MODESTY IS NOT JUST A DRESS CODE

A while back, I went in to bat for a mate over something that was just not cricket.

As a journalist he’d been travelling with Sadiq Khan as the London Mayor crossed the border between India and Pakistan, a poignant moment for many given the history. As he crossed, local officials bade him “welcome home”. Reacting to this, on camera, my friend asked Sadiq “does it feel like coming home?” He replied that home was “South London, mate.”  As the border gates closed behind the Mayor, the social media floodgates opened like a burst drain, spilling foul contents from various malcontents.  Dog’s abuse for my mate and praise for Khan’s response. The comments were at best sneeringly sarcastic, at worst inaccurate and spiteful. Many said the journo was racist, bigoted, Islamophobic and out of touch for suggesting that Pakistan was the London Mayor’s home.  It was jumped on as further proof that The Media was out to get Muslims.  In fact, in the context of what the local officials had been saying and the spirit in which the reporter asked the question, I think it was perfectly reasonable. Also, there is a feeling of home-coming of sorts even for second generation Asians when they go to India or Pakistan. I know there is for me. I know the reporter well. As a young British born Asian starting out in journalism I worked with him right in the heart of London’s Asian communities. He’s a good man and a journalist with integrity and understanding who didn’t deserve such vitriol from strangers who clearly misunderstood - or wilfully ignored - the spirit and context of the incident. Behind the scenes, Sadiq Khan himself acknowledged that it had been very unfairly interpreted.

The majority of this glee-soaked mocking was blaring out from Twitter. Ah, Twitter. It was a place I was keen to avoid. I knew it was populated by the holier-than-thou chasing the Holy Grail of going viral,  while paying zero attention to irritants like context or spirit. But I knew what I had to do if I wanted fight my mates corner. Despite being a conscientious objector to the cyber-war of opinions, I’d have to sign up.

For some context, I’d already been interested in the “Nothing To Do With Islam” narrative surrounding Islamic terrorism: the concerted effort to ring-fence religion itself from scrutiny in terms of its possible role in inspiring terrorism.  The determination to focus only on the geo-political, external societal factors that fuel it.  The latter of course needs to be explored but it should be a holistic approach that addresses all possible causes – including religious texts and the community itself.  Muslim activists needed to take this on board when campaigning on social media platforms and in the media, I thought. Many of the Tweets on the Sadiq Khan incident seemed to be coming from the same Twitter activists who were so invested in pushing the “NTDWI” narrative. So, perhaps this was a chance to really try and see what motivated them and what they thought. I’ll acknowledge now that some of what I’m about to say could apply more broadly to any form of keyboard activism, but there does seem to be quite a distinct type of western Muslim Twitter campaigning. Also, I’ll make it clear now that I’m not referring to the wider Muslim community here. It specifically concerns the people who style themselves as activists and commentators on Muslim issues. The gatekeepers of “NTDWI”. Because they are so publicly vocal about the external things they see as causing problems for Muslims, it isn't a huge leap to think they might want to address the internal problems that may cause extremism too. I think that’s reasonable.

So anyway, here’s what I found, if anyone is remotely interested.

The first thing that struck me as I looked through the people who’d been most outspoken on the Khan incident was that you apparently need a professional looking profile pic, with a nice soft-focus backdrop. Presumably this is to show that you should be taken quite seriously as a commentator. It seemed the conversation at the photo shoots has gone something like this:

“Could you look a tiny bit smugger for me please?”

Click.

“Perfect, thanks”.

It’s resulted in some seriously self-satisfied smirks. I should have heeded that warning sign and walked away there and then. But I set about messaging some of them, pointing out the context of the incident and in some cases asking them to correct their quotes.  A couple of them had changed the wording of the reporter’s question slightly in a way that made it sound like an offensive statement.

I sent dozens of messages. I got one reply. These people aren’t obliged to engage with a stranger who’s appeared out of no-where with an anonymous looking Twitter profile. Fair enough. So I decided to stick around for a while after the Sadiq Khan outrage and see if I could engage them on the broader issues they raise. By this point, they were all starting to blur into one. The vocabulary was all very similar and they all re-tweeted the same stuff and shared each others "powerful" or "important" work. I continued to get no acknowledgement. With my zero followers and mounting pile of unanswered tweets, I was scribbling on a deserted platform like a graffiti artist at a station at night.Maybe my approach was all wrong.  If you are not abusive and raise what you hope are some valid observations, you’ll get ignored. Be a rude and abusive twat and you’ll get a response. For example, I asked one particular columnist why it was OK to ask Muslim activists to comment on Palestine but not on Islamic terrorism. A bale of Twitter tumbleweed rolled slowly by. Soon after, some idiot delightfully invited her to “fuck off” back to her “muzzie shithole”. This got a response. I was jealous and clearly needed to up my game. This engaging with abuse while side-stepping more sensible questions happened a lot. I guess it’s an example of the narrative confirming that was common on these Twitter accounts. If your whole Twitter existence is geared towards proving that Muslims are constantly under attack from all sections of society, then it’s in your interests to highlight everything that might help confirm this. And that meant engaging with semi-literate hate rather than in sensible debate. The "playing the victim" allegation against these activists is a bit toxic. But if you're going out of your way to engage in, highlight, and even promote Islamophobic abuse while side-stepping all attempts at grown-up debate that might actually bring about some change, then you can see how the victim-hood allegation might be levelled. It seemed that many of these activists actually wanted and needed there to be rampant Islamophobia. While trawling through these accounts a song popped into my head, (and I’m sure you could use a musical interlude by now). But the lyrics had changed slightly. “Oh Lord, please let me be misunderstood”.  Because that means we are special and different.  The burden of The Chosen.

Inevitably this scramble for vindication leads to errors. There were a few re-tweets of an incident in which a female Muslim commuter was purposely thrown onto the tracks at a London station. It never happened. And yet here you are re-tweeting it from some dodgy source just because it chimes with your narrative. It made me doubt the intelligence and nous of some of these activists. Another sent round a link to a speech some American professor had just given in which he talked about shooting Muslims. The speech was from three years ago, and the comment in question had been presented out of context. We all make mistakes, but none of the activists I kept an eye on had the high levels of editorial accuracy they demanded of everyone else. If your Twitter page is your own newspaper and you are its editor, then theirs are some of the most biased, unaccountable, single-issue, gaffe-prone publications out there.

There was a real clamour to expose examples of Islamophobia, no matter how ill-researched or misconstrued. Politicians, columnists and “The Media” were cited as the main culprits. The use of this blanket term seemed unfair when we are talking about countless publications and broadcasts. It’s just as bad as lumping all Muslims into the same category as terrorists. Watching this a bit more closely, the examples of “Media” Islamophobia were often limited to the Murdoch press and The Daily Mail. The News is, those individuals / outlets hate any minority group. Muslims are certainly not their only target. That kind of undermines the narrative that Muslims, above any other minority group, are being exclusively targeted with unfair and discriminatory reporting. Actually, these white, rich, upper class business people hate anyone not in their gang. So, they seemed to be guilty of the very things they claimed to stand against – low-level bullying, arrogance, defending their own cause blindly. I began to see politicians, right-wing columnists and these western Muslim activists all as branches on the same bigot tree. With their selective view of history, refusal to address any criticism of religion, and half-truths about Islamic achievements, these activists were just as responsible for spreading lies and misinformation about Islam as the EDL were.

It all begged the questions: how constructive was all this? Are the right questions being asked? Is this the right approach? If there is a relentless effort by “The Media”, society and authorities to demonise the Muslim community, should we not be asking more about why that is the case? As a relatively new phenomenon, what is the motivation? But there were no attempts to explore this, even though perhaps it could prove constructive. The motivation for activists wanting to keep the focus on external acts of Islamophobia is fairly easy to explain - but what the motivation would be for a "Media" campaign to demonise Islam is harder to understand.

As well as Islamophobia, there was another obsession on my watch. The rise of far right extremism. Clearly it is a worry, and it’s very important to raise awareness and keep it on the agenda of politicians. But I couldn’t help wonder why these activists had not displayed this vigilance and concern when Islamic extremism was taking root in mosques and communities around the country. Working within the community with the same energy and conviction, lobbying politicians with the same vigour, who knows what might have been achieved? Again, I’ll make it clear here that I am referring specifically to these activists, not the Muslim community generally. If the activists can mobilise against one form of extremism, why not the other? Instead, when it comes to combatting Islamic extremism, they focus on discrediting the Prevent strategy, spreading distrust and trying to push the gaze away. If the insidious influence of Saudi money and Wahhabism on British mosques had met with the same wave of activism from British Muslim Twitter campaigners, it could have made a difference. Might have even saved lives.

But a word on hypocrisy generally. It came up a lot as an accusation on all sides. In my opinion, it’s almost impossible not to be a hypocrite in some way or other when you take a stand on something. But I was witnessing new levels. It’s misquoted song lyric interlude time again. If some of these activists didn’t have double standards, they wouldn’t have any standards at all. Any western terror attack on a Muslim population was humanised, with the emphasis on the death of innocents. Any Muslim terror attack on a western population was politicised, with the emphasis on the Islamophobic and unfair way in which it’s reported and portrayed - often while the dead bodies were still warm.

While I was on my Twitter shift, two news stories broke close to each other. The “Punish A Muslim Day” letters appeared which understandably caused concern. Meanwhile, concern was growing over the spate of stabbings involving young gangs in London, making headlines. While the stories weren’t linked, it did make me think of the lot of the young working class kid. White black or brown, statistically they are highly vulnerable to violent crime and amongst the most disadvantaged in the country. They don’t have a Twitter army of comfy middle-class campaigners from the advertising and legal world fighting their corner. They face a chronic lack of opportunity and state support. They are treated with utter disdain by some parts of the media. I thought these Twitter activists could bear this in mind while they fought to establish Muslims as the community under siege, neglected by the state and under constant threat of violence. If, for example, a teenage black guy and a visibly Muslim woman take the same walk home at night through their South London estate and come across the local gang, my money would be on Mrs Khan making it home without incident, not the young guy. The activists would do well to acknowledge that sometimes discrimination is more about class than race or, for sure, religion.

So what’s the point of all this? Where does the motivation come from to spend so much of one’s time and energy on this? I’m sure those involved would say it is born from a desire to foster change and speak out for the disenfranchised.  A real purity of intention. I aint so sure. Ego, hubris and arrogance certainly play a part.  They take themselves incredibly seriously, resulting in an absence of lightness and humour, and no sign of that essential life tool – self-deprecation. The arrogance comes through in dressing up their beloved opinion as a fact, staring into its eyes tenderly then sending it out there into the Twitter world like an over-bearing parent, belligerently ignoring any criticism of their precious child. The values that are often claimed as the cornerstones of religion – modesty, humility, and understanding – are rarely displayed. There’s certainly no sign whatsoever of the more spiritual side of faith. The need to nullify critical thought and guide people away from examining possible internal problems like religious texts seemed at the very heart of it.  Anger was a motivation too. But I suspect the cause of the anger is not simply the social injustice that the Tweeter rails against. Because we can never know what lies at the personal heart and background of the people involved.  Are we all not just playing out our insecurities, past experiences, traumas and influences, and projecting them onto a cause or crusade? For some, it seemed it might be a coping strategy for personal or mental health issues not necessarily linked to religion or politics. In a way, that is a more comforting thought.  Better that than being motivated by a cold, righteous political and ideological standpoint with no vulnerability, humanity or personality behind it.

But I wonder how sustainable it is. If you spend so much time very publicly voicing your views on something, tweeting them several times daily, blogging and podcasting manically without much pause for stillness or reflection, perhaps you're on course to trip up over your own opinions one day. You'll say or do something that will undo all your careful placing of yourself as a credible commentator. All that's left will be your precious but now orphaned opinion bobbing slowly along in the social media sea until it submerges.

Last time I went to Karachi, my Aunt hugged me and said “welcome home, beda”. I hugged her back, put down my bags and had a cup of tea on the roof as the call to prayer rose into the evening sky with the birds of prey and kites.

Maybe next time I’ll reply “I’m from west London, mate.”