Muslims, Trust and Cultural Dialogue in the UK
By Dr Akbar Ahmed
American University
Washington, DC
Just a few days ago a man in a van yelling he wanted to “kill all Muslims” drove into a group of worshippers outside a mosque in London. This attack followed several violent acts of terror including those in Manchester and an earlier one in London. Islamophobia has been growing steadily and public figures like Nigel Farage have fed into it calling Muslims “a fifth column living within our country, who hate us and want to kill us.” The gap between Muslims and non-Muslims seems to be dangerously wide and becoming bigger by the day.
Fortunately, there are both Muslim and non-Muslim visionaries in the UK seeking to bridge this gap - Professor Peter Morey of the University of East London and Dr Amina Yaqin of SOAS, University of London, founders of the Muslims, Trust and Cultural Dialogue project (MTCD) to name two.
Morey is a prominent professor of English and Postcolonial Studies and Yaqin is a top Pakistani academic and Chair of the Centre for the Study of Pakistan at SOAS. Morey is now moving to Birmingham University to occupy the Chair in Twentieth Century Literature – his home subject.
The MTCD is a research project focused on studying how multicultural communities foster trust among diverse peoples and extrapolating the lessons from these encounters to all levels of society through conferences and publications. The project focuses particularly on relations between Muslims and non-Muslims and has three primary focus areas: politics and society, business and finance, and the arts and culture.
In my own work, I have been particularly privileged to receive the MTCD’s enthusiastic support for my book and film project, Journey into Europe, which they launched at SOAS. Thanks to the MTCD, we had a strong base for conducting field research in the UK, and throughout, both Morey and Yaqin have remained gracious and supportive. Morey is even Executive Producer of the film Journey into Europe.
They have expressed how they see Journey into Europe and the MTCD as being projects complementary of one another in the quest to build bridges, writing, “Taken together, our two projects begin to sketch ways in which inclusive debate and interaction at all levels can foster a climate of greater trust at this crucial moment when other forces are conspiring to drive us apart”, they say.
It is worth noting that last year, the Pakistan Centre and Alumni Association of SOAS invited me to deliver the annual lecture to a full house at the Brunei Gallery Lecture Theatre. Lord Bhikhu Parekh chaired the session. They showed Journey into Europe the next day with the Pakistan High Commissioner and Sir Nicholas Barrington, the former British High Commissioner to Pakistan, in attendance.
When I asked him what drives him, Morey replied, “I feel motivated in this work by a sense of justice. We need to ensure that a distinction is made between the vast majority of Muslims, who only want the same peaceful life and opportunities as everyone else, and the tiny criminal and terrorist fringe. We need to understand our historical common ground every bit as clearly as our differences, and use it to build better relations in the future.
Prior to undertaking this project, Morey and Yaqin wrote a book titled, Framing Muslims: Stereotyping and Representation after 9/11 (Harvard University Press, 2011), which was the culmination of a three-year research project seeking to explain how stereotypes of Muslims as a problematic presence in the West are spread and permeate society. Morey is also the author of a number of articles and essays, as well as the books Fictions of India: Narrative and Power (Edinburgh UP, 2000), Rohinton Mistry (Manchester UP, 2004) and Alternative Indias: Writing, Nation and Communalism (Rodopi, 2006). He is currently working on a monograph entitled Islamophobia and the Novel to be published by Columbia University Press and two forthcoming co-edited books: Muslims, Trust and Multiculturalism (Palgrave), and Contesting Islamophobia (IB Tauris).
Yaqin, meanwhile, has written a number of essays and articles, and has even co-edited a journal on Faiz Ahmad Faiz. She is co-editing the forthcoming volumes Contesting Islamophobia and Muslims, Trust and Multiculturalism. Yaqin, who received her BA at Punjab, is also making a big impact outside the MTCD as the Chairperson of the Centre for the Study of Pakistan and is working to develop a Master's program in the Study of Contemporary Pakistan. The Centre aims “to raise awareness of the diversity of cultural elements that make up Pakistan, beyond the usual stereotyped elements that make it into the news all the time.”
“Amongst the negativity, we should also reiterate the positive contributions Muslims are making to British society,” Yaqin noted. “The election of Sadiq Khan as the Mayor of London is a case in point, where a dog-whistle Islamophobic campaign by his opponents was disregarded by the voting public.”
In the end, Morey, typically cheerful and up-beat, “feels optimistic about the long-term future, since no society can operate effectively by accentuating divisions between its members. We will speed up the process of eradicating extremism of all kinds when we focus more on the common building blocks of trust which we all employ every day.”
As a friend and colleague, I am grateful to Professor Morey and Dr Yaqin for their compassionate vision and leadership in this time of division and deepening mistrust between faiths and cultures.
(The writer is an author, poet, filmmaker, playwright, and the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies, American University in Washington, DC. He formerly served as the Pakistani High Commissioner to the UK and Ireland. He tweets @AskAkbar. This article first appeared in July, 2017)
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