/11 and 7/7 and increased tension as a result of this discourse framing, the aim was to help discern causes to the major challenges facing governments and the safety, freedoms and dignity of individuals globally. This was attempted through the study of Islamic thought and on-the-ground case study research of Muslim societies and communities. This conference marks one of the major events to have been organised where such a large number of scholars, experts, and activists from a wide range of ideological positions and professional backgrounds come together in an

INTRODUCTION

ambitious attempt to resolve the most pressing issues at the turn of the 21st century. Concern was security and democratic rights of human beings within or in relation to an Islamic discourse. This edited volume assembles selected contributions of these thinkers, academics, activists and faith leaders who not only analyzed but further interrogated the forces in historical and contemporary light that contribute to the greater lack of security and threaten democratic endeavours. How have constraints in government policy on community or group choices and opportunities influenced the political experience of these communities and groups? What political and economic choices have been made and what are their implications for governments, democracy, security, and the future of humanity? What options now exist to policy makers and affected communities and groups in these circumstances? The solutions put forward lie not in a single isolated variable, government, or group but in the complex interconnections between government and civil society, between domestic and external forces, historical legacies, and future strategies. Endeavouring to find solutions for ensuing problems of new transfigurations of citizenship and identity, the contributors draw on case studies, Islamic history, Islamic jurisprudence, and investigative analysis of historical and current political trends and contexts. Citizenship entails membership in a community and this membership entails political rights of these individuals within the given society. Beginning this volume’s discussion on citizenship, Anwar Ibrahim discusses the meaning of citizenship in both Western and predominantly Muslim countries. Notwithstanding the ‘war on terror’ and other failures in the practice of inclusive citizenship, he argues Western countries are indeed leading examples in the practice of democracy. Speaking from his own personal experience of imprisonment and about the problem of authoritarianism in Muslim countries, he argues for the implementation of the universalism of Islam in the sense that its values of justice, compassion and tolerance be practiced everywhere. He maintains human rights must be brought to the fore where condemnation against the violation of human rights must transcend race, colour and creed because one must never lose sight of the fact that humankind is one. Illustrating the complexity of the notion of citizenship and Muslim communities in Western countries, H. A. Hellyer discusses how Muslim

INTRODUCTION

communities in the West understand citizenship as developed from the multiculturalism debate in mainly Europe. He shows that Muslim communities in the West are currently trying to cope with what Islam offers as guidance on the issues of ‘belonging’ and patriotism. They have not yet fully examined what the full weight of Islamic teachings has borne down on the concepts and values of the citizenship debate, as well as the integration debate. He argues for a more thorough deconstruction of these areas before a comprehensive understanding can begin. Jeremy Henzell-Thomas considers the principles of citizenship in Islam through a discussion of the story of the Tower of Babel, and how contrary to the Biblical version, he argues plurality from the Qur’anic perspective as embodied in language is something to be celebrated. He discusses the problem of reality being dichotomized into competing unilateral or unipolar worldviews through these various mechanisms of transmitting ‘truths’, and as such, creating isolating pathologies of civilizational narcissism. He argues for the positive embodiment of the pluralistic Qur’anic vision of citizenship within diversity by embracing the best of all traditions through respectful co-existence, mutual recognition, active engagement, and transforming love. Contexts having highly political and social import are, however, also found in what may be thought harmless entertainment. Anas AlShaikh-Ali argues popular fiction, in fact, serves as a powerful means in the shaping of public political opinion and in the intensification of Islamophobia. He illustrates how through fiction, consumed by billions and marketed globally, best selling authors routinely set the moral boundaries through which we are to view global confrontation. The paper examines not only the role of novels in shaping public opinion but how plotlines also appear to remarkably predict political/military events urging a deeper exploration of the complex relationship that oscillates between fiction and fact, writers and the intelligence services. Is the industry selling novels or marketing a worldview? These are some of the many issues the paper explores. Illustrating, importantly, the agency of Muslim communities in negotiating citizenship and identity are Elmira Muratova and Mohammad Siddique Seddon with their case studies on the Tatars in the Crimea and British Yemenis, respectively. Muratova’s work on Muslims in the Crimea contributes to the small, although growing, number of studies on

INTRODUCTION

Muslim diaspora in Russia and Eastern block countries. She discusses how the Tatars have developed their identity as Muslims through a cultural heritage different to Turks or Arabs and, furthermore, through their expulsion from modern Ukraine and return. She shows how they prove a striking example where people of different ethnic backgrounds and religion can co-exist harmoniously in a region where ethnic and religious differentiation has been marked. Mohammad Siddique Seddon’s paper also shows how a Muslim community has constructed its identity through migration. However, his case study illustrates how in the modern age it becomes impossible to associate a specific culture with a specific place as a symbolic guarantee of belonging. His study on Yemeni diaspora communities in Britain explores the facets of diasporic Yemeni identity by examining their translocal social networks and how this community preserves its distinct religious and cultural traditions in modern Britain, thus, disrupting expectations of the social integration, citizenry and ‘belongingness’ of minority Muslim communities. Authors of this volume discuss the issue of citizenship and identity from a failed public policy angle, pointing to the effects of marginalization of minority populations, here Muslim communities, and the effects of the so-called ‘war on terror’. Charles Butterworth discusses human rights violations under the US led ‘war on terror’ in the invasion of Iraq, treatment of persons seized abroad and imprisoned secretly, infringement of constitutional rights of US citizens, among other related issues. He looks at how these policies have been endorsed but importantly how these policies can be turned around. Tahir Abbas addresses these issues in terms of UK anti-terrorist legislation and policies towards the South Asian Muslim community in Britain. Through a more focused case study on policies experienced in Birmingham, he discusses the effect of marginalization and isolation. The larger argument Abbas makes is the ideological radicalization of British South Asian Muslims and formation of extremist identity as a result of government policies. However, scholars also point to historical and contemporary examples to illustrate how alternative action to violence based on religion may be possible in the experience of imbalanced policies and injustice. Imad ad-Dean Ahmad examines the alternatives to violence in Muslim history. In view of contemporary challenges facing minority groups, Raana

INTRODUCTION

Bokhari explores the practice of dissent as an alternative to violence and as a form of protest aimed at affecting social and political change. Ahmad considers the varied examples of the unauthorized pilgrimage to Makkah that led to the treaty of Hudaybiyyah, Abu Kalam Azad’s role in the Indian resistance against the British occupation, and the first Palestinian intifada. He makes parallels between these Muslim examples and Western cases: Thoreau’s resistance to the taxes supporting slavery and the Mexican War, the American civil rights movement, and the Vietnam War protests. He looks specifically at the role that religion played in these movements, the formation of alliances, how the movements dealt with issues of provocation, the role of publicity, and the role of the threat of violence. With this backdrop, he effectively makes a case for policy application in regards to contemporary challenges to individual liberties and broader security. Raana Bokhari incorporates crucially a gendered perspective by studying dissenting voices among Muslim and non-Muslim women active in Leicester, UK, a model ‘multicultural’ city. Lucy Michael’s work similarly focuses on the ‘multicultural’ city by studying Muslim communities in Manchester and Stoke-on-Trent, UK. After discussing the impact of exclusion and marginalization in terms of the resultant ordering of the city along ethnic and religious lines, she provides an analysis of how the Muslim communities develop a strong ethic of civility. This, she argues, has developed in response through greater community cohesion and social inclusion programmes in order to improve their capacity to access public institutions and mobilize effectively for a ‘fair’ share of social resources. However, globally we witness also a resurgence of political Islam as a means through which groups larger than community level forms of organization or ethnic groups organized along religious lines organize and mobilize to action using Islamic rhetoric. Abdelwahab El-Affendi sheds new light on the causes and means through which this resurgence takes form and the implications political Islam has to global politics. ElAffendi re-examines the notion of the Islamic state by analyzing the Caliphate model, which revivalist movements seek to create. His argument of the impracticability of such an endeavor is supported by his analysis in regards to the problem of the autonomy of politics and lack of the ‘ethical’ state. The solution to the elusive ethical state, he argues, lies
crucially in incorporating democratic values into Islamic political thought. In this book, we concentrate on developments and challenges of citizenship, security and democracy primarily after the turn of the millennium in order to expose pressing problems of integration, co-existence and fast-widening cleavages along ideological lines as the greatest variables to consider. We offer this edited volume as a starting point to understanding the most pressing and difficult realities affecting security and democracy in the next decades to come. For those pondering how a shift in direction from conflict and fear to greater peaceful co-existence and security can begin, this book digs right into the heart of the most difficult dilemmas. With its varied angles to these problems it is also a starting point for finding critical solutions. dr. wanda krause

INTRODUCTION

Islam and Principles of Citizenship
anwar ibrahim Expanding our Intellectual Vision: The Quest for a New Islamic Worldview imprisonment, particularly if it is over a slightly protracted period of six years, is sometimes necessary – as a form of imposed khalwah – for politicians who get too caught up with affairs of the state. Speaking for myself, having been sent into solitary confinement, it enabled me to reread and reflect more deeply among others the works of some of the leading Muslim social scientists. I shall share with you the fruit of such contemplation. At the turn of the last century, after the collapse of the last of the great Muslim empires, and Constantinople saw itself being partitioned between the imperial powers, Muslim intellectuals, politicians, and economists were adrift in a sea of contending theories as to what the Islamic worldview is or should really be. If it was a full sea, it is clear that they did not take the tide when it served, because until today, we remain faced with the same question: do we have that worldview, a lasting metaphysical paradigm, capable of solving not just the ills of the Ummah but mankind itself? Is this odyssey proving to be a search for the Holy Grail, or to bring home the metaphor, is this indeed a quest for the Red Sulphur?1 It is said that the key attribute of the Islamic social sciences in expounding a worldview must rest on the acquisition of knowledge through the rationality of the human mind. I share this view in as much as I believe that the Qur’an does not require man to deny his right to exercise his intelligence. The Qur’an speaks to the rational mind or as has been so well put by the late Professor Fazlur Rahman, “it alerts the intellect.” Is that carte blanche for the wanton abandonment of faith on the altar of reason? The answer would be obvious if we consider too that the
anwar ibrahim Qur’an does not only lay out the order in the universe and the principles within it, but it throws out the challenge for mankind to critically examine them in order to attain certitude of the validity of its claims and message, which invariably would lead to the reinforcement of faith, not its rejection. It is therefore misconceived to imagine that alerting the intellect was a license to stray from the faith because this pursuit would inevitably lead to the realization of the eternal principles of the Divine Unity, which in turn springs forth from the Divine Laws. Because of its timelessness, knowledge premised on this acquires finality and absoluteness. The created order follows invariable laws, as the Qur’an says: “Such was the way of God in days gone by and you will find it does not change” (al-Fat^, 48:23).2 But eternal principles when they are understood to exclude all possibilities of change tend to immobilize what is essentially mobile in its nature, as in the immobility of Islam during the last five hundred years. As succinctly stated by Muhammad Iqbal, the structure of Islam embodies the principle of movement, and this is known as Ijtihad.3Unlike the Mosaic tablets, the Shari¢ah was never cast in stone and evolves continuously through this dynamic process. To talk of finality and absoluteness is therefore to deny the dynamism that is central to the Shari¢ah itself. In order to maintain a middle ground, the essential ingredients of an Islamic methodology in the social sciences must then be conceived not in a unipolar, nor even bipolar, but a holistic perspective which will be universal and eternal in appeal. The challenge to Muslim social scientists then is to articulate a coherent body of metaphysical thought on the basis of a unifying all-encompassing Qur’anic Weltanschauung. Though we do not believe that this is a quest for the Red Sulphur, we fear that the seekers may lose their way in the labyrinth – unless they remain faithful to the injunction to “travel through the earth and see how Allah did originate creation” (al-¢Ankab‰t, 29:20). No doubt, it is this Qur’anic imperative, which enables us to appreciate the diversity of the Muslim experience across geographical, ethnic, social and even denominational barriers. In formulating the fundamental principles and values of such a worldview, we shall stay on course if we remain faithful to the creed that in this diversity, the only absolute is the “unity of knowledge” and the meaning and orientation this unity gives to life.4 The question is: Can this be possible without a transformation of the Islamic intellectual tradition?
Expanding Our Intellectual Vision Muslim social scientists must resolve the long standing quandary, brought about by the ideological rigidity of anti-modern neo-revivalism, which remains tragically the stumbling block to progress and reform. Being still tied to its old practices of cliché-mongering and name calling, this failure to reform must not be seen as a completely new phenomenon, for indeed, it can be traced to the period of Islam after the death of the Prophet and that period of the Rightly Guided Caliphs. And since history tends to repeat itself, it may be useful to recall that the Kharijites tolerated no dissent of their view of Islam, and the view that I have just expressed at the start of this essay would have warranted a death sentence. Their intransigence as regards the outward espousal of the faith is correctly said to have sown the seed for the birth of the fundamentalist movements, which would eventually litter the Islamic geo-political landscape. But we would lay ourselves open to the charge of bigotry if we castigate fundamentalism merely because it sounds menacing. However, our objection rests on more solid ground in that it was this kind of intransigence which was fully adopted by Ash¢arite theology that had distorted the picture of Islam, and continues to do so today. One would have to concede that the excesses of Mu¢tazilite rationalism might have contributed to this violent reaction, but the rigidity of orthodoxy also led to the rejection of even the moderates, and by this we mean the metaphysicians of medieval Islam. From al-F¥r¥bÏ up until Ibn Rushd there is no doubt that a coherent worldview was expounded but from the start, this view was eyed with suspicion by orthodoxy. The argument against the formula of the Muslim philosophers continues to be that a truly Islamic Weltanschauung must be premised foundationally on the Qur’an and the Sunnah and not spring from the loins of Aristotelian and Neo-platonist metaphysics. Professor Rahman went further by suggesting that this ‘borrowed grounds’ worldview cloaked the approach with ‘a more or less artificial character’ and combined with the assault of orthodoxy, “Islamic intellectualism has remained truncated.”5 In this regard, Iqbal’s Reconstructionas quoted earlier on the principle of movement in the structure of Islam, undoubtedly represented a tour de force in modern times, drawing sustenance from the primary sources and yet possessing an ecumenical sweep in its approach that would cut across cultural and geographical barriers. Yet, even though its articulation moved beyond tribal or parochial concerns, it was a creature of history
anwar ibrahim born of the particular circumstances surrounding the collapse of empires and the final dissolution of the caliphate itself, and ipso facto, its structural elements remain period-bound. Syed Naquib al-Attas made a commendable effort premised on the doctrine of ‘dÏn’ as talbiyah, akhl¥q and ta’dÏb. His intellectual assault was trained on the proponents of secularism, which regarded its integral components as the Weberian “disenchantment of nature” and the “deconsecration of values.” Secularization is seen as the setting free of the world from religious blinkers, the dispelling of myths and sacred symbols, and with the “desacralization of politics,” it purports to put back the power of destiny in man’s hands. But al-Attas’s target was not secularism per se but Christianity.6 Alas, today the thematic thrust would seem to have lost its edge because the Western challenge to Islam today can no longer be seen as being solely cast in the Christian mould, though at one time it provided the raison d’être for mounting Islam’s intellectual offensive. The late Isma¢il al-Faruqi expounded his now legendary doctrine of the Islamization of knowledge as a comprehensive intellectual response to the challenge of modernity but the follow through on his ideas has been uninspiring.7 The Intra-civilizational Clash Much as we are getting tired of mentioning it, the ‘clash of civilizations’ specter seems to be the metaphor that appeals to the imagination of historians and political scientists. Many scholars have fallen into this quagmire. It would be well to accept that the discourse between Islam and the West is indeed subject to various predilections, civilizational clash being one. However, all resulting views are essentially influenced by the enormous historical baggage that accompanies this discourse. The upshot is a clash of visions of history, perceptions, and images, which in turn brings about differing and often opposing interpretations, not just of history, but worldviews. Muslim social scientists should disabuse themselves of this notion of the clash between civilizations and refocus their attentions on the clash that has been brewing within the Ummah. We see a more dangerous and portentous clash as one that is intra-civilizational – between the old and the new, the weak and the strong, the moderates and the fundamentalists and between the modernists and the traditionalists. In recent times, over the dissonance of
Expanding Our Intellectual Vision competing demands, Muslims are said to be caught between the centrifugal forces of modernity on the one hand, with its secularizing and liberating tendencies, and centripetal forces of traditionalism on the other, with its predisposition to sacralize and control. One approach out of this conundrum is to formulate a universal Islamic Weltanschauung by expanding the Muslim intellectual vision, not just by raising his intellectual standards but by radically reorienting his mindset. This begs the question: What is the language of our discourse? Are Muslim intellectuals merely engaging themselves and running the risk of descending into a mutual admiration club? It is well and good that we are able to articulate our views coherently in seminars and symposiums, but are we doing enough to broaden the discourse to make it truly inclusive? This is a question that addresses the very role of Muslim social scientists themselves. Modernity Revisited In the 19th century, Rif¥¢ah R¥fi¢ al->ah~¥wÏ asserted that patriotism – ^ubb al-wa~an – was the condition sine qua non for the establishment of a civilized community.8 The stress on ^ubb al-wa~an as a modern conception of territorial patriotism is significant, and marked a departure from the religion-bound notion of the Islamic Ummah, which hitherto represented the main reason for the Khald‰nian notion of ¢a|abiyyah. Ibn Khald‰n rightly pointed out that it was this notion, which gave rise to the ascent of a new civilization; but membership was exclusive to Muslims. In attempting to open up participation to other faiths, >ah~¥wÏ’s approach, though not entirely secular, nevertheless broke new ground by breaching the time honoured religious connotations of the term, Ummah. To my mind, this no doubt was among the earliest calls to plurality. He also advocated that Muslims learn all the modern sciences, and that should not be seen as borrowing from the Europeans because they had originally borrowed from Muslims themselves. To his detractors, >ah~¥wÏ had fallen prey to the allure of the French Enlightenment. However, there were others who saw him as one of the earliest progressive reformists in Islam. Even today, it may be reasoned that it was only natural that one already steeped in the tradition of Islamic political thought could find affinity with some of the Enlightenment’s leading ideas – the principle of justice being essential for a good society, and the
anwar ibrahim theme of virtue and liberty. A common fallacy carried even until today has been the characterization of the Enlightenment as the promotion of unbridled liberty. On the contrary, as is clear from Montesquieu’s Persian Letters, for example, the best life is not the hedonistic, libertine existence, but the virtuous one. Liberty and virtue are invariably linked and in The Spirit of the Lawshe asserts that virtue is the dominating principle in a republican form of government; where virtue fails, freedom disappears into the hands of a despot. When Muhammad Abduh came on the scene, the pursuit of knowledge in Egypt had fallen into the intra-cultural and intra-religious divide heading for an inevitable clash – the traditional versus the modern, the old religious schools with al-Azhar at the pinnacle versus the European mission schools. The religious schools came under attack by Abduh himself. They could only impart religious knowledge while knowledge needed for survival in the modern world was as good as abandoned. Missionary schools appeared to have the upper hand in this, but were viewed with suspicion because of their proselytizing tendencies. Abduh saw the European light but was not dazzled by it, advocating instead reform through the lens of an Islamic renaissance. We have alluded to his theology of unity earlier. Essentially, he saw the clash within Islamic society and knew that the only way to bridge the chasm was not by a mere return to the past, but to the principles of Islam that could justify the introduction of modern Western learning. Scholars tend to gloss over this aspect of Abduh in their eagerness to pin the blame on him as one of the founding fathers of fundamentalism which would morph into radicalism and extremism of various forms. Syed Ameer Ali, perhaps the first of the apologists, sought to show that there was nothing inherently different between predominantly Muslim societies and the societies in western Europe. He contended that the ideals and history of Islam show that it was fully compatible with the Victorian notions of individual choice, private property, and regard for rationality. After all, Muslim societies were at one time far more advanced than European societies in scientific endeavors.9 They fell behind because of the self-imposed intellectual inertia brought on by a complete misunderstanding of the foundational principles of the religion. This led to the stagnation and intellectual slavishness of the age of taqlÏd. Europe was the answer. Apologetic writings in this mould culminated in Taha
Expanding Our Intellectual Vision Husayn’s no doubt valiant but entirely misconceived attempt to prove that Egypt was essentially a western land in terms of cultural orientation.10 Taha Husayn’s philosophy of history and society, under the influence of the French masters, such as Comte, Renan, Anatole France and Andre Gide, was a complete transformation of the worldview with Europe becoming the epicenter, symbolizing modernity and progress, and a perfect metaphor for Egypt’s transformation: to be modern Egypt must therefore become part of Europe. This was the last straw; this European obsession, thrown into harsh relief against the backdrop of oppression felt by Muslims under the yoke of colonialism, triggered the violent reaction which brought forth the likes of Rashid Reda, Hassan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb and Maududi. Tracing its genealogy to Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani and moulded and ameliorated by Abduh, this started as pan-Islamism with a benign face which was prepared to integrate the old with the new and more particularly traditional Islam with the progressive features of the West. But the disciples broke ranks from their masters because they could not see how any middle ground could be attained with a morally reprehensible and decadent West. Qutb for example came to believe that only a truly Islamic State that was firm in its application of the divine law could counter the West and anything short of that was prone to evil and corruption.11 Together with Hassan al-Banna and Maududi, Qutb transformed pan-Islamism from modernist reformism to radical fundamentalism. On the other hand, in Southeast Asia, particularly for the MalayIndonesian archipelago, a pre-Pan Islamist modernism prepared the way for Muslims to embrace more readily Arab modernism than its reception at its own place of birth. While Abduh’s project in the Arab world lost steam by the second half of the last century it was more readily embraced into mainstream Islam in Southeast Asia avoiding the intra-civilizational clash unfolding in the Middle East. Modernity and moderation came hand in hand for the region. Muhammad Natsir, the former Prime Minister and leader of the Masyumi party and Abdul Malik Karim Amrullah, the scholar and novelist known to many as Hamka, were leading exponents of what they felt to be the Islamic worldview, which included the love of knowledge, promotion of democratic values and inclusiveness. Their ideas were readily and widely embraced. The writings of Sutan Takdir Alisyahbana, and Soedjatmoko among the most
anwar ibrahim ardent advocates of Westernization were also well received after separating the wheat from the chaff: ideas about modernizing the education system were accepted while outright adoption of Western ways was rejected. I daresay that it is this feature of Southeast Asian Islam, and particularly Indonesian Islam, that has enabled Indonesia recently to make its quantum leap from dictatorship to democracy. Muslim social scientists could draw invaluable lessons from this rapid accommodation of Southeast Asian Islam to modernity, and perhaps better appreciate why Islamic radicalism has gained far less footing in Southeast Asia than other parts of the Muslim world. This is not to deny that radicalism can and does in fact pose a serious challenge to the region but for radically different reasons, political repression and marginalization being the chief causes –as we witnessed in Aceh until recently, and which remains a major problem in southern Thailand and the southern Philippines. Nonetheless, back in the Arab world, as well as in the Indian subcontinent, the assault by the traditionalists struck at the very core of modernity itself – the concept of democracy. There was no question that taken to its logical conclusion, the demands of reform in the path to modernity would also warrant the adoption of democratic principles of governance. Reformist advocates cited scriptural authority and the practice of sh‰r¥ as well in the election of the Rightly-Guided Caliphs and asserted that the sanctity of the majority vote was not even a Western construct. Traditionalists, on the other hand, led by Sayyid Qutb, countered with even ‘higher’ scriptural authority – Western democracy was a usurpation of God’s sovereignty and was tantamount to idolatry. It was a matter of taw^Ïd, which gave Islam its distinctive feature of cohesion binding all Muslims within a universal Ummah. It was further argued that the moral foundations of the Ummah would be undermined by this elevation of man’s rational thought over God’s sovereignty. According to Maududi, democracy slowly developed its positive idea of claiming the absolute freedom of the people to legislate and to select governments accountable to their interest and ambitions. However, once the will of the majority is acknowledged as the ultimate source of law, there is question as to whether that majority will remain faithful to the principles that should govern the just Islamic society. A majority unbounded by the constraints of the ¢ulam¥’ would inevitably lead to chaos and corruption. Whereas secularism detached people from the restraining bonds of
Expanding Our Intellectual Vision religious morality, and nationalism made them intoxicated with arrogant selfishness, democracy opened the floodgates to uncontrollable acts of plunder, aggression and tyranny.12 We could gloss over this historical perspective and consign it to the realm of academia on the ground that we are already in the 21st century. I have consistently cited Turkey and Indonesia as the best two examples of democracy in action among the most populous Muslim nations; there indeed is life after military dictatorships. The impending accession of Turkey into the European Union is another statement as to the level of liberal democracy attained while in the race for democracy in Southeast Asia, Indonesia has already reached the finishing line leaving its Muslim neighbours still stuck at the starting block. As such, I would hesitate to dismiss the historical perspective as merely academic for indeed varying interpretations may be given to these events as well as valuable lessons may be drawn. Montesquieu made a great impression on the Egyptian reformists in advocating the theory of the rise and fall of great nations but we would have thought that the same lesson was imparted by Ibn Khald‰n centuries earlier. As Iranian scholar Abdolkarim Soroush has argued, the history of Islam is fundamentally a history of different interpretations, of the different schools of thought, and of the different approaches of what Islam is.13 It is true that secularism has seen a major retreat in the West, if not already altogether passé. Nationalism in Europe is all but dead. There is no doubt that the West is seeing a revival of spiritualism. Yet in the Muslim world, there still prevails the fear that the spirit of individual reason and free inquiry will undermine the Ummah, and this fear is compounded by the activities of ultra liberal Muslims who profess an ideology even more secular than their Western counterparts. These new zealots brandish their cultural theology and advocate that Islam has little to offer as a guide to life in this globalized world, and that religious knowledge has resulted in a narrow Muslim vision of knowledge and is singularly responsible for the decline of the Islamic civilization. Under the weight of such incessant attacks, the resultant backlash in Muslim predominant countries is renewed fundamentalism with an increasingly hostile face. Being no longer a response to colonial conquest or military confrontation, this neofundamentalism becomes a response to acculturation, exacerbating intra-societal tensions.14
anwar ibrahim For Muslim social scientists of the modernist persuasion, there seems validity in the argument that the Islamic worldview as articulated by the traditional ¢ulam¥’ continues to be divorced from contemporary realities, still plagued by the fear that the spirit of individual reason and free inquiry will undermine the moral fabric of the Ummah. We shall not attempt to reenter the ancient polemics between the Ash¢arites and Mu¢tazilites, but suffice it to say that the Qur’an reminds us that Allah will exalt to higher ranks those who believe and those who have knowledge, “[and] God will exalt by [many] degrees those of you who have attained to faith and, [above all,] such as have been vouchsafed [true] knowledge” (al-Muj¥dilah, 58:11). Democracy, Jihad and Complicity with Tyranny Throughout the last century, there have been attempts to create a truly Islamic state, its ultimate objective being the attainment of a just polity premised on the Qur’an and the Sunnah. However, being essentially a reaction to Western imperialism, these attempts invariably were linked to the concept of jihad even though we know that primarily jihad is a doctrine of sacrifice for the preservation of faith. Traditionally, jihad was interpreted to sanction war against enemies of the religion and had provided a moral framework for regulating the ensuing conflicts. What about rebellion against the state? The conventional view grounded on a hadith points to the principle that if a ruler orders something that is contrary to the Shari¢ah Muslims were at liberty to rebel. This view has been extended to justify acts against all forms of oppression. Today, jihad has been invoked by certain quarters to legitimize acts of violence in varied forms and guises, blurring the line between jihad and terrorism. With the exception of Turkey, the post-war experiments of Muslim countries with democratic institutions ended in unmitigated failure, returning to power instead corrupt regimes of tyranny and repression. We are by now familiar with the United States policy of ambivalence both prior to and now in the era of the war on terror, supporting autocrats in the Muslim world on the one hand, and championing the cause of freedom and democracy on the other. But why point the finger at the United States alone when we know that we ourselves share in the blame. As Shaykh Muhammad al-Ghazali puts it, it is telling,
Expanding Our Intellectual Vision to see how Muslims are treated in Muslim countries and under Muslim governments and how other countries, such as Israel or Britain or the United States, for instance, treat their own citizens. Human life and the dignity of man appear to have a much lower value and command less respect in Muslim countries … it is difficult under current conditions, to see how Muslims can expect to earn God’s support and fulfill their task as leaders of mankind.15 We are only too familiar with the 1992 bloodbath in Algeria, which saw the banning of the FIS (Front Islamique de Salut) just as it was becoming certain that the Islamist party was about to be legitimately brought to power. Thousands are known to have been abducted by “eradicators.” And notwithstanding a protracted civil war, the oligarchs continue their stranglehold on power. Morocco has likewise used the bogey of terrorism and fundamentalism to resist political reform and the powers that be continue to brook no dissent. The banning of the Muslim Welfare party in Turkey is another instance of the denial of political liberty, though thankfully this is one country which has been able to walk through the storm and come out even stronger and more vibrant. Thus, as an aside, to talk of a “democratic arena of citizenship” is therefore anathema because we know that the existence of free democratic thought is not possible without the active support of the State. And we have just iterated beyond doubt that most Muslim states, secular or sacred, have displayed a notorious history of tyranny and oppression. We can go on ad nauseam about this appalling state of affairs in our own backyard but the fact is that the West has also to blame. It too has a long track record of supporting military dictatorships during the past half century. We know too that Mohammed Mossadegh, for example, was legitimately elected by the people in Iran but was removed from power in a coup led by British and US intelligence agencies. Even in Lebanon and the Palestinian state today, the United States is complicit in the aggression against these two nascent Muslim democracies. And now one-third of the Muslim population who live in non-Muslim countries, are getting the short end of the stick on account of democracy being eroded at their expense for the sins of terrorists. Still, there is no denying that the West offers at least in theory freedom and democracy – fundamental liberties, civil society, and representative government. But if we cast the net wide over Muslim countries, it will be a small catch indeed – we have already alluded to Turkey being the first
anwar ibrahim and until recently the only Muslim nation with clear democratic institutions, a market economy and a free society, notwithstanding its ups and downs. Indonesia of course is now a respectable second entrant into this arena. If democracy is about giving dignity to the human spirit, then freedom is the sine qua non. Within Islam, freedom is considered one of the higher objectives of the divine law in as much as the very same elements in a constitutional democracy become moral imperatives in Islam – freedom of conscience, freedom to speak out against tyranny, a call for reform and the right to property. The recent victories by Islamist radicals have caused certain quarters to be alarmed about the future of democracy. They say it means the rejection of democracy and freedom. But we already know that all but two Muslim nations ruled by secular regimes are tyrannies and dictatorships of varying degrees on the one hand and autocratic regimes and sham democracies on the other, and as such have been the breeding ground for precisely those radical elements that we hope to diffuse by establishing democratic societies. Undoubtedly, democracy and freedom are at the core of our discourse and, to my mind, acquire greater significance around the presence of substantial Muslim communities in the West, whose democratic institutions are under attack all in the name of the war on terror. ‘National security’ has now ominously taken on the hue of political persecution even in established democracies, and there are legitimate concerns to be addressed as we see the increasing tendencies to allow the erosion of fundamental liberties, not just because they are occurring in places with the presence of significant Muslim minorities, but because they should not be condoned anywhere. If the notion of the universalism of Islam is to mean anything, it would require that its values of justice, compassion and tolerance be practiced everywhere. Can we remain blind to the injustice perpetrated in non-Muslim countries? Should we not also relate to the suffering of other minorities in Muslim countries? Needless to say, our condemnation against the violation of human rights must transcend race, colour or creed. An Islamic worldview cannot be articulated without giving preeminence to the heart of the Islamic message, which is first and foremost a message of love and understanding, of compassion and tolerance and of peace. It tells us to strive for justice, fight oppression and oppose tyranny. There are many tribes and communities, cultures and languages, and all
Expanding Our Intellectual Vision these will impinge directly on our worldview. Yet we must never lose sight of the fact that humankind is only one. references ¢Abduh, Muhammad, Risalat al-Tauhid [The Theology of Unity] (Allen and Unwin, 1966). Addas, Claude, Quest for the Red Sulphur – The Life of Ibn Arabi, trans. Peter Kingsley (Cambridge: The Islamic Texts Society, 1993). Ali, Syed Ameer Ali, The Spirit of Islam – A History of the Evolution and Ideals of Islam (London:Chatto & Windus, 1974). Al-Attas, Syed Muhammad Naquib, Islam and Secularism (Kuala Lumpur: InternationalInstitute of Islamic Thought and Civilisation, 1993). Al-Faruqi, Isma¢il R., Islamisation of Knowledge (Herndon: International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1982). Al-Ghaz¥lÏ, Shaykh Muhammad, A Thematic Commentary on the Qur’an, trans. Ashur A. Shamis (Herndon: International Institute of Islamic Thought, 2000). Hourani, Albert, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Husayn, Taha,Mustaqbal al-Thaq¥fah fÏ-Mi|r(Cairo: 1938). Iqbal, Muhammad, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (Kazi Publications, 1999). Maududi, Sayyid Abul A’la, The Islamic Way of Life, 11th edn. (Lahore: Islamic Publications, 1979). Qutb,Sayyid, Ma¢¥lim fÏ al->arÏq[Milestones]. Rahman, Fazlur, Islam and Modernity – Transformation of an Intellectual Tradition (Chicago: TheUniversity of Chicago Press, 1982). Roy, Oliver, The Failure of Political Islam, trans. Carol Volk, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996). Soroush, Abdolkarim, Reason, Freedom, and Democracy in Islam (Oxford University Press, 2000). Al->ah~¥wÏ, Rif¥¢ah R¥fi¢, Al-Murshid al-AmÏn li al-Ban¥t wa al-BanÏn (Cairo, (1872–1873).

INTRODUCTION

The citizenship debate has followed from the multiculturalism debate in Europe and elsewhere, bringing us to the point where Muslim communities, particularly in the ‘West,’ are trying to cope with what Islam offers as guidance on the issues of ‘belonging’ and patriotism. However, the Muslim community has not yet fully examined the full weight of Islamic teachings bearing down on the concepts and values of the citizenship debate, as well as the integration debate; a more thorough deconstruction of these areas is required before comprehensive understanding can begin. Such a deconstruction is an encyclopedic endeavour, but some initial thoughts can be given here.

INTRODUCTION

The Crimean Tatars present a particularly fascinating example of ethnic cleansing in the twentieth century. They were not only removed en masse and in toto from their homeland to a far-off land where they had no connections; they were then, after more than four decades, allowed to return. A people who during recent centuries experienced annexation, oppression and even deportation has returned to its homeland and is reviving its national culture with immense patience. Despite numerous problems and considerable provocation during this process, the Crimean Tatars intend to reestablish their right to be seen as an indigenous Crimean nation through the use of legal democratic methods. National identity and Islam, which form the main components of national identification, played a very important role during the period of deportation, helping to prevent the assimilation and disappearance of the Crimean Tatars. Now they are also key components in the revival process. The Tatars returned to the Crimea with a strong sense of national identity that has become even more clearly defined during the revival process. In the case of Islam, the process of its revival started from scratch, because almost all symbols of Islamic culture in the Crimea had been destroyed by the previous regime. Only the Crimean Tatars’ faith and the religious traditions that they had preserved came to the Crimea with its indigenous inhabitants. There is a degree of interest from Ukrainian scholars in the Crimean Tatar revival. Numerous publications and conferences have been devoted to the process of their rehabilitation and integration into Ukrainian society. Today most reasonable people in Ukraine recognise that without a resolution of the Crimean Tatars’ problems, peace and normal development in the Crimea are impossible. Western scholars have evinced some interest in the process too. The main purpose of this paper is to present a brief overview of the process of the Crimean Tatar revival, concentrating on the role that national identity and Islam are playing in it. I will first provide a brief survey of the chief milestones in Crimean Tatar history. I will then present the key points in the process of national revival: the creation and functioning of national organisations, the main problems in the repatriation process, and the ethnic situation in the Crimea. Finally, I will concentrate on the process of Islamic revival in modern-day Crimea.

The Historical Legacy

Before beginning any discussion of the process of national revival among the Crimean Tatars, it is important to consider the nation’s past. In order to be able to understand fully the context of the modern revival, it is essential to be aware of the key points in Crimean Tatar history. The Crimean Tatar nation was formed on the territory of what is now the Crimean Autonomous Republic (in modern-day Ukraine) in the early fifteenth century. This process went side by side with the process of state building, in the course of which various local ethnic groups (Cumans, Khazars, Pechenegs, for example) and newly arrived groups (Mongols and Tatars) were integrated into the Crimean Khanate under the Gerei dynasty. After a lengthy process of ethnogenesis, the Crimean Tatars, a Turkic-speaking people whose religion became Islam, had appeared. It is noteworthy that the Crimean Khanate was only independent for a few decades, and in 1475 the Gerei dynasty accepted the Ottoman Empire’s protectorate. From that time on, all political, economic and religious processes in the Crimea were directly connected with the politics of the Ottoman Empire in the region. The Crimea became an outpost of Turkish policy in Eastern Europe, and numerous wars with their Slavic neighbours formed one of the main activities of the Crimean Tatars. At the same time, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Crimea became the centre of Muslim culture in the region, and a huge number of mosques, mausoleums, madrasahs, as well as Islamic elementary schools (mektebes), were set up. Thus, according to some scholars, by the end of the eighteenth century there were around 1,600 mosques, 25 madrasahs and many mektebes active in the Crimea. The whole of life in the Crimean Khanate was regulated according to Islamic Shariah law.

As the Ottoman Empire’s power was declining by the eighteenth century, the position of all its satellites also weakened. The fate of the Crimean Tatars was especially dramatic. In 1783 the Russian Empire annexed the Crimean Khanate and declared it part of its own territory. Many Crimean Tatars who did not want to live in a country ruled by an infidel empress decided to emigrate to Turkey. This resulted in the first and the biggest wave of Crimean Tatar emigration. Many villages were abandoned, and mosques, madrasahs and mektebes were closed as a result. Those Tatars who were left were forced to submit to Russian rule. All administration in the Crimea, including the new Spiritual Administration of Crimean Muslims (Tavricheskoe Magometanskoe Dukhovnoe Pravlenie), was firmly under state control. The second wave of Tatar emigration began in 1853, when the Crimean War, which set the Russian Empire against England, France and Turkey, broke out. The Crimean Tatars protested against their forced involvement in the war on the Russian side. Furthermore, both armies destroyed Tatar villages, requisitioned their animals, and so on. The third wave of emigration began in 1918 after the October Revolution and the establishment of an atheist government. Many Tatars simply fled the Crimea however they could. Many of them died of diseases while waiting to escape by ship from seaports in the Crimea. Because of all these waves of emigration, the total number of Tatars in the Crimean Autonomous Republic decreased considerably. If, by the middle of the nineteenth century, Tatars constituted about fifty per cent of the Crimean population, by the early 1940s they formed only about twenty-five per cent. The decline in the population influenced the economic and cultural life of the peninsula. Many mosques were closed and were constantly being destroyed. For example, by 1914 there were only 729 mosques left in the Crimea.

In the 1930s the Soviet government started the final process of destroying Muslim culture in the Crimea. By 1940 there were no active mosques at all in the peninsula; many of them were closed on the pretext of being in poor condition and turned into clubs, grocery stores, schools, and so on. On 18 May 1944 the whole Muslim population of the Crimea (about 200,000 people) was deported from its homeland and settled in the Central Asian republics. After that, all symbols of the Crimean Tatars’ presence in the Crimea were eradicated. The Soviet government justified this terrible act by claiming that the Crimean Tatars had been collaborating with the Nazis during the Second World War. Almost half the nation died during deportation and in the first months of resettlement. The Tatars were settled in special places and for the first few years had various restrictions placed upon them, for instance, on their movements. Only in 1956 did the government rescind the accusation of treachery, but they were still prevented from returning to the Crimea. Some amelioration occurred in the 1980s during the ‘perestroika’ period. Because of the liberalisation of the regime, the Tatars began returning to their homeland, and this process became a genuine mass movement during the first years after the collapse of the USSR.

The Crimean Tatar National Revival

Between the late 1980s and 2006 more than half of all Crimean Tatars returned to their homeland. According to official statistics, in 2005 there were about a quarter of a million Tatars in the Crimea. The most active period in the repatriation process occurred in the early 1990s; thereafter it declined year on year. If, between 1989 and 1992, about 35,000–40,000 Crimean Tatars returned each year, in 1997 the total was only 5,300 Tatars (in 1998—3,400, in 1999—2,800, in 2000—2,200, in 2001—2,000, in 2002—1,000). Hence, according to various sources, almost 100,000 Crimean Tatars still remain in the places to which they were deported (80,000 in Uzbekistan, 15,000 in Russia, and 5,000 in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan). All the Crimean Tatars who came to the Crimea possessed the idea that their homeland lay there, the place where they and their parents were born and where they were planning to revive national statehood and culture. Thus, the Tatars came to the Crimea with a strong sense of national identity, and there it was simply defined and developed.

In 1991, during the first Kurultai (national congress) of the Crimean Tatars, the representative body of the nation, the Medzhlis, was created. The leaders of the Medzhlis declared this organisation ‘a national Crimean Tatar government’. Although this status was not officially recognised, for many years the Medzhlis remained the sole representative Crimean Tatar organisation at state level as well as in the international arena. The head of the Medzhlis was a former Soviet dissident, Mustafa Dzhemilev. At the first Kurultai the Crimean Tatars also issued a ‘Declaration of National Sovereignty’ in which an orientation towards national statehood was openly declared. From the early 1990s on, the Medzhlis tried to construct a vertical system of power to connect all Crimean Tatars from the bottom up, one which could then be used as a convenient tool for mobilising people for political activity of various kinds. From the inception of their activity in the peninsula, Tatar leaders have pledged their support for the idea of Ukrainian national sovereignty and independence, and for many years the Tatars have been almost the main loyal pro-Ukrainian force in Russian-dominated Crimea. From the early 1990s, Crimean Tatar leaders have demanded representation in the administration at both republican and local levels appropriate to their numbers. But numerous problems have meant their representation is less than they would wish. In May 1999, on the forty-fifth anniversary of the Crimean Tatars’ deportation, a Council of Crimean Tatar Representatives was created under the aegis of the President of Ukraine. It mainly consists of members of the Medzhlis, who have drafted numerous laws and other projects which, when adopted, will improve the situation of the Crimean Tatars. But bureaucratic delays and the confused situation among the political elites in Ukraine mean that the Council has not been able to achieve any tangible results.

The Main Difficulties and Problems in the Repatriation Process

The Crimean Tatars have faced numerous socio-economic, political and cultural problems during the process of repatriation. These include problems with housing, employment, the revival of the language, and others. Almost half the people (120,000 people) have nowhere to live; 22,000 of them rent, while 14,000 live in hostels. The settlements where the Crimean Tatars dominate numerically, where people have already built or are still building houses, have problems with the electricity supply (75 per cent of the places), water (27 per cent), gas (more than 90 per cent), as well as problems with roads and sewage. The other main problem is unemployment. According to official statistics, only 56 per cent of Crimean Tatars have permanent jobs.

Although in the places to which they were deported Tatars mainly lived in towns, 55 per cent of them today draw their income from agriculture. Only about 20 per cent work in industry and construction, while another 5 per cent work in markets. Many Tatars, even those with higher education, have been forced to seek jobs at the food and clothes markets. According to statistics, Tatars constitute about 70 per cent of all traders in the food markets and 30 per cent in the clothes markets. There is also a problem with land. About 75 per cent of all Crimean Tatars live today in rural areas, but according to the legislature only 18 per cent have been able to acquire any private land. During the process of privatisation following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Tatars, who had come to the Crimea only a few years before, many of whom were not members of the collective farms in the peninsula, were excluded from land distribution. Numerous demonstrations demanding a share of the land failed to resolve the problem, and served only to complicate relations with other ethnic groups.

In the political sphere, the Crimean Tatars demand official recognition of the Kurultai and Medzhlis as primary representative bodies. They further demand that they be assigned the special status of an indigenous people, and that the drafts of the laws ‘On the renewal of rights and freedoms for deported Crimean Tatars, national minorities and people deported for reasons of their ethnicity’ and ‘On the status of the Crimean Tatar nation’, which have been drawn up, be adopted. If these laws are passed, the Tatars will be able to receive financial compensation for deportation and defend their economic and political rights. Among other problems are inadequate representation in senior positions within the local administration, as well as recognition of the Crimean Tatar language as the second state language of the Crimea.

Other problematic spheres such as language, culture and religion exist in modern Crimea. Because of their fifty years of deportation, the Crimean Tatar language has been excluded from the sphere of education and learning. Now it is basically only spoken at home and, unfortunately, not by all families. Tatar leaders constantly insist on resolving this problem, seeing language as one of the main factors that may prevent assimilation. By 2004 their efforts had resulted in the opening of twelve secondary schools where instruction is in the Crimean Tatar language. Two Crimean universities (Taurida National V. Vernadsky University and the Crimean Engineering Pedagogical University) have departments teaching degrees in Crimean Tatar language and literature, with a combined annual enrolment of about 80 students.

It is essential to remark that over the last sixteen years there have been some achievements in resolving the Crimean Tatars’ problems. The Ukrainian government pays about 40 million hryvnias (the national currency) annually to help the Tatars build homes and resolve their other socio-economic difficulties (through financial support for students, national newspapers, and so on). Although this money is too little (some experts claim that the whole process of repatriation, adaptation and integration of the Crimean Tatars requires around 2 billion dollars), it does help improve the situation. There is also some financial help from international organisations and certain Muslim countries, such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and so on.

The Ethnic Situation in the Crimea

There are three main ethnic groups in modern Crimea: Russians (about 57 per cent), Ukrainians (about 25 per cent), and Crimean Tatars (about 13 per cent). From the very beginning of their return, Tatars were and still are a minority in the peninsula. They are an ethnic minority, a Turkic nation surrounded by Slavs, as well as a religious one, being Muslims in a region where the vast majority of the population is Orthodox. Hence, we have an interesting situation where a nation that was dominant in the Crimea in the past is now just a minority in its own homeland. The Crimean Tatars who created a state that was influential at that time, the Crimean Khanate, have now returned and are concerned about defending their right to be in their own home.

There is real historical debate about the origin of the Crimean Tatars. A popular theory produced by Russian and then Soviet historians holds that the Tatars are not native to the Crimea. According to this view, the Tatars came as invaders during the Mongol invasion of the thirteenth century. Hence, they are not indigenous and that is why, according to this extreme point of view, they do not have the right to return to the Crimea after deportation nor demand anything. Even if they have this right, according to a more liberal view, their status in the Crimea should not differ from that of other ethnic groups. The main argument against this view is that Crimean Tatars do not have a homeland anywhere in the world except Crimea, unlike other ethnic groups such as the Russians, Ukrainians or Armenians.

As a result, relations among different ethnic groups in the Crimea are very complex. Many Slavic (mainly Russian) people have a hostile attitude towards the Crimean Tatars. During many years of Soviet propaganda, the image of Tatars as enemies who helped the Nazis during the war, a people who are hostile to outsiders, uneducated and backward, has been fostered. And even today, after the collapse of the Soviet system, this stereotype still influences many people. The situation is complicated by the fact that the Tatars are strongly oriented towards the West, while the Slavic population is mainly connected and oriented to Russia. According to sociological surveys conducted by Crimean scholars among students at secondary schools, the gap in understanding members of different ethnic groups is very wide. For example, the Slavs living in the peninsula expressed a high level of xenophobia towards all deported people. This is not only sad but dangerous. It evidently results from an education and upbringing which are not oriented towards the building of a tolerant society.

The Revival of Islam in the Crimea

When the Crimean Tatars began returning to the peninsula, there was nothing to show that the Crimea had once been a centre of Muslim culture in Eastern Europe. Mosques had been razed to the ground or else used for inappropriate purposes; Muslim cemeteries too had been destroyed and cities and streets renamed. After sixteen years of the Islamic revival in the Crimea, some progress can be observed. The quantitative indicators of the process—the number of Muslim communities, mosques and clergy—are steadily growing. At the same time, contradictions between quantity and quality in the process still remain.

Muslim Communities

In other parts of the world, an Islamic revival begins with the creation of a Muslim community. The same scenario has also been happening in the Crimea. By the end of 2006 there were 361 Muslim communities in the Crimea. The vast majority (324) was under the jurisdiction of the Spiritual Administration of Crimean Muslims (Dukhovnoe Upravlenie Musul’man Kryma), the DUMK, with its office in Simferopol, while one recognised the authority of another Spiritual Administration based in Kiev. Apart from these, there were more than thirty autonomous communities in the Crimea.

Figure 1. Graph illustrating the numerical rise in Muslim communities

The rise in the number of Muslim communities constitutes a dynamic process which began in the late 1980s, reached a peak in 1995 and, after a brief decline, was reactivated in 1999. The dynamics of this process correlates to the personalities of the individual muftis of the DUMK. It was possible to form these communities on a mass scale during the time of the first mufti, Seitdzhelil Ibragimov (1991–95), who at the time was the only Crimean Tatar who had received an Islamic education (he had graduated from the Mir-Arab madrasah in Bukhara). Then a slight slowing down of the process coincided with the time of the second mufti, Nuri Mustafaev (1995–99). The second growth spurt occurred in the time of the third mufti, Emir-Ali Ablaev (1999–). It would appear that, leaving aside other objective reasons, the personal actions of each mufti must have influenced this process in some respect.

What is remarkable is that a considerable proportion of Muslim communities created between 2000 and 2006 were almost entirely autonomous from the DUMK. Such communities appeared because of the disputes between the DUMK, which supports the revival of Islam ‘traditional’ to the Crimean Tatars, and those Crimean Tatars who have their own views on what kind of Islam should be revived in the Crimea. Judging by the number of Muslims in the Crimea, it would appear that the rise in the number of Muslim communities is particularly intense. For example, it is twice as intensive as in the Russian republic of Tatarstan.

At the same time, it is necessary to emphasise that Muslim communities in modern Crimea do not act as they once did, for instance during the Crimean Khanate. Today they are more dependent economically and politically (on the DUMK and Medzhlis), and their self-regulatory function does not work well. Apart from this, in some places Muslim communities exist only on paper.

Mosques in the Crimea

Between the early 1990s and 2006 about 124 mosques opened in the Crimea; of these, 76 were built from scratch while others were reconstructed. Other than these, about 150 buildings throughout the Crimea were adopted as Muslim prayer spaces. The process of mosque construction started in 1991 when Turkish representatives laid the foundation stone of the main mosque in Simferopol, Kebir Dzhami. The first new mosques opened in 1995. During the first period of Islamic revival in the Crimea almost all the new mosques were built by Turkish sponsors—some sixteen new mosques in total. From 1997 on, Arab sponsors also started supporting the Tatars in this process. By 2006, 45 mosques had been built by organisations and private sponsors from different Arab countries (Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait). Another twelve mosques were built by Ukrainians, including some Crimean Tatars, and another three were built by members of the Crimean Tatar diaspora in the West.

Figure 2. Sponsors of new mosques in the Crimea

The Crimean Tatars started building mosques with their own funds quite late, in the early years of this millennium. It is understandable; in the 1990s people were busy dealing with other socio-economic problems. What is more, even today, when the economic situation of many Crimean Tatars has certainly improved, it is still not widespread. The total number of mosques in today’s Crimea is, of course, much below what it was in the khanate period. At the same time, we should not perhaps compare the current situation with the historic one for a number of objective reasons. Of these the most significant is that there was a different level of religiosity among Crimean Tatars in the past and hence the number of mosques required to serve the people also differed.

According to a sociological survey conducted in 2000, only 12.2 per cent of respondents attend mosque every day or every week; 4.3 per cent once a month and 42.4 per cent sporadically, mainly on Muslim holidays. Hence, 41.1 per cent of respondents never go to a mosque. This data is supported by observations that many mosques in modern-day Crimea are empty most of the time.

Islamic Education

From the early 1990s, there was a real problem in the Crimea with finding Muslim clergy. Muslim communities were being rapidly formed, but there was almost a total absence of educated imams in them. There are two main ways to receive an Islamic education in the Crimea today. The first is ‘external’: receiving an education at Muslim universities in different Arab countries or in theological departments in Turkey. This option was deemed unproductive by Crimean Tatar national and religious leaders, because only a few of the students sent abroad ever returned, and those who did had been ‘infected’ by various ‘dangerous’ ideologies.

The leaders, therefore, brought in another way of acquiring an Islamic education. With the support of official and private Turkish organisations, four madrasahs have been set up in the Crimea. These madrasahs offer a two- to three-year programme. On graduation students normally receive a diploma that qualifies them as imams. Madrasahs in the Crimea mostly follow the same syllabus as in Turkey, but with an additional subject, the Crimean Tatar language. Students at Crimean madrasahs are generally a little older than in Turkey. The biggest madrasah in Azovskoe village has been functioning since 1998. It has a three-year course that is absolutely free for students, and has separate departments for boys and girls.

Apart from the madrasahs, there is the Hafez School in Simferopol that concentrates on teaching students to learn the Qur’an, as well as other Qur’anic and Friday schools that offer basic Arabic and the basics of Islam to anyone who wishes to attend. It must be emphasised that despite the existence of madrasahs, there is still a shortage of educated imams in the Crimea. The vast majority of active imams are over thirty, people who as a rule do not have any religious education, because they were of school age in the Soviet period when there was only one madrasah (in Bukhara) for the whole country, and thus, unsurprisingly, the competition for places was ferocious. Thus, they basically studied Islam on their own. This category of imams constitutes about 75 per cent of the total. The remaining 25 per cent, who are under thirty, includes a large number of graduates of Crimean madrasahs and other religious institutions in Muslim countries.

Pilgrimage

In the last fifteen years, the Crimean Tatars have been able to perform Hajj to Makkah. By 2006 the pilgrimage had been organised six times, with more than 400 people taking part overall. There are some features of Hajj specific to the Crimean Tatars. Firstly, only once (in 2006) did the Crimean Tatars finance their Hajj themselves. The other five times it was paid for by the Saudi government. Secondly, in contrast to other post-Soviet regions, the Crimean people first went on pilgrimage only in the second half of the 1990s. Only in 1997 did the first twenty Crimean Tatars, along with other Ukrainians, visit Saudi Arabia. The explanation is that Arab organisations only came to the Crimea in the second half of the 1990s. Thirdly, the Hajj was organised primarily not by the official Islamic body, the DUMK, but by private charitable organisations. While in 1999–2000 the DUMK was somehow connected with this process, in 2002–03 it was completely excluded from it. Fourthly, organisation of Hajj became politicised. Members of the DUMK and Medzhlis tried to select only those who were loyal to them for Hajj. Arguments between the Medzhlis and the DUMK on the one hand and charities on the other provoked the Saudi government into cancelling the invitation to the Hajj in 2001.

Thus, according to the indicators listed above (communities, mosques, Islamic education and pilgrimage), the process of Islamic revival in the Crimea is proceeding in a dynamic fashion. The number of communities and mosques is rapidly increasing. At the same time, this does not indicate a growth in religious feeling among the people. In this particular case, quantity definitely prevails over quality.

The Medzhlis and Islam

From the very beginning, the Medzhlis took an active part in the process of Islamic revival. Between 1991 and 2006, Medzhlis leaders participated in more than 100 meetings where they discussed the religious problems of Crimean Muslims. Their activity in this sphere peaked in 1998 and then slowed. In this particular year, the Medzhlis was trying to resolve the problems connected with the activities of the Muslim Party of Ukraine (Partiia Musul’man Ukrainy), which first appeared right before the parliamentary elections and was opposed to the Medzhlis. Other than this, with the support of various Islamic organisations, the Medzhlis tried to organise an international Islamic conference on the Crimean Tatars.

Figure 3. The frequency of Medzhlis meetings devoted to the problems of Crimean Muslims

Using the figure above, we can highlight three periods of Medzhlis involvement in Islamic revival in the Crimea. The first (1991–1996) may be characterised as a period of great enthusiasm. Crimean Tatar leaders were highly optimistic about Islamic revival and were convinced of the strength of Islamic solidarity on the part of other Muslim states. The second (1997–2000) was the peak of Medzhlis involvement. In these three years, the topic of Islamic revival made up fifty per cent of the Medzhlis leaders’ contacts. And, finally, the third period (2001–2006) is characterised by the slowing down of communication with Muslim leaders. Enthusiasm was replaced by scepticism and pragmatism.

Medzhlis leaders undertook several initiatives aimed at ‘saving’ the Crimean Muslim community from Islamic ideologies that they viewed as ‘non-traditional’ for the Crimean Tatars. Objective data reveal the Medzhlis’ interest in Islam and the large part it has played in the process of Islamic revival. At the same time, some scholars criticise the Medzhlis for its direct control over the DUMK and the whole revival process. Some stress that the role of the Medzhlis is largely negative, because it uses Islam for political purposes; hence, Islam is just a symbol in its nationalist project.

About 75 per cent of all the meetings held by the Medzhlis that were about Islam were with foreign Islamic organisations and Ukrainian charities funded from abroad. For example, the Medzhlis has had contacts with Muslim countries such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Libya and Iran. Apart from this, Islamic revival has been supported by international Islamic organisations such as the Islamic Bank of Development, the World Islamic League and the World Association of Islamic Youth.

Figure 4. Meetings between foreign Islamic countries and the Medzhlis

The contribution of all these countries and organisations to Islamic revival in the Crimea varies, as can be seen from the chart below detailing their contacts with Medzhlis leaders. The significant figures in the Islamic revival in the Crimea are thus Saudi Arabia (28 meetings), Turkey (19), Iran (5), Kuwait (3), the United Arab Emirates (3) and Libya (1).

Contacts between the Medzhlis and international Islamic centres take a number of specific forms. The first aspect is related to the religious education and training of Muslim clergy from the Crimea in educational institutions in Muslim countries. Crimean Tatars go off to study in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Libya and elsewhere. The second involves the humanitarian work of charities in the Crimea. Islamic organisations are constructing new and restoring old mosques, helping orphans and the poor. Some organisations dig wells or construct roads and medical buildings for the Crimean Tatars. The third is the cultural and educational work of Islamic organisations in the Crimea. They open Qur’anic and Friday schools to teach the Qur’an and Arabic and organise conferences and seminars. For example, for several years now Turkish organisations have been conducting conferences celebrating the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad.

Despite the active support of Islamic countries and organisations in the Islamic revival, many scholars stress that their role is ambivalent. On the one hand, they help in all the areas mentioned above, and on the other, they have divided the Crimean Tatars into followers of different Islamic teachings. Crimean Tatar leaders have claimed that foreign missionaries have imported ideas that contradict what is traditional for Crimean Islam. On the one hand, they are right, because over the centuries the Crimean Tatars practised an Islam that differs from that practised by, for example, Muslims in the Middle East. On the other hand, many national leaders are in fact mythologising the notion of ‘traditional’ Islam, which they identify as a unique Crimean ‘form’ of Islam.

The Chronology of Islamic Revival

The process of Islamic revival in the Crimea has a specific chronology in which three main periods can be discerned. The first period (1989–95) should be seen as a period of institutionalisation of Islam in the Crimea. It may be characterised by phenomena such as:

• The development of Muslim communities;
• The formation of administrative Muslim bodies: the DUMK and the Council of Imams;
• The opening of the first educational institutions (madrasahs) and revival of Muslim clergy.

The second period (1996–2000) constitutes a period of the politicising of Islam in the Crimea. This is characterised by the following features:

• The establishment of control over the DUMK by the Medzhlis and drawing it into political activity;
• The use of Islam as a mobilisation tool for political purposes by the Medzhlis;
• The manoeuvring between different religious organisations and directions by the Medzhlis.

The third period (from 2000) may be identified as the period of realism, because of the Medzhlis’ and DUMK’s consciousness of what kind of Islam they want to revive in the Crimea and how they wish to do this. The main features of this period include:

• The revision by the Medzhlis of its policy of politicising Islam and radicalisation;
• Defining the priorities in Islam’s development in the Crimea, the orientation towards ‘traditional’ versus ‘foreign’ Islam;
• The decrease in relations with international Islamic organisations, and the policy of selective contacts.

Conclusion

Throughout the process of deportation, a sense of national identity and Islam both played very important roles in saving the Crimean Tatars as a nation. Although Crimean Tatars had lost their homeland, their history, the chance of an education in their own language and a feeling of pride in belonging to a distinctive nation, they still preserved their identity. Although the environment in the Central Asian republics was among fellow Muslims who spoke a related Turkic language, the people returned home with a strong self-identification as Crimean Tatars. Furthermore, the Crimean Tatars preserved their religion despite an oppressively atheist regime. They practised it at home and handed it down from generation to generation. They therefore arrived in the Crimea as representatives of a Muslim religion and civilisation.

In deportation, national identity and Islam were very closely connected. For Crimean Tatars it was impossible to be a Tatar and not be a Muslim at the same time. Of course, there were some deviations from this rule—some Tatars did become atheists—but they were not numerous. The vast majority identified themselves as Crimean Tatars and Muslims at the same time, and both identifications were interconnected and carried equal significance.

After deportation, once the process of national revival was under way, national identity and Islam acquired a slightly different meaning. Now Crimean Tatars have begun to question themselves and others, asking what is more important: to be a Tatar or a Muslim? This question became relevant because of the appearance of different schools of Islam in the Crimea. Many Crimean Tatars have become supporters of ‘traditional’ Islam (with its many borrowings from the nation’s pre-Islamic past), while others insist on adopting ‘true’ Islam (without any later ethnic accretions). Hence, today national identity and Islam still unite many Crimean Tatars but may, in some cases, also divide them.

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Uehling, Greta Lynn, Beyond Memory: The Crimean Tatars’ Deportation and Return (New York-Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).

INTRODUCTION

Whilst it is relatively easy to study and understand many aspects of religious and cultural identity within their traditional cultural space, the processes of migration and settlement in a new social domain transform established constructions of identity. Notions of communal religious identity and ideas about what actually constitutes ‘Muslimness’ have led to a number of different, if not dichotomous, interpretations among members of the Yemeni Muslim community in Britain. Another equally perplexing identity question within the diasporic British Yemeni community is what constitutes being Yemeni when one is located beyond the traditional cultural space and geographical boundaries? Again, identity constructions are normally facilitated through social institutions as a primary means of reifying religious and cultural distinctiveness. But unlike public institutions that incorporate and propagate religious expression and identity, manifestations of Yemeni cultural identity are less visible in the public space. Instead, it is the private and intimate domains—the family, home, relatives, friends, food, dress, music, language, etc.—that represent and signify aspects of ‘Yemeniness,’ or Yemeni culture. This paper will explore some of the important facets of British Yemeni identity constructions that nurture and develop a sense of cultural belonging within the diaspora community. By examining their notions of diasporic Yemeniness, we can perhaps understand how the community maintains and establishes its sense of distinctiveness or difference, what specific practices aid the construction of cultural identity, and how it develops new or hybrid identities within the context of contemporary Britain.
Mohammad Siddique Seddon
Global Citizenry Ancient and Modern: British Yemenis and Translocal Tribalism
Mohammad Siddique Seddon
What is a Cultural Identity? According to Stuart Hall, migration reparticularises people and cultures in relation to one another and their places of settlement. In addition to large-scale migrations of people from their original places of settlement in both the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the added phenomenon of globalisation has reconstructed the relationship between the ‘local’ and the ‘global’ in terms of meaning and attachment to a particular place. Migrated communities to Britain, like the Yemenis, have a global dimension to their traditional culture through a number of new formations of identity facilitated by globalisation. The systems of shared meanings and identity markers—what Peter Berger describes as ‘human products’—by which a community defines itself, in other words, its culture, are now more easily transported from their traditional geographic space. This has occurred through modernisation and the development of global technologies: the postal system, television, satellite TV, telephone, email, the internet and other easier means of travel. For example, one can visit any Yemeni home in Britain and observe how satellite TV helps to transport one directly to Sana’a—twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. And whilst global technology may have hegemonised modern Western culture over the rest of the world’s civilisations, conversely, under the shadow of Western globalism, new transnational forms of traditional ‘local’ cultures have mushroomed, facilitated by the same technologies. The term culture includes embodied ideas and beliefs that help us interpret and make sense of the world. Culture also includes social practices regulated and organised by those shared meanings. Sharing the same pool of meanings naturally produces a sense of belonging to a culture and forms a common bond and community identity with others. For the individual, having a sense of position within a set of shared meanings provides ideas about ‘who are we’ and ‘where we belong’—a sense of our own identity. Berger believes that culture remains ‘real’ in the sense of subjective plausibility only when, or as, it is confirmed in relation to the individual and society. He agrees with Marx that man’s world becomes an ‘objective reality’ only through ‘reification.’ Culture and society are therefore understood only within themselves and their particular environment, and Berger asserts that man forgets that the world in which he lives has been produced by himself. More importantly, for Berger, culture and society can function only through ‘meaning’: humans infuse their own meanings into reality by necessity, and the individual attaches subjective meaning to all actions. As such, mankind understands its actions as intentional and as having a direct purpose within society.1 Therefore, it can be said that culture is one of the principal means by which identities are constructed, maintained and/or transformed. Cultures are usually thought to be stable or fixed in their meanings and practices and are established through settled communities in a particular place over a period of time. To think of oneself as ‘Yemeni,’ for example, would inevitably locate one within those specific sets of meanings that have a history and continuity and, because all cultures predate the individual, they provide a stable frame of reference. This frame of reference, or ‘tradition,’ connects the current mode of existence to a historical or ancestral past. Historical connections through tradition give culture a distinctive coherence and a specific form over time, making it internally homogeneous to those who identify with a culture, share a cultural identity and forge a cultural belonging through membership. The ‘marking-off’ of cultures through strongly bounded formations such as tribal membership increases the sense of community (us) and difference (others) among those who belong to a particular culture. Because cultures are distinguished from each other through a sense of belonging and difference, it is not surprising that the impact of globalisation is seen as a destabilising influence on cultures and cultural identity. With the acceleration of flows of goods, people, ideas, images and meanings, globalisation has stretched social relations beyond the geo-cultural states of time and space. More specifically, globalisation has cast a shadow over Muslim ‘micro-worlds’—the syncretic and ‘localised’ multi-expressions of Islam. This is not to say that these acculturated forms of Islam are aberrations; rather, in the blinding light of globalisation, they present themselves comparatively as anachronistic and somewhat introspective.2 Further, the hegemonic nature of global Western consumerism, with its modern tropes and universal motifs (McDonald’s, Nike, Starbucks, Coca-Cola, Levi’s, etc.), has seductively imposed itself on traditional cultures. The unsettling effects of the ‘new global cultural industries’3 are that pre-modern cultures are often caught between the desire for the material rewards of modernity and nostalgia for the stability and traditional coherence that are no longer present in a fast-moving and constantly changing modern world.
Mohammad Siddique Seddon
Kevin Robbins has articulated the unsettling impacts of globalisation on culture, stating: Globalisation is profoundly transforming our apprehension of the world: it is provoking a new experience of orientation and disorientation, new senses of placed and placeless identity. The global-local nexus is associated with new relations between space and place, fixity and mobility, centre and periphery, ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ space, ‘inside’ and ‘outside,’ frontier and territory.4 Whilst traditional culture in Yemen may be experiencing a process of splintering and fragmentation under the intense and relentless influences of global consumerism, Yemeni emigrants and settlers in new displaced communities, such as Britain, can tap into Yemen through global communication networks. It is through all these modern technologies that diaspora Yemenis maintain their sense of identity and belonging to Yemen, whereas in the nascent stages of community formation, Arab cafés provided the primary means of ‘linking up’ with news and events back home. The new technological linkages between the ‘global’ and the ‘local’ have inculcated a heightened sense of ‘Yemeniness’ among Yemenis abroad, creating in some cases a hybrid form of cultural identity within diaspora communities. Yet, as previously stated, Yemen—the ‘homeland’—is rapidly transforming from the often imagined, romanticised and idealised country left behind by economic exilic sojourners some fifty years ago. Admittedly, some forms of traditional Yemeni culture in Britain have been eroded or obscured in their significance within their new geo-cultural environment. However, a ‘virtual’ Yemen is always at hand, either via the electronic tap of global technology or through maintained cultural institutions and networks such as the ‘chew’ (a q¥t-chewing session). Religion is a powerful bearer of shared meanings about the sacred, and it carries a great deal of symbolic meaning with regard to authority and ‘belongingness.’ Like culture, religion can also provide an identity marker of difference and otherness because customs and traditions are the distinctive ways in which ‘things are done’ within a particular culture or faith community. The way people talk, eat, dress, celebrate and commemorate their rites of passage, represent or preserve the narratives of their people or tribe, are all systems of meaning that maintain the collective memory and historical record of the member group. Hall asserts that: Shared meaning systems can develop between people who live in different places—across time and space … the most recent forms of globalisation, where, for example, transnational migrants maintain important linkages between place of origin and place of settlement.5 In this respect, the significance of ‘place’ in cultural systems of meaning is an important component, and despite a new sense of ‘place’ within a global context, Hall maintains that it is still ‘common to think [sic] of cultures as if they depended on the stable interaction of the same people, doing the same sorts of things … in the same geographical location.’6 But in a global age it may no longer be necessary to associate culture literally with ‘place,’ and perhaps ‘place’ is now simply a symbolic guarantee of cultural belonging, establishing ‘virtual’ boundaries around a specific culture and marking it off from others. As we can observe, it is quite possible for many cultures to maintain their identity beyond the confines of their historic ‘place.’ However, there is no doubt that physical settlement, continuity of occupation and an established ‘way of life’ emanating from and rooted within a particular location and physical environment provide powerful frames for conceptualising culture. Further, social relations through tribal bonds, kinship and intermarriage facilitate the development and shaping of cultural identity. Strongly bonded ideas of culture through meaning systems are underpinned by the historical settlement of people, formulating cultural identity through an unbroken common genealogy, kinship, residence and descent which, in the context of a strong, well-bounded cultural identity, is a way of defining ethnicity. That is, the shared activities and meaning systems located in one place that are underpinned by human bonds of kinship and blood ties. The evidence of this shared meaning can sometimes be ‘read’ into certain shared physical features and characteristics of a population. Hall says this is evident where people share not only a culture but also an ethnos, a belongingness or binding to a certain group or place. Here, the sense of cultural identity is very well defined or strongly bounded and, although ethnicity is historically constructed, rather like cultural identity, it is unified among its social groups on so many levels that over a long period of time it appears as though membership or belonging is transmitted or imprinted by nature. Ethnicity then appears to transcend the experience of what we call history and culture. When located in a particular ‘place’ and based on historical origins of ‘kith and kin,’ cultural identity becomes based on ‘blood and soil.’7 In the specifics of Yemeni identity, where tribal belonging is largely the primary cultural identity, the idea of ‘belonging’ to a ‘place’ is signified by the use of the excluding term muwallad. Although the term literally means ‘born of,’ it is actually used to denote one who is born of emigrant origin, i.e. someone born outside Yemen, usually of a ‘local’ mother. So it would appear that ‘place’ locates and fixes ‘systems of meaning’ (culture), and it functions in helping to stabilise and anchor cultural patterns and identities beyond purely historical interpretations and understandings. Further, when we recognise a culture, we perceive or imagine it to have a place or setting, and this is how we give cultures a background or a frame of reference by which we can understand a particular culture. For example, we might ‘think of England’ through an imagined idyllic rural setting complete with thatched cottages, rose gardens and cricket on the green. This could be one way of perceiving or framing ‘Englishness.’ Likewise, ‘thinking of Yemen’ may conjure images of the desert, a blinding sun with a parched landscape and mysterious nomadic travellers. However, these stereotypes of national representations and identities based on ‘place’ and culture are what Edward Said describes as ‘landscapes of the mind’ and ‘imaginary geographies.’8 What Said means here is that cultural identities are ascribed an imagined ‘home’ in which the characteristics of the identity in question are fixed. These locations may be real or purely conceived within the imagination of the inquisitor. The linkage between cultural identity and placement within a particular landscape constructs powerful associations of a ‘place’ as a ‘home’—a location which not only reflects a specific cultural identity but binds that identity to the landscape. Therefore, if cultural identity can be strongly associated with a place through historical, genealogical and ethnic bonds, a real sense of belonging through culture and place is established, securing and familiarising identity.
On a micro scale, cultural identity is more strongly bound through marital ties, blood relations and familiarity, but at the macro level, on the scale of national cultures, the sense of identity and belonging becomes an abstraction. This is because we can never ‘actually’ know or meet all the people who belong to our nation or national community. At this level identity becomes more like an idea, and Benedict Anderson has articulated this abstract notion of national belonging when he describes national cultures as ‘imagined communities.’ In this context, cultural identity is represented through ‘an idea or narrative of the nation’ sustained via different cultural systems that give it meaning. Anderson also argues that nations differ from each other largely because of the different ways in which they are imagined, which represents what sorts of people belong and do not belong to them. National cultural identity, community and belonging rely, therefore, on the imagined or conceptualised meanings associated with them, coupled with the internalised sense of community and belonging with others.9 Perhaps this is why Enoch Powell wrote, ‘the life of nations no less than that of men is [sic] lived largely in the imagination.’10 Ironically, Powell’s quotation serves to exemplify Said’s notions of ‘landscapes of the mind’ and the importance of mythical and invented traditions, stories, customs and ceremonies that help to construct a definition of the nation, spanning time and place. These invisible bonds of cultural identity give us an imagined origin, a location from which we came and to which we belong, or that which we call home.
Yemeni Notions of ‘Britishness’ The development of British national identity suggests a homogeneity that might be culturally realised through aspects of ‘Britishness.’ However, the problematic quest for a British identity can only truly be realised as a historical political construction, and the creation of a British national identity would certainly not have existed before the eighteenth century. ‘Great Britain’ was born out of the Scottish Union Act, which was concluded in 1708, by which English hegemony was firmly established over the British mainland.11 In the historical and developed sense of ‘English-Britishness,’ British-born Yemeni respondents seem more aware of being excluded and less integrated into ‘Britishness.’ Beyond the simple political definitions and the restrictive forms of ‘Englishness’ they constantly confront, the exclusion they face because of their ethnicity and race almost forces them into an identity of difference. It is perhaps because of resistance to English hegemony that new religious and ethnic minorities fare much better among the ‘Celtic fringe’ than their counterparts in the English metropolis. There is likely to be more empathy for minority sub-groups among the Welsh, Scots and Irish because of their own history and experiences of colonisation by the English.12 Yet, despite the colonial imposition, the political terms ‘British’ and ‘Britain’ might still seem somewhat artificial both to the diverse inhabitants who comprise the present population of the UK and to many foreigners who still often refer to the ‘British’ people as ‘English.’ For a few Yemenis, ‘being British’ can never fully be realised, and so their ideas about who they are, and more importantly who their children are, appear to have been framed by their experiences of exclusion. The problem of established representations of new Britons as ‘perpetuated others’ continues to hinder all processes of social inclusion, particularly when, as Hall states: Our picture of them is defined primarily by their ‘otherness’—their minority relationship to something vaguely identified as the majority, their cultural difference from European norms, their non-whiteness, their ‘marking’ by ethnicity, religion and ‘race.’13 British Yemenis have formed a community that is distinctly marked, both culturally and religiously, but it is not particularly separatist or exclusive. Whilst many of their cultural traditions and religious practices have been preserved, degrees and forms of attachment are fluid and constantly negotiated both between genders and across generations. Similarly, both Yemeni traditions and Muslim practices coexist with new forms of identity and cultural manifestations that maintain ‘Yemeniness’ and include ‘Britishness.’ But these hybrid identities are often painfully forged through the intra-community dynamics of preserving tradition and identity and also against the wider social tensions of assimilation and social exclusion. In the British Yemeni context, their specific cultural traditions are removed from the Judeo-Christian classical Western traditions and, in addition, past colonisation by the West, particularly Britain, has marginalised and disrupted the traditional and stable aspects of their religion and culture. Furthermore, the unsettling processes of migration and settlement in the UK have added to the destabilisation of their traditions and culture. Ashis Nandy has described European postcolonial communities like the Yemenis of Eccles as ‘intimate enemies,’ a phrase that reflects both the historical relationship as colonised subjects and the present situation as ‘perpetuated others’ of new migrant communities and the West.14 Hall has insightfully described the predicament of postcolonial communities in Britain and Europe as: [Having] dwelled for many years, and long before migration, in the double or triple time of colonisation, and now occupy[ing] the multiple frames in between or ‘third’ spaces—the homes-away-from-homes of the post-colonial metropolis.15 I would suggest that the construction of a British Yemeni identity is an ongoing process of negotiation. That is, through a process of appropriation and adaptation of certain elements of the dominant culture into the developing and acculturated forms of the minority or subjugated culture, ‘Britishness’ is both deterritorialised and fused into an interactive hybrid identity. A visible manifestation of this social phenomenon was observed at a Yemeni wedding I attended in Manchester, where the groom wore a grey English-style morning suit complete with stiff collar, silk cravat and silver-buttoned waistcoat. His traditional English wedding apparel contrasted with his marriage celebration, where he danced his Yemeni tribal dance and then reclined on cushions to chew q¥t in a huge maqil held in honour of his wedding. The males from the bride’s family chose to wear traditional Yemeni shaw¥l (headdress) and fow~ah (sarong), complete with a jambiyyah (ceremonial dagger), which was waved around as part of the dance ritual. Here, the Yemeni traditional dress contrasted with occasional fluent smatterings of English in a broad Liverpudlian accent. To complete the multicultural hybrid experience, guests were served neither traditional Yemeni dishes nor English food, but instead ubiquitous chicken and lamb curry dishes with biryani and naan supplied by the local Bengali restaurant. Yet beyond the lived realities of new identity formations for the Yemeni community of Britain, representing the multifaceted and complex experiences of minority new Britons through the current discourses of difference may at best be only half the story, particularly when their presence is a constant, if uncomfortable, reminder of our imperial past. The trajectories of ‘difference’ and ‘otherness’ of religious and ethnic minorities in Britain are well studied, but their pathways into new inclusive forms of British cultural experiences and expressions are severely blocked by markers of difference.16 Only by redefining and reimagining notions of ‘Britishness’ and even ‘Englishness’ can we ‘decolonise’ and then ‘globalise’ our sense of national identity in order to realistically reflect contemporary realities. A revolutionary approach towards the inclusion, preservation and representation of ‘other cultures’ in their new diasporic forms need not be at the expense of our national sense of cultural heritage. The production of contemporary hybrid forms of cultural expression through the arts has combined both a traditional and preserved past and new cross-cultural, transgressive and innovative expressions. For example, the cutting-edge and avant-garde musical forms, whether Afro-Caribbean raga, North African rai or South Asian bhangra, have no ‘heritage’ or ‘archive’ and need no authority to permit or sanction their modern—or even postmodern—creative explorations. Making a cultural claim on ‘Englishness’ is an important progression in an evolving British-Yemeni identity. The responses to the current dilemmas of national identity revisit, if not replicate, the polemical discourses of ‘difference’ and ‘other’ developed through Orientalism. By presenting some aspects of British Muslim identity as conflicting and problematic, the suggestion is that a synthesis with their developing British cultural identity is impossible. The assumption that integration into a British national identity is not possible presents a discourse of difference that is largely representative of outdated ideas of otherness located in Orientalism, and extensively critiqued and deconstructed in postcolonial studies.17 Leela Gandhi has described this divisive form of representation as ‘procedures whereby the convenient Othering and exoticisation of ethnicity merely confirms and stabilises the hegemonic [and exclusive] notion of “Englishness.”’18 In the historical process of othering, the study of the Orient through the discourse of Orientalism has previously helped Europeans define themselves in terms of what they are not, as well as providing a monolithic construct by which the East is both comprehended and imagined.
Global Citizenry Ancient and Modern But this flawed process of othering presents itself as little more than an inverted form of self-definition and identity reification because, in its final analysis, the self simply becomes everything the other is not. In the context of the identity politics of minority Muslim communities in Britain, the migration and settlement of postcolonial and Commonwealth communities has been used to ignite racist fears of being dominated or ‘overrun’ by the beliefs and cultures of new religious and ethnic others. Given that the largest minority groups among Britain’s new communities are Muslims, one might conclude that Islam therefore represents the biggest threat to national identity and the ‘British way of life.’ A visible manifestation of this common, ungrounded fear is increasingly expressed through the phenomenon of ‘Islamophobia.’ However, despite an alarming increase in fear of the Muslim other, being British politically has no relation to either religion or race, although historically notions of Britishness have been closely associated with both. Hence, the popular misconception is that being British is synonymous with being ‘white and Christian,’ therefore racially and religiously exclusive.
British Muslim Identity So visible is the presence of new Muslim communities in Britain that they have prompted Tim Winter to note that ‘the arrival and demonstrable sustainability of a large Muslim presence in these islands is the most significant single event in our religious history since the Reformation.’19 In 1997, whilst on a state visit to Pakistan, the Queen offered an interesting possibility for the diverse communities of Muslims in Britain when she commented on their national and religious characteristics, stating, ‘a distinctive new identity, that of British Muslim, has emerged. I find that healthy and welcome.’20 However, despite the optimism of the British monarch regarding the inclusion of her Muslim subjects into the wider British national identity, the details of how and why this new hybrid identity is actually constructed suggest a complex backdrop of negative perceptions about British Muslimness as an identity of ‘unbelonging,’ evolved through a ‘culture of resistance’ in contestation with hegemonic British identity.21 And whilst still engaged in the ongoing process of negotiating a national identity, new British communities of ‘other’ religious and ethnic origins are also caught in the current political crisis that is challenging our already precarious notions of a British identity.
Mohammad Siddique Seddon
In exploring the challenges of ‘multiple identities’ among British Muslims, many social scientists portray increased acculturated Britishness—an increasing identity experience—as being in considerable contention with perceived traditional Muslim and ethnic identities. David Nicolls has alluded to the dangers of representing minority communities as perpetual others, stating: The structural-functionalist theories, with their concept of groups or institutions which are ‘dysfunctional’ to the social system and the notion of ethnic minorities lying ‘outside the system,’ have definite totalitarian implications. It is only a short step in the same direction to recommend that these dysfunctional groups should be eliminated or that these extra-systemic minorities should be deported.22 In addition, as this research and others conducted on specific Muslim communities in Britain illustrate, the monolithic perception and projection of Muslims in Britain and the West needs constantly to be addressed in order to recognise the particularities of changing diasporic communities that defy clichés and common stereotypes. The emerging, yet still contested, British Muslim identity endorsed by the present monarch perhaps has more to do with generational paradigm shifts—from migrant settlers opting for the citizenship of the received country, where their native-born offspring are already part of the social fabric as active contributors to developing multicultural public spheres—than with any political or legal recognition in British law.23 In this process of new identity construction, the traditional concepts and values of parents, their ideas and expressions of Yemeni identity, may lose their significance in the experiences of acculturation, social interactivity and day-to-day life in Britain of second- and third-generation Yemeni children. This paradigm shift is present among the generations of British Yemenis largely because the young are interacting in a completely different way with wider society than their migrant parents. And, in contrast to their parents, young British-born Yemenis have to negotiate multiple identity choices as a result of their differing social circumstances. Here, identity constructions are formed to facilitate both contrasting identities, often ‘bridging’ the inherited traditional world of their parents and their own experiences as contributing social actors. The resultant hybrid or hyphenated identities reflect the multiplicity of their identity experiences: British-Arabs, British-Yemenis and British Muslims. In these multi-identity formations, the young need not be conflicted about being ‘Yemeni,’ ‘Muslim’ or ‘British’; rather, they can exist under the wider umbrella of British identity that includes varied forms of being British.24 These hybrid forms of identity, therefore, do not require Yemenis to reject their ethnic, religious and national identity. Further, because religion and religious communities are among the oldest forms of transnational movements not confined to the territorial boundaries of the nation-state, the emergence of a British Muslim identity conforms to both the ‘local’ and ‘global’ paradigms. In this new hyphenated identity construction, British-born respondents are able to tailor the cultural and religious facets of ‘who they are’ in order to accommodate their own social realities. In other words, the universal validity of Islam as a divinely revealed religion with its own way of life and belief system, and its localised assemblages of organised social structures and institutions that are geo-culturally specific, accommodate a fusion of facets of British cultural and Islamic religious identities—‘British Muslimness.’25 Whilst the British Yemeni community, compared with other Muslim communities in Britain and the West, has experienced a certain degree of cultural displacement as a result of the migration and settlement processes, these experiences have been counterbalanced by the establishment of religious and cultural practices and institutions that both maintain traditional aspects of communal identity and facilitate new expressions of self-identity. Simultaneously, the new forms of identity manifest among second and third generations often display a distinct facet of acculturated ‘Britishness.’ These hybrid identities still exhibit a degree of cultural distinctiveness but are specifically located within the emerging cosmopolitan spaces of the urban metropolis. Noha Nasser argues that the multicultural inner-city spaces of Western cities have become metaphors not only of urban forms with distinct cultural identities but also metaphors for the Occident and the Orient.26 She further asserts that it is becoming increasingly difficult to comprehend the emergence of multicultural locales in British cities without recourse to an understanding of the colonial legacy that has precipitated the processes of decolonisation and migration.27 In the specific context of the Yemeni community, research indicates that a regional or local identity is more pronounced and assimilated than any notions of ‘belonging’ to a British national identity.
Mohammad Siddique Seddon
The Yemeni sense of regional identity in Eccles is locally specific and even conforms to local indigenous resistance to imposed national or European geopolitical identities. The evolution of regional and localised hybrid identities displayed by minority Muslim communities in Britain has also been observed by Nadeem Malik in his study of how Muslim communities identify themselves both locally as British Muslims and globally as members of the universal family of Islam. Malik raises many questions concerning the connection between legal recognition of British Muslims as a social minority and the concept of citizenship, or what he calls the ‘citizen link.’ He concludes that as British Muslim communities slowly became noticed, and despite the ‘bouts of oppression and prejudice’ they suffered, ‘they did not seek to dominate the host community politically or militarily, they simply wanted to live in a different place according to their own customs, values and beliefs.’28 Referring to the process of acculturation experienced by pioneering first-generation Muslim settlers in Britain’s industrialised urban sprawls, he wryly comments, ‘their palates had not quite adapted to Yorkshire Pudding and mushy peas, not every day at least!’29 Contesting the famous maxim attributed to Saint Ambrose, ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do,’ Malik has questioned where the boundaries of citizenship and belonging lie by challenging the rationale of the assimilationist argument against the reality of a historical background of strongly bonded regional British identities in addition to new British identities as a postcolonial phenomenon. He asks rhetorically, ‘do we extend the phrase “when in London, do as the “Cockneys” do,” or, “when in Birmingham, do as the “Brummies” do?”’ answering, ‘obviously, most rational people would argue against any such suggestion.’30 But regional identity among minority communities of new Britons is less contested than inclusion into a British national identity, as Barry Carr’s study of the acculturation of Yemenis and Bangladeshis into notions of a north-eastern regional ‘Geordie’ identity shows. Carr’s research traces the identity shifts of first-generation migrant parents and second- and third-generation British-born progeny, noting that once the children of the Arab and South Asian communities opened their mouths to speak, they made their bid for regional identity.31 However, whilst a local identity may be less contested and easier to negotiate than a British national one, Carr also admits that as the traditions and values of a region are eroded, racism may become a more dominant force, excluding ‘new immigrants’ and their children from developing regional ‘Geordie,’ ‘Mancunian,’ ‘Brummie’ or ‘Cockney’ identities.32
The Urban Village: Translocal Tribalism Whilst the qabÏlah (tribe) plays a primary role in both the identity construction and social interactions of Yemenis in their country of origin, tribal belonging and identity among Yemenis in Britain have a greater degree of invisibility. This is largely because the pre-modern social structures of tribal societies are not factors in the social order of modern industrial Western societies and, therefore, the tribe as a facet of self-identity is somewhat redundant outside the context of Yemeni society and culture. But for first-generation migrants the tribe still remains the major facet of self-identity. That is not to say that tribal identity is absent among diasporic Yemeni communities, but rather that the usual social constructions of the tribe and tribal identity are tenuous beyond the tribal ancestral homeland. Understanding the importance of tribal belonging in the community becomes apparent only after an extended period of ethnographic observational research and a field trip to Yemen. Initially, as a community, the British Yemenis appear to be a homogeneous ethnic group whose community-formation experience is generally one of fusion rather than fission. And whilst many aspects of their religious and cultural identities are visible and facilitated through social institutions, organisations and strong social networks, tribal identities are part of an ‘invisible’ intra-dynamic of the community’s identity construction and formation. Understanding the importance of tribal belonging as a major facet of the multiple identities that construct notions of ‘Yemeniness’ is a phenomenon that has exclusive meaning and value only within and among the community. The term ‘tribe’ is widely used in anthropology, but its precise definition and appropriate application are contested among anthropologists. Etymologically, the word has its roots in ancient Latin: the Romans used the word tribua to mean a political unit, but it was also used to refer to social groups defined by the territory in which they lived or settled.33 Tribal societies and tribes are categorised in the evolutionary scheme of social types and are usually envisaged as primitive sociopolitical groups prevalent in pre-modern societies. This anthropological description of ‘the tribe’ generally refers to groupings consisting of more than one local community, united by common cultural characteristics and some form of political leadership or organisation at a supralocal level. Anthropologists assert that wherever supralocal leadership is well established, there is a greater development of occupational specialisation in crafts, military and religious activities that facilitate a redistributive economy precipitated and patronised by the emergence of chiefdoms or shaykhdoms. However, modern anthropologists prefer to employ the notion of ethnicity or inter-ethnic relations in order to analyse and interpret issues relating to intertribal conflicts, particularly those of African ‘tribes,’ where tribal notions on the African continent are considered largely colonial creations. In postcolonial debates on African peoples, it is thought that tribal ideas were attributed to pre-existing colonised African peoples whose characteristics were then problematised to hinder moves towards independence and self-governance. It is also argued that the creation of tribal divisions and tribal consciousness was largely the work of colonial rulers, in order to impose hierarchy and supralocal unity upon previously largely autonomous local communities in which, before colonisation, a loose and relative sense of ethnic identity existed. Tribal divisions were, it is claimed, extended as a means of maintaining colonial rule and administrative control. Later studies of African peoples showed that the colonial concept of the ‘tribe’ in the African context—perceived as ethnically, linguistically, culturally and politically autonomous and self-conscious units—entailed gross simplifications and misrepresentations that undermined the complex regional inter-ethnic social relations of pre-colonial Africa.34 Despite the increasing unpopularity of tribal definitions and classifications of African peoples in modern anthropological discourse, tribal identity is still a major feature of traditional Arabian societies, particularly in Yemen. Tribal identity as a primary marker of socially constructed identities among Yemeni diaspora communities has been explored in some detail in studies by Boxberger and Freitag and referred to in more general terms in works by Bahr Uddin Dahya, Fred Halliday and Richard Lawless. Most Yemenis view tribal identity in Yemen as a positive, contributory facet of a traditional and conservative society. This is because in Yemen the central authorities have relatively little impact on society beyond the capital and main cities, and beyond these realms the tribes and tribal shaykhs still have a significant role to play. The migration process and subsequent diaspora communities have reshaped notions of tribal identity and belonging for emigrant Yemenis, which as a consequence have also challenged existing interpretations of tribal identity that have generally viewed tribes as pre-modern and traditionally defined them by the territory in which they lived or settled. Dresch asserts that ‘territorial fixity is definitive of collective identities, while families and particular men can move and take their names with them,’35 confirming that tribal categories and identities are not displaced by migration, although they may be reordered due to geo-cultural proximity to the tribal homeland. His study refers to the historically fluid nature of sub-tribal allegiances, which are determined by the outcome of hostilities and disputes between larger tribes and tribal shaykhs. In the process, local historical narratives become assimilated into the collective ‘history,’ honour, narrative and memory of the supralocal tribe, or tribal confederations.36 Putting Yemeni tribal identity into a wider cultural context, Dresch has observed that whilst the modern period of Yemen is defined by the language of the national context, and the preceding period of imamate rule was defined by Zaydi law and religious scripture, the longer tribal period, which incorporates both, is defined by the specific way in which the structure of collective equivalence is transformed through time and altered only over a longer duration. Subsequently, when subtribes change their allegiances and form a new ‘brotherhood’ based on ¢aqd (‘agreement’ or ‘treaty’), Dresch comments that: What has changed is an identity: an element of one set becomes another, although the sets are still defined in the same terms of territory, honour and contradistinction as before. Solidarity is a separate question.37 Within tribal relations there exists an element of opposition between sections concerned solely with guarding one’s clan and territory against others. Further, in terms of tribal allegiance, the whole tribe is then in turn opposed to other tribes. However, in times of conflict tribal sections may stand aside from hostilities and, conversely, in times of calm little stress can be placed on the idea of a ‘common identity,’ and tribal belonging becomes scarcely relevant.38 As a result, tribal identity is maintained through conscious efforts and constructed through events that maintain bondsmen alignments via reified binding agreements. The major form of agreement and obligation is qabl (‘ancestry’) between one tribe and another, and migration, regardless of how far from the ancestral homeland, does not usually sever such ancient genealogical bonds. Lawless has described the Yemen highlands of southwest Arabia as an ‘ethnic reservoir’ from which migration movements have historically extended far beyond its borders.39 In the modern period, migration was facilitated, if not accelerated, by the imposition of Western colonial powers into the region, particularly the British occupation of the port of Aden in 1839. As northern tribesmen filtered their way down towards the Protectorate via the mountain river valleys, the port became not the end but rather the beginning of the journey, settlement and formation of diasporic tribal Yemeni communities. These tribal communities established themselves in France, Holland, America and Britain, as well as adding to previously well-established communities in East Africa, Southeast Asia and the Far East. Through the process of ‘chain migration,’ Yemenis were able to facilitate the emigration of their families and tribal bondsmen into new communities of economic Yemeni migrants globally. In Manchester, for example, it initially took only three Yemenis to forge a community that at its migration peak in the late 1970s numbered over two thousand, a significant number in a town whose total population today numbers only 11,413.40 Lawless’s work has identified a number of tribes from both the southern highlands and the central region (known as al-man~iqah al-wus~¥) whose members were located in the early docklands communities of Britain from the late nineteenth century. His research shows that the official government explanation—that the majority of migrants came from the Hujariyah district of Yemen, located south of the provincial capital of Ta’izz on the western border of the Aden Protectorate—was inaccurate. In fact, tribesmen from many regions and areas of Yemen migrated to Britain through the colonial port. Certainly, in the context of the British Yemeni community, the migration and community formation replicates both the ‘chain migration’ process identified by Anwar (1974) and the ‘second wave’ migration later observed by Halliday (1992).
Global Citizenry Ancient and Modern In its nascent stages, the community developed primarily through tribal connections facilitated by ‘chain migration,’ either from Yemen or by ‘second wave’ migration of tribal bondsmen living in British ports. But as the community expanded, tribal tensions were exacerbated in the late 1960s due to the civil war and hostilities between divided North and South Yemen, which brought regional and political allegiances into play within the local politics of diasporic Yemeni communities. At the same time, however, tribal and regional loyalty and belonging quite often ran counter to political convictions. In the shifting Yemeni politics of independence, civil war and reunification struggles, it would appear that tribal identity often provided a stable means of self-identification in a world where geopolitical boundaries, traditional theocracies and revolutionary ideologies were in a state of constant flux. Tribal identity and affiliation among first-generation migrant Yemenis in Britain remain a very real and tangible facet of their self-identity. Further, tribal identity is reified through the formation of diasporic tribal ‘villages’ in the industrialised urban spaces of Britain, largely facilitated by the process of ‘chain migration’ and by transnational, or what I would prefer to describe as ‘translocal,’ networks and links with the tribal homeland. However, the notion of ‘tribe’ remains somewhat abstract for second-generation British-born Yemenis, and tribal identity or belonging is realised only through a visit to the ancestral tribal homeland. Many of the young respondents, particularly males, became ‘tribesmen’ only after a visit to their father’s village in Yemen. In contrast, female notions of tribal belonging and identity were much less pronounced even after visiting Yemen. The female responses suggested that only an honorary sense of tribal belonging was developed, thereby lending weight to the opinion that patriarchy is the dominant factor in the construction of tribal identity and collective belonging. The experience of patriarchal domination in Yemeni tribal society is perhaps best reflected in the phrase ‘min jadd w¥^id’ (‘from one forefather’) as the maxim of a collective tribal history and narrative. Translocal tribal politics forms part of the intracommunity dynamics of the British Yemeni community, but tribal disputes and tensions surface only occasionally and may even be virtually ‘invisible’ to the outsider. For example, the burden of a son’s obligation to his parents is a traditional feature of tribal and village life in pre-modern societies. Betsy Hartmann and James Boyce’s study of village life in Bangladesh has observed this patriarchal obligation, and they note, ‘in return for the love they give to their children, parents expect respect and support during their old age—a reciprocation which is basic to village society.’41 In addition, because daughters leave the family home after marriage, responsibility for caring for parents ultimately falls on the son. The need to conform to collective conventions, even though one may be far beyond the cultural space and geographical place of one’s ancestral homeland, is essentially self-imposed. And so, through the strongly bonded links and tribal allegiances nurtured in both the tribal village or homeland and the ‘urban village’ of diasporic tribal bondsmen, a unique dimension of tribal identity and belonging based on traditional notions of honour, shame, rights, blood and customs has produced a new form of transnational identity. This is a phenomenon I would describe as ‘translocal tribalism.’ For migrant diaspora communities, the nature and relationship between space and place involve a direct interplay between the terms ‘local’ and ‘global.’ For example, the universal or global dimensions of Muslim identity—the sense of belonging to the Ummah—have direct implications for the construction of an identity that transcends both time and space. Theologically, belonging to the Ummah has both genealogical and chronological ‘links’ to Adam as the first man and Prophet according to the Qur’anic narrative. It is through Adam, the ummatic Patriarch, that the historical communities of believers are spiritually connected, beyond time and space, via the monotheistic Prophets. The religious and political notions of ‘belonging’ according to the Islamic Weltanschauung extend beyond the well-defined and restrictive notions of belonging based on the experiences and ideas developed from the creation of the modern nation-state. The British Yemeni community displays aspects of its Muslim ‘universalism’ that extend beyond its ideas of ‘Yemeniness’ based on cultural, historical, tribal and political expressions of identity. In this way, its members are able to formulate notions of ‘brotherhood’ with other tribal bondsmen and non-Yemenis, facilitated by both theological justifications and religious conviction. Through the process of migration, it could also be argued that ‘Yemeniness’ has been globalised, and the presence of diaspora Yemeni communities in America, Europe, Africa, South Asia and the Far East gives some credence to claims of a ‘local’ culture becoming global. Conversely, the understanding of local as something small and parochial or particular to a specific space and place—defined in opposition to the ‘global’—need not be confined merely to space but is perhaps more relative to size. The ‘global’ dimensions of ‘Yemeniness’ are obviously based on ‘local’ constructions of identity, culture, language, traditions, customs and tribe. In this context, Yemeni identity would be defined through a local character yet transported and manifested in a wider global setting. This translocal form of ‘Yemeniness’ is a product of defining a specific identity in the wider global context of, and against, all others. Obviously, for Yemenis in the diaspora, the impact and influence of the Other cannot be denied as a process leading to varying degrees of acculturation and integration. Equally, it may also be argued that the pervasive hegemonic nature of Western civilisation, through previous colonisation and the recent phenomenon of globalisation, is beginning to affect and erode ‘local’ cultures. Alarmingly, this intrusive aspect of globalisation might mean that eventually no distinctiveness or local character, place or culture would remain within the globalised world. However, from the point of view of the ‘local’ and the ‘global,’ they may not necessarily be terms existing in counterdistinction. In fact, in a very real way—particularly in the construction of ‘Yemeniness’ as a distinctive identity—the ‘local’ and the ‘global’ constitute each other. This is perhaps best exemplified in tribal identity as a translocal phenomenon among the Yemeni community in Britain.
Conclusion To be Yemeni, both in the traditional geo-cultural place of Yemen and within new diaspora communities, is to possess a specific identity that, in contrast to the universalism of a religious (Muslim) identity, is both culturally distinctive and socially different. But whilst Islam as a world religion can embrace the global or ummatic dimensions of communal identity, which are also often heightened by modern global technologies, specific cultural identities would appear to be distinctly ‘local,’ if not somewhat syncretic or even anachronistic. However, as the phenomenon of globalisation appears to propagate dominant and hegemonic cultures, ‘local’ cultures are equally able to reach out via global technologies beyond the confines of traditional space and place. As a result, minority faith communities such as the British Yemeni community are able to transcend the apparent limitations of what might be considered their parochial tribal customs and culture, particularly when located within a new and completely different cultural and social environment. The resilience of the religious and cultural facets of Yemeni identity raises some interesting questions relating both to the perceptions and expectations of the social integration and assimilation of minority faith communities into the wider identity constructions, notions and definitions of ‘Britishness’ in modern multicultural and religiously pluralistic Britain.
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Global Citizenry Ancient and Modern
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US-UK ‘War on Terror’: Implications to Security

INTRODUCTION

the events of September 11, 2001, say George W. Bush and his followers, justify all-out war against terrorism and transforming select regimes in the Middle East. Equally spurious are the reasons offered for the ill-conceived invasion of Iraq, cruel treatment of persons seized abroad and imprisoned secretly, infringement of constitutional rights to privacy for US citizens, refusal to allow foreign nationals with unorthodox political views entry to the US, and, currently, support of Israel’s vicious, inhumane, and criminal assaults upon the civilians of Gaza and Lebanon. Americans killed in battle since 9/11 now surpass the victims of that day, and the toll of Iraqi civilians is perhaps 100times as large. To all this, the American public is astonishingly compliant. Why are such unjust policies so readily endorsed? More important, how might those affected help turn them around? To answer these two questions is my goal here.1 A Refusal to Accept Responsibility For official Washington, the World Trade Center attacks show hatred for the American way of life and freedom, not disagreement over US policy and its blind support for Israel in oppressing Palestinians and usurping their land. Thus Mayor Rudy Giuliani could pretend publicly to reject a $10million gift from a benefactor who dared raise that issue at the award ceremony – even while banking the gift privately. Israel and its policies may not be criticized in the US, not in public fora nor in university classrooms. charles e. butterworth Blinkered Politics: The US Approach to Arabs and Muslims charles e. butterworth Elected officials who dare censure Israel find sources of funding evaporate as they face election challenges from opponents backed by the all-powerful AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee). Professors deemed unfavorable to Israel are attacked on a web-site then pursued by e-mails to university officials demanding that the culprits be fired.2 Congress is now debating a bill to require “balance” in courses concerning the Middle East, that is, mandated representation of the Israeli point of view. Not academic freedom, nor the spirit of inquiry, but a pressure group’s sense of what is needed to protect Israel is supposed to guide the syllabi of future university courses. Moreover, Jewish pressure groups are already preparing to counter expected criticism on university campuses over Israel’s attacks upon Lebanon – the goal is pro-Israeli propaganda, not analysis of the conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbours.3 The same censorship is to be found with respect to the media. There is no Robert Fisk of American journalism, and the clear, objective voice of the Christian Science Monitor hardly compensates for the biased reporting of the New York Times and the Washington Post. Most daunting are the articles of the editorial page staff and columnists of these newspapers with their bias against Arabs and Muslims. Moshe Yaalon, retired lieutenant general of the Israeli Defense Forces and IDF chief of staff from 2002–05, now a “distinguished military fellow” at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, was not challenged when he falsely contended in the Washington Post that Israel had committed no war crimes against the Lebanese or Palestinians.4 Such lies and distortions find no counter in the American press, and so US citizens hew willy-nilly to the dominant pro-Israeli line without ever pausing to ask how that position serves the US national interest. Ironically, for a balanced account of such issues, one must turn to the Israeli press.5 Freedom of discussion is so limited in the US that an article critical of the Israeli lobby and its influence upon American foreign policy could be published only in the London Review of Books. I refer, of course, to the famous Mearsheimer and Walt article,6 reaction to which and subsequent attempts to silence even its foreign and internet appearance only proved the very point they were trying to make. Yet the issues raised by the article cut to the very core of current US foreign policy.
Blinkered Politics These days it is not even possible for foreigners suspected of opinions critical to the US or its Israeli allies to enter the US. Some instances actually make the news: Professor Tariq Ramadan’s revoked visa and Sir Zaki Badawi’s refused entry to the US despite his status as an advisor to Queen Elizabeth and invitation to give a prominent address to the UN. Far too many others receive no attention – to wit, the handcuffing, harsh interrogation, and eventual refused entry to some 80 Iranian academics and intellectuals who arrived with visas on US soil in mid-August to participate in a conference on improving US-Iranian relations. In sum, a new mentality pervades all aspects of life in the US. Americans – or at least those who shape opinion in the US – are intent upon using America’s super-power status to achieve a new world order, one that accords special place to Israel in the Middle East and seeks to impose a particular version of democracy upon Arabs and Muslims. “Particular,” for it rejects the will of the people if they dare vote for religious parties. And it is a version that can accommodate non-democratic rulers deemed useful for the US. According to this imperialist mentality, not Muslim and Arab resistance to indiscriminate American support for Israel and its subjugation of Palestinians plus occupation of their territory in defiance of UN resolutions, nor resentment over the US invasion and destruction of Iraq, but envy for American freedom is at the root of current problems.7 Don Quixote to the Rescue Don Quixote’s vivid imagination pales in comparison to that of George W. Bush and his neo-conservative fellow knights. Full of pride over the demise of a Communist regime, they rush to the conclusion that they have defeated Communism and declare a new war on terrorism. But the enemy is not an idea. Nor are those accused – Hamas and Hizballah – the real terrorists. A well-fed, comfortably sheltered, financially sufficient, and generally complacent individual has difficulty imagining why anyone would sacrifice life or limb to harm others. But one struggling to nourish self and family, forced to live in a hovel, without prospect of employment, insulted and harassed day after day along with parents and children by foreign usurpers intent on driving him or her from ancestral lands, and void of hope that politics as usual will put an end to such misery – such a person
charles e. butterworth may well conclude that to die so as to harm the oppressor is worthwhile. Sadly, although there are no smart bombs and maybe no smart bombers, there are all too many who “smart” from despair. More must be said. If terrorism consists in aggression against innocent civilians, then bombing, shelling, and assassinating the same by state action is as much terrorism as the act of any suicide bomber. For a guerilla to fire a rocket against civilians is no more an act of terrorism than for a soldier to shell civilians on a beach or in their homes. Pre-emptive war, targeted killings, collective punishment, and destruction of civilian infrastructure are not part of self-defense. They are illegal acts condemned by international treaties. Israel has long engaged in such actions, but raised them to criminal levels in Gaza and Lebanon since June 2006. In the midst of it all, George W. Bush vaunted the new order he was helping usher in and eagerly furnished Israel with weapons to decimate civilians. While cluster bombs may not qualify as weapons of mass destruction, they are nonetheless horribly inhumane. These reflections justify terrorism by the oppressed no more than by the oppressor. Both are to be condemned. But apartheid walls and violence intent upon extirpating all suspected of such acts will not achieve security. It will come about only by a just righting of deep-rooted, decades-old wrongs – one that includes a real stake in society for the dispossessed and disenfranchised. According to Condoleeza Rice, the goal of US foreign policy is to fight terrorism by spreading freedom and democracy.8In practice, however, it consists in subjecting – by persuasion or coercion – all others to the will of the US. This follows from the erroneous and excessive reaction of George W. Bush and his advisors to the events of 9/11 and their decision to wage war against an idea – terrorism – rather than against the individuals who have declared their opposition to US policies. Along the way, the US has come to rely unduly upon Israel and to model its actions in Iraq on those Israel follows with Palestinians – even to the manner in which those detained in Abu Ghraib prison were treated. Relying too much on the fallacy that Israel is the sole democracy in the Middle East, the US has accepted Israel’s notion that the sole path to success there is the subjugation of all other nations – especially Syria and Iran. This policy, called deterrence by those in Israel who espouse total war against their neighbours, deserves another name: unjust, foolish aggression.9
Blinkered Politics The tales of knight errantry that have put such strange notions into the head of our Don Quixote come from the insidious writings and whisperings of many who have gained the ear of those in power and of the public: Bernard Lewis, Steven Emerson, Daniel Pipes, Richard Perle, Charles Krauthammer, and William Kristol. They are not members of a cabal, much less of a conspiracy. But they share in opinions about promoting a strong Israel and successfully advance them in ways that demand serious attention. The same holds for lesser figures occupying positions of power at various levels throughout the US government and in the offices of think-tanks and the media: Paul Wolfowitz, Elliot Abrams, Douglas Feith, Abram Shulsky, Hillel Fradkin, and others. Their voices drown out the sober thinking of Patrick Buchanan and push reporters such as Anders Strindberg to the sidelines.10Because of their prestige and power, the US public has never given serious attention to the one proposal that might resolve the impasse in the Middle East, the Abdullah Peace Plan of 2002. As Prince Turki al-Faisal noted in a speech that received all too little attention, it is “the most comprehensive peace plan” offered to date to Israel, namely, “the end of hostility and normalization of relations in return for total Israeli withdrawal from Arab occupied territories, including Jerusalem.”11 Ariel Sharon’s response to the plan was the destruction of Jenin, and George W. Bush seems as unaware of this plan as of other matters counter to his unique vision for a new Middle East. A Return to the Right Path In sum, US foreign policy today consists in determination to reshape the world in its image by whatever means available.12 It invades, controls, and threatens other nations at will by its might. To sustain its military forces, it eludes previously honored contracts and returns troops to danger zones over and over without regard for their preparedness or wellbeing. In retaliation for the deaths of a small number of people, not all of whom were American citizens, it has struck out blindly against myriads of citizens of other countries or abetted its chief ally in such acts. It demonstrates thereby the extent to which it prizes American lives over others. Dispassionate examination of that policy reveals it to be based on two false premises. First, that might makes right – obviating the need to question what is just.13 The second is untenable racism. The same can be said of Israeli foreign policy. Neither is likely to change soon, but it is
charles e. butterworth important to identify the flaws in both and suggest how the opinions supporting them might be refuted or altered. Of immediate importance is providing an accurate portrait of Islam and explaining why it is perfectly reasonable for Muslims or any other fair-minded persons to criticize US and Israeli policies as they relate to both. However foolishly erroneous a term it is, “Islamic fascism” was not coined by George W. Bush. Public policy institutes and universities are all too happy to invite would-be specialists to hold forth on Islam and speculate on why it alone among the Abrahamic faiths incites to violence.14 Yet there is no paucity of well-qualified spokespersons who can provide clear, honest analysis of this and other phenomena having to do with Islam. Muslim social scientists and humanists need to work together so that such a message comes to the fore. To begin with, they must reach beyond parochial organizations and publications to speak to the world in which they live, in the terms used by professional analysts, to explain themselves as Muslims and their faith in all of its aspects. Much has been and is being done, to be sure. Praises must be heaped upon CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations), FAIR (Forum against Islamophobia and Racism), IIIT (International Institute of Islamic Thought), the Minaret of Freedom, and CSID (Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy), as well as many others, for their tireless efforts in explaining and defending Islam and Muslims in their respective communities. Through them much has been accomplished. But more is needed. Permit me, nonetheless, a minor rebuke: for an organization as powerful and wide-reaching as AMSS to hold its annual conference on the same weekend as that of the prestigious American Political Science Association is counter-productive. The political scientists attending AMSS have a more pressing duty, namely, contributing to the proceedings of the APSA. The same holds with respect to annual meetings of other professional organizations. The voices of those able to present a correct picture of Islam and of Muslims will be heard only when qualified scholars, who are intimately familiar with Islam, participate actively in such fora. Clear, dispassionate studies of Islam and of the political, economic, and social problems faced by Muslims around the world are also needed. They must be published in newspapers, journals, and books distributed to non-Muslim as well as Muslim audiences. No longer can anyone
Blinkered Politics opposed to lies and bias stand apart from the wider Western world, especially not as long as Muslims continue to be part of it. Now an intelligent exposition of the faith and practice as well as of the political aspirations of Muslims as Muslims is all-important. At the same time, Arabs – Muslim as well as Christian – must begin to promote their many achievements. Arab culture in all its richness and breadth must be brought to the attention of those who have been ignorant of it heretofore. The opinions about Islam, Muslims, and Arabs that now hold sway have been formed slowly and affected by many events – most unforeseen. But the dangers of allowing those opinions to continue to dominate without challenge affect the world and ourselves more than ever before. That is why it is time to put scruples aside, to accept mingling intellectually and socially with those whose ideas and habits are repugnant, and to enter the fray as scholars, opinion-makers, and concerned fellow-citizens. At the moment, it is not clear what the future will bring in the way of a modus vivendi. A melting-pot society that seeks to do away with the different opinions and habits with which we were raised no longer seems possible or even desirable. Yet it is not clear how we might live as members of separate communities or milal and still come together as fellow citizens in pursuit of common interests. Finding a way out of our current dilemma, a path to mutual understanding, security of life and limb, and some degree of human bliss will not be easy. Clearly, George W. Bush – but also all of us – have much to learn from that astute and ever irreverent political sage from Baltimore, H. L. Mencken. We, as well as those who so threaten our lives, must come to appreciate the wisdom of his observation that “for every complex problem there is a simple solution … and it is wrong.” references Blumenfeld, Laura, “In Israel, a Divisive Struggle Over Targeted Killing,” in The Washington Post(August 27, 2006), A1and A12–13. Esposito, John L, “It’s the Policy, Stupid: Political Islam and US Foreign Policy,” in Harvard International Review, http://hir.harvard.edu/articles/1453/. Halevi, Yossi Klein, “Israel’s Broken Heart: Final Rekoning,” in The New Republic Online(August 15, 2006).
charles e. butterworth Hart, Alan, “The Beginning of the End of the Zionist State of Israel?” Speech delivered at the International Institute of Strategic Studies, August 10, 2006, http:// mparent7777.livejournal.com/11313638.html. Hass, Amira, “Nasrallah Didn’t Mean To,” in Haaretz(August 17, 2006). Kramer, Martin, “A Wise Guy at College Park,” Campus Watch, February25, 2003, www.campus-watch.org/article/id/557. Mearsheimer, John J. and Walt, Stephen M.,“The Israeli Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” in Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Faculty Research Working Paper Series (March, 2006) RWP 06–011. Mearsheimer, John J. and Walt, Stephen M.,“The Israeli Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007). Nasr, Vali, “After Lebanon, there’s Iran,” in Christian Science Monitor (August 9, 2006). Porter, Henry, “Comment: The Land of the Free – But Free Speech is a Rare Commodity,” in The Observer(August 13, 2006). Rice, Condoleeza, “A Path to Lasting Peace,” in The Washington Post (August 16, 2006). Rosenblatt, Gary, “Campus Groups Brace For Anti-Israel Campaign,” in The Jewish Week(August 11, 2006). Scheuer, Michael, et al., “9/11/06, Five Years on: A Symposium,” in The National Interest(September/October, 2006), no. 85. Strindberg, Anders, “Hizbullah’s attacks stem from Israeli incursions into Lebanon,” in Christian Science Monitor(August 1, 2006). Thucydides, Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War, the Thomas Hobbes Translation, ed. Grene, David. Intro. Bertrand de Jouvenel (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1959). Wurmser, Meyrav, National Review Online (NRO)(August 2006).

INTRODUCTION

This paper is a discussion of the experiences of British Muslim communities in light of the events of 7/7. The social, economic and political positions of British Muslims have been important public policy, popular, academic and discourse considerations since the focus on the Rushdie Affair of 1989, the general rise of Islamophobia and the publication of the Runnymede Trust report in 1997. The events of 9/11 and the impact of anti-terror legislation upon Muslim communities, the subsequent discussion of questions relating to multiculturalism in society and the experience of Islamic political radicalisation since 7/7 have led to the current research. After introducing the British Muslim communities, I focus on multiculturalism and Islamophobia in Britain. A discussion of the problem of the radicalisation of young Muslims is followed by a focus on anti-terrorism legislation and its impact on civil liberties. The example of the ‘foiled terror plot’ of 10 August 2006 is a discussion of the intersection of interest in radicalisation and its impact on multiculturalism in a climate of intense Islamophobia. In conclusion, I believe that the many different parameters of Islamophobia are increasingly converging, further problematising already disadvantaged and disaffected religious minority groups.

Muslims in Britain

There has been a Muslim presence in Britain since the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Muslim seamen and traders from the Middle East began settling around the major British ports. Muslims from the British Raj also came to England to study or engage in commerce.1 The major growth of the Muslim population, however, dates from the postwar immigration of Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Indians to fill specific labour demands in certain declining industrial cities in the South East, the Midlands and the North. In the 1970s, Arab communities began to settle in London through gains made in sending economies. Since the late 1970s, a steady flow of Muslim political dissidents and economic migrants has entered and successfully settled in Britain. In the 1990s, there was an intake of Eastern European and Middle Eastern Muslim refugees from such places as Bosnia and Kosovo, Afghanistan, Somalia and Iraq.2

Although it is understood that there are conceptual overlaps, British discourse on racialised minorities has transformed from ‘colour’ in the 1950s and 1960s, ‘race’ in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, and ‘ethnicity’ in the 1990s, to ‘religion’ in the present climate. Here, Islam has had the greatest profile. British popular discourse has shifted from seeing minorities as a homogeneous entity, to discerning differences within and between ‘Blacks’ and Asians, and then within South Asians, to differences between Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis and then between Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs. Religion has emerged as a major social signifier. In Britain, the burgeoning interest in religion has come both from awareness of Islam within the ethnic minority population and from its heightened international profile.

In 1951, the British Muslim population was approximately 21,000. By 2001, it had grown to 1.6 million. Two out of three Muslims in Britain are of South Asian origin, with around half of all British Muslims of Pakistani ethnicity.3 Muslim communities have remained concentrated in the inner-city areas of older towns and cities in the North, the Midlands and the South. This indicates how they have not benefited from the levels of mobility enjoyed by other migrant communities, and their inability to move out of areas facing high levels of social tension and economic deprivation through direct discrimination, racial hostility and cultural preference.4 Birmingham is typical of many of the challenges faced by Muslims across the country. Approximately one in seven of the city’s inhabitants is Muslim, and their unemployment rate is three times that of the city as a whole. The experience of Birmingham’s Muslims brings into focus the fact that economic opportunities have tended to bypass Muslim communities, even when other communities have prospered.

While other cities with large Muslim populations, such as Bradford, are in economic decline, Birmingham’s economic performance has been good, despite the decline of its manufacturing and engineering sectors. The city has undergone successful regeneration, and this has begun to attract a thriving retail, service and commercial sector. Nevertheless, these opportunities have largely evaded most Muslims and may even have given rise to some of the barriers they face. While the indigenous population has moved out of inner-city Birmingham through ‘white flight’, South Asian Muslims have failed to move beyond the inner-city areas to which they originally migrated. Subsequently, these areas have become further disadvantaged, with new employment created elsewhere.5

Multiculturalism and Islamophobia in Britain

In Britain, since the 1960s, governments have shaped policy and practice in relation to ethnic minority groups based on various strategies of anti-immigration and anti-discrimination legislation, on the one hand, with a programme of assimilation, integration and, latterly, multiculturalism, on the other.6 However, the underlying assumption concerning the inevitable assimilation of immigrant groups permeates policy and practice. In relation to British Muslims, this has not occurred to the extent envisaged. This is partly due to the impact of racism on people’s and groups’ potential to integrate into the economy and larger society, but also because of a lack of appreciation of the extent to which ethnic minority communities have come to rely on group, class and ethnic resources to mobilise what little economic and social development they can achieve. In effect, Muslims have often had little choice but to retreat into their communities.

Even before the events of September 11, ‘loyalty’ to a cultural-national identity was being asked of British Muslims. The Rushdie Affair placed the concerns of British South Asian Muslims firmly on the political and social map,7 with issues of civic engagement, blasphemy laws, multicultural philosophy, the nature and orientation of certain religio-cultural norms and values, and socioeconomic exclusion and marginalisation dominating rhetoric, policy and practice throughout the 1990s. Combined with matters relating to cultural hybridisation and the recognition of minority religions, the experience of and dominant attitudes towards British Muslims throughout the 1990s reflected the entire range of insensitive debates and discussions in this field.8

In Britain, assimilation began, in part, as a policy to persuade indigenous white groups that the arrival of immigrant groups would not mean the loss of social, cultural and political identity or the importance of maintaining the status quo. But in the current climate matters are made more complex because the nation-state has developed into a culturally heterogeneous entity, constantly in a state of flux as a result of population movements that are combinations of ethno-religious tensions and the internationalisation of capital and labour. Nations now have to manage the needs and aspirations of diverse immigrant populations as well as more established ethnic minority citizens. Any attempts to make multiculturalism work in the British case have been fraught with ambiguities, inconsistencies, challenges and political leanings, all affected by present politics and collective memory.

The New Labour experiment has had both successes and failures—but, then, as a result of September 11 and the northern ‘riots’, public policy focus has been on domestic security, the war against international terrorism and making ‘communities cohesive’. Issues relating to the experience of British Muslims allow the debates on multiculturalism to be conceptualised in their fullest form. Given the ways in which multiculturalism is viewed, understood, accepted and applied, it is clear that no other group provides greater exposure of its effectiveness than British Muslims. Indeed, there were both external and internal forces affecting the positions of British Muslims before September 11.

Externally, after September 11 the international agenda dominated domestic politics, there was a tightening of security and anti-terrorist measures, and there were citizenship tests for new immigrants. Important to consider too are the disturbances in the North in 2001, as the government’s reaction to them has direct and lingering implications for British South Asian Muslims. Internally, young British Muslims are increasingly found to be in the precarious position of having to choose their loyalties, being impacted by externally driven radical Islamic politics, on the one hand, and developments in British multicultural citizenship at home, on the other. There is a contestation between the forces of radicalisation, secularisation and liberalisation, affecting the lives of young British Muslims. In the post-September 11 climate, British Muslims are at the centre of questions relating to what it means to be British or English. The basis of this rests with issues on the global agenda as well as local-area concerns relating to ‘community cohesion’, citizenship and multicultural political philosophy.9

There is certainly a problem in trying to compare the British case with the Canadian and Australian cases. Although both have had to come to terms with the history of how they treated indigenous Aboriginal peoples, they are not as affected by the complex ethnic and cultural relations of a postcolonial society found in Britain. As such, there are different starting points for different nation-states as they attempt to manage their diverse populations.

In relation to the British case, there are two areas of concern. First, where the policy of cultural integration is strongly assimilatory, there is a moral dilemma as well as the potential for resistance, with the likelihood of stereotyping and stigmatising immigrant populations thought to be unwilling to adapt. Conversely, if the policy is pluralist, there is every possibility that it will be seen as an obstacle to ‘integration’ or a threat to ‘our common culture’. Second, if policies relating to the ‘political or public culture’ are accommodationist and stress a political character, ethnocentric or nationalist reactions are reinforced. If, however, they are ‘ethno-nationalist and assimilationist’, they create ‘fundamentalisms’ on both sides.

Youth, Muslims and Radicalisation

Patterns among ethnic minority communities, where groups are also Muslim, are remarkably similar across Western Europe in relation to immigration, settlement and the current malaise relating to radicalism. Postwar immigrant groups that mostly came in search of improved economic opportunities have found their children growing up in societies that exhibit prejudice, discrimination and racism towards minority Muslim communities. Local education for the young is limited, for much the same reasons as in Britain: poor schools in poor neighbourhoods and children often having less-educated parents. This affects the likelihood of securing effective higher education or entering the labour market. It also prevents individuals and communities from participating as ‘good’ citizens in society. There are also intergenerational tensions as a result of language, culture and attitudes towards majority communities.

Invariably, as the process of adaptation begins to evolve in subsequent generations of migrant communities, an adjustment to the majority society occurs. At times there is resistance, as in the case of a few Muslims who see integration as a negative feature of their lives in liberal, secular nation-states, regarded by some as somewhat antithetical to the life of ‘a good Muslim’. For others, integration has been a positive effort, but once people are negatively affected by the system, a sense of dislocation and alienation, perceived or real, affects consciousness. It encourages some to seek to resolve ‘Muslim issues’, at home and abroad. These individuals are often targeted by radical interest groups, which may result in their carrying out acts of violence involving, invariably, the annihilation of the self and other Muslims.

For some commentators, the incessant interest and focus by the state and the media on ‘militant jihadi’ activity in Britain potentially perpetuates the problem. Certainly, there is a feeling among many that British and US foreign policy has an impact on the perceptions of already much-maligned and disenfranchised young Muslim males who feel they have no voice.10 There are earlier periods in this so-called radicalisation of Islam, particularly in the twentieth century. These include the Salafi (‘early Islam’) writings of Muslim ideologues such as Sayyid Qutb; Hassan al-Banna’s Ikhwan al-Muslimun; Maulana Abu’l A’la Maududi in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s; the actions of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and its wings, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Fateh, in the 1960s and 1970s; and Libyans, Iraqis, Iranians or Lebanese, such as Hamas or Hezbollah, in the 1980s.

A perceptible pattern is found in which Muslims in Islamic lands have opposed the dominant interests of major capitalist states vying for a ‘new world order’. The overall response has emerged over the last two hundred years as Islam and Muslims have had to counter the imperial and colonial onslaught, often supported by US and British interventions in the Middle East and the Muslim world regarding important economic concerns, or to fight the Third World War—the Cold War against the ‘red enemy’.11

Before the events of 9/11, the Rushdie Affair of 1989 highlighted to the world that there were issues pertaining to the South Asian Muslim community that had been regarded as relatively innocuous until then. Pictures of the ‘book burnings in Bradford’ reverberated around the globe, and the media reaction was particularly negative, at home and abroad.12 The collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1991 and troubles in far-off Muslim lands firmly placed Islam and Muslims in the immediate sphere of media attention and political concern.

After 9/11 and certainly after 7/7, a whole host of factors have negatively affected British Muslims. These include increased anti-terrorist measures, increased policing powers, and racial and ethnic profiling in the criminal justice system. An apparent unassimilability of Muslims, with a focus on community cohesion and widening cultural, economic and social divisions, has also existed alongside the apparent and increasing ‘jihadi Salafi’ radicalisation of young Muslims. Gender issues are important to explore, as it is often men who are more likely to become embroiled. Young Muslim women have demonstrated a better ability to deal with the theological, political and social pressures placed on their identities as British and Muslim. Certainly, it is reasonably well confirmed that Muslim women outperform their male counterparts in higher education and, where possible, are better able to negotiate issues of ethnicity, identity and religious minority status.

The Decline of Civil Liberties

In Britain, the Human Rights Act of 1998 guarantees the right to life, freedom from torture, freedom from slavery and forced labour, the right to liberty and security, the right to a fair trial, the right to privacy, freedom of conscience, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and association, and the right to marry and have a family. These are also the freedoms that protect the individual from arbitrary government interference, including freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and trial by jury—usually created and protected by a constitution.

As a result of local, national and international events, namely the disturbances in the North in 2001 and the war ‘on terror’ as a reaction to the events of September 11, policy has sought to place the concerns majority groups have regarding Muslim groups at the heart of practice. The community-cohesion reports and the official Home Office response to the northern disturbances seemed to many at community level to reflect a blame-the-victim pathology. As such, it seeks to placate current policies of multiculturalism and ensures that the focus remains firmly on the British South Asian Muslim communities themselves.

At the same time, in the aftermath of September 11, the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act of 2001 was rushed through Parliament. It gave powers to hold without charge foreign nationals suspected of being involved in terrorism. In order to do this, it meant ‘opting out’ of Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights, allowing for this ‘in time of war or other public emergency threatening the life of the nation’. Britain was the only nation to take this route.

Pressure mounted to alter the way in which this legislation seemingly affected Muslim groups, and in December 2004 the Law Lords ruled 8–1, with the support of the All-Party Human Rights Commission, to repeal the internment powers in the legislation. It did so when the Court of Appeal, under Lord Woolf, reversed the decision of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, ruling that detention without trial was compatible with British and international law. Lord Hoffman said, ‘the real threat to the life of the nation, in the sense of a people living in accordance with its traditional laws and political values, comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these.’

Rather than immediately repealing the Act, the Home Office suggested that ‘control orders’ would be adopted—a non-custodial response applicable to both foreign and British subjects, without charge and for an indefinite period, if it was suspected that an individual was involved in domestic or international terrorism. Measures included electronic tagging, curfews, a ban on the use of the internet and ‘house arrest’, although this term was not used by the incumbent Home Secretary, Charles Clarke MP. Although some minor concessions were made, it was still felt necessary to derogate from the European Convention on Human Rights. If anything, the government has more powers than ever to hold people without charge, a function of the current climate of fear generated by politicians and the media, the constitutional crisis raised by the Law Lords’ judgment and the availability of technology for imposing constraints.14

The erosion of the principle of habeas corpus severely undermines the civil liberties that have made this nation great in the eyes of many. The justification provided is that a trial would damage the interests of the security services because it would expose their secret wire-tapping operations. The continued racist profiling of asylum seekers and migrants is yet another feature experienced by new Muslim groups, also shown in New Labour’s attempts to evade the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees.

The blanket targeting of young Muslims under stop-and-search laws continues unabated, exacerbated by comments made by Hazel Blears MP, the minister responsible for counter-terrorism, who said in March 2005 that Muslims would have to accept as a ‘reality’ that they would be stopped and searched by the police more often than the rest of the public. Since the original terror laws were passed in 2001, around 900 people have been arrested. As of 30 September 2005, although half had been released without charge, around 350 had been charged under anti-terror and other legislation. But only 17 had been convicted of terrorist offences: 3 Islamists and 7 Irish.15

The Institute of Race Relations states that arrests under the anti-terrorist laws have attracted widespread media coverage, while convictions of non-Muslims in court have not been widely reported. Most people are left with the impression that the criminal justice system is successfully prosecuting Muslim terrorists in Britain. Up until 7 July 2005, large numbers of innocent Muslims were being arrested, questioned and released.16 In the post-7/7 period, it seems very likely that this pattern will remain, if not intensify, particularly given that three of the four perpetrators of the suicide bombings in London were young British-born Pakistanis.

Government policy in the area of race relations and multiculturalism tends to be one of ‘integration with cultural tolerance’, but the striking feature of the structural experience of British Muslims, new and old, is the economic and social positions they occupy. It is indeed difficult to generate a position of cultural and social integration from a weak economic and social base. Recent developments in anti-terrorist legislation, the ways in which young British Muslims have been overly targeted by stop-and-search, and the debates relating to multiculturalism and the integration of Muslim minorities serve to provide a multipronged attack on the civil liberties of Muslims in this country.

The general election in 2005 saw New Labour’s majority plummet, partly because the Muslim vote switched dramatically, for example in Bethnal Green and Bow, and given also that more people in England actually voted for the Conservatives than for New Labour. Rather than seeking to empower individuals and groups who seek to integrate successfully into a racially, culturally and religiously tolerant society, the government’s view tends to focus on anti-terrorism. It does so at the acute expense of civil liberties, particularly in relation to Muslims in Britain who remain trapped in poor localities facing direct and indirect cultural and religious racism.

What recent events leading up to July 7 have served to illustrate is the continued rhetoric of a benign multiculturalism that is soft on inequality but hard on identity and culture. Furthermore, neo-Orientalist considerations relating to Islam continue to perpetuate negative political and media discourses. There is no attempt to disentangle the broad category of British Islam, which contains class, cultural, ethnic and even theological nuances.

‘10/8’: Politico-Media Manufactured Event or a Threat to ‘Our Ways’?

The recent ‘foiled terrorist plot’ of 10 August 2006 has revealed an interesting set of observations relating to the developing nature of Islamophobia in Britain. Within hours of the arrests, high-profile policing figures were airing concerns about the ‘biggest terrorist event since 9/11’ and ‘death and destruction on an unprecedented scale’. As the day unfolded, details emerged that more than twenty arrests had been made, largely relating to British Pakistanis, but with a number of ‘converts’ also among them.

Countless passengers suffered in long queues, with mothers made to taste their babies’ bottled milk to assure the aviation authorities of its legitimacy. This was a nonsensical approach, as chemicals used to make liquid bombs do not harm people if taken in limited quantities; rather, they need to be mixed together to cause devastating effects. By the next day, a healthy dose of scepticism began to emerge from the communities in which these so-called suicide bombers had emerged. As one began to talk with professionals on the ground and on the university campus, it became further apparent that many held this view, confirmed by the many bloggers, newspaper letters and opinion columns that could be read on the matter.

A media-manufactured attempt to be inquisitor, jury and judge ultimately resulted in people becoming suspicious of such negative institutionalised voices. The actions at Forest Gate and the untruths relating to the brutal mowing down of Jean Charles de Menezes are too recent in the memory for many. Having had time to reflect on, interpret and report the events, it is clear that we are back where we started, if not worse off, even if many of those arrested are released without charge.

The nation is under the grip of rampant Islamophobia. It is a media-driven phenomenon supported by a wider geopolitical campaign to undermine, destabilise and effectively remove Islam’s ever-growing presence. Islam is simply a threat to a new world order. What has been quite remarkable is how quickly Muslim elites and commentators went on the offensive. After 7/7, Muslims felt a double whammy: as Britons, many were frightened by the terrible acts of indiscriminate violence; as Muslims, communities did not have the confidence of leaders to take on the establishment.

A year on, leaders are stronger, wiser and more articulate, and they have come to appreciate that many people in this great country are with them too. Inevitably, there has been a backlash, as Muslim criticism of such matters is often dismissed out of hand, another specific feature of Islamophobia. Indeed, six Muslim parliamentarians and twenty-eight leading organisations published an open letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair two days after the ‘foiled plot’. It spoke of the role of foreign policy and how it was furthering the causes of militant suicide cults. However, they quickly found themselves ostracised as a result.

A particular question relating to ‘10/8’ and the events before it is: ‘Why Pakistanis?’ Why are other South Asian groups who arrived and settled in this country at the same time not implicated in such acts of terror? The answer is not entirely about ethnicity; rather, it has more to do with factors such as social class and community cohesion.

Clearly, when we speak of young Muslims who are involved or suspected of being involved in terrorist attacks, many emerge from poor neighbourhoods, including ‘reverts’. But some do not. However, what these groups share are characteristics relating to limited opportunities to engage with others in particular spheres and an inability to feel a certain sense of belonging. There is a lack of cultural awareness, an under-appreciation of Britain’s position in relation to, for example, the rest of Western Europe, and most do not have the confidence to take part in mainstream politics.

Notions of cultural and social capital are implicit concepts behind the ideas of community cohesion, but alienation, disaffection, disenfranchisement and isolation are functions of both poorer and richer Muslims, and are sufficient to lead either into radicalisation, although the latter are perhaps less susceptible. In effect, the nation-state has failed Muslims at many different levels.

In October 2005, as the Home Office-appointed working groups detailed their recommendations and suggestions for tackling extremism, only a small number were subsequently taken forward, many with limited long-term benefits. Indeed, there has been a wholesale failure on the part of the state to implement the vast majority of the working groups’ recommendations. Internationally, the influence of foreign policy on the perceptions of already severely disaffected groups is dismissed, if not entirely negated. Nationally, we continue to witness a shift towards new-right politics and an unadulterated sympathy with a US-driven neoconservative political and economic agenda.

Locally, there is limited inward investment in the areas in which South Asian Muslims are concentrated. Poor education and high unemployment continue to influence life chances in starkly negative ways. These circumstances are further compounded by the rural origins of first-generation migrants, who have largely organised community and political culture around clan-based kinship networks, where opportunities for subsequent generations to break out do not always exist.

Local Muslim leadership is weak, including its capacity and vision for the future. Intergenerational tensions are not being resolved, particularly in relation to patriarchy. For the most part, mosques and imams have failed their communities—not in how the young are thought to have become radicalised; in fact, quite the opposite. Rather, it is because they have been removed from the direct religious edification of Muslims, who have subsequently gone on to form their own study circles, use the internet for information and utilise modes of communication familiar to them, namely the English language. Here, those already disposed are particularly vulnerable to negative influences from outside when all else has failed them inside.

Conclusion: After 7/7

Witnessing the events of the last three decades, from the Iranian Revolution of 1979 onwards, the Muslim world has been in turmoil, while Muslim minorities in the Western world have faced economic, social, political and cultural marginalisation. It is these harsh experiences that characterise the study of British Muslims in the social sciences. In the current climate, it is quite apparent that we now need to refer to the notion of ‘British Muslim communities’, not ‘Muslim communities’.

Many South Asian Muslims trapped in poor economic conditions are far removed from a growing body of high-income, well-integrated, savvy professional Muslims, often living and working in the South. As part of this analysis, what is also clear is that debates relating to integration and multiculturalism have been sidelined by a focus on religious minorities and their supposedly ‘alien ways’. What we are also witnessing is the formalisation of the discussion on multiculturalism away from a concentration on equality and diversity towards one that emphasises culture and values. It becomes obvious enough that this sentiment refers to Muslims. How long we are to endure this phenomenon remains to be determined.

The British state has determined a range of responses to the events of 7 July, but the call for an official inquiry is one essential concern that has fallen on deaf ears. This is exacerbated by the fact that the state completely dismisses any link between home-grown terrorism and foreign policy, particularly in relation to activities in Muslim lands. Indeed, the FCO, as part of its engaging-the-Muslim-world programme, routinely sends scholars, academics, community leaders and high-ranking members of influential civil-society organisations across the Muslim world to elaborate on the nature of the British Muslim experience.

In specific attempts to tackle extremism directly, the state orchestrated the establishment of MINAB (Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board). Formally launched at the end of June 2006, this body consists of members from the Al-Khoei Foundation, the Muslim Council of Britain, the Muslim Association of Britain and the British Muslim Forum. It is a tremendous step in the right direction.17 First, it signifies broad Muslim ownership of such an important set of issues. Second, it shows the importance of Muslims building consensus with other Muslims—something that had been significantly lacking until recently. What happens now in terms of delivery will be important to explore.

In the final analysis, with the state making its moves through the empowerment and incorporation of a burgeoning professional and, more importantly, moderate middle class of Muslims, there have been some gains, particularly in how this process has positively engaged young people and Muslim women. At community level, which is differentiated by ethnicity, culture, social class, region and sect, a number of Muslim civil-society and community organisations are working together, and these projects are delivering some valuable outcomes.

As developments emerge in the light of concerted efforts to confront the problems of extremism, what will remain important are issues at the heart of the problem. For most Muslims in Britain, there is pernicious socioeconomic exclusion. Only when structural preconditions emerge to permit education, jobs and housing opportunities will groups value their presence in society, becoming engaged citizens within the framework of an ever-evolving national politico-cultural paradigm.

At the level of the nation-state, popular discourses have focused on culturally essentialist notions of ‘the Muslim’—for example, based on the perceived problems of ‘arranged marriages’, ‘cultural relativism’ and ‘self-styled’ segregation. It is a blame-the-victim pathology that is subliminally inculcated within the majority society. In a hostile local, national and international climate, susceptible young Muslim men are easily targeted by radical Islamism, directly or indirectly.

The violent radical Islamist ideology appeals because of its political and theological context, however improperly legitimised. It is also fuelled by perceptions relating to the actions of certain nation-states and their approaches to foreign policy, as well as how they go about effectively integrating Muslim minorities at home. The 2004 Madrid and 2005 London bombings, and the continued threat to Britain, perceived or real, are testimony to this.

As the state continues its legal, social and cultural assault on Muslims, with its attempts to strengthen ever more draconian anti-terror legislation at home while fighting Muslim ‘insurgents’ abroad, many more young Muslim men are being radicalised. Unless there are greater efforts to tackle the structural issues and politico-ideological constructs relating to Muslims, the potential threat of violent Islamic political radicalism, and its impact on how Muslim minorities experience and help determine a viable multicultural and multireligious society, will remain in the near future.

INTRODUCTION

although Islam is not a religion of pacifism, by which I mean that warfare is not entirely prohibited, nonetheless, it is a peaceful religion. Its objective is to achieve a state of peace and security for both Muslims and those non-Muslims under its protection. Furthermore, warfare is governed by strict rules of what today would be considered “just war theory.” The objective of this paper is to demonstrate that the tactics and strategies of nonviolence are part of the Muslim tradition. In particular, I wish to look at examples of nonviolent activism in the Muslim tradition, and note along the way how they relate to the basic teachings and how they compare to nonviolent resistance in America. Before beginning, it is important to emphasise that nonviolence is an active tactic and strategy of resistance and is not a manifestation of pacifism. Practitioners of nonviolence may or may not be pacifists, and Muslims are not pacifists. Nonviolence may be resorted to because one feels that military force is immoral or because one feels it is less effective than nonviolence in a particular situation. Finally, it must be remembered that nonviolence is often accompanied by violence, either because other factions in a coalition reject nonviolence or because its practitioners engage in violent as well as nonviolent tactics. The most famous cases of nonviolent resistance were accompanied by violence: violent resistance to the British in India coincided with Gandhi’s nonviolent movement; the American civil rights movement was accompanied by violent urban riots; and alongside the nonviolent protesters against American involvement in Vietnam was the “Weatherman” terrorist organisation.

INTRODUCTION

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INTRODUCTION

community cohesion and social inclusion programmes have demanded new alliances across old divides established by historical processes of exclusion and marginalisation which have visibly ordered the ‘multicultural’ city along ethnic and religious lines. This work draws on analyses of interviews and observations conducted across Muslim communities in Manchester and Stoke-on-Trent (UK). The paper looks at the evolving community-level systems of formal and informal representation and collective action that operate within and alongside institutions of local governance, and reflects on their capacity to manage conflict, cohesion and civility within those communities, and improve their capacity to access public institutions and mobilise effectively for a ‘fair’ share of social resources. It also reflects on how those issues of security and participation are presented by community representatives to institutions of local governance, and within the new alliances that they have formed, and the consequences of these portrayals in ameliorating the position of their communities. The prisms through which British Muslims are viewed, and the solutions that are being sought, see Muslims first and foremost as a potential threat. Muslim communities in Britain today find themselves at the sharp end of a number of broad trends that have coalesced in the political context. These trends include a development of governance upon communitarian lines, with reliance on the existence of social capital and the increased ‘responsibilisation’ of citizens, the introduction of ambient police strategies which are appearing in high crime societies such as Britain and the USA to deal primarily with insecurity rather than crime, and a risk management approach to governance. The relationship between risk control and race relations is not new but critical analysis of this relationship in the past has focused singularly on ‘law and order’ issues or socio-economic contexts. Risk control has been aimed at reducing the segregation of disadvantaged groups, and the associated social phenomena such as crime, disorder and self-segregation. Discourses focusing upon the risks inherent in multicultural and multi-faith societies have become commonplace across Europe, particularly since 2001. In Britain, multicultural policies have been blamed for causing cultural and physical segregation, language barriers, and a decreased commitment to national citizenship amongst minorities through integrative and isolationist practices in governance and the provision of welfare services. Since 2001, the Government has pushed ‘community cohesion’ as a way of promoting integration at a local level in order to reduce the negative effects of segregation for both minority and majority ethnic populations within cities, and as a crosscutting format for national engagement. What can be seen in these developments is a race relations agenda that is moving rapidly from a basis in anti-discrimination and equality to one which is based on social control and influenced heavily by these trends. Under a new social control agenda, risk management has impacted upon minority communities in two ways: firstly, in the provision of state resources, and secondly, in relation to the role and capacity of representatives. It is on the second of these that this paper will focus. This paper explores the role of leadership in this changing context, as civic relations at both national and local levels are altered and leadership itself is established in broadly new terms. The simultaneous promotion of the equality agenda, community cohesion, and social control requires a huge depth of leadership within minority communities. The equality agenda requires both activists and technocrats to continuously challenge inequalities on a consistent basis on behalf of minority communities at local and national levels. Community cohesion requires leadership of local communities into engagements with other local communities on a continuous basis. The simultaneous operation of these different agendas within and across a wide range of political and social arenas has impacted upon the development of leadership within British Muslim communities in significant ways. The social control agenda, now, requires leadership that can engage with and influence extreme positions within minority communities, whilst maintaining the normative status quo. This paper argues that the impact of this new agenda must be considered in any discussion of leadership and representation of minority communities. We start with an account of civic relations under the equality agenda, before proceeding to an examination of the changes introduced by the new agenda of social control. Civic Relations: The Equality Agenda The equality agenda has its roots in the anti-discrimination movements of the British Left in the 1970s which pushed for an end to racism and the integration of immigrant communities as well as increased provision for particular sectors of minority communities that suffered further inequalities, such as women. Since that period, equality campaigns have been established within the state, embodied within the Commission for Racial Equality and other institutions. This agenda assumes, however, that citizens of minority groups are willing to engage with a process of challenging discrimination and fulfilling the full array of rights and duties associated with citizenship in all aspects. One of the groups considered least likely to have benefited from these developments, because of self-segregation, are South Asian Muslims. Like Anwar, Ansari has argued that the immigrant generation’s initial adoption of ‘accommodation’ rather than ‘integration’ or ‘assimilation’ as their main strategy was a response to the social rejection of them by much of the host community, and the result was cultural encapsulation and minimum involvement in British life and institutions. However, equality movements have provided an important space within which minority groups have been able to establish civic relations with the state. Della Porta and Diani suggest that collective action of this type can be interpreted as the formation and consolidation of new value systems, as well as having symbolic importance in allowing participants to identify themselves collectively. The ‘Black’ political identity of the 1980s, for example, to which many Muslim South Asians subscribed during that period, had its origin in the equality movements of that period. The move away from the ‘Black’ identity has been a gradual one, but it is nonetheless valuable to note that it was a basis upon which many Muslims initially engaged with the state, before it was largely replaced by a ‘faith’ identity (reflecting their needs and values) rather than a specifically ‘political’ identity. Purdam has argued that after the ‘Rushdie affair,’ Islam became a powerful strategic political constituency in Britain, and therefore use of the term ‘Muslim’ is a political strategy, ‘both as a target for demonisation and a source of unity for Muslims.’ Within early equality movements, there was a deep distrust of electoral politics, but the integration of equality movements and electoral politics developed sufficiently in the intervening years that by 1996 there were over 160 Muslim Councillors across England and Wales. Political participation is often used as a measure of the integration of minority groups in equality terms, because it suggests a commitment to citizenship and the development of civic relations between the minority citizen and the state. High political participation with established political parties has therefore been interpreted as a sign of increasing integration. Over the 1980s and 1990s, the political structure began to allow access to minority political representatives. As strong supporters in many cities of the Labour Party, South Asian communities were at the forefront of this development. Recent trends in voting amongst minority ethnic groups, including Muslims, have however provided cause for debate. Low political participation amongst younger minority ethnic adults has been suggested both to be a result of feelings of inefficacy arising from the socio-economic positions of Muslim communities and simultaneously a signifier of integration into an inner-city culture which does not value political participation. With the increased physical and ontological insecurity that accompanies exclusion, there is a deep impact upon the individual’s sense of efficacy. It is already evident that political participation amongst minority ethnic citizens is diminished severely by this, as well as by factors of access and discrimination. A more holistic view of the relationship between state and citizen, in terms of minority groups, is seen through the lens of leadership, and it is to this that we now turn. ‘Leaders’ in various forms and contexts act as mediators in civic relations, and an analysis of the development of leadership within minority communities reveals much about the development of civic relations in Britain. Leaders The mediation role of ‘leaders’ begins early in the story of immigrant Muslim communities in Britain. Ethnic ‘community leaders’ constituted a key section of race relations actors from the 1960s onwards when Caribbean, Pakistani and Indian workers were coming to Britain for industrial employment. The influence of these ‘leaders’ was enormously strong, particularly in South Asian communities, because of chain migration and the establishment of residential communities along kinship lines, and to some extent it can be inferred from a variety of accounts that this role included elements both of representation and social control. Religious advisors were largely employed in the new mosques at the behest of particular community members who paid their salaries, and thus in many cases supported this system of informal leadership. Independent religious figures were scarce at this point, but held much influence where they did reside. Today, many of Britain’s Muslim communities outside London are constituted largely of traditionally mono-ethnic South Asian communities and continue to utilise the established religious and educational institutions of those communities. Because of that, it is important to understand the ways in which leadership has been conceptualised and envisioned in those contexts. Wider recognition in governance of the unrepresentativeness of many of these early leaders came about in the 1980s. The provision of welfare and social support for fellow immigrants is the first point at which minority communities accept responsibility for one another’s well-being. In Britain, ethnic and religious organisations were recruited and legitimised by the local state to help to reverse the exclusionary processes which minorities experienced, by direct provision and by consultation with the local state, and they continue to play an important role in this regard. At this stage there was movement from engagement with ad hoc community leaders of patronage to what Cain and Yuval-Davis have called ‘salaried professional spokespeople.’ It soon became clear, however, that the new representatives often lacked the ability to mobilise community membership. In recent years, policy-makers have increasingly recognised the importance of the ‘social’ in the stimulation of economic and cultural growth and know that ‘communicative action’ is more politically legitimate and ‘adds value.’ Community capacity-building programmes have thus become important in developing this type of leadership to combine professional leadership with cohesive representation. With a proliferation of representation opportunities over the last decade, ‘leadership’ today can be observed in an array of different political and social arenas, provided both by those who are religious leaders, and those who represent and mobilise Muslims in relation to non-faith issues. Representations are made at a national level by umbrella organisations established around faith identity, such as the Muslim Council of Britain, and around the faith itself, as well as by political representatives through the electoral process. Nationwide membership organisations, such as the Muslim Association of Britain, provide representation alongside a number of other Muslim and Islamic-based campaign and welfare groups. Representations also come from formal arenas, such as Racial Equality Councils and City Council consultative forums, local political representatives and informal groups that coalesce around the provision of welfare services. Spaces of Engagement With a growing and increasingly segmented population, it was inevitable that there would be an increase in the number and type of ‘community’ organisations, places of worship and education, and social spaces that they used. The legitimisation process operated by the local state also had an impact in this regard as it created a proliferation of informal associations each competing to be the legitimate ‘voice’ of their community. This trend, however, has also increased the spaces in which Muslim communities could collectively negotiate the norms and values to which they hold, and establish a basis for their development. Alongside the work to reverse social exclusion, ethnic and religious organisations provided a space for discussion and often a formal basis upon which to debate such issues. It would be misleading, however, to suggest that these, as primary spaces of engagement for the ‘Muslim community,’ were spaces in which disparate sections of the ‘community’ were able to engage freely with each other. In British society, there are few spaces that bring together a whole identity population from different social, economic and political positions. Likewise, in the Muslim ‘community,’ these spaces are often divided by residence, class, religious and ethnic identities, age and gender, as well as by political outlook. Mosques, for example, have been observed to be the site of much conflict over positions on the management committees, whilst ethnic organisations have split and reformed, as various factions struggle for control of valuable resources across the community, sometimes competing with each other across ethnic, religious and political arenas. There are particular social constraints upon these spaces too. Gender segregation as a faith practice requires that there are men and women who can engage with each other across this divide and facilitate wider debate within both gender groups, particularly amongst younger adults who are the most affected by this practice. A longstanding emphasis on age (not unlike that in all other communities) also means that younger adults do not have the same access to discussions on the community’s developments. These issues are significant not because of the ethnicity or religion of the communities, but because of the limited arenas in which these kinds of discussions can be held. We might therefore ask how effective these spaces of engagement were. Conflict and dissent appears to have created a separation of these spaces as well as change within these spaces. The establishment of new organisations was easily facilitated by resources from the state which supported groups with visible needs not met by existing organisations. The separation of these arenas can allow for a more radical change to the development of the community than might occur under a deliberative engagement between all members of the community. This schism can create both positive and negative outcomes. An example of this can be found in Stoke-on-Trent, where it is broadly possible to talk about a community of youth in each of the residential clusters in a way that it is not possible to talk about the older generation, either as a functional imaginary or as a real normative grouping. Even across the city, such a community of youth is much more visible. Young people in this city have used cross-community cohesion as a basis for new alliances across the boundaries created by those earlier generations, not just between Muslim and non-Muslim, but between the smaller Pakistani communities built upon biraderi obligations, and kinship and economic transnational links. The most visible alliances are between the young people of these residential communities, formed through common use of institutions like the city’s College, and increasingly drawing in more of their contemporaries. These have grown at least partly in response to exclusion from the decision-making processes within the community organisations and an absence of in-community spaces in which they had the freedom to express their distinct viewpoints. Changing Agendas In Britain after 2001, there came a new agenda in race relations, with an emphasis upon social control rather than equalities. The social control agenda visibly comes into play after the events of September 11th and the increased security assessments that followed, but arguably it comes from a long history of race relations that were based around ‘community leaders’ and their ability to influence the political participation of their fellow citizens. The substantive change is that while the equality agenda has as its aim the protection of citizens belonging to recognisable minority groups from the negative effects of the majority’s ‘way of life,’ the aim of the social control agenda is the protection of the majority’s ‘way of life’ from citizens belonging to recognisable minority groups. Tony Blair was the first to indicate the new agenda in his speech, just one week after the London bombings of July 7th, when he said: What I’m trying to do here is, and this will be followed up with the action in the next few weeks as I think you will see, is to send a clear signal out that the rules of the game have changed. The new agenda, as expressed by the Prime Minister, emphasised the interdependence of rights and responsibilities in citizenship, and paved the way for a ‘partnership’ between government and the ‘Muslim community’ to promote that duality. The normative statements that he made during 2005 left little room for negotiation of the norms and values to which Muslims should subscribe in the aftermath of the bombings. The ‘rules of the game’ were expressly related to the deportation of foreign national ‘extremists,’ to refugees and immigration, and finally in relation to faith schools, and were positioned as the basis for the protection of a British ‘way of life.’ By juxtaposing the multiculturality of Britain with the ‘new rules,’ Blair linked a non-commitment to an unspoken ‘British way of life’ to the Muslim communities which were already under pressure to explain and moderate the extremist positions on the edges of their communities. In the latter half of this paper, I will examine the impact which this changed agenda has had, firstly, on civic relations and, secondly, on Muslim leadership. Changing Civic Relations The changed agenda has two main effects on civic relations between Muslims and the British state, which I will discuss in more depth below. Firstly, the prioritisation of social control, most recently couched in the language of Blair’s ‘new rules,’ has defined multiculturality as a risk to be controlled in order to avoid the danger of extremism. Secondly, Muslim communities have undergone a process of ‘dangerisation’ which labelled them as groups to be avoided rather than engaged with. Why does multiculturality pose a risk? Under multiculturalist policies of the British state, immigrant populations are imagined to have developed ways of life that pose risk (self-segregation, non-participation in civic life and apparent non-commitment to British values), and they therefore constitute the risk to be managed. Risk, Beck has argued, has to do with its consequences for individual and societal ‘forms of life’ which might be endangered in the future. Management of risk has therefore become the central social practice for risk societies. So it is that multiculturality has been connected with a number of prioritised risks in relation to terrorism and violent public disorder. As multiculturality is increasingly framed as a risk, the process of ‘dangerisation’ of minority groups creates a number of anxieties for the communities or groups that are the subject of those processes. This process is described by Lianos and Douglas as the way in which ‘sensibility to threat is built by cultural means.’ Through future projections of danger, ethical evaluation is made irrelevant in governance, or at best deflected on to safety concerns. The populations who are ‘dangerised’ are not, however, described as deviant. Like the Muslim populations of Britain discussed at length in the public debates on terrorism, they are known to be disadvantaged. Thus, they are not to be morally condemned, but they are to be contained. They are not to be patronizingly treated, but they are to be avoided. They are not detestable but they are disposable. They are simply ‘dangerous,’ ‘suspicious,’ ‘aggressive,’ ‘threatening,’ ‘dodgy.’ They do not need to break rules to be excluded. What is important is their perceived probability of being dangerous and this can even be associated with completely legal behaviour. Dangerisation of Muslim communities in Britain has arisen from the amplification of the terrorism threat by government and the media. Increasingly, Muslim communities are described as culture-bound to immigrant traditions, insular, and self-segregating through language and lifestyle. Containment of this population is however dependent, in contrast to the populations described by Lianos and Douglas, on the exposure of the ‘ways of life’ of these communities in order that they can be more easily visible to the state. Along with this surveillance, formal social control of these citizens imposes the restrictions of rights, and imposes the risk of over-policing and criminalisation processes on these citizens. During the latter part of 2005, it was clear that the Government’s strategy was to co-opt Muslim citizens into public support of the Government’s ‘war on terror.’ This strategy was vocalised by the Prime Minister shortly after the London bombings. He explicitly described the new partnership between the Government and the Muslim ‘community’ in the following terms: Time and again over the past few weeks I’ve been asked to deal firmly with those prepared to engage in such extremism, and most particularly with those who incite it or proselytise for it. The Muslim community, I should emphasise, have been and are our partners in this endeavour. Much of the insistence on strong action to weed out extremism is coming most vigorously from Muslims themselves, deeply concerned lest the activities of the fanatical fringe contaminate the good reputation of the mainstream Muslim community in this country. Blair was, of course, right. Some of the most vociferous rejection of terrorism did come from Muslim citizens in the aftermath of the attack. It is doubtful, however, that the Muslims who called for ‘strong action’ to weed out extremism intended that they become subject to the kinds of controls which were later introduced. Rather it might be suggested that their calls were underpinned by a concern that inaction on the Government’s part would contribute to the processes of dangerisation which they were experiencing. Changing the Role of Leadership The rewriting of the ‘rules of the game’ by the Government clearly involved too a rewriting of the role of Muslim leadership in relation to the state. By inviting ‘leaders’ from Muslim communities, the Government showed a clear strategy for engagement on the issue. Humera Khan observed, Having in the past set up numerous ineffectual working groups and finding that its investment into producing a viable representative voice for the Muslim community was not delivering the goods, it had to think quickly and think new. Enter the ‘Preventing Extremism Together Working Groups’ (PET), the so-called ‘Muslim task force.’ While the title might be a little kitsch the format was definitely new. What was new about this group was that it provided that when the government wanted to get a more representative cross-section of the Muslim community together it could. The real change to the format of engagement was that rather than inviting those perceived to be leaders of the Muslim community, the Home Office looked for leaders from the Muslim community. Politicians, religious and welfare experts, academics and individuals who were pioneers in economic and social arenas were all invited and contributed their expertise. The 109 prominent Muslims who constituted the 2005 working groups on tackling extremism themselves provide a useful example of the way in which the concept of ‘leadership’ has been engaged with loosely in government-community relations. Invited as individuals, not as representatives of organisations or communities, their contribution was wide-ranging and full of expertise, but not tied to any visible group or section of Muslim communities. Within the reports, these prominent individuals set out a sizeable number of recommendations relating to the use, development or creation of leaders. Overall, the role assigned to ‘leadership’ within these discussions was problematic. Emphasis, in earlier reports on the 2001 disorders, was specifically placed upon the re-establishment of informal social control mechanisms within ethno-religious communities, and upon the establishment of formal structures, like youth forums, within which risks could be identified early on. Recommendations from these reports made the position of leadership central to formal and informal control and cohesion strategies, and to the identification of risky groups. In the reports that followed the 2005 bombings, produced by government-appointed working groups, alienation and exclusion of young Muslims were a key focus. Leaders were designated as having a central role in socio-economic development, religious reconciliation, and capacity building in civic participation. Central to both sets of reports was a holistic concept of ‘leadership’ which brought together competent representation, dialogue with government, capacity-building in the community, the development of faith dialogues, community cohesion activities, recognition of exclusionary practices and the ability to connect with the excluded. The central role of ‘leaders’ in the 2001 reports was hardly surprising, given the prominence of ‘community leadership’ in previous inquiries into race-related disorders throughout the 1980s and New Labour’s citizen responsibilisation agenda, but its appearance in the 2005 reports established a new precedent because of its proponents. Welfare and political leaders have traditionally been critics of ‘community leadership’ that is informal, unelected and accorded access to government on an ad hoc basis. The leadership proposed by the reports, however, did not move away from a holistic representation of a ‘leader’ but rather awkwardly bound ‘community leadership’ into the language of the new partnership. The ‘leadership’ which is to take forward almost two-thirds of the recommendations is largely imaginary, made up of a variety of representatives and activists already engaged in this kind of work at government behest and dealing with fragmented systems of representation and resources. The roles they play, as representatives and activists, are themselves largely fragmented roles, operating across and between institutional structures of the local state. Evidence from political representatives and Muslims working within voluntary organisations at a local level, presented later in this paper, will provide some insight into these divisions, and into the consequences of making ‘leadership’ a cornerstone, once again, of race relations policy and practice. But it is important to note that even before the 2005 consultation process was over, there were concerns from those prominent Muslims within it. The most cautious report produced by the working group on Security and Policing clearly expressed its authors’ concerns about the present engagement with Government. The working group retained significant reservations about the Government’s intentions for and commitment to the process. This is partly based on the rushed and poorly organised nature of the current consultation process; and the impression conveyed by the dialogue to date that these consultation meetings were designed more for effect than for any meaningful input. Careful reading of the later report, ‘Preventing Extremism Together: Progress,’ reveals that these concerns may well be borne out. The report makes it clear that the onus for tackling extremism has ultimately fallen to Muslim communities. Of the 64 recommendations from the working groups, only 27 were deemed appropriate to be adopted by government, with the remainder ‘for the communities themselves to take forward.’ The consequence for Muslim communities of this ‘opportunity to respond in a constructive way which was inclusive, positive and forward-looking’ was ultimately an extension of the government’s responsibilisation strategy which endorses the role of an imaginary Muslim ‘leadership’ in which informal social control features heavily. The British Government has not singled out Muslim communities for this type of responsibilisation; rather it is symptomatic of a wider trend in advanced liberal societies. Nikolas Rose has observed that this trend combines what he calls ‘ethopolitics,’ that is, the regeneration of ethical values and shared moral norms and values, and an emphasis on self-governing community. The role of community leadership can be seen as crucial to the success of this governance project. Rose describes how community self-governance holds an interest for government by utilising inside knowledge about crime, and thereby removing risks for wider society: Community is not simply the territory within which crime is to be controlled, it is itself a means of government: its detailed knowledge about itself and the activities of its inhabitants are to be utilized, its ties, bonds, forces and affiliations are to be celebrated, its centres of authority and methods of dispute resolution are to be encouraged, nurtured, shaped and instrumentalised to enhance the security of each and of all. The responsibilisation of Muslim communities with regard to extremism can be viewed in the same light. It is the community’s detailed knowledge about itself that is intended to be harnessed and its own mechanisms of informal social control used to draw in and moderate the extremist positions on its edges. Greater Manchester Police, for example, wrote to each mosque in Manchester in July 2005 describing the London attacks as creating ‘a difficult time’ for all communities in the area, and urging people to be alert and vigilant in relation to terror threats. This open letter illustrates the language of responsibilisation that was prevalent during this period: We must ensure we don’t let these awful events divide the strong communities that we have in Greater Manchester. We all have an important part to play in protecting and reassuring our communities. Extremists will not survive in our communities if we unite together and we work to drive terrorism out. We must divert those who are vulnerable and impressionable away from being drawn into terrorist activity. It is within this new context that Muslim ‘leadership’ now operates, and must develop in order to challenge the new agendas introduced by the state in pursuit of greater social control. One pertinent criticism of Muslim ‘leaders,’ such as those prominent individuals involved in the Home Office working groups, representatives of the Muslim Council of Britain and Muslim politicians, is that to date they have not sought (or have not had the capacity) to challenge sufficiently those new agendas. Critical Distance I want now to turn to an examination of criticisms that have been aimed at ‘leaders’ under this new agenda by other Muslim citizens. The criticisms have to some extent been argued and responded to in the media and constitute a large body of material which is revealing about their proponents in many ways. However, my particular interest here is the understanding of these criticisms as expressions of insecurity at a local level. Four main concerns emerge from the criticisms levelled at the ‘leaders’ working on a national level with government. These criticisms largely were based upon media coverage of the Home Office working groups’ reports and Muslim Council of Britain engagements over the issue of the regulation of Imams, and upon communications which had come through the organisations and networks of which these local ‘leaders’ were members. These concerns focused on leadership: on the acceptance of dangerisation; on the acceptance of responsibility for extremism; on a lack of challenge to the social control agenda which undermined work on equality and on a retreat from providing a critical voice in relation to government policy in other areas. Firstly, there was a concern that the engagements between Muslim ‘leaders’ and government implied an acceptance of a ‘risky’ label by allowing government to phrase equality in risk terms. Public representation by the Muslim Council of Britain and by the working groups was seen to demonstrate a preference for government dialogue over publicly challenging the insecurities experienced by their communities. By engaging with government in the way it did after the London bombings, the Muslim Council of Britain was thought to allow government to set the race relations agenda along the lines of risk management, and to define the role to be played by national and grassroots Muslim leaders and activists. The following quotation, from an interview with an ex-City Councillor, reflects this concern: There isn’t one Muslim who considers them [the terrorists] to be a Muslim. Muslims themselves ostracise—but because we cannot control them—why is that onus on us? Instead of saying that the Muslim community is the most law-abiding citizens in the country and the people perpetrating these acts are on the fringe, why are they saying they’re within our community? I was horrified when Muslim leaders were asked ‘how will you stop them?’ And they said ‘we’ll try harder.’ How if you don’t know who? It also highlights the second concern, that Muslim communities who actively excluded those who held extremist positions in the past would be put into a position where organisations responsible for these exclusionary activities now had to actively try to engage with them. Post September 11th, some Muslims had felt pushed into an identity that they had not previously owned. That identity was a stereotyped cultural-religious identity, linked with ideas about disloyalty to Britain, disrespect for human rights of other cultural-religious groups, the promotion of violent conflict via terrorism, an all-encompassing commitment to an invisible unknowable Ummah. Then came September 11th—they all became Pakistani. All of a sudden you were a terrorist, or a latent terrorist. And that’s where we’re at now. At each step it further alienates the British Muslims because they feel very, very unfairly treated by the British government and the people themselves. Pushed into such a deviant identity, many people strove to adopt a visible and oppositional non-deviant Muslim identity, one that cherished British citizenship, respect for law and for human rights, and promoted peace, denouncing a ‘Western’ predilection for war along the way. The exclusion of those who held extremist views from community organisations and from the use of community facilities was a practice that was apparent before 2005, particularly since Muslim communities were fearful of police raids in counter-terrorist activities after the 2001 World Trade Centre attacks. Groups holding unpopular views were excluded from community centres and mosques in Stoke-on-Trent and Manchester during the research, and it was clear that this was as much because their views did not fit with the moral norms and values of the community as because of a fear of increased police surveillance. From an academic perspective, conflict is both unavoidable and essential to community life. Conflict occurs in the spaces in which the community grows and develops, and it allows the community’s membership to reiterate and to challenge the established norms of the community. But conflict also introduces insecurity to the group, about who is included and excluded, and who has access to the group’s resources. Conflict between groups within a community of origin or faith, or between communities, may create insecurity by posing questions about the validity not only of the group’s claims on societal resources, but about the established norms of that community around which the boundaries are drawn. In a group already excluded from the resources of the political community, such conflicts can be enormously damaging, particularly when spaces for open engagement are disappearing. The second concern, that Muslim communities would suffer further criticism and suspicion for not being able to control those excluded groups, and would experience new problems of internal cohesion, in this light appears to be well founded. The third concern, which emerged from the criticisms voiced in the research, was orientated towards the provision of welfare and social support within these still disadvantaged communities. Several local ‘leaders,’ including youth workers and elected city councillors, reported that their time and energy was increasingly consumed with being constantly on call to police and to the City Councils to deal with issues of concern around disadvantaged teenage males in the inner city. Such issues were mainly based in crime and disorder but also specifically in relation to their modes of expression of their religious identities in their schools and their neighbourhoods. Such included graffiti, gang formation and challenges to authority within those environments. Reports of a variety of organisations in both cities make specific mention of the efforts put into reducing the alienation of teenage males from the institutions of their community and providing a space for them within those institutions. The concern is that intense focus on disadvantaged teenage males will divert attention away from the equalities agenda and the distinct needs of females and older age groups. This may occur through a prioritisation of applications for funding which emphasise work with young disadvantaged males, or prioritisation of engagement with organisations who carry out this work, or in any case, a perceived prioritisation which encourages community organisations to divert their valuable resources away from other groups. The fourth theme emerging from these critical narratives concerns the willingness of national figures to provide leadership that challenges the state in other ways. Two specific issues captured these concerns: the British role in Iraq and the extradition of Babar Ahmad, a British Muslim suspected of terrorist activities, to the USA. Currently, both of these issues attract support from a wide range of Muslim citizens and ‘leaders,’ but the perceived reticence of ‘leaders’ in national arenas to challenge government foreign and extradition policies during 2005 formed a central theme in local discussions. Voicing their criticism in this way appeared to allow participants to vocalise other feelings of insecurity which they experienced and therefore form an interesting record of those, although they are sometimes based on errors in fact. Criticisms were levelled both in relation to the direct representational roles of national leader figures and in relation to their role in expressing the position of Muslim citizens to other British citizens. Muslim leaders are not democratically elected. If you look at the war on Iraq, all the leaders were supporting it when they should have been supporting anti-terrorism. They should focus on external issues, not our own [state] terrorism. There’s terrorism in India, Pakistan, Russia, Italy—but no one wants to address these. With Iraq, a lot of information filters down to Muslim communities and it has an impact on religion—like the killing in the mosque, or in Palestine of a 13-year-old. These atrocities are not visible. MCB—are they proactive? They didn’t have a hard stance on that originally—now they’re against the war. The MCB never stood up. Margaret Hassan—when she was beheaded, Sacranie—it was all so disgusting—they said it was inhuman, barbaric that she’d been killed. It sounds fantastic to the white community. But if you’re Iraqi, Muslim, there was not a word about the thousands of Iraqis killed every day. Not one word about them. It’s barbaric but given how many are killed, there comes a time when frustration comes out. That kind of statement would have won them the support of the Muslim community. This perception of reticence was reflected in observations that other national organisations seemed also to be holding back on direct action. They perceived that fears around the closure of mosques were similarly affecting people involved in these organisations and the threat of governmental backlash. I said [to the senior members] ‘you haven’t done anything for Babar Ahmed’—they said ‘we’re doing it behind the scenes.’ But it’s not visible. Therefore, it’s not worth it. They think they’re going to be the next target. The actions of national organisations, however, also carried another implicit meaning. A stark depiction of apparent compromise at a national level sent a message to the communities indirectly represented by the Muslim Council of Britain that would have had a huge impact on the ontological security of those communities. Even national organisations which had been critical voices prior to the London attacks appeared to be in retreat; that message was that the atmosphere in Britain for Muslims was so full of danger that it was no longer possible to speak plainly about the insecurities suffered by Muslim communities. Conclusion: Secure Civic Relations? Throughout this paper, we have seen that there are a number of roles to be played by ‘leaders’ across a range of social and political spaces of engagement. In principle, the challenge for leadership remains the same under the social control agenda as it does under an equalities agenda. For minorities, it is still a fight to gain equality and at the same time to protect the right to be different and to express that difference. For leaders, it is still a challenge to recognise threats to those rights, and react to them in ways that do not undermine the future of those rights. In practice, however, within the social control agenda, there are additional challenges: to ensure that the full diversity of opinion in the Muslim community is represented; to protect the ‘reputation’ of the minority population; to protect faith-associated resources that are considered by government to add risk, such as faith schools; and to maintain access to resources and representation opportunities related to equalities rather than risk management. Leadership itself then is a focus for future debate. What is it that may be required of leaders, and by whom? Clearly, there is a conflict within the roles set out in this paper. Evidence from Manchester and Stoke-on-Trent of community practice depicts strong exclusionary tendencies that strengthen the cohesion within these communities. Exclusionary processes aimed at protecting the reputation of the community and decreasing internal conflict have long been aimed at ‘extremist’ groups and individuals who are in conflict with the norms and values of the majority number. Government-led initiatives however have at their heart a notion of containment and moderation of extremist positions within Muslim communities by Muslim leaders. They are reliant upon the social influence of Muslim ‘leaders’ who, as we have seen earlier, already face difficulties in mobilising and influencing the diverse sections of the communities they work for or represent. Of particular importance in this discussion is the suggestion that the adoption of a social control agenda of this type by Muslim ‘leaders’ appears to significantly increase the levels of insecurity experienced by their communities. Processes of dangerisation, which are under way in relation to Muslim communities, cannot easily be reversed. They are also now amplified by dangerisation processes within Muslim communities aimed at those with ‘extreme’ perspectives. The capacity of leaders to manage conflict and cohesion within these communities is thus fundamentally challenged. Particular difficulties are posed for the development of civic relations as distrust in the state’s institutions of governance and of social control is increased by the social control agenda promoted by the state, and the increased promotion of separatism in response to that agenda. The conclusion to be drawn from this, therefore, is that this new agenda significantly decreases the capacity of leaders to carry out the functions which the state requires of them at precisely the time when capacity-building is recognised as key to good civic relations. References Ansari, Humayun, The Infidel Within: Muslims in Britain since 1800 (London: Hurst, 2004). Anthias, F. and Nira Yuval-Davis, Racialised Boundaries (New York: Routledge, 1992). 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INTRODUCTION

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