religious diasporas

Edited by JOHN R.HINNELLS

ineral Editors: Zig Layton-Henry and Danieejoly

Migration, Minorities and Citizenship

General Editors: Zig Layton-Henry, Professor of Politics, University of Warwick; and Daniele Joly, Professor, Director, Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations, University of Warwick

Titles include:

Muhammad Anwar, Patrick Roach and Ranjit Sondhi (editors) FROM LEGISLATION TO INTEGRATION? Race Relations in Britain

James A. Beckford, Daniele Joly and Farhad Khosrokhavar MUSLIMS IN PRISON Challenge and Change in Britain and France

Christophe Bertossi (editor) EUROPEAN ANTI-DISCRIMINATION AND THE POLITICS OF CITIZENSHIP Britain and France

Sophie Body-Gendrot and Marco Martiniello (editors) MINORITIES IN EUROPEAN CITIES The Dynamics of Social Integration and Social Exclusion at the Neighbourhood Level

Malcolm Cross and Robert Moore (editors) GLOBALIZATION AND THE NEW CITY Migrants, Minorities and Urban Transformations in Comparative Perspective

Thomas Faist and Andreas Ette (editors) THE EUROPEANIZATION OF NATIONAL POLICIES AND POLITICS OF IMMIGRATION Between Autonomy and the European Union

Adrian Favell PHILOSOPHIES OF INTEGRATION Immigration and the Idea of Citizenship in France and Britain

Agata Gorny and Paulo Ruspini (editors) MIGRATION IN THE NEW EUROPE East-West Revisited

James Hampshire CITIZENSHIP AND BELONGING Immigration and the Politics of Democratic Governance in Postwar Britain

John R. Hinnells (editor) RELIGIOUS RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH ASIAN DIASPORAS From One Generation to Another

Simon Holdaway and Anne-Marie Barren RESIGNERS? THE EXPERIENCE OF BLACK AND ASIAN POLICE OFFICERS

Daniele Joly GLOBAL CHANGES IN ASYLUM REGIMES (editor) Closing Doors

SCAPEGOATS AND SOCIAL ACTORS (editor) The Exclusion and Integration of Minorities in Western and Eastern Europe

Christian Joppke and Ewa Morawska TOWARD ASSIMILATION AND CITIZENSHIP Immigrants in Liberal Nation-States

Atsushi Kondo (editor) CITIZENSHIP IN A GLOBAL WORLD Comparing Citizenship Rights for Aliens

Zig Layton-Henry and Czarina Wilpert (editors) CHALLENGING RACISM IN BRITAIN AND GERMANY

J0rgen S. Nielsen TOWARDS A EUROPEAN ISLAM

Pontus Odmalm MIGRATION POLICIES AND POLITICAL PARTICIPATION Inclusion or Intrusion in Western Europe?

Jan Rath (editor) IMMIGRANT BUSINESSES The Economic, Political and Social Environment

Peter Ratcliffe (editor) THE POLITICS OF SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH 'Race', Ethnicity and Social Change

Carl-Ulrik Schierup (editor) SCRAMBLE FOR THE BALKANS Nationalism, Globalism and the Political Economy of Reconstruction

Steven Vertovec and Ceri Peach (editors) ISLAM IN EUROPE The Politics of Religion and Community

Maarten Vink LIMITS OF EUROPEAN CITIZENSHIP European Integration and Domestic Immigration Policies

Osten Wahlbeck KURDISH DIASPORAS A Comparative Study of Kurdish Refugee Communities

John Wrench, Andrea Rea and Nouria Ouali (editors) MIGRANTS, ETHNIC MINORITIES AND THE LABOUR MARKET Integration and Exclusion in Europe

Religious Reconstruction in the South Asian Diasporas

From One Generation to Another

Edited by

John R. Hinnells

Research Professor, Liverpool Hope University, UK

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Contents

Notes on Contributors

1 Introduction John R. Hinnells

Part I Religious and Social Issues

2 A Reassessment of Identity Strategies Amongst British South

Asian Muslims Ron Geaves

3 British Muslims and the Search for Religious Guidance

Philip Lewis

4 The Contribution of Nurture in a Sampradaya to Young

British Hindus' Understanding of their Tradition Eleanor

Nesbitt

5 Celibacy and Salvation in the Swaminarayan Movement Rohit

Barot

6 Death and Bereavement in South Asian Diaspora

Communities Shirley Firth

7 Parsi Zoroastrian Experiences in Four 'Western' Countries: A

Comparative Study John R. Hinnells

Part II Religious and Political Issues

8 Religion and Ethnicity in America

Raymond Brady Williams

vn

DS 39=

13

29

5

1 74

9

3

12

1

143

9 Public Policy Implications of Canada's Multiculturalism for Religious Pluralism Harold Coward

10 Cultural Diversity, Religious Plurality and Government Policy in Australia Gary D. Boutna

11 Religion in the Educational System of England and Wales: Law, Policy and Representation Robert Jackson

Part III South Asian Diaspora Religions Post 9/11 and 7/7

12 South Asians in America Post 9/11 Raymond Brady Williams

13 Law, Religion and South Asians in Diaspora Wemer Menski

14 Living with Difference: A Forgotten Art in Urgent Need of Revival? Roger Ballard

Index

Notes on Contributors

Roger Ballard is Director of the Centre for Applied South Asian Studies at

the University of Manchester. As an anthropologist, he has been a firsthand

observer of the development of South Asian ethnic colonies in the Pennine

Region since he began fieldwork in Leeds on behalf of the ESRC Research

Unit on Ethnic Relations in 1970. Since then he has kept in continuous

touch with developments in the region. In addition to many papers, he

edited Desk Pardesh: the South Asian Presence in Britain (1996).

Rohit Barot is Visiting Fellow in the Department of Archaeology and

Anthropology at University of Bristol. He has been interested in diaspora,

transnationalism and social change. He has carried out ethnographic

research in Swaminarayan groups in London and India and among

Indians in Bristol.

Gary D. Bouma is Professor of Sociology and UNESCO Chair in Interreli-

gious and Intercultural Relations - Asia Pacific at Monash University and an

Anglican Priest in the Diocese of Melbourne. His research has primarily

focussed on the interaction between religion and society in Western societies,

including Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe,

including a major study of religious diversity in multicultural Australia

focusing on the religious settlement of Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists in

Australian Society and a consideration of Post-Modernity as a context for

doing theology and the discovery of Christian spirituality. He is the author of

Religion: Meaning Transcendence and Community in Australia 1992 and

Mosques and Muslim Settlement in Australia 1994; Editor of Many Religions, All Australian: Religious Settlement, Identity and Cultural Diversity 1997, and

Managing Religious Diversity 1999; co-Author of Religious and Cultural Diversity and Social Cohesion in Australia 2005. His latest book is Australian Soul: Religion and Spirituality in the 21st Century.

Harold Coward is Founding Director of The Centre for Studies in Reli-gion and Society, The University of Victoria, Canada, and Fellow of The Royal Society of Canada. His main fields are Hinduism, Compar-ative Religion and Comparative Ethics. He is author of numerous articles along with 18 books, including Pluralism in the World Religions, Scripture in the World Religions, Sin and Salvation in the World Religions

vii

vi Contents

158

173

192

223

243

265

303

A Reassessment of Identity Strategies Amongst British South Asian Muslims

Ron Geaves

The events of 9/11 were to shock the Western world into a realisation

that there were voices in the Muslim world that were prepared to bring

the reality of armed struggle, formerly confined to ideological and

political conflicts with Muslim regimes, to the streets of American and

European cities, an act which commenced the 'war against terrorism'.

However, the attacks on London in July 2005 were to have an even

more traumatic impact on both the British Muslim and the non-Muslim

communities. The attacks on New York and Madrid had been carried

out by foreign nationals determined to widen the arena of conflicts

long familiar to Muslim nations, to include an armed struggle against a

West perceived to be an enemy of Islam. The attacks on London's

transport systems were especially shocking as carried out by Muslim

citizens of Britain. The attacks were to induce a sense of crisis amongst

British Muslims and British policy makers concerning fundamental

precepts of British democracy in the twenty-first century. A number of

issues have come under the microscope including issues of race,

religion and discrimination, media depictions of Islam, the complexities of

plural societies, identity formation and citizenship, cultural literacy, the

quality of educational provision by both Muslim and non-Muslim

providers, freedom of speech, the intellectual capacity of British Islam

and the inadequacy of religious leaders to meet modern challenges. In

the aftermath a new rhetoric concerning plurality has begun to emerge

from government policy makers in which the over-emphasis on diversity

in multicultural and pluralist discourses has been perceived to be at the

cost of integration.

However, these events, although traumatic, should not distract from

transformations that have been taking place amongst British-born

Muslims since the 1980s, and accelerating into the twenty-first century.

13

14 Religious and Social Issues

These changes could be summarised as a renewed focus on issues of minority citizenship in an Islamic context as opposed to the older attempts to resolve the dichotomy of regional ethnicities and belonging to the Muslim ummah (community).

1 The tragic events of 7/7 will, if

anything, accelerate the change of discourse in the Muslim communities even faster than the processes of aging, and the inevitable transferal of authority from the first-generation migrants to their British-born offspring.

Britain's Muslim communities were predominantly South Asian in origin and created by the post-colonial relationship between the former ruler and their subjects in India. Even prior to the mass migration of the second half of the twentieth century, Muslims had been arriving in Britain throughout the nineteenth century. Some arrived to receive a British education in either one of the professions, for example medicine or law; others, the sons of India's ruling classes, attended exclusive private schools; however, the majority were not so fortunate and their relations with the British colonisers not so privileged.

2 Large numbers of women

employed as nannies (ayahs) to British families were brought over by steamship to look after the children during transit back to Britain, when the children were sent back to boarding schools. On arrival in Britain these unfortunate females were made redundant and discarded to end up in charity hostels and homes for poor women, often in some of the most deprived areas of the country. Men also arrived in similar areas as a result of their recruitment to the British merchant naval fleet. Contracted on a one-way trip, usually as stokers and deckhands, these men found themselves waiting in British ports such as London, Cardiff, Liverpool and Tyneside for a return boat to take them back home. The wait could be long and some men chose to seek alternative employment setting up cafes and accommodation hostels for seamen in a similar position to themselves. Some of these men were to settle and marry British women creating the first British Muslim communities organised around religion. The remnants of these communities exist to the present day, mostly consisting of men of Yemeni or Somali origins employed after the opening of the Suez Canal.

3

Bengalis too were employed as cooks and on finding themselves in a similar situation opened restaurants, a trade which has thrived to the present day with hardly a British town or village not possessing a Bengali curry house on its main street.

Little is known of the role of religion amongst these early settlers. A few exceptions have been explored by scholars and light is still being thrown on these early attempts at establishing Islam on an organised basis.

Ron Graves 15

Three notable examples are the Woking mosque in West London; the work

of Abdullah Quilliam, a high-profile convert in Liverpool during the late

nineteenth century; and the dockside communities organised around the

activities of Sufis from the North African Alawiyya amongst the Yemeni

communities.4

Whatever was taking place in this early period, the impact of South Asian

Muslims arriving from the 1950s to the 1970s as a result of Britain's needs

for labour in manufacturing and service industries during the period of post-war

economic growth was to change the landscape of the nation's religious life

dramatically. In addition to Sikhs and Hindus, the new arrivals established

themselves in ethnic enclaves around factories in Britain's inner cities,

especially concentrated in parts of London, Lancashire, Yorkshire and the

Midlands. It is generally believed that the first male arrivals did little with

regard to establishing the infrastructures of religion. They expected to return

with their incomes saved to invest in a better life back home, and large

percentages of their wages were sent back to families in their home villages

and towns. Many of the men were unskilled labourers from the villages and

probably culturally bewildered by the new environment and its customs. In

addition there were 'push' as well as 'pull' factors to their decisions to

become economic migrants. For example, the partition of India and Pakistan

had created major social upheaval in the Punjab, and later the decision by the

government of Pakistan to flood large areas of Mirpur to construct a dam

caused further disruption of populations. Later in the 1970s, Bangladeshis

arrived as a consequence of the civil war between East and West Pakistan and

others were to arrive as a result of the mass expulsion of South Asians from

parts of Africa undergoing 'Africanisation'. These 'push' factors must have

added considerably to the sense of bewilderment and emotional crisis that

accompanied migration. It is perhaps not surprising then that these men

removed from their families did little to create mosques or other structures

that would lead to Islam's establishment in the new environment. Identity

remained firmly entrenched in the place of origin.

My interest in the study of British Muslim communities was to begin much

later in the 1980s, just prior to the well-documented Salman Rushdie

incidents. By this time the single men of the earlier decades had reunited with

their families in England, either bringing wives and children to join them or

returning to places of origin in order to marry and bring their near family

back to Britain with them. Second-generation children had been born and

were already at school. In the case of some of the earlier settlers, a third

generation had arrived. In certain


parts of Britain, South Asian Muslim 'ghetto-type' communities existed

complete with the economic infrastructures of 'ethnic' businesses and

enterprises, the social networking organisations and religious building

such as mosques and dar al-ulums to provide training for imams and

Islamic scholars.

My initial interest was raised by theoretical questions belonging to the

sociological study of religion with regard to the relationship between

.religion and ethnicity. At the time most of the existing studies of these

new communities was sociological and concerned with ethnicity. Religion

was not considered a primary factor of investigation and apart from some

pioneering work on the various Muslim factions that constituted South

Asian Islam carried out by Francis Robinson little work existed on the

religious life of the migrants.5 Roger Ballard had identified the

emergence of religious infrastructures in the context of South Asian

migration when wives and children arrived to join the single men.6

-

^Francis Robinson's work had alerted me to the diversity of Islam in the

subcontinent"SndThe existence of groups such as Deobandis, Barelwis,

Jamaat-i Islami and Ahl- Hadith to name only a few significant players.

The Deobandis and the Barelwis were traditional adversaries since the

nineteenth century. Deoband dar al-ulum had been founded in 1867

with a vision to maintain Muslim religious consciousness in the wake of

the British dominance and the final collapse of the Mughal Empire in

India. The aim of the college was to train well-educated ulema who would be

committed to the cause of reform of Islam and the staff, and students

regarded themselves as an independent school of thought whose main

aim was to protect and revive Islam. The Deobandis were opposed to the

kind of traditional subcontinent Islam that focused around the tombs

and shrines of deceased Muslim holy men and women, and dismissed

most of the practices of popular Sufism as innovation or distortion of

'pure' Islam. The Barelwis, on the other hand, emerged from the

activities of Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwi (1856-1921), who defended and

embraced everything to do with Sufism as an intrinsic part of Islamic

identity, defining the Muslim community in cultural as well as religious

terms.7

The third significant group of movements in the British context

appeared in the twentieth century and emerged shortly after the partition

of India and Pakistan to actualise the revolutionary ideas of Maulana

Mawdudi (1903-1979). In 1941 he had established Jamaat-i Islami as an organisation which could mobilise the best minds of the time into a

jihad movement to bring about an Islamic revolution in the

subcontinent. Mawdudi's main argument was that an Islamic state was

Ron Geaves 17

essential in order to fulfil the Muslim vision. This conclusion arose from his

understanding of the Islamic imperative to bear witness to the oneness of

God. Mawdudi understood this to mean not simply a religious proclamation

of uncompromising monotheism but a political thrust to establish God's

sovereignty in human societies. Political systems based on democracy,

socialism or secularism are therefore a type of idolatry, in that they replaced

God's sovereignty with human authority. The latter movements were also

opposed to popular Sufism and although they had some features in common

with the nineteenth-century reformers of Deoband, they were much more

overtly political. I was interested in how such movements reproduced

themselves in Britain and, in particular, how traditional rivalries between them

played out in the context of community building in diaspora. One of the key

theoretical positions that arose out of my research at that time concerned the role

of religion and its relationship to ethnicity. A strand in social scientific study

looks at religion as a function of ethnicity; Referring to this, Kim Knott has

stated that 'the predominant view in Britain and the USA, is that religion is

the passive instrument of ethnic identity'.8 This perspective is exemplified in

E.K. Francis' statement that 'it is the ethnic group which sanctions a

particular church affiliation, and which supports a religious congregation and

its institutions as an effective means for its own maintenance and the

preservation of its cultural traditions'.9 This viewpoint is helpful to analyse

the religious symbols and organisations developed by first-generation

migrants, but I was convinced that the relationship between ethnicity and

religion is more complex and changes with circumstances. Muhammad Anwar

sees both ethnicity and religion as variables of identity, independent but

interrelated.10

As a Religious Studies scholar I remained convinced that there

are certainly occasions when religion plays a central role in forming ethnic

group identity. My research at that time suggested that the religious revival that

was identified by Ballard was essentially religion functioning as an agent of

ethnicity as the families strived to reproduce cultures in the new context.u

It was the younger-generation British-born Muslims, especially those

influenced by a modified post-Mawdudian radicalism, who provided the

evidence to demonstrate a shift in the relationship between religion" and

ethnicity as they grappled with three major factors in their identity formation;

that is British, Muslim and Pakistani/Bangladeshi/Indian and so on. In fact, it

went further than that for within each national category there were intense

regional identities, for example, Punjabi, Bengali and Mirpuri.

Interwoven

attempt to disentangle

The figure above shows the three major categories, labelled as 'ethnic culture', 'Qur'anic Islam' and 'British culture'. The three identities are in a state of dynamic tension with each other resulting in positive and negative exchanges as they interact. In the first stages of migration, the major interactions take place between British culture and ethnicity. Islam principally plays a functional role as a marker of identity as first-generation Muslims engage in micro-politics focused on community building.

12 However, the second generation find themselves drawn

towards British identity as a natural allegiance of birth and as a result of socialisation processes. However, the tensions that can exist between the loyalties of parents towards ethnic identity at the place of origin and the social norms of the new culture can be very difficult to negotiate. Thus we find British-born Muslims beginning to move away from the engagement between ethnic cultures and to develop a discourse based on religion as their primary identity. The term 'British Islam' was beginning to gain currency amongst the generation born and raised in Britain even back in the early 1990s, and had found institutional expression with the advent of the Islamic Society of Britain. In this position, Islam is paramount and moderates over and determines the content and shape of ethnic and national identity. The debates of the 1990s were to set religion and ethnicity at odds with each other and resulted in attempts

Ron Geaves 19

to discover an Islamic identity that could resolve these tensions. The

advantages of such an approach were that Islam was perceived as a

universal identity able to be allied with any national loyalty and as a

primary identity provided a global ethic and code of behaviour that tran-

scended locality. Today the picture is changing again. As young British

Muslims have moved into negotiating Islamic identity with British identity,

issues of religion and citizenship have become paramount.

Successful negotiation of these three strands of identity can lead to a

British Muslim able to enjoy the best of all worlds, integrating Britishness / and

Islam but with ethnicity weakening or taking on new hybrid forms. '

However, imbalance can result in identity crises, which can lead to the

pathological in extreme cases. Too much focus on maintaining ethnicity can

lead to isolation and living in a past that becomes increasingly difficult to

hold onto. Too much focus on scriptural Islam can lead to fundamentalism

and a literalism that is not fluid enough to cope with living in a non-Muslim

environment. Too much emphasis on Britishness at the expense of Islam with

an accompanying loss of ethnicity can lead to an assimilation that leaves the

individual isolated from community /

roots and origins.

The efforts of the new generation to shift the debate away from ethnicity towards citizenship were to be complicated by the worsening international political situation. Many had been attracted to the teachings of the most influential Islamicists of the twentieth century - Maulana Mawdudi (1903-1979) and Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966). Both these activists offered two very powerful ideas. The reinterpretation of the shahada to focus on the sovereignty of Allah led to a powerful critique of Western society and institutions as shirk (idolatry) and the emergence of Islam as a political ideology. In such thinking, the ills and imbalances of the contemporary world order could be righted by embracing Islam and its political, legal, social and economic institutions wholeheartedly and rooting out from Muslim societies the man-made compromises with Western systems that were the consequence of the recently past colonial relations. The objective in the Muslim world was the foundation of Islamic states. The second potent idea was connected to the first and posited that any Islamicisation, whether individual or communal, required the purification of Islam from any cultural innovations that had been added historically to the religion as practised in some ideal past (either in Medina or by the first three generations of Muslims). Although the majority of British-born Muslims essentially rejected the idea of an Islamic state in Britain as hopelessly Utopian, the idea of an Islam that existed free from cultural accretion was a powerful symbol


British culture - attraction - necessity - assertion of self

natural allegiance

Incompatible attempt to reconcile

Exchange hostility

\ Family Safety

Aggression

Ethnic culture

Quranic Islam


for a generation trying to carve out an identity that released them from

the requirement to maintain the cultures of their parents. If Islam could

exist in a pristine state, it could provide its own independent cultural

identity but flexible enough to integrate with other systems of identity

where there was a symbiosis with Islamic norms. New movements

appeared that offered British Muslims the organisational avenues to make

concrete these two idealisations. For those who adopted both visions, the

dream of a pure Islam manifested in an Islamic state led to the advent of

radical 'rejectionist' movements such as Hizb-ut Tahrir and al-Muhajiroun.

The majority of British activists, however, embraced the ideal of a pure

Islam as a strategy for working with British institutions in partnership

without losing sight of Islamic values. The result was the creation of the

influential 'participationist' movements such ISB (Islamic Society of

Britain), MAB (Muslim Association of Britain) and MCB (Muslim Council

of Britain).13

These 'participationist' movements have travelled far from the

original radical positions of Qutb and Mawdudi, moving towards

mainstream politics and integration, framing their discourse within

citizenship issues and Islam's compatibility with democracy. The minority

who have remained loyal to the radicalism of the two ideologues

continue to proclaim loudly that democracy, founded on the tenet of the

sovereignty of the people, is at odds with the rule of Allah and

constitutes an enemy to be struggled with and overthrown by the law of

God and the triumph of Islam.

Whilst this process of politicisation and islamicisation was occuring, the sense of Muslim beleaguerment which had appeared after the publication of Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses, and the inability of protest to halt the sale of the novel, was to become much worse after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the resulting increase in US hegemony. The problem of a viable Palestinian state remained unsolvable and degenerated into a vicious condition of strike and counter-strike against civilians on both sides; the United States, Britain and their allies invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, and Kashmir remained a sore point for British Pakistanis, in particular. The collapse of the Soviet Union and world communism created armed struggles in Chechnya, and Bosnian Muslims found themselves involved in horrific ethnic cleansing caused by primitive Serbian nationalism. Into this already difficult international scenario, 9/11 came as a catalyst, achieving an iconic status even greater than its actual cataclysmic occurrence.

The worsening international situation, convincing millions of Muslims

that they were the new enemy of the United States after the end of the

Cold War, was echoed locally by the street riots in several

Ron Geaves 21

northern cities in Britain with large Muslim populations of South Asian

origin. Although not connected in any way, both were to act together as

catalysts for the British nation state to close its borders and defend its

civic culture. Whilst continuing to support multiculturalism, a new

language of integration and cohesion was voiced by national politicians

demanding controls on imported imams, intercontinental marriages

and far more rigid controls on political and economic migrants. Whilst

their elders continued with the management of the mosques and the

maintenance of traditional cultural and religious domains, young British

Muslims were once again being confronted with the question of what it

means to be Muslim and British.14

The worsening international situation played into the hands of those

who argued that the values of Western Europe and the United States were

morally decadent and their governments were maintaining a foreign

policy which was a continuation of colonialism. Internationally the

Muslim fundamentalist movements were able to successfully promote

the idea that even after the independence of Muslim nations from colonial

rule, Western powers and their ideology still rule the Islamic world under

a so-called 'Muslim mask'. Seen in these terms, such fundamentalism must

be perceived as a protest movement promulgating an ideology which

provokes a response from those groups which are the most acutely aware

of the tensions presented by the contemporary world. It is not surprising

that many young British Muslims were attracted to the fundamentalist

message as a solution to the problems that appeared to be escalating

across the globe. In addition, the critique of colonialism could also be

used in a post-colonial situation where many British Muslims faced

unequal opportunities even when achieving educational goals. For those that felt let down by the cultures of their place of birth and

the culture of their parents, new and radical solutions were sought after. The culture of parents was perceived to be riddled by traditional attitudes and beliefs that had no bearing on their own situation. Acceptance as equal citizens in their land of birth appeared remote. Fundamentalism attracted the minority because it is quintessentially modern; that is to say, it constitutes a response to events and conditions in the present.

15 In

Britain the values of modernity call for increasing assimilation into the cultural mainstream of the society into which their parents settled. At the same time, opportunities to do this on an equal footing are denied. On the other hand, the emergence of migrant communities which preserve group solidarity by defining identity ethnically cannot offer much to young Muslims who firmly know


themselves to be British. Islamic fundamentalism, in its affirmation of religious authority as holistic and absolute, offers an apparent solution to this dilemma. Although the establishment of an Islamic state remains clearly an unrealistic goal in a British inner city where Muslims are a minority, it still remains an ideal for some.

The phenomenon of religious fundamentalisms in the twentieth century states that religion can be the corporate public action of reli-giously motivated individuals to change the social system on behalf of what they perceive to be their deepest spiritual loyalties. In this respect, the 'participationist' and the 'rejectionists' are both influenced by the fundamentalist ideal and share similar values even if opposed to each other's activities. For many young Muslims in Britain, the concept of the ummah becomes of central importance to their religious ideology. In Britain, it can link many British-born Muslims to an identity which transcends both their allegiance to nationality and the ethnic loyalties of their parents. But the ideal of an identity rooted in Islamic univer-salism is not only abstract and intellectual but carries with it a powerful emotional sense of identification reinforced by the feelings of 'otherness' powerfully generated by Western racism and orientalism. In this context, it is likely that the images of Muslim civilians seen to be dying and suffering in various hotspots around the world and so graphically portrayed by the media will impact on the emotive ties inherent within identity construction. The balance between Muslim, ethnic and British identities, each with its own emotional baggage, will be radically chal-lenged by the awareness of a shared sense of the ummah in suffering.

In the meantime what has been happening to the older generation who have developed the Muslim infrastructures in Britain? A number of Muslim movements had transmigrated from the subcontinent into Britain and have been a major factor in establishing the religious infrastructure of Islam in Britain. Although such movements are not in themselves violent in their reaction to the West, historic strategies of resistance to the colonial presence of Britain in India and the loss of Muslim power created an animosity towards Western political and educational institutions and the selection of a self-conscious defensive posture of isolation.

These strategies of isolation and the subsequent related production of Muslim apologia adopted respectively by Deobandi-influenced groups and Jamaat-i Islami-influenced movements have contributed to an ambiguous relationship to the new homeland amongst first-generation South Asian migrants and continued to influence the mosque through imported imams and elders who maintain the politics of the countries of

Ron Geaves 23

origin. These strategies of resistance developed in the colonial era have

been maintained, refined and sharpened by the continuing post-colonial

relations of the majority world, especially Pakistan and Bangladesh, with the

wealthy, non-Muslim nations of the West who are still perceived to hold

the Muslim nations in the grip of poverty and underdevelopment. These

unequal post-colonial relations have formed part of the processes of

economic migration and the strategies of resistance have been maintained

in the new environment hindering any attempts at successful integration

of the new world and the old.16

British South Asian Muslims have continued

to perceive themselves as a relatively powerless minority in the midst of

non-Muslim territory and have sometimes utilised the same strategies

developed in opposition to the colonial presence.

Migrant communities have been shown to reaffirm traditional values

and consequently their religious traditions are strengthened.17

The

experience of British Muslims would suggest that this is so, but any

assessment of the events of 7/7 will need to take note of increased religiosity

among many second-generation British South Asian Muslims but within

the context of the religious environment that transmigrated with the first

generation. The religion of the parents had been created in an earlier

atmosphere of defensiveness where movements struggled against the

enemies of materialism, atheism, the influence of Christianity, and

Western political domination but also regarded each other as doctrinal

enemies. The processes of migration can be compared to rites de passage

possessing similar stages.18

In establishing their religious life based on the forms already existent in South Asia, the newly arrived migrants tried to deal with the separation or detachment from a particular set of cultural conditions by duplicating them in the new environment. Although the creation of religious forms and structures provided the constructive potential of public engagement, the continued strategies of isolation and a rhetoric of 'otherness' provided the possibility for the growth of destructive trends. For the first-generation migrants, the reform message offered the attraction of an apparently successful strategy for survival; just as it once attempted to unite all the disparate Muslim strands in India, so now it could bring together all the many ethnic divisions amongst Muslims in Britain, and serve to unite a Muslim minority community from the subcontinent to a wider worldwide movement of revival. The nineteenth-century movements had stockpiled nearly 200 years of experience in maintaining an authentic religious expression and providing a vehicle for cohesive community identity; in addition they were skilled in supplying detailed information on religious


matters concerning everyday life. However, in achieving these goals, the

policy of isolation led to them being hopelessly adrift from contem-

porary life and riven by sectarian differences.

The reproduction of religious life and the re-appropriation of Shah

Wall-Allah's old rallying cry of 'Islam in danger' may have constituted a

continuation for the first generation, but the cultural conditions did not

suit the young British-born generation who found themselves caught in

a liminal stage between the laws, customs, conventions and ceremonials of

the way of life reproduced by their parents and those dominant in

twentieth- and twenty-first-century Britain. Deprived of leadership roles

in the mosque and socially under-privileged in British society, they had

been brought up in the environment of isolation, divisiveness and

awareness of 'otherness' that constituted their parents' separation and

detachment. Islam was not utilised as a voice of integration but rather

separation and exclusiveness. In this state of liminality, the young sought

new avenues to express their condition, often seeking for the

comradeship and egalitarianism, not available in the movements and

structures created by their parents, in the twentieth-century politicised

movements which were able to symbolically parallel the liminal condi-

tion's need for communitas. They could offer a sense of sacredness,

homogeneity and intense comradeship.

It is not my contention to suggest a direct causal link between membership or contact with South Asian Islamic reform movements and acts of terrorism by British-born South Asian Muslims, but to argue that in the transition process the continuity of nineteenth-century strategies of isolation and the recreation of the discourse of 'otherness' have not helped the integration of Islam in Western society. There are signs of the third stage of rites de passage emerging, that is a new stable state possessing rights and obligations vis-a-vis others where the British Muslim is expected to behave in accordance with certain customary norms and ethical standards. Muslims need not fear such an event as assimilation for it has been demonstrated by the writings of Tariq Ramadan that Islam can accommodate the best aspects of Western democracies without in anyway compromising its own ethics.

19

In continuing the old rivalries, nothing significant has been achieved that contributes to the development of a uniquely British or even Western forms of Islam. Divergence of sects and cultural binary fission remains the norm but is achieved more effectively by the groups that represent the first generation.

20 It probably has helped to maintain the

struggle to recreate Islam by British-born generations to some extent but it has not placed the religious movements of the first generation or

Ron Geaves 25

their memberships in the heart of new discourses taking place in the

British context. However, there are signs that change is taking place. If,

on one hand, divergence has continued to flourish to the degree that it

is more accurate to speak of Muslim communities rather than a single

community, on the other hand, there are indications of a shift towards

convergence amongst young British Muslims and their leaders.

Significantly this convergence refocuses awareness on the spirituality of

Sufism as opposed to its traditional role as a carrier of ethnic or cultural

identity.21

As stated above, the pioneering groundwork to forge a British Islamic

identity was carried out by young British Muslims whose original

thought and action were influenced by Maulana Mawdudi and Sayyid

Qutb with their rhetoric of an Islamic state and the removal of all

cultural accretions from Islam. The call for an Islamic state is likely to be

more successful as a tactic for change in Muslim majority nations. In

Britain it seemed an impossible dream, at best a hope for a distant

future, at worst a tactic that would antagonise the majority population

and its official agencies of government and social control. However, the

rhetoric of identifying and struggling against cultural accretions could be

developed as a critique of ethnicity and an effective tool for carving out a

uniquely British space for Muslims. The success of this strategy is

apparent. First, the impetus for identity struggle has clearly shifted from

ethnic origin to discourses around Muslim identity and citizenship

issues. In addition several key organisations have developed which

represent the voices of young British Muslims to government and other

official agencies, completely bypassing the mosques which remained in

control of the older generation still operating under the model of

cultural binary fission. However, the old reformist argument of removing cultural accretions to

find a 'pure Islam' can result in a loss of richness and diversity that generations of tradition have established as part of the religion. At worst it leads to forms of fundamentalism and primitivism, even aggressive radicalism that have plagued Islam in the last 20 years. On the whole, the forms of British Sufism were not prone to such forms of primitive Islam, but they were open to criticisms of cultural accretion as long as they were unable to discern where tradition and ethnicity separated. On the other hand, they retained an inner piety and aura of spirituality that appeared to be absent from the more politicised reform movements.

Recent voices are emerging that appear to take account of these factors and are prepared to draw upon the new reform rhetoric of moderation, citizenship and participation in Western democracies and also realise


the value of Muslim piety and spirituality. Whilst on one hand encour-

aging British Muslims to participate actively in British democratic insti-

tutions from a standpoint of Islamic values and to reassess their position as

citizens of a non-Muslim society through creative reinterpretation of

Qur'an and Hadith utilising the methodology of traditional Islamic

sciences, on the other hand they are deeply aware of the lack of spiritu-

ality. Tariq Ramadan calls for 'the birth of a new and authentic Muslim

identity, neither completely dissolved in the Western environment nor

reacting against it but rather resting on its own foundation according to its

own Islamic sources'.2Z

In the process, British Muslims are called upon to be

activist but to maintain spirituality and faith as the innermost circle of their

Muslim identity.23

He argues that many young Muslims are leaving

Islamic associations because they feel that something is missing, a

'something' that he identifies as spirituality.24

Spirituality is defined as

remembrance and he puts forward the Sufi position that all Islamic

practices, particularly prayer, are means of recollection (dhikf).25

In Tariq Ramadan's exposition of the role of Western Muslims we hear a

convergence of the new moderate political activism and its engagement

with citizenship and identity issues but embedded in a spirituality which

takes its inspiration from traditional Muslim piety with its foundations in

tasawuf (remembrance of God). These new voices are intensely aware of

contemporary ethical issues such as environmental concerns and call

upon Muslims in the West to avoid 'binary vision' and turn to finding

'committed partners' who can 'elect' from Western culture attributes that

are positive and promote the human good and at the same time fight

actively against the negative aspects of consumerism and the 'destructive

by-products' of modern society.26

This is a long way from the

reproduction of culture that is exhibited in cultural binary fission described

above. It is, on the contrary, an attempt to carve out a new cultural and

religious space that creatively interacts with the new environment. They

bypass the world of the mosque, and Sufism influences their world view.

They are not exponents of folk tradition or the Islam of local traditions

and are able to utilise Qur'an and Hadith to great effect to put across their

message on the issues that matter to them. Ethnicity is transcended to

discover common cause in either a universal consciousness of ummah or the

ideological belonging to the ahl as-sunna wa-jama'at. In doing so a new internationalism is being forged and for the young British Muslims of

South Asian origin the inspiration is more likely to come from their own

generation from across the Muslim world or from high profile Western

converts than from the South Asian elders who still pull up drawbridges of

isolation in their respective religious

Ron Geaves 27

fiefdoms of Coventry, Birmingham, Bradford or Manchester. The future of

British Islam is being highly contested by the various emerging groups from

amongst the British-born generations. It remains hard to perceive who

will emerge as victors but it is certain that the first generation and their

forms of Islam imported from places of origin will have less and less

impact.

Notes

1. Geaves, R.A. (2005) 'Negotiating British Citizenship and Muslim Identity' Muslim Britain, Tahir Abbas (ed.), London: Zed Books, pp. 66-77.

2. For a detailed account of nineteenth-century South Asians in Britain, see Visram, R. (2002) Asians in Brtiain: 400 Years of History, London: Pluto Press.

3. See Halliday, F. (1992) Arabs in Exile: Yemeni Migrants in Urban Britain. London: IB Tauris.

4. The origins of the Woking mosque have been described by Nielsen, J. (1995) Muslims in Western Europe, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press and Geaves, R.A. (2000) Sufis of Britain, Cardiff: Cardiff Academic Press. The activities of Sheikh Abdullah Quilliam in Liverpool have been recently high-lighted by the attempts of the Muslims in Liverpool to purchase his original centre and turn it into a museum of Islamic culture in the city to be called Abdullah Quilliam Heritage Centre. The Abdullah Quilliam Society has been created in Liverpool to co-ordinate these activities.

5. Robinson, F. (1988) 'Varieties of South Asian Islam', Research Paper in Ethnic Relations, no. 8, Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations, University of Warwick.

6. Ballard, R. and Ballard C. (1977) The Sikhs: The Development of South Asian Settlements in Britain', Between Two Cultures, Watson, J. (ed.), Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 21-56.

7. Sanyal, U. (2005) Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwi, Oxford: Oneworld, p. xi. 8. Knott, K. (1992) 'The Role of Religious Studies in Understanding the Ethnic

Experience', Community Religions Project Research Paper, Leeds: University of Leeds, p. 12.

9. Francis, E.K. (1976) Interethnic Relations, New York: Elsevier, p. 157. 10. Anwar, M. (1980) 'Religious Identity in Plural Societies: The Case of Britain',

The Journal of the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, 2:2/3:1, pp. 110-121. 11. Geaves, R.A. (1996) Sectarian Influences within Islam in Britain, Leeds: Mono-

graph Series, Community Religions Project, p. 54. 12. Werbner, P. (2002) Imagined Diaspora ̂among Manchester Muslims, Oxford:

James Currey, p. 49. 13. The labels of 'participationist' and 'rejectionist' were coined by McRoy, A.

(2006) From Rushdie to 7/7: The Radicalisation of Islam in Britain, London: The Social Affairs Unit.

14. Geaves, R.A. (2005), pp. 71-72. 15. Geaves, R.A. (1996), p. 78. 16. For a fuller analysis of these historic strategies, see Geaves, R.A. (2007)

'An Assessment of Colonial Strategies of Resistance, Liminality and


Herberg's Thesis in the Rise of Radicalism and the phenomenon of the "suicide bomber" in British South Asian Youth', Islam Political Radicalism: A European Comparative Perspective, Abbas, T. (ed.), Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

17. Will, H. (1983) Protestant-Catholic few: An Essay in American Religious Sociology (2nd edition), Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

18. See Victor, T. (1969) 'Liminality and Communitas', The Ritual Process: Struc-ture and Anti-Structure, Chicago: Aldine Publishing. Van Gennup in his classic work on rites de passage had posited a three-stage process. The first phase is that of separation or detachment of the group or individual from the previous fixed point in the social structure or a set of cultural conditions; the second is the liminal stage, where the group or individual passes through a period that is 'betwixt and between' located states and positions in cultural space; the third and final stage is the re-emergence of the group or individual to a new stable state described by Turner as possessing 'rights and obligations vis-a-vis others of a clearly defined and structural type; he is expected to behave in accordance with certain customary norms and ethical standards binding upon incumbents of social position in a system of such positions'.

19. See Ramadan, T. (2004) Western Muslims and the Future of Islam. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

20. Sometimes traditions are duplicated so effectively in the diaspora situation, providing a mirror image of village customs and practices, that I have preferred to use the term 'cultural binary fission' to describe the process of reproduction. The term 'binary fission' is borrowed from Biology and refers to the most basic reproductive method known to nature, where amoebae simply divide their cells and split into two to create a duplicate of themselves. I am not arguing that the attempt is successful as there will always be transformations that take place in a new environment but that the religious forms created by the first generation have functioned as attempts to duplicate the cultural forms of the locality of origin. See Geaves, R.A. (2005) 'Trans-global Mysticism or a case of Cultural Binary Fission: The Transmigration of Sufism in Britain', Global Networking and Locality: Suflsm in Western Societies, Department of Cultural Studies, University of Bremen, September 29, 2005.

21. See Geaves R.A. (2000) Sufis of Britain, Cardiff: Cardiff Academic Press. 22. Ramadan, T. (2004) Western Muslims and the Future of Islam, Oxford: Oxford

University Press, p. 83. 23. Ibid., p. 85. 24. Ibid., p. 125. 25. Ibid., p. 79. 26. Ibid., p. 76.

For Muslims guidance is the

religious imperative. The Qur'an

is understood as Allah's

guidance par excellence, especially as exemplified in the

Prophet's life. As the Islamic

community spread in time and

space, believers whose religious

and cultural sensibilities had

been shaped by other religions

and languages had new

questions for which they sought

guidance. Who was to answer

their questions? Once Islamic law - shari'a - was sufficiently developed,

many turned to jurists who answered with legal decisions - fatawa; others, impatient of such external knowledge of the religious sciences -

'ilm - sought out the sufi orders custodians of experiential knowledge of

God - ma'rifat.1

As Muslims have travelled, traded and traversed new linguistic and

cultural worlds there has been a constant dialectic of adaptation to such

societies by jurists and sufis as they sought to answer unfamiliar

questions put to them and a process of 'Islamisation', whereby madrasa-

trained scholars ceaselessly campaigned

against 'aberrant' local custom... whether referred to as reform (islah), renewal (tajdid), religious summoning (da'wa), or even holy struggle (jihad) [and inspired] thousands of men to return to their home districts, or penetrate unfamiliar territory, to teach, cajole, inspire, and lead local peoples into a more 'proper' observance of the faith.

(Bulliet 1994: 187)

The twentieth century has brought new challenges, new questions and - most disquietingly for the 'ulama, the custodians of traditional Islam - new institutions of public education which have threatened their monopoly of religious learning. Muslim students can now learn about Islam in school and university, whose teachers are often themselves the

British Muslims and the Search for Religious Guidance

Philip Lewis

29


products of state tertiary education rather than the madrasa. Moreover, across the Muslim world, modernists and Islamists alike have created their own separate institutions of Islamic study and research.

The search for guidance is difficult enough in the Muslim world with the proliferation of different and often competing centres of religious authority. The task becomes more urgent and more difficult in much of the Western world, where, through economic migration since the Second World War, significant Muslim communities have been created. Islamic jurisprudence did not anticipate that Muslims would willingly choose to leave the House of Islam for the House of Unbelief. Muslims now find themselves as minorities in countries whose public life, culture and institutions owe little or nothing to Islam. A situation for which the Islamic religious tradition offers little guidance. As Dr Zaki Badawi, the distinguished Egyptian scholar and former Director of the prestigious Islamic Cultural Centre and mosque in London, has repeatedly remarked, 'Muslim theology offers, up to the present, no systematic formulations of the status of being in a minority' (Badawi 1981: 27).

This chapter offers a preliminary study and assessment of some of the attempts made by Muslims to create religious institutions which can connect with the social and intellectual world of young British Muslims. Particularly important is the question of whether Muslims in Britain can access the insights and developing expertise emerging from within multi-ethnic Muslim communities, whether Arab, South Asian or British (through conversion). I consider their impact on one northern industrial city, Bradford, which has the third largest concentration of Muslims in Britain, after London and Birmingham, and is linked through nationality, sect, kinship and caste with all the other main Muslim centres of settlement in Britain.

2

Curriculum, ethos and alumni of Britain's Islamic seminaries

Britain's mosques continue to be the favoured location for passing on the Islamic tradition to a new generation of Britain's Muslims. The community has invested hugely in these institutions which number 613, of which 96 are purpose built.

3 Bradford has some 30 mosques and nine

supplementary schools, many of which have links with British semin-aries. Seminaries belonging to two traditions with their origins in South Asia will be the focus of this section. The first are the Deobandi semin-aries at Bury and Dewsbury, the second, a new Barelwi initiative in Nottingham. The Bury dar al 'ulum was the first Deobandi dar al 'ulutn

Philip Lewis 31

(literally, house of [religious] sciences) to be established in 1975, and

has developed links with al-Azhar in Cairo and Madina University in

Saudi Arabia, where many of its students go after completing their 6-year

programme of study. Dewsbury was set up in 1982. Also in the Deobandi tradition it shares with Bury an emphasis on dini (religious) rather than

duniawi (worldly) concerns. Bury serves as the European centre of the revivalist

movement, Tablighi Jamaat. Deobandi and Barelwi seminaries continue to draw heavily on a

famous eighteenth-century Indian syllabus of study - dars-i nizami. The

Bury syllabus is sufficiently similar to that taught at Nottingham to serve as

an introduction to the intellectual world of both traditions. They offer a

6-year course. The first year comprises the basics of the Arabic language

- grammar (sarf) and syntax (nahw) - taught with Urdu text books;

elementary works in Arabic on literature and language; the life of the

Prophet, his companions, and the history of early Islam, again taught

through the medium of Urdu. In the second year more difficult books in

Arabic on grammar and syntax are introduced, along with a textbook on

composition in Arabic and translation exercises from Arabic into Urdu.

Arabic literature and language are given priority. History drops out and

fiqh, Islamic jurisprudence, is introduced, through selections from a

Hanafi text. Qur'anic recitation, tajwid, also makes its first appearance.

The third year includes the same stress on Arabic with the addition of

Arabic rhetoric, and for the first time Qur'anic commentary, tafsir, with

half the Qur'an translated from Arabic into Urdu. A beginning is made on

the study of the principles of Islamic jurisprudence. The life of the

Prophet, selections from hadith and tajwid complete the years' study. The fourth year includes classical Arabic literature, Arabic rhetoric,

and the second half of the Qur'an is translated from Arabic into Urdu. An elementary work of logic is introduced as an aid to understanding the Qur'an. The principles of Islamic jurisprudence are further explored, hadith and tajwid complete this year's study. In the fifth year there is study of an Arabic text book mapping the changes in language from classical to modern Arabic; a Hanafi text book on the terminology and the principles of Hadith selection; a short Arabic commentary of the Qur'an by Suyuti (d. 1505), written in co-operation with his teacher, known as tafsir aljalalayn; Tibrizi's famous compilation of hadith, Mishkat al Masabih - 'niche of the lamps' (sura 24: 35); Marghinani's Hidaya, a twelfth-century compilation of Islamic case-law; a text of apologetic theology on articles of belief, al 'aqaid, by Nasafi (d. 1143); and tajwid. The final year is devoted entirely to reading in Arabic and translating

into Urdu all the six collections of hadith, along with Imam Malik's

Muwatta.

This syllabus clearly reflects the continuing influence of the dars-i

nizami in such works as Suyuti's short Qur'anic commentary, Tibrizi's

compilation of hadith, Nasafi's text book on kalam, apologetic theology,

and the Hidaya. The distinghuished Indian Arabist and historian Maulana

Shibli Nu'mani (d. 1916) was critical of the dars-i nizami syllabus'

dependence on the slight works by Suyuti and Nasafi, which he felt had

hardly begun to do justice to the rich treasury of Muslim scholarship in the

area of tafsir and kalam. The same criticism holds good for these British

seminaries.

The potential of history as a valuable tool for a contextual appreciation

of the strengths and weaknesses of key Islamic texts - not least the twelfth

century Hidaya - has yet to be explored at either Deobandi seminary. Their

emphasis on hadith, with some 20 per cent of the timetable devoted to it,

means that outside the first year's cursory study of early Islamic history,

there is no other study of Islamic history, nor any exposure to great Muslim

thinkers such as al Ghazali (d. 1111) or Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406) or indeed

the Indian scholar, Shah Wall Allah (d. 1762), one of the few South Asian

scholars whose work in Arabic is studied at al-Azhar in Cairo. Only in the

private school, catering for boys between 13 and 16 years old, are English

and modern subjects studied at all. Since so little Islamic history or Islamic

philosophy is studied, it is difficult to envisage the graduates of such centres

developing the confidence to study British philosophy, history and literature,

still less politics, economics, and more recent disciplines such as the social

sciences and psychology.

Bury and its sister foundation at Dewsbury provide a closed process of

socialisation within total institutions which organise all aspects of life -

study, leisure and sleeping - and where all activities are carried out in the

company of people from the same institution and regulated from above. In

these seminaries there are no televisions or videos, since these are considered

to transgress the Islamic prohibition against representation of living

creatures. Radios and newspapers are also excluded as a distraction - there

are periodic checks in the dormitories to make sure no one is listening to a

radio. Music is considered as haram and often preached against with

youngsters told that on the Day of Judgement molten glass will be poured

into the ears of those who have so indulged. Paradise and Hell frame the

horizon within which life is conducted.

The education of those in the private school - 13-16 years old - has to

conform to the dictates of English law. Four subjects are offered

to General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) level: English

language, general science, maths and Urdu. However, while this is taught

in the afternoon the rest of the curriculum is taught in the morning in Urdu

and an emphasis is placed on learning the Qur'an by heart in Arabic - hifz -

without as yet understanding it. It is clear that the students live in two

distinct linguistic and cultural worlds. One may illustrate this from the Urdu

Islamic textbook used - Lessons from Islam by Mufti Kifayatullah (d. 1952).

Here the students read about the miracles wrought by the Prophet, including

'splitting the moon', an interpretation of sura 54: 1. In the afternoon they

study general science in English. Any possible discordance between these two

worlds is neither recognised nor addressed, in part because different

teachers teach the Islamics course in Urdu and the English curriculum.

The traditional method of teaching in such institutions is for the student

to master a series of set texts. Thus a group studying hadith will read it out in

Arabic, then translate it into Urdu. The teacher will correct the Arabic or the

Urdu translation, where incorrect, and give his or her interpretation of its

meaning. This latter will be considered as normative and when the students

are examined, orally or in writing, the teacher's interpretation will be

reproduced. The emphasis is on the transfer of personalised knowledge

whereby a given corpus of works and their accredited interpretation is

mastered. Such traditional Islamic seminaries have little interest in individual

expression or creative writing:

In religious instruction the teacher is not someone whom it is easy to

challenge... [since] any criticizing the teacher would be taken to be

criticism of Islam... If the teacher is the custodian of truth, then there is no

point in trying to develop the imaginative or the collaborative capacities

of his pupils, since that would only result in a distortion or weakening

of the truth that it is his role to transmit. (Leaman 1996: 314)

Bury and Dewsbury are not impervious to the need for some changes. This

is evident in three developments: Dewsbury now has meetings for

'professionals' conducted in English, Bury has produced a magazine in

English - Subula Salaam/Peaceways - and it is possible for its more able

alumni to subsequently acquire degrees in a Western university. I attended a

meeting of 'professionals' in September 1996. This comprised some 1200

people who came from all over Britain for a 24-hour meeting. On the walls

of the prayer hall were signs for the different groups from Yorkshire,

Lancashire, Scotland, London, the Midlands and Wales to

Philip Lewis 33 32 Religious and Social Issues


gather and place their bedrolls. In the address I attended, the speaker worried about 'rebellious' women and youth, along with 'Westernism, materialism and egotism'. Muslims were urged to assume their responsib-ilities and duties to their neighbours and friends. They were to banish any feelings of inferiority since they had the superior din (religion). The speaker admitted that to wear a beard was to be scorned and assailed with slogans such as fundamentalist, extremist and militant. However, he insisted that Muslims could not 'be assimilated or absorbed'.

The three young men I spoke to who had travelled from Birmingham, conspicuous in their Western dress, admitted that they were unhappy with Tablighi Jama'at's acontextual approach and their failure to connect with real issues such as unemployment, racism and drugs affecting many Muslim youth. Still, what is significant is that the movement is not confined to the marginalised and poorly educated, those suffering unemployment and the social dislocation of migration. Although it continues to offer such men self-respect, brotherhood and a sense of purpose as they are re-Islamicised, albeit within a very South Asian milieu.

Bury's bimonthly magazine - Peace-ways - is also an important concession to the demands of a new location. However, as with seminary and revivalist gathering, its content focuses on personal religiosity - modelling every particular of one's life on the Prophet's example - and seldom strays into the public world of politics and economics, still less engage with the world of most Muslim youth. The content of the magazine is edifying and exemplary stories of the Prophet, the companions and the saints. A page is devoted to 'questions'. The following are a selection from one edition (May-June 1995): Is it permissible to walk away while sitting in front of a person performing salaah (prayer)? Is there any thawab (merit) in listening to the Qur'an... recited on a cassette player? Is it lawful to eat rabbit meat? Is it lawful to take out a loan to build a house on my plot of land? Is it permissible to scatter dates in the mosque on the occasion of nikah (marriage)? I am a 28-year-old student and I want to get married. I have heard that women do not like men with beards? Can I shave? In what proportions should I distribute the estate of deceased relative to his wife, children and nieces?

Imam 'Akhtar' is a young 'alim, who has successfully traversed three educational, linguistic and cultural worlds: a graduate from Bury in 1988, a BA in Islamic studies from al-Azhar in 1990 and an MA from the Department of Middle Eastern Studies of Manchester University in 1992. As well as teaching youngsters about Islam, he lectures part-time on aspects of Islam in a local university.

Philip Lewis 35

'Akhtar' considers that Bury has benefited from its links with al-

Azhar, which already has had some impact on curriculum and teaching

methods. He instanced the inclusion of the book by the Indian scholar

Abul Hasan All Nadwi (b. 1914) on developments within the Arabic

language from the classical to the modern age, and the inclusion in 1990 of

the famous tafsir by Baidawi (d. 1286), introduced to complement the

shorter work of Suyuti. With regard to method, one major innovation,

borrowed from Azhar, has been the addition of a 10,000- and 15,000-

word thesis at the end of the fifth and sixth years. Such a thesis can be

written in Arabic, English or Urdu and involves some minimal research.

The Principal of Bury had also encouraged a few students to go on to

study Islamics, law and Arabic at British universities. 'Akhtar' was

confident that, in time, this would have a further impact on Bury in both

the content of the curriculum and the methods of study. He acknow-

ledged, however, that Bury was a long way from getting its courses in

Islamics and Arabic accredited by British universities. They had been

advised that if they introduced some 'A' level studies their students

could, at least, transfer to a British University more easily than at present.

What was surprising was that 'Akhtar' had not encountered the works

of modernist Islamic scholarship in Egypt. He had, for example, not

studied any of the works of the greatest of al-Azhar's reformers,

Muhammad Abduh (d. 1905). He had gained a cursory knowledge of

Western scholarship in his study of Islamic thought at Manchester.

However, 'Akhtar' appeared innocent of the concerns and anxieties of

modernist Muslims. For example, he expressed no difficulty with the

section in Hidaya which, in the context of prescribing rules of evidence,

insists that in most cases 'the evidence required is of two men or of one

man and two women, whether the case relate to property... marriage,

divorce, agency, executorship...' (Hamilton 1987: 353). The formula

'one man equals two women' has been extrapolated from a Qur'anic

verse touching on witnesses to a financial transaction, where the reasons are

stated: 'if one of them (women) should make a mistake, the other could

remind her' (sura 2: 282).

The traditionalist, nourished by such esteemed works as Hidaya,

considers

the law that two female witnesses equal one male is eternal and a social change that enabled a woman to get used to financial trans-actions would be un-Islamic. The modernist... would say... when


women become conversant with such matters... their evidence can equal that of a man.

(Rahman 1980: 48-9)

'Akhtar' seemed unaware of this whole debate, a storm centre in contem-

porary Pakistan, and one of the factors behind the emergence there of a

women's movement. He exhibited no understanding of why such

teaching might be considered problematic to some of his Muslim

contemporaries.4

By 1995 Bury had produced 260 ulama, 250 trained reciters of the

Qur'an and 290 huffaz (Peaceways April/May 1995: 2). We might assume

that British mosques are snapping up such bi-lingual 'ulama. In reality

this does not seem to be the case. Many prefer to continue to import

South Asian personnel. A major reason is economic: British-trained

'ulama expect a decent salary, while those from South Asia usually come

without their family and remain dependent on the mosque committee -

most have no job security. In short, many Deobandi graduates find them-

selves in a dilemma: the mosques cannot or will not pay them a living

wage and their training is too specialist to equip them to work in the

mainstream education system. Therefore, increasing numbers eke out an

existence in shops, market stalls and family businesses. This could mean

that the more able members of families are sent off to universities while the

less able are sent to the seminaries, a situation already happening in India.5

In a conversation with a member of a national umbrella organisation

for Deobandi ulama - Jami'at-Ulama Britannia (JUB) - I was told that

JUB hoped to persuade these seminaries to deepen and widen their

curriculum, for example to include 'A' levels. They would also press them to

provide some recreational opportunities such as inter-mosque football and

cricket competitions. Finally, they would like them to establish links with

local teacher training colleges to enable them to get a training

qualification. Once this happened the Muslim community might be able to

win over Local Education Authorities to employ them as peripatetic

religious education teachers for Muslim pupils on analogy with the

present provision of peripatetic music teachers. At the moment such

hopes seem far from realisation.

While 'Akhtar' is confident that incremental change will enable Bury

to better connect with the intellectual and cultural world of educated

British Muslims, this is not the view of Dr Musharaf Hussain. Dr Hussain

is the intellectual driving force behind the new Barelwi initiative Al-

Karam College in Eaton, Nottingham, comprising private

Philip Lewis 37

Islamic school, college and dor al 'ulum. Dr Hussain, like 'Akhtar' has

traversed three different intellectual and cultural worlds, although in a

different sequence. He acquired elementary religious education from a

Bradford 'alim, then earned a PhD in medical biochemistry from Aston

University. After some years as a research scholar at Nottingham

University he spent a year in a traditional dar al 'ulum in Pakistan -that of

a distinguished Pakistani religious scholar, Pir Karam Shah, after whom

the Nottingham centre is named. He rounded off his Islamic formation by

gaining a BA in Islamic Studies from al-Azhar in Egypt.

Dr Hussain found the al-Azhar education was much broader than that of

a traditional Pakistani dar al 'ulum. It was much more ready to consider

and learn from a wider band of Islamic scholarship, including classical

Islamic philosophy and Shi'ite works. Yet, he still found his al-Azhar

teachers largely insulated from the intellectual world of modern society.

Therefore, although at present Al-Karam College has some 150 boarders in

its private school and college - due to increase to 350 -and two dozen

students participating in a fairly traditional dar al 'ulum syllabus, he hopes

that the college will eventually win accreditation for a 3-year BA in

Arabic and Islamic Studies. This he sees as comprising a relevant

intellectual formation for a new generation of British 'ulama. In sum, Dr

Hussain, while salvaging some of the works from the dars-i nizami

syllabus for a new BA programme, feels that a radical new start is

required if British 'ulama are to have any chance of relating to the

intellectual and cultural world of Muslims having higher education in

Britain.

The ethos and curriculum of the Al Karam private school is also very

different from Bury and Dewsbury. At the Deobandi centres dress and the

language of instruction - Urdu - breathes the world of South Asia. Not so at

Eaton. The pupils are dressed in Western clothes, the classrooms are full

of the latest audio-visual tehnology, and 'A' levels are offered. The school

and college prospectus is at home with the educational jargon of key

stages and offers a well-thought-out curriculum reflecting the national

curriculum and Islamic teaching. Unlike the Deobandi seminaries this

offers an integrated model of Islamic and Western knowledge. In all there

is a realisation that most of the students will not become 'ulama and will

need to transfer to institutions of tertiary education elsewhere in Britain.

This attempt to fuse the best of the two intellectual traditions is deliberate

and reflects Dr Hussain's worry that most Muslims


are still reticent about calling themselves British Muslims, preferring to regard themselves as Pakistanis or Bengali Muslims living in Britain. He wrote,

Perhaps many of our elders have serious reservations about calling

themselves British because of what the British did to their forefathers in

India or the Middle East... But aren't our circumstances different now?

Haven't we willingly accepted British nationality? It's high time we

seriously adopted our distinct British Muslim identity... if we fail to do

so we will not be able to take root [here] and we shall always remain

in our ghettos and as foreigners at the fringes of society.

(The Invitation December/January 1994/5: 1-2)

The college magazine -Thelnvitation - also reflects a more holistic vision of Islam. It seeks to combine dini and duniawi concerns: there are sections for children, education, current affairs and a forum for questions. What is striking, in contrast with Peaceways, is that it includes female contributors, as well as articles about Muslim women. In some numbers there are profiles of the celebrated Pakistani cricketer Imran Khan, an interview with a female Pakistani television personality now working for a West Yorkshire media company, an interesting justification for taking family photographs, reflections on the Cairo conference on population, as well as a considered meditation on 'How man can draw closer to God through science' by Dr Hussain himself, who is unusually well equipped to write on such an issue.

Various other Muslim institutions in Britain have reflected on the desiderata for an Islamic curriculum in Britain, whether the 'Muslim Parliament' in its educational white paper published in 1992, or the 'The Muslim College' in London in its 'provisional prospectus'.

6 All agree on the

need to teach in English and to add history and philosophy - Islamic and Western - to the traditional curriculum of Qur'an, hadith and flqh. If 'The Muslim College' is right to insist that for Islam to 'survive and prosper in modern Europe it must learn the techniques and frames of reference of modern European culture' then it is clear that Bury and Dewsbury have a long way to go and that the Barelwi tradition - on the basis of Dr Hussain's analysis and programme - seems more hospitable to such an engagement with modernity. However, Al-Karam College only began operating from Nottingham in September 1995 so it is too early to evaluate its success in realising its ambitious aims. Dr Hussain is well aware that the college's success will, in part, depend on attracting well-educated and well-motivated staff.

Philip Lewis 39

The emergence of a British Islamic identity

Clearly among the preconditions for a self-consciously British Islamic

identity to emerge are institutions and organisations comfortable with

operating in English - Al-Karam College with its creative engagement

with Western education is the most promising development within

'traditional' Islam. The involvement of Bradford's most respected and

distinguished Barewli 'alim, 'Allama Nishtar, teaching part-time in its

Islamic seminary, augurs well for future links with Bradford mosques in the

Barelwi tradition.

Outside traditional Islam there have been other important devel-

opments. Increasing numbers of British Muslims are studying Arabic at

university. There are now a trickle of university departments with

Muslim scholars lecturing in Islam - Lampeter, SOAS, Cambridge,

Chester, Manchester - and the Christian-Muslim collaborative venture of

the Centre for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations (CSIC)

which functions as a postgraduate school of the theology department of

Birmingham University. A most important initiative to emerge from co-

operation between CSIC personnel, Birmingham University and local Muslim

communities in the city has been the development in 1991 of a 4-year BEd at

Westhill College in Islamic Studies for primary school teachers, with

Islamics taught by Muslim staff. Since 1994 a further Honours degree

course has been developed, a Bachelor of Theology -the Islamic equivalent

to the BTH offered in applied Christian theology. Once again a number of

Bradford Muslims are on such courses.7

Within self-consciously Muslim groups in Britain the Young Muslims UK

(YM), which formally came into being in Bradford in the autumn of

1984, with its study circles, annual camps for male and female pupils,

excellently produced magazine ~z_T[endsj- has developed into a national

organisation appealing to able young pupils in secondary schools and

colleges. It is part of the well-resourced Islamist tradition with its

research and publications headquarters - The Islamic Foundation - in

Leicester. Not only is it able to draw on their well-produced English

literature but is now formally the youth wing of The Islamic Society of

Britain QSB)Jaunched in 1990. The ISB offers a home for members of

YM when they cease being students and is intended to provide an organisation where Muslims from South Asian backgrounds and British

converts can work together developing a self-consciously British

expression of Islam. ISB and YM jointly organise an Islam Awareness Week

in the autumn to coincide with the opening of the new university terms.


Their third Islam Awareness Week (IAW) in September 1996 was accompanied by an eight-page free newspaper in English: on the front page an English Muslim insisted that 'Islam is not some foreign reli-gion'; an Afro-Caribbean convert worried about a friend who had also converted but was now going astray because of the paucity of provision by the Muslim community of 'social activities specially sports activities'; ISB declared its commitment to contribute to 'enriching... Britain' as it sought to revive 'long forgotten dimensions and objectives of Islam... [i.e.] social justice, spiritual nourishment, moral uprightness and personal development'.

The paper was characterised by a refreshing candour and self-criticism. Farooq Murad, Vice-President of ISB, and ex-President of YM, acknow-ledged that 'sharing the Message [of Islam] is a much neglected respons-ibility, and in our religious commitments it is rarely mentioned let alone given its due importance'. His father, Dr Khurram Murad, a leading Jama'at-i Islami activist in Pakistan, when asked in an interview what changes he had noticed during the 20 years he has been visiting Britain, positively commended the emergence of YM and ISB but also acknow-ledged that 'differences among Muslims have grown and sectarianism has strengthened'. Batool Toma spoke of attending the investiture of the Mayor of Peterborough, himself a Muslim, where she had opportunities to talk to non-Muslims and dispel myths about Islam. She observed that 'It was not that those with whom I conversed had any wish to remain uninformed about Islam... rather... that few opportunities are available to us for the kind of interaction which facilitates this exchange of information to take place.'

In a reflective piece, entitled 'Our Interconnected Future', Dr Ataullah Siddiqui, of The Islamic Foundation, noted that

Our community is one among many, and this is not by accident but by the design of God... What we need is to connect with others on the basis of our humanity, our human family, promoting the commonly known goods (ma 'ruf) and demoting the commonly known evils (munkar) in human society. In Britain today, Muslims are sharing classrooms, hospital wards, work place and even cemeteries with non-Muslims. Despite all this sharing, the Muslim discourse today is about 'us', 'our needs', 'our demands', it is about 'our exclusivity'. We have not been able to see the society around us as 'our society'. We have our shared humanity and shared 'morality' such as humility, truthfulness, justice for the poor and the needy. Our future is intrinsically connected with fellow human beings. But this is hardly

Philip Lewis 41

reflected in our organisational programmes and individual priorities. A

change of perception is necessary and it is only possible if Muslim

individuals and organisations have the will and ideas [to provide the

space] for non-Muslims to play a constructive role along with

Muslims... [then] perhaps our presence will be seen as an asset, not a

liability.

This publication, as a practical initiative in collaboration with non-

Muslims, included a short article by a Christian leader, the Bishop of

Southwark. What is clear is that with initiatives such as YM and ISB a

section of the Muslim community is developing the confidence to

engage with the majority community in a variety of forums. The I AW

newspaper advertised Islamic courses and degrees offered by the University

of Wales, Lampeter, taught by Muslim scholars. The ex-director of the

Islamics department - Dr Mashuq ibn Ally - as a founder member of the

youth movement which preceded YM and active in various Islamist

organisations - has the confidence of both organisations.

The YM continue to be active in Bradford. In the summer of 1994 it

produced a glossy newsletter - The Yorkshire Muslim - with information

about its many groups in Bradford, Leeds, Halifax and Huddersfield.

What was impressive was the range and variety of activities. In Bradford

they run a football club for Muslim youngsters, an 'A' level and GCSE

tuition centre, study circles for learning Arabic, a women's gathering in

Urdu, and, as well as separate study circles for 'brothers' and 'sisters', a

joint gathering for those 20 years old or above. What is clear is that they

have learned that if they are to make real inroads into the Bradford

Muslim communities they have to shed something of their elitist image,

offer leisure as well as study opportunities, and seek to respond to real

issues in the community such as extra tuition for Muslim pupils, many of

whom are underachieving in local schools. Inside this glossy handout was

an article 'Hellfire, Paradise: You Choose', which contrasted vividly and in

much detail the torments of hell - citing Qur'anic verses imaginatively

elaborated with considerable relish - with the delights of paradise. The

seriousness of the issues are communicated on their front page:

[Yorkshire Muslims] are not fooled by the bhangra or the beat, neither are they into drink to behave like apes on the streets. They're not the drop outs hooked on hashish... They are light onto darkness to give people hope and a chance of a new start... Don't be foolish and follow the DROP! all the way down to Hell... No! SAVE YOURSELF!


The YM clearly are trying hard to connect with the language and

concerns of young Muslim youth. In one of their copy of Trends Quly

1996) they have an article entitled 'Islam in Cyber Space', which lists

Muslim material on e-mail and the Internet, as well as identifying some

of the pitfalls of this new information superhighway. As well as articles

about Islamist struggles around the world, material for children, comment

on British current affairs and a letter page, it is prepared to publish

controversial articles. Thus, it includes a long series of answers by Sheikh

Syed Darsh - a graduate of Al-Azhar, Cairo and chairman of the UK

Shariah Council - on different aspects of marriage. To the question 'Can

a girl/boy choose her/his own partner?' Dr Darsh answers,

Traditionally girls were the passive partners in such matches. The possibility of meeting... was not widely available... Nowadays girls go to schools and proceed to universities. They meet with boys in classrooms, Islamic societies and at universities... They get to know one another in a decent moral environment. They are mature, well educated, cultured and outspoken. These factors have to be taken into consideration. Once a decent, good mannered Islamically committed young Muslim attracts the attention of a like minded Muslimah, their parents have to be reasonable... They have to realise that they are not buying or selling commodities.

(Trends, July 1996:8-9)

One critical development which can contribute to the emergence of a British Muslim identity is the creation of a British Muslim press. The Muslim weekly, Q News, started publication in March 1992 and has sought to provide British Muslim communities, bearing multiple and often conflicting national, caste and sectarian identities, a forum to discuss and debate a range of contentious issues in the community. So far it has successfully avoided alignment with any Sunni group and also covers the Shiah world. Its journalists are often British-educated women, which ensures the voice of Muslim women is increasingly heard.

Q News does not avoid contentious issues nor controversial institu-tions: in some issues Dr Mohammad Ghayasuddin, the organiser for the 'Muslim Parliament' of Muslim charity, was profiled and criticised the fact that 90 per cent of the estimated £50 million British Muslims spent on charity went overseas rather than addressing some of the pressing needs in Britain, not least among young British Muslims toppling into crime and drug-addiction; an editorial thundered against the importation into Britain of Pakistani sectarian politico-religious extremism with

Philip Lewis 43

the invitation and visit of Mr Zia ur Rahman Farooki, leader of the

'odious Sipah-e Sahaba', a rabidly anti-Shiah group; of a piece with this

was an article criticising Muslims who collude with negative media profiles

of Islam by their refusal to condemn acts of terrorism committed by Muslims

and whose author reminded his readers that suicide bombers put themselves

outside the pale of Islam; a Muslim convert sought to defend the

emergence of a 'liberal Islam' against its detractors who seemed willing to

call for an armed jihad in Britain: she lambasted the self-righteousness of

those willing to pre-empt Allah's role as ultimate judge, to ignore Qur'anic

injunctions to mercy and compassion and willing to impose Islam by

force; a Muslim Women's Helpline in Wembley congratulated the weekly

for opening up the issue of abuse of women in the Muslim world and

observed that

We are inundated with calls from highly intelligent, devout young

sisters who wish to pursue further studies in education but are often in

conflict with parents and their cultural views. Often, these vulnerable

girls run away when pressure is too great to bear, particularly when

parents think that packing them off 'back home' is going to solve the

problem. They generally end up in vile refuges... Then there are

married women who are more or less imprisoned within four walls...

[and] end up on tranquilisers, anti-depressants or Prozac. (QNavs 11-24 October 1996: 16)

Another valuable feature of Q News is the biweekly column by Sheikh Syed Darsh giving answers to a wide range of questions sent to him. The topics touched on suggest little or no censorship is exercised. Leafing through back numbers the following questions were posed: What was the attitude to 'gay' Muslims? Whether workers could go on strike? Was it licit to watch footballers prancing around in shorts during Euro 96? Can live bait be used in fishing? Should prostitution be decriminalised? Was it right to do jury service in a non-Islamic judicial system? What of involvement in British party politics? Was it right to send children to state schools with their un-Islamic ethos? Nor does Sheikh Darsh avoid questions which touched on sectarian issues within the community. Thus, he sympathised with a Deobandi questioner perplexed by constantly being told not to worship in Barelwi mosques because they prefix 'Ya' to the name of the Prophet. Sheikh Darsh explained that

One school approves of the prefix which they say indicates that the Prophet is capable of seeing, hearing and generally interceding for


suppliants. Others believe supplications should be directed to God alone because he alone has these attributes... However, today many young people are being brainwashed into regarding this as an act of shirk - a reaction which is causing lots of dissension and hostility amongst our community.

(QNews, 26July-1 August 1996: 5)

The impact of such developments on Bradford's Muslim communities

Muslim youth workers and teachers are more likely to be confidants of young people on religious issues than 'ulama. However, very few feel equal or equipped to adequately discharge this responsibility at the moment. The situation may be eased as teachers qualify in Islamics at Westhill College in Birmingham. Only one mosque in Bradford has any provision for youth recreation and the mosques are not considered user-friendly by most young people. Imam 'Akhtar' acknowledges that the 'ulama are not role models for young people. Dr Hussain has deliberately chosen the term 'college' for the Nottingham initiative in preference to madrasa or dar al 'ulum because the latter have negative associations for British Muslims.

The editorial in an edition of a Muslim monthly, a Barelwi publication distributed in Yorkshire and Lancashire, posed the rhetorical question:

Today with so many mosques - has the community become united? Has it got a unified leadership? Have the mosques given a sound Islamic education to the younger generation?... Have [they] become community centres where the young and the old, men and women can visit and celebrate their functions?... thousands from the younger generation are becoming secular. It's discos and not the mosques that are attracting them. There are kids who have learnt the full Quran... and are caught shoplifting. Other kids have stolen portable telephones from the mosques... the mosques have become a dead institution in Britain.

(The Islamic Times, Manchester monthly, June 1994: 4)

Little wonder that Dr Shabir Akhtar, an individual member of the Bradford Council for Mosques, considers 'traditional Islam... in sorry decline; many in the educated classes are repelled by it. By refusing to address the problems that plague the modern mind... Islam is gradually losing control... over the daily life of secularised believers.' Further, 'fate

Philip Lewis 45

and destiny have been largely replaced by choice and decision as central

categories of thought in the contemporary world'. Even fear of the Day of

Judgement, he contends, can no longer be relied on to sustain belief: 'the

distant terrors of Hell are... insufficient even to motivate deeply

religious people' (Akhtar 1990: 16, 20 and 150).

Still, it would be asking a great deal to suppose that 'ulama, largely

trained in South Asia, could connect with the world of young British

Muslims. In the 1980s and 1990s a hybrid Muslim youth culture was

emerging, enjoying social space and a measure of freedom in schools,

colleges, youth and community centres. A large part of this culture turns on

music, often a combination of bhangra and reggae, alien and inaccessible to

most elders. At the same time as Bradford YM was publishing its glossy

brochure, The Yorkshire Muslim, Muslim businesses were selling tickets for an

'Asian pop music extravaganza' at a Bradford club described as

'Bhangramania' to 'celebrate the end of fasting [during] Ramadan'

(Bradford, Telegraph & Argus, 11-3-94). An all-Muslim female group

emerged with a new release, Indie-Yarn, about resistance to arranged

marriage. Profiled in a national Sunday newspaper, the group conceded that

their parents would probably object to the video but pointed out the

double standards this implied: 'Our parents are happy watching Hindi

movies with buxom, sari-clad women dancing around and kissing behind

umbrellas, but they get uncomfortable when they see their own children

dancing' (Observer, 29-9-96).

The one school of South Asian Islam which allows space for music is the

Barelwi tradition. Famous Pakistani Qawwals such as Nusrat Fateh All

Khan and the Sabri brothers are regular visitors to British cities,

including Bradford.8 Audio and videotapes of their performances remain

very popular in Bradford's Asian shops. Nusrat Fateh All Khan quite

self-consciously sees his music as a link with the sufi saints and a way in

to the world of sufism for young British Muslims. He experiments with

English lyrics and faster rhythms committed to 'bringing the sweet

melodies of Islam to Western ears':

Like al-Ghazali before him...Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, through the use of his music, effectively combats the puritan voices which have wished to eliminate all aesthetic and recreational elements from Muslim life... In an age where the moral chasm between popular culture and its Islamic counterpart appears to be getting ever-wider, [his] music is also a rapturous reminder to the young of the fecundity

and vitality of their religious heritage.

(QNews, 14-21 April, 1995: 9).


It will be interesting to see whether any British Muslims will appear who can further adapt the qawwali to reach more young Muslims, espe-cially those for whom English is the first language and whose Punjabi is probably not good enough to enjoy the lyrics and fully enter into the religious experience mediated by them. If many young Muslims are to sustain and nourish links with the Islamic tradition the affective world of the qawwali is a more likely vehicle than the rather austere, activist and cognitive world of Islamism.

The one personality who can sometimes connect with the world of

youngsters is the shaikh/pir, the charismatic centre of sufi circles, a figure

within Barelwi Islam deemed close to God, one of the category of 'Friends of

God'. Within South Asian Islam such people have a diversity of functions,

intercessory, pastoral, devotional and political. In the autumn of the year

1996 one such pir visited Bradford as part of his tour of British devotees.

He was the son of a recently deceased Pathan sufi -Naqeebullah Khan

Shah - whose name is inscribed on the plaque celebrating the opening of a

new building for their youth centre, al-Falah in 1985, where many of the

management are his devotees [murids]. This pir, popularly known as

'Colonel Sahib' because he served in the Pakistan army, has been a

controversial figure in his home country for insisting that instead of the

ceaseless rhetoric that Christians and Jews should become Muslims the

imperative of the moment is that Christians, Muslims and Jews should

become more sincere in practising their own religion, then better relations

might subsist between these communities - rather than, as at present,

spending their best efforts killing each other, whether in the Middle East

or in Bosnia.

In Bradford he met many youngsters. He is an excellent and amusing communicator in English. He sees the essential problem facing many young British Muslims as one of a communication crisis between parents and children. The children are educated, streetwise and can read about Islam in books and thus challenge parental understandings of the tradition, especially where parents were socialised within oral traditions in rural Pakistan. He tells the parents to spend time with their children at meals, talk to them and take an interest in their work. Very much within the sufi tradition he stresses affirmation and affection for the young and the need to take their questioning seriously, as well as stressing that they should not 'bunk off school! He is urging his followers to set up a modest centre, free from the vagaries of local authority funding, which can provide recreation and support for such youngsters in a relaxed Islamic ethos with a library of Islamic books. His is not 'the shape up or hellfire awaits you' line of many other groups and 'ulama.

Philip Lewis 47

It is not surprising that there is a growing concern among Muslim

scholars and elders that an increasing number of educated British

Muslims, unable to identify with the traditional 'ulama, are simply

bypassing them. In the case of groups such as YM the members are able to

access an increasing section of Islamic classics available through the

expanding list of works translated into English by the Islamic Foundation

and other reputable publishers, as well as having the opportunity to

study Islamics at places such as Lampeter University with respected

Muslim scholars sympathetic to the Islamist ethos. However, for other

Muslim students their Islam is culled from pamphlets or such books as are

immediately accessible in English. At best, this is a haphazard introduction

to the riches of the Islamic tradition, lacking the disciplines and

methodology of traditional scholarship. At worst, such works as are

available are either polemical diatribes against the West or simplistic

appeals to return to the sources of the Qur'an and Sunna, which discount

1500 years of history and disciplined reflection. The literature of such

groups as Hizb at Tahrir, the Party of Liberation, bear this impress.9

The leadership, dynamics and style of such groups has been vividly

and sympathetically drawn in a novel - The Black Album - by the Anglo-

Pakistani writer, Hanif Kureishi. In the figure of the student leader Riaz he

communicates and captures their appeal. Riaz's Sunday talks in the

mosque

were well attended by a growing audience of young people, mostly

local... Asians. Not being an aged obscurantist, Riaz was becoming

the most popular speaker...he entitled his talks, 'Rave from the

Grave?', 'Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve', 'Islam: A Blast from

the Past or a Force for the future?' and 'Democracy is a Hypocrisy'. (Kureishi 1995: 67)

Such groups are, of course, not confined to the pages of novels. Since the

riots in Bradford in a Muslim area [Manningham] in June 1995 Hizb at Tahrir (HUT) has been active in starting study circles in two of the city's

mosques. This movement, founded in Palestine in the 1950s as a

breakaway from the Muslim Brotherhood, is committed to the recreation of the caliphate - abolished in 1924 by Mustafa Kemal. HUT, first and

foremost an Islamic ideological party, is banned in most of the Arab

world, and their agenda does not seem particularly relevant to British

Muslims. To understand the movement's appeal I interviewed two of its

members.


'Tariq' is an activist who gives up time to distribute their literature and

attend their meetings. His parents are from rural Gujarat in India. Born

and brought up in London, he dutifully attended a traditional mosque.

When 17 he was invited to an Islamic circle in London, organised by

HUT. They represented a breath of fresh air. Here was a group of young

Muslim professionals, dressed in Western clothes, speaking in English of

Islam as an ideology, which would eventually prevail. Their leaders and

publications spoke of issues such as racism, the plight of Bosnia,

Palestine, Kashmir and Chechnya, themes seldom if ever touched upon in

the mosques. Tariq', now a student of Arabic at a local university is

hopes to become a journalist. In Bradford he belongs to one of their

newly created study circles in the city.

'Asif, also from London, shares a flat with Tariq'. His parents are from rural Azad Kashmir in Pakistan. Like Tariq' he went through the motions of learning the Qur'an by rote in his local mosque. He too went along to a meeting organised by HUT when he was 17. Brought up on stories of Muslim oppression of women he was delighted when the HUT activist pointed to page three of the tabloid newspaper, The Sun - the page where a topless female is pictured - and argued that here was the place of real oppression. The 'alim at the mosque could not read English, let alone use a tabloid to make his point.

'Asif was at pains to stress the 'rational' nature of HUT's appeal and approach. For him HUT's position papers on politics, the economy and international affairs offered a well-developed case stressing Islam's answers to the ills of international capitalism, nationalism and socialism. He told me that there were two types of jihad, political and intellectual. 'Political' was active struggle against corrupt Muslim regimes; 'intellectual' was the struggle to cleanse Muslims of wrong ideas to which they were enslaved. In Britain activists like 'Asif were involved in the intellectual struggle. 'Asif was studying law and not yet sure of his future plans.

It is significant that both members are from Barelwi backgrounds and the two HUT circles in Bradford take place in Barewli mosques. HUT are not sympathetic to the world of sufism but are happy to recruit there. In traditional sufism unquestioning allegiance to the pir can translate into confidence in a restored caliphate as the answer to the ummah's problems. Further, the elders are happy to see their youngsters involved in an Islamic study circle in the mosque and often do not appear to attend to what is actually being said.

It would be wrong to exaggerate the numbers involved nor the significance of groups such as HUT. However, the danger of such a movement is

Philip Lewis 49

twofold: its inflammatory literature - anti-democratic, anti-zionist, anti-

Western, anti-Hindu, anti-Sikh - reinforces stereotypes about Muslims

already part of the 'common-sense' world of many in British society and

the media, as well as competing with, even undercutting support for, groups

such as YMs concerned with a real engagement with wider society. Since

many campuses have banned HUT they can present themselves as alone

embodying the authentic Islamic message as they confront the powers of

the 'Pharaoh' - a Qur'anic figure symbolising political forces opposed to

the Prophet - while other groups, such as YM, can be presented as colluding

with the Pharaoh!

Conclusion

Muslims in Britain have generated a large number of initiatives intended to

embody and transmit the Islamic tradition across the linguistic, cultural

and generational divides within the communities. Because Islamic

institutions and publications are increasingly using English, British

Muslims, whose origins are in South Asia, can access the insights of Muslim

converts and scholars from the Arab world such as Dr Darsh. Alongside such

vitality the observer cannot but be aware of the failure of the generality of

ulama to relate to British Muslims and take their questions seriously.

Eighty years ago Iqbal, the great Indian Islamic thinker, in his famous

Urdu poem 'Complaint and Answer' bewailed the persistence of

sectarianism and caste for fragmenting the Muslim communities in South

Asia and ridiculed those who assumed bombast could do service for

serious thought. Sadly sectarianism seems more virulent than ever today

and risks further antagonising many young Muslims. Rhetoric rather than

scholarship still seems the hallmark of many Muslim publications.

Among groups courting young Muslims there are three broad

responses to minority status: isolation from wider society (Tablighi Jama'at), engagement with it (Young Muslims/Islamic Society of Britain) or the

rhetoric of resistance (Hizb at-Tahrir). To put the number of those

attracted to self-conscious Muslim groups in perspective we need to be

aware of Dr Musharaf Hussain's contention that 'most... young people

(perhaps 90%) have no links with any Islamic organisation or mosque

and no feeling of responsibility for the future of Islam in this country' (The Invitation, December/January 1994/5: 2). Future research will be

able to identify which, if any, of these patterns of guidance succeeds in

gaining a hearing from the generality of British Muslims.

Notes

1. These categories are not mutually exclusive. For South Asian Islam see B.D. Metcalf (1982) Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband 1860-1900, New Jersey.

2. For a detailed profile of the Bradford Muslim communities see P. Lewis (1994). Islamic Britain, Religion, Politics and Identity among British Muslims, London.

3. These figures were given by Sher Azarn, the ex-President of Bradford Council for Mosques, in the newspaper promoting 'Islam Awareness Week', 23-29 September, 1996.

4. See K. Mumtaz and F. Shaheed (1987) Women of Pakistan, Two Steps Forward, One Step Back? Lahore, pp. 106—110.

5. See R. Geaves (1996) Sectarian Influences within Islam in Britain, Leeds University Department of Theology and Religious Studies.

6. The Muslim College was established by Dr Z. Badawi, a distinguished Egyptian scholar with degrees from al-Azhar and a PhD from London University. He is one of a handful of Muslim scholars in Britain equally conversant with Islamic and Western disciplines.

7. I am grateful to Dr North for allowing me to use material from his doctoral thesis (1996) - Muslims in Birmingham: Religious Activity in Mosques and Para-Mosques, CSIC. The material on Westhill College comes from pp. 122-127.

8. See R.B. Qureshi (1986) Sufi Music of India and Pakistan: Sound, Context and Meaning in Qawwali, Cambridge.

9. See S.Taji-Farouki (1996) A Fundamentalist Quest: Hizb at-Tahrir and the Search for the Islamic Caliphate, London.

Bibliography

Akhtar, Shabbir (1990) A Faith For All Seasons: Islam and Western Modernity, Bellew Publishing, London.

Badawi, Z. (1981) Islam in Britain, Ta Ha Publishers, London. Bulliet, R.W. (1994) Islam, The View From the Edge, Columbia University Press,

New York. Hamilton, C. (1987) Translation of Hedaya, 1987 (1870), Premier Books, Lahore,

Pakistan. Dr Hussain (1994/1995) The Invitation, produced in Nottingham, December/

January double issue, 1994/5: pp. 1-2. Kureishi, H. (1995) The Black Album, London. Leaman, O. (1996) 'Islam'in JJ.Chambliss (ed.), Philosophy of Education: An Encyc-

lopedia, Garland, New York, pp. 311-316. Rahman, F. (1980) Major Themes of the Qur'an, Bibliotheca Islamica, Chicago.

_».

The Contribution of Nurture in a Sampradaya to Young British Hindus' Understanding of their Tradition

Eleanor Nesbitt

Introduction

Any consideration of the transmission of Hindu tradition in Britain

requires examination of the contribution of sampradayas (guru-led

movements) to the religious nurturing of young people. Sampradaya^, some spanning many centuries, are among the strongest strands inter-

woven in the Hindu tradition. Indeed, with their more defined focus,

history and teachings on discipline, arguably 'the so-called "sects"... are

indeed religions, while Hinduism is not' (von Stietencron 1991: 20).

Some scholars suggest that the appeal of these movements - and of

certain charismatic contemporary gurus and 'godmen' - is strongest in

urban India (Swallow 1982) and in diaspora Hindu communities

(Clothey 1992). Any understanding of Hindus in Britain, a necessity for

'cultural experts' and Religious Education teachers among others, requires

awareness of the role and nature of sampradayas. In this chapter sampradaya is used to refer to the following groups

represented in the United Kingdom: the Arya Samaj, ISKCON (the Inter-national Society for Krishna Consciousness), Pushtimarg, the devotees of Sathya Sai Baba, Radhasoami (particularly the line of Gurus based in Beas, Punjab), the Ravidasis, Swaminarayan (including several distinct

lines) and the Valmikis.

The term sampradaya serves as a convenient inclusive analytic term

for the sub-traditions under consideration in this chapter. It is true that

The research was directed by Robert Jackson in the Warwick Religions and Education

Research Unit and supported by the Leverhulme Trust which also funded Hindu

Nurture in Coventry (1986-1987) and Punjabi Hindu Nurture (1988-1999).


51

8

Religion and Ethnicity in America

Raymond Brady Williams Wabash College

'Black is beautiful' became a powerful affirmation of an American ethnic

group negotiating a new social location for itself in the 1960s. Intellectual

and political currents swirling around that negotiation led to both

renewed scholarly analysis and popular affirmation of ethnicity that

were concurrent with the dramatic opening of the doors of immigration in

1965. The move from assimilation to pluralism is rooted in collateral

affirmations: 'Hindu is beautiful,' 'Korean is beautiful,' 'Gujarati is

beautiful,' 'Sikh is beautiful/ 'brown is beautiful.' These affirmations

involve a reconstruction of concepts about and role of ethnicity and the

relation of ethnicity to religions, now including most of the religions of

the world. After 1965, immigrants congregated in the United States from

every country in the new immigration that brought to an end the period

of lull in immigration that had begun in the 1920s, during which relatively

few entered the United States. That lull had profound effects on

American society, but the lull ended with new groups of immigrants

'Made in the USA/ who identified themselves by new ethnic and reli-

gious markers. Contemporary mobility and rapid communication create

and maintain new lineal connections among ethnic and religious groups

within the United States and between migrants in many countries. In

the process, the meaning of ethnicity and the relation of ethnicity and

religion are recast. Exploration of this process as exemplified by immigrants

from South Asia in this chapter presents five propositions about the

new immigration, three examples, and some reflections on ethnicity as

a mode of communication or rhetoric of representation and its relation

to religion.

143

144 Religious and Political Issues

Migration, religion and identity

First, religion is a powerful force for immigrants in the formation and

preservation of personal and group identity because it provides a tran-

scendent grounding for identity. That is the reason religion is potentially

either one of the most conservative or the most radical aspects of

culture. 'Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God!' is a basic

religious affirmation that pits the individual and group against external

forces that would precipitate either chaos or homogeneity. Many

immigrants affirm that they are more religious following immigration than

in their native place, even though the style of their participation and

their religious roles are substantially different than they could have

imagined prior to immigration. When everything is changing, religion

provides a firm transcendent base from which to negotiate those

changes, even changes affecting the religion as well. For example,

absence of professional religious specialists among immigrants thrusts new,

young immigrants into leadership positions and requires new modes of

religious expression. Gender roles are renegotiated in the process of

migration, which is enormously disruptive of old patterns. Immigrants

are balancing worlds as they engage in a quest for new identities. That quest

becomes public, and religious institutions appear at the time when

immigrants' children reach the age to be socialized outside the home and

as the myth of return dies in the face of their children. That quest

common to a long stream of immigrant groups is one reason that people in

the United States are more religious by a number of measures than people

in other Western industrialized countries. Religion functions to form

and preserve personal and group identity.

Second, push-pull factors of migration create new, unique religious

and social groups. Immigrant groups are 'Made in the USA,' 'Made in

Britain,' or 'Made in Canada.' Each is unique, not found elsewhere,

even though the same designations are often used for them. Nowhere

outside of Mecca during the Hajj would one find so diverse a group of

Muslims as those now living in any American metropolitan area. A

Hindu temple in the United States and the people who worship there are

different from those found in India. One observes the ecumenical

affirmation of the church most vividly by watching those leaving an

urban cathedral following Mass. Nevertheless, different strategies of

adaptation are followed by religious and social groups that imply

different languages, leadership, cuisine, dress and ethos. Nor are these groups static. They are moving slowly through the generations from

immigrants to their grandchildren, being joined at the same time by new

Raymond Brady Williams 145

immigrants constantly arriving for jobs and family reunification. From the

outside, a religious or ethnic group might appear to be fairly stable, but inside

the story is one of constant flux and redefinition. The concept of a generation

is a construct out of the American immigration experience; where else is

one a member of the 'first generation' or 'second generation'? The meaning

of generation weakens the more distant it is from immigration. Hence, not

only do distinct, unique groups appear out of the immigration experience,

they evolve through stages as the number and age of immigrants change.

Push-pull factors create networks for migration that define the new groups

in ways that are demographically and professionally distinct. These

networks reach into Gujarat of India in ways that unpredictably produce a

very high percentage of Gujaratis among Asian-Indians in the United States.

Preference categories create the brain drain and assure that the Asian-

Indian community has one of the highest median family incomes of groups

identified in the 1990 census. Inclusion of nurses within the category of

professional people creates a large Malayalee Christian community from

central Kerala in American urban centers. The demand for physicians

following the establishment of Medicare and Medicaid results in large

number of Asian-Indian physicians in small towns in mid-America. The

demography of migrants does not parallel that of their native country or

area. Hence, the reverse impact of migrants on their native places is

disproportionate on some components of society in relation to others. The

forces that shape these groups and their location on the social map are as

complex as those creating the geological topography of America. Third, an important function of these new groups is boundary construction and preservation. Social and religious groups construct complex boundaries of language, rituals and codes that create identities for both groups and individuals. Religion becomes an important marker of identity, but not the only one. Immigrants must be adept at integrating elements of several identities and using them to their best advantage in different social settings, both in the native place and in the new place of residence: Gujarati, Hindu, Swaminarayan, Patel, New Yorker, American, physician and so on. These designations imply multiple social contexts and diverse roles. An immigrant does not transplant an identity or a religion as a whole cloth in a new location. Unique groups created by immigration create and sustain new identities - like assembling a car in America using many parts manufactured abroad - but always adapted to local regulations and requirements. Preexisting institutions create the structures that stipulate boundaries.


Governmental regulations regarding application for tax-exempt status prescribe organizational structures that are forced on religious and social groups, requiring officers, bylaws, boards of directors or trustees and so on. The inclusion or omission of place for religious or ethnic designation on governmental and institutional forms creates and solidifies boundaries. For example, 'Asian Indian' as an official designation by the US government both recognizes and solidifies a set of boundaries that are nonexistent elsewhere. Immigrants are not being deceitful when they respond to the boundaries imposed internally and externally by selecting designations for themselves in their best interests; it is simply an aspect of the greater freedom for re-creation and self-identification than is generally the case in the place of origin. Firm boundaries are essential to identity; malleability is essential for migrants; the tension and negotiation between these two are determinative for new immigrants.

Fourth, immigrants do not form religious groups and other social groups in order to stay isolated from the settled society, but in order to negotiate from a stronger position with other social groups regarding their new social location in ways that will protect their children and the values the immigrants wish to affirm and preserve. Forcing new residents into identifiable social designations is one way that groups in the settled society create space for them. 'Hello, I'm a Presbyterian. What are you?' 'I'm Hindu. Pleased to meet you.' - this exchange marks a significant negotiation that establishes social location and structures of relationship between two people and their communities. 'Can we use your church fellowship hall for our meetings on Sunday afternoons?' One should note that important internal negotiations also occur among immigrants from the same country and between the generations of an immigrant community. 'We are Jains, not Muslims, so we maintain good relations with the Hindus in the midst of tensions regarding events in India' or 'My parents are devoted Hindus, but I am only a cultural Hindu' suggest both delicate internal negotiations and careful posturing in relation to outsiders. Americans are used to such negotiations by various social groups, so it is often taken for granted that the new religious and ethnic groups will develop in ways analogous to those of the old immigrants of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A serious question is, however, whether the old vocabularies, symbols and structures are appropriate or even intelligible in negotiations resulting from contemporary migrations.

Fifth, contemporary migrations are different. Rapid mobility and elec-tronic communication create transnational families and religious groups


and call for a new transnational approach to the study of migration,

which according to Click Shiller, studies migrants 'who develop and

maintain multiple relations - familial, economic, social, organizational,

religious, and political - that span borders... and take actions, make

decisions, feel concerns, and develop identities within social networks

that connect them to two or more societies simultaneously' (Schiller

era/., 1992, pp. 1-24). Insight into the new reality of migration results

from the study of intricate relationship of Caribbeans living in New

York, but moving back and forth, literally and figuratively, between New

York and home. That is a dramatic instance of the new experience of

immigrants from many parts of the world. Immigrants are both here and

there in ways not possible even 25 years ago. Indeed, immigrants are

balancing worlds, merging them and creating something new. A result is

the necessity of remapping the social and religious fields of the new

immigrants to America.

The major currents of change are shifting boundaries as immigrants

reform and preserve individual and group identities in America,

involving shifting religious and ethnic markers and boundaries. Selection

and combinations of strategies of adaptation by immigrants -

individual, national, ethnic, hierarchical and ecumenical - depend on

elements from the past, on receptivity of the settled society, on the size

and length of residence of immigrants and on their own creativity. All

affect the shape of boundaries of the religions themselves and the relation

of religion to ethnicity as religion either reinforces or transcends ethnic

boundaries.

The religious groups

Muslims: Shifting religious and ethnic markers

Nowhere nor any time outside of Mecca during the Hajj have Muslims

from so many countries and ethnic groups lived together as are found in

any major city of the United States where immigrants from many countries

and converts converge. Muslims from India encounter brothers and sisters

from countries and ethnic groups they had never even heard of and face

the prospects of creating a combination of religious and social practices

that will embody the unity and brotherhood/sisterhood of Islam. Considerable freedom exists in the United States to adopt diverse and

evolving strategies of adaptation.

For example, Muslim leaders in Houston established earlier an organ-

izational pattern that stresses the transcendence of Islam over ethnicity.


The mosques of immigrants are ethnically integrated and

organized in a parish pattern. The first central mosque sponsors

satellite mosques in the sprawling developments at compass

points out from the center. Each mosque has its Islamic school

that introduces children from many language and ethnic groups

to the unity of Islam and to basic Islamic rituals and beliefs. The

mosques are de jure and de facto religious institutions, fostering religious

identity with siblings that transcends ethnic identity. Ethnic social

networks outside the mosque preserve elements of ethnic identity, so

that, as one immigrant remarked, 'After prayers Arabs return to their

kebabs and Indians to their curries.' Nevertheless, Id celebrations in the

metropolitan convention center bring Muslims from related mosques

together, replicating the diversity of the individual mosques. Exceptions to

this pattern are the African-American masjids that preserve a primary

ethnic identity.

A different pattern of adaptation is present in Chicago mosques,

where they are organized by distinct ethnic groups. All mosques are de jure open to all, and no exclusions are permitted, but most of the

Chicago mosques are de facto identified as Arab, Asian (i.e., Pakistani

and Indian), European (i.e., Bosnian), or African by the training of the

imam, the membership of the governing board, and the dominant

language. Indian immigrants join in prayers with other immigrants from the

Indian subcontinent, and in the educational programs provided by the

mosque their children study not only Arabic as a sacred language, but

primarily Urdu as the ethnic language of both home and mosque. Id

ceremonies in convention centers bring together people from various

ethnically based mosques to celebrate briefly with brothers and sisters

the unity of Islam. Which of these two adaptive strategies or some

third yet unexplored option will be dominant in the next generation is

unclear.

Then there are the American cousins. When in 1965 Malcolm X reported his Meccan experience of the unity of ethnic groups in Islam; Muslims were poised to enter the United States to meet their distant cousins in the Nation of Islam. That encounter has changed both the Nation of Islam and the face of Islam in America. In the first instance, immigrants helped to shift the boundaries of the Nation of Islam in the creation of the American Muslim Mission. The movement of the African-American Muslim from being American cousins, into cousin brothers and, increasingly, into brothers and sisters creates a new missionary religion that competes with Christian churches for allegiance of African Americans, creating shifting boundaries that may well be the more important impact of these new immigrants on American religion.


Hindus: Weakening internal and strengthening outer

boundaries

Hinduism in India is amorphous, but its internal

boundaries are relatively fixed: ethnic, linguistic,

sectarian and social. Hinduism is being redefined in

America as a world religion, creating a definite identity that at the

same time weakens internal boundaries. American Hindu immigrants

put together in the same temple diverse deities, language groups, castes

and rituals not found in any single temple in India. Vaish-navas and

Shaivas, brahmin and vaishyas, Gujaratis and Telugus, all meet equally

in ecumenical temples under the rubric of Hindu unity. Such temples

and a guru-based neo-Hinduism are creating new forms of Hinduism in

America with redrawn boundaries.

Hindus also discover some American cousins in the International

Society of Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) and the Vedanta Societies. As

the appeal of these groups to people from the majority population has

remained low or even declined, leaders of these groups have become

increasingly religious specialists for the Hindu immigrants -ISKCON

intentionally and enthusiastically, the Vedanta Society slowly and

reluctantly.

The transnational character of families and religious organizations

provides the context in which overseas Hindus are influencing develop-

ments within the Hindu community in India. The made-for-TV present-

ation of Ramayana influences Hindu perceptions in India, Britain,

Canada and the United States in ways that reinforce and provide

monetary support from abroad for the Hindutva movement. The effects

that immigrants have on American society are evident; but increasingly

important are reverse effects of immigrants in America on religions in

India and elsewhere because of contemporary transnationalism.

Christians: Transnationalism and boundary categories

Christian immigrants experience this transnationalism. A pious mother kneels each morning during mass at St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Bangalore to pray for her children scattered around the world: a daughter working as an environmental scientist in Indianapolis, an engineer son in California, a son in an accountancy program in London, a physician son in Dublin, a daughter who is a computer specialist in Toronto, a son seeking admission to a graduate program at Notre Dame in Indiana, and a daughter on an admission visit to an American university. The mother and many of her friends in Bangalore are part of transnational families and religious groups created by rapid emigration over


the past 30 years of highly skilled professionals from India to developed

countries.

Christians from India serve as a specific example of general devel-

opments in new relations established between the country of origin

and the country or countries of settlement currently made possible

by rapid communication and mobility. These immigrants bring several

societies into a single social field that relates India to the Gulf States,

Great Britain, Canada, the United States, the Caribbean and other coun-

tries as well. These relations emerging among migrants at the turn of

the millennium generate a new transnational approach to the study of

migration. Immigrants with transnational relations are able to maintain

several identities and to express these at times and in ways that are most

advantageous. Immigrants are inherently insecure, and uncertainties in

the global economy and about future immigration policies force them to

cultivate options in more than one setting. One way to do this is to use

the wealth, social ties and status gained in one location to develop status

and capital in another, both to make their own place secure and to

enable family members to move to the most promising location (Schiller

etal., 1992, p. 112).

Both religious reflection and academic study must now take account of

transnational aspects of religious groups. Both the practice and the study of

religion developed methods and agencies reflecting the migration and

ecumenical character of nineteenth-century migrants and groups, but

the experience and study of the old immigrants did not reveal the same

transnational character of religion experienced by the new immigrants.

The situation calls for new studies of the lived reality and social fields of

immigrants and of the vitality of their relationships within and between

several societies, and it demands a new conceptualization of religions

that will take into account these new forms of interactions.

The challenge to American religion, in common with that to other

social institutions, is to create and maintain boundaries within which

individuals can fabricate their identities and preserve continuities with

the past. These can become either workshops or prisons. The question is,

can religions in America provide materials, perhaps newly conceived and

worked, with which groups can build porous boundaries, ones strong

enough to sustain personal and group identity but sufficiently permeable to

allow easy, natural, nonthreatening negotiations among groups that will

sustain civic order and maintain goodwill? Is it possible to balance

multiple worlds?


Reflections on ethnicity and religion

A thesis of this chapter is that religion functions to

provide a transcendent basis for personal and group

identity, but the relation of religion and ethnicity is

being revised in the new immigration as exemplified

by the experience of South Asians in the United States.

The introduction to the Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups (Thernstrom, 1980, p. vi) lists

items that more or less characterize an ethnic group

rather than providing a definition: common geographic

origin, migratory status, race, language or dialect,

religious faith or faiths, ties that transcend

kinship/neighborhood/community boundaries, shared

traditions/values/symbols, literature/folklore/music, food preferences,

settlement and employment patterns, special political interests,

institutions, internal sense of distinctiveness and an external perception

of distinctiveness. The list is malleable, and difficulty exists in drawing

analytic boundaries to determine if some groups that have clear group

identity and ethos are to be designated as ethnic or not. Moreover, the

relation of religion to ethnic identity varies so that ethnic identity is

reinforced by religion for some, while for others ethnicity is stripped of

any transcendent religious elements.

Ethnicity is a product of a local environment; hence, migration always

transforms ethnicity as migrants create new groups in new contexts

and revise their personal and group identities to enable them both to

maintain some continuity necessary for psychic and social health and to

adapt to the demands and potentials of a future in a new social

location. Ethnicity is not something transferred from one location to

another; rather, it is created new in each new setting. Thus, ethnic and

religious groups are 'Made in the USA' by new immigrants, and the

relationship between ethnicity and religion is recreated and transformed in

the geographical and temporal transitions.

A brand new ethnic group has been formed in the United States by

immigrants from India, a process that very quickly received government

sanction in the legal designation as 'Asian Indian.' It is significant that

the legal designation, which was the object of a great deal of discussion

and negotiation within the immigrant community itself, is different from designations used in the United Kingdom or Canada. The group is

different in the United States and certainly different from any identifiable

social group in India. Communication and mobility that creates an

Asian-Indian community in the United States also creates a new

cosmopolitan Indian identity in India and seems to be engendering or

imposing a newly formed Hindutva consciousness among some


segments of the population, resulting in many tensions and

conflicts. It may be part of a worldwide development, the

consequences of which we are only partly aware.

It is fortunate that individuals are able to emphasize more

than one element of their identity in different contexts as

circumstances dictate. One is able to be an Asian Indian in one

context, projecting one set of symbols and loyalties, then be a

Gujarati in another setting and then American. Movement

from one to the other requires diverse sets of knowledge and

skills, the acquiring and maintenance of which require enormous

investments of energy (which is why the tendency is for individuals to

become monocultural - it is easier). The relationship between these

potential individual identities is reflected in the establishment of social

and religious organizations that reinforce different elements of identity -

India Cultural Center, Gujarati Samaj, Swaminarayan Hindu Satsang,

and, finally, a Federation of Indian Associations. Personal identity is

malleable in ways that institutional identity is not, so potentials for

personal identity are reflected in the intricate relationships that exist

among ethnic, religious and even professional organizations.

Once the Asian-Indian community reaches a population density in a

location, groups based on regional-linguistic characteristics develop.

Language is fundamental to differentiation, so Gujarati, Punjabi, Telugu,

Bengali, Tamil, Hindi and other groups develop, first as meetings of a few

relatives and friends in homes and meeting halls and then as formally

incorporated charitable organizations recognized by the government as

tax exempt. These provide support networks for providing a wide range

of social welfare benefits from securing jobs to teaching languages (both an

Indian language for children and English as a second language for adults)

to arranging marriages. They also provide the only location outside the

home where immigrants and their children, perhaps to a lesser degree,

can enjoy the language, cuisine, arts and mores of the parents' native

place.

Each group identified by ethnic markers has members who identify

themselves with different religions. Punjabi Sikhs and Punjabi Christians

share some common markers, but the religious commitments separate

them into different groups, or, stated a different way, the religious

commitments allow the individuals to express different elements of

identity in different contexts. In a similar manner, Gujarati Hindus and Gujarati Muslims share many cultural markers, but maintain distinctive

markers that relate one group to Hindus from other parts of India or to

Muslims from India and other parts of the world. The relation of Sikh

identity to Punjabi identity differs from the relation of Muslim


identity to Gujarati identity. The explicit character of that difference

is negotiated in the United States and has meaning in relation to the

other social and religious groups among which each individual or each

group is negotiating a relationship. In part the negotiation depends

upon whether the group is identifying itself in some way as a majority,

as is the case with Punjabi Christians, for example, or as a small minority

among other Asian-Indians, as is the case with Gujarati Jains, or as a

minority among immigrants from many countries, as is the case with

Asian-Indian Muslims. Religion functions differently in these different

contexts. Moreover, the freedom created by migration and the voluntary

character of religion in the United States permit, and even encourage, a

variety of levels of identification with regional-linguistic and religious

groups with which immigrants are free to associate themselves. Thus, the

relation of religious commitment and ethnic identity varies greatly. It is

impossible to separate religion from cultural markers, as, for example, it is

impossible to separate a lyric from the tune or raga in real experience,

because no unclothed religions exist. The relation is different and more

compelling between Sikh and Punjabi identity than between English and

Asian-Indian identity, at least for the first two generations of immigrants.

Jewish identity has been created as a combination of cultural ethnicity

and religious ethnicity, so that a category of Christian Jew is viewed as

anomalous in ways that the category of nonreligious, secular Jew is not.

Gentiles, who convert to Judaism, often upon marriage, are identified as

ethnic Jews as well, even though spouses who do not convert maintain

Gentile identity. No category of religious Jew apart from cultural Jewish-

ness seems to exist. Migration to Israel by Jews from many different

cultures creates several distinct Jewish ethnic groups, including the

Cochin Jews from India.

Sikh identity is similarly tied to Punjabi identity. Immigrant Sikhs in

the United States came into contact with a group of non-Punjabi

converts to a form of Sikhism propagated by Harbhajan Singh Puri. The

converts accepted the religion, but detached it from several aspects of

Punjabi identity, which caused some tension in the early days. In the

Punjab, Sikhism was so immersed in Punjabi culture that the issue did

not arise, though, to be sure, some Punjabi Sikhs could be more devout

and observant than others. When Sikhs migrated to North America and

other countries, the question of the relation of Sikh religion to Punjabi

culture was raised at many levels. What is the Sikh religion distinct from

Punjabi customs and practices?


The issue comes to the fore in each Asian-Indian religious group at

the point of marriage. The earliest immigrants were generally single

males, some of whom married outside the religious and linguistic group,

primarily to white, Christian partners. (Sikh immigrants at the begin-

ning of the twentieth century were exceptions because restrictive laws

and social customs led to marriages with women of Mexican back-

ground.) Another pattern developed of immigrants returning to India to

arrange marriages within the religious and linguistic group, occa-

sionally within the linguistic group but outside the religious one. The

situation has become very complex and confused as children of immigrants

approach marriage age, which itself is rising among immigrants, not

least because of the difficulty of locating appropriate marriage partners.

Although Asian Indians number well over a million, they are

geographically, socially and religiously scattered, so families face real

difficulties in either establishing efficient networks for marriage nego-

tiations or locating appropriate candidates for marriage. The preference of

parents is for arranged marriages with people 'like us' in religion and

custom, but the Americanized children are in many ways not 'like them'

and question the practice of arranged marriages and the implied ethnic

and religious preferences. Each Asian-Indian family and group has a

generally recognized concentric circle of marriage preferences implicit in

such arrangements. The most central is often the family or village-

based traditional network for arranged marriages (either by return to

India for marriage or by careful negotiation in North America), then the

religious and linguistic group, then either the religious or the linguistic

group, then the Asian-Indian, reaching out to the larger candidate pools of

the general population, with distinct preferences within the general

population based on religion, color and social class. Decisions of each

individual and each family are made among a wide array of potentials,

and each decision implies a series of commitments regarding religious

identity and ethnic identity. Relatively few marriages have occurred

among the second generation and the third generation, so it is difficult to

discern the developing patterns or to predict the future.

Nevertheless, four possibilities are in the offing. Ethnicity could recede as

the representation of both individuals and groups, with religion

becoming the primary marker. Will Herberg's methods and conclusions in Protestant, Catholic, few have been questioned. Nevertheless, the thesis is

sound that if marriage decisions are based on religious affiliation to a

greater degree than on linguistic or ethnic affiliation, religion becomes

the primary marker and establishes the most important boundaries in

American society. Religion could become the primary marker for Asian


Indians, both internally, as Hindus, for example, marry other Asian-

Indian Hindus and establish an ecumenical Hinduism, and externally, as

Indian Muslims marry Muslims or Christians marry Christians from

other national and linguistic groups. Intermarriage of persons from

different nations and cultures may blur physical distinctions between

people in a type of biological morphing over time that will highlight

other differences, such as those of religious affiliation.

Ethnicity is a mode of communication, a rhetoric of representation

that is continually changing, in the context of a syntax of commu-

nication shared by many groups defined in a variety of ways. Modes of

dress, language or accent, cuisine, calendar, gesture, art and ritual

communicate intricate messages an individual and a group transmits of

itself. It is a communicative pattern that requires that a difference in

representation signify a difference of self-identification, but it also

requires a generally understood syntax and takes place within a common

communication pattern. For example, the inclusion of an American flag in

a parade sponsored by an Asian-Indian Hindu group is a significant

element in the rhetoric of self-representation of the group that defines or,

in fact, is its ethnicity. The audience for such rhetorical acts is the group

itself as well as those outside. Stephen Webb notes that such rhetoric

has a narrative element, an ongoing story that needs conflict and

climaxes in order to sustain the kind of drama that makes group identity

valuable. It also has a hermeneutical dimension, in that it is a way of

interpreting or juxtaposing events in the larger world and filtering those

events so that they do not fundamentally challenge or destroy group

loyalty (Private communication). Little remains of ethnicity beyond a

rhetoric of representation and the effects it produces. It is tempting to

judge the strength of ethnicity and the facility of people within the group

in the use of the rhetoric of representation by the clear distinctions that are

preserved within society; that is, African-Americans distinguished from

Hispanics or Jews. By these criteria, greater distinct-iveness represents

greater rhetorical skill and power, and less distinct-iveness represents

less. In truth, however, rhetorics of representation are refined, with

sharper ability to reveal nuanced differentiations and finer distinctions. In

the use of such refined rhetoric, a society develops greater sophistication

in interpersonal and group relations. Individuals are able to express a range of identities and loyalties in a wide variety of contexts and among

different groups. Both individuals and groups are able to position

themselves with greater clarity and to greater advantage among diverse

groups. Such sophistication contributes to the orderly and creative

development of society.


The refined rhetoric of representation may result in what has been

called 'symbolic ethnicity,' referring to the use of elements of an older

rhetoric in new configurations. For example, a gathering on Diwali with

other people having family ties in Gujarat for a meal of eclectic cuisine is

the only occasion of the year when one sees many Gujaratis. Observance

of Diwali is part of a rhetoric of representation different from the observ-

ance in Gujarat or by new immigrants in the first decade of residence

in the United States. Still, it is part of a rhetoric of representation for

both those who participate and any who observe. It is called 'symbolic'

because it does not have the same rhetorical function often attributed

to ethnic discourse.

Ethnicity, even understood as a rhetoric of representation, could in

the past have been studied in a bipolar manner, both temporally and

geographically, with the two points of contact in the 'past and over

there' compared with 'now and over here.' The direction of influence

could be charted as unidirectional from 'then and there' to 'here and

now.' Contemporary migration and the rapidity of mobility and

communication changes all that by creating a transnational communic-

ation that is transforming rhetorics of representation. Groups formed

by new immigration form cells in several locations, each of which is

shaped by the context within which it finds itself and by developments

within the other cells. The process of transformation of individual cells is

linked to what has happened and is happening to the other cells by

constant communication through electronic media and mobility. A

Malankara Orthodox congregation in the United States is directly influ-

enced in a myriad of ways by what happens to other Keralite Christians in

Chicago or other cities, in Kerala, Canada, the Gulf States, the United

Kingdom and South Africa. A rhetorical model for analysis of personal

and group representation would permit a more dynamic understanding of

the personal and group identities and their function in society.


different? Migration and the transformations brought by it are age old,

but the contemporary reality is structurally different and the rate of

transformation is greater. New immigration in the United States since

1965 is relatively recent and the transformations are just now reaching

maturity with the second generation. It is too soon to record assured

results and too dangerous to predict future trends. That we are exper-

iencing a new reality in ethnic representations and religious identities

is clear, and that the future is not going to be just a fast rerun of the

past is certain. Religion is and will be a powerful component of personal

and group rhetorics of representation and identity because it provides a

transcendent basis for personal and group identity.

Bibliography

Herberg, W. 1960. Protestant, Catholic, Jew. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Schiller, G., Nina, Basch, L, and Blanc-Szanton, C., eds. 1992. Towards a Transnational

Perspective on Migration: Race, Class, Ethnicity, and Nationalism Reconsidered. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 645. The New York Academy of Sciences.

Thernstrom, S., ed. 1980. Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Conclusion

An ethnic identity is a rhetorical mode of representation by an individual and a group that is rapidly changing in contemporary transnational settings. The function of what we have studied as ethnicity is also changing under the forceful influence of electronic media and mobility. It is difficult to trace the power and influence of religion in the midst of these changes. If ethnicity is a rhetorical mode of representation, is religion also a rhetorical mode of representation allied in the same syntactical or linguistic field as ethnicity? Do they 'speak the same language' or

12

South Asians in America Post 9/11

Raymond Brady Williams

Wabash College

The destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City in 2001,

recognized worldwide simply as 9/11, was a traumatic event more immediate

and powerful for a generation of Americans than the bombing of Pearl

Harbor on 7 December, 1941 - a date that President Franklin Delano

Roosevelt said would 'live in infamy.' December 7 was an attack on

military, killing soldiers and sailors, far away from the mainland, reported

on radio and in newspapers, leading to a declaration of war. And 9/11 was

destruction of an economic center, killing civilians, at the center of

American power, viewed in horror in real time by millions of Americans,

precipitating consequences still unforeseen.

The trauma of 9/11 and responses to it, like 7 December, 1941,

constitute a pivotal event in American life with profound effects on civic

and religious life and geo-cultural affairs. Beginning in 1941, the United

States moved from relative isolation to increased involvement in the

affairs of Europe and Asia, encouraged patriotism, demonized 'the other' -

especially Germans and Japanese - mobilized for a world war, learned a

great deal about Asia, and gradually transformed itself into a world

power. The last half of the twentieth century was shaped by that response.

History does not repeat itself, the national and world contexts are different,

the causes of terrorism are poorly defined, and only 5 years have passed

with no resolution in sight.

The new focus is the Middle East. Religion is identified as a motivation

for the 9/11 events and for terrorist attacks that preceded 9/11 and still

continue in America and in other countries. Islam claimed by the

terrorists is a world religion with a significant representation in the

United States, even among those killed in the World Trade Center. The

United States has a much more heterogeneous population than in 1945,

shaped by the new immigration after 1965, including Muslims from

223

224 issues Post 9/11

many parts of the world. South Asians and their religions that are new to

the United States, including Islam, are adapting to a new context just as

Americans are adapting to new religions among their neighbors. The

national trauma of 9/11 and its aftermath are having significant

consequences nationally, internationally, and ecumenically. They affect

the experience of South Asian immigrants - Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus,

Jains, and Christians - and the remapping of their social and religious

fields in American society and culture. It is too soon to record assured

results and too dangerous to predict future results nationally or interna-

tionally. Nevertheless, the first half of the twenty-first century is being

shaped by the worldwide responses to 9/11.

Experience of South Asian religious groups since 9/11

America is different in the twenty-first century, in part due to the new immigration following changes in immigration law passed in 1965. New immigrants selected from every country of the world on the basis of occupational and family reunification preferences initiated a profound ethnic, racial, and religious transformation of American population. South Asians constituted a significant and successful segment of the brain drain that brought the brightest and best scientists, engineers, physicians, and other specialists to enhance the American economy. Because a very small number of South Asians were present in 1965, only later did many South Asians join the new immigrants under provi-sions for family reunification in the new law. Only a few South Asians applied for refugee status, and only a small number can be identified as undocumented aliens. The result is that Asian Indians as a group are very successful, with incomes among the highest of all American ethnic groups. Unemployment is relatively low, and the community enjoys a relatively high socioeconomic status.

South Asian immigrant families are scattered across America and generally do not occupy urban ghettos. Although some areas experi-enced a large influx of South Asians, such as Flushing, NY during the 1970s and 1980s, and Middlesex County, NJ, in 1990s and 2000s, those communities are not constituted by the urban poor and unemployed. The government of the United States does not keep official records of the religious affiliation of citizens or permanent residents - unlike Australia and Canada - which makes it more difficult to provide statistical data about American religious groups. That does have the value of preserving the privacy and religious freedom for citizens in the midst of religious controversy and tensions. Immigrants are free to establish


religious institutions, which were founded and are still led by upwardly

mobile young, lay professionals who established mosques, temples, and

other institutions in order both to preserve personal and group identity

for their children and to facilitate their successful integration into American

society. The character of immigration, residential patterns, and religious

leadership shape South Asian communities and religious groups

differently from those in the United Kingdom, Europe, and Australasia.

Immigration continues apace. The number of immigrants admitted

from India numbered 70,000 in 2004, almost double the average of

those arriving in the 1990s. Among those immigrants in 2004, approx-

imately 40,000 were under the preference categories for professional

occupations, and 30,000 were for family reunification, a distinction that

often implies a difference in educational and economic status. Approx-

imately 10,000 were under the age of 18 (INS 2004). Asian Indians have a

higher per capita income than the general population and other Asian

communities, but some immigrant families are disadvantaged, primarily

those in families admitted for family reunification.

The U.S. Census Bureau statistics for 2000 on South Asian populations

born in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh do not include American-born

South Asians, but give some indication of growth. Those born in India

were 1,022,000, in Pakistan 223,475, and in Bangladesh 95,295. Fifty-

five percent of those born in India and Pakistan were male, and 58

percent of those born in Bangladesh were male. Fifty percent of those

from India and Pakistan and 56 percent of those born in Bangladesh

were under 35 years of age (U.S. Census 1). Asian Indians and other

Asians rank better than other groups in key indicators of child well-

being such as infant mortality, child death rate, teen death rate, teen

birthrate, teen school dropouts, and percentage of children in single-

parent homes (Kids Count State-Level Data Online 2006). A majority of

South Asian women are in or approaching child-bearing age, so the

number of children is likely to increase at a rate greater than the general

population. Numbers will continue to grow even if the rate of increase in

percentage slows.

Because South Asian immigration started recently and because it

continues apace, each Hindu child has a specific location in an age group

and in an immigrant generation. It is difficult to identify the genera-

tions in a Hindu gathering. Anthropologists refer to 'the living present' that includes three generations generally in close contact. Studies of

immigrants conceive of generations differently. It is common to refer to

children as being 'first and a half generation' who come as small

children with their parents, as 'second generation' born in the United

Muslims

Identity and rhetoric of those who destroyed the World

Trade Center and responses in some Muslim countries cast a shadow on Muslims in the United States and abroad. Retaliation against the Taliban in Afghanistan and subsequent attack on Iraq places the United States in direct military conflict with Muslims. American focus shifted to the Middle East and to the growth of Islamicist influence stretching from Pakistan to Europe, an area about which Americans have relatively little knowledge or understanding. Islam in the Indian subcontinent or Indonesia was largely unknown. A narrowing of the open door of immigration and travel was an immediate result of 9/11. All travelers experienced greater scrutiny and searches at airports and delays in obtaining travel documents. People from Islamic countries believe that they are profiled because of racial features, names, ethnic dress, or accents in ways that discriminate against Muslims and South Asians in general. The narrow door creates the perception of intolerance and rejection that does much to reduce sympathy abroad that immediately followed 9/11.

Americans remember the intolerance that followed 7 December, 1941 manifest in the internment of Japanese Americans and rejection of what remained of German language usage. After an unfortunate reference to a 'crusade' against those responsible for 9/11, President George W. Bush and other public figures attempted to downplay the role of religion by referring to 'terrorists', 'fanatics', and Tslamicists' somehow distinguished from Muslims, especially from American Muslims. It has been increasingly difficult to do because Osama bin Laden and insurgents in Iraq and elsewhere appeal to Muslims everywhere to oppose Western decadence and dominance.

South Asian Muslims are caught in the middle, and many experience a double consciousness. Their developing national identity as Americans and their religious identity as Muslims are seen as in tension as citizens both in a nation engaged in conflict in Islamic countries and in a culture in many ways at odds with the ideals and practices of Islam. As is the experience of other recent immigrants, national identity involves


an additional double consciousness as American citizens and as Asian

Indians or Pakistanis. Indeed, some hold dual citizenship. A majority

of American Muslims are upwardly mobile professional immigrants

from South Asia and Iran or are African Americans who are fairly

recent converts having little association with the Islamic Middle East.

Moreover, national, ethnic, and religious identity is complicated by

diversity among refugees and immigrants. Many citizens and permanent

residents in the United States from the Middle East are Christians or

secularists from Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq fleeing conflicts and discrim-

ination or are Shi'ite refugees fleeing Sunni domination. Relationships

within the house of Islam in American society and among immigrants

with diverse religious traditions are complicated by 9/11 and varied

responses.

The event reinforced negative attitudes toward Islam and Muslims

that already existed in response to the separatist, racist stance of the

Nation of Islam under Elijah Muhammad (1897-1975) and to earlier

terrorist attacks against Americans in Iran, Lebanon, and Somalia that

were supported by some vocal Muslim clerics. The immediate responses to

9/11 were acts of vandalism against mosques and Islamic institutions, hate

talk against Muslims, and other offensive acts that included the tossing

of a pig's head into a mosque in Lewistown, Maine, as late as July 2006.

Muslims report fear caused by such acts and the need to take steps to

protect their families, even purchasing guns and avoiding areas or

contexts fraught with tension.

Negative attitudes were reinforced by bombings in the London under-

ground and bombing of a train in Madrid. Continued attacks placed

Americans in various communities on edge, raised suspicions, and

complicated relationships. Conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in

Lebanon in July/August 2006 and the hate crime attack by a Muslim man

on Jewish women in a Jewish center in Seattle in July 2006 threatened to

create greater tensions between Muslims and Jews in America. Leaders

warn against the danger of importing conflicts from the Middle East

into America. The most comprehensive survey of attitudes toward Muslims was

conducted by the Pew Global Attitudes Project in 13 countries, including the United States, from 31 March -14 May, 2006 (Pew 2006). A majority of American respondents indicated that relations with Muslims are bad (55 percent), and a third indicated that they are good (32 percent). A third of Americans say Muslims are mostly to blame for bad relations, but 26 percent point to Western people, while 22 percent volunteer that both are to blame. Positive ratings of Christians were 88 percent and Jews

226 Issues Post 9/11

States, and, now increasing in numbers, 'third generation' born of newly

married couples reared and educated in American culture. Because the

function of religious groups in the United States is intimately associated

with the formation and preservation of identity of children, parents and

religious leaders attend to the effects of responses to 9/11 on religious

and ethnic identity and the socialization of their children.


77 percent, but only 54 percent for Muslims. Nevertheless, the rating of

Muslims was higher among Americans than in other Western countries,

which may be the result of the professional occupational preferences

in the US immigration law. The positive characteristics associated with

Muslims by non-Muslim respondents in the United States are that they

are devout (67 percent), honest (44 percent), generous (26 percent),

tolerant (28 percent), and respectful of women (19 percent). Almost

two-thirds indicated that Muslims are not respectful of women. The

other negative characteristics associated with Muslims were that they are

fanatical (43 percent), violent (45 percent), arrogant (35 percent), selfish

(27 percent), greedy (24 percent), and immoral (19 percent). Negative

attitudes toward Muslims by these markers were lower in the United

States than in most other non-Islamic countries included in the survey.

News commentators often suggested that lack of prosperity in Muslim

countries is a contributing factor in antipathy toward the West. The

Pew survey asked American respondents to state the causes, and they

responded: (calculating the percentage of top two responses) government

corruption (50 percent), lack of education (51 percent), U.S. and Western

policies (14 percent), Islamic fundamentalism (32 percent) and lack of

democracy (28 percent). Unfortunately, the Pew survey did not report on

American attitudes toward American Muslims or calculate responses of

American Muslims as a separate group (as the survey did for Muslims in

other Western countries).

A majority of Americans express a positive attitude toward religion,

and accept extravagant manifestations of religious piety and practice as

part of religious freedom. The right of any group to establish religious

organizations and institutions and to practice and propagate their religion

is protected by the legal system. American Muslims are immigrants from

many countries and ethnic groups and are not easily identified except

by dress or name. Racial, ethnic, and linguistic Islamic diversity is

represented in large American urban mosques in ways rarely experienced

outside the Hajj in Mecca. South Asian Muslims occupy a relatively

high socioeconomic status, are dispersed throughout cities and towns

rather than being ghettoized, and maintain a relatively low profile. These

factors contributed to the fact that overt negative reactions against Muslims

have been relatively isolated and sporadic events.

The Muslim population is growing in the United States through

immigration, conversion, and birth, but estimates of current numbers vary widely from 2.5 million to 7 million. Although the number appears to

be fairly large, the percentage of population is smaller in the United

States than in Britain, France, or Germany (n.a., The Economist 2006).


Although Americans are becoming familiar with divisions between

Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims in Iraq, few are able to distinguish between

the groups in the United States. Intermarriage with non-Muslim women

who convert to Islam is one avenue of growth. Islamic law and

custom permit marriage of Muslim males outside, but prohibit marriage

of Muslim women to non-Muslims. Men were the large majority of

early immigrants, and some married Christians. Marriage to an Amer-

ican citizen facilitates permanent resident status, which has attractive

features for those on temporary visas (Hehrke-White 2006: 136-140).

In earlier decades, military assignments in foreign countries resulted in

intermarriage and the increase in permanent residents from Germany,

Britain, Japan, and Korea identified as 'war brides.' Recent and current

assignments in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other Muslim countries seem not to

be resulting in 'war brides' or 'war grooms.'

Islam confronts American Christianity with its first major competitor for

the conversion of Americans because Islam promotes propagation of

the faith (dawah) and conversion of infidels from all traditions. African-

American Muslims constitute approximately a quarter of American

Muslims (Harvard Pluralism Project 1). That estimate, based on a Zogby

poll in August 2003, does not make ethnic distinctions between the

settled African-American community and recent Muslim immigrants

and refugees from Africa and the Caribbean. Although mosques are

officially open to all races and ethnicities, which is a tribute to the

universalism of Islam, African Americans establish separate masjids that

are associated with the Nation of Islam founded by Elijah Muhammad

(1897-1975) and now led by Louis Farrakan or are part of the new

orthodox movement supported by Malcolm X and established by

Wallace Muhammad. Many African-American mosques are in major

urban areas, and African Americans constitute a majority of American

converts. Perhaps due to the dramatic, life-changing conversion of

Malcolm X in prison in 1948, Islamic organizations undertake a

significant ministry and proclamation to prison inmates and provide

social services and support to converts released from prisons. The relation

between the 'black mosque' and the 'black church' is one of the

important dynamics in shaping future social, religious, and political

affairs. A significant development in the post-9/11 period is the conversion

of Hispanics to Islam. Estimates conducted by national Islamic organizations such as the Council for American Islamic Relations and the Islamic Society of North America show roughly 40,000 Hispanic American Muslims, with estimates as low as 20,000 and as high as 75,000


among some 37 million American Hispanics. Research by Samantha

Sanchez indicates that the majority of converts are college-educated

women between the ages of 20 and 30. A large number of female conver-

sions occur due to marriage with Muslim men (Barzegar 2003). Jose

Padilla, one of those tried for plotting terrorist attacks, is a Hispanic

convert. Hispanics are diverse racial, economic, and national groups

with ties to Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries. Leaders stress

the historical roots of Islam in Spanish culture and speak of a 'reversion'

to Islam in two senses: (1) Some leaders say that all people are born

Muslim so conversion means returning to an original state of faith; (2)

Islam had a significant influence on Spanish language and culture, espe-

cially in southern Spain. Leaders stress the power of Islamic teaching and

practice to defend minority rights and to combat deteriorating social

conditions in Hispanic families and communities. Hispanics join South

Asian Muslims and other recent immigrants in creating American Islam

and in shaping religion in America in the twenty-first century.

Asian-Indian Muslims have a major role to play in American Islam.

Before 9/11 leaders spoke about their special opportunity to create a

modern form of Islam that would demonstrate how to live as faithful

Muslims as a minority in a modern democratic society. Now they are

gaining the collective economic and political power to influence reli-

gious affairs in the United States and abroad. Immigrants from India

and Pakistan are primarily part of the brain drain from the Indian

subcontinent that established themselves economically and socially in

American society. Their children have genetic and social advantages to

become high achievers in Western universities and in business and

other professions. The second generation has now entered into lead-

ership positions in Muslim institutions. The experience of 9/11 has

been traumatic, causing a reassessment of their relationship with American

society, values, and political affairs. Negative reaction in Islamic

countries and communities has certainly reduced the potential of American

Muslims to influence Muslim affairs worldwide in the short term.

Nevertheless, the potential of leaders of American Muslims to develop a

modern form of Islam that will influence the entire 'house of Islam' over

the long term is great.

The best estimate is that 1578 mosques and centers serve American Muslims (Harvard Pluralism Project 1). Although some mosques are identified as primarily Asian, African, Arab, or European-Bosnian, it is not possible to say how many mosques or institutions serve primarily South Asian Muslims. National organizations, such as the Islamic Society of North America, serve as mediating institutions that


create bridges between mosques, education, proclamation (dawah), and

social services. An important function of national organizations after

9/11 is to represent Muslim interests to the majority population and

the government. Anger and ignorance in the immediate aftermath of

9/11 created the need and opportunity for Muslim leaders to under-

take extensive outreach educational activities. Leaders of the Islamic

Society of North America conducted training workshops for the Federal

Bureau of Investigation and other government agencies so that offi-

cials would have more accurate information about Muslims and their

organizations. Local leaders engaged in outreach in their communities

to counter acts of discrimination and intolerance. Curiosity about

Islam opened opportunities for distribution of copies of the Koran and

propagation of the faith. Anecdotal reports suggest that increased

interest in Islam and conversions to Islam have taken place since 9/11.

Sikhs

Sikhs were the first to suffer retaliation following 9/11. Errors in identi-

fication resulted from ignorance about South Asian religions and misin-

terpretation of Sikh turbans, which seemed to the uninformed to be

identifying marks for Arabs and Muslims, even the Taliban. Although

Sikhs came early to the United States in the first part of the twentieth

century, long before other South Asian religions were present, ignorance of

Sikhism and sporadic hate crimes make Sikhs feel like a vulnerable

unwelcome minority. Prior to 9/11, American Sikhs entered a period of

consolidation and growth following division, tension, and communal

turmoil in the 1980s and 1990s caused by the Khalistan agitation for a

separate Sikh homeland in the Punjab, an Indian Army attack on the

Sikh shrine at Amritsar, and the assassination of Prime Minister Indira

Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards (Williams 1988: 69-84). Resolution of

those tensions promised a period of growth and institutional develop-

ment in the new century. Approximately 250 Sikh places of worship (gurdwara) and centers serve a

Sikh community of 250,000 people (Harvard Pluralism Project 1). Some estimates are higher. Most Sikhs have family roots in the Punjab and share Punjabi culture and language. A major undertaking through local gurdwara and national organizations, such as the Sikh Council on Religion and Education, has been to educate the American public about Sikh beliefs and practices. Leaders urge participation in interfaith associations and activities. Sikh organizations follow the example of other anti-defamation initiatives to identify and oppose various forms of discrimination.


Hindus

Muslims are a minority of South Asian immigrants who join a large

religious community that is multiethnic, multicultural, and multina-

tional. Sikhs are a majority in the Punjab, a minority in India and a

smaller minority in the United States who are determining the relation

of Punjabi ethnicity and Sikh identity in a new context. Hindus are a

large majority in India, representing many regional language and ethnic

groups who are adapting to being a small diverse minority in American

culture.

Although relatively small compared to the number of Hindus in India,

American Hindus have developed strong and growing religious insti-

tutions. The primary impetus for developing temples and institutions is

the socialization of children of the second generation. Economic

success and professional and organizational skills of early immigrants

now support construction of elaborate temples and many social and

religious programs in the United States and in India. Estimates of the

Hindu population are 1.2 million or more, and the number increases

due to new immigration for high-tech jobs and family reunification and

development of second and third generations. Over 750 Hindu temples of

various types serve the changing needs of the community (HVP 2006:

1). Three types of temples are common: (1) Ecumenical Hindu temples

contain deities representing many sects and regions of India and

develop an all-India ethos; (2) Ethnic temples serve Hindus from a region

or linguistic group and preserve ethnic identity and culture; (3) Hieratic

temples are dedicated to the deities and leaders of a particular group,

often with a regional identity as well. The doctrine and practices of a

founding teacher and successors, who are closely associated with the

divine, shape the ethos and worship. The tendency for temples that began

as ethnic or hieratic is to expand their ecumenical scope to include

Hindus from diverse groups.

A large percentage of Hindu immigrants have roots in the Indian

state of Gujarat, and Swaminarayan Hinduism is one of the fastest

growing Hindu groups in America with several subgroups (Williams

2001: 33-68). The Bochaswansi Akshar Purushottam Sanstha (BAPS)

Swaminarayan group is the most successful branch in the number of

temples and centers. It follows a hieratic strategy of devotion to a

living guru, Pramukh Swami, an ethnic strategy of attracting primarily a

regional linguistic following of Gujaratis, and an ecumenical strategy of

reaching out to other regional linguistic groups with a message of

Sanatana Dharma. It has 600 temples, 9000 centers, and 700 sadhus in


India and abroad. Forty-one of the temples are in the United States, and

a number of sadhus reside in the major temples and travel regularly

to visit families and centers across the country. Several of the temples

(Chicago, Houston, and Atlanta) are built of marble and sandstone elab-

orately carved in India and shipped to America for construction. Several

of the sadhus grew up in America and are able to help youth of the

second generation to become American Hindus. Plans are underway

to construct an elaborate monument and culture center in New Jersey

similar in scope and design to Akshardham monuments in Gandhinagar

and Delhi (Williams 2005: 131-137).

American Hindus have been little troubled in the aftermath of 9/11

except for some inconvenience in travel, a slowdown in obtaining

immigration documents, and general concern with backlash against

ethnic minorities. Immigration from India does continue, and new residents

regularly appear at Hindu temples and meetings. Little interaction exists

between Hindus and Muslims in America. The identification of Muslims

as terrorists associated with 9/11 reinforces negative opinions of Muslims

among American Hindus that stem from decades of conflict and distrust

between India and Pakistan and between Muslims and Hindus in India.

Although the American public generally has a positive attitude

toward India and Indians because of shared democratic ideals, admir-

ation for Mahatma Gandhi, and positive evaluation of highly skilled

and successful professionals among the immigrants, attitudes toward

Hinduism were negatively influenced by the International Society of

Krishna Consciousness and Rajneesh Hindus. As immigrant Hindu

groups matured, leaders turned their attention to removing negative

stereotypes, especially in films, television shows, news reports, and,

because it is so important for their children, public schools. Respect for

Hindu customs and religious duties in public places and schools, such as

provision of pure vegetarian options in McDonalds restaurants and

school cafeterias and protection from occasional vandalism to temples

and images, is an important goal. American Hindus are a diverse group and respond in a variety of ways to

currents and pressures in India. The Hindutva movement in India emphasizes the ancient Hindu foundation of Indian culture and reli-gions and attempts to strengthen and support political and social move-ments that emphasize that tradition. One manifestation of Hindutva has been to raise questions about the research and publications of American scholars of Hinduism. Works of Wendy Doniger (University of Chicago), Paul Courtright (Emory University), and James Laine


(Macalester College) have been criticized and attacked in India. Among the scholarly issues are decisions about insider/outsider research on religions, postcolonial and postmodern theories regarding the study of religion, and Western bias in representing Indian history, culture, and religion (Rao 2006: 4-8).

One recent manifestation of these concerns arose regarding a text-book on South Asian history proposed by Oxford University Press for world history courses in the California school system. A state committee reviews and approves all textbooks used in California schools. The proposed textbook contained interpretations of the early history of India and descriptions of Hinduism that some Hindus found objectionable. They opposed the textbook and asked the committee to reject it. The attempt has been unsuccessful thus far, but it demonstrates the growing power and sensitivity of American Hindus. Immigrants moved to form a variety of Hindu organizations and institutions, not to remain separate from American society, but to negotiate from a stronger position their entry and place in their new homeland.

Jains

No one seems angry with Jains, and Jains keep a low profile on the American religious scene. They are closely related to Hindus in culture and ritual, so few Americans know about Jain doctrine or practices and do not distinguish them from other Asian Indians. Steady growth through births and immigration supports development of temples and shrines. The total population is between 50,000 and 75,000. Jains worship in independent Jain temples or at shrines they have set up as part of ecumenical Hindu temples. Approximately 95-100 temples and centers serve the community. The issues facing Jains have not changed following 9/11. The primary task is education of children and young people in the philosophy and practices of Jains. The primary doctrines emphasized for Jains and the larger society are nonviolence (ahimsa) and its corollary practice of vegetarianism.

Christians

Christians from India are relatively invisible among the majority Christian population. One reason is that Indian Christianity has ancient roots, is very diverse, spreads across both India and the United States and represents most strands and denominations of Christianity from Syro-Malabar Orthodox to Latin Catholic to Pentecostal (Williams 1996).


They do not constitute a visible minority in any single church group or

region in America. Some immigrant families join established congreg-

ations, but most seek or start new congregations related to Indian

languages and denominations and recruit priests and pastors to serve

congregations. They have established several dioceses and American

organizations related to those in India. The shortage of priests for American

Roman Catholic parishes leads to recruitment of priests from India, where

there is an excess of vocations for the priesthood and monasteries, to serve

American parishes.

Indian Christians are distinctive because the shortage of nurses in

America opens the door to graduates of nursing schools in India, a

majority of which are Christian foundations and have Christian

students. Female nurses came in large numbers in the 1970s and 1980s

and later brought their spouses and children under provisions for family

reunification. A shortage of nurses continues and predictions are that the

shortfall will increase in the next decades, so the door remains open to

nurses from India. Although the immigration process slowed temporarily

following 9/11, it has returned to its earlier rates. The result is that the

Indian Christian community continues to grow through birth and

immigration. India was second only to the Philippines - another country

with English-speaking Christian nurses - in the number of applicants at

12,508 between 1 October, 2004 and 30 September, 2005 (Commission

on Graduates of Foreign Nursing 2005: 13). Although experiencing

steady growth, Asian-Indian Christians are often lost in reports on Asian

Christians and are overshadowed by East Asians, especially Korean

immigrants, among whom Christianity is growing rapidly. National

ecumenical organizations are greatly weakened and are unable to provide

venues for the visibility of Christian groups new to the American

religious scene. Nevertheless, if Indian Christians are able to preserve

their children in the faith, Asian-Indian Christianity will be an

important addition to the rapidly changing mosaic of American

Christianity.

Major issues for the future

Immigration and new generations

Past immigration and religious movements among the generations of immigrant families determined the current shape of religion in America. Post-19 65 immigration and the new religions that immigrants bring


are shaping the future. The second generation of families from South Asia carries the praise and burden of being 'a model generation.' Close family ties, high expectations, good economic and social standing, and good educational opportunities have produced a relatively successful and high achieving generation that is now producing the third genera-tion. They faced pressure to excel in communicating in two languages and to preserve values of two cultures. They refer to themselves as 'coconuts - brown on the outside and white on the inside.' They joke about being the 'ABCD generation - American Born Confused Desis.' 'Desi' refers to a compatriot. South Asian religious groups were formed primarily to help preserve and transmit religious and cultural traditions to this generation.

The level of assimilation or acculturation of the second and third generations will greatly influence the future of Islam, Hinduism, and other American religions. Common models of analysis are assimilation and Americanization of earlier generations and progressive secularization of Western societies. Neither of those models seems predictive of the experience of current generations, but it is unclear what the future models will be or if they will be the same for diverse ethnic and religious groups. The model that Will Herberg developed was that the second generation rejects the traditions of their immigrant parents, whereas the third generation recaptures some of those traditions in revised forms in what others call 'symbolic ethnicity.' Herberg's analysis came at the end of a period of lull in immigration between 1915 and 1965 during which the generations progressed undisturbed and unsupported by new immigration (Herberg 1960).

New immigrants from South Asia are constantly refreshing religious and ethnic groups. The new first generation of immigrants arriving in this century preserve contacts with religious leaders and institutions in South Asia and they possess recent experience of rituals and ethos current in mosques, temples, gurdwaras and churches in India. Many of the recent immigrants enter under family reunification provisions of immigration laws and procedures. A few are undocumented residents. Many do not possess the educational or professional qualifications characteristic of the earlier 'brain drain' from South Asia and face harder struggles in establishing themselves and their families in American society. Future adaptation of these religions in American society involves an intricate negotiation between the generations of Asian Indians as well as with the majority society.


Intermarriage and conversion

Two additional characteristics of American experience affecting the

shape of religion are intermarriage and conversion, which are often

related. In the U.S. Census for 2000, which for the first time permitted

dual identification, 494,468 persons self-identified as Asian Indian in

combination with another designation. That suggests a significant

number of intermarriages by Asian Indians, but it does not specify the

nature of intermarriages or whether they involve intermarriage among

religious groups (U.S. Census 2). Intermarriage between Muslim men and

non-Muslim women is more common than between non-Muslim men

and Muslim women, which is prohibited by Islamic law and custom.

Intermarriage accounts for some conversions to Islam.

Religious belief and participation is guaranteed in the Bill of Rights,

which is interpreted to mean the freedom to convert from one denomination

to another, from affiliation to nonaffiliation, or from one religion to

another. The open market place of religions created by immigration and

the freedom of religion established in law contribute to the fact that

Americans are more religious by some measures - belief in god,

membership in religious groups, and regular participation in religious

practices - than citizens in other industrialized nations. Some South

Asian immigrants come from nations that prohibit or legally discourage

conversion from one religion to another, especially conversion from

Islam. A number of immigrants take the opportunity migration affords to

change their religious practices. Leaders speak about 'unmosqued'

Muslims who are unaffiliated with Islamic institutions. It is not possible to

chart such religious changes or the number of conversions.

The American government has been prohibited since 1957 from

keeping data about religious affiliation of citizens. An impetus for that

restriction was the experience of Jews during the Holocaust of being

singled out by the Nazis. Imagine what a new Hitler could do with

modern computer lists containing religious identification! The absence of

governmental religious identification also permits religious changes

unfettered by governmental intrusion. Freedom and equality of religious

people before the law are fundamental and certainly will affect devel-

opments among new immigrants, but it is too early to determine what

those effects will be.

Immigrants have a number of personal and institutional identities

from which they can choose to meet an array of contexts and circum-

stances that span several nationalities, ethnicities, and religions. One


issue is the function of religious identities in a time of religious extremism. Earlier immigrants in the third generation tended to emphasize religious identities over national identities, hence the classic work entitled Protestant, Catholic, few (Herberg 1960). An earlier chapter in this book argues that ethnicity is a rhetoric of self-representation (see p. 155), and to some degree that is true of religious identity as well. Asian-Indian religious groups are careful after 9/11 to identify them-selves as American groups, displaying American flags, participating in patriotic events, and contributing to relief activities in the United States as well as in South Asia.

Interfaith associations and study of religions

Events on 9/11 and the aftermath revealed a woeful lack of knowledge about religions, even about the religions of neighbors, and ignorance is a breeding ground for intolerance. Interfaith associations that developed in the previous century focused on relations between Christians and Jews in America and had not been active with other religions. Such associations, largely supported by mainline Protestant and Jewish groups, had been largely moribund. Moreover, it is generally the case that individuals engaged in interfaith dialogue are marginal in their own faith communities (Williams 2005: 262-268). Religious groups of new immigrants had been largely concerned with internal matters and establishing institutional strength to serve their children. In spite of that recent history, some interfaith associations gained new life to fill a post-9/11 need.

Grassroots responses have kept communal tensions and conflicts to a minimum. Civic and religious leaders reacted to acts of violence against Muslims and Sikhs by organizing protection of religious buildings and planning communal programs to create better understanding between religious and ethnic groups. Churches and synagogues opened their doors for programs to explain doctrines and practices of South Asian religions. Mosques, temples, andgurdwaras extended open invitations to neighbors to attend services and programs. Increased tensions in Israel and Eebanon highlight the importance of strengthening good relations between Muslims and Jews in the United States.

One governmental initiative that receives attention from religious groups is the 'faith-based initiative' supported by President George W. Bush. This controversial program provides government funds for faith-based institutions engaged in education and social welfare activities. The initiative is strongly supported by conservative Christian groups, but an unforeseen effect is support on an equal basis for vouchers for Muslim private schools and for social service activities supported by various


South Asian religious groups. Participation of

mosques, churches, and temples in the initiative is

controversial and raises constitutional issues regarding

separation of church and state.

Except for Asian-Indian Christians, no institutions

for the training of South Asian religious leaders exist

in the United States. Hence, lay professionals are

leaders in many religious organizations, and Muslims,

Hindus, Sikhs, and Jains recruit religious leaders from

South Asia to serve their institutions. Many are trained

in traditional, conservative educational institutions in

America, and most have little exposure to detailed

information about other religions or about American

culture, so they have difficulty in representing their

religions in the public square or in helping young

people to interpret their religions to neighbors. Theological seminaries

and rabbinical schools for the preparation of pastors and rabbis have not

been well prepared to teach students about interfaith relations, especially

beyond the Jewish/Christian orbit. Appropriate education of religious

leaders for new religious institutions and for leadership in a multicultural

and multireligious America continues to be a great need.

The separation of church and state in the United States was interpreted

for a long time to exclude religious rituals, the formal study of religion

from state-supported elementary and secondary schools. Unlike Britain

and Canada, the study of religions is not mandated in the public schools of

any state. Even after the US Supreme Court affirmed that academic

study of religion is appropriate, only brief treatments of world religions

appear in some social science classes or world history classes. No separate

state certification is offered for teachers of courses on religion. Both

religious and secular Americans are suspicious about the teaching of

religion in state elementary or secondary schools.

Interest in university courses and programs on Islam and the religions of

India has increased post 9/11. Interest in world religions, especially

Asian religions, increased following World War II and especially after

American involvement in Vietnam. The function of the courses was to

help Western students know about the world in which the United States

was becoming the major power. Following the surge of immigration from

South Asia and other parts of the world, university courses and programs

became the place where children of immigrants learned about their parents' culture and religion. Now classrooms are filled with students from

diverse backgrounds who seek to learn about religions of their neighbors.

Hope for future understanding and tolerance between Americans of

various religions may rest to some degree with students in these classes.


Transnational religions

Events following 9/11 demonstrate that the world has continued to

shrink. Contemporary mobility and media enable almost instantaneous

communication and rapid travel of people, ideas, and artifacts. Each of

the South Asian religions in the United States has outposts in other parts

of the world, including Pakistan and India, that create transnational

networks. Money, people, and ideas flow though the network with great

rapidity, transforming religious and cultural experience in many coun-

tries. Religious leaders from several traditions travel from India each

summer for tours of temples, ashrams, churches, and homes. They both

teach and learn. Visits back to India and other South Asian countries

are secular holidays to visit families and also religious pilgrimages to

renew associations with religious leaders and practice. Transnational

relations with leaders and faith communities in India, Canada, Africa,

Australasia, Britain, and other countries influence adaptation of South

Asian religious groups to American society, and reverse influences travel

through the network to influence developments in mosques, temples,

churches, and gurdwaras abroad.

A significant relatively new development is the exploding realm of

cyber-religion so that diverse forms of all religions are present in virtual

reality everywhere and all the time. Bangalore and Pune in India have

developed into international centers for digital communication, and

computer specialists are among the newest of the 'brain drain' immig-

rants. Internet presence of religions and religious leaders that these

computer specialists facilitate contributes to the transnational character of

religions and increases the power of those who control the new tech-

nologies and the specialists who wield them. Each religion becomes a

'world religion' in an expanded digital world of communication. And e-

mail communications and blogs influence attitudes, beliefs, and practices

around the world for good or ill.

A major difference between December 7, 1945, and 9/11 affecting

responses in America is the religious and cultural changes resulting from

new immigration created by the immigration law of 1965 and subsequent

administrative decision. The American population is now multiethnic and

multireligious in new ways, expanding beyond European ethnicities and

Judeo-Christian faith communities to encompass all the religions of the

world and people from every nation and tribe.

Ignorance and intolerance in Europe led to the Holocaust, and Amer-

ican ignorance and intolerance permitted the internment of Japanese

Bibliography

Barzegar, Abbas. 2003. 'The Emerging Latino Muslim Community in America', High Plains Society for Applied Anthropologists Journal, Fall. [Reprinted in Harvard Pluralism Project http://www.pluralism.org/research/profiles/ display.php?profile=72671] Commission on Graduates of Foreign Nursing 2005.

'A World of Experience: 2005 Annual Report'. Hehrke-White, Donna. 2006. The Face Behind the Veil: The

Extraordinary Lives of Muslim Women in America. New York: Citadel Press. Herberg, Will. 1960.

Protestant, Catholic, few. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. INS 2004. U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, Persons Becoming Legal

Permanent Residents During Fiscal Year 2004 by Region/Country of Birth and Selected Characteristics. Region/Country: India. Harvard Pluralism Project 1.

'Statistics by Tradition' [http://www.pluralism.org/ resources/statistics/tradition]. The Pluralism Project web site contains the most up-to-date statistics and data about South Asian religious groups in the United

States. HVP. 2006. Hindu Vishwa Parishad Newsletter, 15 May, 2006:1. Kids Count State-Level Data Online 2006. Race and Child Well-being. Table 1

'10 Key Indicators of child Well-Being by Race and Hispanic Origin Status: 200/2003'. http://www.aecf.org/kidscount/sld/auxiliary/race_child.jsp

[1/2/06] n.a. 'Islam, America and Europe', The Economist, 23 June, 2006. Pew. 2006. 'The Great Divide: How Westerners and Muslims View Each Other'

Pew Global Attitudes Project, Pew Research Center, [http://pewglobal.org/

reports, 5/22/06]. Rao, Ramesh. 2006. 'Whose Religion and History Is It Anyway?' in The Hindu

Vishwa XXXIII 2:4-8. U.S. Census 1. U.S. Census Bureau, Census 2000. Table FBP-1. Profile of Selected

Demographic and Social Characteristics: 2000. Population University: People Bom in India; Pakistan; Bangladesh. U.S. Census 2. U.S. Census Bureau,

Census 2000, special tabulations. Table 4. Asian Population by detailed Group: 2000.


citizens in the 1940s. Perhaps some lessons have been learned that led

American politicians to discourage religious discrimination and backlash

against Muslims after 9/11 and that led civic leaders, including

religious leaders, to work toward understanding and tolerance - most of

all, to be appalled and ashamed of hate crimes and discrimination that

did result. It is clear that American society is now religiously the most

diverse in the world, perhaps in the history of the world. If the fragile

experiment in democracy, religious freedom, and civil rights that has

been an evolving struggle in America for the past two centuries is to

survive, let alone flourish, the lessons of understanding and tolerance are more essential than ever.

- 1988

' Rdigi0m

°flmmi

^ts from India and Pakistan-'" theAmerican

Ta

Pestf

y- Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University

r '7 '",*' United

States:

The Indian Immigrant Experience. Cambnd

«e

University Press. Edition in India by CUP New

inamy

an Hindui

™- Cambridge, UK: Cambridge

— - • 2005 'Terror Invades Paradise' in Williams on South Asian Religions and Immigration. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. ^ngions ana

13

Law, Religion and South Asians in Diaspora

Werner Menski

While studying South Asian socio-legal experiences in diaspora, it is

productive to take a wider angle, including legal theory. The major

experience of law for South Asians in disapora continues to be, as much in

1996 as in 2006, that the official law of the new home frequently does

not respect and accept the religio-legal traditions of new Asian and African

minorities, assuming that the newcomers and their descendants will

merge, ideally without trace, in the 'host' societies. While it is

beginning to be realised everywhere that these are quite unrealistic

expectations, such things take time to be reflected in tangible form and in

academic literature, which lags behind socio-cultural reality.

Especially since 9/11, official Western legal systems and public

opinion have become more hostile to arguments that non-Western

socio-legal traditions should become an identifiable part of 'our' estab-

lished public order. Calls for the introduction of 'personal laws' in

England, heard since the mid-1970s, sound increasingly hollow and

unrealistic. Mainstream politicians often use the liberal-sounding

language of 'inclusion', but still aim for long-term unidirectional assimil-

ation rather than multicultural integration of the kind that is developing in

certain parts of Europe in socio-cultural reality. Visions and realities do

not match, and South Asians remain everywhere under pressure to

'integrate' into Western 'host societies' by abandoning much of their

socio-religious and certainly legal heritage. In such pressured circum-

stances, violent backlashes are bound to erupt at times, whether through

suicide bombers, intifadas, neighbourhood conflicts or suicides. Europe is,

for some, now a battlefield at many levels.

While 'race' is now suspect as a major criterion, people cannot change their skin colour, which remains a critical identity marker.

Diffident approaches about retention of South Asian identities are not

243

242 Issues Post 9/1 1

Dem 1997


just evidence of plain racism or Eurocentrism, but represent Anglo-focused attempts to negate alterity, as well as a persistent opposition to multiculturalisation and glocalisation as somewhat unexpected forms of globalisation (Menski 2006: 3-24). That these restrictive official lines of thinking are not matched by socio-legal reality 'on the ground' has been observed by an increasing number of scholars for many years,

1 but we

muddle on regardless, privileging Western state laws and continuing to downgrade all forms of non-Western laws. While South Asian laws cannot simply be imported into European legal systems, certain elements of South Asian legal cultures may be useful to understand activities in the increasingly multicultural courtrooms and in other legal battlefields of the West.

But mainstream legal scholars continue to glorify the importance of Western legal transplants all over the world (Watson 1993), while manifest ethnic implants in Western legal systems are downplayed (Menski 2006: 58-65) and officially denied (Shah 2005b). In modern Western settings, the convenient division of private and public spheres implies that a migrant's religion remains a matter for the heart, or the home, but not the public sphere. However, in non-Western socio-cultural and legal traditions, as much in history as today, the interaction of law and religion appears to work out differently in reality, so that such assumed boundaries of 'religious' and 'secular', of private and public, exist as permeable entities rather than as 'black boxes' (Twining 2000). Breaking such boundaries, ethnic minority legal studies now emerge as a new subject (Menski 2002b; Shah 2005b).

Concentrating on Britain as an arena of multiple struggles, we see that individuals may seek to avoid conflicts, keeping their religious expressions to themselves. Since 9/11, however, one sees much more deliberate assertion of visible minority presence, whether through dress codes (and resultant court battles on Islamic headscarves in many countries) or in spatial changes to living environments, reflected in planning laws (Nielsen 1981, 1995; Gale 2005). Religious communities and individuals have made more or less overt claims for legal recognition of 'religious' needs, but states have pursued restrictive strategies, making special allowances for some religious practices while maintaining adherence to a common legal order. Every country in Europe, it seems, pursues this in its own culture-specific way. The strategy of allowing culturally grounded exceptions seems particularly well developed in Britain, where Sikhs can legally ride motor-cycles without wearing crash helmets under the Motor-Cycle Crash Helmets (Religious Exemption) Act, 1976, re-enacted in s. 17 of the Road Traffic Act of 1988. Muslim and Jewish butchers

Wemer Menski 245

are allowed to procure halal and kosher meat under section 36 of the

Slaughterhouses Act, 1976.

Clearly, this earlier preference for special allowances by the state has

created difficulties about defining limits to exceptions. In particular it

has created much resentment about differential treatment of certain

groups, grounding communalising talk of discrimination on the basis of

religion and recent charges of deliberate official lawlessness (Shah

2005a). Being simply 'liberal' no longer resolves the simmering basic

conflict between law and religion, it merely changes the nature of the

debate (Shah 2005b). Clearly, there is no simple or permanent solution to

this uneasy relationship. It requires constant re-negotiation in triangular

fashion between community norms, state laws and certain sets of values

and ethics (Menski 2006: 612).

Focusing on Britain and South Asians, I outline here first how the

current unsatisfactory scenario, characterised by often deliberate break-

down of communication, has developed. There is a remarkable lack of

honesty on the part of dominant legal theory in acknowledging a plurality

of rule systems and sources of law, but also equally notable stubbornness

by communities resisting assimilation to new environments. Many

observers have found that in diaspora, 'tradition' appears to become

more traditional. Analysing how South Asian migrants perceive official

legal systems and why they consider 'religion' as relevant for

themselves also in legal terms, we see that these two perspectives

involve different conceptualisations of law and religion, which inev-

itably require subtle re-negotiation. Such differences in perception are

reflected in the structure of legal systems worldwide and I outline briefly

two basic models of legal arrangement, showing that diasporic scenarios

often involve a desired or actual cross-over from one model to the other.

Analysis of the element of religion in this context shows that (a)

English law, as a legal system, is uncomfortable with religion as such; (b)

it is particularly uncomfortable with, if not hostile to, South Asian

religions; and (c) in a multicultural society the law is today increasingly

forced to admit that there are serious conceptual problems surrounding the

definitions of Taw' as well as of 'religion'. Coping with cultural diversity

in law has therefore become a new focal point of research efforts in conflicts

of law (Shah 2005b). For most South Asians in diaspora religion

remains a powerful force which leads to new strategies to use 'religion'

privately in self-constructing various South Asian identities. Rather than

preventing this process, legal interventions designed to block formal

legal recognition of ethnic minority concerns have led to


a restructuring, the creation of new hybrid developments which traditional legal scholarship finds difficult to understand.

Contested models of law and religion: Conceptual poverty and lack of honesty

In remarkably circular fashion, the law simply claims to be 'the law' (Allott 1980), without realising that it has limits. Because lawyers like to think that they are in charge of the world (the relevant -ism here is legocentrism), legal theory prominently asserts its domination of the public sphere through formal legal mechanisms in the guise of 'rule of law' everywhere in the world (Peerenboom 2004). The under-lying philosophy of state positivism remains popular and dominant, but where does this leave people as individuals or members of communities? What about different value systems, including religions? With minor variations in different countries, religion has been officially separated from 'secular' law, relegated by those same legocentric, state-focused presuppositions to a narrowly conceived private sphere, a mental space rather than a designated area of socio-legal reality.

The prevailing academic discourse has therefore been able to hide behind convenient 'rule of law' labels and the perceived need to protect British, even explicitly English, 'core values' (Poulter 1986: v-vi). Resistance to a pluralisation of the rule systems in countries like multicultural Britain today remains strong. Deeper analysis yields a picture of muddled criteria and unsystematic thinking, complicated by an unwillingness to put recognition of social reality above adherence to particular legal theories. The end result has become haphazard discrimination in English law today Qones and Welhengama 2000). In public meetings, Muslim speakers in particular complain that Sikhs and Jews appear to be English law's darlings, while Muslims face discrimination. Long Jewish presence in England may explain special provisions in marriage law (Hamilton 1995), but how did the Sikhs as fairly recent newcomers obtain so many concessions from English law? Through subtle lobbying, the Sikhs have achieved a privileged position in English law as a recognised 'racial' or 'ethnic group', while brazen Muslim demands for shari'a have been ignored. Since such lobbying was partly based on religion (which officially should not be a criterion under English race relations law) rather than 'proper' racial characteristics, complaints that this is discrimination in the name of non-discrimination are perhaps justified.

2

The aftermath of 9/11 has reinforced this line of argument, voiced with renewed conviction by many Muslims, with copycat reactions

WemerMenski 247

from some 'fundamentalist' Sikhs and Hindus. However,

such divisive argumentations and simplistic legalistic

stances are neither healthy nor sustainable. South Asian

socio-religious experiences in diaspora raise a number

of complex intersecting conflict issues which concern

legal theory, the vexed business of comparative law

(Legrand 1996) as well as Asian studies and religious

studies. While there are no simple answers, one thing is

certain: no amount of uniformising secular law making

can negate the inherent pluralisms of people's

religions, values and community norms. The constant triangular re-

negotiation of state law, community-centred rules and different value

systems (Menski 2006: 612) is never going to go away. Indeed, a new

phase of legal pluralism studies has to be embarked on to make better

sense of such complex issues (Shah 2005b).

Meanwhile official laws continue to behave as though they could

govern the socio-legal field through legislation and judicial control. As

a result, the official English (and Scots) law and the South Asian

communities in Britain have an ambivalent relationship, marked by

avoidance reactions on both sides and increasing non-communication,

rather than constructive open cooperation. At its core, this constitutes a

struggle between the demands of law and the claims of religion, with no

side willing to give in. However, this is also an intensely socio-political

conflict over different claims of morality and universality, and thus

between competing value systems anchored in specific communities.

All of this focuses, ultimately, on control over the rules of any living

society or community, which remains composed of individuals with

their own scope for agency - an issue that should never be ignored,

whatever academic discipline we are in. We also see here confirmation

that South Asian and other ethnic minority legal studies are intrinsically

interdisciplinary. Familiar complications arise because community leaders (however

defined) may have their own views about simmering conflicts, while families and individuals constantly claim the agency (often without realising this) to develop their own ways of life in a new environment, which may clash with the rule systems stipulated by leaders and the state. Individual agency finds rich support especially in common law jurisdictions, where one works from case to case, so that awareness of situation-specificity is cultivated. These are familiar concepts from 'back home'. Customary rules are therefore not just a matter of the past, but new customs continue to be developed in front of our eyes - even if the official view (strongly supported by common law history) may decree that 'custom' is a thing of the past. Significantly, the official law (and


spokespersons of official religions) have problems recognising this in

the United Kingdom, but not elsewhere in the world.3

South Asians in diaspora, individually and collectively, have had

to learn to live with such discrepancies. Ballard's excellent research

(1994: 1-34) confirmed that they can be surprisingly self-

empowered to navigate such conflicts, finding ad hoc solutions that

lead to further developments. Nothing is set in stone; there are no

limits to the pluralities involved in such reconstruction processes.

Skilled navigation is the name of the game, not unproblematic, but

deeply empowering. As more scholars appreciate such pluralistic

presuppositions, it is becoming obvious that many South Asians in

Britain are not just turning into brown Britons but have developed

their own localised and yet transnational hybrid identities, often a

make-believe world, but always in some sense real, enmeshed

between individual conscience and global inter-linkedness.

Globalisation has here come to mean the local intermingling of

pluralities, leading to emergence of differently configurated multi-

cultural societies almost everywhere. The end result, in a country like

Britain, is neither straightforward compliance with English or Scots

law nor simply adherence to traditional Asiatic religions. What has

developed as the legal diaspora experience of South Asians in Britain is

the unplanned, yet somewhat systematic, creation of new hybrid

entities, patterns of thought and behaviour, manifesting themselves in

hyphenated identities of a diverse nature (Ballard 1994: 1-34).

The South Asian evidence in this respect is broadly in line with the

current experience of other diasporas, but can this almost unlimited

plurality-consciousness be sustained? If South Asians expect to live in

Britain as full members of society as well as of recognised diasporas,

rather than as inferior British people with 'substandard' characteristics

which justify continued marginalisation, it seems that official legal

recognition of such hyphenated identities remains useful. However, who

decides the modalities of mutual adjustment and allocations of recog-

nition? Who should adjust to whom? More specifically, to what extent

can the official law take account of South Asian religious elements in

the construction of South Asian diaspora experiences?

In a colonial scenario, English law was mainly a means of control

and suppression. While that same law also had a friendly side, incor-

porating South Asians into the colonial family as British subjects and

Commonwealth members, the image of the law itself is severely tainted. In Britain, this law explicitly allowed South Asians, until the Commonwealth

Immigrants Acts of 1962 and 1968, to come to Britain 'without let or

hindrance', though this did not always work smoothly (Shah 2000).

Wemer Menski 249

In the North American scenarios, South Asians were largely

excluded as unwanted aliens until the mid-1960s.

Historical studies (Visram 1986, 2002; Merriman 1993; Ansari

2004) show that South Asians have long lived in Britain.

Research has confirmed that the immigration restrictions of

the 1960s and early 1970s created settled South Asian

minority populations in Britain and elsewhere, forcing

individuals to make decisions about citizenship, residence

and 'domicile', the three connecting factors that may link an

individual to a particular legal system, without being able to

sort this out completely. Subsequently augmented by family

reunification and today constantly supplemented by more

family members joining from abroad, as well as new births in

Britain, this increasingly plural-ised population has now

reached figures in millions. The leaking tap of family reunion

has proved impossible to switch off because human rights

concerns prevent a total closing of borders, and 'ethnic cleansing'

is hopefully not an option (Ballard 1994: 8). Thus, in Britain, we

witness desperate attempts by those in charge of the law to reassure the

public that immigration can be controlled (Shah 2005a), but here also the

law has limits. More dishonesty in public discourses follows inflated

claims about the powers of law.

Large settled Asian communities, often on a segregated religious or

communal basis, have become a social reality in some parts of the United

Kingdom, but not in others. Hence one cannot expect that we all 'sing

from the same hymn sheet' when it comes to appreciation of multi-

cultural realities. In many (mainly rural) parts of Britain multicultur-

alism still means little in practice beyond the almost ubiquitous chicken

tika masala. In other parts of the country, particular local patterns of

minority domination raise questions over the nature of multiculturalism

when the English element has effectively become miniscule and we have

Banglatown, chota Bharat, Pakistani mohallas or now, in some places,

Somali-dominated neighbourhoods in competition with South Asian

settlements. There was some panic recently over Londonistan. South

Asians in Britain may be only about 4% of the population (roughly half of

Britain's ethnic minority population), but are not thinly spread over the

country. Instead, they live mostly in concentrated communities, no longer

only in 'inner city' areas. I observed from the mid-1970s onwards how

Muslim Bohras from Kenya resettled in some Leicester streets, house by house, recreating old neighbourhood ties and communal links.

Today, there is also a purpose-built mosque and community centre

which involved sacrificing many earlier family homes for the common

good. This has created an aesthetically fitting new structure


that blends in with the surrounding environment while reinforcing the

South Asian characteristics of a local British neighbourhood, a remarkable

new hybridity 'on the ground', surely reflected in mental spaces, as one

observes the people of this lively neighbourhood. Many Asian residential

areas in Britain have temples, mosques and gurdwams in them. In

diaspora, religious identities have acquired demonstration effects

which they did not have before, particularly not for those communities

that exchanged a majority status 'back home' to become a minority in

diaspora (Sutherland 2003).

Such spatial patterns of reconstruction impact strongly on the legal

sphere, and English law finds itself under siege. The official law every-

where has enormous problems with South Asians, many court cases

involve South Asian laws and cultures, and the approach to South Asian

case law has been changing over time. From a starting point of ambi-

valent inclusion of South Asians as Commonwealth citizens in the 1960s

and early 1970s, early cases showed English law keen to accommodate

ethnic minority scenarios.4 Gradually, though, more hostile approaches

dominated English case law during the 1980s and 1990s.5 Today's official

approach remains marked by defiant exclusionary mechanisms, often

hidden behind arguments about 'rule of law', equal treatment and

desirable common values, but the post-2000 human rights dispensation in

the United Kingdom also pulls the other way and forces the official

law to recognise hybrid facts.6 But there is still little room for South

Asian cultures and religions within the 'British' label. In legal reality,

confirmed by my involvement as a legal expert for courts, there is

enormous scope for abuse of legal rules by decision makers, unable or

unwilling to understand the realities of South Asian diasporic hybridities

today.

Within the public sphere and its assimilationist assumptions, South

Asians and their religions and cultures represent, for many outsiders and

often for themselves, as confused deshis, an irritation factor which has

refused to abate. Private confusions provide rich material for novels and

soapy dramas and often make it into the news. On a formal level, English

law, in the past two decades, has reacted with increasing defensive-

ness against assertions of South Asian religio-cultural practices, openly

discriminating against and between South Asians, while maintaining an official rhetoric of non-discrimination which sounds increasingly

hollow.

South Asians as individuals and communities have long questioned

this hostile official stance,7 and it is not difficult to summarise why this

continues to be a problem. First, the effects of stricter immigration

WemerMenski 251

controls over a long time have directly affected most South Asian

families, often hitting women (Menski 1999). This continues to be a

problem, but is played down and not widely known. Wilful refusals of

visas for family visits, even in cases of marriage and - more dramatic -

funerals, continue to cause avoidable agony. The law is often not

perceived to be 'on your side' if you are an Asian in Britain. This awareness

continues to hit many well-established people who may come up against

barriers that they thought had long been overcome. The law, we often

hear and see in legal practice, is not perceived as fair to Asian 'others', but

loudly proclaims to be inclusive. More dishonesty is manifest in this field

than most individuals and even informed scholars realise.

More specifically, the law is perceived not to be respecting South

Asian religious needs and now often intervenes aggressively in matters of

South Asian culture.8 While being British has not been easy (Modood

1992), becoming British has not been made easier by newly introduced

compulsory tests of knowledge of life in Britain, and by recent attempts to

force even babies to prove 'good character' before acquiring British

citizenship.9

At the same time, there is evidence that some 'others' are treated better, and that somehow white people rarely experience certain immigration-related problems (Macdonald and Blake 1991: 260), adding to misgivings about the arbitrary operation of rules (Spencer 1995). The earlier effects of the primary purpose rule often divided legally married South Asian couples for years (Sachdeva 1993). Frequent refusals to accept the legal validity of South Asian marriages and divorces entered into abroad (Mole 1987; Sondhi 1987), and a virtual ban on inter-family adoptions from South Asia (Mortimore 1994) constantly upset South Asians, especially when they are law-abiding citizens of the United Kingdom and suddenly find themselves confronted with hostile legal rules. Recent requirements to seek state permission for registering certain marriages in the United Kingdom disproportionately target non-white individuals and are presently challenged on human rights grounds.

10 English law stubbornly refuses to implement supposedly well-

established principles of private international law and thus curtails the rights of many South Asian individuals.

In the domestic arena, English law faces huge problems in recognising the socio-religious needs of South Asians, refusing legal validity for South Asian forms of marriage and divorce performed in Britain, insisting on uniformity of laws. However, in Chief Adjudication Officer v. Bath, 2000 [1] FLR 8, the English Court of Appeal found itself constrained to find


a just solution and was forced, on grounds of equity, to hold that an unregistered Sikh marriage in the United Kingdom during the 1950s had created a legal status equivalent to marriage under English law, thus entitling Mrs Bath, a Sikh widow, to pension rights. Still today, though, Hindu religious marriages or a Muslim nikah performed in England carry no legal validity in their own right. A marriage entered into before anything other than the Christian God or the secular state is no marriage for the official law.

The above necessarily brief overview of contested scenarios and issues illustrates the long-standing unhappy relationship between English law and South Asian minorities. We continue to know little about this because it has only recently become respectable to discuss the interrelation of religion and law (Bradney 1993). Notable avoidance reactions, on all sides, led to an absence of well-grounded discussion. Having declared itself superior, English law, with few exceptions, has refused to negotiate change from its basic position of official strength and legitimacy,

11 while the

minority adjustment strategies are increasingly marked by avoidance reactions in the form of almost stoic 'inner migration'. This helps to avoid outright conflicts, impedes open resolution of many issues, and leads inevitably to new pluralities. It is evident that religion remains a major factor in this purposive non-discourse on the growing pluralisa-tion in diaspora.

The official discourse on law and religion

It lies in the very nature of law and of religion that they compete when deciding socio-political rules, as both claim superior control over the same social field. Religious authority, based on a superhuman source, however defined, can be personalised, most dramatically today in the Muslim Shi'a tradition of the Imam, who combines legal and religious authority in his person. However, it can also manifest itself informally, but no less powerfully, as in the Hindu/Buddhist traditions and African religions, which do not necessarily rely on a divine figurehead, but allow certain individuals to become powerful institutions. However, these authoritative models and personalities ultimately operate on basic presumptions of limited human power. But this does not mean that humans, therefore, have no right to make laws. Rather, it will be conceived as the duty of mankind to devise appropriate rule systems for the social sphere (for Islamic law, see Coulson 1969).

The experience of many Islamic countries apart, law, by the nature of its dominant positivist ideology as a command laid down by a political

WemerMenski 253

authority, tends to present itself as inspired by a particular religion, but

also sees itself as distinct from the religious sphere, which is commonly

relegated to the realm of the 'private' and is thus somewhat narrowly

circumscribed. But different cultures and religions view this differently.

When is a law secular, and when is it not (Huxley 2002)? Where does

'private' end and 'public' begin? Can any ruling authority really be

totally separated from 'religion'? These remain contested questions.

In terms of historical jurisprudence (Kelly 1992) one thing seems

certain: apart from socialist legal theory, which systematically excludes

religion, most legal theories accept that religion, as a superhuman force,

lies beyond the sphere of man-made law but exists as a factor impacting

on human lives. As a result, legal theory has cohabited uncomfortably

with religion and, according to a leading legal philosopher (Cotterell

1989: 6), 'the rationality of modern law is a piecemeal rationality'. For

positivist legal authority to set itself up as dominant over religion, it

first had to be divorced from natural law philosophies with their own

(now often secular) claims of superiority. Statist positivism and secu-

larism therefore go hand in hand with the so-called rational modernist

conceptualisations of law.

In Europe, the early principle of cuius regio eius religio focused on territorial

law and caused its own problems. If the ruler's religion determined the

people's religion in his realm, it necessitated conversion or emigration

of the 'other', early forms of ethnic cleansing, or necessitated protection

and recognition mechanisms for religious minorities. It was in the gift of

every ruler to grant legal recognition for various religious minorities.

While this has never been an unproblematic option for liberal states

and enlightened rulers, non-recognition of 'the other' tends to cause

multiple problems. Continental European history is, not by coincidence,

filled with multiple refugee streams and mass flight (by the standards

of that time) between the tiny 'states' that dotted Europe's map. Many

rulers found that the presence of certain religious minorities could be

good for the economy, so that religious intolerance was often balanced

with economic and political self-interest - the idea that immigration

might be good for economics is hardly new (Simon 1989). This did not

change significantly in the period of nation states, in fact it multiplied

the pressures for recognition of religious minorities because larger

states involved potentially more people of religious minorities. However, whether a ruler or state recognises religious minorities or not appears to

have little to do with the competitive relationship of law and religion.

What matters in this regard is whether the ruling legal authority has

declared itself free from a superior religious, political


authority. For Britain, in this respect, the divorce from Rome and the Establishment of the Anglican Church were key events.

Local peculiarities apart, it appears that in the wider world there are basically two models of how legal systems organise the interaction of law and religion. The first model, based on territoriality, implies the strategy of most Western legal systems to maintain a formally uniform legal framework for all persons resident in a state, not necessarily only all citizens. In this 'rule of law' model, the basic assumption is that the state's law is the same for everyone. While states may rhetorically stress formal uniformity of legal rules, they often allow certain variations and exceptions in practice. Religious plurality is tolerated but only within limits defined by the law, which cannot be described as uniformity of legal regulation, since a little bit of plurality is still plurality. Any small recognition of religious or 'ethnic' diversity thus unmasks the rhetoric of secular uniformity as a convenient political strategy to control socio-cultural plurality. However, such arguments depend entirely on our underlying definitions of law.

In graphic form, we find one official law for all within the legal field, but this kind of law is riddled with exceptions. To what extent such exceptions are formally allowed depends on history and politics, on numbers as much as lobbying skills. The picture below shows a general, territorially uniform law for all with certain exceptions for some categories of people:

Uniform law with exceptions

But what if people in a specific territory follow different religions and as a result want to practise different laws? No state can avoid this issue. The simplest 'solution' has been insistence on the overriding principle of territoriality, manipulating the definition of 'law' to include only state law. Various forms of people's laws are then just evidence of different cultural patterns, or they are 'exceptional laws' which somehow do not count on a par with the formal official law. In countries with old-established indigenous populations, such as the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, but also Finland or even Germany (the Sorbs), there may be a slightly modified pattern granting the indigenous

WemerMenski 255

population a specific legal position of difference that is formally recog-

nised, often still related to territoriality.

In many other legal systems, indeed in most legal systems of the

world, territoriality has been combined with the competing principle of

'personality'. The latter recognises legal systems which can be attached to

and travel with persons of a particular religion or culture. The key

question becomes to what extent a territorial legal system would legally

recognise any practice related to 'personality' or socio-religious identity.

Many states (e.g., France, Brazil and some Muslim countries) deny the

presence of minorities, but this issue cannot so easily be swept under

the carpet. Lawyers may be brilliant at creating fictions, but a state is

never a body of uniform people and a legal system is never a simple

collection of uniform rules. Legal systems tend to be complex entities

made up of different parts and '[i]t is very difficult, if not impossible, to

give a clear-cut definition of law' (Deva 2005: 1).

Hence, within a framework of legal uniformity there will always be

many situations in which some rules apply only to specific people. Laws

on driving apply only to people who drive. In secular legal systems,

religion should not be a relevant criterion. But what is 'religious'? Law is

always culture-specific, and legal systems are always influenced by

ethical and religious concepts that Chiba (1986: 3-4) called 'legal postu-

lates', values underpinning any official or unofficial rule system. So

purportedly uniform rule systems often end up making exceptions for

certain groups of people on the basis of religion. For example, Britain

has had separate marriage rules for Jews and Quakers since 1753 and

one may question whether such privileges for older communities can be

justified in today's climate (Hamilton 1995).

There are other ways of handling legal pluralism than making ad hoc

exceptions. To take better account of internal legal plurality, there is a

second global model of legal arrangement, sometimes referred to as the

millet system of Ottoman vintage or the personal law system. Most non-

Western countries take explicit account of the needs of various

communities and thus recognise the presence of various concurrent reli-

gious belief systems within a particular socio-legal field. Significantly

such pluralised legal systems often take religion as the main distin-

guishing feature, but in African countries, for example, it would be a question of different communities (Hinz 2006).

This second model is relevant here because all South Asian legal

systems follow it. Most migrants to Britain were therefore familiar with

this plurality-conscious method of taking legal account of diversity

and difference. In practice, this operates as a dual system of legal


organisation, combining a uniform general law, which often includes

the country's constitution, with a system of concurrent personal laws, in

which Hindus are governed by Hindu law, Muslims by Muslim law,

Zoroastrians by Zoroastrian law, and so on. In graphic form, this model

shows Indian law, with Hindu law as the majority law, and Muslim,

Christian, Parsi and Jewish laws as minority laws, together with an

important secular legal option:

General law

Personal laws

For Pakistan and Bangladesh, the only modification to this model would be that the majority personal law is Muslim law, while Hindu law is a minority law, and for Bangladesh one would need to add Buddhist law, which in India has been subsumed, by state intervention, in the Hindu law (as have the Sikh and the Jaina law).

Two contested issues arise in those plural legal scenarios: First, who is a Hindu, Muslim, Zoroastrian, Christian or Jew becomes an important question, thus dragging religious identity into legal discourses. But where an up-to-date secular option exists, as it does in India (but not in Pakistan, Bangladesh or Malaysia), an individual would appear to have the freedom to choose which law to be governed by. Western countries seem wary of such options, using the issue of communal determinism -even if it is a fiction as Amartya Sen (2006) now argues - as a powerful argument against pluralisation of legal systems.

Secondly, because personal law systems do not govern the entire legal field and are mostly restricted to family law and succession, the border between personal law and general law remain contested. Mainly in criminal law (Dhagamwar 1992), there is continuing concern that personal laws are clawing back territory as a result of conservative nationalist clamour (Dhagamwar 2003). Such fears of resurgence of 'religion' are used to favour more state centrism. But can legal rules ever be totally uniform, and whose rules does one prefer? There is a lot of muddled thinking here in legal scholarship on a global level (Menski 2006).

The uniform legal model above seeks to sideline religion as a relevant criterion in the legal field, while the second model is plurality-conscious

Werner Menski 257

and explicitly takes account of various religions. Both legal methods of

handling religion create problems. The worldwide debates about legal

pluralism suggest that legal uniformity is merely a theoretical model,

since even formally uniform legal systems have to make multiple excep-

tions. On a theoretical as well as empirical basis, it is therefore correct to

assert that 'legal pluralism is the fact. Legal centralism is a myth, an

ideal, a claim, an illusion' (Griffiths 1986: 2). This means that religion

remains a factor in any legal discourse even if it is hidden, or a sidelined

party to legal debates.

South Asian minority communities in British diaspora, from a position

of deficient strength, can therefore nevertheless rely on strong

arguments in favour of plurality and historical recognition of religious

diversity as legally relevant. In principle the global contest between law

and religion has not been resolved in favour of law and Western cultural

domination. Ballard (1994:13) indicates South Asian negative reactions to

supposedly superior British lifestyles, powerful indicators of 'inner

migration' on the part of many individuals within the ethnic minority

communities. Today, rather than 'legal transplants' from Europe to the

countries of the South in colonial times, we find Southern 'ethnic

implants' in the legal systems of the North as a result of global migration

(Menski 2006:58-65). While the uniform legal model prevails at a formal

level, in socio-legal reality the unofficial personal law remains critically

important, even if dominant legal theory seeks to ignore it. Lack of

honesty about socio-legal reality prevails and continues to prevent

deeper analysis.

The English legal system and religion

English law's reluctance to recognise ethnic minority religions is not only historically grounded through the genesis of common law and colonial experience, but also strongly linked to legal theory's reserva-tions about religion. Historically, the clash between worldly power and religious authority in Britain is instructive. Having declared its inde-pendence from Roman Catholic interference centuries ago, the British state has not shaken off the influence of religion altogether. The state has somewhat dishonestly (as many South Asians now realise) resorted to calling itself 'secular'. It operates as a secular force, while cultivating links with an established Church which go beyond ceremonial actions. But the secular state is not trusted any more, as the Rushdie affair and the resulting debates on blasphemy laws clearly showed. The monarch remains also Head of the Church, signifying a convenient political


convention created by constitutional law experts. Due to this constitu-

tional arrangement, the British state and English law have retained a

broadly Christian, indeed specifically Anglican ethos. The law has been

anxious to preserve this inter alia through education policies, and the

special place of Anglicanism is strongly reflected in the current regulation

of marriage laws.

A problem with religious allegiance as a form of legal authority

remains everywhere that it does not retreat into a shell when politicians

and lawmakers say it should. Abrogating the claim of religion to superior

power has the effect that religion continues to exert 'extra-legal' influ-

ence over individuals and groups of people, coming back to power,

now as 'unofficial law' rather than official law. State law, in a nutshell,

cannot abolish religion - these are different types of law. 'Religion' therefore

claims importance and even supremacy today as moral authority, secular

values rather than religious doctrine. It remains an important fact in

public life that the Archbishop of Canterbury can comment on any

matter with considerable authority of person and office. The same

person also retains a formal role in the law-making processes of English

law and can attempt to influence opinion, asserting the realm of the

religious, through such official channels.

Similarly, if the British Home Secretary tells British Muslims that they

must respect the law and must live by 'our' rules, he is not making an

overtly religious statement, yet he is saying that the rules and values of

this country override those which immigrants and their descendants

brought with them and adhere to. He makes the claim then, without

saying so, that English law overrides the shari'a. The positivistic message

for South Asians in diaspora is clear: mainstream multicultural discourse

constantly reinforces assertions of the centrality of the so-called secular

state law and supremacy of law over religion. In modern Britain, we see an

important shift away from openly religious authority to what one may

characterise as semi-hidden religious authority. Religious authority has

changed form and substance and asserts itself now as secularised moral

authority through various spokespersons who rely on principles and

rules which derive their legitimacy and force from something like

religion, however secularised.

It seems easier to critique this linkage of law and religion for minority religions than for spokespersons of the majority, because we presume

that anything Hindu or Muslim is always 'religious' (Menski 2002a),

while we do not apply the same presumptions to other religions,

including that of the majority. Western individuals who had a Euro-

centric education and themselves perpetuate a Eurocentric system of

Wemer Menski 259

education and public life, with all the self-interest mechanisms which that in turn produces, may not notice that this constructed world may not be in order. They may even see it as their legal duty to remind 'others' that assimilation is required for harmonious coexistence on common terms. But whose common terms? For people in diaspora, this kind of message may signify a bundle of unpleasant, familiar colonial assertions of eurocentric religious dominance and power.

Recent academic writing is beginning to search for a postmodern conception of law reflective of its cultural diversity (Shah 2005b: 2). In some earlier publications on legal theory from Asia, the subtle interaction of 'official law', 'unofficial law' and 'legal postulates' (Chiba 1986: 5-7) has been powerfully and persuasively emphasised.

12 Others from that

region, especially Sack (1986) and Castles (1994) from Australia, have made useful contributions to such legal debates. Western 'model jurisprudence', as Chiba (1986: 1) called the positivist approach to the marginalised roles of religion and culture, is today under challenge (Legrand 1996), for good reasons. Western 'model jurisprudence' is merely a law-centred, establishment-focused view of the world which excludes social diversity and the plurality of religious and ethnic human experience. As a model it remains useful, as a tool to investigate the legal position of minority communities it has severe limitations.

The so-called recent resurgence of ethnicity and religion has been widely noted. It is not welcomed by academics who prefer to redefine the world according to their own opinions rather than analysing what they find. Academics are often political activists, and avoidance reac-tions often mean that legal researchers do not want to know about religion and its relationship with law. There is little we can do about this, except cross-referring to intellectual and political dishonesty, noting that English law remains uncomfortable with religion, and specifically the effects of ethnic minority religions. Official statements and much scholarly debate merely strengthen a convenient status quo between law and religion - an uncomfortable stalemate scenario. The official banishment of religion from the legal sphere has not made religion non-existent - instead we are just playing with words.

Conclusions

This chapter has emphasised legal approaches, showing how the law is interlinked with socio-cultural realities and religious elements that most legal scholars find difficult to incorporate into their analyses. I hope to have demonstrated how and why English law remains quite unwilling to


negotiate a position for the various South Asian socio-legal communities

approximating that of the personal law systems, which most South

Asians are familiar with. The predominance of legocentric approaches

anticipates patterns of socio-cultural assimilationist change in a generation

or two. Indeed, there will be change, but not simply in the direction of a

melting away of selected religious and cultural differences attached to 'the

others'. In comparative perspective, the US model of the melting pot has

influenced official thinking in Britain, but seems a less realistic

outcome than more pluralistic concepts like the Canadian mosaic, which

Australia also now acknowledges as a consequence of social plur-alisation

(Bouma 1997). Internationally, we are struggling to understand how

diversity can be matched with uniformising trends, now also in the context

of globalisation vs glocalisation.

A critical question remains how far the respective official law will

adjust to the new socio-legal patterns that various communities, here

specifically South Asians, are already developing, but necessarily as

unofficial laws. The law has the potential to adjust to new pluralities,

taking account of various religious needs. While Western legal systems

are themselves deeply infused with particular religious ideologies and

cultural histories, the distancing of law from religion will continue

because it is an essential element of legal self-preservation strategies,

linked to the law's centrality claims. Given that South Asian religions

emphasise the close links and partial overlap between law and religion,

any form of legal recognition of South Asian religious issues would shift

the balance of power in favour of religion, thus endangering the law's

supremacy. This is why we are so nervous, in Britain today, about the

claims of 'religious' law. The present domination of legal theory by state-

centric positivism will not disappear overnight, just as religions will not

vanish, but it seems that both need to be constantly challenged to avoid

extremist abuse of power.

I conclude therefore with the observation that all parties in this

contest between law and religion need to recognise it as a perennial

process of re-negotiation, which does not need to turn into a combat

scenario. While nothing can be resolved forever, the law can continue its

claims of official control of the entire social field, while large sections of

ethnic minority communities have empowered themselves to redevelop their own existence in diaspora, in social, religious as well as legal terms.

As a student of South Asian culture, I am not surprised by this. Mother

India's many children have always developed their own ways of doing

things and have a long tradition of reconciling apparently irreconcilable

patterns of belief and practice. The continued prosperity and richness

WemerMenski 261

of South Asian religious identities in Western countries is a living testi-

mony to the assertions that religion is as strong as law, that legal cent-

ralism is a fiction, and that legal pluralism is a fact. As Western countries are

becoming increasingly plural in ethnic terms, it is too late to turn the clock

back. Yet, we are still far away from the acceptance of social and religious

or cultural plurality as a fact of life and an element of 'living law'. South

Asians in Britain, experiencing discrimination daily simply for being

different (even if many people may not notice this), cannot be blamed

for being protective of diversity, because they are, in this process,

merely protecting themselves. But the burden of assimilation and

adjustment cannot be placed on the communities in diaspora alone.

Official legal systems, too, need to be more plurality-conscious and less

exclusionary and to give more friendly signals to diaspora communities to

show that they 'belong' and have a rightful place within the legal orders

of Europe and North America without having to deny their hybrid

identities.

Notes

1. See in particular Menski (1987,1993), Ballard (1994), Jones and Welhengama

(2000) and now Shah (2005b). 2. See on this pointedly Roger Cotterrell in his Foreword to Shah (2005b). 3. For example, a leading South African legal scholar (Bennett 2004: 2) emphasises

that customary laws 'are, at one and the same time, both young and old... customary law is always up to date'.

4. See for example Qureshi v. Qureshi [1971] 1 A11ER 325 as a high-water mark. 5. An extreme example is Chaudhary v. Chaudhary [1984] 3 A11ER 1017, with

hostile comments about Islamic law as 'jungle law', which are still relied upon in some cases today.

6. In Singh v. Entry Clearance Officer, New Delhi [2004] INLR (Immigration and Nationality Law Reports) 515, a Sikh family adoption in India was finally recognised by the English courts after a long battle.

7. There is a rich literature from the 1970s, now largely ignored, which high-lighted abuses of the law by the state. Activist lawyers like lan Macdonald (1969,1972) started their remarkable careers as critics of officially sanctioned discrimination and some continue to battle in this field beyond retirement (Macdonald and Webber 2005).

8. Prominent examples would be the government-sponsored campaigns around forced marriages, which have led many people to believe that all South Asian marriages with elements of 'arrangement' are deeply suspect, and ongoing efforts by some local authorities in the United Kingdom to ban Muslims from arranging cross-cousin marriages, which are known to result in disproportionate numbers of disabled offspring.

9. This rule has now (after vigorous protests) been modified to exclude children

under the age of ten.

10. A test case appeared as The Queen v. Secretary of State for the Home Department, decided on 28 March 2006.

11. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, English law was more willing to take account of South Asian concerns in family matters (Pearl 1972).

12. I am not saying that such research does not exist in the West. For excellent examples, see Griffiths (1986) and in detail Cotterell (1989) and Kelly (1992).

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To British observers, the suicide bombings on London's underground on 7/7/2005 marked as much of an end of an era as did the attack on the twin towers on 9/11. The days of liberal multiculturalist

appeasement appeared to be over. As the Prime Minister put it, the rules of the game had changed: diversity had been overindulged; allowed to go too far. Britain's dilemma was deeper than America's: unlike the dissident Arabs who slipped into the United States to train as pilots, London's bombers were born in Britain. If extremism

was an internal threat, it followed that the body politic was rotting from within, and to contain the infection required unprecedented initiatives. If that meant backing out of the European Convention on Human Rights, or even of habeas corpus, then so be it.

Although many aspects of established social policy were overwhelmed in the aftermath of the events of 7/7, the tsunami did not arrive without warning. From the publication of Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses to the so-called 'Northern cities riots' two decades later, an escalating series of incidents provided clear indications that young British Muslims were becoming increasingly restless. Moreover their restlessness was of a distinctive kind: from the Satanic Verses controversy it was quite clear that the underlying contradictions were as much a product of religious and cultural issues as those of 'race'. The 'northern riots' of 2001 precipitated a further step-change in policy. The report which was prepared in their aftermath, Building Cohesive Communities (Cantle 2002), was promptly adopted as government policy. Remarkably, the sharp switch in emphasis which Cantle recommended attracted heavyweight intellectual support. As Prospect Magazine argued,

Lifestyle diversity and high immigration bring cultural and economic dynamism, but can erode feelings of mutual obligation... In the

265

14

Living with Difference: A Forgotten Art in Urgent Need of Revival?

Roger Ballard


decades ahead, European politics itself may start to shift on this axis, with left and right being eclipsed by value-based culture wars and movements for and against diversity.... The progressive centre needs to think more clearly about these issues to avoid being engulfed by them... to that end it must try to develop a new language... that transcends the thin and abstract language of universal rights on the one hand, and the defensive, nativist language of group identity on the other... People will always favour their own families and communities; it is the task of a realistic liberalism to strive for a definition of community that is wide enough to include people from many different backgrounds, without being so wide as to become meaningless.

(Goodhart 2004)

At first sight, the 7/7 explosions confirmed Goodhart and his supporters' fears; in their aftermath Britain's 'failed policies of multiculturalism' attracted much criticism. Such policies, it was argued, had facilitated the emergence of unincorporated communities within which extremism thrived unchecked. Britain was adversely compared with France, where the policy of laicite was comprehensively antithetical to multicultur-alism. Since the Republic's citizen are all by definition French, minorities remain deliberately unrecognised. Homogeneity is a central objective of public policy, and the manifestation of diversity - especially if religiously grounded - in public is consequently deemed illegitimate. Hence in sharp contrast to multicultural Britain where halal school dinners are widely available and uniform adjustments to cope with minority proclivities have become the norm, the French authorities successfully prohibited Muslim pupils from wearing the hijab in state-funded schools. Suddenly France came to be admired for its refusal to concede to 'divisive' (and hence community-cohesion sapping) demands for minority rights.

Nevertheless, uncritical support for the colour-, religion- and culture-blind policy of laicitt did not long survive the events of 7/7. Four months later the banlieue of Clichy-sous-Bois on the outskirts of Paris -in which (largely Muslim) migrants of African origin and their locally born offspring were warehoused in soulless high-rise apartment blocks -erupted in a series of night-time confrontations between local youth and the gendarmerie. The initial reaction of the authorities was entirely dismissive: Interior Minister Sarkozy described the rioters as 'vermin' who should be swept away with high pressure hoses. However, his reaction was read as provocative. As the intifada spread round the banlieues

Roger Bollard 267

of Paris and then to many provincial cities, the authorities had no

alternative but to pay attention to the causes of these uprisings.

Once peace was restored - which did not occur until troops had

been called out to reinforce the buckling resources of the police -

there was widespread agreement that new initiatives were required

to address the underlying issues. We have yet to see whether these

will be sufficient to prevent further trouble. But so long as the

Republic's overarching commitment to laicite remains

unchallenged, there appears to be a substantial prospect that further

eruptions will occur in due course.

The challenge of plurality

France and Britain face similar problems. Like most industrialised countries,

they experienced a mass influx of non-European migrant workers during

the years of prosperity which followed the Second World War, such that

their populations were rendered substantially more diverse in ethnic

terms. Contrary to widespread (if naive) expectations of swift

assimilation, the resultant patterns of plurality have become a

permanent feature of the social order. Confusion now reigns over how

best to respond. Numbers are too large for expulsion to be a realistic

option, and the final solution of genocide is manifestly off the agenda.

Yet all the more acceptable solutions - whether framed in terms of anti-

racism, of multiculturalism or of laicite - appear to precipitate equally

unviable outcomes. These contradictions are by no means confined to Britain and France.

Mass migration is now a global phenomenon, and ethnic plurality has become the most salient locus of violent conflict in whichever direction one looks. Yet the source of these contradictions - the presence of religious and cultural plurality within a single social arena - is in no way a novel phenomenon. Human society has always been culturally diverse. It is easy to see why: members of the species Homo sapiens are unique in their capacity to create the terms of their own social existence, and hence to be cultured in innumerable differing ways. Likewise our species has also always been exceptionally spatially mobile, and just as eager to trade. What is novel about the contemporary world is not so much the coexistence of persons using differing social, cultural, linguistic, and religious conventions to order their lives, but rather the acute feelings of discomfort which are now routinely precipitated in circumstances of this kind. Contrary to widespread (modern) belief, the explosions which now so often occur when those who differ find themselves confronting one another are not innate. Rather they stem from our newly entrenched


expectation that societies can only be expected to cohere on an orderly basis if they are ethnically homogeneous. Given such a mindset, ethnic plurality is routinely perceived as an unwelcome and destabilising threat to the integrity of the established social order.

Yet just how accurate is that supposition? Are plural societies neces-sarily unstable? Or are our current assumptions merely a consequence of having entrapped ourselves within the ideological limitations of our taken-for-granted 'presentist' and 'unitarian'

1 expectations? A brief

historical excursion produces some illuminating results.

The historical roots of Britain's current condition of ethno-religious plurality

Most contemporary societies are cross-cut by ethno-religious divisions of one kind or another. Some are of such antiquity that they have come to be regarded as autochthonous, whilst others are of much more recent origin. Britain - or more accurately the United Kingdom - provides a clear example of the range of possibilities. Over the millennia the indigenous Celtic population of the Atlantic Isles was marginalised by successive waves of immigrants. Those who arrived from North Germany and Scandinavia came to be defined as Anglo-Saxons, and were in turn subordinated by further invaders from Normandy. In the centuries that followed these two disparate immigrant groups gradually merged, leading to the construction of the Anglo-Norman Creole which we now know as English. However, English was much more than a language: as an ethnic category it provided a vehicle whereby all those resident south of the Scottish borders and east of the Welsh marches could close ranks, thereby enabling them to differentiate themselves from - and to legitimate their hegemony over - those of their predecessors who had been relegated to the Celtic periphery.

Although the English, Scots, Welsh, and Irish components of popul-ation of the Atlantic Isles were eventually brought together in the United Kingdom, the underlying condition of plurality was not eliminated: each of the Celtic nations maintained a strong sense of distinctiveness, not least because of the England's maintenance of a position of hegemonic dominance within the Union. Moreover England's carefully constructed condition of internal homogeneity was further overlaid (and hence compromised) by successive migrant inflows. These included Huguenots, Irish Catholics and Eastern European Jews prior to the two World Wars, and the more immediately visible settlers from Asia, Africa and the Caribbean thereafter. In other words migration is nothing new to English

Roger Bollard 269

(or British) history; nor is ethnic plurality. Whatever current

mythology may suggest, both have long been the order of the day.

Likewise the arrival of newcomers has rarely, if ever, been regarded

as welcome by the indigenes. Over and above the additional

competition for scarce resources which their presence inevitably

precipitated, the newcomers' alien beliefs and lifestyles were

routinely perceived as a threat to the integrity of the established

cultural, linguistic, and religious order.

Immigration was only part of that story, however. As a result of

the systematic changes precipitated by the Henrician and

Elizabethan reformation, the English became acutely averse to the

prospect of plurality. At an institutional level, the reformation transformed

England into one of the world's first nation-states. Having disengaged

his kingdom from papal imprimatur, Henry's state required a new source

of legitimation. He and his associates found it in the English nation,

which was held to have manifested itself in its people, its language, it

Parliament and its Church - of which Henry promptly proclaimed

himself the head. Henceforward the English were in a position to identify

themselves as body of people united in their linguistic, cultural, and

religious homogeneity, free of subjugation by their external enemies

(especially in the shape of Spain, France and behind them the Pope), and

answerable only to the authority of the Crown in Parliament. A nation-

state,

no less.

All this had far-reaching socio-political consequences. In the context of this explicitly non-plural dispensation, it followed that anyone who failed to accept the theological principles of the Church of England could be labelled a (political) traitor no less than a (religious) heretic. As a result the so-called 'recusants' - those who doggedly resisted the new dispensation by maintaining their commitment to the Catholic faith - were in constant danger of harassment. Whilst dissidents were promptly burned at the stake for their pains, most, usually as the result of a very public refusal to conform to the requirements of the regime, simply lowered their profile, keeping their Catholic commitments as private as possible. Even so, the resultant de facto condition of religious plurality was an implicit challenge to England's normative commitment to comprehensive uniformity. What was to be done, given that efforts to eliminate all such deviance would risk something akin to civil war? A solution was eventually found in the regularly renewed Test Acts. These required all those seeking public office or entry to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge to swear an oath of allegiance which was composed in such a way that it would only be acceptable to those of an Anglican persuasion. So it was that a substantial minority of England's


population - some indigenous (as in the case of Catholic recusants)

and others of immigrant origin (as in the case of Jews and

Huguenots) - were reduced to the position of second-class subjects,

a position from which they were not formally 'emancipated' until

1831,2 following several decades of acrimonious debate.

Emancipation did not resolve the underlying issues. When the Act

was passed no one was aware of the extent to which the industrial

revolution was about to transform the British social order. In the

decades that followed Britain's industrial cities grew at an

unprecedented speed, and once the resources of the surrounding

countryside had been exhausted, their insatiable demand for

additional labour led to millions of migrant workers being drawn in from

further afield. The arrival of Irish and Eastern European settlers rendered

Britain's cities steadily more plural, no less in religious and ethnic terms.

The English socio-religious order had been rendered more plural than ever

before, and conflict over the issue soon became acute. As Karl Marx -

himself a German Jewish immigrant - observed,

Every industrial and commercial centre in England now possesses a

working class divided into two hostile camps, English proletarians and

Irish proletarians. The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker

as a competitor who lowers his standard of life. In relation to the Irish

worker he regards himself as a member of the ruling nation and

consequently he becomes a tool of the English aristocrats and

capitalists against Ireland, thus strengthening their domination over

himself. He cherishes religious, social, and national prejudices against

the Irish worker. His attitude towards him is much the same as that of

the 'poor whites' to the Negroes in the former slave states of the U.S.A.

The Irishman pays him back with interest in his own money. He sees in

the English worker both the accomplice and the stupid tool of the

English rulers in Ireland.

This antagonism is artificially kept alive and intensified by the press, the

pulpit, the comic papers, in short, by all the means at the disposal of the

ruling classes. This antagonism is the secret of the impotence of the

English working class, despite its organisation. It is the secret by which

the capitalist class maintains its power.

(Marx 1870/1975: 220)

Most latter-day Marxists have interpreted this final observation as an

indication that ethnic conflict is best understood as the outcome of

cynical efforts by the ruling class to divide and rule the opposition.

Roger Ballard 271

However, closer reading of the text promptly reveals

that whilst Marx was well aware of the likelihood of

such developments, it was analytically irresponsible

to halt the argument at that point. By expanding his

analysis to include a consideration of how the

dialectics of imperial and racial inequality can

intersect with - and in doing so undermine -the

contradictions of class, he develops the argument

still further, and in doing so develops a further point

which remains as relevant as ever: that when ethnic

antagonisms come to the boil, all contending parties can be expected to

pursue their own interests, whether as 'poor whites' seeking to maintain

their position of privilege over former slaves, or as Irish Fenians busy

repaying English workers in their own terms.

Marx's point is crucial. Throughout the latter part of the nineteenth

century, ethnic contradictions were at least as salient a feature of British

working-class experience as were those of class. When Churches and

Synagogues became defensive rallying points for Irish and Jewish

migrants, they immediately became the foci for attacks by English

workers. Riots frequently ensued. Education also became a battleground,

given the Church of England's stranglehold over the curriculum of

publicly funded schools. Hence when Catholics finally managed to gain

public support for a separate educational system of their own, the initiative

was promptly criticised as 'Papism on the rates' (Fielding 1993). During

the course of the twentieth century this particular disjunction has

gradually faded, so much so that it is now a pale shadow of its former self.

Whilst the Orange order once flourished in most of Britain's industrial cities,

today its presence is felt only in Liverpool and Glasgow, and of course in

Ulster. But if the existence of this ethno-religious disjunction has

gradually been excised from public discourse, so much so that it has

successfully been replaced with a myth of proletarian unity, the

underlying issues have in no way disappeared. English hostility towards

Catholic and Jewish presence may indeed have declined sharply during the

course of the past half century - but only because a new set of targets for

popular xenophobia have appeared to replace them.

Although structurally similar to their predecessors, Britain's current

patterns of ethno-religious polarisation nevertheless include some

distinctive features. First, the latest waves of newcomers are easier to

target, given their physical identifiability; secondly, the religious and

cultural traditions which they brought with them differ much more

sharply from indigenous ideas and practices than did those of their

predecessors. Hence whilst the reactions to their arrival, including their

collective allocation to a status of second-class citizenship, is a close

match with established precedent, the additional dimensions of


distinctiveness which the newcomers have introduced are such that contradictions let loose by their arrival are proving to be particularly severe.

A changing world

During the latter part of the twentieth century the structure of the global order has changed radically. Three interlinked developments have been of particular importance. First, the collapse of European empires - of which Britain's was by far the largest - in the aftermath of the two World Wars; secondly, the dramatic increase in personal prosperity which has been experienced in every developed economy, leading to shortage of those prepared to undertake menial tasks and a corresponding increase in the demand for migrant workers. Thirdly, a dramatic decline in the cost of long-distance travel, enabling non-European migrants to penetrate metropolitan labour markets on an unprecedented scale.

In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War gaps in Britain's labour market were filled by several hundred thousand 'European Voluntary Workers' recruited from Poland and the Ukraine. Following the erection of the 'Iron Curtain', migration from these sources came to a halt, and was rapidly replaced by an inflow from British possessions in Africa, the Caribbean and South Asia. Over the years this non-European inflow grew steadily in scale. As colonial subjects, the newcomers had an automatic right of entry into the United Kingdom, and at least at the outset little thought was given to the long-term consequences of their arrival. By the early 1960s this initial absence of mind had ceased to be sustainable. The demand for labour remained high, and numbers were rising rapidly, but there was no sign that the settlers were on the brink of return, and still less of their assimilation into the indigenous mainstream. Whilst the Confederation of British Industry insisted that in the absence of a steady inflow of migrants many factories would have difficulty in maintaining production, espe-cially at night, the Trades Unions viewed the steadily growing inflow with alarm. It was feared that employers would use access to cheap migrant labour as an opportunity to drive down wages of indigenous workers.

In fact these fears were largely unfounded. On arrival migrants invari-ably took jobs which no one else wanted, and so were rarely in direct competition with indigenous workers. Nevertheless Caribbean bus-drivers and nurses were becoming an increasingly visible in London, as were Indian foundry workers in the West Midlands and Pakistani

Roger Bollard 273

mill-hands in the Pennine region. Moreover their presence began to put

pressure on other scarce resources, such as housing, prompting further

fears of unwelcome competition. Whilst the Labour Party initially stood

firm in the face of populist pressures, this principled stance cut little

ice amongst its working-class supporters. Matters came to a head in the

1964 General election. A hitherto unknown Conservative running under

the slogan of 'If you want a Nigger Neighbour, Vote Labour' toppled a

leading Labour politician standing for a safe seat in the industrial West

Midlands. Abandoning their earlier scruples, Labour joined the

Conservatives in a competition to introduce more restrictive immigration

policies. There appeared to be no other means of retaining the support

of white industrial workers on which the party depended.

Enoch Powell's intervention

These developments brought 'immigration' to the forefront of political

debate, with a consequent focus on the likely future course of 'race

relations' in Britain. Breaking ranks with mainstream thought within

the Conservative party, Enoch Powell emerged as the champion of those

who demanded not just an instant halt to further immigration, but

systematic repatriation of the unwelcome aliens. In his notorious 'rivers of

blood' speech (1968), Powell chose to hang his arguments around

recent efforts of local Sikh bus-drivers to be allowed to wear turbans

rather than caps as part of their uniform. Having quoted a fellow Labour

MP's remarks to the effect that

The Sikh communities' campaign to maintain customs inappropriate in

Britain is much to be regretted. Working in Britain, particularly in the

public services, they should be prepared to accept the terms and

conditions of their employment. To claim special communal rights

(or should they say rites?) leads to a dangerous fragmentation within

society. This communalism is a canker; whether practised by one

colour or another it is to be strongly condemned.

Powell went on to insist that

For these dangerous and divisive elements the legislation proposed in the Race Relations Bill is the very pabulum they need to flourish. Here is the means of showing that the immigrant communities can organise to consolidate their members, to agitate and campaign against their fellow citizens, and to overawe and dominate the rest with the legal weapons which the ignorant and the ill-informed have


provided. As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see 'the River Tiber foaming with much blood'.

(Powell 1968)

Stripped of its rhetoric, the logic of Powell's argument is plain to see. Just as it had once been argued that if the Catholics would take a mile if they were given an inch, he envisaged that the newcomers would likewise promptly gain a vested interest in

the preservation and sharpening of racial and religious differences,

with a view to the exercise of actual domination, first over fellow-

immigrants and then over the rest of the population... Only resolute

and urgent action will avert it even now. Whether there will be a

public will to demand and obtain that action, I do not know. All I

know is that to see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal.

(Ibid.)

Although Powell's views were widely condemned as 'racist', careful inspection of his arguments show that he was in fact far more concerned with ethnic than with racial plurality. Moreover, in keeping with argu-ments which had been repeatedly articulated ever since the reformation, he grounded his case in the thesis that aliens could never be a part of the English nation, and that their presence threatened its very integrity. It was on this basis that Powell argued that legislation designed to bar discrimination was completely wrong-headed: instead he insisted that further immigration should be brought to a halt, and replaced by a programme of publicly funded repatriation. Although his views were by now so extreme as to be regarded as intolerable by the Conservative Party - so much so that he was forced to relinquish his seat in Parliament - his arguments nevertheless attracted a great deal of popular support. They could no longer be ignored.

Roy Jenkins' response

In an era when Home Secretaries still sought to lead rather than defer to popular opinion, Roy Jenkins challenged Powell head-on. Insisting that the minorities could, would and should become integral components of British social order, Jenkins rejected as naive the suggestion that once immigrants had 'fitted in' they would abandon all aspects of their ancestral heritage. Instead he sketched out an overtly pluralistic vision of the future course of integration, which should be understood 'not as a flattening process of assimilation, rather of equal opportunity, accompanied

Roger Ballard 275

by cultural diversity, in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance'.

Although this vision remains prescient four decades after it was first

articulated, it attracted remarkably little support, even in progressive

circles. Despite his comprehensive rejection of Powell's nationalistic

essentialism, even Powell's most vociferous critics remained

unimpressed. No less than their opponents, the prospect of

plurality appears to have left them with feelings of acute unease,

albeit on quite different grounds. No less committed to a Unitarian

vision of the future than Powell, his liberal critics argued that the

migrants' problems stemmed above all from their condition of

deprivation, precipitated in their view at least as much by the

retrogressive parochialism of their cultural traditions as by their

condition of material poverty. To those who adopted such a perspective,

Jenkins' position appeared to be incurably romantic. Hence those on the

left regarded the assimilation of indigenous ways as one of the migrants'

most urgent priorities, on the grounds that this would open the way to

progressive modernity.

However well meaning their intention may have been, the

consequences of their adoption of this line of argument were disastrous.

First, Enoch Powell's core arguments remained unchallenged, whilst his

central conclusion - that prospect of comprehensive assimilation was an

illusion - was abusively dismissed as 'racist'. Secondly, and yet more

seriously still, those who advanced such arguments made themselves

hostages to fortune. If Powell was right and the minority presence did

indeed precipitate ethnic plurality, the assimilationist ground on which

they had taken their stand would be swept from beneath their feet.

The rise and fall of anti-racism

For the while that prospect still lay someway down the road. In the meanwhile once Powell and his many (mostly working class) supporters were defined as racist, it followed that those who opposed that position should identify themselves as anti-racist. In the event both racism and its antonym turned out to be exceedingly slippery concepts. Anti-racists took it for granted that they occupied the high ground; but how could they sustain that claim? Were their arguments primarily moral, on the grounds that racism was as irrational as it was wicked? Or were they primarily political? In the heated atmosphere of the 1970s those who argued that anti-racism was a political project soon found themselves facing acute problems. If racism was an irrational manifestation of false consciousness, as was widely argued at the time, it followed that anti-racism was a component of wider agenda whose ultimate objective was


to overthrow fascism and capitalism. Amongst those who most vigor-

ously supported such views were those who argued that as a result of

their condition of super-oppression, black people could be expected to

play a vanguard role in the coming revolutionary upsurge. The outcome

was predictable. Whilst this far-left agenda proved attractive to many

disaffected radicals who had participated in the student uprisings of the

late 1960s, those onto whom they sought to project the role of

'vanguards of the revolution' soon realised that this agenda meshed

poorly with their own experientially grounded interests and concerns.

Other forms of ethno-racial and then of ethno-religious mobilisation

proved to be far more to their taste.

Whilst politically oriented anti-racism was steadily marginalised by

lack of support, its more moralistic dimension continued to thrive. Once

conceptualised as a poisonous mixture of ignorance, stupidity and sin, it

followed that racism was best remedied not so much through political

action, but rather through educational programmes which would enable

those who had been seduced by racist ideologies to see the error of

their ways. 'Anti-racism' became the theme of innumerable training

programmes, so much so that many Local Authorities began to require all

those seeking employment to demonstrate 'a commitment to anti-racist

and anti-oppressive practice'. But just what was the 'racism' of which

trainees were expected to be aware? And rhetoric aside, just how was

'anti-racism' to be practised?

Given its narrow conceptual foundations, all manner of issues were

excluded from the anti-racist agenda. Two deficiencies were of particular

significance. First, the absence of any reference to issues of ethnic plur-

ality, and secondly any recognition that people of colour might have

the capacity to set their own agendas. Hence far from opening all the

issues for debate, the narrow moralist framework within which almost

all anti-racist initiatives were conceived effectively closed off discus-

sion, on the grounds that the exploration of these allegedly diversionary

issues was inherently racist. The outcome was often little more than a

charade. Whilst a small minority of trainees could often be persuaded to

accept the invitation to flagellate themselves in an effort to eliminate

the last vestiges of original sin, most of those required to participate in

such initiatives were far more sceptical. Although challenges to an agenda with which they were required to agree was disallowed, several

escape routes were readily available. One option was simply to take the

opportunity to gain the capacity to talk the talk - even if this had little

impact on the way in which one interacted with people of colour.

Nevertheless the acquisition of an anti-racist vocabulary did

Roger Bollard 277

make a difference: should trained anti-racists subsequently find their

behaviour challenged, they were now in a position to produce waves of

patronising verbiage highlighting their awareness of, and sympathy for,

the plight of black people. Other escape routes were less sophisticated, if

rather more popular. Having returned to the canteen after having been

released by one's mentors, one could simply mock the political correctness

of the ideas with which one had been required to agree (Ballard and

Parveen 2007).

In the face of such developments support for anti-racism steadily

crumbled. Moreover the wider political agenda changed radically after

MrsThatcher came to power in 1979: 'socialistic' notions such as anti-

racism were in no way to her taste. Central government support for such

initiatives - and indeed for any kind of targeted support for the new minorities-

was soon withdrawn. Instead 'multiculturalism', often in the form of

unfocussed celebrations of the most superficial aspects of ethnic diversity,

became the order of the day. With hindsight, the most salient feature of all

these developments was their top-down perspective. Remarkably little

attention was devoted to what the minorities were up to - or why.

The development of ethnic colonies in post-war Britain

Life was not easy when the first pioneers set about establishing themselves in Britain. In post-war Britain, finding a job, let alone a place to stay, was not straightforward. This was an era when notices announcing 'no coloureds need apply' were commonplace. However, in facing up to these challenges the newcomers were far from being the helpless pawns which the anti-racist agenda so often sought to suggest. Having made their way to Britain under their own steam, settlers took advantage of every available opportunity to establish self-constructed footholds in what was self-evidently a hostile terrain. Since gaining allies was crucial to survival, and since the natives mostly turned their backs, all the early settlers looked to others in the same position as themselves as a source of guidance and support. Whilst fellow immigrants were normally willing to help each other out, relationships of reciprocity were far easier to construct, as well as much more resilient, when established between those who shared some prior sense of commonality. Hence whilst initial linkages were largely ad hoc in character, it was not long before those who shared some degree of linguistic and cultural commonality began to cluster together. In so doing they established the foundations for subsequent processes of ethnic crystallisation, a process which was strongly reinforced once chain migration began to


take off. Far from arriving in Britain as blundering pioneers, the majority

of newcomers began to arrive with clear objectives in mind: to link up with

friends and kinsfolk who had already established themselves in the United

Kingdom. As they did so a whole series flourishing ethnic colonies soon

began to emerge (Ballard 1994,2003).

Whatever their origins, the trajectories of adaptation followed by

each stream of migrants initially followed much the same pattern. New

arrivals looked out for those of similar backgrounds: prior connections »n

the form of shared linguistic, religious and cultural codes, and better still

immediate ties of kinship, offered a highly effective basis around which

to construct networks of mutual reciprocity. Once in place, these networks

enabled settlers to face the challenges of their new environment on a

collective rather than an individual basis. A dynamic of settlement began to emerge. As local ties of reciprocity became steadily more

entrenched, temporary sojourners found themselves transformed into

firmly rooted colonists, committed to reconstructing all the most

significant social, cultural, religious, and familial institutions with which

they were familiar back home. Such developments were not driven by

nostalgia, nor by mindless 'tradition'. Rather they were highly adaptive in

character: the resultant processes of community-construction were a

highly effective means of facilitating survival in adverse circumstances. At

the outset such initiatives were largely defensive in character. But as

settlers began to feel more firmly rooted, they gained the confidence to

assert themselves more openly. At the outset they had kept their heads

down in the face of the exploitation and marginalisation; now they

became increasingly willing to raise the heads above the parapet.

Early awakenings

Overt resistance initially emerged where the shoe pinched tightest of all: on the shop floor. Resentful about being allocated the hardest, dirtiest, most dangerous, and ill-paid jobs, people of colour began to challenge the processes whereby they were assigned to such tasks. As they did so it became clear that managers were rarely responsible for relegating them to such positions. This was a period when the Trades Unions were a powerful force on the shop floor, where shop stewards in a position to determine who was deployed to which task. In doing so they invari-ably favoured the union's white membership over those drawn from the visible minorities - even though most of them were also union members. During the late 1960s and early 1970s the resultant tensions reached boiling point: people of colour began to take collective action in

Roger Ballard 279

an effort to challenge these practices. The confrontations so

precipitated had a number of striking features. First, almost all were

self-organised: if the local branch secretary and his immediate

colleagues were the principal source of their difficulties, there was no

point in challenging them through established union structures.

Secondly, there was frequently an ethnically specific catalyst behind

these initiatives, most notably in the form of the Jat Sikh-dominated

(and largely communist-inspired) Indian Workers Association (IWA).

Thirdly, their approach to mobilisation was one which consciously sought

to unite all rangdar log (people of colour) - be they of Asian or Caribbean

descent - the better to pursue their common interests (John 1969;

Beetham 1970; Brooks and Singh 1979). At the time these incidents attracted a good deal of attention, they

were the first overt signs of collective self-mobilisation by people of colour. But as the 1970s progressed such challenges became steadily less frequent, and have by now been forgotten by almost everyone bar the participants. There were several reasons why challenges of this kind faded away. First, the industrial recession which followed Prime Minister Thatcher's assumption of power, together with the restrictions on industrial action which she imposed, gave those protesting 'from below' ever less space within which to manoeuvre. Secondly, the trajectories of adaptation followed by different sections of the minority population were becoming increasingly diverse. As Afro-Caribbean and South Asian communities began to move off in different directions, inter-ethnic alliances amongst people of colour became steadily more difficult to organise and sustain. Last but not least the majority of better-educated South Asian settlers (who provided the IWAs with their leadership) began to leave the shop floor to pursue more profitable opportunities elsewhere, thereby removing a vital catalyst from the industrial scene. As a consequence active resistance began to move away from the shop floor and onto the streets, and from an older to a younger generation. The resultant uprisings proved to be of far-reaching significance.

The challenges to exclusion articulated from the early 1980s onwards differed sharply from those which erupted in the 1960s and 1970s. First, they were public confrontations - usually with the police - and normally occurred in the residential neighbourhoods where the protestors them-selves lived. Secondly, they were precipitated by a much wider range of grievances: initially local, but as time passed increasingly inspired by issues of national and indeed international character. Last but not least all the uprisings became ethnically specific: far from uniting all people of colour, they articulated the concerns of specific local communities.

280 Issues Post 9/11 With this in mind I have deliberately chosen to use the term intifada to identify such developments. Like their counterparts in Palestine, these uprisings emerged from the grass roots: they were not a product of careful prior organisation formulated from above. But in using the term, I do not wish to glamorise such incidents: no one who has first-hand experience of an intifada would do so. The damage they precipitate is immense, and the greater part of their costs and consequences is invariably borne by the protestors and their families. Nevertheless they convey powerful symbolic messages: that is why I have highlighted them here.

The Afro-Caribbean intifada of 1981

In January 1981, 13 Afro-Caribbean teenagers lost their lives in a house-fire in New Cross, apparently as a result of a Molotov cocktail being thrown through the front window of the house where a birthday was being celebrated. But in sharp contrast to the wave of public sympathy which an equally bloody IRA bombing in Ulster had precipitated a few days beforehand, the press and the police promptly blamed the local Afro-Caribbean community as the authors of their own misfortune. Hostility towards the local police was further exacer-bated as they continued to target young Afro-Caribbean men in a major stop-and-search operation. The tinder was dry, and the fuse was soon lit. During the following summer confrontations erupted between the police and the young Afro-Caribbean men, first in inner London and then in other cities in which substantial Afro-Caribbean ethnic colonies had also crystallised. The police were ill-equipped to cope. Their command and control mechanisms broke down, their riot shields turned out not to be fire-proof, and before long the officers called out to confront the protestors night after night were so tired that they could hardly stand. Had the troubles not subsided when they did, there would have been little alternative but to call out the troops to restore order.

Alarm bells promptly rang in both Whitehall and the press. Enoch Powell's prognostications appeared to be coming true. Two major initi-atives were set in train. First, the Police were retrained and re-equipped for riot control; and secondly, substantial funding was made available to Local Authorities under Section 11 of the Local Government Act, to provide them with (Financial) means of addressing the underlying stresses and strains. On the face of it this response was entirely appropriate: the new minorities had long been complaining about the poor quality of

Roger Ballard 281

the public services, and the irrelevance of what was on offer to their

needs. But whilst lack of ethnosensitivity in service delivery was a central

focus of their complaints, the agenda within which the remedial initi-

atives were conceived did not mesh with these concerns. As a result the

greater part of the newly released funds were ploughed into 'community

projects' designed to keep young people off the streets, whilst also

providing employment opportunities for minority activists. Once so co-

opted, it was hoped - often correctly - that their commitment to political

activism would diminish.

At least as far as the Afro-Caribbeans were concerned, these initiatives

appeared to have had the desired effect. Apart from isolated incidents

such as that on the Broadwater Farm (a public housing project in northwest

London) in 1985, where a police officer was bludgeoned to death in the

midst of protests about a bungled arrest, there was no repetition of the

multi-city intifada which erupted in 1981. Yet it would be idle to

suggest that all is well on this front. Despite substantial efforts to

retrain the police, relationships between front-line officers and young

black men remain highly problematic to this day. Meanwhile the Afro-

Caribbean community has become deeply fragmented. Whilst its many

Churches are a focus for resilience, especially for women, drugs and

gun-crime attract the attention of many (although by no means all)

young men. By 2002 just under 11% of Britain's prison population was

made up of people of African or Afro-Caribbean descent. Intifada has

been replaced by incarceration.

Pakistani Muslim intifadas

Given that the participants in the 1981 intifada were overwhelmingly Afro-Caribbean, many commentators argued that as a result of their much more orderly cultural heritage, Indians and Pakistanis were unlikely to emulate their 'more excitable' Afro-Caribbean counterparts. That comfortable assumption fell apart in the uproar which followed the publication of The Satanic Verses in 1989. The initial reaction was relatively low-key: Bradford Council of Mosques organised a public burning of Rushdie's novel to highlight Muslim disgust at its contents. But when neither the press nor the authorities nor even the Commission for Racial Equality displayed the slightest sympathy with Muslim concerns, protests escalated - only to be dismissed as an indication of the inherent backwardness of the Islamic tradition, and of its followers' inability to appreciate the more sophisticated intellectual, literary, and cultural conventions of the contemporary world. For the

T


rising generation of young Muslims such a humiliating dismissal of

their dearly held values was too much to take: in the face of public

taunts, their initially well-ordered protests began to degenerate into

violence.

In the years that followed local incidents sparked of a whole series

of small-scale intifadas, of which some of the most spectacular - and

certainly the most publicised - were the so-called 'northern riots' which

exploded in the former textile towns of Burnley, Oldham, and Bradford

in the summer of 2001. Bungled efforts by the police to regain control

over the streets in inner city residential areas in which Pakistani Muslims

had established tight-knit ethnic colonies precipitated violent resistance

to the riot squad, whom local youths regarded as enemy occupiers. In

comparative terms the level of violence was relatively mild: it was

much more limited than that which ensued when Caribbean youths

took to the streets two decades earlier. Moreover this time the police

were better prepared. Command and control remained intact, and well-

trained and adequately-shielded riot squads soon reclaimed the streets.

They also came equipped with video cameras, producing evidence on

the basis of which several hundred stone-throwers received substantial

prison sentences (Carling etal. 2004). Nevertheless the outcome was

very different. In the first place improvements in video technology

meant that images of burning cars in Oldham and Bradford were

flashed around the world. Secondly, the perpetrators were Muslims.

Even though 9/11, let alone 7/7, were yet to occur, the events were

widely publicised and precipitated a great deal of alarm. The authorities in

Whitehall dispatched Tom Cantle, an experienced Local Government

administrator, to investigate the causes of the disturbances.

When Cantle and his colleagues returned to London to prepare their

report, they appear to have been suffering from shell-shock. It was not

so much the incidents themselves which disturbed them, but rather the

depth of the ethnic divide out of which they erupted. This shines out

from the opening paragraph of their report:

Whilst the physical segregation of housing estates and inner city areas came as no surprise, the team was particularly struck by the depth of polarisation of our towns and cities. The extent to which these physical divisions were compounded by so many other aspects of our daily lives, was very evident. Separate educational arrangements, community and voluntary bodies, employment, places of worship, language, social and cultural networks, means that many

Roger Ballard 283

communities operate on the basis of a series of parallel lives. These lives often do not seem to touch at any point, let alone overlap and promote any meaningful interchanges.

(Cantle 2002: 9)

On the face of it, their observations confirmed Enoch Powell's prediction that non-European migration in general, and South Asian migration in particular, was bound to precipitate unbridgeable patterns of ethnic polarisation. But whilst Powell saw no solution other than repatriation, Cantle and his colleagues took a different tack: they concluded that efforts to bridge the divisions they had observed through the intro-duction of active policies of 'community cohesion' should now be the priority. Unlike previous reports on these matters, Cantle's was not placed on a shelf to gather dust. Instead it was promptly adopted as a central strand of government policy: every local authority received instructions to take urgent steps to promote 'community cohesion'. Policies designed to promote 'multiculturalism' suffered the same fate as those of 'anti-racism': they were swept aside.

Before exploring the implications of the new policy - commitment to which was further reinforced in the aftermath of the events oil 17 - it is worth pausing to consider the specific context to whose problems it was initially devised as a remedy. Bradford, Oldham, and Blackburn are once-thriving mill-towns into which migrant workers from South Asia were drawn in large numbers during the 1960s and 1970s. Most came from Mirpur District in Pakistan, or from Sylhet District in Bangladesh. By the time of their arrival the local textile industry was in terminal decline; it finally collapsed in the early 1980s. This had a disastrous impact on the local economy of the textile towns, since no alternative source of employment was readily available. No section of the local population was more seriously affected than the Pakistanis and the Bangladeshis, since they were overwhelmingly concentrated in this narrow sector of the labour market.

Despite this setback, as a result of which virtually everyone lost their jobs, this was a period of rapid development within the local Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities. Many men were in the midst of reuniting their families in the United Kingdom; despite everything they continued to do so, even if they had to use their hard-earned savings to finance the transfer. Hence the 1980s and 1990s witnessed a rapid growth of tight-knit and mutually supportive ethnic colonies in the close-packed streets of Victorian terraced housing in which the migrants had settled. The reunion of families also led to a rapid growth of a locally born

T


second generation, whose members began to reach adulthood come the

turn of the millennium. The virtual disappearance of opportunities for

unskilled people, for people of colour with a limited command of

English to gain access to waged employment had severe consequences

for members of the older generation. Most found themselves perman-

ently unemployed. By contrast many of their offspring successfully

turned to self-employment as a means of earning an income. A multi-

tude of corner-shops, restaurants, takeaways and taxi services opened

for business, enabling members of still-burgeoning ethnic colonies to

press their way forward, despite their initial condition of severe

disadvantage.

However, their achievements were far from universally welcome.

Whilst many of the newcomers' immediate neighbours, the largely

indigenous residents of nearby council estates, had also been signific-

antly disadvantaged by industrial collapse, their capacity to cope with

adversity proved to be considerably less extensive than their Pakistani

neighbours. However, rather than emulating the newcomers' commit-

ment to frugality and collective reciprocity, by displaying a similar

willingness to take entrepreneurial initiatives, most of their neighbours

responded with feelings of jealous hostility. From their perspective, the

fact that the despised newcomers appeared to be doing better than they

seemed was deeply unjust.

The indigenous perspective

As far as most members of the indigenous population of Oldham, Burnley and Bradford are concerned, the familiar social order within which they grew up has disintegrated. As they see it, the unthinkable has happened: the 'immigrants' who originally arrived as unskilled and largely invisible night-shift workers have made substantial parts of the town their own; and having done so, they appear to be pulling ahead of the towns' 'real' inhabitants in material terms. How can this be explained? No matter how much objective observers may suggest that the newcomers' achievements are the outcome of hard work, frugal lifestyles and the application of entrepreneurial talent, such arguments leave most members of the indigenous population unimpressed. Nowhere are such feelings of hostility more acute than in the 'sink' council estates which surround the emergent ethnic colonies. Already feeling betrayed by the powers that be, they routinely ascribe all their difficulties to the unfair competition from 'the Pakis', who in their view have been allowed to 'get away with it' by a supine state. Hence it is

Roger Bollard 285

regularly asserted that the minorities are disproportionately

favoured by government-sponsored programmes which provide

them with mosques and community centres, whilst 'we', who

have always lived here, get nothing. 'Pakis', it is consequently (if

erroneously) argued, enjoy special privileges. They've even got a

race relations law especially for them; but if we open our mouths to

complain, we just get shouted down as racist.' Those who have reached

such conclusions view the policies put forward by the British National

Party with much favour.

The Pakistani perspective

Those on the other side of the fence dismiss these alleged 'privileges' as

entirely fictional. Acutely aware that their achievements are the outcome of

their own hard work, they point out that if the ghore (white people) are

jealous of their achievements, they could follow in their footsteps if they

wished. They are also sceptical about the benefits which have actually

accrued from the numerous urban regeneration schemes designed to assist

the 'socially deprived'. From their perspective the impact of such

initiatives have been largely symbolic. They may have provided many

Asian youngsters with jobs as link-workers and teaching assistants, but

the permanent benefits arising from them have been few. Constantly

vulnerable to changes in Whitehall priorities (as, for example, when

Section 11 funding was suddenly withdrawn), short-term bolt-on initiatives

have done little to provide the (still overwhelmingly white) teachers, doctors,

social workers, and police officers who continue to dominate the

professional mainstream with improved levels of linguistic and cultural

competence. Hence their capacity to provide effective services to their

minority clientele remains as inadequate as ever. Although urban

regeneration initiatives receive a great deal of publicity - provoking

further ire amongst jealous white neighbours - the best that can be said

about such programmes is that they have operated as job-creation

schemes for restless youth.

The tinder box explodes

Cantle and his colleagues had every reason to highlight the depth of the polarisation with which they found themselves confronted. The under-lying contradictions had been brewing for decades. On the one hand large sections of the indigenous population were alarmed by what they saw as an alien canker emerging in their midst, and by the refusal of the powers that were to take cognisance of their concerns. Meanwhile the newcomers, and even more so their British-born offspring, were acutely


aware of the hostility that their presence generated amongst their white

neighbours, and of the authorities' reluctance to take serious cognisance of

their concerns. Recently a further explosive factor had been added to the

brew. Whilst the older generation of migrants had come to regard the

position in which they found themselves with resigned equanimity,

members of the rapidly expanding British-born generation refused to

accept their marginalisation. Suggestions that their colonies had become

'no go areas' for outsiders were particularly irritating. As far as they

were concerned, the parts of town which best deserved that appellation

were the all-white council estates by which their settlements were

surrounded. Asian families unfortunate enough to be rehoused on such

estates invariably found the abuse to which they were subjected intolerable,

and promptly moved back into the safety of their own community.

Meanwhile the late-night drinkers who form a substantial part of their

clientele of their restaurants, and takeaways took it for granted that they

had a right to abuse those who served them, whilst taxi-drivers unwise

enough to demand payment from recalcitrant customers whom they

had driven home to an all-white estate had much to fear. In a series of

incidents well known within the community, but largely ignored

outside it, such arguments had been settled by a resort to homicide.

The tinder was dry and ready to burn. The initial spark may well

have derived from reports in the press, and especially on BBC radio,

suggesting that Muslim-majority areas in Oldham and Bradford had

become no-go areas for whites - and indeed for Hindus. The British

National Party promptly sought to raise the temperature. Rallies were

organised in both cities, but only attracted a limited response. Then a

small group of thugs staged a provocative incident. On the fringe of one of

Oldham's major Pakistani ethnic colonies they insulted and assaulted two

women. News of the incident quickly circulated by mobile phone, and a

large number of young men went to defend the community's honour.

By the time police arrived, the BNP thugs had left the scene; instead

they encountered a gathering of angry young Pakistanis. It was at this

point that the plot was lost. The most senior police officer in Oldham

had recently been interviewed on the BBC, where he suggested that

localities such as this were becoming 'no-go areas'. His prophesy

promptly became self-fulfilling. As police poured reinforcements into the neighbourhood in an effort to regain control, its young residents

vigorously resisted the alien incursion. After several hours of riotous

confrontation the protestors were driven back indoors - but on the

following day similarly structured confrontations erupted in Bradford

and Burnley.

Roger Bollard 287

Some analytical reflections

On the face of it these uprisings did not pit the 'immigrants' and 'natives'

directly against each other. Echoing similar confrontations involving

the Irish settlers who arrived in industrial Lancashire more than a

century beforehand, young Mirpuri men rose to the bait which had

been provocatively dangled before them - and promptly got hammered by

the forces of law and order. However, just as in earlier times, it would

be wrong to assume that the police stood outside the underlying

disjunction. Its officers, from constables to their commander, were over-

whelmingly drawn from the majoritarian side of the ethnic boundary.

Doubtless they had all attended racism awareness courses; but in the

event they still acted as an army of occupation, displaying no obvious

understanding of the possible motivations of the young men defending

the honour of their homes, their families and their community. From

this perspective the incidents which Cantle was sent to investigate were

both a symptom of, and had yet further exacerbated, the contradictions

which so alarmed him.

At one level the contradictions with which Cantle and his team found

themselves confronted were the outcome of a locally specific set of

contingencies: no other part of Britain received such a heavy inflow of

non-European migrants from a single rural source, suffered so badly

from local industrial collapse or received so little infrastruc-tural

investment to make good the resultant deficiencies. But whilst

polarising processes which precipitated the intifada were consequently

particularly acute, they were by no means unique to the 'northern

cities'. Ethnic plurality is now a de facto characteristic of most British

cities, and similar patterns of polarisation - governed in each case by

specific local contingencies - can be detected everywhere. The issues

highlighted by Cantle and his colleagues are a general rather than a

localised feature of the contemporary British social order.

A theoretical perspective: The dynamics of ethnic plurality

Whilst Cantle does not seek to generalise in this way, a further feature of his argument is worth highlighting: the assumption that disjunctions with which he found himself confronted were unprecedented. He is clearly mistaken on this point. Britain's industrial cities have a long history of ethno-religious disjunctions of just this kind, and similarly structured patterns of polarisation can be observed throughout the


contemporary world. If so, it follows that his assumption that ethnic homogeneity (and its assumed correlate, 'community cohesion') is a normal state of affairs from which ethnic plurality can be regarded as an unfortunate deviation is seriously misleading. Empirical data points firmly in the opposite direction.

Viewed from a less parochial, and less paranoid, perspective, ethnic plurality is much more a normal than an abnormal human experience. With this in mind it is worth turning to Furnivall's carefully argued but long overlooked account of the political economy of colonial Southeast Asia, in which he set out a sophisticated analysis of the everyday operation of plural societies. For Furnivall, a plural society is one in which

two or more elements or social orders live side by side, yet without mingling, in one political unit... In its political aspect a plural society resembles a confederation of allied provinces, united by treaty... for certain ends common to the constituent units and, in matters outside the terms of union, each living its own life. But it differs from a confederation in that the constituent elements are not segregated each within its own territorial limits. In a confederation secession is at least possible without the total disruption of all social bonds; in a plural society the elements are so intermingled that secession is identical with anarchy.

In a plural society, social demand is disorganized; social wants are sectional, and there is no social demand common to all the several elements... this... is the root cause of all those properties which differentiate the political economy of a plural society from unitary economy of a homogeneous society.

Of necessity it raises the economic criterion to a new place in the scale of social values. There is one place in which the various sections of a plural society meet on common ground - the market place; and the highest common factor of their wants is the economic factor. They may differ in creed and custom, in the kind of music or style of painting they prefer; the members of different sections may want one thing rather than another; but if they want the same thing, they will all prefer to get it for twopence rather than for threepence. Individuals of all sections have in common... the economic motive, the desire for profit; and they all join... in forwarding the economic process.

Roger Bollard 289

[a further] characteristic of plural society is a sectional division of labour; although the primary distinction between the groups may be race, creed or colour, each section comes to have its own functions in production, and there

is a tendency towards the grouping of the several elements into distinct economic castes.

(Furnivall 1939: pp. 446-450)

Furnivall drew most of his empirical material from his observation

of Dutch-controlled Indonesia, where well-established Buddhist,

Hindu and Islamic traditions were cross-cut by numerous more

parochial disjunctions, and where the whole edifice had been overlaid by

further disjunctions precipitated by the arrival of two rival sets of

immigrant entrepreneurs, the Dutch and the Chinese. No group

occupied a position of comprehensive hegemony. Rather members of

each of its component communities (including the soon-to-be-toppled

Dutch colonialists) deployed their own distinctive moral and cultural

agendas to order activities within the arenas which they were in a

position to control. In the midst of all these diversities, it was the

marketplace which ultimately brought these disparate components

together: as Furnivall observed, trade across boundaries simultaneously

united and divided all those involved. Hence the edifice was

underpinned by a division of labour in which members of every

component community found themselves in constant competition with,

as well as being economically dependent on, all the others.

Ethnic homogeneity and its alternatives

Although Furnivall used his observations of developments in Southeast Asia as the foundation for his model, his theoretical perspective is of universal applicability. If so, the consequences are far-reaching: whilst pluralistic social orders of this kind remain as commonplace as ever, they stand in comprehensive antithesis to the ethnically homogenous nation-states which 'modernists' have come to regard as the only viable basis for the construction of a stable and harmonious social order. Iron-ically, Furnivall completed his magnum opus just before the outbreak of the second of the World Wars, which were largely fought in pursuit of nationalist dreams of ethnic homogeneity. Moreover, despite the dreadful consequences of efforts to implement such dreams, especially in Nazi Germany, the hopeless pursuit of 'nation-building' has continued unchecked to this day. Formerly plural societies continue to break apart,


accompanied by endlessly repeated efforts to achieve a condition of

homogeneity by means of 'ethnic cleansing'. Whilst the industrial-scale

efforts to achieve that goal manifested in the gas chambers have not

been repeated, the loss of life precipitated by outbreaks of organised

homicide in a swathe of hitherto plural societies, including Punjab, Sri

Lanka, Cambodia, Rwanda, Yugoslavia and now Darfur, has already

surpassed that achieved in the European holocaust.

The agendas underpinning these developments were rooted in similar

principles. On the grounds that plurality would render their societies

socially, culturally, and politically unstable, ethnic homogeneity came

to be regarded as a necessary prerequisite for national coherence.

Precisely that vision also underpinned Enoch Powell's arguments;

although few commentators have since been prepared to articulate that

vision as clearly as he did, popular opinion in much of Euro-America is

now moving ever more firmly in this direction. The currently favoured

concept of community cohesion brings us back to precisely these issues.

How much homogeneity is required to enable Britain - or any other

contemporary society - to achieve social coherence? That some degree of

commonality is a necessary prerequisite for viable social order is self-

evident. Unless everyone in any given arena is agreed about which side of

the road to drive on, chaos is inevitable. Likewise, without agreement

about how commercial transactions should be ordered, and how

arguments over matters of common concern should be negotiated and

resolved, public order would collapse. But how far must agreement

about common principles go to ensure that chaos can be avoided? Does it

necessarily follow that everyone should routinely speak the same

language? Is it essential for everyone to follow the same principles in

organising their families and marriages? Should diversity be formally

respected? And if so, in what spheres and on what basis and how far?

With such considerations in mind, Cantle's position is comprehens-

ively anti-pluralistic. With Furnivall's formulation in mind, Cantle's

description of a situation in which 'separate educational arrangements,

community and voluntary bodies, employment, places of worship,

language, social, and cultural networks, means that many communities

operate on the basis of a series of parallel lives' is entirely familiar. But

instead of recognising that these contradictions are an outcome of

differing interests as between subsections of the population, such that

the equitable negotiation of conflicting interests would become a central goal of public policy, Cantle concludes that diversity itself is the source of

the problem. Hence his advocacy of a policy of community cohesion.

Roger Ballard 291

An absence of community - or its mislocation?

In a remarkable irony, Cantle did not find himself confronted with an

absence of cohesive communities in his excursion to the northern

cities, but rather a plurality of them. Moreover, as in the rest of urban

Britain, the arena where a sense of community was at its weakest was

not amongst the minorities, but rather amongst the poorer sections of

the indigenous majority. Hence it is not so much the absence of

community which the policy initiative would seek to remedy, but rather its

mislocation. His model demands the destruction of communities in the

plural and their reconstruction in the singular. Moreover, precisely

because a sense of community is much more strongly sustained amongst

the various minorities than it is amongst the indigenous majority, the

processes of social reconstruction which he advocates would of necessity be

ethnically specific in their impact.

As in the rest of Britain, the indigenous residents of the inner-city

council estates in Oldham and Bradford are not renowned for the

strength of the local networks. Conventions of kinship reciprocity have

been severely eroded by individualism and consumer capitalism, as

well as a further paradoxical consequence of the welfare state: the

collective structures which were once the backbone of English working-

class communities have by now all but disappeared. 'Community' in

indigenous working-class contexts is now but a shadow of its former

self.

The contrast with most sections of Britain's minority population could

not be greater. Internal networks within most of the longer established

groups such as the Jews and the Irish Catholics still flourish, and are yet

stronger amongst their South Asian successors; indeed the biradari-based

networks which underpin Mirpuri ethnic colonies in the Pennine region are

amongst the tightest-knit of all (Ballard 2003). However, Cantle pays no

attention to the extent to which ethnic consolidation has been a key

feature in the trajectories of upward mobility which members of Britain's

once marginalised immigrant minorities have so routinely traversed.

The results of this deficiency are clear. In his analysis, as in those

developed by the great majority of contemporary social commentators,

the networks of inter-personal reciprocity around which ethnic colonies are constructed are not identified as a resource. Instead they are routinely

dismissed as problematic, on the ground that they isolate those within

them from contact with the indigenous mainstream. Cantle explicitly

picks up this 'common-sense' view by highlighting a comment made by a

Pakistani interviewee on the opening page of his report: 'When I leave


this meeting with you I will go home and not see another white face

until I come back here next week.'

How should this statement be read? Is it an empirically accurate

account of everyday experience within local ethnic colonies, as Cantle

suggests? Or is it no more than tendentious hyperbole? My experience

suggests the latter. Despite the tight-knit character of local minority

communities, I know of none in which white faces are entirely absent.

Nor are their members entirely cut off from the wider social order. No

matter how intense interactions within the biradari may be, their

members regularly encounter members of the indigenous majority as

they take their children to school, consult GPs, go to work, go shop-

ping in town or take a walk in the park. They routinely enter alien

social arenas when they do, so social interactions across the ethnic

boundary are a routine component of everyday life. The experience of

most members of the indigenous majority is quite different. Even if they

live in cities with a substantial South Asian presence, the great majority of

white Britons rarely interact with people of colour; moreover, when such

interactions do indeed occur, the terms of engagement are invariably one-

way.

Despite the inherently plural character of the British social order, the

existence of ethnic diversity is routinely overlooked by most members of

the indigenous majority. Hence when members of the ethnic minorities

enter the ghore social universe, they are expected to suppress their

distinctiveness and to order their behaviour in terms of indigenous social,

cultural, and linguistic conventions. By contrast on the rare occasions

when members of the indigenous majority traverse the ethnic boundary in

the reverse direction, they rarely step right through it, because they have

not acquired the social, linguistic, and cultural competence which would

enable them to do so. Hence even when they cross the boundary, they find

themselves unable to engage with those whom they encounter on their

hosts' own terms. The exercise of hegemony is a personal as well as a

structural phenomenon (Ballard and Parveen 2007).

In hierarchically organised plural societies, cross-boundary transactions

are invariably markedly asymmetrical. Whilst those at the bottom of the

social order soon acquire a shrewd appreciation of the conventions deployed

by the powerful, those in a position of privilege have little need to

familiarise themselves with the ways of those whom they dominate. On

the contrary they have every reason to dismiss them as mistaken. Cantle displays no awareness of this asymmetry. Instead he goes out of his way

to suggest the disjunction is symmetrical, since he follows up the

quotation from his Pakistani interviewee with another from a White

Roger Ballard 293

informant: T never met anyone on this [council] estate who

wasn't like us from around here'. In my view this second

comment is far more likely to be empirically accurate than

the first: if only for reasons of safety, brown faces are rarely seen on

council estates. In his efforts to highlight symmetry, Cantle misses a

further crucial point: that even in sharply polarised societies interactions

across ethnic boundaries occur as a matter of routine, and are ordered in

terms of a well-established set of social conventions.

Ethnic groups and the construction of boundaries

That such interactions are a key feature of plural societies is the core

theme of Frederik Earth's classic study Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. Roundly criticising the naive assumption that ethnic groups maintain

their cultural distinctiveness as a result of the absence of interaction

between them, he produces extensive empirical evidence to show

First... that boundaries persist despite a flow of personnel across them

Secondly, one finds that stable, persisting, and often vitally important

social relations are maintained across such boundaries, and are

frequently based precisely on the dichotomized ethnic statuses. In

other words, ethnic distinctions do not depend on an absence of

social interaction and acceptance, but are quite to the contrary often

the very foundations on which embracing social systems are built.

Interaction in such a social system does not lead to its liquidation

through change and acculturation; cultural differences can persist

despite inter-ethnic contact and interdependence. (Barth 1969: 10)

Having explored the interactive character of plural systems, Barth dismisses the commonplace assumption that ethnic disjunctions are the outcome of primordial (and hence immutable) patterns of difference. Instead he argues that they are maintained by - and indeed the outcome of - dialectical interactions across mutually constructed boundaries. Moreover, once such patterns of ethnic interaction and differentiation are firmly entrenched, 'the ethnic boundary canalizes social life' (op. dr.: 15), so much so that 'ethnic identity is superordinate to most other statuses.. .and is thus imperative, in the sense that it cannot be disreg-arded and thus set aside by other definitions of the situation' (op. dr.: 17). But in what sense is it imperative? Barth takes it for granted that power relations across such boundaries are rarely equal. Hence whilst


excluded groups can be expected to close ranks as a means of self-

defence, and to utilise their solidarity as the means of articulating their

collective interests, those further up the hierarchy can be expected to

use exactly the same tactics to marginalise their challengers, and hence

defend their position of advantage. Hence ethnic closure is by no means a

tactic deployed solely by disadvantaged minorities. Rather 'the boundaries

of pariah groups are most strongly maintained by the excluding host

population' (op. tit.: 31).

Yet, however stoutly defended the resultant disjunctions may be in

conceptual terms, Earth follows Furnivall in arguing they nevertheless

remain readily permeable: no matter how powerfully they may have

been reinforced by mutual competition. Such cross-boundary transactions

are an everyday occurrence in the Pennine region. Most minority

businesses attract a large non-minority clients: many could not survive

without them. Minority families routinely access educational and health

care services, shop in city centre stores, and access (often on an extended

family basis) mainstream leisure facilities. Members of the locally born

younger generation are yet more familiar with indigenous ways: most

work for mainstream employers, and regularly use the same leisure facilities

as their indigenous peers.

An analysis informed by Furnivall and Earth's insights highlights the

shallowness of Cantle's understanding of the issues. This is not to

suggest that the disjunctions which caused him such concern are

fictitious. Far from it: their consequences are only too real. The most

serious deficiency in his analysis is his failure to recognise that far from

being the outcome of a lack of inter-ethnic contact, the disjunctions he

observed are the outcome of competitive interactions across them.

What renders those interactions problematic is not lack of contact, but

the lack of symmetry in the organisation of those contacts, and above

all the character of the rules of engagement which members of the

indigenous majority routinely seek to impose. These routinely disregard

the linguistic, conceptual, and cultural conventions deployed within

the minorities' ethnic colonies, and also insist that when members of

such communities emerge into public arenas they should order their

behaviour, speech and self-presentation in 'acceptable' terms: those routinely deployed by members of the hegemonic majority. In this scenario

the minorities' commitment to ethnic alterity, even when restricted solely

to domestic contexts, is immediately identified as pathogenic. Far from

being identified as an asset, it is routinely perceived as a source of self-

induced social disadvantage. Such arguments are steadily being

expanded. As demands for homogeneity become more insistent, those

Roger Bollard 295

who choose different way can find themselves accused of betraying their

basic obligations of citizenship - as in the case of the Hispanic population

of the United States.

7/7 and its consequences

All these issues came to a head when four young Muslims from the

Pennine region blew themselves up on the London Transport system

on 7/7. Their motivations were grounded as much in a belief that

Muslims were being systematically marginalised and oppressed on a

global scale as they were in more parochial British contexts. Moreover, in

sharp contrast to the less spontaneous uprisings by which they were

preceded, their actions were carefully pre-planned. Nor can their actions be

described as 'popular': the vast majority of British Muslims regarded the

carnage they precipitated with horror. But although the perpetrators

consequently stood out on an extremist limb, the attitudes and exper-

iences which caused them to behave as they did were a product of the

processes described here. Hence the sentiments which underpinned

bombers' actions were immediately appreciated by the great majority of

young British Muslims, even if the consequences of their display of their

anger and despair were simultaneously regarded as being overwhelmingly

counterproductive.

With this in mind the atrocities the bombers had the effect of making a

crucial symbolic point: the consequences of contradictions highlighted in

this chapter are by no means restricted to the banlieues of Britain's

northern cities, nor were they in any way historically unprecedented.

Guy Fawkes hatched a similarly explosive plot four centuries previously,

which would have had yet more devastating consequences for the capital if

it had not been discovered in time. Disputes about religious pluralism are

nothing new in English history.

A singular or a plural future?

Where next? No matter how attractive dreams of a singular future may be, issues of plurality, and the contradictions to which they give rise, can no longer be brushed under the carpet. Neither anti-racism nor laicite offers viable solutions to the underlying problems. Nor does the demonisation and delegitimisation of difference offer any kind of solution. Efforts to repress diversity in contexts of plurality merely reinforce the determination to differ. If so, what are we left with? Now that all other solutions appear to be unviable, it is worth re-examining what


has hitherto been described as the multicultural approach, above all to

identify just how and why it is deemed to have 'failed'.

With this in mind it is worth reminding ourselves that one of the

reasons why the concept was embraced in the first place was that it was

perceived as a more easy-going, less aggressive and hence more palatable

alternative to the confrontational arguments pressed forward by the

anti-racists. To the extent that understandings of multiculturalism

emerged from visions of the rainbow delights of 'multi-culti', they were

bound to fail: the political and strategic challenges thrown up when the de facto reality of ethnic pluralism challenges dreams of national homogeneity

are far too deeply rooted to be resolved by soft options. Hence for the

proponents of multi-culti the events of 9/11 marked the end of an era,

and those of 7/7 punched nails into their project's coffin; but far from

acknowledging that this might have occurred because of the inadequacy

of their vision, most fair-weather multiculturalists simply blamed the

terrorists for letting them down. Piqued by this betrayal, they have

proved only too ready to line up behind visions of community cohesion.

Our inspection of Cantle's understanding of community cohesion has served to reveal its inherent flaws. Whilst all plural societies need to establish a viable basis on which to negotiate social cohesion as between their component parts, attempts to impose cohesion by demanding conformity to a single religious, linguistic, cultural, and moral ideology are bound to fail. The unilateral imposition of homogeneity in contexts of plurality can only be expected to sharpen underlying contradictions, and hence precipitate an increase in heterogeneity. That said, no plural society can operate without some means of ordering cross-boundary transactions. Since no business can be done in the absence of a common transactional code, a negotiated lingua franca invariably emerges in plural contexts. The English language is a classic example of just such a lingua franca.

If outright war is to be avoided, the core issue is what the contents, the scope, and above all the symbolic character of such a common trans-actional code should be. Negotiation is the core issue: there is no more effective recruiting sergeant for polarisation than attempts to impose hegemonic solutions. With this in mind it follows that aspects of our current democratic conventions, and especially the expectation that the will of the majority should normally prevail, stands in urgent need of qualification. A pluralist vision would not only support Muslim girls to wear the hijab to school if they so wished, but also resist the imposition of restrictions on those who wished to use hounds to hunt foxes. A viable condition of plurality must not only recognise that diversity is

Roger Ballard 297

an ever-present dimension of human affairs, but also be underpinned by

a presumption of a right to differ, even when the behaviour in question is

significantly at odds with established conventions.

It goes without saying that this right could not remain wholly untram-

melled: even the most plural societies are of necessity underpinned by a

restricted number of common conventions. That said, a commitment to

plurality demands that such requirements are kept as parsimonious as

possible. In doing so it also follows that the liberal dream of identifying a

singular set of universally applicable moral principles around which 'the

good life' can be constructed must also be set aside, to be superseded by a

recognition that every moral system is culturally grounded, ethnically

specific and hence non-universal in character (Gray 2000). If it could be

accepted that moralistic hubris, no matter how well intentioned, is

inherently oppressive, many of our current dilemmas would be far easier to

resolve. If political and cultural compromise became the order of the day

at every level in the socio-political order, the 'threat' of plurality would

simply evaporate. Once humanity regains its capacity to acknowledge and

respect difference, our current tendency to regard diversity as the enemy

of solidarity could be steadily whittled away, opening the way for the

emergence of societies in which everyone could feel at ease within 'a

community of communities' as Parekh (2000) felicitously puts it. In so far

as the objective of community cohesion is to 'help micro-communities to

gel or mesh into an integrated whole.. .[and] to develop common goals

and a shared vision' (Cantle 2001: 70), it stands at the opposite end of

the spectrum from Parekh's vision.

Conclusion: Ethnic plurality and the challenge of the

twenty-first century

The new millennium may well prove to mark a turning point in human affairs. The nineteenth and the twentieth centuries were an age of nation-alism, during which the world's empires fragmented into ever more numerous national components, each of which sought stability and justice in the context of separate visions of ethno-national homogeneity. As we enter the twenty-first century, unitarianism is proving an impossible dream. The costs of secession and the attendant processes of ethnic cleansing are manifestly unacceptable, whilst the exponential growth of long-distance migration is undermining all efforts to construct ethnically homogeneous nation-states. That Euro-America should find the resultant contradictions acutely challenging should come as no surprise. It was European thinkers from Hegel onwards who initially provided the


philosophical basis for dreams of national homogeneity, and their ideas

were exported to the remainder of the globe during the nineteenth-

century age of Empire. As we enter the twenty-first century Euro-America's

position of global hegemony is fading fast. Millions of non-European

settlers have established themselves in the former heartlands of the

Imperial order, such that alarm bells have begun to ring across the length

and breadth of Euro-America. Populist movements demanding a halt to

further (non-European) immigration, the better to sustain our (already

irretrievably flawed) condition of ethno-national integrity have emerged on

all sides. Yet despite the steady globalisation of the world order, nationalist

dreams of Unitarian homogeneity continue to exercise as powerful a hold

over Euro-American imagination. Still committed increasingly hubristic

expectations of both local and global hegemony, the prospect of living in

conditions of religious, linguistic, and ethnic plurality continues to be

regarded as a dreadful prospect.

The time has come for a re-think. Our Unitarian dreams have passed

their sell-by date. The goal of comprehensive ethnic homogeneity - call it

'modernity' if you will - is proving to be unreachable, and its pursuit is

precipitating ever more bloody consequences. If our taken-for-granted

assumptions are leading us into the wilderness, it is time to turn around.

We have much to unlearn. Our un-modern ancestors found plurality far

less bothersome to live with than we do. What went wrong? In our

doggedly Unitarian pursuit of 'modernity' and 'progress', some salient

truths about our human condition have been swept aside. Three of the

most obvious include the propositions that

• as cultured beings, we humans have an infinite capacity to create the terms of our own existence, and to do so in extraordinarily varied ways;

• although we share many commonalities, there is not, is unlikely to be and certainly never has been a single vision of 'the good life' to which all humans adhere;

• whilst everyone holds their own vision of the good life in high esteem, any attempt to forcibly impose that vision on others is asking for trouble: more often than not such effort will simply reinforce those alters' determination to pursue their own course.

When our ancestors began to construct towns and then empires, they were never so foolish as to attempt to render them ethnically homo-geneous. Whilst all pre-modern states included a hegemonic elite whose

Roger Bollard 299

members occupied position of enormous privilege, the successful rulers of

the far-flung Empires of antiquity never sought to eliminate all traces

of ethnic, religious, and linguistic plurality from amongst their subjects.

That would only invite rebellion. Instead all they demanded was

acknowledgement of and respect for Imperial authority. The epithet 'render

unto Caesar that which is Caesar's' promised his subjects a great deal of

personal autonomy, provided they accepted the legitimacy of the

overarching Roman umbrella. In a post-9/11 context it also worth

remembering that all the historical Islamic Empires were markedly plural in

character. To be sure every Sultan looked on his Muslim subjects with

special favour, but that certainly does not mean that Jews, Christians,

Zoroastrians and Hindus were systematically excluded from positions of

power and privilege. Moreover, whatever stories of Muslim bestiality

may have been circulated in western Europe since the failure of the

crusades, it was the Latin Christians, rather than their opponents, who

were for long the most enthusiastic exponents of Holy War and

conversion by the sword. Hence as Sachedina demonstrates in his illu-

minatingly titled volume The Islamic Roots of Democratic Pluralism, the

ferocious visions of Islamic unitarianism through which contemporary

jihadis legitimate their actions have much shallower historical and ideo-

logical roots than do those of the Washington neo-cons who have taken

advantage of the assault on the twin towers to launch a global re-run of

the crusaders' agenda under the banner of a War on Terror.

Building on key Qur'anic messages which insist, amongst other things, on

the unity which underpins all the variety found in God's created world,

such that all of Adam's offspring will stand as equals - regardless of

gender and tribal affiliations - when they are ultimately called to

account for their doings during the course of their sojourn on earth,

Sachedina concludes that in historical terms the Islamic vision of a just

society has never been as monolithic as the majority of its contemporary

ideologues so mindlessly insist. Instead, the focus of the Islamic social

message has been to make human beings aware of their true potential, to

overcome self-cultivated weaknesses that prevent them from dealing with

others with justice and fairness. Islam seeks to remedy these weaknesses by

improving inter-human relations and emphasising people's civil responsibilities towards one another. The challenge for Muslims today,

as ever, is to tap the tradition of Koranic pluralism to develop a culture of

restoration, of just intra-religious and inter-religious relationships in a

world of cultural and religious diversity. Without restoring the principle

of coexistence, Muslims will not be able to recapture the spirit of early

civil society under the Prophet (Sachedina 2001: 138-9).


Democracy, especially when formulated within the context of a

nationalist framework, swept such pluralistic understandings to one side.

Once plurality was defined as a challenge to national integrity, the only

reasonable response to diversity was to seek its elimination. However, it

was not democracy per se which precipitated that outcome, but rather the

majoritarian basis on which nationalists invariably insisted that it should

be interpreted. Democratic orders which leave no space for diversity will

of necessity be regarded as oppressive by those who differ; and efforts to

suppress those differences invariably sharpen rather than eliminate the

underlying disjunctions. In these circumstances the remedy is not to back

away from the principles of democracy, but rather to temper simplistic

majoritarianism with a recognition that accepting the consequences of

ethnic plurality is a necessary civic virtue. As a leading American theorist

of the imperatives of plurality argues, this will require urgent steps to

encourage.

a wide diversity of religious faiths, sensual habits, household organ-

izations, ethnic traditions, gender practices, and so on, and [to]

encourage the civic virtues of pluralism to inform relations between

these constituencies. But a democratic pluralist won't willingly, for

instance, allow the state to torture prisoners; murder to go unpunished;

parents to deprive their children of an education; the public school

system to deteriorate; wealthy citizens to evade taxes; orphaned

children to be placed under the care of incompetent adults; adult

citizens to be unemployed for too long; the gap between the real cost

of living in a system and the income-earning ability of most citizens

to grow large; the income hierarchy to become too extreme; or narrow

Unitarians to take charge of the regime. . . . a diverse culture is one in

which pluralistic virtues of public accountability, self-discipline,

receptive listening, gritted-teeth tolerance of some things you hate, and

a commitment to justice are widespread.

(Connolly 2005: 43)

The pursuit of such strategies will never be easy. In comparison with the

clarity of the Unitarian nationalist's vision, plural societies are grounded in

endless compromises and hard-driven bargains. To modernists in search

of clear-cut solutions, all this will appear impossibly chaotic. But is there

any viable alternative? The orderly world of which unilateralists dream

can only be achieved by taking exclusivist positions in which alternative

perspectives are eliminated. But as current developments

Roger Ballard 301

constantly remind us, the consequences of so doing in an inescapably

plural global order are exceedingly severe. As we enter the twenty-first

century the central challenge facing humanity is the re-establishment of

respect for difference. If we could regain the capacity to do so, we would

have a much brighter prospect of responding with equanimity to the

conditions of ethnic plurality which surround us, no less globally than

locally. We all have much to re-learn.

Notes

1. I happily acknowledge my debt to Michael Banton as the coiner of the first of these terms, and to William E. Connolly as the source of the second. If 'presentist' refers to the anachronistic mistake of seeking to read past events in terms of present-day suppositions, 'unitarian' refers to those who make the parallel mistake of assuming that only non-plural societies can ever be viable.

2. Although England was one of the world's first nation-states, it always firmly rejected republicanism. Hence in formal terms Britain's population still remain subjects of the Crown rather than citizens. The only Act dealing explicitly with UK citizenship was passed in 1981, and is primarily concerned with identifying those who do, and those who do not, have unquestioned rights of entry and abode in the United Kingdom.

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Index

In this index personal names have been listed in alphabetical order of first name, as in some cultures this is the significant name. Where authors have been cited for their publications they have been listed under surnames for this is how they would be consulted in bibliographies or catalogues. In some places a page reference is given where the actual word may not be used but the concept is discussed.

Page numbers in bold represents chapters.

Abdullah Quilliam, 15, 27n4 Aboriginals, 5, 162, 164, 165, 167, 185 Abrahamic Faiths, 181 Abul Hasan All Nadwi, 35 acculteration (see also assimilation), 23,

27, 59, 62,122-3,129,135, 236 acharyas, 81, 82, 83, 87, 88 adharma (see also dharma), 77 Afghanistan, invasion of, 4, 20, 136,

138, 226, 229 African American Muslims, 229 Africanisation, 15 Afro-Caribbean converts to Islam, 40 ahl as-sunna wa-jama'at, 26 Ahl-Hadith, 16 Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwi, 16 al-Azhar, Cairo, 31, 32, 34, 35, 37, 42,

50n.6 al-Falah, Bradford youth centre, 46 Al-Karam College, Nottingham, 36-9 al-Muhajiroun, 20 Alawiyya of North Africa, 15 alcohol, 87 Alijafarey, 132 'alim, 34, 37, 48 Allah, God in Islam, 40, 43, 44, 101 Allama Nishtar, 39 America (see also immigration; Parsis;

Twin Towers; USA), 1, 3, 6, 143-57, 223-42 African Americans, 229

American Islam, 230 American Muslim identity, 226

numbers, 228-9

American Muslims, 226 upwardly mobile, 227 Americanization, 236 Asian Americans post 9/11, 223-42 Atlanta, 233 attitudes to religion, 228 brain drain from South Asia, 230 Californian school history courses,

234 census question, 182, 224, 225, 237 Chicago, 5, 129, 148, 156, 233 Christian diversity of, 144

competition with Islam, 229 church and state in America, 239 Council for American Islamic

Relations, 229 democracy, 241 equality before the law, 237 'faith based initiative' post 9/11,

238 government policy (see also census

question), 226, 228, 229, 237, 238, 239, 240, 249 gurdwaras in,

231 Hindus in, 232-4 Hindutva in America, 233 Hispanics convert to Islam, 229-30 Houston, 5, 147, 233 ignorance of South Asian religions,

231 immigration, 223, 224, 225, 226,

227, 228, 229 Indian Christians in, 234-5 leaders

counter stereotypes, 233

303

The outcome of an international scholarly collaboration, this collection

examines how religions from South Asia have been reconstructed within

Western settings and how identity is shaped, not only by migrants but

also by subsequent generations.

Focusing on Britain, USA, Canada and Australia, the chapters address the

religious, social and political issues facing South Asian diasporas and

examines how they have been affected by 9/11 and other terrorist atrocities.

The book concludes with an examination of how policy should react and

adapt to the issues raised by the growing presence of South Asian diasporas.

John R. Hinnells is Research Professor at Liverpool Hope University, UK, a

Senior Member of Robinson College Cambridge, UK, and Honorary

Professorial Research Fellow, School of Oriental and African Studies, London,

UK. His books include Zoroastrians in Britain; Zoroastrian and Pars/ Studies;

and The Zoroastrian Diaspora. He has also edited The New Penguin Dictionary

of Religions and The New Penguin Handbook ofLiving Religions.

TD QJ_

lO

Jacket photograph © jeremy Edwards .

www.istockphoto.com