Islam's decade

[Uthman]

By Asim Siddiqui

An appalling event launched Islam into the spotlight. But amid the trauma, there are things to be thankful for.

The question: What did the noughties mean for religion?

The noughties may go down in history as the decade that finally brought Islam in from the cold. When those planes crashed into the Twin Towers, life was never quite going to be the same. The way the decade would pan out was set in motion that day.

Never in recent memory was so much to be written about Islam. This was the decade that being a radical Muslim or a moderate one became viable career options. There was no shortage in demand – or supply – for comment and analysis. Those who had even remotely worked with Muslims or read up a bit on Islam became "expert" commentators overnight.

So many of the problems in the Muslim world were to be viewed almost entirely through the prism of religion. Poverty, lack of education, the disempowerment of women's and violence were all laid at the doors of Islam. Islam was the problem and it's modernisation was the solution. This way of thinking about Islam conveniently sidestepped all the usual factors it is also important to consider when diagnosing social ills.

There were times during the decade that the obsession with Islam and Muslim-related news stories reached a frenzy. In the aftermath of 7/7, it felt that a Muslim had only to sneeze out of place for it to make the front pages.

The upside of this new focus on Islam has been far greater levels of engagement between Muslim and non-Muslim communities. Fresh voices began to be heard in the public domain that showed wider society an Islam whose values were common and whose aspirations were shared by most ordinary people. Muslims would increasingly ask themselves what benefit they could bring to those outside their faith community. There was also far greater interest in learning from others.

I recall being involved in organising a Muslim event on climate change at the start of the decade. We decided to invite an expert on the issue (George Monbiot as it happens), rather than asking a Muslim, as would have been typical at the time, even when that would mean getting a generalist and not an expert. We may have been breaking the mould at then; we wouldn't be now.

Today, the diversity of Muslim voices in the public domain make it much more difficult than it was 10 years ago for any one Muslim group to get away with speaking on behalf all Muslims. It is also more difficult for elements in the media to make gross generalisations, as so many more Muslims are now themselves part of the print and broadcast media. The same is increasingly true of the political and business worlds.

So the noughties was an age when we were all forced to try and understand each other better. Globalisation made the world smaller and brought us all that much closer. How we all get along in such a small interconnected and interdependent world and what new ideas – religious or otherwise – will help us are now the pressing issues that will be left to the next decade to resolve.

Source

Asim Siddiqui is a founding trustee of the City Circle, a grassroots network of professionals established in 1999 which runs, in addition to educational and welfare projects, weekly public events providing an outlet for debate on issues of concern for British Muslim communities and wider society. He is currently an advisor to Harrow Central Mosque.

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[Supreme]

So it fair to say that, despite condemning Islam, the noughties strengthened it in a way?

I don't really know what changes the noughties brought to Christianity. A Pope died, a new one was sworn in. That's all I can think of really.