Muslim and Christian texts. Demotix/ Lynda Bowyer. All rights reserved.The threat of violent extremism by young, radicalized Muslims has left
European leaders fumbling for a solution. But it would be a grave mistake to
maintain the policy of the last decade and a half that addresses radicalization
by communicating with British Muslims as Muslims rather than as
fellow-citizens.
David Cameron announced in October that ‘Muslim groups’ will be given
5 million pounds to help to prevent radicalization. Cameron’s approach is to
recognize the attraction of ISIS to disenfranchised young Muslims and to appeal
to ‘Muslim communities to plug the gap’. Bad religion is to be replaced by more
religion.
Cameron’s approach is an example of a wider phenomenon that treats
religion as a treatment for social ills among British Muslims. By keeping them
in touch with their ‘roots’, so the theory goes, all manner of social problems
can be solved. Social conservatives of all hues can find something appealing in
religious tradition because of its endorsement of ‘family values’. The
promotion of religious charities as part of ‘the big society’ fits into the
same framework, where the welfare state’s obligations to certain ethnic
minorities are farmed out to clerics. Cameron, like other European leaders,
seeks a ‘moderate Islam’ as an antidote to the kind of extremism witnessed in
Paris.
This approach seems to be endorsed by Labour
commentators too. In July, Keith Vaz observed that ‘we need to understand how a
few have become separated from their communities’. And Khalid Mahmood, himself
a Muslim, argued that we need to provide the right guidance ‘in terms of our
religious obligations… if we can’t do that, how can we blame everyone else?’
Much of the support for a state-sponsored intensification of Muslim
education is driven by communities that are split between Britain and South
Asia. Religiosity is an important way for these communities to signal that they
are not Anglicised, and that their children remain good marriage partners.
These concerns, for the maintenance of family values in the face of a godless
individualism or the fear of miscegenation with white neighbours, have driven the
campaigns for sex-segregated education since the 1990s. Here religious
institutions are an antidote for the migrant environment. The same kinds of
concerns are active in the debate on extremism. If we claim that all that is
good stems from religion, social issues among Muslims can be dealt with by
making them more Muslim.
Yet the kind of education that goes on in most mosques does not offer
an opportunity for social criticism. Imran Mogra describes the Deobandi
curricula widely used in the UK as aiming to encourage ‘children to conform to
divinely ordained patterns of behaviour’. A great deal of time is devoted to
the correct pronunciation of Arabic for Qur’anic recitation, rather than to
critical reflection on the texts. There is no opportunity to question, and no
discussion of the contemporary world in textbooks that were composed in
nineteenth century India.
‘Islam’ is often described in these curricula as a ‘complete way of
life’. This is also a common statement in Muslim social media, especially in
the sermons of popular preachers such as Zakir Naik. This assertion proclaims
Islam’s superiority over other religions. It presents Islam as a total system,
where political, social and religious questions are all interwoven, and all are
answered in the Qur’an and sunna if one knows where to look. It also justifies
the large amounts of time spent on the supplementary religious education of
Muslim children.
Some believe that greater knowledge of Arabic and Islam would help
young Muslim women fight unfair cultural practices that are unIslamic. But this
approach equates ‘Islam’ with goodness: it doesn’t provide any voice against
practices that are unfair but Islamic, and offers no space for ideas of the
good that come from outside an Islamic tradition. And the religious instruction
that is being advocated also prevents them from stepping outside the boundaries
of a circumscribed tradition. Indeed, a belief in ‘Islam’ as a total system
serves to differentiate Muslims from other citizens by denigrating non-Islamic
sources of knowledge as sub-standard and not relevant to Muslims.
This assumption that Muslim problems can only be dealt with by Muslims
is witnessed in a recent initiative founded at SOAS in London. Here a project
on Muslim integration, under the auspices of the Kuwait-based Nohoudh
foundation, advertises for post-doctoral researchers who are Muslims and who
are born in Britain. The presumption seems to be that only Muslims are
qualified to understand the social situation of their co-religionists. This
pattern of recruitment likely constitutes religious discrimination under the
law. But, quite apart from that, it is a troubling case of secular universities
being willing to accept religious affiliation as a form of qualification.
It is an error for politicians and institutions to invite British
Muslims to think about extremism as Muslims, rather than as citizens. If we
encourage a religious analysis of issues that are social, economic or
political, we encourage sectional responses, where one community’s suffering is
not equal to another’s.
The US and UK governments certainly deserve criticism: that is a sign
of a healthy civil society. But our civil society needs to hold all
‘orthodoxies’ up for scrutiny, whether these are economic, political or
religious. Instead of a moderate ‘true Islam’ that western governments hope to
wish into existence, it would be much better for them to define the political
good for all citizens on terms that do not seek to divide them into different
groups, as Muslim or Jewish, Hindu or Christian.
