Rethinking and Reclaiming the Minority Space
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Quarterly Magazine Volume 2, Issue 1 - February 2020 / Jumadi II 1441 ISSN 2632-3168 £5 where sold Home, heart and community: rethinking and reclaiming the minority space ARZU MERALI: FAISAL BODI: KASIA MAZ Hindsight in 2020: After the 2019 General NARKOWICZ : SALEEM: US think tanks and the Election, Britain’s minorities Brexit and the The scourge of deterioration of Muslim must brace themselves for hierarchies Islamophobia civil society space worse to come of Europeanness In the Name of Allah, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful t is a sign of how far we have regressed been placed centre-stage creating an envi - that Muslim civil society veterans in the ronment of hate which encourages the UK fondly remember the Satanic Verses popular expression of hitherto latent sen - Affair as the high point of community timents. While some have called for Labour Contents: unity and activism. In the late 1980’s it took to adjust to the new reality, something that the besmirching of the beloved Prophet effectively amounts to a policy of appeasing IMuhammad (peace be upon him) to bring racism, others have urged the party to re - together the diverse strands of the commu - connect in new ways with people whose nity and give birth to what represented economic disaffection is vocalised in the 3 Arzu Merali: nothing short of a political awakening. In language of race. There is no quick fix to Hindsight in 2020: US the years that followed the experience of the “white tide” sweeping Britain, argues think tanks and the campaigning during these events spawned Bodi, and things may have to get a lot deterioration of Muslim an array of representative organisations worse for those on the receiving end before raising hopes that a newfound political con - they get better. civil society space sciousness would translate into effective The second article on Brexit, by Kasia political power. However, barring the odd Narkowicz, looks at how the issue has Faisal Bodi: notable exception such as the 2003 inva - brought into sharp relief the racism and 8 After the 2019 General sion of Iraq, the history of Muslim politics discrimination faced by people of Eastern has been dominated by powerlessness, frac - European origin. The arrival of these expa - Election, Britain’s tiousness, sycophancy and strategic miscal - triates in large numbers after 2004 coin - minorities must brace culations. cides with an increase in anti-immigrant themselves for worse Charting the trajectory of UK Muslim sentiment/hysteria in Britain. While Mus - to come activism, our lead article by IHRC’s head of lims are often depicted through old racist research Arzu Merali, explains its decline by tropes of potential terrorists and sexual reference to a wider Zionist, neocon, strat - predators, Eastern Europeans are seen to Kasia Narkowicz : egy of divide and rule, led by think tanks be responsible for stealing jobs and re - 11 Brexit and the such as the Rand Institute. Using the old sources. Since they are also likely to feel the hierarchies carrot and stick approach, western govern - force of racist post-Brexit immigration pol - of Europeanness ments have co-opted and/or coerced inde - icy, it is a travesty that their plight is usually pendent Muslim voices into such lassitude overlooked. Narkowicz says that while that many of us are able to raise even a many Europeans from the former Soviet whimper of protest, let alone organised bloc have made Britain their home, they Maz Saleem: campaigns, against policies and actions that fe el far from at home. They are scared and 13 The scourge of progressively undermine our religious and insecure. Narrowing, increasingly social life. Where we are outraged enough racialised, definitions of Britishness and ris - Islamophobia to speak out, such as for example on the ing hostility make these white and Christian issue o f Islamophobic anti-terrorism legis - migrants feel more and more unwelcome. lation, the response has often fallen into the Our final article comes from a cam - frameworks constructed for us by our ad - paigner who was reluctantly thrust into versaries thereby advancing their agenda anti-racism activism after her father was instead of securing our own strategic ob - murdered by a white supremacist as he The jectives. walked home from evening prayers at his While she laments the slide into a trap local mosque in 2013. The killer of 82- ong View set by our adversaries, this is not a nostalgic year-old Mohammed Saleem would later L Quarterly Magazine plea for a return to some imagined halcyon be found to be responsible for planting days. Rather it is a genuine, heartfelt call bombs at mosques in the same area of the on the community by someone who daily West Midlands. Maz Saleem recounts the lives and breathes the Muslim experience Islamophobia she faced from a criminal to reflect and reset if we are to ever become justice system that initially treated her fam - Editors: the kind of force our numerical presence ily as the prime suspects and showed little Faisal Bodi and and collective talents justify. sensitivity to religious sensibilit ies pertain - Arzu Merali The recent election of a party led by an ing to burying the deceased. But her focus opportunistic xenophobe and misogynist is much wider, explaining the term ‘institu - The Long View is a project will do little to ease things for Britain’s tional Islamophobia’, and documenting its Muslims and racialised minorities in gen - presence across the gamut of society from and publication of Islamic eral, not least of all because the poll was security legislation to education and health Human Rights Commission driven overwhelmingly by an issue that has care. (a limited company no 04716690). its roots in racism: Brexit. The first of our The submissions this issue paint stark articles on the subject by Faisal Bodi iden - pictures of societal crises and upheaval. Yet Web www.ihrc.org.uk tifies the underlying causes for the popular from these analyses comes the possibility of E info@ihrc,org support for the party that recast itself as the joined up thinking and conversation. From Tel +44 20 8904 4222 party of Brexit, paying particular attention there, maybe even action. Let’s make a to the flocking of Labour’s traditional start. All views are the authors' own and do working class base to the dog-whistle of immigration. He highlights how Islamo - not reflect IHRC's views or beliefs. Faisal Bodi and Arzu Merali phobic and racist meta-narratives have Editors Cover photo: Fight the far right: No to Tommy Robinson. No to Fortress Britain, Join the conversation by emailing us on [email protected] , tweeting @ihrc or find us on 9th December 2018 by and (c) Socialist Facebook. You can even send us an old fashioned letter to IHRC, PO Box 598, Wembley, Appeal under CC 2.0 HA9 7XH, UK. Or pop by to the IHRC Bookshop for one of our events (or watch online www.ihrc.tv) at 202 Preston Road, Wembley, HA9 8PA. Find out what events are coming up at www.ihrc.org.uk/events . The Long View - Quarterly Magazine February 2020 / Jum d al- khirah 1441 2 ā ā ʾĀ Muslim civil society Hindsight in 2020: US think tanks and the deterioration of Muslim civil society space The promise represented by the emergence of RAND in summary The RAND reports that have some res - Muslim civil society activism in late 1980’s Britain has onance amongst Muslim civil society date failed to translate into effective political agency. In back to 2003, in particular Civil Demo - cratic Islam by Cheryl Benard and Building fact, if anything, it has regressed under the weight of Moderate Muslim Networks also co-au - internal contradictions, powerful external opposition, thored by Benard in 2007. Benard in 2003 (amongst many other things) argues and the absence of principled strategies. Arzu that Muslims could be categorised in four ways as: fundamentalists, traditionalists, Merali explores how Muslims can get back on track. modernists, and secularists. Let’s leave t’s been a funny few years/decades. It has stitutes: Battling the Power of Islamic Re - aside the critique of such terms, but focus only just struck me how far the post- sistance by Hakimeh Saghaye-Biria . These on the reality that they are made meaning - colonial narrative has shifted, and been three co ntinue in detail micro and macro ful as praxes recommended by US think shifted by Muslims in large part in the theorizing the conveyor belt of anti-Islamic tanks. last 40 years. What has been all too evident and hegemonic forces that impact not just In this neat and tidy Muslim world of is the countermovement of capitulation or Muslims but many and all oppressed peo - RAND, only the secularists and some mod - Iinternalisation of hegemonic colonial narra - ples in some form or another. The catas - ernists can be engaged by the US to further tives at the day to day level of Muslim civil trophe of water contamination in Flint, the US aims in the region. Make no mistake, society in which I work. This piece requires role of multi-national corporations and the at this level, conversations about the future me to add examples and anecdotes, and as economic desolation of swathes of the US of Islam and Muslims are brutal. RAND’s far as possible I want to anonymise the since the 1970s (Saeed Khan in The New overarching agenda is to reform Islam fun - organisations and individuals referred to. Colonialism), intersects and has unex - damentally, thus removing any possibility This piece is not about individual or organ - pected consonance with the structural tha t should the US move towards a position isational blame, though there is much to be forces that the Kerner Commission, ap - of fostering or allowing democracy in the re - doled out.