Do not treat someone as a\nspokesperson for their faith or culture<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\nThe Christian Muslim Forum also\nprovides ethical guidelines for interaction between our different communities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Multicultural understanding<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During my 54 years in the UK\nthere is much that I have learnt about who I am, where I have come from as well\nas something (not enough) about those who are different from me. Starting with\nthe Asian Studies Course in the late 1970s I continue to take (and create)\nopportunities for multicultural understanding amongst our diverse communities. My\nrecent focus in this respect has been on learning, and encouraging others to\nlearn, about our Muslim neighbours. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There continue to be some useful resources to aid one\u2019s learning about Muslims. I was able to add to my collection the book Being Muslim Today by \u00a0Saqib Iqbal Qureshi. It has a very telling sub-title: reclaiming the faith from orthodoxy and Islamophobia. The book opens with a question from the author\u2019s 15 year old son: \u201cPapa, is Isl\u0101m really more violent than other religions?\u201d Qureshi explains how his son is teased by his fellow students, who mock his Muslim identity and insinuate that is a terrorist. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He pushed back against the taunting, but\ndeep down he wasn\u2019t entirely sure. Was his religion really one of violence? It\nwas clear by the expression on his face that Mustafa didn\u2019t have a solid,\ngrounded answer. And no wonder. So much of what we\u2019re bombarded with links\nMuslims to violence. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe author wonders: \u201cWhere was my\nson\u2014or any curious Muslim\u2014supposed to find clear answers about what the Isl\u0101mic\ntake on violence was\u2014or gender or any number of issues?\u201d He makes clear that \u201cbeing\nMuslim in the West is incredibly tough.\u201d He explains how the ordinary Muslims live\ntheir lives surrounded by opposing camps: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In one corner, you have a sizable chunk\nof the non-Muslim Western \u201cintelligentsia,\u201d who feed off misrepresenting\nMuslims\u2014highlighting every act of violence committed by a Muslim anywhere in\nthe world and linking it to Isl\u0101m. They are uninterested in any other Muslim\nstory that runs counter to their \u201cMuslim is violent\u201d narrative.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nThen there is what he describes\nas the \u201cMuslim establishment itself\u201d. This is where, according to the author\none finds orthodox leadership who demand unthinking adherence to a religious\nframework that raises more questions than the orthodoxy will admit to. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unfortunately, it\u2019s under this umbrella\nthat most Muslims reside, meekly accepting that their role is unthinking\nadherence to whatever the imams, sort of clerics, tell them, lest they be\naccused of waging war against God\u2014which can then translate into punishments all\nthe way to murder.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nAccording to the author there\nare a tiny minority in the Muslim community who he describes as \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
the orthodoxy\u2019s violent half-cousins, the\nlunatic fringe, the textbook antisocial personality disorder exemplars, who\nseem obsessed with making Isl\u0101m live up to its reputation of cartoon villainy\nin the West. This is a group assembled for a brawl, not a theological debate.\nIn fact, study after study has demonstrated that while identifying with Isl\u0101m,\nthis group is typically illiterate about it. It takes the many legitimate\ncomplaints that Muslims have and twists that righteous anger into something\nhorrible.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nIsl\u0101m is never out of the news, and it\u2019s rarely allowed to be a\npositive story. The battle among bigoted influencers, the hundreds of millions\nof Islamophobes, obstinate orthodoxy, and the lunatic fringe has crept steadily\ninto our society to a point where it overwhelms Muslims in Europe, North\nAmerica, and beyond in our interconnected world.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nAccording to Qureshi, the\ncommunity has failed to equip younger Muslims with resources to explore questions\nthat arise for them about Islam and which are either dismissed or answered less\nthan honestly\u2014with explanations that are culturally acceptable but wholly\ninaccurate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I agree with the author that it\nis important to understand and have a truthful conversation about Islam and\nMuslims, instead of one informed by generalisations and stereotypes. For this\nwe need resources that are accurate and written by insiders of the Muslim community.\nThis book, therefore, should go someway in helping Muslims to answer some of\nthe questions that arise about their faith. Equally, it should provide a\nresource for the wider community who desire to understand their Muslim neighbour\nand their beliefs. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In his book The Colonizer and the Colonized Albert Memmi book, explores how a bad act committed by a non-white person often comes to represent the whole community, while an act committed by a white person reflects only that individual. This is certainly true when it comes to Muslims in our society. For a healthy … <\/p>\n
Continue reading “Being Muslim Today”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1787"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1790,"href":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1787\/revisions\/1790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}