Notes on the “Islamification of Britain”

This is a guest post by Shaaz Mahboob of British Muslims for Secular Democracy

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The evening of 10^th December 2009 saw an event being hosted in London, which brought together an array of speakers ranging from the far right, to the nationalists down to the aspirers of a global Wahabi-Islamic Caliphate.

Perhaps the most significant feature of the debate “Islamification of Britain: Myth or Reality?” (http://www.thedebateinitiative.com/#/islamification-debate/4536297387) was the well behaved manner in which both the audience and the speakers conducted themselves. There were bouts of applause each time a raw nerve was trampled over or when a chord was struck close to the listeners’ jugular. Half prepared to expect a series of disruptions and ugly heckling from the audience owing to the line up of speakers including the BNP, I was pleasantly surprised at the preservation of decorum and felt encouraged that all is not lost and there is still hope for our society’s future civility.

What was more astonishing was the fact that during the Q/A session, the BNP speaker Jeffery Marshal was largely ignored by the audience and hardly any questions were put to him in relation to BNP’s stance on religious freedom for Muslim under their government. Instead the theme of the open discussion focused once again, around the attire of Muslim women, and the lack of meaningful “relationships” with Muslim women who wear the Niqaab (face veil) that Alan Craig, the man from the “Christian People’s Alliance” insisted on being able to foment.

What wasn’t desirable was the skewed representation of Muslims on the panel who in the form of Abdullah Al-Andalusi from Muslim Dawah Initiative (renamed Muslim Debate Initiative -www.dawahinitiative.com) ended up repeating two acts: first, defending the Hizb ut Tahrir ideology, thereby asserting the notion that Sharia law within “Muslim lands” in the form of a Caliphate was the only solution to world’s woes and that the implementation of this system remained his ultimate desire. Second, citing heavily from the Bible and Christian history going back a good few centuries, in an attempt to justify the various inequalities that exist within his version of Wahabi-Islamic Sharia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabi ) weighing heavily against women and minorities. The fact that none of the major schools of thought within Muslims see eye to eye over interpretation of Islamic values, and therein remains the fact there is no one Sharia acceptable to all, seems to be of no consequence to Al Andalusi.

It must be pointed out at this point that the initial line-up is alleged to have included Councillor Fiyaz Mughal who apparently backed out the debate weeks before the event, and yet despite Al-Andalusi being in regular contact with various liberal and secular minded groups including British Muslims for Secular Democracy, in full knowledge of BMSD’s recent attempts to engage in a dialogue with the far right groupshttp://www.bmsd.org.uk/pdfs/islamification.pdf such as the SIOE, no attempt was made to broaden the Muslim perspective at the dais.

The BNP’s sole argument that Muslims have no respect for their non-Muslim neighbours and certainly not for the Church clergy, backed by a couple of newspaper stories from local press, failed to make the impact that one would have expected during this debate. Father Frank Gelli an Anglican Reverend sat not only next to Al-Andalusi, but appeared be on his side too, on almost all instances where hardline interpretation of Wahabi religious belief was shown to contradict basic human rights and in particular those of women. Not too sure of whether or not to defend the Archbishop’s support for Sharia law in Britain, the Father too, failed to convince the audience of the Anglican stance, whatever that might be. Those in the audience were left guessing till the very end.

British Humanist Association’s Andrew Copson along with Robin Tilbrok of the English Democracts did end up making strong arguments in favour of a society where religions could thrive without treading on each others’ toes whilst citing their reservations about the implementation of a two tier legal system in Britain including the Shariah law.

Most interestingly Al-Andalusi’s initial assertion that the majority of British Muslims do not support Hizb ut Tahrir’s viewpoint that an Islamic Caliphate was the ideal solution for Muslims, and even HT do not call for Sharia in Britain, was subsequently self-rebutted when according to himself, the implementation of such a system is a must for Muslim majority areas. Whether or not in the next few decades the Boroughs of Newham, Tower Hamlets or cities like Bradford would, according to his own logic, qualify as Muslim majority areas where Sharia could justifiably be implemented, remained unanswered. Imagine a Muslim woman from a close knit community voluntarily opting to discard the Islamic law in favour of approaching the British courts for justice.

His defense of the Niqaab (which is a face veil, not to be confused with a headscarf, the Hijab http://www.bmsd.org.uk/articles.asp?id=34), which Craig objected to as a barrier to communication and integration, was alarmingly fierce. Most frightening and disturbing was his dream that he narrated during the debate that a ban be placed on the Niqaab and the ensuing “sight of policemen ripping off veils from Muslim women on the streets of Britain. Whatever such deep down imagination harbours and what he might wish to gain from such unimaginable scenes, it completely escapes me. What he did fail to narrate is that fact that during the Hajj, it is forbidden for women to cover their faces inspite the presence of millions of men all around, who are strangers to them (http://www.bmsd.org.uk/articles.asp?id=34). Furthermore, there is no segregation during the various rituals that are completed as part of the pilgrimage.

Nevertheless, the initiative by the Muslim Dawah Initiative and the participation by the various groups in good faith deserves appreciation and a round of applause from all quarters of the political spectrum and members of all communities. The right wing and nationalist parties’ along with Humanists and the Anglican clergy sharing a platform with pro-Caliphate and pro-Sharia organisation engaging in a healthy debate about the religious differences within our society is indeed a step in the right direction.