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Creating and Capturing Muslim Narratives

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Creating and Capturing Muslim Narratives Quarterly Magazine Volume 1, Issue 2 - June 2019 / Shawaal 1440 ISSN 2632-3168 £5 where sold Rewriting our future, revisiting our past: creating and capturing Muslim narratives IAN ALMOND : DR MYRIAM ARZU MERALI: YOUSEF On the Quiet Capture FRANCOIS: Don’t mention the war: HELOU: of the History of the Rewriting our future: Muslim Amnesia and Palestinian online West – by the the need for Muslim the Need for Collective advocacy countering Islamophobic Right narratives Memory Israeli propaganda In the Name of Allah, Contents: the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful he theme of our place as Muslims periphery (former colonies) are being within the wider national story is the pushed to the margins by Britons from the thread that binds together three of the old Empire's core. But while Islamophobia four articles in the latest issue of The Long may be a new specificity the challenges we TView. face as a community as a result of racism are 3 Ian Almond: For at least the last two decades British largely the same as other BAME communi - On the Quiet Capture of society has witnessed a populist lurch to the ties. Addressing them, therefore, requires a the History of the West right which has both been nourished by (and more collaborative approach, more akin to – by the Islamophobic in turn fed) narratives seeking to redefine a that developed by Muslim groups in France Right pre-immigrant Britain that supposedly where joining forces with Roma and other existed before the confusion and contamina - anti-racism groups pre-empts official tion caused by multi-culturalism. attempts to play "divide and rule" politics. Dr Myriam Francois: In this idealised white "Golden Age" of Dr Francois sees the arts as a way in which 4 Rewriting our future: sedate cricket matches on manicured village British Muslims can define their own place the need for Muslim greens and grimy workers pouring out of within Britain. By becoming producers as narratives smokey factories at the end of their shift, the well as consumers and storytellers as well as place of minorities, be they ethnic or reli - subjects we can start to challenge the racist, gious, has been called into question. politically motivated narratives that have Arzu Merali: Identifying a crisis in British identity they come to dominate what it means to be 7 Don’t mention the war: diagnose as a diffidence and timorousness in British. Muslim Amnesia and the defending "traditional" British values in the Arzu Merali takes up the question of Need for Collective face of a hostile multi-culturalism, their how Muslims should address their erasure focus has turned on everyone who doesn't and misrepresentation from national narra - Memory look or talk like themselves or indeed tives. She finds problematic the reflexive espouse the same values. Rather than being responses which simply restate Muslim a restatement of any kind of a native histori - contributions to e.g. the wars Britain has Yousef Helou: cal British identity, this identity assertion historically fought, as this risks making us 12 Palestinian online has actually taken place in opposition to complicit in the present-day glorification of advocacy countering more newly settled communities. the military that seeks to legitimise war Israeli propaganda Under this resurgent right wing against Muslims abroad. While it is impor - populism the Scottish are viewed as want - tant to paint ourselves into the national away traitors, the EU a back-door way for picture, we must reject the temptation to Germany and France to control Britain, East present ourselves as the same as those who European immigrants an army of cheap deny our role in society and history because labour to displace British workers and to do so is to acquiesce in their moral abuses, Muslims a Trojan Horse looking to enforce which in many cases run counter to our own Islamic values on the silent majority. divinely inspired values. The How have we arrived at such a critical The final piece in this edition is by juncture? Yousef Alhelou and departs in part from and ong View Professor Ian Almond locates one cause dovetails with in other ways the theme L Quarterly Magazine in the revision of history to recast the British above. As Palestinians have grown politically Empire as a benign and benevolent force. and militarily weaker and increasingly more Whether it's the retelling of history in the isolated as a result of their abandonment by classroom, the whitewashing of political the Muslim world, this has given rise to a atrocities and abuses, or the creation of a new energy in cyberspace that seeks to Editors: fictitious past through popular culture the diffuse their cause. Historically, mainstream Faisal Bodi and objective is the same - to inform our choices western media has been complicit in propa - and opinions in the troubled present by gating pro-Israel narratives. This imbalance, Arzu Merali reference to a "glorious" past. a function of power asymmetry, is being He sees how "the slow, subtle, low-key challenged by a new wave of revolutionaries The Long View is a project beatification of Empire has insidiously crept who have made cyberspace their battlefield. and publication of Islamic into the background of every debate" and Applications such as Facebook, Twitter and Human Rights Commission that its proponents are thriving in part Whatsapp now enable Palestinians to because they have "been able to grow in a bypass the censors and disseminate their (a limited company no 04716690). rich topsoil of historical ignorance." own news and views to a global audience. For Dr Myriam Francois the newly- Having been undermined by dominant Web www.ihrc.org.uk emerged national story leaves little room for pro-Israel narratives, Palestinians have E info@ihrc,org Muslims except as a "problem identity" that taken up the challenge of retelling their Tel +44 20 8904 4222 is there to be tolerated by the "native" major - current and past stories using new media. ity. The rampant discrimination and target - A lesson perhaps, for us all to take on. All views are the authors' own and ing of Muslims today parallels the recent rise do not reflect IHRC's views or of right wing narratives (and the retreat of beliefs. multiculturalism) in which Britons from the Faisal Bodi and Arzu Merali Editors Cover photo (c) Sara Russell of Invisible Lines exhibition at IHRC Join the conversation by emailing us on [email protected] , tweeting @ihrc or find us on Gallery, 2015. Image in photo by Facebook. You can even send us an old fashioned letter to IHRC, PO Box 598, Wembley, Nasreen Raja. 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 . 2 The Long View - Quarterly Magazine June 2019 / Shawaal 1440 Rewriting History On the Quiet Capture of the History of the West – by the Islamophobic Right such as Victoria and Abdul (2017) end with the Indian protagonist kissing the feet of The fight against Islamophobia could benefit Queen Victoria’s bronze statue. When we from rewriting the whitewashed history round all of this off with the widespread public consumption of a documentary genre currently dispensed to British schoolchildren, we can only term ‘Yes-Empire-was-bad-but- argues Ian Almond. we-did-give-them-rail-travel’ (Simon Schama’s A History of Britain , Jeremy Pax - bout a year ago, I was having coffee The unfortunate thing about History is man’s Empire ), it is hardly surprising to with a Muslim schoolfriend from that, unless we make an effort to look for it learn that nearly two-thirds of people inter - my childhood. She said to me: ourselves, we get most of it unconsciously, viewed in the UK feel the British Empire is “What kind of history are they without asking – either from our educa - more something to be proud of than teaching at school nowadays? My son came tional institutions, or from our mainstream ashamed of, and over one-third still wish we up to me yesterday and asked: ‘Mum, was culture. We grow up already formatted, so to had one today . Athe British Empire a good thing or a bad speak, with an unconscious backdrop of the To make one thing clear: the solution thing in India?”. Her son’s history lesson, it world in our mind. This unconscious back - here is definitely not to replace a Western- appeared, had been all about the wonderful drop is tremendously important – all the friendly history with an Islam-friendly one. things the British did around the world. more so because we hardly notice it is there. Muslims, like any other group, are every bit The remark reminded me of something It is never thought of as ‘political’, but rather as prone to selective amnesia as Europeans. vague, but I couldn’t say what. When I got a deep, natural kind of common sense. It is Turkey continues to display an unwilling - home, I looked up the matter online, and why people can be puzzled when they are ness to fully acknowledge the violent, large- quickly found the thing that had eluded me: told Israel is a settler-colony, or when they scale ethnic cleansings of both the 1890s and an eight-year old article in The Guardian , hear India asking Britain for an apology (for 1915 – when the Armenian population was reporting on the appointment of a right- what – the railways?), or when Greece de - nearly completely removed from its lands; wing, pro-imperialist, pro-Western aca - mands that we return its monuments.
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