(an amended version of an article originally published in 1986,
it was an extract from a public lecture of the same title delivered
in 1981. The full lecture is available from Ta Ha Publishers Ltd.,
1 Wynne Road, London SW9 OBD. This extract is reprinted here with
the kind permission of the author and publishers).
The emergence of Islam in Arabia in the seventh century C.E.
coincided with the introduction of Christianity into Britain.
St Augustine came to Britain while the Prophet was a young man
but the conversion of the Northumbrians and East Anglians took
place after the ministry of the Prophet had begun. Not long after
the death of the Prophet the Muslim state expanded with explosive
rapidity onto the Christian world, conquering Syria, Egypt, North
Africa and Spain. Muslims at the centre of the world of Islam,
however, had little knowledge of Britain at that time. In the
middle of the eighth century Bishop Willibald (St. Willibald)
went with a number of other Englishmen on a pilgrimage and they
were arrested in Tortosa in Syria, accused of spying. When he
tried to identify his place of origin to his interrogators they
did not believe what he said. The Muslims of Syria apparently
knew nothing of the off-shore island located where ‘the sun sets
on the edge of the sea of darkness’ (as the Arabs called the Atlantic
Ocean). The image of the Muslims in the European mind was in its
formative stage too and this image was being built on a vast volume
of misinformation about Islam which was described as a form of
polytheistic idol worship and the Islamic way of life as lascivious
and violent.
This image persisted throughout the Middle Ages and in certain
respects still persists to this very day. By the time of King
John, Muslim powers in the Maghrib and Spain became very familiar
to the British. For this reason Matthew Paris thought it plausible
to assert that the beleaguered King sent a delegation to the Almohad
ruler of Morocco seeking military support against his rebellious
barons and promising to convert to Islam. (1)
Reports of British rulers converting to Islam do not belong only
to these early times. A much more recent monarch of this country
was reputed by the Muslim peoples of the Empire to have become
a Muslim. The monarch in question was none other than the great
Queen Victoria herself. The origin of the report comes from a
charming and unusual episode. One summer’s day towards the end
of the last century the Queen noticed three figures of strange
appearance by the railings of Buckingham Palace. They were two
men and a woman carrying a child. She was moved to invite them
into her presence. They were naturally delighted and excited at
being allowed into the Palace and having the honour of meeting
the Queen herself. The Queen asked who they were and where they
were going. They replied that they were Malays from Cape Town
on their way to Makka to perform the pilgrimage. The Queen stretched
her arms towards the woman and took the child, kissed it gently
and gave it back to the mother. At the end of the audience the
Queen in a gentle and quivering voice, said: ‘Please pray for
your queen at the Holy Places in Makka’. The three Malay visitors
left the Palace fully convinced that the Queen was a secret Muslim.
Later from Makka the report spread far and wide through- out the
Muslim world. (2)
It is not my intention to survey the long history of the relationship
between Great Britain and Islam. My concern will be limited to
the more recent aspects of this relationship or, to be more precise,
to the Muslim community in Britain.
There is little doubt that Muslims appeared on the shores of
Britain as traders throughout the Middle Ages. In those days the
Muslims may not have ruled all the waves but they certainly ruled
a large portion of them and the southern ports such as Hastings
were known to Arab travellers and cartographers. But we have no
knowledge of a large settled community of Muslims in this country,
though evidence of some Muslim settlements is coming to light.
Some gravestones with Arabic inscriptions have been dug up in
a garden in Derbyshire. It is possible that these tombstones belonged
to the eighteenth century. The matter is being investigated in
order to trace the origin of these stones and the community that
used this graveyard.
Large Muslim settlements in Britain belong to the era of British
commercial pre-eminence. Ships from all over the Muslim world
called on various British ports and certain liners specialised
in carrying goods to and from particular ports. Sailors from the
Yemen and South Asia became familiar with Liverpool, Cardiff and
South Shields and groups of them dug roots there and remained
more of an outpost to the home country than an assimilated part
of the British community. It was in the nature of their business
that they should continue to be in close contact with their home
country with little or no concern for what went on immediately
around them.
After the Second World War the whole situation was transformed
through the technological advances which made transport easier
and cheaper. The industrial growth in Britain and Europe characteristic
of the 1950s and ‘60s brought a large number of Muslim immigrants
to this country. They flocked to where work opportunities presented
themselves. They manned the foundries of Rotherham, the textile
factories of Manchester and many other enterprises throughout
the Midlands and of course in Greater London.
Scotland (especially Glasgow) has a strong Muslim community with
highly successful and respected business people among its members.
The growth economy of the era of industrial expansion offered
opportunities for the small businesses so familiar in Pakistan,
India and Bangladesh.
Many small shops appeared in areas of immigrant concentration
and gradually spread into other areas. The small shopkeeper’s
family put in long hours providing more service to customers and
thus formed the last line of defence against the supermarket monopoly.
A number of small enterprises, particularly in textiles, clothing
and leather industries continued to emerge.
But there was another type of Muslim immigrant who deserves special
note. At the time of King John British students flocked to the
universities of Muslim Spain to acquaint themselves with the advanced
technology and scientific knowledge of the Muslim world. Some
of these students stayed in Spain and were integrated within the
Muslim community. Now that Europe is the fountain of scientific
and technological know-how, many Muslim students come to this
country to study and many of them make Britain their home. In
addition, the work opportunities in Britain attract a good number
of highly trained Muslim doctors, engineers, lawyers and architects.
It is therefore important for us to note that the Muslims of this
country participate at the highest levels of intellectual and
scientific activity.
Even more recently a new type of immigrant from the Arab world
has arrived on the scene. They come equipped with oil wealth and
spend a large portion of their time in Britain with their family:
more often than not he is based here and their children are educated
through the medium of English.
From this sketch we can conclude that we have a community between
a million and a million-and-a- half, comprising people of vast
wealth and others who are struggling to earn a living in new and
unfamiliar surroundings, a community also of enormous talent and
energy. This general picture however needs to be examined a little
more closely.
The Muslims in Britain have various origins. The majority of
them come from the sub-continent of South Asia. Many are Pakistanis,
others are Bengalis. There are, as was mentioned, a number of
Arabs as well as Muslims from West Africa and Malaysia, Turkey
and Cyprus. There are a few who come from South Africa, East Africa
and the Caribbean. They speak different languages — Urdu is dominant
amongst the sub-continent immigrants but Gujarati. Bengali and
Punjabi are spoken by large sections of the community. It is generally
accepted that the largest portion of the Muslim community traces
its origin to Pakistan, followed by those from Bangladesh and
then those from India.
Many of the first generation immigrants, still for the most part
isolated from the cultural and educational life of this country,
speak little or no English. particularly if their educational
background is initially poor. Their children, on the other hand,
speak English as a native tongue with little or no acquaintance
with the mother tongue. Very few of them are literate in the language
of their heritage. This has its own serious consequences for the
community.
From this description it should be clear that the Muslim community
consists of many small communities with their particular languages
and customs. They retain their cultural traditions as their major
point of reference and continue to conduct their affairs wherever
possible in the manner to which they are accustomed. If they prefer
arranged marriages it is not for the purpose of circumventing
immigration law, as the Press would sometimes have us believe,
but because to the ordinary Pakistani and Bengali such is the
order of things as they understand them. The spectre of a young
man or woman being thrown into society to seek a marriage partner
is regarded by the community not only as immoral but also as irresponsible.
Marriage is too serious a business for the community to be left
entirely to the inexperienced whim of the young. Circumstances
impose their own strictures on the community and many a young
man or woman may rebel against a system so unfamiliar to those
brought up in Britain. But the majority of the young still welcome
the advice of their parents, sure in the knowledge that it is
up to the young people themselves to accept or reject parental
choice.
The Muslim family in Britain follows a life-pattern as close
as possible to its perception of what is proper in Islam. The
woman in the Muslim family has a strong and secure position at
the centre, for Islam perceives society as a collection of families.
We hear a great deal about the poor position of the Muslim woman.
In reality she has a greater part to play in decision- making
in family affairs than her deceptively self-effacing pose may
suggest. Among the shopkeepers, for instance, the wife is as much
a business-partner as a life-partner. The generation of Muslims
growing up here has to grapple with the problems of the two cultures
and has to attempt to resolve the ever-present tension between
the home on the one hand and the school and society at large on
the other. They are not as unique in this respect as one might
suppose at first glance. All societies face the same problem in
this ever-changing world. If we call it a clash of cultures for
the immigrant communities we may dignify it with the title ‘The
Generation Gap’ within the local community.
Most sub-continental families seek residence in a neighbourhood
where other families of similar origin reside. But the necessities
of life have to be acquired and jobs must be obtained wherever
possible. Individuals as well as families cope as well as they
can in difficult circumstances. They sometimes organise themselves
as a community around the mosque in a formal and regular way.
They meet also on the annual religious occasions to celebrate
and to enhance their fellow feeling. In reality, however, they
remain small groups with more or less full autonomy within the
framework of the larger groupings.
The Muslims have a large number of organisations. They may exceed
4,000, mostly concerned with local welfare and occasionally with
more ambitious pretensions, but only the societies centred around
the mosques appear to have true social significance. We have here,
therefore, a community united by a system of beliefs and certain
basic rules of conduct but divided on linguistic, national and
cultural grounds. The tension between the universal and the particular
is ever-present within the Muslim community. It was once said
of the Semitic races that they have as many opinions as there
are individuals. Ibn Khaldun said of the Arabs that their intense
individualism can only be subdued by an extraordinary phenomenon
such as the appearance of a prophet.
The spirit of individualism appears to affect the behaviour of
the community in Britain. Concerted action on behalf of the entire
community has not yet manifested itself. In a few cases locally
based community projects such as mosques and religious education
have been comparatively successful. The success or otherwise of
these local projects seems to depend on the personal qualities
of the leadership regardless of the wealth of the community or
its level of education.
On a recent visit to the community in High Wycombe, I found a
group of factory workers who have created an effective organisation
for the religious education of their children, securing in the
process the aid of the local authority and the good will of the
various school principals. Despite their low income they were
able to accumulate sufficient funds to obtain a piece of land
for the purpose of building a mosque and cultural centre. A more
prosperous community in Glasgow has been able to sponsor an ambitious
project of a mosque and cultural centre. The project is to cost
two and a half million pounds and is at the moment at the half-way
stage. The same community succeeded also in launching a private
school for girls. Examples of this abound, indicating the intrinsic
ability of the community to cope with its immediate problems.
So far, however, the community has not organised itself on a
national basis. There is no doubt that the time factor is important
in this matter. The Muslim community in this country is only abut
two decades old. Another factor is the linguistic problem. English,
the lingua franca amongst them, is not understood sufficiently
by many members. But above all, unlike the Christian community,
we have no common authority such as the Church.
Religious Organisation
Islam is a religion of the law. It centres around the book, the
Holy Quran, and as such it has no priesthood. The imam is not
an ordained priest but simply the leader of the prayer, a position
which can be technically taken by any Muslim within the community
who has adequate knowledge of how to pray. The appointment of
an Imam to a mosque is a practical measure to ensure that when
the time of the prayer comes there will be someone there to lead
the worshippers. Islam also does not differentiate between the
spiritual and the temporal, and the religious authority as well
as the political is vested in one institution which rules in the
Muslim country. Ideally the Muslim ruler should have sufficient
knowledge of Muslim law to make decisions without reference to
anyone else. This was not always the case and in consequence there
emerged a body of specialists who came to be called the Ulema,
the ‘savants’. They were simply the legal experts of the law in
force in Muslim countries (which happened to be a religious law).
Like every ‘savant’ his authority rests on his sound argument
rather than on any claim to infallibility.
The immigrant community in Britain for the present lacks effective
organisation to order its religious life and those aspects of
human relations such as marriage, divorce and inheritance which
have to be in accordance with religious law to he acceptable in
conscience by the good Muslim. How the Muslim community resolves
this issue remains to be seen but there are strong moves within
it towards the creation of a representative body to take charge
of all its problems. Such a body could effectively sanction the
creation of institutions such as Muslim legal committees with
effective moral and religious authority to compel compliance.
Such bodies, once in existence, will almost certainly help the
British Bench in resolving issues of dispute amongst Muslims pertaining
to personal status.
The question of education is perhaps more straightforward. The
Muslim community which in its homeland depended upon the Muslim
government to provide education consistent with its heritage and
religious beliefs cannot, in Britain, expect more than tolerance
on the part of the British authorities for Muslims to introduce
and finance their own religious education. For the present a large
number of Muslim children are given some religious lessons after
school hours in some cases and over the weekend in others. This
education is better than nothing but it is hardly satisfactory
for the Muslim parent and it often taxes the child without necessarily
providing a significant degree of knowledge and understanding
of the faith. The only solution to the problem lies in the establishment
of a series of Muslim schools to become a resource for Muslim
teaching. Our problems in this regard are not unique. Christian
and Jewish communities suffer in the same way. The only difference
is that the Christians have a long and well-established tradition
of the Church undertaking these matters on their behalf, while
the Jews have developed in this country their Board of Deputies
which safeguards their community’s interests. The greatest wonder
is that the Muslims, having neither of these institutions, have
nevertheless carried through their task in this regard with determination.
The challenges facing them are growing in complexity and they
are adapting, albeit slowly, to the new environment. They are
moving towards integration without assimilation. They are becoming
a part of the great British community without losing their identity
as Muslims.
Footnotes
1. See Daniel The Arabs and Medieval Europe,
Longmans 1975, p178.
2. Anecdote related by Rosenthal From Drury
Lane to Mecca.
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