Introduction

This paper is concerned with contributing both to theoretical paradigms for Muslim Youth Work and ideas on what could comprise relevant Youth Work interventions in the context of recent manifestations of Islamic orthodoxy.

I analyse the consequences of Multiculturalism in British society in general and suggest that it has led to confused thinking whereby anything claimed to be emblematic of a culture/religion is practically beyond criticism or even, considered analysis by those from another culture/religion/ethnicity. Given that most youth workers are white/of secular or Christian tradition, the fear of offending Muslim sensibilities has led to an abdication of responsibility for providing a safe forum where aspects of Muslim beliefs can be safely considered and discussed by Muslim youth. Accordingly, a moral vacuum has been created which leaves the way open for some Muslim youth to resolve painful ambiguities by turning to the certainties most valued in their communities, which provide them with status, self-esteem and degrees of power that are rather less readily available in the individualised, atomised secular public space of British society.

The lack of safe opportunities for young Muslim females and males to dialogue on common practices in their families and communities has resulted in their isolation and a consequent difficulty in recognising the fascistic forms of belief-structure in Islam ( these arise both from literal interpretations of the Koran and the Hadith and Sunnah (sayings and example) of the founder of Islam, Muhammad bin Abdullah). These fascistic belief-structures, when taken seriously and acted upon by the older generation of Muslims settled in Britain, have resulted in the deaths of young people whose conduct challenged long-established parameters of power and exploitation in Muslim communities. The policy of Multiculturalism with its posturing of moral relativity has in practice, enabled Muslim 'community leaders', who wish to control youth originating from Muslim backgrounds, to do so with impunity - usually under the guise of promoting/protecting 'their' culture (but only as these powerful representatives of the orthodoxy define it) from the depredations of western imperialism.

In this paper, I argue for a morally and politically engaged Youth Work ethic and conclude with a series of questions that could be used in Youth Work with Muslims, to help generate a sensibility that can begin to unpick centuries-old traditions and Koranic-Hadith-Sunnah-based practices that deny the human rights of three categories of people: the human rights of girls and adult females, the human rights of those Muslims who don't comply with its orthodoxy /who wish to leave Islam and, the human rights of all peoples who are not Muslim. The astute reader will note that these three categories of people encompass the overwhelming majority of humanity!

1. The Muslim Self at Home and the Muslim Self in the Gorah's Secular Space

In contrast to the French philosopher Descartes, who claimed 'I think therefore I am,' Karl Marx affirmed '- the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality, it is the ensemble of social relations'. (Marx, 1845. 29).

That there is a dialectical relationship between identity and social context continued to be expressed by various sociologists early in the 20th century. For example, C.H Cooley developed the idea of the Looking Glass Self. For Cooley, self and society are, as he famously put it, 'twin-born'. Rather than positing the individual self and society as independent, separately existing entities, his theoretical model sought to show how both the development of the sense of self in each of us, and how the changes wrought over time in human societies, are absolutely co-dependant. Cooley's life work explains how the objects of the social world are constitutive parts of the subjects' mind and self. The development of self and the shifts and movements in families, communities and the larger society, arise dialectically, through encounter. In the 1920's, G.H. Mead continued to develop these ideas, analysing the critical juncture of human consciousness, social being and the society that encompasses each individual. He emphasised that it is through interactions with significant others, that each of us develops an internalised sense of the generalised Other.

For the purpose of this paper, the question to be posed is this: If each member of the new generation comes to selfhood by assimilating the objectified reality of Significant Others, of the previous generation, what happens when two sets of 'previous generations' are experienced by one self? In what way is it possible to reconcile the contradictions between two opposing sets of Generalised Others, if, as a young person, one's consciousness is to some degree, formed through the medium of the contradictory elements they are composed of?

However the permutations of this complication are worked out, it still must be asserted that the affectation afflicting Western philosophy and its ivory tower intellectuals, for so long, was founded on a fiction:- Descartes' atomised individual, who logically, cannot exist. Along with sociologists such as Cooley and Mead, I wish to assert that personal identity in the real world is both socially constructed and socially constituted: I am who I am because of whom I relate to, and relate with.

What are the implications of this perspective in helping us to conceptualise and therefore to start to understand, the pressures on those youth who experience a painful bifurcation of values and practices between home life and the wider community represented by school, the media and the government? Certainly, there has been relatively little research by academics from the fields of Psychology and Sociology - nor in my observation and experience, is there much understanding by the adults who compose in their 'being', the contradictory expectations experienced by 'dual heritage' youth. Do Muslim youth for example, have two sets of 'Generalised Others'? What types of signification have the 'Significant Others' to constitute, to make a difference? More precisely, just what emotional, spiritual and material contributions do individuals have to make, before they are likely to carry this resonance of significance for an Other? I have since realised that things can be even more complicated than this for those of us with a dual heritage. If the unceasing reproduction of our forms of community directly and immediately influences the realisation of the intimate, personal characteristics of individuals,' (Bakhurst and Sypnovich 1995: 69) what happens when youth are faced with situations of divided loyalties to divided communities?

The Other: 'the black, the brown, the nigger, the wog, that previous generations of British citizens thought of as less than human and therefore, legitimate to exploit, is now, part of that same social body. How to transform the historically-based sense of Alienness, that Otherness, into a sense of 'They', who now, are a part of 'Us'? And to what extent have the policies of Multiculturalism been a help or a hindrance? Furthermore, how do those of us who are aware of how our forebears were massacred/exploited, resolve being citizens of the nation responsible, and therefore, being now, beneficiaries of that exploitation? When these opposites are in the same social body, what can be the nature of such a communal existence?

In the light of the worldwide, accelerating assertion of Muslim identity, which seeks to negate all loyalty to any nation state, the questions that must be formulated concern trying to understand the extent to which social relationships in 21st century Britain are infused with a set of core, common values. To what extent are we in Britain, in fact, living in deeply differentiating (and therefore, differentiated) moral and psychological Bantustans? The South African policy of apartheid had at least the merit of honesty: the Whites, who controlled all the resources, who formulated all the laws, and who administered all the organs of the state, made it abundantly clear through their laws that Blacks, Coloureds and Asians had better know their place. Any challenge to the status quo was met with painful retribution. The merit in this, I wish to suggest, is that there is little room for confusion - Black/Coloured/Asian youth knew what their place in the social order was for the whites in South Africa made not the vaguest nod in the direction of even a hypothetical equality.

Here in Britain the opposite situation seems to have developed over the past thirty or so years. Despite a legal structure that on paper, ensures equal rights for all its citizens, white professionals routinely use a variety of labels such as 'ethnic minorities' of the generations born here, as well as their parents who came to this country in the 1950's and 60's. I hear some of those talked about in such terms, use the distancing label, Goray (whites) to describe the people who compose the majority society. How to heal this schism without appearing to promote the equivalent of a colour blind policy that pretends there is no difference and furthermore, pretends there is an equality that doesn't in fact, exist? How can we acknowledge difference without making it an unalterable, undifferentiated shibboleth? Interestingly, this word is used in the Old Testament by the Gileadites, as a test word to find out who were the Ephramites amongst them, as the latter could not pronounce the sound 'sh'.

No such test is necessary for perceiving the offspring from the former colonies of India and the Middle East. They - or rather, we, look different, generally being darker. We tend to have different styles of cuisine, often wear different clothes and are usually brought up to believe in different religions from the Church of England. Following the riots that engulfed many of Britain's major inner cities, in the summer of 1981, I imagine some grey 'Yes Minister' type, sitting at a desk and saying: 'Well! Let's celebrate these differences to show we are not racist-.'

And so, from the early 1980's onwards, the multicultural paradigm arose and along with it, the hosts of policy makers and their Politically Correct communiques up and down the country. The more victimisation you could point to, the more resources you could lay claim to. So very quickly, the voluntary sector became replete with individuals from various 'ethnic minorities' competing with one another, to see who could build the bigger community centre, who could develop the bigger project, and who could cozy up to and form, the more in-depth connections with council members and other potential sources of funding and influence. Not surprisingly, this vying for resources has done little in the way of fostering a sense of community within British society as a whole. Rather, the opposite seems to have become the legacy as perhaps demonstrated by the fact that the Local Authority funded Humera Community Centre in Beeston, Leeds, was frequented almost exclusively by South Asian Muslims, some of whom became involved in the atrocious July 7th killing of civilians in London. Where do we seek the causes for their lack of loyalty and love for the British society they were born into?

So let us look more closely at Muslim youth, seeking a path of clarity and integrity between the contradictions of home life and those of the secular white world which their parents and the older generation running the 'community' centre did not need to engage with on an emotional or spiritual level, but they must. We have Muslim youth born in this country, who stand out a mile when taken to their families' country of origin. Often, they can experience a sense of dislocation and foreignness there. When these youngsters return to their country of birth, Britain, what are their day-to-day experiences? I would say these are ones where they are often, also, given a sense of their foreignness, their 'differentness'. Instead of empathy and acceptance, they are daily, in all manner of ways, faced with rejection at a deep psychic level. This is situation is damaging and creates a precarious self-identity. Surely then, the process of working out who are going to be their 'Significant Others', and the structure and shape of their 'Generalised Other' is thus set into a very different dynamic than those youth who do have some combination of race, culture, class or religion as a point of connection to the wider British society.

The magnificent human response to degradation, ridicule, marginalisation, non-acceptance the world over, is defiance and the treasuring of the difference. For example, homosexuals began using the word 'queer' which their tormentors used as a term of abuse, and similarly, The Friends Society began using the term 'Quakers' which their persecutors used to jeer them with the wounded vortex of human consciousness. Experiencing rejection, it rejects. Being given contempt, it gives contempt back. Experiencing the violence of being cast in the role of the feared foreigner, the Other, it mirrors back the same rejection of the majority culture's non acceptance of their humanity.

How could the attempt to go beyond the colour blind policy of the 70's, have borne such fruit? It's time to take a closer look at what I'm calling the Multicultural Merry-Go-Round.

2. The Multi-Cultural Merry-Go-Round

Merry-Go-Rounds as we all know, are part of the fun of the fair. - a little transient distraction from the real business of life. This is how Multicultural policies have translated into the curricula, activities and ethos of schools, youth clubs, media and governmental bodies. In schools, for example, the U.K being Multicultural has meant, remembering the festivals of various 'ethnic minorities' and if possible, getting the mums to make food typical of their culture e.g. samosas and other spicy titbits. The more adventurous might include a fashion show too, which everyone finds good fun, especially if the white teachers don some ethnic clothes.

In 2003, I worked at a primary school for a term in a Yorkshire town where perhaps 90% of the pupils were of Muslim, South Asian heritage. To my surprise, I found almost all the bilingual teaching assistants were also of this background, whilst just about all the fully qualified teachers were white females. There was a degree of informality, and friendliness between the two groups ... you could see the effort white staff were making to show interest and foster government-promoted abstract concepts such as 'Inclusivity' and 'Community Cohesion'. But the white staff all lived well outside the catchment area of the school, which was however, where most of the bilingual staff lived. So basically when the bell rang for the end of the school day and everyone packed up to go to their respective homes - the fairground was over for another day! Despite all the apparent goodwill, I found a large degree of artificiality and impersonality characterising the interactions of the white teachers with the Asian pupils and the Asian bilingual assistants. The white staff worked with a heightened sense of the 'differentness' of the Asian children, and this served to accentuate whatever differences there were, into a kind of impermeable 'Otherness'. Interestingly, both camps found it difficult both to place me, and to know how to position themselves around me: I am a 'visible minority' in terms of skin colour; I could speak Punjabi to the children who entered the nursery, knowing no English. However, as both sets of staff quickly sought to ascertain, I had not followed the cultural model of arranged marriage and I rarely wear Asian style clothing. In addition, while I had been employed as a classroom assistant, it was known that I had a teaching qualification equivalent to the (white) teaching staffs', as well as a research degree equivalent to the headteacher's. Both sets of staff were visibly perplexed as they found it was not so straightforward to pigeon-hole or 'place' me. My understanding from this and similar situations, is that just as the more familiar forms of racism deny the individual 'personhood' of each of us in favour of lazy generalisations-so also, has the policy of Multiculturalism.

Accordingly, the Multicultural ethos which was supposed to challenge racism by valuing all cultures equally has in actual fact, instituted a form of racism in that it defines and separates groups of people in terms of skin colour and/or family, cultural and religious heritage. This, more than anything else, renders Wolfgang Bruno's depiction of Multiculturalism as validating tribalism, ring true. He says, 'In multiculturalism, the individual is reduced to a member of a "tribe" be that of the black tribe, vs. the white tribe, the Catholic tribe vs. the Protestant tribe, or the Muslim tribe vs. all the other tribes.' (http://wolfgangbruno.blogspot.com/2005/10multiculturalism-tribalism-recycled.)

Multicultural policies comprise what I call 'Foolishness in the Foreground'. Mary Daly, the world-renowned theologian and philosopher, defines foreground as the male centred, mono-dimensional arena where fabrication, objectification and alienation take place, it is the zone of flat feelings, perceptions and behaviours. It is relating characterised by artificiality, lack of depth and a lack of connectedness with living being.

Contrast this with what Carl Rogers characterised as the ideal interpersonal relationship to facilitate learning. I am applying his concepts to the development of self that children undergo, through interactions with Significant Others. Prizing, acceptance, trust, of the other. Empathic understanding, so the Other is not evaluated or judged, but shown the simply sincerity of the desire to understand. Most crucial perhaps is the concept Rogers termed, 'Realness'. Being who you really are, and coming into a direct, personal encounter with the Other is the characteristic that I think is crucial in creating a feeling of belonging, in contrast with being treated as 'different' , as 'alien'.

The terms used by Carl Rogers are echoed in interesting ways by some of the principles that are said to underpin the best quality Youth Work. Of those summarised by Smith (1999-2002) from his readings into Youth Work theory, I wish to refer to three. These are:

Committing to Association - which describes the educative power of playing one's part in a group or association

Being friendly and informal, and acting with integrity. This encompasses the principle that not only should the Youth workers be approachable and friendly, but that they should also have faith in people while striving themselves, to live good lives.

Being concerned with the education /welfare of young people. Smith lists how the educative orientation has been expressed through training courses, classes, discussions, libraries and opportunities in the widest sense to expand and deepen the experience of youth beyond the parameters of their immediate family and social environment.

Extending the Cultural Framework: Bringing Mosques and Madrassas into Visibility, Dialogue and Accountability

(Smiths' diagrammatic representation (1999-2002) of spheres of activity for Youth Work has been extended in the above diagram).

I wish to suggest that none of these elements can be applied to Youth Work with Muslims if youngsters' status as Muslims is an unchallengeable 'given'. In fact the lack of engagement with Muslim youth is exemplified in the diagram presented by Smith in his Conclusion. The diagram depicts youth work moving out via personal advisors in the social work context, and youth service workers linked to schooling. I suggest that the parameters of Youth Work need to be extended to include the youth in Mosques and Madrassas. (Please see above.) These establishments (apparently involving some 100,000 children in Britain) urgently need their work to be brought into visibility and accountability. Even some Muslim leaders themselves are beginning to realise this and calls for greater accountability are starting to be made. (The Daily Telegraph, March 23, 2006, p18) In this article, G. Siddiqui, Head of the Muslim Parliament, has apparently suddenly realised, to his dismay, that the 700 or so madrassas in Britain are operating 'outside the law' and there could be widespread abuse being reported in the future, in similar fashion to the situation of the Catholic Church in recent years.

That such a realisation has yet to be made by the liberal-left inspired multiculturalists, shows how, in their effort to be seen to be valuing other cultures they are fundamentally lazy and, lacking personal/moral commitment, they are ultimately, cowardly, not daring to speak out for fear of being seen to be racist. Ironically then, Multicultural policies have in practice, ended up abandoning Muslim youth to whatever self-serving ideology any powerful clique in any sector of society, wants to espouse.

Only serving to bolster the status quo, it is not surprising that those jumping onto the merry-go-round of Multicultural Boards and paper policy generating committees, are usually males who do little more than represent their own interests as self- appointed community leaders. Certainly, they have patently failed to understand, never mind address, the burning issues and vital questions for Muslim heritage youth seeking meaning and self-respect.

The frequently self- serving nature of these self-appointed community leaders, combined with their unwillingness to engage in a meaningful way other than the celebrating of superficial differences, leaves Muslim youth isolated and open to manipulation by charismatic individuals.

While their parents and the older generation of settlers in this country often had no formal grounding in Islam, they were sustained by a sense of genuine community and interdependent forms of relationships. These economic and family-based ties have eroded in the past twenty or so years so that the present generation of youth do not have that psychological comfort which was the source of a sense of belonging and identity, rooted in a living community of relations for their parents. The younger generation lack that deep seated sense of identity their parents took totally for granted. At the same time, like the older generation of 'immigrants' they continue to be readily identified as outsiders. ( I have always wondered why White people who leave their homeland for another, are usually referred to as settlers, while every other category of person who does the same, is invariably called 'immigrant'. Could it be these terms have less to do with the movement of people, and more to do with their degree of power in the social and political fabric of society?)

Having been to Pakistan only once in my life, and having little engagement with Asian Muslim culture other than via my immediate family, I was told by my neighbour that my teaching English, was like 'taking coals to Newcastle'. What is the effect of hearing such comments year in, year out? In such subtle ways, visible minorities are denied full acceptance in British society at a deep level, and this is also evidenced by how frequently one is asked 'Where do you come from?' as if you've just stepped off a boat from Africa-Asia-someplace else, not here! To what extent does this create a sense of dislocation, of alienation?

The policy of Multiculturalism with its denial of the reality of objective truth claims in favour of cultural relativism has resulted in the swampy marsh of moral relativity. It is this abdication of critical joined-up thinking by the white liberals who have spawned Multiculturalism, which has enabled the 'community leaders' wishing to control youth, to do so with impunity, under the guise of promoting-protecting culture-religion from the depredations of western imperialism. But what would have happened to Spinoza if he had been told by multicultural zealots in the Amsterdam of the 17th century, to go back to 'his' community, the one that cursed and then excommunicated him for his beliefs? Yet girls of Muslim heritage are told by counsellors, doctors, youth and social workers to go back to families who deny them any right to selfhood separate from the definitions of a medieval patriarchal world view, in which dissent can and is, punished with death..

The Multicultural ethos, thus comprised, has lead to a profound intellectual laziness because there is no real effort made to understand the why and wherefore of difference. Or that all difference should not be promiscuously valued simply because it arises from another culture. Rather, there must be an active seeking to understand the underlying commonality of human nature that transcends the particularity of any one culture. So for instance, the rather basic common-sense notion that any practice that hurts or maims the body or psyche, should be challenged is a principle that has failed to take hold due to the mania of political correctness which Multiculturalism I believe, is directly responsible for. Accordingly, there has been little coherent, socially validated criticism or even public debate on the atrocity of female genital mutilation. It too, continues to remain a taboo topic.

Similarly, when a young Asian Muslim woman challenged the Muslim males at a political rally about why no one had protested about the beheading, in Birmingham, of a 16 year old girl by her Muslim father, because she had converted to Islam, yet many had joined the demonstration to protest about the BNP leaving a pig's head outside a mosque door, she was physically attacked by the Muslim males and then verbally castigated for being 'divisive' by the liberal whites. But the right to freedom of religion, must not be restricted to defending the right of Muslim males to practice their religion free of intimidation and mockery, and then the rest of society looks the other way, when the same male Muslims deny that same right to their mothers, daughters and sisters. Rather, male Muslims and the younger generation following their example, need to be challenged, as Spinoza challenged the illogical and dehumanising edicts of his Jewish compatriots.

The young woman in the example above, was placing another reality beside the one posited by Multiculturalism which blindly defines ethnic communities as homogenous entities. In fact, no human society is. There is a battle going on, as there always has been between those who believe 'Might makes Right' and those who are willing to accept the Rule of Law. Which is the truer religion, the authoritarian one, that threatens death and damnation unless one follows unquestioningly a particular way (usually as defined by those seeking power over others) or the version that honours the individual conscience?

Where are the youth workers, teachers, and academic researchers in this battle? Sadly, they have not even been on the sidelines, as witnesses and commentators. By and large, they have lacked the will to know and the courage to find out.

The young woman in the example just cited, was placing another reality beside the one posited by the Multicultural wallahs who position the Muslim (male) as the poor victim of racism. She was exposing a more complex dynamic: that in another context, we can have the Muslim male as oppressor. But this was a taboo topic for the PC crowd of socialists and Anti Nazi League organisers. Even though, to stop her speaking from the platform, she was spat at, shouted at, and then physically attacked by one of the 30 or so Muslim males near the stage, for raising this question on behalf of the beheaded 16 year old, still, her left-liberal comrades defended the abusive and violent Muslim men. According to them, to talk of the abuse of power by Muslim men was divisive as the enemy, they had decided, was the British National Party (BNP).

Well, it is now of the utmost importance that we acknowledge that each community has its version of the BNP. Each 'community' has its fascists, its warmongers, those who see others of a different colour or creed as less human than themselves-. And each community has its humanists, its peacemakers, those who live by the creed of the Golden Rule. What is the role of educationalists and youth workers? To sit on the proverbial fence?

In response to bringing into the open, this example of Muslim males' double standards of morality, I was chided by some of those who attended the seminar I gave in Dec 05, which this paper arose from. I was remonstrated by several attendees of the seminar I gave, and told that domestic violence is an issue in every community and so, why pick on Muslims? The answer to that question is that only Islam's holy book and only Islam's founder Muhammad, urge the killing of those who wish to leave the religion of their birth.

"Verily, those who disbelieved after their Belief and then went on increasing in their disbelief - never will their repentance be accepted." (3:90-91) Islamic law states that according to Allah's apostle Mohammed, there are only three accepted reasons to shed the blood of a Muslim: One who has shed the blood of another Muslim without cause, one who has committed adultery, and a Muslim who becomes an apostate. (Abandons Islam) Anyone who decides no longer to abide by the tyrannical laws of Islam is put in the same category as a murderer and an adulterer.

http://www.faithfreedom.org/opedBarbarastock60321.htm

Yet, in line with the credo of Multiculturalism, each category of minority in British society should be free to practice its religion and culture. How does this accord with the Islamic ruling? Can a society function if it is to have a myriad of laws pertaining to sets of citizens, defined according to their racial/religious/cultural origin? If so, how does that differ from the law in Apartheid South Africa? Certainly, this is the deplorable situation in Saudi Arabia. Such societies deny the common humanity of us all and the rule of law itself is therefore undermined.

Not only have Multicultural policies been covering up a profound intellectual laziness, they have also concealed a deep cowardliness for they have served to keep intact the totems and taboos of each faction of ethnic minority, as well as those of the majority society. This helps no one to heal.

In Western secular society, there is a deeply held sensibility against discussing people's personal and political belief structures. The belief that one's religious feelings and commitments are a personal, very private matter between one's conscience and one's God, makes it extremely hard for people in positions of influence such as teachers and youth workers, to articulate criticism and make considered analysis of others' religious convictions. But this is precisely what is urgently required now. While the effect of the colour blind policy of the early 70's, the denial of difference was alienating in its own way, the policy of multiculturalism, of BLINDLY and promiscuously celebrating difference is equally, if not more, damaging. I suggest that Muslim youth need to be engaged with, not bowed down to.

I wish to suggest it is an essential part of the role of educationalists and youth workers to encourage youth - whatever their heritage, to ask the 'unaskable' questions. For it is only through exposing taboos and examining totems that we will forge a path that affirms our common humanity. This is what Multiculturalism has patently failed to do. In its place we must create a process of wise, active engagement with Muslim youth, neither permitting them to become the sacrificial lambs of Islamic orthodoxy, nor the Other in our midst whom we merely pacify or patronise. Rather, we must treat them as young people, struggling to make sense of a divided world which they - and therefore we all, have inherited.

3. Affirming Our Common Humanity

The Palestinian Christian scholar, Bandali Jawzi suggested that every generation must interpret inherited knowledge in the light of changed circumstances, paying particular attention to the 'vilified other'. (Sonn, 1996) Every nation has its history written by the conquerors. Jawzi sought to unearth huge movements for gender equality and social justice that were virtually obliterated by the tiny elite of rulers in Muslim history. Such movements for social justice and for women's equality (e.g. the Babakis, the Mutazilis, and the Isma'ilis) arose frequently in the early and middle years of Islamic rule and were ruthlessly suppressed. Connections need to be made between the utterly extravagant lifestyles and general immorality of those Muslim rulers and the oppressive laws they imposed by the sword- and the similarly oppressive nature of the powerful Muslim elites of today, manipulating youth to become suicide bombers. There were fierce power struggles immediately after Muhammad's death, and for centuries to come. The stagnation and fossilisation of certain edicts, the consequence of authoritarian elements gaining and maintaining control are what we now see as normal Muslim practices. But these norms in the making were fiercely contested, both during the time Muhammad was claiming Prophethood and in the centuries after.

All this calls for a passionate engagement with Muslim youth, not as the Other in our midst whom we must pacify or patronise but whom we engage with, at the level of our common humanity and common heritage, as one people of one planet, struggling to overcome our shared history of revolving sets of conquerors and conquered.

Which are the areas where awareness of contradictions can be raised? Below, I list some of the pertinent issues confronting Muslim youth and provide a very brief outline of the logical inconsistencies and moral blind spots which require addressing within the supportive, friendly environment that Youth Workers aspire to create. These are questions that are certainly not encouraged by mullahs in madrassas, and very rarely in the home of the average South Asian Muslim family where typically, the Koran is read in Arabic without any understanding of that language - the lexis having been learnt in conjunction with the phonetic system of Arabic, while the semantics - the meaning structures and significance - are completely omitted.

Conscious-Raising of Muslim Youth

Girls getting murdered by fathers and brothers for not complying with the double standard of morality whereby they (Muslims males) have sexual relations outside Islam and outside marriage, and family/community members look the other way. Why must 'honour' rest on females while every injurious/immorality by men is excused/not seen as their responsibility?

We never hear of Muslim males getting disturbed and wanting to wage 'jihad' over forced marriages and the murder of girls but Muslim males seem to get in a passion about such things as Burger King's design of a twirling ice-cream, which could inadvertently look like part of the letter for the Arabic word, Allah, if shifted around and viewed at a specific angle. In similar vein, a Muslim employee complained about the image of a pig on a mug/box of tissues, so at Dudley Council to avoid offending Muslim sensibilities, employees have been banned from having items with such images on such things as having a box of tissues featuring Winnie the Pooh and Piglet.

Muslims rage about occupation of Palestine/Iraq etc, but give no acknowledgement of the fact that the policy of invasion and imperialism instigated by Mohammad is then, also, equally wrong. The thinking seems to be that Muslim land-grabbing, murder, enslavement and rape in the name of spreading Islam, is good, other nations /regions doing the same is bad. However even if this moral inconsistency is to be accepted, the denial of a homeland to the Kurds (most of whom are Muslim) by consecutive Iraqi, Iranian, Syrian and Turkish governments since the 1920's reveals the Muslim cries of victimisation as mere opportunism.

So is it the case that Western nations' slave trade and colonisation is bad, but when Arabs enslave and abuse human rights, they are good? Those peoples whose lands were invaded by Muslims were given a stark choice: convert to Islam or pay much higher taxes. Imagine the uproar if Muslims were given the choice to convert, be killed or be allowed to live only to subsidise an extravagant lifestyle for Christians/ secularists.

Muslims benefit from the learning of women in Britain, as they are taught by women, healed by women, represented in courts by women, so when are they going to acknowledge that the Koran must be a man-made text, and a product of its times for it encodes inferiority and has demeaning laws such as, that two women's testimony is equivalent to one man's. Adherence to the Koran teachings has resulted in unequal inheritance, marriage, divorce and other laws all based on women's' supposedly lesser responsibilities/lesser logic. Given women's achievements when there is a more level playing field, as in the West , how can Muslims continue to justify these double standards of morality which were instituted by Mohammad in the 7th Century ? His followers have enthusiastically endorsed that fraudulence that passes for morality, ever since, and enshrined into law such perversity that if a woman cannot produce four male witnesses to her rape, she is to be charged with the crime of adultery or zina. In essence, the core of the Muslim teachings is that women are responsible for such men's depraved conduct. Yet whilst bearing the burden of men's wrongdoing, women are simultaneously treated as minors, for they are supposed to be perpetually under the guardianship of some male - their father, uncle, husband, or son - however immoral he may be.

The central need of Muslim heritage youth, like youth emerging out of any totalitarian ideology or cult, is to apply rationality to the creed that demands total submission and obedience as the price for familial/social acceptance and nurturance. Muslim youth however, are in an uniquely difficult position in that they must address both the contradictions and hypocrisies of the secularist/humanist/feminist sensibility (that retains its racism - (often in the form of a genteel and subtle air of superiority) and the Islamic Orthodoxy which overlays a religious veneer to both its misogynistic values and its political ambitions, using the rhetoric of 'brotherhood' in the shape of the 'ummah' the worldwide society of Muslim believers.

That there is not a total hegemony in Muslim communities based in Britain, is being demonstrated by those Muslim females who attempt to experience a level of personal freedom not permitted to females under Islamic norms. I suggest that it is Muslim females who are at the forefront of challenging the older generation who unthinkingly venerate as divinely sanctioned, the exploitative and oppressive actions of Muhammad. Such individuals need both moral support and practical guidance to enable them to survive the wrath of their elders and the colluding brothers/uncles/husband.

Male Muslim youth also need moral support in daring to recognise and then start to address, the cruel irrationality and double standards of morality - some of which are indicated above, that were enshrined into the semblance of a religion., some 1,400 years ago. Islam, an ideology, spread for centuries by the power of the sword, carries a special appeal to the youthful male psyche. Indeed, I would suggest that the control of women and girls and their subjection to male authority within the family, is the axis around which Muslim identity in Europe, revolves. Hence, the increasing rates of (dis)honourable killings of girls from Muslim families, who choose to exercise their own minds in decisions ranging from dress style, marriage/sexuality/friendship choices and religious commitment. Male Muslim youth who scorn the illicit power such abuse gives them, need to be affirmed in their commitment for they too, come under intense pressure to conform.

Looking at the condition of human rights throughout the Muslim world, it is a matter for celebration that in the West, if your child converts to another religion, marries someone whom you don't approve of, or dresses in a way that you find unacceptable, you can't lock her up at home, or batter or kill her, without facing the relevant criminal charges. Would it be going too much against the Multicultural ethic to provide overt moral and practical support to Muslim youth, before situations of conflict culminate in physical attacks and death of the young person? I have known lecturers and counsellors in Further Education, who hesitate to 'get involved' in situations of (Muslim) parental abuse, for fear of being accused of 'racism'. Worse still, young people facing the ugly pressure of forced marriage, are liable to be reminded that respecting/obeying parents is part of their 'culture'. Meanwhile in Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia or any of the countries where some combination of Sharia law and Islamic custom prevail, there is little socially sanctioned recourse against the parent or husband who kills their teenage offspring/wife due to her refusal to comply with the fascistic dictates of Islamic mores and tradition.

In Britain, where are the governmental and human rights/youth organisations that can protect the young victims of such parents settled here? Is such conduct destined to become acceptable in secular democracies under the auspices of the Multicultural hegemony? Certainly, local authorities and schools have turned a blind eye to virtually all infringements of the human rights of young people of dual heritage, other than the most extreme, such as cases of murder. Multicultural policies have been central in permitting what amounts to a dual standard of citizenship.

The lack of a deep and genuine engagement by professionals charged with some sort of duty of care for youth with the realities being experienced specifically by Muslim youth in Britain, has lead to a profound inability to morally engage with and guide them.

It is time there was recognition in the legal, social and educational strata of Britain, that what constitutes the law in the Islamic world, amounts to serious prosecutable offences in the majority of the world's juridical systems. For example, in Britain, we are increasingly seeing Muslim men openly living in polygamous relationships. Is this not damaging to the children of such marriages? Where can the children of the first and second marriage go to, to cope with the emotional, psychological and financial consequences of this action on the part of the father?

What of the marriages being contracted during school holidays against the wishes of school-age teens, who are taken from Britain to their parents' country of origin? I personally know of a girl of Bangladeshi heritage who was taken at the age of thirteen back to Bangladesh and forced to sit through a marriage ceremony and then had to suffer forced sexual relations with the much older 'husband'. When she returned to England, and to school, as a 'married' thirteen year old, who could she have turned to for some degree of understanding and support?

There can be little relevant Youth Work interventions for Muslim youngsters until it is acknowledged that the policy of Multiculturalism has shielded Sharia law and its cultural derivatives, from rational examination in the light of the democratic rights that are enshrined in the constitutions, customs and jurisprudence of western democracies. Here I must add that I am certainly not suggesting that rationality as a human faculty has flourished only in the West. Rather, I am suggesting that the human faculty of reason has been feared and more successfully suppressed in the Muslim lands over the centuries, than say, the Catholic orthodoxy managed to achieve. Pluralist viewpoints began to emerge in the West because Christianity happened to permit the separation of state powers and religious structures. In contrast, Islam, from it very inception, was a political force and as such, broached not the slightest challenge to its hegemony. The narcissistic personality structure of the founder of Islam also led to the institutionalised glorification of everything Arabic. Consequently, one's piety as a believer, came to be indicated by the degree of adherance to or adoption of, the Arabic language, dress code etc. Whereas the glorification of the Aryan 'race' by the Nazis was soon seen through, Arabic people's deplorable denial of the humanity of those outside their ethnicity, as laid down in their holy book, the Koran has not received the same condemnation. Their narcissistic megalomania - so similar to Nazism, has been harder to identify as such, due to the Arabic nations' dressing up of the same values in religious garb.

The starting point for addressing manifestations of Islamic orthodoxy's brand of fascism must be the understanding that Sharia law constitutes in its essence, a violation of human rights and as such, all its precepts - from the rulings on polygamy, to its applications regarding apostates, need to be defined as illegal. Any attempt to implement Sharia law whether by an individual or an organisation, should be deemed a criminal act.

Educationalists' and Youth workers' most constructive approach would be to attempt to develop dialogue with Muslim youth whose lives are living contradictions between secular sensibilities, based on the valuing of the individual, and the violations that occur when Islamic religious and cultural precepts are implemented by the older generation. Writing in the context of Brazilian people becoming free of class and colonial oppression Paulo Freire suggested, 'The key to-. the recuperation of hidden or mystified reality, is problematization. Problimatization means both asking questions and calling into question and is therefore a challenging attitude- (and) at one and the same time, the beginning of an authentic act of knowing'. (Freire, 1972:9). Both the ethos of Multiculturalism and the ideology of Islam are in need of such authentic acts of knowing. Such 'acts of knowing', need to address issues of colonisation by the European nations while, at the same time, asking Muslim youth to recognise similar abuse of power in their history - such as forms of slavery carried out under Islamic rule in the past and in the present day (for example, in Sudan).

It is only by means of such honest reflection and dialogue, that can we engage with Muslim youth as with any other youth - at the level of our common humanity and common heritage as one people of one planet , struggling to overcome our shared history of manipulation and exploitation by a tiny minority who claim God-given rights over us.

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