Rahid's Post

Commenter Rahid has been kind enough to respond to a request of mine for a post about "being a Muslim in London". Here it is-

Heh, man you have no idea :)
What you'd be getting from me IF i venture to label myself Muslim is a dada-esque slacker style Muslim point of view and that's really too wooly and abstract to have any grounds for scripture based proposals. I go to mosque maybe once or twice a year if that and then only to please my dad. The following ain't anything in particular, I'm just rambling...

First off, my impression is that one of your (and the general tabloid media's) main problems is that you think a 'Muslim Scholar' is someone that says "hey look at me, I'm a Muslim scholar" and then just because we are inately lazy and it's easier than wondering if this guy is for real the media (loving a good sound bite) go on to nod at the things this dick says and goes "fuck! see that guy with the wiggy name, yeah him, look at that i told you they were extreme"

My understanding is that unlike the familiar Christian religion there is no hard and fast central authority like the Pope (not that i agree that's a wholly a good thing either, as how many shadowy vatican story have we heard over the years). Anyway given these lack of strictures there is at the most a "committee", a very loose confederation of Imams if you will (think Amateur Star Trek) or whatever, that issue guidelines rather than rules, as there's no need after all the rules are in the book, and there's no higher 3-dimensional-tangible-made out-of-atoms thing than The Book for Pete's sake you can't go changing that, Hence the You-aint-read-the-Koran-unless-you've-read-it-in-the-original-Arabic (you see the S.T. allusion again?). The problem comes when some politico rises up thru the ranks and no one questions him as he has the defacto top interpretation of the book than anyone else purely because everyone in the local community if all full of acceptance that what ever happens is what is deemed (ie Allah's will etc).

I'm only deemed Muslim because my dad is; as in, he handed out the After-Eight-Mint-of-Religiosity to my Bro and myself over a period of years way back in our youth and it never really took; we were too busy watching Starsky & Hutch and transcribing lyrics from Dean Friedman and various prog rock albums. My dad is a gentle old soul and i get the impression that everyone out there in the wider Indo/Pak community across London knows him. He does not kick up a fuss. He does the Indian equiv' of sucking his teeth whenever he happens upon something that bruises his Victorian sensibilities.

The point is that if most of the good Muslims are like my dad, and i tend to think they are (and i tend to think i'm right) they are just not sociatily (sp?) equipped to get up on a soapbox and protest that they are being mis-rep'd. As that's far too a material endeavour - they are religious to the point of thinking God (i'll use the big G this time) will straighten everything out and there's no need to get overly stressed about it. I'm inclined to think this may be why you only hear from the care-in-the-community-Muslims. When all said and done it looks like after all this time the champs of stiff upper lipness have been the trad c-of-e Muslims all along.