It was one thing watching part of the Muslim community being slaughtered, the Qur’an being misquoted, and the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad (ص) demonised on the Dispatches program that came on over a month ago; but it was painful when I saw Muslims on T.V., that is, educated Muslims, taking opportunity to blame the world’s problems on other schools of thought, as if there is no-one else involved in the tribulations upon the Muslims. I started to think, if we don’t agree with part of the Muslim community should we take the opportunity to banish them on T.V?
But there was a wider issue that arose from the reflection I had, something beyond the ill-designed program and the ‘white intellectual’ Muslims used within it. I watched another program on the new Unity TV (sky 825). There, I saw two reverts, one interviewing the other about their accpetance of Islam. The dominated discussion was how the ‘Muslim community’ treated ‘us’ when we came to them. It was about how ignorant they were that a white person could become Muslim, and how when they accepted them, they were treated as if they were scholars that new everything about Islam. I felt a horrid sense of inferiority as an Asian. I’m certain this is not what the program presenter and interviewee intended, but this is increasingly becoming the picture, ironically, presented through Muslim sectarianism.
There are two major sectarian polarisations in the UK Muslim community. There is Salafi and Sufism. Neither are accurate terms, and all vary in degrees (most people are somewhere in between, which are groups in themselves), but the crudeness should help explain what I am trying to say. Also, it is fundamental to note that all specific characteristics that are described are subject to their reperesentation in Britain (i.e. salafis, deobandis, barelwis and sufis all have completely different community characteristics in different countries (Alhamdulillah!)).
What is clear is that most Black reverts become salafis and most White become sufis, again in the crudest sense. What is associated with the former catergory is street-attitude, literalism, intolerance, extremism and takfir. And what has been associated with the latter is universalism, universities, academia, poetry, calmness, peace, spirituality and tolerance. To some extent these categorisations are true. Many white reverts come from rejecting the theology of Christianity but retain the compassion encouraged within it, whilst many Black reverts enter as a rejection of hard lives as working class minorities in an institutionally racist society. But this very background seems to be influencing the born-again Muslims within this country who are renewing their faith.
Spirituality in Islam, or as some may call it, tasawwuf is no longer seeking Allah, but reading and intellectualising about how close Freud’s and Nietzsche’s work is with Islam. So many young Muslims are baffled in amazement about the comparison made between Western Englightenment Thinkers and the book of Allah. People are now in search of an ‘academic Islam’. This has an inherent link with the left-wing influence, mostly brought by ex-Chrtistians who have retained an overly-tolerant understanding, and who like to interpret Muslim poetry, philosophers and great spiritual thinkers as in some way nihilists. This is where an apolitical stance comes in, as if Islam will change moral decadance of the world from a University theological department.
The opposite is equally bad. It is the total rejection of the system, often grossly misinterpreted as inspiration of the thoughts of Malcolm X. It is the promotion of a literal understanding, of an inheritance of truth necessarily, and the abolishment of every other way of thinking. It is judging a person first by his sect, and then by his acknowledgement of his Lord. It aims to be a working class culture, always in a struggle against the innovations of the community.
I think enough said about the characteristics of each category.
What becomes apparent from all of this is that there is an ‘elitist’ ‘spiritual’ Muslim community being nurtured. It just so happens that those within it are White middle-class reverts who are ‘intellectualising’ Islam according to the Enlightenment tradition they have been exposed to in their PhDs. On the other hand, there are the literalist developments being emphasised by the many Black reverts, emphasising a working class struggle, and searching for ‘roots’, very similar to the Afro-Carribean experience in finding their rastafarianism and Africanism a few decades ago. Both are dangerous extremes, and are having massive effects on born-again Muslims (from whatever ethnicity) in search of the true interpretration of their faith. The choices they have are not the sectarian theologies are labelled above but, British Black Salafism and British, Middle-Class White Sufism.
For me this is not a theological issue, neither do I have anything against either of the racial categories. Neither am I trying to point out that this is a colour issue. When I say Black, I am talking about all the races and ethnicities that act the way Britian has traditionally defined Black people (in a very racist way), and the same for Whites (in a very inherently superior way). (i.e. either ‘colour’ could belong to either camp!)
I am trying to point out that much of what is happening in the sectarian side of things within the Muslim community has little to do with theology, and much to do with the reinforcement of racial and class divisions that have existed in Britain since…a very long time.
Did I just admit to a distinctly ‘British Islam’…oops
NB: I cannot emphasise enough that ‘White’ and ‘Black’ in this post refers not to the colour of skin, but the attitude and experience associated with a member from the community generally in Britain (rightly or wrongly). So, a young white boy, who listens to rap, wears baggy trousers and is working class is most likely to become the type of ‘Black’ Muslim I have defined. It is referring to stereotypes, that people of any race or colour could fulfil.
