EVENT: Aspire2Inspire Conference in Melbourne ...

Another excellent initiative by the ICV and partners. I'd go except that I'm too old! Click on the poster below for more info ...

REFLECTION: Lessons from an older cousin ...

There were Jews on the First Fleet to Australia in 1788. According to Bilal Cleland, author of a definitive history of Muslims in Australia, there were Muslims on the Second and subsequent Fleets. In terms of European settlement on this continent, that makes Jews our elder cousins.

Our virtually-twin faiths ensure we have even more in common. For a long time now, I've been wondering why leaders and concerned citizens from Muslim communities don't spend more time learning from their Jewish cousins.

Which makes it pleasing that the Australian Intercultural Society and the Anti-Defamation Commission in Melbourne jointly organised a National Cohesion Summit in February this year. The topic of the summit was ‘The Australian Jewish Experience and Challenges Faced by Muslims’. You can read more about the event here.

Among the keynote speakers was Hon Justice Howard Nathan, a Justice of the Supreme Court of Victoria. Justice Nathan spoke of the early achievements of Jewish settlers in literacy and numeracy. His advice to us is certainly worth its weight in gold ...

Not only were they literate, but they were also numerate, which put them ahead of others and stood the Jews in good stead ever since. Education, education, and yet more education was the key.

Also important was the contribution of Dr Helen Light, Director of the Australian Jewish Museum. Yes, museums do make an enormous difference in helping to construct an historical identity and in building bridges with the broader community. Consider these wide remarks ...

While museums are secular organisations, they are important venues to discuss cultural identity and talk about religion ... They teach the value of diversity, share the importance of respect between different people and provide a model of a community that has been able to make a real contribution to society.

I am not aware of a single Muslim community in the West which has established a museum. We so often complain about others constructing a negative identity about us. Yet the fact is that we are often too lazy or too pre-occupied with short-term issues to consider projects (such as a museum) which will have lasting effect.

Words © Irfan Yusuf 2008


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HUMOUR: The Cult of the Big Nosed Demon is back ...

Nasty Jewish conspirator spreading racial impurity through oversized nose ...


Nasty Islamic conspirators with Israeli names spreading more racial impurity through their oversized noses ...
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The Nazis were a rather strange bunch. Completely obsessed with certain harmless minorities (Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled etc), they blamed the ills of the world on any individual they deemed linked to these groups.

Today's Nazis have replaced Jews with Muslims. Yet their racist and sectarian bigotry shares certain common features with the German Nazism of the mid-20th century.

The Nazis assumed that Jews had bigger noses than the rest of humanity. Today's Nazis from the far-Right IslamistMonitor.org have attributed big noses to Muslims, be they of the more observant variety (such as Cat Stevens) or of the more nominal variety (such as myself).

As if to make matters worse, the website also asks whether the Arabic word "Yusuf" means liar. For the benefit of the in-breds who pollute cyberspace with their imbecilic site, allow me to clarify the matter.

"Yusuf" is in fact a form of HEBREW spelling of the name of the Bliblical and Koranic prophet Joseph. Arabs tend to spell the name as "Yousef" or "Youssef". Israelis and Jews who use the Hebrew pronunciation tend to spell it as "Yosef" or "Yusuf".

In fact, on quite a few occasions have I been approached by Jews and asked if I was an Israeli. Why? Because of the way my surname is spelt.

Aah well, I guess in the eyes of some chronic racists, that makes me the type of chappy who tends to have a big nose.

(Thanks to BC of Melbourne for the tip-off.)

Words © Irfan Yusuf 2008

COMMENT: Tabligh Jamaat - media scrutiny and genuine research

Tablighi Jamaat ijtima (gathering) in Pakistan.


In a lengthy story on the unfortunate situation facing the imam at Sefton Mosque, Natalie O'Brien (senior editor for The Oz) cites the work of Dr Jan Ali, who completed his PhD on the topic of "Islamic revivalism: a study of the Tablighi Jamaat (let's call them "TJ" for short) in Sydney" at the University of New South Wales in 2006.

You can download and read the entire 325-page thesis here. Dr Ali has also authored a paper for the April 2003 edition of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs which can be found here. I'll certainly be going through the thesis as it is of direct interest to my own research toward the "Iremonger" book.

TJ played an important role in my own religious development. It disturbs me that this movement is being described as a recruiting ground for terrorism. I can imagine that the TJ's open doors policy of allowing just about any Muslim to join them can make them an effective cover for any aspiring terrorist. But to describe them as a "conduit" is certainly over-the-top.

English researcher Yahya Birt has reviewed a collection of essays on the TJ which can be found here.

The TJ are an outgrowth of the Deoband movement of Muslim religious education in India. Deoband is the name of a village in the Saharanpur district of the Utter Pradesh (UP) state in northern India. South Asian Sunni Islam is unique in that it is the subject of a divide between Deobandi and Barelwi schools. The rivalry between these two competing schools of thought is often at the heart of disputes between South Asian Muslims and the management of religious institutions in South Asian diaspora communities.

One American scholar who has spent much time with the TJ leadership in South Asia is Professor Barbara D Metcalf. Professor Metcalf has written extensively on the TJ and their relationship with the Deoband school. Professor Metcalf is fluent in Urdu and has also completed an excellent partial translation of Behishti Zewar, a book of Islamic sacred law written especially for women by a Deobandi jurist named Ashraf Ali Thanawi.

Words © Irfan Yusuf 2008

MEDIA: Natalie O’Brien on Rabbi Hilaly?

I’ve written elsewhere about how Natalie O’Brien, a senior reporter for The Australian, has suggested that Sheik Hilaly is somehow linked to Usama bin-Ladin. It seems that, according to O'Brien, if you find yourself on the same side of an argument as bin-Ladin, you are somehow linked to him.

But now, having re-read the same article, it also seems that O’Brien is suggesting that Sheik Hilaly delivers his Friday sermons on Saturdays. Do we apply O'Brien's convoluted logic and presume Hilaly is also linked to the Beth Din?

Read these paragraphs and wonder …

At his sermon at Australia's biggest mosque, in the southwest Sydney suburb of Lakemba, Sheik Hilali said the cartoons, published in a Danish newspaper in 2005 - and republished last month - showed the "hatred and envy" felt by the West against Islam.

He said today's sermon at the mosque would be followed by a march to a nearby park to protest against the cartoons …

At his sermon today, Sheik Hilali is expected to … He will make an appeal to …

In his sermon, Sheik Hilali will also …

He will say … He will express his grief at …

Um, is she talking about two separate sermons? Or is the same sermon being delivered in two instalments? Or is Sheik Hilaly delivering his Friday sermon on a Saturday?

© Irfan Yusuf 2008

BOOKS: Light-hearted memoir dispels Muslim stereotypes with deft

Unimagined: a Muslim boy meets the West
Imran Ahmad
Aurum Press Pty Limited, London
2007
HB: $35

Unimagined is the story of a middle-class English boy who goes to a grammar school, completes university studies, falls in love with various girls and women along the way and ends up pursuing a career in the internal audit department of a major multinational, earning enough money to buy a house and the same Jaguar his hero James Bond drives.

So what on earth does all this have to do with Islam? How can we understand the processes of alienation, terrorism, violence, lack of integration and all that other nasty stuff we allegedly need to understand in order to understand Western Muslims? How does this book help us understand them when it provides us with only the picture of one with whom we can readily identify?

This memoir contains no violence (apart from some schoolyard bullying and references to news reports of overseas events), no honour killings and only the feeblest reference to a possible arranged marriage. In fact, what makes this work so abnormal among so many other Muslim memoirs published in Britain, such as Ed Husain's The Islamist and former Guantanamo inmate Moazzam Begg's Enemy Combatant, is that the life it describes is just so normal.

Don't expect to find cultural warriors like Melanie Phillips (author of Londonistan) or Daniel Pipes (journalist and director of the Middle East Forum) referring to this book as an example of British or Western Islam in action (or should that be inaction?). Imran Ahmad has written an amusing and highly accessible book which deals with a range of theological and cross-cultural issues by telling the story of the Muslim he knows best.

One lesson we learn from this book is that for many Muslims, religion can only be understood within a cultural context, often with little relation to that within which a certain 7th-century Arabian Prophet presented his message. In practice, this means many South-Asian Muslim parents have almost identical expectations of their children as South-Asian Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, Catholic or Jewish parents. It is of little consequence to such parents whether you can read the Koran in Arabic or the Guru Granth in Punjabi or even the Torah in Hebrew. So long as you study hard and become a doctor or engineer and marry a good South-Asian girl of your own social class and faith (with emphasis especially put on the former), not much else matters.

Perhaps what makes Imran's experience different from that of an English boy of Hindu or Sikh parents is that his own faith and scriptures share much in common with the Biblical stories he learned in school. I can certainly relate to this as an important factor allowing me to ''fit in'' more easily.

Don't expect to find cultural warriors like Melanie Phillips or Daniel Pipes referring to this book as an example of British or Western Islam in action. For me, the discovery that the Koranic account of Joseph's life was virtually identical to that in the Bible (and that my own surname was merely an Arabic pronunciation of this famous person) was a seminal moment in the development of my own religious identity.

I did find it unusual that Ahmad's parents were happy for their son to attend religion classes limited to the Old Testament only. My own parents insisted I learn what Christians (at least those of the Anglican variety) believed. Perhaps

this lack of exposure to New Testament theology made it harder for Ahmad to face what little intellectual challenge could be posed by the "Rapture" theology of his fellow university students sucked in by American commercial evangelism.

Like so many other South-Asian migrants to Britain, Ahmad receives only the bare minimum religious education in childhood. He lasts only a short time at the Sunday school of his local mosque. Ahmad learns more about religion at school, and ends up knowing more about Old Testament prophets (also mentioned in the Koran) than about contemporaries and successors of the Prophet Muhammad.

In fact, like so many children of Muslim migrants, Ahmad must figure out the answers to a range of theological questions without assistance from parents or imams. Instead, most of his learning is at the University of Sterling in Scotland, where Ahmad has enrolled in a chemistry course in which he takes no interest, but which he believes might make him more employable and respectable in South-Asian circles.

Theological issues feature heavily in the book, with Ahmad constantly toiling with the whole idea of spending an eternity burning in hell because he made the wrong religious choice. Ahmad is also troubled by certain moral choices, and operates on the common South-Asian Muslim presumption that salvation is obtained by doing good deeds and avoiding naughty ones.

Ahmad spends hours in the library reading books about Sufism, and also borrows tapes of religious polemics from fellow students. He is put off by the narrow-mindedness of the chap who delivers sermons at Friday prayers, but is attracted to the intellectualism of study circles organised in a London mosque by Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens).

Ahmad doesn't venture anywhere near political Islam. Perhaps this is because he had already entered the workforce by the time the Afghan jihad and its Islamist theology was being promoted by conservative governments and right-wing think tanks (not to mention mosque imams) across the West.

This book is a rather light read, making it accessible to a wide audience. Ahmad has no difficulty in poking fun at himself, whether describing his childish approach to theology as an infant or his almost equally childish and extremely shy approach to women as an adult. In its focus on everyday issues and its sheer ordinariness, Ahmad's memoir dispatches the myths of Muslim-phobic cultural warriors with almost as much ease as an in-form Nasser Hussein would have dispatched the deliveries of his opponents when he captained England's national cricket side.

Irfan Yusuf is associate editor of AltMuslim.com. His book proposal about young Australian Muslims navigating their way out of political Islam received the 2007 Allen & Unwin Iremonger Award for public affairs writing. This review was first published in the Canberra Times on 22 March 2008.

© Irfan Yusuf 2008

MOROCCO: Liquid gold ...

I was clearing through my old editions of the Australian Financial Review when I came across an article hiding in the Travel section of the December 21-27 edition. The article was reproduced from the New York Times and was given the headline of “A holiday that guarantees you strike liquid gold”.

The liquid gold in question was the oil of a nut called argan. The argan tree which produces the nut can be found in a coastal town of Morocco called Essaouira, once a Portuguese fishing village now populated largely by Berbers.

Essaouira apparently was once a huge hippy hang-out, boasting of the patronage of such greats as Cat Stevens and Jimi Hendrix. Today, the town is more famous for its liquid gold, the paste produced from the argan nut which has become a major source of income for local Berber women.

Morocco may not be the most democratic nation on earth, but its King (Muhammad VI) is regarded as having a more enlightened attitude when it comes to women’s rights. The King has started supporting the formation of coops managed by women which produce argun oil that then makes its way into various skin cremes. Apparently the argan oil and paste have a high concentration of Vitamin E, not to mention phytosterols which are good for treating scar tissue and lacklustre skin.

So how is the oil/paste made? Amy Larocca writes in the AFR/NYT story ...

Approaching Essaouira’s sandy-colored ramparts, passing the olive groves and grazing donkeys, you see signs announcing women-run argan cooperatives: Argan Co-Op, Women’s Argan Collective, Miracle Oil. And so on. If you pull over to a cooperative, the Berber women — and it is only women who make argan oil — will often invite you in to watch them work. In most of the cooperatives, the older village women sit in the courtyard and work as the younger bilingual girls walk you around, giving a tutorial about the process. (Pull over too many times, though, and be prepared to hear all about the process again. And again.)

The nuts, which look like a cross between a walnut and an almond, are picked out of the fruit of the squat, gnarled argan trees that dot the yellow hills above Essaouira. Depending on the season, there might be goats up in the branches, munching on the fruit. The nuts destined for salad oil are roasted on an open flame over a large steel drum, like chestnuts, which brings out their distinctive peppery flavor; those that will be used for skin- and hair-care products are left raw.

The women first crack the shells with sharp stones. They then place the kernels between two Flintstone-size slabs of rock, grinding them into a brown paste, which resembles chunky peanut butter. The paste, kneaded by hand to extract the oil, transforms into a solid hunk and is sent to nearby factories, mainly in Agadir, where more oil is extracted by a press. Some is made into soaps, creams and shampoos, but it is the pure oil that is most sought after.

And how are the coops managed? How do they get funding? What kind of support do their receive from local and overseas investors?

... thanks to the substantial efforts of the Moroccan King Mohammed VI (who has been praised for his efforts to promote women’s rights) and the local government, the oil is being exported worldwide, moving from the mud-and-stone co-ops into spas and Sephoras around the world.

Because the extraction of argan oil is a labor-intensive task perfected by the Berber women native to the area (it takes a few days to produce one liter), the government has established a fund for the cooperatives. Outside groups, like the government of Monaco, have gotten involved as backers. Women from the villages nearby are invited to work half days (so they can still tend to their families) in exchange for fair wages and good working conditions. Eventually, the cooperatives should pay for themselves. Unesco has designated the 10,000-square-mile argan-growing region as a biosphere reserve.

Meanwhile, more Western cosmetic companies are starting to distribute this “liquid gold,” as it is often called. Liz Earle, who runs an organic skin-care line in England, uses argan oil that she buys from two of the cooperatives in Essaouira in her Superskin Concentrate.

Yep, globalised capitalism can benefit the otherwise economically vulnerable. And it seems not all Muslim monarchs are despots.



Words © Irfan Yusuf 2008

SPAIN: Where did all the mosques go?

Some years back, I read a book by an English Muslim author named Ahmed Thomson. The book concerned the history of Islam in Spain during and after its Jewish-Muslim golden age. That was a time when Cordoba housed the largest mosque on the planet. And when people of all denominations flocked to al-Andalus in search of knowledge, wealth, health or just somewhere to live in peace.

Basically, people went to Spain for the same reason so many people settle in Australia or New Zealand or some other stable Western country.

Today, Australia has plenty of Muslims and no shortage of mosques. In fact, in some cities and localities, we have too many mosques. When I was growing up, we had to travel 30 minutes to get to our nearest mosque. Now, we have 2 or 3 mosques within 5 minutes drive. One of these mosques was established when there was a split in the leadership of the other nearby mosque. The splinter faction went 3 km south-east and established a small prayer hall adjacent to a shopping centre carpark.

These days there are so many splinter-group mosques that it is hard to know where all the splintering started. One community elder once told me that even the Imam Ali ben Abi Taleb mosque in Lakemba started out as an ethnic splinter mosque.

Yet if a recent article in the New York Times is any indication, it seems we should start exporting some of our mosques to Spain. It seems that in many Spanish towns, Muslims have had to start saying their Friday congregational prayers in converted garages.

Although Spain is peppered with the remnants of ancient mosques, most Muslims gather in dingy apartments, warehouses and garages like the one on North Street, pressed into service as prayer halls to accommodate a ballooning population.

The mosque shortage stems partly from the lack of resources common to any relatively poor, rapidly growing immigrant group.

Then, of course, there is the usual factor of ordinary Muslims with no interest in violence or even politics having to suffer thanks to the violence of a few extremist ratbags.

But in several places, Muslims trying to build mosques have also met resistance from communities wary of an alien culture or fearful they will foster violent radicals.

Distrust sharpened after a group of Islamists bombed commuter trains in Madrid in March 2004, killing 191 people, and in several cities, local governments, cowed by angry opposition from non-Muslims, have blocked Muslim groups from acquiring land for mosques.

Complicating the issue is Spain's historical enmity between Islam and Catholicism and the steady rise in Muslim migration that has only taken place in the last decade or so.

Muslims ruled much of Spain for centuries, but after they were ultimately vanquished in the 1400s, their mosques were either left to ruin or converted into churches. Since then, fewer than a dozen new mosques have been built to serve Spain’s Muslim population, which has grown in the past 10 years to about one million from about 50,000 as immigrants have poured into the country.

That rise has coincided with a decline in church attendance in overwhelmingly Catholic Spain, giving new echo to an old rivalry between the two religions. It was the Catholic king and queen, Ferdinand and Isabella, who defeated the last Moorish ruler in Spain in 1492 and oversaw the expulsion of Jews and Muslims. Now, as churches struggle to draw a dwindling flock, Muslim prayer halls are overflowing.

“The reality of this country has changed much faster than that of other countries,” Ángel Ros, Lleida’s mayor, said in an interview. “A process that took 30 years in Italy or France has taken 10 years in Spain.”

The situation is so bad that in one region of Spain, the local parliament is even considering passing a law forcing local councils to allow land to be set aside of religious buildings, including mosques.

... the ruling coalition in Catalonia submitted a bill in the regional parliament in December that would oblige local governments to set aside land for mosques and other places of worship. Representatives of Muslim organizations hope it will inspire a similar national law.

“People are realizing the world has changed and they can’t look the other way,” said Mohammed Chaib, a member of the Catalan parliament and the only Muslim lawmaker in Spain.

Not everyone sees things the same way.

Cardinal Luis Martínez Sistach, archbishop of Barcelona, opposes the bill, which would entitle all religious groups to land on an equal basis. He argues that Catholicism requires different rules.

“A church, a synagogue or a mosque are not the same thing,” he said, according to the conservative Spanish newspaper ABC. The bill, he said, “impinges on our ability to exercise a fundamental right, that of religious liberty.”

While no law on religious land use exists, the wealthy Catholic Church faces no difficulty acquiring land, experts in law and religion say ... Spain’s secular state cannot finance religious buildings, though it has a special arrangement to subsidize the Catholic Church.

And we thought we had it bad here in Australia.

© Irfan Yusuf 2008