Stuck in an identity trap

Few of Britain’s myriad ethnic groups have been written about as much as its Muslim community, especially Pakistani-origin Muslims, who have been a subject of a series of critical books. And, interestingly, most have come from their own peers — Ed Husain, Sayeeda Warsi, Sara Khan, among others. These are not your usual chest-beating agnostic secularists; indeed most are practising Muslims and share their community’s angst about how their community is perceived by non-Muslims with constant scrutiny of its mores and practices.

But, they don’t share its self-pitying narrative of victimhood.  While acknowledging that the community is frequently a victim of stereotyping and prejudice, they argue that it cannot entirely escape responsibility for how it is perceived. The truth is it is rife with religious and cultural bigotry, as Ed Husain documented in his book, Among the Mosques, reviewed in these columns recently.

In They,  Sarfaraz Manzoor, who is among Britain’s handful of prominent mainstream Muslim journalists, tells the story of his community through the prism of his experience as a descendant of a deeply conservative family from rural Punjab in Pakistan. In a way, it complements, often overlaps, Mr Husain’s book and could be read as a companion volume.

But while Mr Husain highlighted Muslim religious extremism, Mr Manzoor’s focus is on cultural separatism: How British Pakistanis have tended to retreat into cultural ghettoes to “protect” their Pakistani identity. In fact, religion barely figures in his analysis as a factor in shaping Muslim attitudes towards, for example, women and the liberal Western way of life.

More than once, referring to their misogyny, sectarianism, and suspicion of non-Muslims, he asks how much any of this has to do with Islam. And invariably he concludes, very little. He blames it on Muslims’ own primitive cultural values; or what he calls “an imported village mentality” alluding to the rural roots of most Pakistani immigrants.

Mr Manzoor shows a similar hesitation when discussing a possible link between Islam and the violence perpetrated in its name. Ultimately, he seems to say “Let’s leave-Islam-out-of-it” because nobody really knows how significant a role religion plays in their action.

Mr Manzoor himself doesn’t come from a particularly religious background, but culturally his parents shared the wider community’s insularity.

 “I grew up in a segregated community and I know the impact it had on my life,” he writes recalling how “I was raised by my parents to believe that  they  were different to us. They  had a different culture,  they  were a threat to  our way of life, and  they  would never accept us.  They  were white people.”  On the other side of the racial divide, it was Muslims who were seen as they  —an embodiment of all the perceived threats to White Christian values.

 It was this, he says, that prompted him to investigate the problem of Muslim segregation: Why do they live in segregated communities? Why don’t they treat women the same as men; how much should they be held responsible for Islamist extremism? And is it possible to help bridge the divide from they  to us?

This sets him off on a journey through Britain’s Muslim strongholds— Luton where he grew up, Bradford, Manchester, Birmingham, Oldham et al—and he comes up with some truly horror stories of forced marriages (victims include both boys and girls); gender discrimination; domestic violence; and mental health issues. 

Though he bravely tries to be optimistic by highlighting the more progressive attitudes among younger Pakistanis, it’s hard to miss the overall message: For all their avowed modernity, young Pakistanis stubbornly cling to what they regard as their distinctive Pakistani cultural identity. And the constant fear of losing it means that they have set down red lines that they would not cross. One of these is never to marry a white person. Friendship or a quick relationship yes, but no marriage which they see as the start of a slippery slope to erosion of their Pakistani cultural identity.

 Mr Manzoor, who is married to a white woman, confesses that there are “costs” to marry outside one’s community. “It can feel lonely being the only Muslim in the family,” he says.

His book features a number of young rebels who —like him—left their family homes in search of freedom. But, alas, they are too few to add up to a significant trend towards real change, and the prospect of a transition from  they  to us  looks too distant from where the community is now at the moment. He, of course has a point that “integration is a two-way” process and the host society, too, has a responsibility to reach out to its ethnic population. Unfortunately, the reality is that self-imposed isolation hurts the minorities more than their majority peers. It’s true of minorities everywhere, and British Muslims are no exception.