‘I don’t repent’, says Farooq who accused imams of ‘mind-boggling banality’

A crisis of leadership in British Islam is causing violence and encouraging ‘cults’ among Muslims.

A ‘desperation for guidance’ is driving ordinary Muslims into the hands of groups whose sole aim is to gather more adherents, says a Bristol businessman.

Farooq Siddique, Bristol Post columnist, who complained of the ‘mind-boggling banality’ of local imams’ concerns had a paving slab thrown through his car windscreen earlier this month.

Siddique, businessman turned campaigner and community organiser, has often been outspoken in the paper on issues affecting British Muslims and has attracted hate mail.  

In 2009 he wrote a column suggesting that Muslims who fought for Britain in the world wars should be remembered with a memorial. It had to be taken down from the web just days later due to the Islamophobic comments posted.

But his recent piece criticising the ‘petty and mundane’ subject matter of Friday sermons has stirred up even worse controversy within the Muslim community.

Speaking to Lapido, Siddique said that the response initially was ‘overwhelmingly positive’ and that everyone seemed to be discussing the issue of the imam’s role.

‘That so many people are talking about it is incredible. In many respects it's a job well done’, he said.

Then he began to hear that a few people were accusing him of being ‘very ill-mannered toward the Prophet.’

The issue concerned the fact that he had included ‘celebrating (or not) the birthday of the Prophet Mohammed’ in his list of ‘inane topics’.

This debate often divides Barelvi and Deobandi Muslims, the two dominant forms of Islam in south-Asia. Broadly speaking, Barelvis celebrate the Prophet’s birthday, while Deobandis do not.

In Pakistan the date, which is at the end of January, can often see bloodshed as celebrations are attacked.

Smashed

Friends warned Siddique that he had ‘stirred up a hornets’ nest’.  

‘It is the fundamental necessity of an imam to comprehend the political, social, educational and spiritual environment of the society’, explained Mufti Rasool.

Siddique had not left the buck in the right place, he said.

‘I am a mufti [Sunni scholar] so I look at everything! I have to look at all sides. He didn’t give all sides you see – he did not say why imams are failing.’

On 6 February Siddique awoke to find the rear window of his car smashed.

A committee member from the Council of Bristol Mosques (CBM) who wishes to remain nameless, described a growing resentment of the fact that Siddique’s profile as a writer meant he was becoming the de-facto spokesperson for Muslims in Bristol.

Siddique himself spoke of his struggle with this responsibility. He feels that there is a crisis of leadership in British Islam, and that this has lead to the popularity of groups like Tablighi Jamaat who give strict instruction on how to act and dress.

Such movements were ‘cults’ he said, whose sole aim was to gather more adherents.

He felt himself being pulled into the vacuum created on occasion. ‘There is a desperation for guidance out there,’ he explained.

Imams were letting Bristolian Muslims down.  ‘Traditionally in Islam, the whole purpose of [the Friday sermon’s] existence is to discuss issues affecting the Muslim community and then come to some kind of common response.’

Islamic scholar, former Bristol imam, and consultant to mosques, Fiaz Rasool said it was wrong to downplay the issue of Mohammed’s birthday, but he respected Siddique’s basic sentiment.

He too had become frustrated with most mosques’ lack of relevance. However, he claimed that it was misguided to blame the imams.

‘[The imam] is like the driver of a London Underground Tube; the direction is given and they just stop the train and close and open the doors. The imam is not the policy maker.’

Trustees of mosques deliberately hired ill-trained imams from south-Asia who were ignorant of British life, and then kept them financially poor and uneducated. The management could then continue to run the mosque according to local political motives, often those taking place along biraderi [clan] lines.

When he was first in the UK as an imam, leading prayer at a mosque very close to Siddique’s residence, Rasool was, he said, isolated from British life and often too poor even to buy a newspaper.

Today he has an MBA and a MSC in educational management, and views it as a duty to keep abreast of national and international news.

Home page photo: Paul Blakemore