Twenty years ago, Ayotallah Khomeini pronounced his notorious fatwa against Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses. It was the climax of a controversy that had raged for several months, and would continue to do so for another year and more. In hindsight, the Rushdie affair marked the beginning of a new political assertiveness amongst Britain's Muslims. As one Islamist noted at the time, with some satisfaction, "young Muslims who had been worrying the older generation with their indulgent ways—pool, pop and Pepsi—are now returning to the mosques in droves." Having encountered Islam, so to speak, through politics, it was only natural that they should gravitate towards a politicized Islam. Islamist organizations, which had hitherto struggled to attract recruits and supporters, now found themselves in the right place at the right time; the story of Islamism in Britain had begun.
The young Muslims who protested on the streets of Bradford, Bolton, and Birmingham, who attended in their thousands the rallies in Hyde Park, are no longer so young, but neither are they so old. Most are probably in their late thirties or forties. Half a generation behind them are the young Muslims of today, the inheritors of a mantle forged in the flames of a burning book. One strand of the Islamist narrative that began twenty years ago led, tragically, to the events of the 7 July 2005. But, as I have argued before (Prospect, August 2008), Islamism is not—and never was—a unitary phenomenon and other threads have led in different directions. How have these other stories turned out?
In order to find out, I began a journey across Britain, speaking to "ordinary" young Muslims—that is, those who are not, or have ever been, affiliated to radical Islamism—from different ethnic, class, regional and doctrinal backgrounds. I wanted to hear what they had to say for themselves; I wanted to peer into their inner worlds, to mine their experiences and emotions as well as their thoughts and opinions.
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It is commonly believed that the principal dynamic within Britain's Muslim communities is a culture clash between "British" values based on secular-liberalism and Islamic values. It is not. In fact, the main social dynamic in these communities is a generational conflict between the "elders"—those first generation migrants who came to Britain in the 1960s and 1970s—and their offspring, the second and third generation Muslims who have come of age in the wake of the Rushdie affair, 9/11, and 7/7.
Shiv Malik noticed this when researching the background of Mohammed Siddique Khan, the ring-leader of 7/7, arguing that it was the key to understanding the radicalisation of the July 7 bombers. This is probably true, but a narrow reading of his account might conclude that the generational conflict is significant only because it contributes to radicalisation. A broader reading, however, might also see in this generational conflict as the foundation of a nascent development away from Islamism towards a British Islam able to negotiate and accommodate Islamic and British cultural frameworks.
As Malik noted, the elders in Beeston only became concerned about the new religiosity of their youth when their monopoly over the arrangement of suitable marriage partners was challenged. Such challenges to the elders' authority was not, however, the prerogative of young radicals who had found a substitute 'family' within Islamist organisations, as Malik's article suggests. I found them to be an almost ubiquitous aspect of social relations within Britain's Muslim communities, and they ranged beyond marriage to include education, social lifestyle, leisure, and employment.
Whilst it is true that religiosity is growing amongst British Muslim youth, the particular ways in which they express it is of great significance. The young Muslims I met insisted they had turned to Islam themselves, out of choice. Their parents did not "force religion down our throats." "Islam is something I chose to do," said Aisha, a student from Slough. "It was something I did for myself, not because someone else told me to do it." The word "force" (and its various synonyms) clearly signals the desire for its flip-side: "freedom" and "choice".
Others have noticed this refrain. In a report published by Policy Exchange, the authors also pointed out that this motif was common to both the non-religious and the religious, to both those who have followed a secular path and those who have taken the Islamic route. They did not, however, draw the significant inference that since the generational conflict is also common to both these groups, then these are not culturally alternative pathways but two sides of the same coin: secularisation and Islamisation are two dimensions of the same desire for empowerment amongst the current generation of Muslim youth.
The objective is to liberate themselves from the ways of their elders, which they feel impose unwarranted restrictions on their social and personal freedom. The majority of British Muslims migrated from the Indian subcontinent, particularly from Pakistan and Bangladesh. The generational conflict within these communities rests on the tensions between two forms of social organisation that are largely incommensurable. On the one hand is the biradari social system; close-knit and insular, it places the demands of the extended family above all else. Individuals are subordinated to it, and behaviour is regulated by the concepts of honour and shame, which inhibit actions that might threaten the cohesion and self-identity of the family. It is very different to the individual-oriented social structure in Europe and the west, which has the nuclear family at its core. Each has different values, norms of behaviour, patterns of obligation, and sets of expectations.
Growing up in the west, young British Muslims have understandably absorbed the values of the western social system, but they find themselves having to negotiate with their parents' demands for them to observe their obligations to the biradari. Caught between the two, many find their traditional family structure to be oppressive but they are often unable or unwilling to tackle their elders head-on. Those few who have tried have often been socially ostracised, which has sometimes had devastating effects on them. Many have "gone off the rails", turning to drugs, crime and prostitution. Others have turned to Islamism, a discourse of empowerment that also offers the consoling myth of a stable civilizational identity: an attractive alternative to the messy anxieties induced by their social and cultural hybridity.
Yet others have tried a different approach. Given that their parents insist the biradari social structure is "Islamic," these young British Muslims are increasingly reinterpreting Islam in a manner that will enable them to sanction their belief in greater individuality and freedom of choice. This is what lies behind their insistence—also ubiquitous—that "culture" is distinct from "religion." "Islam and culture gets automatically merged together a lot of the time," said Qadeer, a young inter-faith worker in Lancashire, "but there's a huge amount of differences. For example, forced marriages and stuff like that. Most families from the subcontinent will say it is a religious thing when actually it's a cultural thing for their own gain."
The pressures of the biradari system clearly bear most heavily on women. It is a patriarchal system that rejects gender equality. The young Muslim women to whom I spoke found the culture/religion distinction particularly useful: their interpretation of Islam is one that portrays gender inequality as un-Islamic.
In west London, a 19-year old called Razia narrated a long story about her fruitless efforts to convince her parents that she should be able to choose her own partner. She was unsuccessful and resigned to her fate but was aggrieved that her brother was allowed to have a "love marriage." On top of that she was irritated by the blatant ways in which her parents privileged her brothers over herself and her sisters. "It says in the Koran, you know, that sons and daughters should be treated equally and those that don't treat them equally will get punished," she said.
Her point was echoed by Aisha. "I don't deny the fact that you do get some people who are very traditional, and they enforce these things, like the woman should stay at home, she should be a housewife—that is where the misconception is, because people confuse religion with culture."
It is apparent, then, that Islam offers an effective way for these young Muslims to outflank their elders. It is an idiom through which they can express their dissatisfaction with their elders' cultural restrictions in a manner that will be understood by them. It is also a way of sanctioning cultural values and practices they are more comfortable with. These are values they share with their non-Muslim peers, substantiating the idea that a British Islam is emerging, and will one day flourish. To put it another way, many young British Muslims are increasingly turning to Islam not because they are alienated from Britain, but in order to express the British values they have absorbed from the wider society. Islam enables them to deploy these values more effectively within their own social contexts of family and community.
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Several things follow from this emphasis on individuality and choice. Principally, the logic of pluralism is embedded into young Muslim thinking. They spoke most prominently of their faith in terms of "pathways" and "journeys"—the term sharia literally means "path"—and there was an acceptance that there are many equally valid pathways into and through Islam: there are many ways of being Muslim. They accept difference (of opinion, of belief) as being intrinsic to the practice of Islam.
At the same time, most of these young Muslims do not equate individuality and choice with secularism, or the idea that faith should be privatized (although some do). They continue to see themselves as part of a meaningful social group – as Muslims; and as Muslims they feel it is their duty to participate fully in social life. Aisha articulated this very well, "Islam is about changing yourself for the better, I would say. And in changing yourself, you change the way people perceive you as well, and then it becomes a community thing as well as on an individual basis. You need to look out for your community – you have a social responsibility to yourself, to your parents, towards everyone else as well, whether they're Muslims or non-Muslims."
Time and again I heard it put to me that the duty of Muslims is to "put something back" into society. In London, an accountant called Raihan put it thus, "It's pretty much because I am a Muslim that I feel a debt to the communities that I live in, the society in general. You have to contribute back, you have to give something back."
Over half of those I spoke to were involved in voluntary work of some kind. Those who believe that young Muslims cleave to Islam because they do not want to integrate into British society should bear this in mind. There are plenty of young Muslims in Britain for whom Islam is not a badge of alienation but the very basis of integration and social engagement.
Since their "community" is not confined to Muslims, it soon became clear that the caricature of young Muslims as inward-looking and separated from wider society is misleading. There was a genuine open-mindedness and tolerance of cultural and religious difference. In fact, they cherished being surrounded by people different from themselves. One response I often heard when I asked them if they would prefer to live in a Muslim country was that they would find it boring because everyone there would be Muslim.
So, just as these young Muslims are comfortable with accepting differences within Islam, so too are they comfortable with living in a multi-faith, multicultural society. They have a live-and-let-live attitude that is tolerant and pluralistic. Such young Muslims accept non-Muslims as equals in society, recognizing the need for co-existence in the secular sphere even as they hold on to the primacy of Islam as a system of belief. Because they have to live with visible and palpable differences every day, they have started to see difference as normal, as enabling and enriching, not as a problem. They flatly reject the binary world-view put forward by the militants and radical Islamists.
Individuality, choice, pluralism, ethical commitment, and social responsibility to society in general (and not just Muslims): all these values require a new attitude towards the interpretation of Islam itself, and young Muslims understand that greater flexibility and creativity is required if they are to construct an Islam appropriate to their circumstances as a minority community in the twenty first century. They recognise that an increasingly globalised, interconnected world confronts Muslims with unprecedented challenges, which cannot be addressed if they continue to observe the old prejudices against doctrinal innovation ( bid'a).
And many of these young Muslims want the flexibility to interpret their texts in the light of changing concerns. Instead of reading the text "as it is," one must read it with due attention to the "principles" that lie behind it as well as the historically specific context within which it emerged. All the young men and women I spoke to were wary of the naïve literalism and dogmatism of some schools of thought in Islam today.
Taken together, these elements amount to a new conceptualisation of their faith as a moving force rather than a static object. Unlike those literalists and dogmatists who wish to reduce Islam to what they believe is its pure or original state, or those secularists who believe that religion invariably leads to a narrowing of perspective, young Muslims in Britain see Islam as the source for new possibilities.
Ironically, one of the central themes of The Satanic Verses is "how newness enters the world." But the problem with Rushdie's critique of Islam in that novel is his suggestion that Islam, from the outset, has set its face against history and change. This has never been the case. Islam, like everything else in history, has changed and developed, and one need only look to the British Muslim youth of today to see the truth of that.
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The patterns of thought I have described were common threads that bound independent young Muslim voices across the country, across classes, and ethnic backgrounds. Though it would be unwise to suggest that they are representative in any conventional sense, it is clear that the constituency is large, and it constitutes a radical potential for reform. Nevertheless, we should also be clear that these voices do not represent, as yet, a critical mass of popular opinion ready to be mobilized in a systematic ideological offensive against both traditional Islam and traditional Islamism in the name of a new British Islam.
They should rather be seen as intimations of a post-Islamist British Islam, in which the grand ambitions of Islamism are being rejected, and the very basis of being a Muslim is being reappraised in the context of living as a minority community.
These ideas are, as yet, fragments swirling in the maelstrom of intellectual, spiritual and political ferment within Britain's Muslim communities. Unorganised, and often coexisting with contradictory impulses, they are imperfectly fashioned and in need of refinement. This is most apparent in attitudes towards Sharia law. One group felt that Sharia was utterly irrelevant to them and had no hesitation in dismissing it as unnecessary. The rest did express some appreciation of Sharia, but they all hedged this desire with qualifications that, in effect, made it all seem rather academic.
In time, some of these ideas will find their way into the public arena in a more coherent form. Indeed, forward thinking Muslim organisations are already beginning to register and foster these developments. These include groups as diverse as City Circle, the Islamic Society of Britain, the Quilliam Foundation and British Muslims for Secular Democracy, as well as participants in the Radical Middle Way, such as YMOUK, and newspapers and magazines like Q-News and emel.
The question is, will these ideas—fragile as they are—be given the time and space to develop? The ordinary Muslims I spoke to are those over whom the radicals and militants would clearly like to exercise influence, and each of them is a front line in the battle for hearts and minds. They are ready to fight back; they are marshalling their arguments, and the government could help with resources. But it should be careful, and avoid unwarranted interference in social movements it does not yet fully understand. It would be a mistake either to promote one position or group too willingly, or suppress others too forcefully. That may be the natural political reflex in these anxious times, but the urge should be resisted. It is regrettable that the very same politicians who have been (until now) so sanguine about the invisible hand of the market should have also been so eager to let the heavy hand of the state meddle in matters that should, as much as possible, be allowed to run their course.
Discuss this article on First Drafts, the Prospect blog; and read Kenan Malik's interview with Hanif Kureishi in our current edition here
