White converts struggle to keep their identity
Rashmee Roshan Lall [ 4 Sep, 2006 2300hrs IST TIMES NEWS NETWORK ]
LONDON: Heard the one about the white convert to Islam who continued to use his original name, the one given to him by his parents? That name was 'Christian'.
Many of Europe's new Muslims, it seems, see no contradiction in bearing a first name like 'Christian' and professing a faith like Islam. Cambridge Muslim academic and scholar TJ Winter is a case in point.
"For my official work, banking and so on, I use my English name. When I am with fellow Muslims, I use my other name—Abdul Hakim Murad," he says.
So does Michael Young, another English convert. Six years ago, Young complained that the "ignorance of many born Muslims" initially forced him to adopt a so-called Muslim name and it was only later that he discovered "there is no requirement whatsoever to change one's name."
Accordingly, says Young, "I generally now use my 'real' name, not the 'Muslim name' that was initially thrust upon me".
The name issue is serious. For many it is a sign of British Islam's struggle to develop a clear and focused identity that belongs here on the British Isles rather than in Pakistan, where the brute majority of Britain's 1.6 million Muslims belong.
Batool Al Toma, the white convert who heads the New Muslim Project in Leicester, a one-stop shop for convert-induction, says her quarterly journal Meeting Point, stresses the need to stay British or European and Muslim. White converts, she says, do not need to adopt an Asian or Pakistani culture to demonstrate they are Muslim.
"We advise new converts that they do not need to change too much. They can still wear the same clothes, from the high street, do everything they always did and still be both British and Muslim, there is no contradiction there."...
Interestingly, many white Anglo-Saxon converts, including Winter and former British cabinet minister's son Joe Ahmed Dobson believe the traditional values they bear are more 'English' than 'the rave culture' embraced by their fellow citizens.
"As Muslims, we have traditional English values on raising children, marriage, homosexuality. We are actually more English than most people nowadays," says Winter.
Even so, there is a lengthening list of white converts who have infamously and radically changed name, appearance and behaviour.
The massive conspiracy to blow up trans-Atlantic airliners, foiled by British police on August 10, yielded at least three such converts. Don Stewart-Whyte, Oliver Savant and Brian Young.
By all accounts, the trio enthusiastically embraced new 'Islamic' identities with Stewart-Whyte metamorphosing into Abdul Waheed and a determined show of his new faith after a troubled English adolescence.
Savant became Ibrahim and Young emerged as the newborn UK Muslim Umar Islam.
Even more swingeing was the complete change of identity of Germaine Lindsay, the black convert who took part in the 7/7 bombings.
Lindsay's neighbours say that after he became Jamal, he took to wearing 'Muslim robes' and adopted an extremist philosophy to bomb Britain, which he took to be enjoined by his new religion.
Winter says Lindsay, Young, Savant and Stewart-Whyte symbolise British Islam's growing problem with white converts who "haven't had a classical Muslim theological grounding".
The so-called white convert 'Islamic terrorist', he cautions, just doesn't know enough about his new faith.
It is a view endorsed by Robert Ferrigno, the bestselling author whose new book Prayers for the Assassin imagines an Islamic US in 2036 with veiled women hurrying down Seattle's busy streets and a ban on alcohol.
"The problem with conversions among Westerners," Ferrigno tells TOI, "is that they are often ignorant of much of Islamic history, and easily fall prey to the most extreme versions of the faith. It is no surprise that when Islam was at its cultural zenith approximately 1,000 years ago, it was at its most liberal and tolerant, encouraging dialogue.
The Fatimid Muslims who ruled north Africa established the world's first university in 988 and placed several Christians and Jews in positions of authority under Fatimid caliphs. The problem today is that fundamentalist Muslims are the only ones considered good Muslims."
But now, things may be changing. Perhaps in a reaction to the cultural orthodoxy of British Muslims born into the faith and hailing from Pakistan, many of Britain's estimated 20,000 new white converts are increasingly articulating their need to keep their Anglo-Saxon roots.
It is a theme echoed by Young, whose gripe about white conversion emphatically declared, "When I, a westerner and a former practising Christian, became a Muslim, I became just that—a Muslim, a believer in the religion of Islam, ie someone who believes in the oneness of God as opposed to the concept of Trinity and who accepts Mohammed as a prophet of God. I'm the same person with the same name, wearing the same western style of clothing (though now respecting the modest dress code of Islam) and eating the same style of food (though now making sure that my meat is halal). I have not rejected my country, its culture or tradition. I simply now hold different theological beliefs."
Young added that on becoming Muslim he "did not adopt an alien culture or become an Arab, a Pakistani or anything else, nor did I sign up as a supporter of a variety of nationalistic independence or separatist struggles around the world—Palestine, Chechnya, Kashmir, Indonesia—just because the protagonists happen to be Muslims".
Winter agrees. "British Islam is developing its own personality," he declares. But pressed on what he imagines it might look like, he demurs. "We can't define Britishness right now, so how can we define British Islam." This then, is work in progress.