Quote:Bangladeshis in east London: from secular politics to Islam
openDemocracy.net
Delwar Hussain
7 - 7 - 2006
Who speaks for the mostly poor Bangladeshi community in east London? Delwar Hussain charts a long-term shift from secular leftism to Islamism - one in which British state policy has played a significant role.
Steve, Lord Ellpus e.a -- I thought this was a fascinating article.
The case study it presents of the British Bangladeshi community seems to encapsulate a lot of the background of the wider Islamist upsurge.
It sketches the competition between Bengali nationalism and leftism, "emancipatory vehicles" of the previous generation or two, and the emergingly dominant Islamist identity.
Historically, secular Bengali nationalism had a clear advantage: Bengali independence was wrested bloodily from the Pakistanis, and the Islamists, back then, collaborated with Pakistan. But even in Bangladesh itself, the Islamists have been on the rebound; they've even entered government.
When it comes to the allegiances of British Bengalis, moreover, the article describes Islamism as the current that is far more adept at using modern tools of outreach, mobilisation, and negotiation with the government. Thats how they are winning over British Bengali workers, while the parochial ethnic community groups remain stuck in the debates and tools of yesteryear.
It also describes the rise of Islamism as a consequence of the emergence of a new generation. The one that was actually born in Britain, yeah. A generation that does not easily identify anymore with the migrant identities of homeland Bangladeshi politics, but suffers enough poverty, discrimination and cultural alienation to be unable to identify with British society either.
Looking for an alternative identity that is both global/abstract enough to allow their mishmash type to feel part of it, and yet strident enough to help them to 'push back' against white-English society, many of them actually gratefully welcome the savvy advances of the Islamists.
Interesting stuff. Covers all kinds of other angles too. Here's the key passages (IMO):
Quote:[The] issues [at play in the Bangladeshi homeland] - Islamic and Bengali identity, religion and culture, political struggle and political power - are very much alive in London's Bangladeshi diaspora, centred in the Tower Hamlets area. At their forefront are organisations such as the East London Mosque (author of conspicuous and effective Islamist initiatives) and the Shadinata Trust (a secular body that seeks to increase awareness of Bengali culture and history among British Bangladeshis). [..]
The battle is an unequal one: the secular effort is faltering against the vibrancy and energy of the Islamists. For many young people in deprived Tower Hamlets, [the issues pursued by the secular Bengali organisations are] ancient history with no relevance to their lives: they regard Bangladeshi politics as distant and corrupt, and day-to-day issues of drugs, gangs and unemployment as far more relevant. The Islamists, by contrast, are sophisticated and up-to-date in their focus and appeal. The East London Mosque [..] is no fringe organisation; it was at the centre of the campaign that helped elect [..] George Galloway in the 2005 general election. [..]
A Bangladeshi [Islamist] Jamaat MP, Delwar Hossain Sayedee, has regularly appeared at the mosque [..]. These visits are controversial: older Bangladeshis accuse him of involvement in the massacres of Bengalis during the liberation war. But the Jamaat has made strenuous [..] efforts to distance itself from its extremist and anti-Bengali past, and young, third-generation, British-born Bengalis have demonstrated in support of Sayedee's presence. [..]
In south Asia, the [Islamist] party has drawn support from those both promoted and dislocated by modernisation - middle-class people (teachers, lawyers, and engineers among them) repelled by western ideas and attracted to the ideological rigour of fundamentalism. Indeed, societies in transition often generate fundamentalism. In London, [in] the absence of a Bangladeshi middle-class [..], it has discovered another constituency: the British-educated Bengali working class, those at the bottom of Britain's social pyramid [..]. The path of social advancement may be closed to them elsewhere, but the doorway to rightwing, fundamentalist theology is broad and always open. [..]
The social policies of successive British governments have played a part in the long-term trend away from secularism and towards Islamism. The British state has since the early 1990s deferred to a generic idea of the "Muslim community". This has increasingly enabled mosques to enter into partnership with local authorities to deliver social-welfare programmes. [By now,] to end the funding of [explicitly faith-based youth associations] would result in the disappearance of crucial social safety-nets of the kind once provided (but no longer) by the state. [..]
In [the] aftermath [of the Rushdie affair and the Gulf War], Britain's political establishment realised that British Muslims could not be ignored, believed that gestures towards fighting poverty and social exclusion would undercut support for specifically "Muslim"' causes, and at the same time sought (for economic and ideological reasons) to cut government funding to voluntary organisations. The result of these combined processes was the rapid emergence of faith-based alternatives in the social arena. [..]
While in earlier periods British Bengalis were known by their national origin, today they are seen as part of a homogeneous "Muslim community". This is the irony of multiculturalism: policies aimed to create diversity in British society opened spaces for fundamentalist intolerance and homogeneity. [..]
The phenomenon seems supportive of an argument based on the idea of young people being "in-between two cultures" (alienated both from the cultural "traditions" of their parents and "modern" western culture). This led them, the idea runs, to an embrace of an Islam that allows individuals to transcend this separation by linking them into the global "culture-free" identity of the umma. [..]
Bengalis are among the poorest in Britain, and among those most exposed to racial discrimination. This is not new; but the response of the maturing third generation of indigenous British Bangladeshis is. Between the 1960s and the 1980s, Bangladeshis in London used secular, socialist ideology to combat injustice - a system of thinking that could then still lay plausible claim to the future. There also remained at that time the option of return [..].
Today, [..] Bengal is distant from their [children's and grandchildren's] daily lives [and] Bengali secularists appear today as archaic as the political left. Islamic brotherhood is a more potent tool in the fight against discrimination. [..]
"Islam stands as a psychological barricade behind whichÂ…Bangladeshi young people (usually men) can hide their lack of self-esteem and proclaim a functional strength through the imagination of the umma". [..]
An older generation of British Bangladeshis saw Islam as one aspect of a plural, many-layered identity; for their children and grandchildren it has become the basis of a monolithic ideology, the supreme identity in the struggle for political and socio-economic interests. [..]
The Islamists have managed both to articulate and project a persuasive political meta-narrative after 9/11, and to appeal to young people in east London by focusing on issues of drugs, crime and unemployment. [..]
The impulses and actions of what might in another age have been seen as working-class anger have thus acquired a more plausible emancipatory narrative in Islamic fundamentalism. That this has been facilitated by state funding along faith lines is a fact few are ready to confront. [..]
The fight of secularists against racism and poverty appears bland compared to the ardent certainties of religion. [..] While the [ruling] Bangladesh Nationalist Party - and George Galloway in London - seek to ride the Jamaat-e-Islami tiger for political gain, [..] Jamaat and other fundamentalist groups are sowing the seeds of future conflict [..].
