From Protest To Engagement
A few good words go a long way
By NAZIM BAKSH
On a cold, windy Saturday afternoon in late February, I joined hundreds of
mostly young British Muslims as they crowded into Westminster Hall in central
London to listen to an impressive line-up of Muslim scholars. The program was
sponsored by the Radical Middle Way (RMW), an independent grass-roots
initiative that receives limited funding from the British government.
In the year since it was launched, RMW has organized a variety of public forums
across the UK. Often dubbed The Scholars Road Show, these forums have
featured speakers such as Shaykh Abdallah Bin Bayyah, Al Habib Ali Al-Jifri and
Shaykh Hamza Yusuf. With eye-grabbing titles such as Between Ignorance and
Extremism and Is Islam in Need of a Reformation?, the organizers have had no
difficulty filling venues. RMWs message has reached an estimated 60,000
British Muslims.
The London program was titled From Protest to Engagement, and as the
evening progressed, a consensus started to emerge among the speakers.
Engagement, or more specifically, faith-based civic engagement, is the most
sensible response to the challenges Muslims are currently experiencing in the
West. It also conforms to the character of the Blessed Messenger, Muhammad,
upon him be peace and blessings.
As I listened to Shaykh Abdallah Bin Bayyahs talk, I came to the realization
that in his own inimitable style, he had put his thumb on the fault-line of
Muslim reality in the West. Caught in the schizophrenic tug-of-war between
nationalist identity and loyalty to the Ummah, Muslims have unfortunately
embraced a logic of the left and adopted protest as a counter-hegemonic
political strategy.
Over the years, protest has invariably resulted in the entrenchment of a now
dominant paradigm among Muslims of an us (Muslims) versus them (kafirs).
Protest arises from a false assumption that the dominant system will
eventually collapse in the ashes of its own inherent logic. From this
perspective, protest is the alternative movements best strategy to speed up
its demise.
Protest breeds resentment and when infused with religious zeal, it often
leads to sectarianism, and in many cases, violence in the name of faith. In the
cauldron of protest politics, religious extremism has found fertile ground to
germinate.
Making a shift from a discourse mired in the politics of protest to an action
plan grounded in social engagement, I realized, was going to require more than
a sound niyah (intention). The seismic shift from protest to engagement will
require all stakeholders among Muslim communities in the West to set aside
their titles and ideological platforms and embody an ethic based on the values
we hold in common as human beings.
That was the message of Shaykh Abdallah bin Bayyah. He elucidated the efficacy
of engagement over protest by citing a narration attributed to the Messenger of
God, upon him be peace and blessings. The Prophet compared two kinds of
passengers on a shipthe people on the upper deck and the people lodged in its
hull. As the ship sets out, those in the hull decide to drill a hole in the
boat to gain access to badly needed water. Witnessing this, those on the deck
must decide whether they should shout slogans and organize a demonstration with
banners that scream for attention, or engage the drillers in a meaningful
dialogue in order to save the ship from sinking and causing the death of all on
board.
When you have a fire to put out, Shaykh Abdallah said, you are not
concerned about who is standing with you to put it out.
Muslims in the UK, he continued, need a group of firefighters to pick up a
bucket and come to the rescue of societies that are burning.
The first indication that some segments of the British Muslim community are
struggling with this message, if not rejecting it outright, came at the very
end of the program when Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, executive director of Zaytuna
Institute in Hayward, Calif., delivered the closing remarks of the evening.
He forthrightly dismissed any accusation leveled at RMW that because it
receives government funding, it means that the opinions of the scholars who
speak on its platform must be government propaganda.
Who do you think this government is? Shaykh Hamza asked. They are
called civil servants. Who do you think pays them? It is from the pockets of
the people.
There are nearly 2 million Muslims paying taxes in this country, dont they
deserve a little refund? Loud applause.
This is not Rawalpindi, Cairo or Karachi, where if you criticize the
government, you suddenly disappear. In this country you are not only subjects
of the Queen, but you are citizens as well. Loud and approving applause again.
Clearly, the protestors were not present in Westminster Hall.
NAZIM BAKSH is a Canadian Journalism Fellow at Massey College, University of
Toronto. He is a television and radio producer with the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation.
Copyright 2007 Islamica Magazine.
All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium is
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