Author: Sunanda K. Datta-Ray
Publication: The Telegraph
Date: May 20, 2006
URL: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1060520/asp/opinion/story_6244244.asp
The reinvention of Oxford as the centre of
Islamic piety
Tony Brett's defeat in Oxford's council election
was one of many small details that passed unnoticed in the excitement over
the gains that the white supremacist British Nationalist Party made in a London
suburb. But it could mark a turning point in the reinvention of the town of
dreaming spires as a centre of Islamic piety.
The contrast between victor and vanquished
is revealing of Cool Britannia's transformation. Tony - Antony Edwin St John
Brett - a Liberal Democratic councillor for the last six years, is a young
graduate of Corpus Christi College, founded in 1517 "to the honour of
the most precious Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, of His most spotless Mother
and of the Saints Patrons of the Cathedral Churches of Winchester, Durham,
Bath and Wells and Exeter". He is a churchwarden, sings in the choir,
and is also a wizard with computers, which is how I first met him.
Mohammed Niaz Abbasi, the Labour candidate
who unseated him, is a virtually unlettered bearded middle-aged taxi-driver
from Pakistan whose rudimentary English is heavily accented. But he is a mosque
leader and has the entrée into the homes of Muslims who comprise 20
per cent of voters in their Cowley Marsh ward. The women don't speak English
at all. Three other ethnic Pakistanis (another taxi-driver and a postman among
them) were also elected to the city council.
There were no Pakistanis in the Seventies
when Ann Spokes Symonds was Lord Mayor of Oxford. Her witty and erudite husband,
Richard Symonds, historian of Oxford and the Empire, enjoys startling bemused
Pakistani taxi-drivers with delightful tales of his stint with refugees in
Pakistan at the time of partition and experiences with the United Nations
observers in Kashmir.
These simple folk are part of the national
community of well over a million Muslims which overlaps with the wider Asian
population. Leaving aside a handful of achievers like Sir Iqbal Sacramie,
secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, or Lord Nazir Ahmed, they
are the poor relations of the Britasian world with its billionaire tycoons,
globally acclaimed authors and distinguished personalities in all walks of
life. Asian-run businesses in London alone have an annual turnover of £60
billion.
Muslims have been the cause of concern ever
since the July 7 explosions. Why do Hindus prosper while Muslims languish,
people ask. Why are there no Hindu rebels? Concern and comparison help to
explain the British government's new solicitousness towards Pakistan and determination
not to be seen as supporting India over Kashmir. Two of the four young Muslim
suicide-bombers spent time in Pakistan: whether or not they established contact
there with al Qaida operatives, Pakistan's potential to influence British
Muslims creates nervousness. "The process of indoctrinating these men
appears principally to have been through personal contact and group bonding"
according to the parliamentary intelligence and security committee report,
which stresses Pakistan's vital role in the process. It's a country that Tony
Blair dare not offend.
One of his ministerial colleagues reiterated
this week that Muslims must be given special instruction in "core British
values" like democracy, freedom of speech, fairness and responsibility.
"Taking the Muslim population as a whole, they face some of the most
acute conditions of multiple deprivation," says an official study. It
found that 6 per cent of Muslims (nearly 100,000 people) approved of the bombings
that killed 52 innocent people.
Some of that rage must also simmer below the
surface in a town where the beard and burqa are becoming as relevant as cap
and gown. There are many signs of this awakening consciousness. Kitty Datta,
Amlan Datta's scholarly wife, was outraged to pick up a pamphlet called "How
to go to Heaven" (through conversion to Islam) in the Cornmarket. Conversion
is an important part of the agenda. One of the July 7 bombers, 19-year-old
Germaine Lindsay, was a black Jamaican convert. Surfing the Net, I came upon
Oxfordislam which calls itself "a site for non-Muslims in Oxford and
around to learn about Islam and hopefully convert to their beliefs and way
of life for man". If there isn't a queue yet to seek salvation, it is
not for want of trying.
Muslim organizations zealously promote causes
that strike a sympathetic chord in others. Calcutta radicals may pretend to
support Palestinians but it was in Oxford that 500 candles were lit last Sunday
to recall the 58th anniversary of the Nakba - catastrophe - which is how Arabs
describe the Zionist triumph of 1948. The Out of Beirut exhibition in the
Museum of Modern Art recreates that city's trauma. The public library's newspaper
section stocks the Daily Jang and Al Hayat. Its lending shelves display more
books in Urdu than any other Asian language. Apart from the usual "Indian"
restaurants, any number of shops and eating places cater to tastes from Morocco
and Turkey. Telling symbol of the new assertiveness, the young daughter of
Farhan Ahmad Nizami, Indian-born director of the Oxford Centre for Islamic
Studies, has taken to wearing the hijab that her mother doesn't.
Still swathed in scaffolding and builders'
fencing, the centre's new building by Magdalen's playing fields is the most
magnificent manifestation of this additional dimension to Oxford's mellow
personality. Its dome and minaret (picture) fully live up to the grandeur
of the model I saw some years ago in Nizami's old centre in George Street,
which is a focus of Islamic intellectual life. Tariq Ramadhan, author of Western
Muslims and the Future of Islam, was a recent speaker. Impressed by Nizami's
work, Prince Charles announced that the centre has "the potential to
be an important and exciting vehicle for promoting and improving understanding
of the Islamic world".
It is not alone in that endeavour. The new
redbrick Victorian Saracenic Central Oxford Mosque and Islamic Centre commands
Manzil Way only a few minutes walk away. Nearby are the Ahmadiya Muslim Association's
premises, the Madina Mosque and Muslim Welfare House and the Bangladesh Islamic
Education Centre and Mosque. They are a mixed bag. If one of the imams strikes
an austere note with his beard, cap and long black robe, another, the young
Imam Mohammed Ata Ullah, is known to have fled Pakistan, leaving behind his
wife and children, after fanatics killed his reformist father.
The university's active interest in Islam
probably began with Albert Hourani, the ethnic Lebanese Manchester-born academic,
who pioneered Middle East studies at St Anthony's. Wafic Said - the Syrian
magnate whose name will forever be linked to Margaret Thatcher's $20 billion
Al-Yamanah arms deal with Saudi Arabia, reportedly the biggest ever - took
up the torch. His £40 million Said Business School (the benefactor provided
half the money and Sainsbury the other half), a high airy structure with an
abundance of glass, commands the landscape by Oxford railway station.
Even - and paradoxically - the Khalili Research
Centre for the Arts and Material Culture of the Middle East should be included
in that list. When I met the art collector, Nasser David Khalili, as Sir Tim
Lankester's guest at Corpus some years ago, and talked about the Iranian-origin
Khalilis in Calcutta and Madras, I assumed he was a Muslim. Now, I discover
he is a Jew. But as the Sultan of Brunei's representative, he was instrumental
in setting up the Brunei Gallery opposite the School of Oriental and African
Studies in London. Last year, he donated £2.35 million from the family
trust for Middle East studies in Oxford.
They are the august generals who inspire foot-soldiers
like Abbasi on Oxford City Council. How far they will advance is the moot
question. But, already, they have overcome one barrier. Gautam Malkani argues
in his new novel, Londonstani, that "Paki" can be a neutral or even
affectionate word - but never when used by goras. With four city-council seats,
Oxford Pakistanis know they are not mere "Pakis" any longer. They
could even be the future.
