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There has been much
ado about the need for an Islamic State, and little thought on how
to bring it about. Moreover, whilst the arguments for the benefits
of a proper Islamic system within its own territory have a great
deal in their favour, excessive talk about that model provides no
answers to the problems Muslims face here in the West as a
religious, and disunited, minority governed by a secular state with
little sympathy for Islam.
The mirage of a state of our own,
therefore, becomes a detractor, keeping us away from what we should
be doing: re-defining our role within the society in which we live
and examine the opportunities open to us to change this society for
the better.
Those who dream that the Islamic State would fall from the sky
and who prefer verbal radicalism to real hard and pragmatic work
would very quickly consider this approach as a foul compromise with
the forces of disbelief. The truth, however, is that to denounce the
world around us does not shift it one iota, and unless we interact
with those whom we might well differ with, we shall simply be forced
into a self-imposed ghetto of delusion.
The Islamic Party of Britain has consistently argued that all the
strong-talk about a theoretical Islamic State is of little use
whilst we remain ignorant of the real power constellations and the
means by which they manipulate our existence. A Khilafat whose
economy remains dominated by the World Bank and the IMF, or for that
matter by so-called Islamic banking institutions playing their part
for them, will be no different from the numerous Islamic nation
states we already have where Islam cannot be implemented. It is a
sad fact of history that the structure of political Islam in the
world was broken down by the Zionist movement led by Theodor Herzl
in their endeavour to establish the Jewish State, and that once
lost, this structure has to be rebuilt slowly from the bottom up.
One can repair an existing instrument no longer once it has been
dismantled and dis-assembled into its constituent parts.
When the Muslims who entered countries ruled by others were
backed by a strong Islamic State, it did not take them long to
establish themselves and dominate the societies which they
conquered. This encounter was not always peaceful, but it was never
prolonged, because they were armed with a truth that had been put
into practice and was thus convincing to all who could be made to
see it in action. Now Islam, on the political level, is far from
being a reality, even though it remains a very real life experience
for Muslims in their private spheres. Therefore those called to
accept Islam can easily dismiss it out of hand as a nice theory that
is unfortunately not practicable by asking us to point them to an
Islamic country where things are precisely as we say they should be.
Muslim communities in the West have in the past neglected the
political and the economic dimensions of Islam, reducing Islam to a
merely cultural expression. Thus they could sustain the paradox of
wanting to make their new environment resemble their home countries
as closely as possible, when they had voluntarily left those
countries for political or economic reasons. If they preferred the
way things were done back home, why did they abandon their homes in
the first place? This contradiction can only be explained by the
attachment to a cultural expression of Islam in countries where the
political and economic power had already been surrendered to the
colonial forces occupying the Muslim lands. To look for salvation in
the very countries of the West that had taken away their sovereignty
indicates that they never understood the workings of an Islamic
state system. To have the same people call for the establishment of
an Islamic State smacks of ignorance or hypocrisy, or possibly both.
The younger generation of Muslims born in the West without choice
of their own are not going to benefit much from such rhetoric, nor
are their interests served by an attempt to withdraw into
self-styled safe havens, like the folly of advocating a separate
Muslim parliament with no powers, a talking shop playing on the
feel-good factor but achieving no more than the marginalisation of
Islam. Muslims in Britain today need to figure out where it is
appropriate to have their own institutions and where it is
appropriate to integrate without running the risk of assimilation.
Those advocating the hard line that we should not have anything to
do with the Kufr-system are usually students aspiring to gain a
qualification issued by that very system, knowing too well that if
they got together to form their own study circles, the certificates
issued by such an all-Muslim institute of learning would benefit
them little in their career ambitions. Inevitably we have to make
use of institutions that are not run by ourselves, but we need to
define how we interact with them and how we gain a measure of
influence over those decisions that affect us. Organisations of our
own can often help in achieving this aim more efficiently.
There is no blueprint we can follow. The books of Islam do not
contain a chapter ?what to do when you come to Britain. We can only
learn from our own successes and failures, as well as from the
experiences of others in a similar situation, namely Muslims in the
rest of Europe, in the United States of America and in South Africa,
as well as the more limited experiences of Muslim minorities in
other parts of the world. When looking at those examples, it needs
to be born in mind that nowhere has there been a concerted and
planned effort to introduce Islam, but that there were diverse
Islamic activities which out of necessity developed models to serve
their purposes. We do not start from a clean slate, but carry a lot
of unhelpful baggage from past encounters with the society around
us. We, the Muslims, have often become the greatest obstacle to
establishing Islam.
When dealing with secular, post-Christian, state administrations,
Muslims traditionally behaved as a typical minority, seeking to
redress the disadvantages of their minority status by demanding
equal access to positions of influence on the one hand, and special
allowances or minority rights on the other. This situation is prone
to create resentment in main stream society, as the term positive
discrimination, which was coined to justify competing on privileged
terms in an attempt to compensate for previous inequality, shows.
The quota system which allocates positions to members of particular
communities simply by virtue of belonging to them, irrespective of
other qualifications, will set up communities against each othe. Its
introduction in the Yugoslavia of Tito, for example, laid the
foundation for a great deal of the hatred to surface later in the
Balkans. What has hindered our ability to take society by storm with
the truth of Islam is that, unlike the Muslims in the very early
days of Islam, we hardly spare a thought of what we could give to
society by way of contribution, whilst concentrating instead on the
question of what else we could want from them. There are no Muslim
charities serving the needs of the wider community, beyond the
immediate belonging of our own, whereas many Muslims depend on
hand-outs from the state and from non-Muslim charities. The
practical message we send is of a tribalist Islam, a far cry from
the universal message we preach.
Even in countries where the fight for minority rights has been
much more successful than here in Britain, these limitations still
hold true. In Austria, because of the historic connections of the
Habsburg Dynasty with the Turkish Caliphate, the Muslims are a
recognised religious community, with state funded Muslim teachers in
schools and even a regular TV programme. In Spain (an experience
which is particularly interesting because of Muslims in their desire
to gain recognition having linked up with a regional non-Muslim
independence movement in Andalous to further their aim) a newly
founded representative body of Muslims has entered into a contract
with the state which details their mutual rights and obligations. It
seems that here in Britain the Action Committee on Islamic Affairs
which so badly handled the Rushdie Affair for us, tries to go down
the same route, re-packaged as the Muslim Council of Britain. The
question, when bargaining for concessions from the non-Muslim state,
like state-funded Muslim schools, is firstly, how representative is
the body presenting itself as the official negotiating partner, and
secondly, are we as Muslims meant to be content with being
tolerated?
Good communications make for better understanding, and the
co-ordination of our activities surely makes for better efficiency
and reduces the waste of resources. However, most of the attempts to
pull Muslim resources and activities together were undertaken in the
desire to exert control, and this in the end was their downfall, as
ordinary Muslims usually resent surrendering their freedom of action
to a central authority imposed upon them. The matter is further
complicated by the fact that many organisations here have loyalties
to sponsors abroad and cannot, therefore, merge with other
organisations answerable to different ideological or paymasters. The
Muslim Council of Britain is the most ambitious attempt so far at
controlling Muslim affairs and becoming the official voice of Islam
in Britain. It is well funded, which suggests that someone has a
keen interest in getting it to succeed, and it remains to be seen
what becomes of it when those who are currently being wooed to join
up as members are asked to finance all its activities from their own
means. Individuals funding and directing Islamic affairs have in the
past done so in a very patriarchal and despotic way and feel quite
uneasy about the Western concept of democracy. Yet to convince the
British government of their legitimacy, they have to appear
representative. This can be done by inviting all, but developing a
structure where some have more say than others. The Muslim Council
of Britain to be inaugurated at the end of November, for example,
has a mixed set-up of delegates from national organisations and
representatives of twelve regions of the UK. Nine of those regions
are in England, whereas Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland count
as only one region each. It is arguable whether there are as many
Islamic activities in, for argument's sake, Devon as there are in
the whole of Scotland, when the quality of some activities, like
Radio Ramadan in Glasgow, by far outdoes what happens in the London
capital.
Inequality is a very British game. The British government does
not look for a representative body of British Muslims; it would be
quite happy to strike a deal with a body that can simply lay claim
to being representative. In the past the Home Office has nominated
the Islamic Cultural Centre in London as the central mosque which
speaks for all Muslims, not because the Muslims in Britain delegated
those powers to it, but because its very foundation was the result
of a diplomatic trade-off between Britain and Egypt. A mosque
created by leave of Her Majesty's government is more likely to serve
the interests of a British administration than one founded by local
Muslims. If the British government is going to give concessions to
an allegedly representative body of British Muslims, it is going to
want something in return. The advantage of having an official Islam
is that those who do not comply with the decisions taken can be
considered as out of the fold of Islam, they may not necessarily be
excommunicated, but they can safely be ignored as irrelevant. Since
Samuel Huntingdon pronounced his theory of the clash of
civilisations as an imminent confrontation between the West and
Islam, the strategy of the American administration, and with that of
European governments following their lead, has changed to one of
differentiation between the moderate Muslim and the terrorist. Those
accepting the conditions under which they are recognised will be
tolerated, the remainder can then safely be hunted down.
Muslims should enter into alliances with those who share their
views and beliefs in certain areas, so that jointly we can work for
changing a status quo that is not acceptable to us. Muslims should
not withdraw from public life, but they should be careful not to
enter into an agreement with a government which thereby gains a
leverage of control over Muslim affairs. If we want to change the
state in which we live, we can hardly do this on the very terms this
state prescribes for us. To maintain independence of thought and
action, it may sometimes be necessary to forfeit certain privileges
that might be desirable but are available only at a price. To enable
ourselves to bring about meaningful change, we must stop viewing
Islam as a possession of ours and instead offer it as a service to
humanity.
Author: Islamic
Party of
Britain |
Date Published:
Author
1997 |
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