I AM WRITING THIS as the repercussions of President Trump's blanket ban on refugees and residents from several Muslim countries in the Middle East and Africa entering the USA are being felt across the world. The President says the ban is temporary and denies it is aimed at Muslims, and although it has been somewhat modified with a new Executive Order, since Trump also says it is intended to challenge Islamic terrorism and to 'keep America safe' the message is pretty clear to all and resonates with what he said many times on the campaign trail: It's all the 'Muslims' fault'!
The tragic consequences of this ban at a human level – families forced apart, loved ones stranded, the Syrian refugee programme suspended indefinitely – have yet to be counted, but they will be tragic for the thousands of individuals affected and desperate stories will continue to be told and amplified across the web and news channels. Yet again, 'Muslims' and 'tragic stories' will be linked and the negative narrative associated with the world's second largest religious group of 1.6 billion adherents, or 23 per cent of the world's population, will be compounded.
In the UK, this negative image (often portrayed and exaggerated by the media) is in spite of the UK's Muslim community being the most generous, most family focused, most self-sufficient and most proud of being British (Britain being seen as the most Muslim-friendly of many Western countries). So, those of us who are not Muslim but know and love Islam and seek to be good neighbours to all (just as Prophet Muhammad and Jesus Christ instructed) must work harder to challenge the negative narrative and promote the good. That's why this book and the life and example of Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari is so important and his resilience, in the face of hostility from all sides, is so impressive.
I have had the privilege of knowing and working alongside Dr Bari for the last twenty years, mainly in east London. I live in Stepney and he has worked and done most of his community work in Tower Hamlets. We have shared both the good and the not so good moments of this journey together. He is too young to talk of legacy, since that usually happens when people die, but Dr Bari's legacy is already clear to me; not only in the bricks and mortar of the outstanding London Muslim Centre and East London Mosque but, equally significantly, in the thousands of young people he has mentored, encouraged and supported on their own journey as British Muslims or Britons who happen to be Muslim. If these are not enough for a legacy, then there will be the thousands of families who have read and relied on his books on parenting and his blogs on youth identity, parenting and public life.
My vocation to revive the tradition of community organizing in the UK started properly in 1989, when I helped set up Citizens UK to be the home of community organizing. Initially, I organized in Bristol and managed to build a Citizens Alliance of twenty-seven institutions – churches, schools, voluntary associations, three Sikh and one Hindu Temple. Together we campaigned for better housing, more sensitive policing, business accountability, and general issues surrounding the 'common good'. In 1994, I was invited to take this model to east London and see if it was possible to organize across the four east London boroughs of Newham, Waltham Forest, Hackney and Tower Hamlets (twenty years later, The East London Citizens Organization [TELCO] now includes civil society groups from Redbridge and Barking and Dagenham, too).
In November 1996, leaders and members of forty-seven civil society groups across the four boroughs gathered at York Hall in Bethnal Green for the Founding Assembly of TELCO (now part of London Citizens with over 200 institutions in membership). More than 1,200 citizens packed the historic Hall and were encouraged and endorsed by the late Cardinal Hume, the BBC presenter and former Independent editor Andrew Marr, Sir Stephen O'Brien (of London First), local politicians and other religious leaders. The largest and most disciplined turnout was the delegation from the East London Mosque (ELM) in Whitechapel. Siraj Salekin from the ELM cochaired the Assembly, and made it clear that he was a proud East Ender and that we were all in this together, as did the diverse and youthful delegation from his Mosque community. This was the beginning of what has been a mutually beneficial relationship between what is now the London Muslim Centre, its neighbours in TELCO/London Citizens, and Dr Bari and myself. Citizens UK organizes around the broad and common interests of the member groups.
At the end of the 1990s, apart from promoting Islam and providing services for the growing body of worshippers, the self-interest of the East London Mosque was growth and expansion. Consequently, in 1998 TELCO and the mosque joined hands in an ambitious campaign to protect the plot of land adjacent to the building for mosque expansion against the alternative threat of expensive private flats for City workers. The story of this successful struggle will be told elsewhere, but the tactic we decided on was for the Christian clergy of TELCO to lead the campaign for the land and the ELM team to stand back but oversee developments and support large public actions to attract media and public attention. The outcome of this 'jihad' (in its true meaning, as 'struggle') was that the East London Mosque acquired the land in 1999 and HRH Prince Charles and HRH Prince Mohammed al-Faisal launched the fundraising for the London Muslim Centre in 2001, which was opened in 2004.
Dr Bari became Chair of the ELM in 2002, so much of this tremendous effort of both internal and external politics, negotiation and fundraising was led by him and his Committee, and their many willing volunteers. In 2003, Dr Bari was awarded the MBE for services to the community. This growth and commitment to service within the local community was extended for women in 2013, with the opening of the Maryam Centre.
On 6 July 2005, I and about 100 young people and staff from Norlington School for Boys in Leyton (an active member of TELCO) were standing with thousands of others in London's Trafalgar Square to hear the Chair of the International Olympic Committee announce that the city had won the privilege of hosting the 2012 Olympic Games. When, to everyone's surprise, the Chair announced that London had won, we cheered louder than most. We knew in 2004 that TELCO (including some of the students present) had struck a historic deal with the London Olympic Bid Committee to include a series of economic deals which would benefit east Londoners if London won! It was a day of celebration. The sun shone and all was well with the world.
Early on 7 July 2005, I went to the Citizens UK office in Whitechapel to meet the fifteen student interns that were training as student organizers during our Summer Academy training month. They were unusually late arriving, and a passer-by said there was a problem on the Tube. I then checked the news and saw that there had been an explosion at Kings Cross and another at nearby Aldgate. I tried to phone the students and realized that the mobile networks were either down or so busy there was no service. Fortunately, all of the students were unharmed, but London was not. Fifty-six people died and many others were injured as a result of four young men leaving bombs on London transport. This has come to be known as the 7/7 bombings, and though it did not match in devastation and deaths the horror of New York's terrible atrocity in September 2001, the consequences for the Muslim community and across the world have been dramatic.
Although TELCO and the London Muslim Centre immediately mobilized support and solidarity – by noon that day we had issued joint press statements and a major interfaith witness and walk by hundreds of our members to Aldgate Tube – by the following day the shock waves and implications of this act of mindless violence and terror had already set back community relations very significantly. In the longer term this led to the 'Prevent' anti-extremism programme, a major investment by the government in the surveillance powers of the State. Leading individuals and institutions of Islam came under an all pervasive spotlight, including the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), which was launched in 1997, as well as the East London Mosque and anyone connected to it.
Despite a hostile press and the growing power and presence of far-right street movements like the English Defence League (EDL) and British National Party (BNP), Dr Bari was persuaded to stand as the MCB's Secretary-General in 2006, and once elected served loyally and effectively in the post for four very tough and challenging years. His contribution to public life continued after this as a member of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG), which delivered one of the most glorious Olympics in history in London in July and August 2012. He describes the summer of 2012 as the world as it should be – London smiled, the sun shone and the rich diversity of London was celebrated and relished by the thousands