E Rasool: Muslim Council of Britain annual meeting

16 June 2006

I want to start of by expressing my sincere thanks to the MCB for inviting
me to their tenth annual general meeting and to be able to share a few
experiences with you on this occasion. But more than thanking them for the
invitation, I want to thank them for the work that they do and also for what
they represent in British society today.

I think we have learnt a very important lesson in South African government,
whether it was a then Apartheid Government, or whether it is the current
African National Congress Government, which is that government cannot choose
who it wants to speak to. It speaks to those who are legitimate. It speaks to
those who represent the people. It speaks to those who represent the pulse of
the community whether they find it agreeable or not. Government must intensify
discussions with such an organisation to reach greater degrees of agreeability
so that society can be more coherent and cohesive.

This is what the MCB has come to represent in Britain over the last few
years. It is the point of coherence within the diversity of the Muslim
community. A diversity that is cultural. A diversity that is ethnic. A
diversity that is, linguistic and the MCB constitutes a point of coherence
within it.

We are a community of many schools of thought. But something needs to hold
us together despite the various Madha'hib. We sometimes have unnecessary but
intense fights between Deobandis and Barelvis and someone needs to hold up the
common ground between us. We sometimes have different political streams within
us and different shades of opinion but someone needs to remind us about what
holds us together. And sometimes we have different intellectual approaches to
life but again we need a common denominator that reminds us of an essential
identity that unites us despite the diversity.

To a large extent the MCB has played that role within British society, but
it has not only been a point of coherence but also a point of articulation,
that ensures that we are not only spoken about but we are also speaking,
expression our joys, our concerns and necessarily at critical moments of our
anger. Because if our diversity clashes occur by means of an anger that fosters
greater fragmentation, it becomes more dangerous to society than when it is
channelled through a legitimate voice that is able to help us move forward and
articulate our views in ways which are sensible to the rest of society.

The MCB has also been a point of focus. A point in which our identity can be
lobbied so that religious identity in your case can also become part of the
national census so that society may know how it is changing, not to emphasise
difference, but to understand what the make up is today called the British
Nation. More importantly it focuses the dialogue between Muslims and fellow
citizens of whatever other colour, nationality, and creed to find the points of
co-operation between all.

Pliny the Elder, a renowned roman leader once said "Out of Africa always
something new". So, what I come to bring you here today is a perspective formed
on the continent of Africa. I am not sure that it may be new but Africans have
memories that remember how things were before and how things could be again.
They remember what the values was that drove us before and how they can assist
us again because the world often forgets long standing values at times of
stress. So, I share with you experiences from Africa and South Africa and I can
only hope that what you find agreeable, you will take and what you find
disagreeable you will disagree with.

There is a fundamental difference between say British Muslims and South
African Muslims. In South Africa, the Muslim Community has evolved over three
hundred years. Our history has been one where we have been brought there as
political exiles, as slaves from South East Asia and Africa, as indentured
labourers, from the IndoPak subcontinent and our community has also been formed
with the indigenous population of South Africa.

Secondly, today being 16 June, Muslims together with the rest of South
Africa, commemorate the many martyrs that fell in the struggle against
apartheid. We were not theoretically fighting apartheid, we also spilt our
blood so that we also celebrate freedom in South Africa, and we also celebrate
freedom for Muslims because Islam has not always been a recognised legal
religion in South Africa. In fact, until just about over a hundred years ago,
to be a Muslim was a crime that invited even death. That is the difficulty from
which we come.

Those were desperate years for Muslims in South Africa that may echo in some
ways many of the emotions and the feelings that go through the Muslim world all
over the globe today: the physical and psychological occupation in the
heartland of Islam and many other places where the psychological oppression is
palpable. In the Western world, Islam phobia and the prejudicial profiling and
stereotyping that go with it, often make us secondary victims in that war on
terror. To add to all of this, our internal weakness and fragmentation has had
its own impact on the Muslim society. We lack internal coherence, and
therefore, a shared perspective and framework from which to respond in this
changing world.

In the face of this we either acquiesce or become extreme. What remains
elusive is often that middle ground that defines who we are as Muslims. We are
not Ummatan Wassatan – an Ummah that is balanced, an Ummah that finds the
Middle Path. We fluctuate between acquiescence and extremism. This is the
collective pain that we carry around with us. This makes the pain inflicted on
us by occupation and Islamaphobia unbearable.

It reminds us of that early period of Islam when Sayyidina Bilal was
tortured, when Sumayya was martyred, when the converts to Islam were
ostracised, when Muslims were boycotted for two years, when the prophet was
ridiculed and the collective pain in that Meccan Crucible caused the Muslims to
stand up and to proclaim to the heavens 'Mata Nasrullah?' 'When is the help of
Allah coming?' And Allah's promise has ever been true: Allah's reply to him
"Nasru Min Allah, Wa Fahun Karib" "Help from Allah will come and a speedy
victory." That is the promise of Allah at the time of the greatest oppression
of Muslims and Islam. And yet, it is not the victory in the ways that we
ordinarily imagine. It is not the military victory; it is not the vanquishing
of enemies. It is not the destruction of those who oppose us.

In fact, in the chapter in the Qur'an, ironically called Fat'h, The victory,
it starts with the words 'Inna Fatahna La Fathal Mubin' 'I have given you a
manifest victory.' And you read this Surah with the expectation that you will
read about a battle, about the vanquishing of enemies, about the destruction of
opponents and you are surprised when the Surah speaks about guidance onto the
straight way, when the Surah speaks about the powerful help that will come from
Allah.

But the powerful help is not the sword or the gun, the powerful help is the
Sakinah, is the tranquillity entering the heart of Muslims. It is the calm. It
is the rationality that goes into the hearts and the minds of Muslims. It is
the exhortation to be calm, accept the Sakinah the tranquillity. It is the
adding of 'faith to our faith' to use the words of the Qur'an. It is adding
faith individually to us, strengthening our own imaan (faith) but making Islam
the attractive proposition to attract many others to this worldview, to this
way of life that we call Islam.

Contrasted to the Sakinah that becomes the psychological property of the
Muslims is the Hamiyyah, the emotionalism, the fanaticism of those who oppose
Muslims. The Qur'an in fact describes it as 'Hamiyyatan Jahiliyyah' the
fanaticism that comes from the Age of Ignorance. How is it that we have
inverted in the world today the Sakinah and the Hamiyyah? How is it that those
who occupy the heartlands operate with a Sakinah, a calculation, a methodical
nature of doing their work and all we have to reply with is Hamiyyah,
emotionalism, extremism, fanaticism? How do we become the embodiment of that
Sakinah, of that tranquillity, of that calm, of that rationality and ensure
that hamiyah fanaticism is always kept away from us?

In readi Surah Fat'h, we understand the treaty of Hudaybiyya was there to
create the conditions for Islam to be understood, to be spread and to be
accepted in the world. This clearly shows how the Qur'an guides us, even today.
We cannot enter a discourse that began to speak about the revisionism of the
Qur'an, about the need to make the Qur'an relevant almost as if the Qur'an is
an anachronism, in the world today.

In South Africa, we found exactly the opposite. We found the Qur'an filled
with answers and that we needed to go back to it. The conditions for modern
living were laid over fourteen hundred years ago. Almost anticipating the
modern age Surah Mumtahina speaks about how we must order our relations with
non-Muslims, with those who are not Muslim.

Allah does not forbid us from having good relations or relations with
non-Muslims if they do not fight us for our deen and drive us from our homes.
In fact, if they do not fight us for our deen and do not drive us from our
homes, Allah wants us to embrace them with kindness and righteousness and to
deal with them with justice. That is a very important 'deal' almost that the
Qur'an puts forward. Do not fight us for our deen, for our faith, do not drive
us from our homes, and in return what you get is kindness and justice in our
dealings with you.

It is an advance on the early Meccan revelation of 'Lakum deenukum waliya
deeni' (to you your religion, to me mine) which establishes the need for
tolerance in the face of hostility. This speaks of an embrace of the other
under certain conditions of hostility are found. In South Africa we asked: what
is the impact of a revelation like that on how we build this post Apartheid
South Africa?

We understood that that injunction in Surah Mumtalina laid the basis for the
establishment of what we particularly desired as a Muslim monirity - a Dar Al
Aman, a place of security, a Dar us Salaam, a place of peace, and more
importantly, a Dar us Shahadah, a place where we can profess our religion
privately and publicly. And that became the core value of Muslims as we
established a post-apartheid government.

How do you build the conditions for security for Muslims, peace for Muslims
and profession of faith for Muslims, not exclusively, we understood that what
we demand for ourselves, we must ensure for others as well. Because the moment
you enter the terrain of exclusive rights even to those that you may despise
the most in the world, once you become exclusive you create the conditions for
discrimination.

What does it mean then to establish this Dar ul Aman, Salaam and Shahadah?
It is freedom from social persecution, as encaptured by the notion of driving
from your homes, but it is the freedom also to profess your faith privately and
publicly. What does this profession of faith then mean? Unlike the Dar ul
Islam, the abode of Islam where many of the things that Muslims may believe in
can find expression in the way in which the state or the government rules and
operates. Islam's prohibition of alcohol consumption becomes a prohibition
patrolled in a Dar ul Islam.

Dar us Shahadah may be different in that respect because we cannot expect
the State to forbid what we forbid as an Ummah, as a community. By the same
token, we cannot expect the state in a Dar ul Aman wa Salaam to enforce what we
believe in over society. There is a shift of responsibility from the state to
the community to the family to the individual.

I am suggesting that the pursuit of security, peace and profession should be
the theoretical backdrop to conceptualise life particularly as minorities, but
also as Muslims in majority situations. If we understand that maybe our
objective as a Muslim ummah in the world today is to increase the space for
Aman, Salaam and Shahadah and we disabuse ourselves for the immediate future of
the objective to increase the space of Dar ul Islam, then we already begin to
collapse a very important misconception of the world today and an eternal
restlessness within us, because some of us grew up believing that the
establishment of the Islamic state is the be all and end of all of our
existence and that we should remain restless until we have achieved it.

It may be more useful for us to understand that it is eminently acceptable
for us to increase the space for Aman, Salaam Shahadah and around these
construct what the Islamic project in the world ought to be today. That begins
to create a mindset that is achievable, not idealistic, creative not imitative,
unifying not polarising and liberating, not anxious.

In South Africa today, many would admit that what Muslims have as freedom is
far more than what Muslim countries can provide. If we are willing to open
ourselves to a paradigm of greater space for security, peace and profession,
then an entirely new discourse of victim hood, anger, militarism, polarisation,
hostility, extremism and compliance.

Within such a society, the first key issue that we must problematise is the
discourse of multiculturalism. The notion of multiculturalism is a contested
notion, not only in Britain but all over. Some see it as a guise within which
to beguile minorities into a national consensus. Others see it as a surrender
of an identity. We need to approach this multiculturalism through its informing
concepts.

The first informing concept is unity and diversity. There is no disagreement
on unity. We all agree for unity to manifest itself on multiple levels. There
is no disagreement with diversity. We all agree on the need for diverse groups,
for different groups to retain difference and identity.

Often the challenge in a society such as South Africa then, and Britain now,
is the juxtaposition of the two. How much unity and how much diversity? What is
the balance between the two? Too much diversity or diversity taken to the
extreme creates the conditions for isolation, allowing yourself to be
ghettoised, in a society of atomised communities. You see the Bangladeshis
there, you see the Pakistanis there, you see the Jamaicans there, you see the
Zulus there, the Xhosas there all in splendid isolation.

On the other hand, too much unity or unity taken to the extreme, leads to
assimilation. It is a melting pot of all differences and cooked until all
differences disappear. Both extremes are undesirable. We need to find a tipping
point between unity and diversity so that we do not have a melting pot that
assimilates and a diversity that isolates and atomises.

Each society must grapple with where their tipping point is, where is that
point of balance between unity and diversity? You need enough unity for a
national identity and for a shared sense of national values that unites us with
the rest of British society. What do we agree on in terms of the informing
values of being British? What do we agree on in terms of being part of a
British Nation? So that we can with justification say "We are British" like we
say with pride "We are South African" but at the same time, we need to have
sufficient diversity to be able to say we are British Muslims. We can even go
further to say: "We are British Muslims of Pakistani origin." We can even go
further and say "We are British Muslims of Pakistani origin who supports
Liverpool" if there are still such supporters around.

That brings us to the second informing concept in the discourse of
Multiculturalism. It is the ability to carry multiple identities without one
identity contradicting the other. I think part of our collective make up as
Muslims is to believe that we are Muslims first and last sometimes to the
exclusion of all other identities. That may be a fine ideological concept when
you are in battle with the world when the world is divided between Dar ul Islam
and Dar ul Harb, the abode of hostility. The fact of the matter is,
globalisation, the complexity of life, the need to get on with other people,
the need to build human solidarity, may mean that you can even assert your
Muslim identify as the primary identity but accept your South African identity
as a secondary identity.

There is a very important question that we asked ourselves in 1994. Are we
South African Muslims or are we Muslims in South Africa. There is a fundamental
difference between the two. If we are Muslims in South Africa, we are guests;
we are sojourners, travellers passing through. We earn our living there, but
our allegiance is somewhere else. We live off the state but we will die for
another country or another cause. That was our test. We decided very firmly
that we are South African Muslims and the debate was 'Muslim' is an adjective
or a noun and whether 'South African' is an adjective or a noun. We decided,
given the fundamental role that faith plays in our life, that 'Muslim' would be
the noun and 'South African' would be the adjective. It will describe the noun,
without detracting from loyalty or allegiance to our country.

I am throwing out these debates in almost the way in which we argued it out
because what I am trying to do is to take you through all the many years of
discussion, arguments, debates that we had in order to arrive at the concept
that I think we enjoy in South Africa today because if shows a major reflection
on the issue of identity and we have decided to avoid the extremes, on the one
hand of isolation, on the other hand of assimilation and thank God our country
and our government did not seek for us to assimilate and did not want us to
isolate.

The third informing concept to multiculturalism is the notion of
integration. If one understands and defines isolation as atomised communities,
ghettoised communities either by their own hand or through the action of
government, then this premise is not desirable. On the other hand assimilation
where the parts submit with the whole and only find definition in the whole is
equally undesirable. You subject your religious, ethnic, linguistic identity
for the cause of South Africaness, or Britishness or Frenchness or Turkishness.
Assimilation is clearly not going to be going to be useful in the world
today.

You must reject assimilation. The key word in integration is integrity. The
test for integration is whether the integrity of the nation or the whole
respected, and is the integrity of the part of the whole is respected. Do you
have integrity as a Muslim and does the nation of Britain have integrity as a
Nation? If you can see the integrity of the whole and the integrity of the part
of the whole then you begin to understand where we are going to with regard to
integration. We should not be fooled when integration becomes interchangeable
with assimilation, because assimilation wants the integrity of the whole at the
expense of the integrity of the part of the whole, while isolation emerges from
one emphasis on the integrity of the part of the whole.

Integration is therefore desirable because it respects both the whole
(Britishness) and the part (Inclusiveness) and bring the two into coexistence
and hopefully harmony and cohesion. Britishness cannot be what it was then.

Those are some of the key challenges that Muslims must face in deciding on
their participation in a multicultural society. Part of the test that British
society may have to face is what is Britishness today? What does it mean to be
a Briton? What constitutes Britain today? Is it as it was under empire? Is it
as it was under colonialism? Is it as it was fifty years ago?

Fortunately in South Africa we had the opportunity to overthrow the old
system and bring in a new system. We were explicitly going to renew ourselves
and reinvent ourselves so we could ask the question: What does it mean to be a
South African? And we said, no, to be a South African means, to accommodate
eleven languages and because there are almost a million Muslims who do not
understand Arabic but they read it every day in their Madrasahs, it is central
to their religion and they want to learn it as a language in the school. The
government recognise it so that it can be taught in the schools.

Using the same logic, our Bill of Rights recognises all the religions are
equal, irrespective of the number o adherents but based on the equal value of
God. The same applies to South Africa's relationship with traditional leaders,
ethnic groups etc. This opens up enormous new paradigms, new ways of thinking
through this issue of what it means to be South African. Now, if you walk in
any street in Britain and you see the variety of people, clearly, Britishness
is no longer only those who speak English, only those who are Anglican, only
those who are Anglo-Saxons, only those with light skins. The definition of
Britishness may have shifted.

Therefore you cannot approach the issue of multiculturalism from the point
of view that inclusion will be good for the security of the state. Inclusion
will be good to reflect the full nationhood of Britain, signifying these
transitions in British society. The problem is that Britain does not have a
1994 like South Africa had: A moment of rupture, a moment of renewal to fix the
plane while you are flying it. We could bring the plane down, fix it, renew it,
upgrade it, change its engine, rearrange its passengers, decide on the best
pilots that we wanted and then get it off again. You have got to do all of that
as the British society while the plane is flying and that could be rocky. It
could endanger the plane at times. But if your collective well being depends on
how well you fix the plane while its flying then maybe it is in the collective
interest: not to rock the plane but to fix it decisively with sensitivity. It
puts the onus not only on British society but also on this collective Muslim
community that the MCB represents?

At times we have to be honest and examine on whose behalf we make demands
and requests and what hats we re wearing when we do so. We may confuse the
rights of Muslims with the rights of certain sub-groups in Islam. Whose
interpretation about dress are we trying to inscribe in society. Is it the
minimum that the Qur'an wants or is the maximum that school of thought amongst
us want? Who wants the har covered and who wants the face covered? Should we
have the minimum Islamic norm accepted in Britain that Wahhabism may want in
Makkah?

Sometimes we may be advocating on behalf of an ethnic group, but under the
banner of Islam and we must have a clear distinction about when we are speaking
ethnically and when we are speaking as Muslims. We need to find, very
importantly, a working unity amongst us that understands what the minimum and
maximum insertions that we could be putting forward for living together a multi
cultural society.

In negotiating inclusion as a minority, we know it is often good to start
with a maximum demand, but for our own good we are dealing with the need to
create a caring minimum standard that all of us could recognise as legitimate
anywhere in the world of Islam. It is unfortunate in this debate about
multiculturalism came to the world's attention more by virtue of the world's
concern with security, the 'War on Terror.' The Niyah, the intention, has not
been pure. It has not been the result of a concern for human solidarity, or
embracing the other, but a need to justify a war and to repel terror.

So it is imperative that we get the point of departure sorted out. The point
of departure with such a sensitive debate cannot be security, because it is
overlaid by stereotyping, profiling and stop and search operations in the
interests of security, stop and search in the interests of security. We cannot
have these as the starting point of this debate. But, it has become the reason
for this debate being opened.

The MCB, together with all Muslims and all those who seek human solidarity,
may need to display the greatest hikmah, the greatest wisdom, in terms of
rerouting this debate away from its original intention. How do we show
sufficient generosity and gain sufficient intellectual adeptness to get this
debate onto another level? We can respond to the debate by renouncing it or we
can grab the debate and reroute it. That is the strategic challenge of our
leadership.

How do we give leadership in this debate about multiculturalism and human
solidarity and give it the impetus and content it requires. How do we put the
debate on multiculturalism, inclusivity and human solidarity at the service of
increasing the space for peace, security and the profession of faith for all
citizens of the world? We must open this debate amongst many divers groups in
our society. If the Hindus feel marginalised, they must be allies on the debate
on multiculturalism. If the Jews are a marginalised community, not withstanding
disagreements with them on many other things, how do we mobilise them into this
debate? They may be listened to more easily than what we may sometimes are. If
Jamaicans or Africans who are here as part of an African Diaspora are
marginalised and do not fit into the notion of Britishness, how do we redefine
this debate by building solidarities and unities and discourses with them in
order to get them into this debate?

This is the moment to wear the mantle of leadership in this debate not
victim hood. And you have been tested for ten years. Part of the mindset of
Hamiyyah, of emotionalism, is to make the victim hood the most impressive of
your adornments in order to gain sympathy from the world. We do not need
sympathy, we need support for a new world paradigm – a world view of
compassion, that will make the world a more peaceful, tolerant and accepting
place for all the citizens of the world.

Leadership must be framed in ways which are compassionate, in ways which are
inclusive. Part of our problem is that we have made compassion, peace,
compromise into attributes of weakness, despite the fact that the very name of
Islam derives from peace, the very mission of the prophet is to be a 'mercy
unto all of humanity's (a balanced community). How have we allowed our essence
to be subverted and put at the service of those who know only anger, victim
hood, who only know how to fight extremism with extremism? How have we, the
mainstream allowed ourselves to be abdicating leadership?

The Ummah, in minority or as majority requires this leadership urgently. Let
us rise to the challenge.

Issued by: Office of the Premier, Western Cape Provincial Government
16 June 2007