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.
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.
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