Darragh Monahan: Confronting stereotypes and promoting unity

The response to the introductory piece on Muslims in Fermanagh has been extremely humbling, and it is wonderful to see the positivity, and genuine curiosity and happiness at the chance to learn more about Muslims and their way of life - at the same time, however, certain aspects of public response were disconcerting, worrisome, and disappointing, yet by no means unexpected.

From some sectors of the community the viewpoint on Islam, on Muslims, and on this author personally were less than favourable, and in some cases outright antagonistic.

Well, I suppose that one cannot please everyone, and that has not been the intention behind writing this column.

The goal here is simply to get the message across that Muslims exist here in Fermanagh, for one reason or another, that they are here to stay, and to help people get to know who those Muslims are, so we can build a well-informed society where all can coexist in peace and safety.

Part of achieving that goal is to engage with ideas about Islam and Muslims which are held, especially those which are untrue, mistaken, or about which there is ignorance.

Personally, having been Muslim now for 21 years, I am no stranger to having been the recipient of abuse or attracting ire simply because I am a visible Muslim. This can take the form of verbal slurs, such as ‘al-Qaeda’ and ‘Bin Laden’ when those terms were in fashion, then ‘ISIS’ during that point in time when the actions of the allied forces of the USA and European armies had decimated Iraq and its regions, and in doing so created that particular monster.

I have thankfully only experienced some physical altercations - perhaps it’s the beard or the turban which keeps me safe! One tends to develop a thick skin, and I have solace in the fact that my experience is nothing to what ‘brown-skinned’ Muslim men and women have to put up with far more frequently.

A valid question is - should anyone have to put up with this, and why does it seem like Muslims attract negativity, and in many peoples’ eyes, seem to deserve to be pointed out, sidelined, demonised, and disparaged?

This article will attempt to address this phenomenon, which is termed nowadays as Islamophobia - a slightly cumbersome term, meaning ‘fear of Islam’, in a similar vein to the term ‘Antisemitism’ - used to highlight anti-Jewish sentiment - something just as condemnable as Islamophobia.

Let us get to the explanation.

It is perhaps no surprise that a negative perception of Islam and Muslims persists, even if it is a hugely mistaken generalisation - academically dishonest, blindly reactionary and willfully ignorant.

A study named ‘State of Media Reporting on Muslims’ published in 2019 by the Centre for Media Monitoring analysed over 10,000 news articles and broadcasts in the UK, and it was found that 59 per cent of the articles associated Muslims with negative behaviour, whilst others misrepresented or made generalisations about the Muslim community.

A notable trend was that when a Muslim committed something bad, which anyone of any religion or background indeed might do, the religion of the Muslim was highlighted alongside their vile act - this is something unique to Muslims.

If a Hindu person, a Jew, a Buddhist, or even a Christian, commits some evil, their religion will not be mentioned, however the same is not true for Muslims, and just as a droplet of water continually falling on a rock creates a permanent change, the idea that ‘Islam = Bad’ is implanted.

We all know the way Muslims are portrayed; from Hollywood representations of Arabs as mindless fringe terrorists brandishing bazookas, to the alleged misogyny of Muslim men, and by extension Islam itself, to the idea of the oppressed, veiled female given no voice or agency in society, or even that Muslims are some kind of ‘fifth column’, surreptitiously seeking to overthrow ‘Western’ values, and that it is only a matter of time before Islam ‘takes over’.

Add to this the accusations that Muslims are solely responsible for ‘grooming gangs’, seeking to corrupt the purity of white British girls, and every other form of mud-slinging one could imagine - the fear-mongering never seems to stop.

Across history, Islam has been no stranger to having had its opponents. Right at the beginning of the Prophet Muhammad’s mission, after he began receiving revelation at the age of 40, and began preaching the message of Islam, he was labelled by detractors as ‘insane’, as a soothsayer, and as a corrupter of society.

His enemies persecuted his weaker followers, berating them, attacking them, beating them, torturing them, and even boycotting them for a two-year period where no one was allowed to trade with them, assist them, or provide them with sustenance until the early Muslims had to migrate from Makkah to the city now known as Madinah - an event so important that Muslims mark their calendar by it.

Far from being the ‘warmonger’ that his doubters label him as, the Prophet was forced by necessity to conduct wars to preserve Islam from existential threats, and ensure its survival, in the face of the most extreme opposition.

Later on, in the Middle Ages, Christian Crusaders, seeking to liberate the Holy Land from the hands of the ‘barbarian heathen’ Muslims, slaughtered thousands within the walls of Jerusalem - among whom were Arab Jews and Christians, who were mercilessly butchered.

A Crusader chronicler of the time wrote: "...if you desire to know what was done with the enemy who were found there, know that in Solomon's Porch and in his temple our men rode in the blood of the Saracens up to the knees of their horses."

The idea that all inhabitants of Jerusalem at the time were Muslim, and that Islam was a barbaric religion, and that hence it was meritorious to destroy them all in order to gain a victory for Christendom, was considered as acceptable.

Closer to our time, Orientalists, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, continued the trend, and worked hard to actualise the colonisation of (former) Muslim empires - the Ottoman Empire, one of the largest the world has seen, eventually ceased to exist by 1922, and in its place, maps were redrawn to create nation-states which would be held and controlled by various European powers.

To those bemoaning the influx of migrants to European shores, they should consider what the cause of this phenomenon actually stems from - the resource-grab, the ‘Scramble for Africa’, and the fact that the entire colonial project disempowered those regions, subjugated them, and enslaved them to a cruel economic system.

That the economies of the ‘developing world’ continue to suffer, leads to people seeking refuge, or economic surety, in the country from where the colonists originated.

This should be no surprise. It is just a pity that the same corrupt economic systems have enslaved us all, so we are compelled by circumstance to blame the ‘other guy’ instead of actively seeking to change the system itself, and remove the powers responsible - an article for another time, methinks!

The Orientalist approach, in the guise of being academically sound, relied heavily on bias against Islam, considered to be inferior to Christianity, and the idea that Muslims (and other colonised peoples) were of lesser racial stock, a notion based upon the racist pseudo-scientific ideas of eugenics en vogue at the time, and the perceived ‘superiority’ of the white race which had been used historically to legitimise the use of African peoples as slaves.

Orientalists spared no effort in promoting the idea of a ‘West vs. Islam’ duality, cultivating and spreading the notion that a ‘Western’ way of life was under threat from ‘Eastern’ ideas, in particular from Islam.

If we learn anything from history, it should be to not repeat those actions which have been proven to be mistakes.

A society would be doomed if it fell to doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

However, from the hurtful comments which were received from our last article, it seems that unfortunately, these historical (and misplaced) tropes persist with regard to Islam and Muslims, despite the risks that the spread of Islamophobic ideas poses to the safety of Muslims living here, not just the unspoken undercurrents of being assumed inferior and the psychological impact this has, but also the risks of physical harm when racist violence flares up, such as we saw in the Province and across the UK during August this year.

As a person with a ‘stake’ in both camps - simultaneously ‘Irish’ and ‘Muslim’, identity politics is a lived reality for me.

I know instinctively why people can have a negative perception of Muslims when they are seen as ‘other’, and that is when it is driven simply by being uninformed, or from failing to examine and identify the bias in how Islam has been (mis)represented, even historically as we have seen.

What can also be found, is the active targeting of Islam, from those adamant to keep it as their enemy - I do not expect folks with this approach to change their tack anytime soon!

I urge all the readers of this piece to be more aware of Islamophobia, to critique their own perspectives with regard to Muslims, especially when the result is the vilification and demonisation of them as an ‘other’ - I would extend this even beyond Islam, as the same principle can and should be applied within the Northern Irish context.

If we sought to understand each other more as human beings and developed a healthy dialogue of mutual respect and acceptance of difference, nothing would be able to stop us from becoming a highly functioning, empowered and flourishing society.

Thank you for reading, and peace and safety until next time!