[lbo-talk] Madeleine Bunting on the social history of UK Miripuris

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Fri Jul 22 09:35:07 PDT 2005


http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1530581,00.html

Monday July 18, 2005

The Guardian

Orphans of Islam

The history of Britain's Mirpur population may help to explain why

some became suicide bombers

Madeleine Bunting

The room is packed, the discussions go on way beyond the allotted

time: this was a meeting of young professional Muslims in London at

the weekend. The anguish and self-criticism was unstoppable as they

struggled to find answers to how their faith could have nurtured such

a perversion as suicide bombers in London. The object of their

scrutiny - the chairman singled this out as a mark of accepting their

responsibility - was not British foreign policy, but their faith. What

do the Qur'anic verses about jihad really mean? How can extremists

misinterpret them? And the imam, Abu Muntasir, patiently tried to

answer - it's been a failure of our scholars, a failure of our

teachers. The harshness of the self-criticism was painful to hear:

this was a community flagellating itself.

The themes at the core of their discussions were about the failed

transmission of Islamic values in Britain and the collapse of Islamic

authority - long traditions of respected scholarship and religious

leadership were all cast aside on 7/7 by these four young men - why?

Over the coming months, every detail of these young men's lives will

be picked over by anti-terrorist experts to map the experiences and

influences that shaped their extremism. It's early days, but already

some of the factors that need to be plotted on to this map are

emerging.

First, the families of the three Leeds-based bombers were originally,

in all likelihood, from Mirpur, part of Pakistani Kashmir. Mirpuris

form 70% of the British Muslim population, and the figure is even

higher in northern towns. Just as the dominant role of Saudis in 9/11

led to a spotlight on the religion and politics of Saudi Arabia, so

attention will focus on Mirpur.

This rural, impoverished district provided cheap, unskilled labour for

Britain in the 60s and 70s. Most immigrants were from

subsistence-farming communities and had had little or no schooling.

They made a huge cultural and geographical leap to settle in the UK -

the dislocation is hard to imagine.

One of the things they brought with them was the perception of a long

history of dispossession and marginalisation. Partition brought

terrible bloodshed and the division of Kashmir between Pakistan and

India. (This was the issue cited until very recently as the most

pressing political priority in the UK by the majority of British

Muslims.) Within Pakistan, Mirpur is to the more dominant Punjabis

what the Irish have historically been to the British, explained one

Mirpuri.

In the 80s the remittances began to flow in, fuelling an extraordinary

boom in Mirpur, bringing computers, televisions, the internet,

satellite dishes, microwaves and fridges. One of the strongest Mirpuri

traditions is that you marry your first cousin, so there is a constant

exchange with the UK to renew the Mirpuri influence for the next

generation. Mirpur has been an example - and there are others the

world over - of the painful disruption in deeply traditional

communities of a sudden influx of wealth and interface with modernity.

The narrative of dispossession gained new force in the 80s amid the

collapse of the industries in which the first generation had come to

work. Men who had worked long hours in the textiles and steel industry

- and had been, arguably, more integrated into white workforces than

their taxi-driver and curry-house sons - found themselves redundant.

The more recent oppression and humiliation of Muslims in Iraq and

Afghanistan would have resonated powerfully with these collective

memories of Yorkshire Muslims, passed from grandfather and father to

son.

A second critical issue that needs to be plotted on to this map is

that the vast majority of Mirpuris adhere to a tradition of Sufi Islam

called Barelwi. One of the Indian Islamic revival movements of the

late 19th century, Barelwi life revolves around holy elders known as

pirs; their graves become shrines and places of pilgrimage.

The problem, which has been well known within many Muslim circles, is

that Barelwism has particularly struggled to translate itself

effectively into British urban life. There are very few

English-speaking Barelwi imams. They have steered clear of national

organisations such as the Muslim Council of Britain, and even set up

their own umbrella group recently. They are treated with disdain by

the Wahhabi and Muslim Brotherhood-influenced groups who are more

vocal in the British Muslim community. The writ of the MCB's Iqbal

Sacranie, a Malawi-born Indian Muslim, doesn't reach into such

introverted communities. One wry comment at the weekend was: if

Sacranie is visiting the Leeds Barelwis now that's great, but it's

probably the first time.

What has been obvious to thoughtful second-generation Barelwis

themselves is that they are losing the young. The mosques are tightly

controlled by the old patriarchal elders, who hire their Urdu-speaking

imams from the home village. The kids come to prayers, don't

understand much of what they see or hear and drift off to find an

Islam that can answer their questions.

A profound disconnection has opened up between the communal experience

of political and economic dispossession and the pious, otherworldly

Barelwi traditions. As one Yorkshireman from a Barelwi background,

Azhar Hussain, said: "When I was 17 and got to university and began to

take religion more seriously I went to hear all the Islamic groups to

see which one made the most sense. The Barelwis are not on university

campuses; they can't answer those questions."

In the early 90s Arabs told Navid Akhtar, a broadcast journalist from

a Barelwi background, that they had spotted a constituency in these

disaffected young Muslims; "They called them 'orphans of Islam',"

Akhtar says.

To compound the crisis of identity for male teenagers, Muslim girls

are thriving with their new-found opportunities in the UK as they pull

steadily ahead of their male counterparts at GCSE level and in the

numbers going on to higher education.

Some in the Muslim community have been struggling with these problems

for years, trying to challenge recalcitrant mosque committees, trying

to set up youth projects; they have been well aware of the threat of

extremism. "We've been too afraid," a Muslim living in a northern town

told me. "There are so many frustrated, angry men who tell me,

'They're doing it in Iraq, why can't we do it to them?' They convince

themselves that this is Islamic. I find it frustrating that our

community hasn't tackled this. We have to talk to them about these

issues - let them get their anger out."

For this man, who does voluntary community work, what lies ahead is an

impossible tightrope of near-illegality if he is to take on the

challenge of extremism in his community - he agrees and likens his

position to that of someone who works with drug addicts. We are told

that what lies ahead is a battle of ideas. If so, this kind of

community volunteer is on the frontline. It will be his judgment call

as to when he can guide a disorientated, angry young man or whether he

has to shop him to the police.

m.bunting at guardian.co.uk

The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and

Clarifications column, Tuesday July 19, 2005:

In the Comment piece below, we said that Mirpuris (people originating

from Mirpur in Pakistani Kashmir), formed 70% of the British Muslim

population. That is incorrect. We should have said they formed about

70% of the British Pakistani population. We did not intend to suggest

that all Barelwi imams had steered clear of the Muslim Council of

Britain, which does, in fact, contain some prominent Barelwi scholars.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005



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