Growing up in UK in the late 80s and witnessing the rise of western Muslim consciousness in television pictures of protest rallies against Sir Salman Rushdie, allowed one a glimpse of the complete cycle of the rise of Muslim identity politics in this country and perhaps the entirety of Northern Europe for that matter. This identity politics that sprouted out of the pulpit of the Mosque during Friday prayers all over cities like London, Birmingham, Bradford and Blackburn was initially concerned with the proliferation of un-Islamic cultural influences on the youth, issues such such as Bollywood cinema, British soap operas, secularism and the sight of the temptation of drinks, drugs and rock and roll. As the followers grew older, found the generally intolerant wider society to be less appreciative of their cultural identity, and the men on the pulpits continuing to chant the same old narrative of disdain for things western without really offering any new modes of expressing the diverse cultural identity of what it was like being a young Muslim man in the 90s, 00s and then the third decade since The Satanic Verses, the boys turned into men several times over. Some of these young adults were already suffering from the trappings of personal, familial and psychological frailties; some of the yet more sensitive, often times more susceptible to coercion, took to the scriptures without forming the required critical faculties in their understanding of faith. These critical faculties are of intrinsic importance when shaped by a true appreciation of the wider societal context of what it is like to be a man in this 21st century world, a world of constant economic turmoil, gender equality, a world divided along micro-cultural lines of ethnic consciousness and a world that is just a little more dominated by the rightwing think tanks.
This writer is not condoning violence against any community, even those I disagree with a little more. Similarly, I am not condoning the black and white Salafi world that many young men are identifying with. We are living through a transitional period in western Muslim history. Many profess to know from both sides of the argument an exact solution to the radicalisation of young men. I suspect that in small measures, many of the arguments may well have some merit at a purely academic level. Yet, there is no ultimate solution other than dialogue between communities. Contrary to the neoconservative assertion that had dominated Political Science since the fall of the Iron Curtain, there is no clash of civilisation here but more a clash of fundamentalisms. What writers such as Samuel P Huntington or Francis Fukiyama had spat out decades earlier had shaped the intellectual mindset of the political right to such an extent that its thirst for conflict pervades the cultural context of the mainstream media. Generations have grown up educated to this theme tune of suspicion. One one side is the ardent Salafi radical in Muslim vestures, on the other side is the right wing 'Clash of Civilisation' brigade with its need to impose the idea of crusade in all interaction. Caught up in the middle are individuals with little inclination to be involved in the significance or context of the conflict, both inflicting hatred through heinous hate crime, hate speech, or a fostering of anti-western, or anti-Muslim hatred depending on which camp one belongs in.
In every society there are those who object to hatred and those who hate. Presently, we have a few more of the disillusioned latter. The most popular hate crime is Muslim bashing, but such animisity is also a wider expression of hatred towards the unknown. Before Islamophobia there was the hatred of Asians. Before that there was a prejudice against the Afro-carribean community. Prior to that it was the Irish. If we go back a decade further it was the Germans who had replaced the French, who in turn had taken the hated mantle of the Spanish. In addition, this national and civilisational grand hatred had subsumed minor hatred between communities engulfing different political, ethnic and often religious identities.
What is to be concluded from understanding the significance of historical hate crime or its present manifestation? A need for personal, cultural, ethnic, national or civilisational identification precede such crimes. Since these identities are here to stay, it would follow that the only remedy is to say farewell to arms, farewell to hate speech and a celebration of our differences through social, sporting and artistic dialogue.
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The Al Jazeera piece cited in this article: UK report: Anti-Muslim hate crime rising
Samuel P Huntington's essay: The Clash of Civilizations?
Francis Fukiyama's essay: The End of History?
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