And in other Muslim news
By Khaled Diab
A recent survey found that two-thirds of media coverage of British
Muslims was negative. The time is ripe for other news.
August 2008
|
|
|
Omid Djalili |
This time of year is traditionally the silly
season, when the media take a break from serious news to milk stories of EU
officials crying over spilt
milk, how Heinz is taking the baked
out of its beans and the final
frontier in sex. That’s not to mention the tabloids’ year-round obsession
with dressing scantily clad women up as news by reporting on a Big Brother bum
deal and Combat
Barbie’s battle preparations for the Miss England glamiator
contest.
However, since the 7 July 2005 attacks in London,
this great British tradition has been under threat from those pesky and
troublesome Islamists and sundry (sun-dried?) Muslims.
This month we have seen paparazzi chasing B-list celebrity
Islamists as they buy groceries, nasty
Arab fathers, Muslim
rage at cute puppy and how we are apparently sleepwalking into Islamisation.
Given such lop-sided
coverage, it is not surprising that many ordinary Britons view Muslims as a
threat and many British Muslims live in apprehension and even fear. Huma Qureishi, here on the pages
of CiF, wrote
of how many ordinary Muslims have decided it is best to keep their heads down.
Although I’ve never been one to keep my head
down, I can understand where they are coming from. I recall how much tenser the
general atmosphere got after the New York, Madrid and London attacks. In fact,
in the wake of 11 September, I would get alarmed phone calls from my mother
asking if everything was all right with me after she’d heard about some racist
murder or outburst from a rightwing politician.
Despite my mother’s worries, I rarely come
across overt racism – at least, not since I left school in London, and even then
it was rare, usually the preserve of geographically challenged bullies who
didn’t appreciate a middle-class “Paki” know-it-all who was big enough to talk
back.
Of course, I am lucky that I am not an
impoverished youth living in Bradford or Paris.
In addition, the fact that I am not religious
and have cosmopolitan friends and colleagues also helps. I work in a Brussels
media company that has a fairly vibrant mix of nationalities and cultures. In
the editorial dept in which I work, there is another writer with a Muslim
background: a Canadian with a Sudanese father and a Caribbean mother.
Rather than get into the never-ending debate on
how big the Islamist threat is – which is as futile as the ‘piece of string’
conundrum, since everyone will spin it out to just the length they need – and
the victim/villain dichotomy, I’d like to veer off the beaten track and
introduce some Muslims who do not fit the boilerplate image.
In Britain and across Europe, young Muslims
have taken to music and comedy to show their cool and funny face. One notable
example is the award-winning and irreverent Shazia Mirza, who took up and dropped the hijab and broke the apparently universal social taboo
surrounding hairy
women.
She jokes about her life. “I used to be a
teacher in Tower Hamlets,” she once quipped. “I had to carry a knife to
parents’ evenings. Which were basically singles’ nights.”
South Asian traditions. “[Matchmaking] gets very
confusing in Asian circles – if you don’t keep track, you could end up sleeping
with yourself.” And racism. “I’m very indignant about
all the Poles and Romanians coming over here and stealing our racism… What’s a
black or an Asian got to do to get noticed now?”
Another comic success has been the
belly-dancing Omid
Djalili who takes a poke at national stereotypes
by describing himself as the “only Iranian comedian in the world… that’s three
more than Germany”. He now has his own
show on the BBC which covers everything from a high street magic carpet shop to road rage and speed dating with a
difference.
Although Djalili is
not actually a Muslim but a Baha’i,
his comedy is based on his Iranian identity and perceptions of Muslims, besides
the distinction would probably be lost on much of his audience.
Commenting on the media’s fixation on Islamist
extremists, he quoted an imaginary news anchor in one routine: “To get a
balanced view of the Middle East, we now go over to Muslim nutter
with a hook.” He likens this to “al-Jazeera TV
interviewing, as your sole representative, the grand dragon of the Ku
Klux Klan”, whom he quotes as saying: “Well, we believe in death to all
darkies, Jews and A-rabs everywhere. We believe in
creating a white supremacist state in the middle of Egypt.”
Muslim comedians have also made headway in France, the Netherlands and Belgium.
France has, at 5 million, Europe’s largest
Muslim population which usually makes headlines relating to riots and crime.
But less reported is their success in all walks of life, from music and literature,
to sports, politics
and business.
France’s most famous Muslim is probably captain
of the World Cup-winning football team, Zinedine Zidane, considered
by some to be the best footballer ever.
French pop music has been massively influenced
by North African artists, from the success of the exiled “chebs”
of Algerian Raï,
the radical sound of the poor, to the languorous and dreamy tones of the
enigmatic Souad Massi. France even has
its own devout Muslim rapper, Médine.
In fact, young and successful Muslims in France
are working to promote what Amel Boubekeur
of the School of Social Studies in Paris calls their own brand of ‘Cool Islam’.
“They are trying to promote an Islamic identity, but also an ethic of
solidarity, charity, responsibility for each other,” she told the BBC.
The media is geared towards bad and alarming news.
Front-page headlines are never likely to inform us: ‘Muslim youth helps OAP
carry shopping home’ or ‘Christian, Muslim and Jew share a laugh after work’,
or the racier ‘Hijabbed med student and white bloke
in white cloak seen studying together’. But it is important for us all to look
for the stories that don’t make it into the editor’s cut, if we are to keep our
grip on reality.
This column appeared in The Guardian Unlimited’s Comment is Free section on 18
July 2008. Read the related
discussion.
ã2008 – Khaled Diab.
Unless otherwise stated, all the content on this website is the copyright of Khaled Diab.