Читать книгу Diversify - June Sarpong - Страница 12
Оглавление‘Conquering others shows strength, but conquering one’s self shows true power.’
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
If the Obama presidency has been the modern defining global event for aspiring black males, then terrorism has been the defining dictate of the Western view of ‘other’ Muslim men. It has arguably led to Muslim men overtaking black men as primary figures of fear: ‘brown’ has become the new ‘black’. This group is the most diverse of the ‘other’ male groups, covering a wide variety of ethnicities, nationalities, and socioeconomic groups, with Islam being the world’s second biggest faith. However, in the modern collective Western psyche there are only really two kinds of Muslim men: those who will harm us, and those who probably won’t. And nobody seems to know the difference.
Integrate or separate?
Though the religion’s main presence has been in the Middle East, Islam has had a longstanding presence in the West, predominantly in mainland Europe, where rulers and warlords of Muslim faith ruled over Christian populations before extending to parts of Asia and Africa. This led to periods of Holy Wars in the medieval era, as well as phases of coexistence between Muslim and Christian populations. Fast forward to the twentieth century – post Second World War – and we have Muslims migrating from Africa and Asia to Christian America and to Christian/secular Europe.
Muslims, for the most part, hail from countries that were less dominated by the West. So, unlike most colonized communities, Muslims were able to keep their language, faith, and customs rather than adopting European equivalents. This is something they were also able to maintain during modern migration, still retaining their faith in predominantly Christian and secular societies. Many also chose to retain the language and style of dress of their country of origin, protecting, in theory, a clear cultural identity and sense of belonging. So we have a scenario in which the British Muslim male child finds himself in a Western society where he is visibly different, sometimes in dress as well as beliefs and complexion, and with a family at home who often wish to retain many aspects of their original culture. As is the case with most immigrant communities, Muslim families wish their young men to gain acceptance and develop the ability to pursue success and support a family of their own. To this end, many young Muslim men will study diligently and embark upon a career path and seek the same respect, recognition, and acceptance that we all strive for.
For some it’s not acceptance at any cost, however, and as we’ve seen with black men, when ‘other’ men feel excluded by the main culture, they form a subculture. British Muslim communities tend to be close-knit, and they have a strong economic presence, especially in London, that provides a back-up option for those who may fall outside the confines of wider society.* So the question for these young British Muslim men is in fact not so dissimilar to the one the British people have recently faced in their relationship to their European neighbours: integrate or separate?
15%: the proportion of Muslim prisoners in 2015 (up from 8% in 2002)*.
Let’s be clear: the vast majority of Muslim men have chosen integration, while still proudly retaining their Muslim identity. There is not a one-size-fits-all approach, and nor should there be. Keith Ellison, Mahershala Ali, Aziz Ansari, Hasan Minhaj, and Reza Aslan in the US, Zayn Malik, Rageh Omaar, Mo Farah, Sajid Javid, Riz Ahmed, Adil Ray, and London’s mayor Sadiq Khan in the UK are all examples of Muslim men who have made a contribution and commitment to their respective countries, while celebrating their Muslim identity.
However, on 11 September 2001 the question of the integration of Muslim men suddenly became acutely urgent. If you happened to be a Muslim man – indigenous or otherwise – failing to display visible signs of integration into Western society, you immediately became an object of suspicion and fear. In fact, you didn’t necessarily have to be Muslim – just of a light brown complexion and rushing to work, as in the tragic case of Jean Charles de Menezes, who, on 22 July 2005 (two weeks after the London 7/7 bombings), was mistakenly identified as a potential suicide bomber and shot dead by a team of armed police at Stockwell Tube Station in London. We have reached a point where society has demonized these people in the worst possible way, assuming Muslim men are a threat to our lives and the lives of others.
The backlash against Muslims following the rise of terrorist incidents by Muslim men born in Western countries has been phenomenal, and is probably the greatest challenge to date to our Western model of secular multiculturalism. In response, both Muslim communities and the Western societies they are part of have become vulnerable to extremist views from each side of the argument. The rise of populism has destabilized the political and liberal centre ground in many Western countries, and Muslim men across the socioeconomic groups find themselves on the fault line. For all our sakes we must face the epic twofold challenge in front of us: to tackle the root causes that lead Muslim men to become radicalized in the first place, and to quash the Islamophobia that has reared its ugly head in response.
Five times: the amount more media coverage a terrorist incident receives if the perpetrator is Muslim.*
The route to radicalization
We know that poverty, lack of employment opportunities, and alienation from wider Western society offer a more direct route to radicalization. When disenfranchised young Muslim men, who do not identify with their parents’ interpretation of their faith or with mainstream Islam, can opt for a political extremist interpretation, which resonates with their anger over Western foreign policy towards Muslims around the world, everyone is at risk – especially the young men themselves. Our lack of diversity has a lot to answer for.
However, poverty and lack of opportunity is not the only route to radicalization, as well-educated and relatively affluent Muslim men have also embraced and acted on extremist views. This is difficult for liberals and centrists in the secular West to reconcile. How can Muslim men who have been afforded the opportunity to be part of Western society and been rewarded for their contribution opt to actively work towards the destruction of that society? Indeed, the destruction of their neighbours, colleagues, and fellow citizens who, you would assume, are also friends and acquaintances? You’d think that religious freedom, democracy, and the opportunity to achieve prosperity is a pretty good deal. We’ve covered all the bases, right? All the things that should matter to them? What are we supposed to do?
Sadly, it’s never that simple. Growing up in East London, I witnessed the insidious creep of radicalization and its divisive effects first-hand. I had friends at college who I suspect became radicalized before I even knew what that meant. They became estranged from their friends, were told they needed to separate themselves from ‘infidels’ in order to get closer to God. Their style of dress and patterns of behaviour changed, and they became strangers, while we became ‘others’ to them. These were young men we had all previously socialized with and considered friends. Our teachers had no idea how to reach out to them, and neither did we. But we shrugged our shoulders and continued on our life journeys, as it’s only natural that some friends will drop off as we progress from adolescence to adulthood. So what if those who ‘dropped off’ happened to be disenfranchised Muslims with an underlying resentment of Western foreign policy? Who cares?
Well, Londoners did on 7 July 2005 when our citizens were killed and maimed by fellow citizens, for whom Britain was their home but no longer where their hearts resided. I would later discover that two of the bombing suspects had attended a mosque not far from where I grew up.
Twelve years later, London and its global visitors would face the same horror again, but the Westminster terror attack on 22 March 2017 forced us to rethink our assumptions of those most likely to do us harm. We’d always thought young Muslim men were the danger – radicalized, impulsive, and with not too much to lose – but this time the perpetrator was not a young man and neither was he born a Muslim. He was a 52-year-old mixed-race male born Adrian Elms, and was a late convert to Islam. Having previously been imprisoned at Her Majesty’s pleasure several times for violent attacks, he drove a car into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge and went on to stab Police Constable Keith Palmer, killing four people in total.
This atrocity, as well as the murder of MP Jo Cox in June 2016 by 52-year-old far-right extremist Thomas Mair, and the Finsbury Park attack on 19 June 2017, perpetrated by 47-year-old Darren Osborne – both middle-aged, non-Muslim men – have proved that radicalization in all its forms – be it Islamism, far-right extremism, or Islamophobia – is equally dangerous and that the profile of a ‘terrorist’ is far broader than we thought. It seems some men do not grow out of violence but rather into it, and isolation and exclusion from society leaves them and us vulnerable to the impact of the indiscriminate violence of terrorism.
The multifaceted threat we all now face, not just from terrorism but from extremist responses to it, became disturbingly apparent just two months after the Westminster attack, when the city of Manchester fell victim to perhaps the most heinous of terror attacks so far; this time the target was children – mainly young girls attending the concert of pop sensation Ariana Grande. The devastation resulted in 22 fatalities and 59 injured. And to make matters worse, following the Manchester atrocity there was a reported 500 per cent surge in Islamophobic attacks in Greater Manchester. This is something we must denounce with all our might. We have to stand up for compassion and the rule of law, even when it is hardest to do in the face of hostility – in fact, this is when it’s most important. Less than two weeks after the Manchester attack, London was hit again, this time on London Bridge and in nearby Borough Market, where people were enjoying a night out in cafés and restaurants. The attack lasted just eight minutes, thanks to the brave and speedy acts of the police, but in that short space of time, three young Muslim men armed with knives were able to murder eight innocent victims – from Britain, Australia, France, Canada, and Spain – and injure an additional 48. And again, the police reported a 40 per cent increase in Islamophobic attacks immediately afterwards. London still stands as the multicultural jewel in the United Kingdom’s crown – but the threat to our unity remains.
This is where we must consider the devastating effects of a lack of diversity not only on the minority who are excluded, but also on wider society. And of course the problem is not unique to the UK and US. In recent years Europe has also experienced numerous horrific incidents of Islamist terrorism that have left the world stunned and citizens traumatized. The civil wars in Iraq and Syria have been used by purveyors of a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam to attract young European Muslim men and women to travel to these war-torn regions, and this in turn creates a challenge for the authorities: what to do with returning citizens who may pose a terrorist threat following weapons training and potential involvement in atrocities? Some suggestions I’ve heard here in the UK have been that we should remove passports, revoke citizenship from dual nationals, or imprison without trial. I understand the desire and the need in some cases for harsh measures. But these are short-term responses when what we need is a long-term solution: prevention. We must explore other options, since marginalizing these men and allowing them to be ‘other’ exposes them to the very extremism that many would not turn to if fully accepted and supported by society.
The route to integration
So what can we do to tackle this proliferation of radicalization? How about the tough love approach? What about banning burkas and burkinis (French proposals) and enforced English language tests for Muslim mothers (a British proposal advocated by David Cameron)? Oh wait, all those proposed measures, supposedly aimed at dealing with the threat of extremist Muslim men, target Muslim women instead – how unfortunate. How about a ‘Muslim travel ban’, as ordered by the Trump administration in early 2017? Well, according to UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd, this gave ISIS a ‘propaganda opportunity’ – and the evidence suggests that the more we isolate or alienate a particular group, the more vulnerable to extremism they are. Again, all these measures are short-term and short-sighted, and motivated as they are by Islamophobia and prejudice, they relegate all Muslim men to the category of ‘other’.
We have allowed this fear to prevent us from applying the one thing we haven’t yet tried: diversity, inclusion, and tolerance – allowing these men to truly belong. Surely, to transform the minds of these radicalized young men we must create a powerful and undeniable counter-narrative to extremism? Believe it or not, some political decisions can be guided by compassion and love as much as self-interest, even though we shy away from this in the face of right-wing pressure. This is where we offer something the extremists can’t.
A brilliant initiative that shows how this can be done is currently underway in Denmark. After Britain, Denmark has the second largest number of its citizens fighting in Syria, and Steffen Nielsen – a crime prevention adviser in the country – is trying a fresh approach to reach out to them. He has helped develop an innovative rehabilitation programme for young radicalized Danish Muslims, offering them a second chance and the opportunity to be reintegrated back into Danish society. The programme runs in collaboration with welfare services and police in Aarhus, Denmark’s second largest city. Ex-radicals are offered intense therapy and psychological treatment, mentors, and assistance with rebuilding their lives by finding work or accessing further education. The programme also provides support for their families.
Nielsen is the first to admit that the programme is still ‘trial and error’. However, he is committed to this rehabilitative approach, even though not all of the political class in Denmark approve. ‘We are experiencing more political pressure to do something more like the British stuff,’ said Nielsen – revoking British passports, etc. ‘The entire political debate is rife with simplifications. You can choose to shut them out and say, “Okay, you chose to be a jihadist, we can’t use you any more.” Or you can take the inclusive way and say, “Okay, there is always a door if you want to be a contributing member to society.” Not because we are nice people, but because we think that is what works.’*
It’s an important point. The problem is far too complex to try only one approach, and we cannot assume there is no way back for those young European citizens who feel disenfranchised and have chosen hatred as a means of finding purpose and meaning. Men who perpetrate violence are, after all, themselves victims of their own violence, whether they die by their own actions – flying a plane of innocent people into a building or detonating a suicide bomb – or are killed or imprisoned by the authorities.
Prominent anti-extremist campaigner and LBC presenter Maajid Nawaz, a former jihadist himself, has clear views on what needs to be done and believes it’s a process we all need to participate in: ‘The only way we can challenge Islamism,’ he says, ‘is to engage with one another. We need to make it as abhorrent as racism has become today. Only then will we stem the tide of angry young Muslims who turn to hate.’
Maajid is not alone. British Muslim businessman Iqbal Wahhab, has put this idea into practice and made it his personal mission to help rehabilitate disenfranchised men by giving them work and responsibility. Through his thriving restaurant Roast (which coincidentally is based in Borough Market, the second location of the London Bridge attack), Iqbal hires ex-offenders and helps train them for a career in the food industry. You can read about one of his most heartening success stories, Mohammed, a young Muslim who now manages a chain of busy cafés, at www.Diversify.org. It’s a clear example of the key role the business community can play in helping to steer at-risk men onto a productive path.
It’s ironic that the day after the Westminster attack we buried former IRA commander and Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland Martin McGuinness – initially a man of violence and a former terrorist who then became a statesman and a man of peace. It took many years to end the violence in Northern Ireland, precisely because we weren’t prepared to examine and address the causes of it. I recognize that reaching out to men of violence is never easy or palatable, but violence comes from vulnerability and the inability to achieve aims by other means, so we need to recognize this in potential perpetrators and work with them to achieve much more benign aims, so that we’re not all left to deal with the tragic aftermath of their frustrations.
Of course, when faced with destructive acts of terror, there is an understandable urge to err on the side of enforcement. Those involved in such heinous crimes obviously must be severely prosecuted – but we cannot ignore that there is also a contingent who have lost their way and have not yet reached the point of no return. These young men are British citizens. So what do we do with them? This is the question that determines who we are. Which path do we choose? Rehabilitation or retribution? Our future safety depends on how we answer.
ACTION POINT: Find out when the next #VisitMyMosque day is, go along and meet local Muslims (if you are a non-Muslim yourself).
DISCUSSION POINT: How would Trump’s ‘Muslim ban’ have been received if it had been proposed before 9/11?
