Becoming a British Muslim

By Zahrah Awaleh*

December 29, 2005 

Central Mosque, London

I find myself having to justify who I am now on a regular basis. I used to think it was quaint, but now it’s just increasingly annoying. I am a Black British-born Muslim woman living in London. People have told me that I resemble someone Sudanese, Sri Lankan, Indian, Eritrean, and even Egyptian. I’m actually Somali, but Somali ethnicity, history, culture, and language contain threads of shared experience with the above peoples. This would add to the doubt surrounding the whole notion of exclusive “ethnicity” or “culture” in the field of social science, but that’s another story.

My father arrived in the United Kingdom as a young man in the 1950s and quickly joined the booming steel industry of the then world-renowned British Steel Corporation. He married and eventually brought his young wife over with their two children from Northern Somalia in 1972 to settle in the steel town of Scunthorpe, South Humberside. I am the fourth child and the second to have been born here, and though the Somali community was tiny within Scunthorpe, I remember how close the families were to one another and the strong friendships their children developed with one another. I also made good friends outside of the Somali community with children from diverse backgrounds, which included English, Bengali, Pakistani, and Jamaican. I left Scunthorpe when I was 11 years old and moved to Sheffield for four years, then to London in 1990 where I’ve lived ever since. I’ve always lived amongst the Somali community wherever I resided in the United Kingdom, while enjoying close and lasting friendships with people outside of it, and this is part of the blessing of living in probably the most multicultural society on the planet.

The two times I lived outside the United Kingdom, as a language student in Egypt and as a long lost daughter in Somaliland, I found myself struggling to adapt to both cultures, even though they are situated in countries that are predominately Muslim. While I was in Somaliland I had to think really deeply about my identity all the time because it was under so much scrutiny by almost everyone I met. They had not met many British-born Somali women that carried their dual heritage with pride, and who, by their description, practiced Islam with more conviction than they appeared to. Once I got back to the United Kingdom in 1998, I was thrilled to be back in my indigenous homeland, yet I still felt somewhat like a stranger. I believe now that this was largely due to my understanding of Islam, which was still heavily influenced by the extreme branch of the Salafi movement of my college and university days in the 1990s. Leaders of that movement constantly reminded us followers that the best of times for Muslims had been and gone with the Prophet (peace be upon him) and his Companions (may Allah be pleased with them all), and that all we could hope to achieve now was to remain “strangers” in this world (dunya) existing on the periphery and detached from the filth of mainstream modern society.

Since 9/11, Muslims in the West have experienced intense criticism like never before, and it made me reassess my Muslim identity and the Muslim community in Britain. Consequently, I have realized that Muslims individually and collectively are partly to blame for their marginalization in British society because in a lot of ways that’s where they think they belong. This is mainly due to their having an inferiority complex as immigrants and the other extreme of professing a superior tradition of morality within Islam, thus appearing to be extremely arrogant in the eyes of non-Muslims.

As I said previously, I was heavily influenced by the huge Islamic revivalist movement in the United Kingdom, and especially London, while I was an undergraduate at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, in the early to mid-1990s. I was a prominent member of the Islamic Society (ISOC) and we attempted to establish a small Muslim community at SOAS with quite good results. However, the bubble burst once everyone graduated because we had to enter the real world, gain employment, and work with non-Muslims. Something I suspect most of my peers in the ISOC were not used to at all. Our aims in the ISOC had been quite narrow; most important was the relearning of Islam via classical religious texts whose interpretation was strongly Hanbali or Salafi. The crucial matter that we didn’t learn, however, was the modern comparative interpretation of those classical religious texts that allowed differences of opinion and diversity within Islam and adaptation according to time and place. This would definitely have made us more at ease with living Islam in Britain, while being confident Muslims and good and actively participating citizens. There were countless missed opportunities at university for many Muslims to participate in mainstream groups that concerned themselves with mainstream issues, such as student debt, human rights, the environment, and poverty. That way non-Muslims would have seen that Muslims generally could care for issues beyond their own “minority issues” and stand up for causes that had a greater impact on the wider society.

Post-9/11, Muslim groups and individuals have been working very hard to explain to British society that Islam is not a “religion of terrorism.” Soon after the terrible event in New York I felt the pressure from British society, especially the media, to assimilate or perish from time to time. This has made me realize that my origin is essentially British through and through. When I am asked where I come from now, instead of saying Somalia, I say Britain, not because I’m ashamed of my ethnic origin or embarrassed in case someone thinks I am a refugee. I am British and a British Muslim first because this is and always has been my home. English is my first language, though it isn’t my mother’s. I was educated here and this is where I feel I belong. I feel very passionately about establishing strong Muslim communities in Britain, and presently I work closely with a Somali refugee community group helping members to integrate themselves and their families into British society. Similarly, I am very enthusiastic about getting involved in mainstream issues that may or may not directly benefit the Muslim community, but will definitely benefit the wider society: the anti-war movement and the green movement for example.

The British Labour government claims to be in tune with the needs of the British Muslim community. On the one hand it rushed the introduction of the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005, which gives the Home Secretary the power to issue “control orders” to restrict the liberty of individuals without trial or appeal who then must stay under house arrest indefinitely. This is in contradiction to the European Human Rights Act the Labour government proudly introduced in 1998; thus Labour had to withdraw certain clauses to pass the act. Then on the other hand, just last month on June 9, Labour introduced the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill 2005 into parliament. The bill is an extension of the original 1986 Public Order Act that prohibits incitement to racial hatred and which protected Sikhs and Jews (because the law said they were racial groups) but not Muslims (because they do not make up one racial group).

It is extremely ironic and disturbing that the Labour government has made every British Muslim a potential “terrorist” by the existence of the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005, then tried to “alleviate” its negative impact on Muslims by speedily introducing the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill 2005. This merely helps to confuse the British public, who don’t know whether they should fear Muslims (more than they used to) or not. The bill simply may not have been necessary had the act not existed and highlights yet again the hypocrisy and stealth tactics that Blair has become notorious for. Blair is determined to drag Britain kicking and screaming behind Bush’s “War on Terror.” Thankfully, Muslims in Britain have started to wake up and get politically active by joining the anti-war movement, protesting against the many innocent victims of the anti-terror legislation, and switching from being staunch Labour supporters to voting for the Liberal Democrats and independent parties, such as Respect in the May 2005 general elections.

Muslims have always contributed immensely to European history; thus Professor Tariq Ramadan suggests that the “duty of Muslims is to take Islam from the periphery of European culture to its centre” (10). This would be achieved by Muslims becoming active citizens and adapting Islam to modern living while respecting its original intent. Muslims don’t want to be “tolerated” by the British public because tolerance implies the majority has to suffer the presence of the “minority” if it so wishes. Muslims want to be accepted as equal citizens in Britain with equal opportunities and rights, as a community whose worldview and various cultures can contribute enormously to the diverse mosaic of traditions that constitute modern British culture and society.

I have just come into work this morning and learned about several blasts going off in central London. There are injuries, but I still don’t know if there have been any deaths. Obviously, I’m repulsed by such cowardly tactics that have brought a cloud of gloom over London and the rest of the United Kingdom, which had such an air of hope and excitement from the peaceful protests over the G8 Summit and from winning the Olympics for London in 2012 just yesterday. The perpetrators of today’s tragedy should be brought to justice; however I’m afraid that the anti-terror laws here will just impede that and destroy the lives of innocent people in the process.

• “An Interview with Tariq Ramadan.” Emel Magazine May–June 2005.

* Zahrah Awalah holds a BA in Arabic language and an MA in Islamic studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. She resides in London with her husband and two children. You can contact her at z_awaleh@yahoo.com.