The Enemy Within by Sayeeda Warsi

Author:Sayeeda Warsi
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241276044
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2017-03-02T05:00:00+00:00

I urge you, my co-religionists, to celebrate this diversity, to embrace the British cultural space in which Islam had set down roots. I urge you to become active citizens, engaged in politics, playing your part in presenting solutions to the challenges of our times, from the economy to climate change, education, welfare and foreign policy. I urge you to be strong, articulate citizens who champion democracy and reject violence as the way to dissent, not compliant and malleable, as healthy democracy needs dissenting citizens, a community that agrees with policy-makers because it believes in the policy and not simply to gain favours, one that disagrees with policy-makers on points of principle and not simply to feign grievance. All things government are not good, nor are all things government bad, a statement, as polls show, British Muslims agree with. Government is not the enemy. It’s our government, which we played our part in electing. And when it acts in ways we find unacceptable we must play our part in democracy in changing it. That is the British way and the Islamic way.

When we disagree we must learn to disagree well, both within our communities, with fellow Brits and with government. On our journey in Muslim Britain we must learn to take responsibility for our ‘wrong turns’ of the past and try not to make them in the future. The over-reactions to The Satanic Verses was a wrong turn; the MCB’s historic position not to attend HMD was a wrong turn; the holding-back of women in our communities was a wrong turn; the creation of ‘the Muslim industry’ in response to Prevent funding was a wrong turn; and being caught unprepared as the Blair government consulted after 7/7 and then never implemented 90 per cent of the agreed proposals was a wrong turn. We as a community have to take responsibility for our mistakes too just as government needs to take responsibility for its. Cohesion is a two-way dance, we must accommodate and compromise as we expect others to do.

There are, as I see it, three roads at this juncture, three ways forward. Which one we take will partly determine how future generations tell the tale of Muslim Britain and the negative or positive role played by today’s British Muslims.

Firstly, more of the same. But the answers of the Islam we grew up with and continue to be taught in many a mosque simply do not provide the solutions to the questions and challenges we face today. This will mean we are consistently out of step and a ‘problem’ community.

Secondly, constant acceptance of all things British as espoused by the state, with British Islam being done to us. This Anglican Islam could simply become a non-practised, non-observant, part-time extension of a historic identity which future generations will read about in history books.

Or, thirdly, an honest and robust engagement with scripture, teachings, environment and history to find an accommodation – or, as scholars like to call it, ijtehad. This is in line with

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.