European Islam: the return of Hagar

Abraham casts out Hagar with Ishmael, at the behest of Sarah.

In his middle years, Rembrandt conceived a fascination for the Biblical account of the expulsion of Abraham’s wife Hagar. The result was a series of images which show Hagar, young and fertile, being sent forth into the wilderness at the behest of Sarah, the infant Ishmael by her side. Sarah, the indigene, the Hebrew, is portrayed as an old, infertile woman, who looks at the departing refugee from an upper window.

Islam is, of course, the Ishmaelite epic. Ishmael’s gentile credentials make him the primordial nomad. His is not to be a single land, but all the earth. His descendent, upon him be blessings and peace, was sent among a largely nomadic people, to facilitate the spread of this most universal of religions, from a Madina whose proud title is Dar al-Hijra, the Abode of Migration. The book of Genesis was right to tell us that Ishmael’s seed ‘shall multiply exceedingly’.

Europe’s significant Other

Today, in Europe, Sarah is again old, and Hagar is again fertile. Islam is, as we would theologically expect, at the forefront of the reinvigoration of the tired demography of a continent which, in living memory, has seen terrible nightmares. Ishmael, the refugee, uncontaminated by Europe’s crimes, is now settling in Europe. He has, in fact, already become Europe’s most significant Other. He thus brings hope that Europe’s appalling history may find an alternative path, a vision of God and society that can heal the continent’s wounds.

There is a universalism implicit in Islam which can help accelerate Europe’s current relaxation of ancient tribalisms, which have been scored so deeply into the political map. As the Koran says, ‘O mankind, we have created you of male and female, and have made you peoples and tribes, that you might come to know one another.’ Europe’s tragic history of racism and genocide can only benefit from exposure to our own, universal, vision of human unity. Mark Mazower, the historian, entitled his recent book on 20th century European history The Dark Continent. As people of faith, we are called upon to help with the process of illumination.

We come, however, at an awkward time. Minoritarian zealot movements in the Islamic world, and their diasporas in Europe, have provided ammunition to xenophobes who seek to draw a veil over Europe’s record by claiming that Islam is represented by its margins and its extremes. That claim may be dismissed with the same contempt which we deploy when we hear that Judaism is defined by the behaviour of radical rabbis on the West Bank. Our experience of our religion and our communities is that we are here as peaceful citizens; and we reject as alien and frightening the media’s apparent desire to focus only on our outlandish and freakish margins.

At present, asylum seeking, and the often related issue of immigration, are near the top of the political agenda across the European Union. Ishmael is here, and here in significant numbers; and we find ourselves at the centre of Europe’s current debate about itself. We are to integrate ourselves; and all the polls indicate that most of us have no problem with this idea, if it signifies an enhancement and addition to what we already are, rather than an erasure and destruction.

Yet this demand is being made at a time when no-one, except the maniacs on the extreme right, can clearly describe to us the culture into which we are to integrate. Europe, and its member states, form a patchwork of historically different cultures and religious landscapes. Europeanness, as a concept, seems extraordinarily vague.

An emerging European Muslim identity

Perhaps that is to our advantage. With the unstoppable erosion of regional difference, and its replacement with new alignments based on political persuasion or an ever-proliferating rainbow of lifestyle choices, coupled with the freedom of movement guaranteed under the Amsterdam Treaty, Islam can easily define itself as another trans-national strand in the tapestry of the changing and broadening European reality.

As Europe-wide Muslim institutions evolve, and take the place of Islamic centres and organisations whose axis is linked to the Middle East or elsewhere, a distinctive European Muslim identity will become even clearer than it already is. It will be, in the jargon, a ‘thin’ rather than a ‘thick’ identity, that is to say, it will not define itself rigorously. But it will come to be, because this is how Islam has always come to be. There is an African Islam, a Central Asian Islam, a Malay Islam, and there is already, as I find as I travel, a burgeoning European Islam.

This European Islam, and the institutions which it is beginning to evolve, will be the key to resolving many of the current arguments about asylum-seekers. This is because the far right views Islam as the clearest example of a cultural principle which forbids integration, and creates a politically and socially dangerous ghetto. Once we Muslims show ourselves able to define ourselves as an EU-wide community, with a particular moral and spiritual vocation to a largely secularised region of the world, the integration of asylum-seekers will be enormously simplified.

The evolution of a European Islam, absolutely faithful to the religion’s duties but open to the European mainstream, will also help governments, and the European parliament, to distinguish between authentic Islam, and the Islam of extreme sects and factions currently being exported by a few corners of the Islamic world. Perhaps an analogy may be sought with imperial China, where the Muslim community began as the result of forced migration at the hands of the Mongols, generating a minority that proved so faithful to the Chinese state that Islam was recognised as one of the three Heavenly Religions of the empire.

Perceptions of threat

To date, there is no comprehensive European legislation on asylum and immigration. The so-called third pillar of the Maastricht treaty, now ten years old, adopted in principle the aspiration of a single European Union policy in this respect. In reality, member states have guarded their autonomy more fiercely in this area than in almost any other. The Germans, Belgians, Spanish and some others, have been pressing for full integration of this area of policy, while the notorious Eurosceptic nations, particularly Denmark and the United Kingdom, have been fighting hard against it.

The situation has become more polarised following the security scares of the past couple of years. It must be recalled, however, that European countries do not, with the partial exception of France, have any experience of terrorism emanating from practicing Muslims.

Here in the United Kingdom, we have had terrorism relating to ancient sectarian hatreds in Ulster. There has been animal rights terrorism. There has been terrorism related to various secular causes in the Middle East and elsewhere. But on the British mainland, the fact remains that this country’s largest minority, which is the Muslim community, has been generally immune from the temptation of terrorism. This despite the sad reality of social exclusion, unemployment, and bitterness about British governmental support for repressive regimes in many countries of origin.

Recent arrests, it needs to be stressed, have not altered that picture. If any convictions are secured, the individuals involved will, it seems, have been recent arrivals to the UK. It is by no means clear that the prosecutors will be able to demonstrate to the satisfaction of a jury that weapons being manufactured were destined for any given activity or target. And we recall the Lotfi Raissi, scandal, and other cases where political pressure, and a general public hysteria, led to arrests and trials that, in hindsight, never stood the least chance of securing a conviction.

Still, the question remains a significant one for our community. The government is under pressure to slide away from beneath its commitments under Maastricht, and adopt a harsher approach to asylum-seekers. Mr Blair is even forced to make improbable promises to halve their number within six months. What should our position be?

Towards a rational asylum policy

We should start with the reflection that the Muslim world has often borne the brunt of asylum-seekers and refugees. Iran and Pakistan are currently the world’s principal accommodators of refugees. Iran, in particular, as the UNHCR has underlined, has a generally honourable record of allowing asylum-seekers to stay, to travel freely, and to work.

Europe, however, with its static populations, and its historically high degree of racial chauvinism, often seems to experience difficulty in matching this sort of Abrahamic hospitality. Asylum has become politicised, and, more recently, ‘securitised’. Against the Maastricht spirit of openness and human rights, there is the contrary trend, already begun in this country when the British Nationality Act of 1948 was squeezed and effectively abrogated by anti-immigration and asylum legislation in the 1960s and subsequently. Demographic, racial and cultural fears have supplied much of the impetus for this, as it is estimated that some six hundred thousand illegal immigrants enter the European Union each year. With declining local birthrates, themselves often the consequence of the spread of feminist ideas or consumer materialism, the imagined European, or British essence is, we are told, under some kind of threat.

This places European Muslims in a difficult position. On the one hand, we wish to see Muslim traditions of hospitality and support for the weak integrated into European legislation, as principles in which we may take shared pride. On the other hand, we must recognise the danger of an overt pro-immigration or pro-asylum discourse feeding the right-wing perception that there is an Islamic conspiracy to maximise the demographic growth of our communities.

In fact, of course, the leaders of Europe’s Muslim communities are palpably indifferent to the prospect of further Muslim immigration. Indeed, there is a widespread perception that the ongoing transfusion of new blood perpetuates divisions in our communities, such as the Deobandi-Barelvi split, that do not travel well, and are largely irrelevant to the shape of Islam as it is now developing in this country.

There is also a widespread sense that recent arrivals may seek positions of mosque leadership which should be in the hands of those with a greater mastery of English, and more consciousness of wider British society. So it is certainly not our position that we feel we will automatically gain from further increases in the community’s numbers. For disliked minorities, there is weakness in numbers, not strength.

There are, however, issues on which we can and should raise our collective voice. Those who have visited detention centres, and have involved themselves in the often bizarre and highly-bureaucratised asylum application process, are convinced that it is in the asylum-seeker’s interest, as well as the interests of the taxpayer, for procedures for applications and appeals to be speeded up.

We will also claim the right to insist that better facilities be made available for Muslim religious needs in the detention and reception centres. Staff employed by Group 4 and other companies should be thoroughly trained to understand the specific needs of Muslims who are, after all, not criminals, but are frequently brave men and women fleeing persecution.

Let me propose one final demand that we could make. The Home Office has for too long been called upon to deal with the human consequences of blunders made by the Foreign Office.

This was particularly blatant during the Bosnian war, when Douglas Hurd’s refusal to lift the arms embargo against the Bosnian army ensured that hundreds of thousands of refugees fled areas from which they were being ethnically cleansed. Many of these people claimed asylum in the United Kingdom. And there are, sadly, many further examples.

The current lawlessness in Somalia is the consequence of a profound indifference on the part of the UN Security Council members to attempt to recreate a viable state and economic infrastructure in the Horn of Africa.

Again, the Home Office – and the taxpayer – are called upon to pay the price of the Foreign Office’s lack of initiative. In the Palestinian Territories, the reluctance of the United Kingdom to impose sanctions on Sharon’s government is one factor ensuring that new settlements are built on Palestinian land, so that Palestinian refugees fetch up in Tower Hamlets or Birmingham.

In Afghanistan, the amount of money available for economic reconstruction has been greeted with a chorus of derision by Afghan officials. The return of refugees is consequently slowed; and indeed, there have been fresh migrations from rural Afghanistan as the drug barons and warlords have taken over from the Taliban, and the central government finds no resources to intervene.

It seems to me, then, that the contribution we can make to the current argument is to direct the discussion towards causes rather than consequences. Genuine asylum-seekers, by definition, would not have left home but for the presence of a repressive political order. The current argument will continue forever until western governments adopt a more humane and generous policy towards the world’s poor, increasing the currently derisory proportion of GNP allocated to the aid budget.

More, we need to press our governments to insist on more decent behaviour by western allies. The ambassadors of countries such as Tunisia and Egypt, just to take two examples, are warmly received in Europe’s chancelleries; but that warm reception perpetuates the human rights abuses which generate the streams of asylum-seekers which are now taxing the ministers of the interior, and, in some places, throwing up politicians of the stamp of Pim Fortuyn and his numerous clones in other European countries.

The conclusion, then, has to be that the current tension between the brave liberal rhetoric of Maastricht, and the increasing hostility of member states to asylum-seekers, cannot continue without producing a string of European and national crises. The solution cannot be a retreat from Europe’s post-war ideals, and a capitulation to the most intransigent wing of the political spectrum. For the consequences of that would be too disastrous for community relations at home, and for Europe’s international profile. Instead, fortress Europe needs to share her treasures with the world, and abandon the notion that her security is best served by supporting pliant but morally abhorrent regimes elsewhere.