Two weeks ago the Times of London printed a special section that is a textbook example of how not to cover a minority concern, in this case the beliefs of Muslim clerics in Britain.
The key issue is that plans are in the works to construct the largest mosque in Europe near the East London site of the 2012 Olympics. According to the Economist, the Abbeymills mosque would have space for 12,000 worshippers, far surpassing the largest Anglican structure in Britain, St. Paul’s cathedral in central London, which has room for a paltry 2,500 faithful. The largest religious structure in Britain already is a mosque, the Baitul Fatah mosque in Surrey, which has space for 10,000 worshippers. However, Baitul Fatah is not as conspicuous presence as Abbeymills, with its sweeping modernist design and a completion date of just before the Olympics, would be.
Of course there is significant scope for debate — as the 281,685 people who signed a petition opposing the mosque’s construction would attest — but the Times decided not to cover the debate fairly but rather to offer innuendo. The paper ran this headline: “Exclusive: Islamist sect taking over UK mosques” and explains “An investigation by The Times has found that almost half of Britain’s mosques are controlled by a hardline Islamic sect.” (For the record, I hate this use of the word “Islamist” because it makes the headline sound like a tautology, like “Catholics worship in Catholic Churches.” The problem is that just twenty years ago, Islamist could only mean “a scholar of Islam” and today the word has lost this neutral sense and almost exclusively means “scary, hyperconservative Muslim.” It’s practically a synonym for “bad guy” and clearly that’s problematic from the perspective of good journalism.)
ifWho are these dreaded “Islamists” destroying Britain from within? Well, they’re Deobandis, which probably means little to non-Muslim Britons. The Deobandi movement is an Islamic revivalist movement founded in the northern Indian town of Deoband in the mid-nineteenth century in reaction to the failure of Indian society to mount an effective opposition to British colonialism. (This failure was dramatically manifest in the 1857 uprising, which the colonial authorities brutally crushed.) The Deoband movement remains very influential in South Asian Islam and some 80% of Muslim clerics trained in Britain follow curricula derived from the movement.
As someone who studies South Asia and knows something about Islamic revival, I don’t think there is cause for concern over the fact that many Muslim scholars in Britain have Deobandi affiliations. Among the diverse group, there are liberals and conservatives, radicals and centrists. Instead of recognizing this, the Times latches on to Deobandi influence as a convenient explanation for radicalization of British Muslims.
The worst offender is Andrew Norfolk, whose article “A movement fostered by the fear of ‘imperial’ rule” describes the rise of the Deobandi movement and shifts from a restrained, historical tone to unsubstantiated accusations against the British Muslim community. By playing up the opposition to colonialism, the lede implies that if the Deobandis were hostile to British colonial rule once, then they should also be hostile to modern “British values.” Does he really believe that opposing colonialism was about opposing “British values”? I quote the last three grafs here:
Because they are free to practice and preach their religion in Britain, Deobandis are told that they should obey the laws of the land. Yet when it comes to how they should view their adopted country, the message is one of almost unremitting hostility.
Parents who allow their children to attend a non Muslim school, teenagers who wears Western clothes, clean-shaven men, women who do not wear the hijab – all such practices are condemned as a detestable imitation of the ways of the kuffar (unbelievers).
Many Deobandi clerics view any attempt to engage with the deviant, nonMuslim majority as a threat to the pure faith. Steps towards integration are perceived as a betrayal; Muslims are told to steer clear of nonMuslim neighbours.
Norfolk’s ideological bent is painfully obvious: British freedom is invoked in contrast to “unremitting hostility” (the trope of the ungrateful immigrant, which is shockingly common in accounts of British South Asians). A passage about how Muslims have no interest in integrating into society because they do not want to associate with unbelievers — and here he uses an Islamic term for maximum scare effect. Lastly, a sweeping generalization about what Deobandi clerics believe, and note that this is not what the clerics say but what they believe. Norfolk is either clairvoyant or has proved himself not a very good journalist.
The other articles one can read in this section have pornographic headlines, like “Exclusive: sinister sect recruits in Pakistan” and “Muslim group behind ‘mega-mosque’ seeks to convert all Britain.” The latter article invokes Tablighi Jamaat, a reform movement associated with the Deobandi school, as a sinister cult, just as the Freemasons or the Jews were once seen as shadowy figures destroying society from within. The sensationalistic quote about conversion makes little sense because the Tablighi Jamaat has always billed itself as a reform movement for Muslims and has claimed to have no interest in proselytizing non-Muslims. Although it’s not politically correct to say so many Christian denominations still believe it is their duty to convert as many people to their sect as possible; it’s hypocritical to suggest that only shadowy Muslims allegedly trying to overthrow Western society are thinking about conversion.
The Times’s coverage reads like an unsourced case study of every petty dread that exists in the White British population. The unavoidable conclusion is that the paper either exploited fear to sell copies or did not have the journalistic rigor to rise above fear, and no one’s interests are served.
