{"id":10126,"date":"2021-05-03T16:25:32","date_gmt":"2021-05-03T16:25:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyrapidnews.com\/eng\/?p=10126"},"modified":"2021-05-03T16:25:32","modified_gmt":"2021-05-03T16:25:32","slug":"a-muslim-history-of-the-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailyrapidnews.com\/eng\/2021\/05\/03\/a-muslim-history-of-the-uk\/","title":{"rendered":"A Muslim history of the UK"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Sadiya Ahmed has been busy during Britain\u2019s latest COVID-19 lockdown. She has produced a podcast, created a heritage photography competition, and is working on setting up a Muslim History module to run alongside the national curriculum.<\/p>\n<\/header>\n

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It is all part of this former tutor\u2019s aim to ensure British Muslim history takes its rightful place within mainstream British history.<\/p>\n

\"A-Muslim-history-of-the-UK-rapidnews-dailyrapid\"<\/p>\n

\u201cMuslims aren\u2019t just on the margins of British society, but are part of British society,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

She wants to place their stories alongside the already documented \u201cmainstream\u201d British history in archives, museums and academia.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt gives our communities an authenticated representation and claim to British history, as \u2018our history\u2019, one we are evidently part of.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is a mission many historians say is long overdue.<\/p>\n

There is \u201ca popular [mis]perception that Muslims in Britain are an alien presence, people who have arrived here only recently. In other words, they lack roots, and because of that they lack ties and emotional bonds with this country\u201d, explains historian Humayun Ansari.<\/p>\n

\u201cRootedness\u201d, Ansari says, is a \u201chuman need\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is the sense of \u2018rootedness\u2019 that establishes emotional ties between people and place. Archival silences have a demoralising effect and are damaging to self-esteem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sunder Katwala, the director of British Future, an independent think-tank focused on equality, diversity and human rights, is optimistic. He believes a new generation of historians, and history that is more accessible through online sources and social media, is creating space for everyone\u2019s history to be told.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we are seeing a broadening of the stories that are being told and heard,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cBritish history is the story of how we, the British, came to be us. It can only fully do that job by becoming more inclusive.\u201d<\/p>\n

He mentions the recognition given to the 400,000 Muslims in the Indian armies that fought for Britain in the first world war, more than a century ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis used to be a largely unknown and untold story,\u201d says Katwala, \u201cbut there has been rapidly increasing public awareness of the Black and Asian contribution to the world wars, which had a much higher profile during the First World War centenary than it had before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Muslims have been fighting for the British army for more than a century, but until recently their story was largely untold [Photo courtesy of Everyday Muslim Heritage]<\/figure>\n

\u2018Our histories will be lost\u2019<\/h2>\n

Ahmed set up the Everyday Muslim Heritage and Archive Initiative (EMHAI) in 2013 to document the history of British Muslims.<\/p>\n

\u201cFuture generations need to understand that Muslims have historic roots in Britain that actually go back centuries,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

The first Indian\u00a0restaurant\u00a0in London was established by a Muslim surgeon in 1810, and the first purpose-built mosque was opened in 1889.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel each generation thinks that they\u2019re \u2018the first\u2019 because our history is largely undocumented, but we aren\u2019t aware of the all the accomplishments of the past \u2026 Without that knowledge, we\u2019re kind of stuck in a perpetual cycle, which grounds our identity as migrants or immigrants, and not citizens, and therefore not seen as equal to someone who\u2019s from a white British heritage.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Britain\u2019s more than 3.3 million-strong Muslim community is heterogeneous. The largest part of the religious group originates from South Asia, but there are also Arab and African communities, Muslims from Southeast Asia, the Balkans and Turkey, as well as those who have converted or are the descendants of converts, all with histories waiting to be told.<\/p>\n

EMHAI aims to tell these stories and create space in history for a group Ahmed says has largely been \u201cabsent from places such as museums and archives\u201d. She believes it is one of the reasons Muslims and other diasporic communities, \u201cdo not visit or engage in these spaces\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we don\u2019t visit museums and archives, we won\u2019t feel like we belong here. Not belonging is alienating.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we don\u2019t take ownership and document these stories, our histories will be lost. As if that history never existed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Post-war migration<\/h2>\n

Like the post-second world war migration from the West Indies to the United Kingdom, many South Asians came to plug Britain\u2019s labour shortages, with migrants from Commonwealth nations often working in transport or factories.<\/p>\n

But, says Ahmed, while \u201cthe stories of unskilled labourers from South Asia that came to work in factories is a true portrayal\u201d she is keen to emphasise that \u201cit\u2019s not the only perspective\u201d.<\/p>\n

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Ansari, who is a professor of the History of Islam and Culture at London\u2019s Royal Holloway University, explains that: \u201cIn the early 1960s, the government sponsored [a series of] films \u2013 Calling all Muslims! \u2013 enthusiastically inviting Muslims to come to work in British industries or to study in British universities.\u201d <\/p>\n

Ahmed says there were \u201cvery educated people that came here with PhDs, and they were more educated than some people here, but they weren\u2019t getting the jobs that they were qualified for\u201d.<\/p>\n

Some early migrants were lawyers, teachers and doctors. There were also zoologists and biologists. \u201cThey\u2019re not the stereotypical professions that you\u2019d say, \u2018oh, Muslims only do x, y, and z\u2019. The stories give you a wider picture of who the Muslim community really are,\u201d Ahmed reflects.<\/p>\n

\u2018Transient guardians of our history\u2019<\/h2>\n

Ahmed, the oldest of nine children, was born in Walthamstow in east London, to an Asian-Kenyan mother and a Pakistani father from Wazirabad, which is \u201caffectionately known as the Sheffield of Pakistan because of its stainless-steel industry\u201d, she explains.<\/p>\n

Her motivation \u201cto do something\u201d to document and share Britain\u2019s tapestry of heritage has always been there, she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt came from the convergence of my parents\u2019 stories from my childhood of their lives growing up in Pakistan and Kenya, their early lives, and experience of making a home in Britain.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Ahmed (centre) with three of her siblings [Photo courtesy of Everyday Muslim Heritage]<\/figure>\n

Growing up in an intergenerational household of siblings, \u201csome of whom are around 15 to 20 years younger than me\u201d, made her realise \u201cwe are all but, transient guardians of our history\u201d.Through building these intergenerational connections, of shared photographs and the stories behind them, conversations were started which may never otherwise have happened. Ahmed discovered that, unless probed, many people chose not to share the details of their early life in the UK, the struggles and the sacrifices.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think it was necessarily a sense of shame or a lack of pride, but something that just isn\u2019t spoken about. Everyone is so busy with their day to day chores and responsibilities, histories might only be shared in passing, but not in-depth or documented,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Oral history projects, like Ahmed\u2019s, allow younger generations to better understand some of the \u201ccomplex choices\u201d early migrants faced.<\/p>\n

One example is the creation of prayer spaces and mosques. The post-war generation may have \u201carrived from Muslim majority countries, creating a community that developed from nothing\u201d, Ahmed says, \u201cbut it didn\u2019t mean that they were Islamic scholars, architects or designers\u201d.<\/p>\n

That came later, through the next generation of Muslims, who, among other things, questioned the limited space for women\u2019s prayer areas that were created by the first wave of Muslim migration, and have redesigned mosques of today with inclusivity.<\/p>\n

The birth of an archive<\/h2>\n

Ahmed\u2019s ultimate goal is to create a museum or \u201cmuseum-style\u201d learning space, but she realised there was a more immediate need to create something \u201cmore tangible\u201d that has \u201chistorical significance\u201d.<\/p>\n

And so EMHAI was born.<\/p>\n

\u201cArchives are what a legacy is built on, and these are what my community were missing. I soon realised that the archives are our legacy.\u201d<\/p>\n

So far, Ahmed has recorded 112 oral histories, a series of recorded interviews that document and collect memories and personal commentaries of historical significance.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we started, it was difficult, it would take weeks and months to get people to agree to an interview. And to explain to them what it would entail and why we\u2019re doing this.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Funeral prayers in Pakistan [Photo courtesy of Everyday Muslim Heritage]<\/figure>\n

Ahmed started by interviewing friends and family, and then the project grew through word of mouth and social media, which has meant she can \u201cconnect to a wider audience\u201d.Before the COVID pandemic, Ahmed or one of her 10 volunteers \u2013 who are all trained in interview techniques \u2013 would usually speak to the contributors in the comfort of their own home.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a whole process. It\u2019s not just walk into someone\u2019s house, do an interview and walk out again. It\u2019s something that you have to have emotional involvement in, you have to be emotionally present,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n

Some interview set-ups can take weeks or months. \u201cThere was one time where we were trying to get a photograph from someone. And just to get that photograph, it took us 18 months.\u201d<\/p>\n

A template is used to ensure everyone is asked a similar set of questions, with room for individual stories. Each interview takes just more than an hour.<\/p>\n

Recurring themes include \u201ceveryday\u201d subjects like fashion, work, education, racism, food and faith.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026 It\u2019s about being a person who happens to be Muslim,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s about setting that person, their experience in the context of British history, showing how we live our lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of those interviewed was 50-year-old Rakin Fetuga, one half of the hip-hop group Mecca2Medina. He says the only part Islam played in his childhood home in London\u2019s Notting Hill during the 1970s, was a picture of Mecca on his living room wall. For him, being Nigerian and British came first; being Muslim came later.<\/p>\n

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Fetuga believes parents must teach their children history at home rather than relying solely on schools.\u00a0He cites the stories of\u00a0Marcus Garvey,\u00a0Malcolm X\u00a0and\u00a0Harriet Tubman, but he also says the\u00a0history of being African in 1970s\u2019 Britain must also be taught.\u201cWe need to teach our children that when we came here in the 70s on the doors it said \u2018no Blacks, no Irish, no dogs\u2019. They need to understand the history because the children growing up today in the classroom, you say something, they\u2019re like \u2018That\u2019s racist\u2019. I say to them, \u2018Excuse me, you don\u2019t even know what racist is\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

EMHAI has created three archives including the first British\u00a0collection\u00a0of stories and memories of the Black, African and Afro-Caribbean (BAAC) Muslim community in London.<\/p>\n

Launched in 2017, Ahmed wanted to \u201creflect the diversity of the Muslim community\u201d in Britain, and says Black British Muslims are often overlooked within the Muslim community. \u201cThe diversity of what Black Muslim means needs to be understood and taught.\u201d<\/p>\n

She hopes to create more focussed projects on different communities, like the Somali and Nigerian communities, but does not have the funding for it at the moment.<\/p>\n

Ahmed\u2019s work has inspired others to collect and curate their own histories.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what I really wanted Everyday Muslim to be, to inspire others to do this,\u201d she explains. \u201cBecause it\u2019s not just one person\u2019s job, one organisation\u2019s job, it\u2019s definitely a community responsibility. And it\u2019s taken some time to get to a point where people are beginning to realise the value of their stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not expecting to stay<\/h2>\n

The EMHAI archives are a collection of video or audio oral history interviews, transcripts, photographs, documents and ephemera and are partially catalogued and archived in locations across the UK, including Bishopsgate Institute and Vestry House Museum.<\/p>\n

We Weren\u2019t Expecting to\u00a0Stay, is another of its collections. This one documents the lives of Britain\u2019s largest Muslim group \u2013 south Asians from 1950 to 2015.<\/p>\n

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Many early migrants believed their time in Britain would be short-lived, with ideals to save money and return \u201chome\u201d. But with more job opportunities and better salaries in the UK, single men soon brought their families to join them. <\/p>\n

\u201cTheir families joined them and their children were born in the UK, making this their \u2018home\u2019. They started to feel more settled and integrated here. They valued the justice system, meritocracy, and equality that the UK offered them,\u201d says Sundas Ali, the co-author of Identity, Belonging & Citizenship in Urban Britain and lecturer in Politics and Sociology at the Oxford University.<\/p>\n

In We Weren\u2019t Expecting to Stay, colourful photo galleries capture moments \u2013 from births and children\u2019s parties to young men dressed in their finest posing beside famous London landmarks.<\/p>\n

Halal chickens and Jewish butchers<\/h2>\n

Food is a common theme that weaves through the archives, with many mentioning the difficult quest to find halal meat in 1960s\u2019 Britain.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Everyday Muslim project has created three archives capturing the \u2018everyday\u2019 moments in people\u2019s lives. Food is a recurring theme [Photo courtesy of Everyday Muslim Heritage]<\/figure>\n

One interviewee remembers receiving parcels of it sent to his west London home from Bradford where there was a more established Muslim community. Another recalls a kind Jewish butcher in east London who allowed Muslims space to slaughter chickens on Sundays. <\/p>\n

\u201cThrough hearing the stories from the project, I appreciate how we can take everyday decisions or actions for granted, such as buying halal meat,\u201d says Ahmed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt also made me realise that if such basic experiences are unknown, then there is a disconnect between generations that results in a loss of connection to their culture and heritage.\u201d<\/p>\n

With love, from Walthamstow<\/h2>\n

Another contributor, Nazeea Elahi, 46, tells how her father\u2019s encounter with a London cabbie led to her family settling in Walthamstow.<\/p>\n

Fazal Elahi was 36 when he arrived in London from Pakistan, leaving behind his wife and four children aged below 10.<\/p>\n

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Fazal Elahi\u2019s passport [Photo courtesy of Everyday Muslim Heritage]<\/figure>\n

\u201c[My father] had no fixed address to go to [when he arrived at Heathrow in 1963], all he knew was that he had a cousin living somewhere in Bradford. Having no idea where Bradford was in relation to London, my father went to a taxi driver at [Heathrow] airport and requested to be taken to Bradford. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe taxi driver laughed and said it was too far and to give him an address in London instead. My father replied that he didn\u2019t know anyone in London.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe asked the driver if he knew a house in London where Pakistani people were living, if so could he drop him there. The taxi driver took him to a house near Queens Road, Walthamstow. That was how my family ended up living in Walthamstow instead of Bradford.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mariya bint Rehan, 34, whose parents came from Pakistan\u2019s Punjab region, offers a sensory description of her own childhood memories working in her father\u2019s corner shop. She remembers \u201ca lukewarm strawberry Yazoo straight off the cash and carry floor at the end of a gruelling wait, the sweet smell of cardboard which flooded the shop and the lost taste of a Snickers bar from the 90s\u201d.<\/p>\n

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Mariya bint Rehan\u2019s father\u2019s corner shop\u00a0[Photo courtesy of Everyday Muslim Heritage]<\/figure>\n

Rehan, a writer and illustrator, says the corner shop allowed her father to buy their first family home in Walthamstow, and send his four children to university, forging professions in publishing, law and philanthropy. <\/p>\n

After selling his corner shop he went on to own several small businesses including a small property company. While her mother taught English in female prisons and now owns her own haberdashery in north London.<\/p>\n

Open all hours corner shops like the one Rehan\u2019s father ran were often used as comedy material for racist \u201cjokes\u201d. But Rehan says she wants to redefine the stereotype, telling EMHAI: \u201cI \u2026 want to reclaim the reductive stereotype of the \u2018Indian\u2019 corner shop, and its subsequent reinterpretation as noble, ingratiating support characters in someone else\u2019s story.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to replace it with my dad and his resolve in creating a better life for my siblings and I. I\u2019m pleased to say my spine now unfurls in pride over the memories of being the daughter of a remarkable corner shop owner.\u201d<\/p>\n

But racist jokes were not all people of Rehan\u2019s father\u2019s generation \u2013 and earlier arrivals \u2013 had to worry about.<\/p>\n

\u2018Throwing matches\u2019 at women\u2019s hair<\/h2>\n

Ansari describes how there was an \u201canti-immigrant sentiment that started to spread among layers of white society, as did racism towards minority ethnic communities, reaching a crescendo in Enoch Powell\u2019s \u2018River of Blood\u2019 speech in 1968 in reaction to the arrival of South Asians from East Africa\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cResidentially concentrated and segregated, South Asian Muslim communities suffered the full force of racism. They were blamed for not integrating into British norms and values,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n

In the 1950s and 60s, Muslims in Britain were largely identified in ethnic rather than religious terms \u2013 as Pakistanis, Arabs, Yemenis and Somalis. They experienced systematic marginalisation and rejection in employment, housing and education primarily on grounds of their ethnic heritage, Ansari explains.<\/p>\n

This led to \u201cskinhead \u2018P***-bashing\u2019 but also violent attacks on mosques. In the changing context of the following decades, the focus of racism shifted and it is arguable that the foundations of today\u2019s Islamophobia were being laid in those decades\u201d.<\/p>\n

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Navid Akhtar (far left) as a child [Photo courtesy of Everyday Muslim Heritage]<\/figure>\n

Navid Akhtar, 54, the founder of\u00a0Alchemiya, a Muslim content streaming service and a contributor to the archive, recalls his own experiences with racism growing up in 1970s\u2019 Britain. <\/p>\n

\u201cTo be called a P*** or to be even to be spat on, things like that, you just took it in your stride after a while, you found ways around.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can literally remember people spitting on my mother and as well as feeling the emotions of just confusion and anger there was always relief because at the same time hearing that there were people who, because they knew women had oil in their hair, they were literally throwing matches onto their heads.\u201d<\/p>\n

Akhtar\u2019s account offers a glimpse into intergenerational conversations that took place as each generation sought to make its own way and formed alternative identities to those who came before.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy parents were Pakistani [from Kashmir], that was their main identity, they brought that here [to the UK],\u201d says Akhtar, who was born in Paddington where he spent the first few years of his life.<\/p>\n

\u201cI often found myself saying to my father you can\u2019t grow Pakistani mangoes in Northern Europe, which is what you\u2019re trying to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Busses, beer and boiled eggs<\/h2>\n

Others recall less harrowing experiences.<\/p>\n

Ghulam Haider, 87, arrived on a scholarship in 1957 to pursue his MSc in engineering at Imperial College in London. He returned to Gujranwala in Pakistan\u2019s Punjab province after graduation and worked for Pakistan Petroleum before returning to the UK in 1962 to continue his career in civil engineering, building roads and bridges.<\/p>\n

He remembers staying at a hotel in London\u2019s Russell Square when he first arrived, and receiving an alternative education from his English mentor at the time. \u201cHe showed me how to ride a bus \u2026 He also took me to a pub and said \u2018you don\u2019t have to order beer \u2026 you can order orange juice\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Ghulam Haider (left) with Jack Wade, the man who showed him around London and introduced him to life in the UK [Photo courtesy of Everyday Muslim Heritage]<\/figure>\n

On learning that Haider did not eat bacon, he advised him to \u201cstick to boiled eggs\u201d.\u201cAnd that\u2019s what I did,\u201d Haider recalls. \u201cFor a long time, everywhere I used to just order boiled eggs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Haider has lived a comfortable life in the UK, but his was far from the experience of many.<\/p>\n

Fatimah Amer, a historical researcher focusing on social and minority histories in the UK, says her father, who had graduated top of his class at Cairo University and worked in different government departments, moved to London from Egypt in 1970 \u201cin the hope of pursuing his studies\u201d.<\/p>\n

But \u201csoon the burden of rent and bills took its toll\u201d so he started looking for a job.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt a time when prejudice and discrimination was still rife his qualifications and experience meant nothing in the UK and he resorted to searching for employment amidst the small Egyptian community,\u201d Amer explains.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mohamed Amer came to Britain to study for his Masters [Photo courtesy of Everyday Muslim Heritage]<\/figure>\n

He found work in the catering industry, initially in the first-class restaurant carriage on British Rail \u2013 where he met Amer\u2019s mother \u2013 and later in five-star hotels on London\u2019s Park Lane.\u201cIn the midst of trying to build a life here in England my father says he never stopped dreaming of one day going back into education, the reason he came to England in the first place,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 1993, he received the master\u2019s degree he had come to England for, 23 years after he first arrived.\u201d<\/p>\n

The story above has been reproduced with permission from Aljazeera.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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