Who Really Speaks for Islam?

The following article is the response I wrote on behalf of FOSIS to the attacks from Lucy James of the Quilliam Foundation (http://www.guardian.co.uk/free-d/power-of-a-handshake). Unfortunately, the ptb (powers that be) decided not to publish this response... God bless 'em...

WHO REALLY SPEAKS FOR ISLAM?

This is a critical question to ask in a time when the international landscape has been changed, thanks to the atrocious acts of terror committed by a handful of criminals under the banner of Islam. In the continuing efforts to counter terrorism, the government and the public need to know who they can trust, who they should be monitoring, and who are the charlatans making money out of the public’s fears, and the Muslim community’s guilt.

The Quilliam Foundation (QF) embody the charlatans. An observant reader will notice the theme that runs throughout their discourse: there are good, moderate, ‘traditional’ Muslims, and there are bad, extreme, dangerous ‘modernist’ Muslims, sometimes blanketed under the term ‘salafi’ or ‘islamist’. This false ideology seems to have become doctrine since the publication of Ed Hussain’s “The Islamist”. The pitiful shame is that £1,000,000 of the taxpayers’ money is going into spreading this myth.

The shocking truth is that this myth makes identifying the real criminals more difficult for the authorities, because matters of faith or culture-based social conservativism (such as a man shaking a woman’s hand) are confused with matters of criminality. The truth is that no one grouping of British Muslims produces terrorists – there are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Muslims in every category, a tiny minority of whom will be recruited to terrorism – unless Britain can unite to stop it.

When I was a student at the University of Manchester like Lucy James of the QF, I too was rather worried about the low voter turn out to Students’ Union elections. Despite running a harder, better campaign than my opponent for the position of Communications Officer in 2006, apparently I was not religious enough for the I-Soc to lend me their support, and as a result of student apathy, I lost the election.

Why would Manchester University Isoc not support an active member of FOSIS, the national umbrella body for Isocs, in a student union election?
For the one year I was at Manchester running in the elections, the Isoc happened to be run by apolitical traditionalists, and literalists, who seemed to care more for the length of one’s beard than the strength of one’s abilities. Were they dangerous ‘Islamists’? No. Would they shake a woman’s hand? No. Were the Isocs that preceded and followed them of the same school of thought, ideology, madhab, or political stance? No.

British Muslim students are more diverse than any other student religious grouping, based on their ethnicity, backgrounds, cultures of origin, schools of thought, nationalities, and political views. The leadership of each campus Isoc expresses that naturally diversity and changes every couple of years, and the heads of each of these Isocs elects the FOSIS national executive annually. FOSIS aims to respect that diversity, and represent their common interests. So it’s no surprise that the current FOSIS executive is made of individuals from every major school of Sunni Islamic thought.

Why is this important? Because the moment I speak out against the QF’s dangerous over-simplification of who the good and bad Muslims are, their only response will be to accuse FOSIS of allegiance to the bad, ‘modernist’ version of Islam. Perhaps they believe their own lies.

The only person who ever really spoke for Islam was the blessed Prophet Muhammad. The rest of us just have opinions – some of them better informed than others.