Muslim Britain: Communities under Pressure
edited by Tahir Abbas
Zed Books | March 2005 | ISBN 1842774492

The publication of this book is a timely and relevant one. Though it talks about and discusses events before the London bombings of 7 July 2005, it provides real insight into the complexities and personalities of the south Asian Muslim communities; particularly Pakistani and Bangladeshi.

The book is in four parts and its inter-disciplinary approach is what gives it the edge to other books in the genre of “British Islam.” Topics range from the historical and social background of Islam and its presence in the UK, the sociological concepts and phenomena of Islamophobia, identity politics and multiculturalism, and an explosive section on media representation of Islam. Specific issues include attitudes to jihad, Pakistanis in Northern Ireland, and the personal turmoil that Bangladeshi women went through as a result of post-9/11 reactions, both from within and outside the community.

The breadth of subject matter, variety of expertise and insightful analysis are the qualities that impressed me about this book. Particular credit should be given to the editor, Tahir Abbas for managing to squeeze quite a lot in, bringing together a varied collection of essays and managing to make sense of them so that the flow from one part to the next is natural and seamless. This book is no bed time story but the issues it analyses relate to the current nightmare British Muslims are living.

Contents:
Foreword - Professor Tariq Modood

Part 1: From Islam to British Muslims…
1. British South Asian Muslims: Before and After September 11 - Tahir Abbas
2. Muslims in the UK - Ceri Peach
3. Muslims in Britain: Issues, Policy and Practice - Muhammad Anwar

Part 2: Islamophobia, Identity Politics and State Multiculturalism
4. From Race to Religion: the New Face of Discrimination - Chris Allen
5.Negotiating British Citizenship and Muslim Identity - Ron Geaves
6. In the shadow of September 11: Multiculturalism and Identity Politics - Stephen Lyon
7. Lobbying and Marching: British Muslims and the State - Jonathan Birt

Part 3: Media Representation, Gender and Radical Islam
8. Reading between the Lines - Muslims and the Media - Tahira Sameera Ahmed
9. Educating Muslim girls: do mothers have faith in the state sector? - Audrey Osler and Zahida Hussain
10. Attitudes to Jihad, Martyrdom and Terrorism among British Muslims - Humayun Ansari
11.'(Re)turn to Religion' and Radical Islam - Parveen Akhtar

Part 4:Temporal and Spatial Ethnic and Religious Identities
12. All Quiet on the Eastern Front? Bangladeshi Reactions in Tower Hamlets - Halima Begum and John Eade
13.Tower Hamlets - Insulation in Isolation - Nilufar Ahmed
14. Flying the flag for England? Citizenship, religion and cultural identity among British Pakistani Muslims - Yasmin Hussain and Paul Bagguley
15. Pakistanis in Northern Ireland in the aftermath of September 11 - Gabriele Maranci

Afterword - John Rex

Tables Notes Bibliography Index

About the author: Since 2003, Tahir Abbas has been director of the Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Culture at Birmingham University. He has written and co-authored numerous articles on race equality, ethnicity, multiculturalism. He is currently writing a monograph on “British Islam: The Road to Radicalism” (Cambridge, 2006) and working on two research projects, both on British Muslims, funded by the Department of Health and the Heritage Lottery Fund. He is a regular commentator in the media, including Sky News, BBC News and BBC Asian Network.

Review of the Book by Rekha Khurana in Workers Power 302 - Jan/Feb 2006

Since the events of 9/11, Muslims all around the world have been thrown into the spotlight. Rekha Khurana reviews Muslim Britain - Communities under pressure - edited by Tahir Abbas, published by Zed books, 2005, and looks at the challenges facing British Muslims

The first few essays in Muslim Britain give the reader a broad picture of the state of South Asian Muslims in Britain today. The picture is one of systematic discrimination and oppression in every area of life.

Ceri Peach uses the 2001 census to show that Muslims are a not homogenous bloc, but come from different ethnic backgrounds, speak almost 100 different languages, and are divided by class.

There are 1.6 million Muslims in Britain today, compared with only 25,000 in 1951. Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Indians came to Britain to fill the labour shortages in the industrial cities of London, the Midlands and the former textile towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire. The Muslim population is still highly concentrated in these areas. Two thirds of Britain’s Muslims still come from a South Asian background, while the rest originate from North Africa, East Europe and South East Asia.

The Muslim population is young: one third of them are under 16, compared to one fifth of the population as a whole. However, 40 per cent of Muslim school leavers have no qualifications, showing a hidden bias in the education system.

Pakistanis and Bangladeshis represent one of the poorest and economically marginal populations in Britain. The percentage of Pakistani and Bangladeshi Britons registered as having “never worked or suffering from long term unemployment’ is five times higher than that for the population as a whole. Bangladeshi and Pakistani women have the lowest economic participation rates of any ethnic group.

There is now a growing number of Muslims in the service sector, as well as an increasing number, who are starting their own business. Muslims working in the manufacturing industry are mainly manual workers in the fast declining textile and metal industries.

In short, Muslims hold menial jobs, are employed in older industries, have lower incomes and, are vulnerable to unemployment.

In his essay Issues, Policy and Practice, Muhammad Anwar looks at the type and quality of housing Muslims live in. Although Bangladeshi and Pakistanis were both badly off, 70 per cent of Pakistanis own or are in the process of buying a house compared to only 38 per cent of Bangladeshis. However, even when they do own homes, the condition of these houses is often poor.

More Muslims live in terraced houses compared to whites. Houses are also far more likely to be overcrowded (43 per cent compared to 2 per cent of white households). Many lack of toilet facilities and central heating. The overwhelming majority of Muslims live in inner city, rundown areas, where housing problems are endemic.

Islamophobia and racism

In a matter of weeks after 9/11, the government’s terrorism act threatened to outlaw certain Muslim organisations, scrutinised the financial dealings of others, and increased powers to the security forces and the police. Muslims found themselves coming under attack and facing suspicion and hostility.

A few short months later, David Blunkett blamed the Bradford uprising on “self-styled” segregation by Muslims, complained about Muslims not speaking English in the home and of not marrying partners from this country. Blunkett turned reality on its head. Instead of seeing segregation as the result of economic deprivation and racist discrimination in education and housing, he claimed it was self-imposed and the cause of racism.

The language used by the media also reflected the changing attitudes to Muslims. Words such as “extremist”, “fundamentalist” and “radical” began to be used in apocalyptic headlines across all sections of the British press.

The British National Party, in particular, seized the opportunity to exploit this climate of fear by producing anti-Muslims propaganda to feed on peoples’ prejudices and insecurities. In one publication circulated in Oldham, they called for whites to boycott local mulsim owned businesses, but not those “owned by Chinese or Hindus... only Muslims as its their community we need to pressure”.

A BNP campaign leaflet entitled “Islam out of Britain” sought to explain “the threat Islam and Muslims pose to Britain and British society”. And in a leaflet entitled The Truth about I.S.L.A.M. it employed I.S.L.A.M. as an acronym for “intolerance, slaughter, looting, arson and molestation of women”. Selectively quoting the Qur’an, it painted the most despicable picture of Muslims, claiming that “no one tells the truth about Islam and the way that it threatens our democracy, traditional freedoms and identity”.

The essays offer many such important examples and references of how the BNP used the situation after 9/11 and the rise in state racism, but what the authors don’t discuss or offer are any tactics or solutions to deal with the rise in Islamophobia and racism. It’s important for antiracist groups, trade unionists and socialists to stand in solidarity with Muslim communities, as well as other groups facing racism and oppression to dispel the lies and myths that are spread by the media, politicians and groups such as the BNP.

Where communities are under physical attack, we fully support them forming defence squads made up of workers and youth in the area to protect themselves against police harassment and racist attacks. The trade union movement should offer such elementary measures their full support.

However to really defeat the racists we must combine the fight against racism with the struggle against desperate poverty, crumbling public services and unemployment.

Multiculturalism

The other major theme of the essays is the debate around multiculturalism and integration. There has been widespread questioning of whether Muslims can be, and are willing to be, integrated in British society and whether they are committed to its core values of freedom, democracy, sexual equality and secularism.

Since 9/11, and more recently after the 7th July bombings ,there has been an explosive attack on the policy of multiculturalism in the right-wing press. Many of the authors in the book discuss these attacks on multiculturalism and correctly criticise the policy of forced integration. But multiculturalism is not a strategy for eradicating racism. Why?

Multiculturalism stresses the need for inter-racial harmony, and declares its aim to be a society that tolerates a diversity of cultures. In this way, multiculturalists believe, racial prejudice can be eradicated through education. Therefore multiculturalism works on the assumption that racism is just a prejudice without any material foundation.

Racism is the ideology used to justify imperialist or advanced capitalist countries’ right to superexploit and dominate the nations of the global south: Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. Whether it is the crude genetic pseudoscience of the early twentieth century or the supposedly more sophisticated theories of cultural backwardness of the early twenty-first, this ideology is also used to divide the international working class.

Racism’s persistent appeal to workers of the dominant nation - despite its incoherent basis - is due to the fact that white workers gain marginal material privileges in housing, education, job opportunities, etc. from the racial oppression of Muslims and other ethnic minorities. Those, like the Socialist Workers Party, who deny this simply belittle the need for an ideological struggle within the white working class against racism.

The great service Tahir Abbas and the other contributors to Muslim Britain have provided is to prove this. The job of antiracists, trade unionists and socialists now is to use this data to fight for full equality for British Muslims. Muslims will of course be in the forefront of this struggle, but they can only win liberation by linking up their struggles with the working class and to come together to fight against capitalism, the system in which the roots of racism, war and exploitation lie.