Tag: Reviews

My latest Friday Prayer Review for my city is up at my usual places: the original can be seen at http://www.progressiveislam.org/friday_prayer_review_feb_23_2007_the_necessity_of_public_dissent

Standard crosslinking disclaimers apply... 

"My wife has been sick for a couple of days, so I've been taking an 'operational pause' and hold down things on the home front. So, I was unable to attend Friday Prayer today. However, recent developments have impressed upon me the need to openly discuss the necessity of public dissent within Muslim communities."

I've posted the latest installment of my almost-year-long blogging project to document my experiences at Friday Prayer / Namaz-e Jumah / Salat ul-Jum'ah in my city. Take a look at http://progressiveislam.org/friday_prayer_review_february_16_2007

Don't worry; we're all one big family with similar goals in mind, so clicking on the link won't decrease you in Eterazianess at all, I promise. The Maestro himself approves...

Review: "Dispatches: Undercover Mosque", Channel 4 (UK)

Ali linked to an article which discussed a piece of investigative journalism into extremism in some of Britain's major mosques. After a week of constantly receiving emails asking me to write and complain to Channel 4 about this 'Islamophobic' documentary, it finally aired last night.

But I have to say the documentary was all a little bit tired; I have seen it all before. I don't see what some Muslims are getting upset about (but am not surprised they are). And I don't think the documentary met the hype of the previews, for it never actually proved anything of substance other than something which was already known; that Saudi Arabia funds a lot of missionary activities in Britain and some Muslims might be bigots and religious supremacists.

The investigation focused on the Jamiat Ahle-Hadith, one of Indo-Pakistani Islam's significant sectarian movements, who operate a mosque in an area of Birmingham (although someone familar with the area suggested that the mosque has little influence outside of its own sectarian circles) and a mosque in my area, Al-Tawhid. We also heard from popular Salafi preachers Khalid Yasin and Sheikh Feiz, as well as some fans of Maududi who work in the UK Islamic Mission. (Although, it must be noted that despite Sunni Traditionalists eager to clump Ahle-Hadith with the Salafis, the two don't see eye to eye on everything. For example, amongst hardcore Salafis, Jamiat Ahle-Hadith are deviants and I've seen and heard some Super Salafis denounce Shuaib Hasan, the most prominent  Ahle-Hadith imam in the UK.)

There was the usual denounciation of gays, Jews, non-Muslims, democracy, women's rights, pop culture, and gays and Jews (did I mention they denounced gays and Jews?). I am sure most of you are familiar with the monochromatic rhetoric. At one point my brother turned to me and said, "Typical Muslims. All they ever see are gays and Jews." Being showmen, many of these preachers played to the lowest common denominator and knew how to tap into cultural prejudices amongst their Muslim audience. 'Jews as pigs' got an airing, as did the 'democracy is kuffocracy' one-liner, which I hadn't heard in a few years. One preacher couldn't even bring himself to use the word 'homosexual'. We were shown clips of a few Maududi fans, and one imam got excited about the eventual conquest of the world by Muslims. Another wanted Muslims to create 'a state within a state' and eventually take over Britain. Much of the rhetoric was pretty crude and vulgar and undoubtedly hate-filled (e.g. "filthy kuffar!", "kuffar this" and "kuffar that"), but nothing I hadn't heard before. They even had one Murtaza Khan, who I remember giving a Friday sermon when I was a dewey-eyed university student, and the thing that struck me even then was how he was half-quoting verses, because I was sure the Deobandis who had taught me Islam hadn't made up verses from the Qur'an.

There was also a slightly bizarre moment when they showed one preacher declaring Islam to be superior to all other religions. This, to me, is like saying the sun appears to be a bit yellow and just a tad warm, considering just about everyone, religious or secular, usually affirms the superiority of their views as opposed to the views of their 'opponents'. Indeed, the end of history is not only something religious people believe in but many secular ideologies also promote (e.g. neoliberals and Marxists). Religious people are just usually more open about telling others of their convictions.

Review: Cultural Jihad: Making Islam Matter

I was going to write a detailed review of Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah's lecture at SOAS two Friday's ago, in front of an audience of largely young Muslim audience, on the topic of religion and culture. But a combination of no computer, no internet, increased workload at work and university, a visit to Aberdeen and general procrastination thwarted that attempt. However, the launch of the New Generation Network and subsequent discussions has brought a few things back into focus for me, and made me think about that evening's discussion.

Dr. Abd-Allah's lecture, organised by The Radical Middle Way, Q-News and The City Circle, rested on the arguments he presented in "Islam and the Cultural Imperative" (pdf link), a paper he gave for the Nawawi Foundation where is a chair and scholar-in-residence. I would recommend reading the paper if one is interested in the detailed arguments Dr. Abd-Allah brought forward. I believe a video of the event will be made available online soon. However, I am not going to look at the specifics of the proceedings that night -- it is easy to deconstruct everything that was said after the event -- but I will concern myself with broader issues raised. For it is not so much was said that evening that concerns me, but what I observed.

The first thing that always strikes me about these sorts of events is not always who attends them, but who doesn't attend. What worries me is that the people who turn up, which are regularly held by both The Radical Middle Way (a government-sponsored project with the aim of fighting extremist propoganda) and The City Circle, are not the Muslims that need the most help. I am uncertain as to whether merely buying glossy books on Islamic poetry and translations of al-Ghazali is enough to 'make culture'. This is not what Dr. Abd-Allah said, but it is what I feel these events end up becoming; the Muslim equivalent of wine and cheese evenings. This is the image that is reinforced in my mind; the mind of someone who has a stack of these glossy books on Islamic poetry. These events have the danger of becoming nothing more than feel good talking shops, where people of similar dispositions (this is not the same as people who agree with one another) talk to each other, validating their own concerns.