26.02.2004

Weak at the knees

Around the web

It is hard to believe that just two years ago, the Muslim Association of Britain barely registered on the radar screens of the left. But a couple of years is a long time in politics even by the left’s sclerotic standards. Its co-sponsorship of mass anti-war demonstrations, along with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Stop the War Coalition, has allowed the MAB to assume a prominence out of all proportion to its size. So, what is it about the MAB that makes the leadership of the Socialist Workers Party go weak at the knees?

Perhaps it was the nice corporate-looking MAB website that caught the SWP’s eye. After all, the header is a nice dark shade of red, and it may signify the objectively anti-imperialist character of the MAB. Or was it have been the link to the MAB’s youth magazine, Life of a Believer? In the sample editorial, Rizwan Macwann quotes a muslim student saying about the west: “There is too much stuff for one to desire. Too may temptations.” The solution for Macwann is that “families and communities must invest time and resources to provide the youth with all the education and training they need”. So there we have it. Not only is the MAB anti-war, but SWPers can assure themselves that its anti-commercialism is implicitly anti-capitalist too. Comrades looking for a quick and easy way to pick up muslim votes for Respect in the forthcoming European elections will find their opportunist needs catered for on the merchandise page. MAB placards, t-shirts, and information booklets are all available to enthusiastic Respect activists keen to ingratiate themselves with their local imams.

The last in this first group of links is a Noddy’s guide to islam, designed, it seems, to accommodate the barest levels of political education. So even those SWP hacks that slavishly follow their leadership’s every turn should have little difficulty. The page starts off with ‘The message of islam’, which is that allah alone is worthy of worship, and that Muhammad is his messenger. Then a list of other beliefs is given, such as the acknowledgement of angels, other holy books, etc. This is followed by the five pillars of islam: the shahada (belief in god and Muhammad as his messenger), the salah (observance of the rituals surrounding prayer), zakat (charity tithe), siam (keeping to the fasts of Ramadan), and the hajj (Mecca pilgrimage). Sadly that is as far as it goes, as the dedicated pages addressing each pillar are undergoing construction.

However, 16 other articles are available for download in pdf. The one essay that interested me was tucked away at the bottom. In a piece called ‘Boys will be boys - gender identity issues’, Abdal-Hakim Murad draws on the mutually antagonistic sources of ‘scientific’ socio-biology and the postmodern turn of feminism away from concerns with equality to issues of difference to justify the common islamic position on gender. He manages to construct a convoluted argument suggesting that to oppose sharia law is to reject the scientific data on gender. This allows Murad to treat gender and the discourse of sex as the outcome of the universe’s (god-given) innate nature, and not the result of historically variable human relationships. However, since Lindsey German has proclaimed gender issues a shibboleth, SWPers need not bother challenging this nonsense. Votes are more important.

The rest of the main field is split into four sections. ‘Events and activities’ includes study circles, conferences, and kung fu classes (!). ‘Latest news’ contains some bits and bobs from the bourgeois press, including an item on the 14,000 white Britons who have converted to islam. Needless to say, figures for those who have “succumbed” to secularism are conspicuously absent. ‘Press releases’ and ‘Action alerts’ display the issues currently exercising the MAB.

The navigation column offers the usual mix of resources, mailing list, news, and contact details. ‘Links’ carries dozens of websites, both islamic and secular. Unfortunately for comrades Galloway and Rees, their game of footsie with the MAB has yet to yield a link to Respect, and, to add insult to injury, the only party listed are the Greens! The other page of interest is ‘About MAB’, which lists the group’s aims and objectives. These bullet points are hardly controversial - and certainly contain nothing threatening to the fabric of western civilisation, as the BNP and co like to pretend. Yet neither is there anything particularly radical about them either - which probably explains why the SWP is happy to have the MAB as a bedfellow.