Young British Muslims face an identity crisis. Somewhere between the Amir Kahn’s and the Abu Hamza’s lies the slim definition of moderate Islam. We investigate what it means to be a 20-something Muslim in modern Britain, and why many of them are stuck between Iraq and a hard place! By James Cox.
It’s difficult not to feel overwhelmed by the temperate hot-potato that is modern Islam, a faith attracting the kind of publicity that can define a generation.
Even our language has adapted to the climate: Terror, Guantanamo, Shari-ah, Jihad.
A tabloid goldmine of slogans keeping the middle-Brits awake at night, and with one eye on their neighbour.
From the controversial war in Iraq to the terrorist attacks and hate peddling preachers on our own doorstep, we all take a different look at Islam, and we have a new pin-up for ‘evil’.
But, from the ashes of the media hoopla, emerges a generation of people for whom the rules aren’t so clear. For British Muslims in their teens and early twenties, it’s difficult to know how to please everyone.
Here in the West: home of the disassociated youth, birthplace of the teenager, the dynamic of youth is very different from the moralistic ideals involved in a religious upbringing. For a teenager in Britain, the liberal expression of sexuality and the lure of alcohol seem to be as ingrained in our culture as the importance of abstinence in Islam.
Strangely, British boxing champ Amir Kahn, a twenty-something Muslim in the throes of a glittering career has had no problems winning over the public. Khan said he won his world title for Britain, the Pakistani community, and all Muslims. His public persona and his allegiance to his culture are inseparable, tethered together by his public allusions to it. Khan then was Britain's sole representative in boxing at the 2004 Athens Olympics, winning a silver medal at the age of 17 in the lightweight boxing category. He lost in the final to Mario Kindelan, the Cuban who, in 2005, he avenged the two losses by beating the 34 year old Kindelan in his last amateur fight.
Away from boxing he was involved in a TV programme for Channel 4, Amir Khan's Angry Young Men. The programme centred around troubled angry men and aimed to use the disciplines of boxing, coupled with faith and family values, to help re-focus their lives and steer them away from trouble in the future. He is a rare beacon of positivity in the muddied view of modern Islamic Britons, and even a spell of high profile driving offences, and defeat in the ring, have failed to dampen his popularity.
But even with his clean cut regime and success as a role model, Khan has received criticism from extreme Islamic quarters.
In 2008 Radical cleric Omar Bakri Mohammad was quoted in the Daily Mail saying: 'Amir Khan is not a good example for Muslims. He wears shorts with the Union Jack. That is a sin...He should not be wearing the flag because sovereignty is for God. His only allegiance should be to the Prophet Mohammed.'
But even this theological criticism was denounced by Inayat Bunglawala, the assistant secretary general to the Muslim Council of Britain, who pronounced Khan a proud role model.
Whilst Amir Kahn’s own self restraint may be aided (or even initiated) by the necessity for him to be in peak physical condition, does the average person in his demographic make choices on the back of their beliefs or upbringing?
Dee, a 24 year-old student born in Kuwait but raised in London is living proof of the identity crisis.
She is, all at once, a Muslim, a Briton, an Arab and a twenty-something – a colourful heritage made all the more troubling by the current climate.
“I feel incredibly pressured by these two opposing ideals,” says Dee, visibly troubled by her core dilemma. She is dressed in high street fashions, far from the robed extremists and scripture spouting images our media is saturated with.
“I have been raised in a Muslim family, but it is rooted in modern Britain. My parents have never threatened my education, or shielded me from other cultures. I was even educated at a Catholic school. Choices in life come from an individual. You learn things as you grow and interpret teachings in different ways. The choices should come from the individual not a misinterpreted scripture, or societies version of you. It’s a shame the way the media misrepresents modern Muslims. It makes my position even more difficult.”
Indeed, the cultural void imposed upon young Muslims seems married to the way in which we perceive them, and this seems to be the crux of the matter.
The majority of British Muslims come from Indian families, lending a specific weight to how we define what a “Muslim” is. This definition seems flawed when you consider the spectrum of cultures and degrees of belief within the faith.
There is considerable diversity, for example, between Sudanese and Kuwaiti practices.
The faith itself has become co-joined with a culture that exists only as a stereotype.
A faceless foreigner, an alien invader whose ways and customs do not appear to as unilaterally European as we would like.
Dee seems exasperated by this idea that we can define her as a Muslim.
As in any religion around the world some beliefs and practices are shared by all Muslims. Beyond these core elements however, the variations become immense.
“Some Muslims drink, some see pray, some don’t, some enter relationships with non-Muslims, some accept parts of the Qur’an and discard others. Just as some Christians accept homosexuality and the more extreme don’t. How can it not be viewed the same for Islam?
“It is essentially the same as saying you can’t be a Christian if you have had sex before marriage to suggest you can’t be a Muslim and drink.”
In fact it was Arab chemists who discovered alcohol in the middle ages (‘alcohol’ itself is an Arabic word). Islam DOES prohibit consumption, but the Qur’an does this gradually, even attributing, in some verses its beneficial effects. The majority of Muslim countries DO NOT outlaw the sale of alcohol and never have. Only in the more extreme countries such as Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Sudan do these restrictions apply.
“It’s a personal choice, that can only be made by someone who is well educated, and confident in their faith” Says Dee.
“It is not for us to judge anyone who decides to drink, or to abstain from drinking.
It’s more complicated than that. And the social pressures to enjoy yourself when you’re out seem linked to alcohol consumption. It’s confusing for anyone who’s been educated to not drink. You’re left feeling, Am I British? Am I Islamic, Am I Arabic...what am I? Perhaps I’m all of these things.”
Islam originated in 7th Century Arabia and after the prophet Muhammad’s death in 632AD, it split into two factions: Shi’ite – who believe the leadership should have passed to Ali Ibn Talib (Muhammad’s closest male relative) and the Sunni – who make up 90% of today’s Muslims and revere the caliphs chosen to succeed the him.
It is a common misconception that either group is more extreme than the other. After all, the fundamentalist leaders in Iran and Shi’ite but the Taliban in Afghanistan are Sunni.
By the 17th Century Islam had been and gone from Spain and Portugal, and was practised as far as India and Indonesia and as wide as Central Europe.
Today the rainbow of traditions and interpretations reflect the colourful past of the religion, a far cry from the image we have branded in our cultural consciousness.
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