OTHER MUSLIM MINORITIES

Rashmee Z. Ahmed on Muslim Identity in U.K.

For a multi-cultural society, even so innocuous an exercise as a survey of popular baby names, can be a disturbing reminder of a demographic time bomb inexorably ticking towards a thousand guernicas. So also Britain's recent discovery that Mohammed was its most fancied name for baby boys. Not entirely unaccountable, of course, for Britain... has a surging population of 1.2 million Muslims and available growth trends indicate that the figure would double sooner rather than later.

Still it continued to view the future with only the vaguest intimations of unease, hoping perhaps against hope that Prime Minister John Major was right when he once said there would "always be an England, with spinsters cycling to communion on Sundays". Today, however, it is another Tory MP's remark that bears repeating. "In reality", retorted Winston Churchill, "it will be Allah's faithful going to the high street mosque".

Explosive Mix

That there certainly seems to be a "British Islam" is because of several factors. Statistics, the continued intifada of the local Mullahs and the ebb and flow of the geo-political tide have alloyed into an explosive mix. The perceived threat within Britain first flashed on to TV screens when Bradford's believers burnt a book. So it was that the heresy of confessed apostate Salman Rushdie gave purpose and fire to a scattered community. Unashamedly they prostrated before the ranting absolutism of the 'pure' and in a single moment the racial label of Asian Muslims was submerged into their religious identity.

The perception of threat has only intensified coming through clearly in even so bland a document as the 1995 edition of the Central Statistical Office's population report. It reads: "The number of those belonging to Muslim religious bodies in 1992 was as large as the combined membership of Sikh, Hindu and Jewish religions". But the note of warning is entirely natural, as John Esposito analyses in his book, The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? Indeed, Britain, where-Islam is the third largest religion, and France, where it is the second largest, are constrained to respond with xenophobic fury to a threat they can barely understand. This in turn, evokes a backlash like when the Islamic Party of Britain was set up some years ago. it was led principally by white British converts, including Yusuf Islam (pop singer Cat Stevens) in a bid to beat institutionalized British political parties at their own game.

Fanatics' Witch-hunt

Soon after, a Muslim "Parliament" was set up as well and rabid radicals like the Hizb-u-Tahrir began policing university campuses to deal with blasphemers against faith.

This was, indeed, a movement, but not so much a revivalist movement as a search for identity. It is important to make a distinction between religious revivalism and a community's politicization in search of its self. Sociologists generally agree that the concept of people going back to religion is essentially Western; it hardly applies to those from the East, who never left their faith in the first place.

For many British Muslims then, it was less a quest for faith as a voyage of discovery to find out, as Edward Said meditatively said of the Palestinian people and displaced communities in general: "Do we exist? What proof do we have? What did we become a people? When did we stop being one?"

The young particularly are torn between twin polarities the narrow certainties of their co-religionists and the broader, secular values of their compatriots. This confusion is compounded by having to work out an identity Asian and Muslim; minority within minority. In the last decade or so, many chose Islam to fill in the gaps, more as an ideology and a complete social system than as the ritualistic faith of their elders.

(Source: The Times of India, 15 January, 1996)

Philippines: Establishment of Autonomous Region for the Moros

Moro National Liberation Front's leader and Philippine officials signed an interim agreement on 1st December, 1995, at Jakarta after five days of talks.

Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas, in his. concluding speech to the meeting, urged the Philippine government and Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) to close the gap on the two remaining issues blocking a final peace agreement. Indonesia which is acting as mediator would convene a fourth round of talks "very soon" but no time has been set.

The third round of talks, sponsored by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), began on 27 November. The interim agreement covered the areas of education, economic and financial systems, mines and minerals, the administrative system, the executive, the judiciary and the introduction of Shariah law.

A joint communique said 123 points had been approved. But the amalgamation of Moro activists with the Philippines (armed forces) as well as the provisional government for the proposed autonomous region were unresolved.

There was an agreement on an autonomous region on the island of Mindanao, 800 kms south of Manila, but not on the designation of the head of the region. The potentially more dangerous but smaller Moro Islamic Liberation Front as well as the more militant Abu Sayyaf and National Islamic Command Council radicals (did not participate in the) talks.