After delivery and assembly of my furniture yesterday, the two delivery men took a little time out for coffee. One of them, looking at my bookshelf said, “the noble Qur’an and the Glorious Qur’an, what’s the difference?” I told him “no difference, it’s just different names. They are translations of the Qur’an”.
What followed was a burst of quick-fire comments around 9/11 and 7/7. Had I known beforehand that these average white Englishmen in their mid 30s had this number of questions, I would have asked my wife to cook a proper ‘Indian’ for lunch. We all know how much an Englishman loves his curry – that’s prejudice based on fact.
Whilst I sensed the inquisitive nature of their interest, I could also feel the resentment and even anger against Muslims. “With respect mate”, said one of them. “As an Englishman, how dare people come to my country and look down on us and our laws.”
Underneath the apparent dislike lay an eagerness to understand and the desire for answers to the questions floating in their heads.
Some 30 minutes later…we were still engrossed in discussion. Yes, about honour killings, terrorism, and sharia law in Britain. Then one of them said, “this problem we have between Islam and us is all caused by the situation in Palestine.”
The penny dropped. If Jo Blog the Millwall fan can pinpoint the occupation of Palestine as a major cause of the friction, perhaps we still have a chance to win our very own battle for ‘hearts and minds’. This is despite Ms Phillips and her ilk in the media.
The question is how? For a start we can do away with the infighting and have a semblance of unity before we can proceed.
The idiocy of lack of engagement with wider non-Muslim society must also be ditched. Our neighbours, work colleague or fellow students (etc) all have the same miscomputations and questions. It seems engagement on a personnel level, which until now remains largely absent, is the best tool we have. This can only happen with a paradigm shift in our da’wa methodology.
Instead of having an inward-facing approach confined to the Muslims, we need to focus primarily on the non-Muslim community.
Meanwhile, 35 minutes later they concluded by saying “I tell you one thing mate, we now know not to judge Muslims by what we hear in the media or by the actions of one or two individuals.” And that’s just over coffee; just imagine what can be achieved by a full dinner over two hours multiplied by 2 million Muslims.
it’s a good article in the right direction.
I dont agree with the following because we need to develop and empower the muslims to carry out the task of removing the media and government distortions:
“Instead of having an inward-facing approach confined to the Muslims, we need to focus primarily on the non-Muslim community.”
But for this to be achieved, we actually need more examples of how to actually articulate things. I feel that most muslims have no idea how to articulate their point and so do not go out looking for the challenge and carrying out this individual dawah
Possibly we could benifit from further examples of your interactions, so we can learn to articulate.
jazakallah khaire
I hoped I would have had the courage to similarly discuss the issues, but the phrase “come to my country” would have threatened an outbreak of World War III because this is MY country, too, and most Muslims who are here are descendents of people who are INVITED by Her Majesty’s government to do jobs white people wouldn’t. And if all you read is the tabloids, what do you really know? Grrrrrr!
This is a elegant example of what is possible on the part of our community when it comes to dealing with problems of islamophobia, which we aren’t doing enough to counter.
I think, as Musab mentioned above, that it’s ‘in the right direction’, but I would add to that that we needn’t necessarily be programmatic about it, by telling two miliion muslims to do the same–and I think that’s not really what you’re saying anyway–but what we do need is two things:
1. an encouragement of education in our community, which will naturally give rise to an ability to articulate, but before that, and more importantly, we need
2. spiritual well-being, or the seeds of it, so that people can truly reflect Islam in themselves; and this will also make sure that the ‘articulation’ that arises from education is sincere and from the heart.
Just discussing these sorts of issues with civility will, in sha Allah, puts us on the right track, in sha Allah.
والله المستعان
Salam
Excellent start. We need more discussion around this subject. As I too feel that not enough is being done.
What I gather from the article is this. No formulaic programme but personnel interaction which displays the exemplary character of Islam.
No formulaic answers but yes to education so that we understand Islam as understood by our predecessors.
Islam was a dynamic force for firstly internal change and secondly external change. If through our personnel interactions we can change the views held by our non Muslim neighbours, then we have already begun to influence the politicians and media manipulators.
I don’t believe that Islamic organisations can do this, nor do I believe they should. They have failed in any case.
This should be grass roots approach.