Bradford's Burning
Many in the older generation tell me that the youngsters are "too British, too much full of rights ... Bloody fools ... In Pakistan the police would kill them on sight."  Yasmin Alibhai-Brown reflects on the rioting by south Asian Muslims in this English town.

"Cultural" Muslims on the rampage in England.  What an advert for Islam!

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Asians set upon an English youth in Bradford.  Dawah in action?

I have to confess that I didn't think Bradford would follow Oldham and Burnley in the bonfires of lunacies sweeping through towns of Northern England this sticky summer. But it has, and once again this city has become the symbol of ethnic tensions, brutal racism, failed integration and miserably inadequate inner-city policies.

Hundreds of young Muslim men, maddened (sometimes said as though this was the only reason) by the growing presence of the National Front and British National Party, took to the streets and were met by white racist thugs looking for a bloody good fight. In the end, the mobs turned against the police. The usual slogans and explanations – deprivation, racism, Islamaphobia, the far right – are already in circulation. Repair kits – regeneration, training, additional resources, possibly a report by a major commission – will follow soon. Water canons are threatened by tough man David Blunkett – but hush now, tread a little gently before rushing on.

Things are more complicated than we think and the lives of British Muslims are not represented by these noisy, obstreperous men who would never be allowed near any daughter of mine. Most Asian men, even young hot-head Muslims, do not act this destructively even if they are victims of deprivation, racism and neo-Nazism. If anything Asian men have found it difficult to gain respect in this society because they are seen as weaklings.

On Sunday I was in Olympia in west London with 5,000 or more Muslims from my Shia Ismaili community, for an annual celebration that always reflects both evolution and an attachment to some timeless truths. Hundreds of young male volunteers were there to help the old and sick, and hassled parents.

I stopped the car to drop off my infirm mother, and three men – with earrings, tattoos and cropped hair – plus tasbis (rosaries) on their wrists rushed to get her on to a wheelchair. One got her some lunch and another escorted her to the toilets – all this while I struggled to find a parking space. Ten per cent of the crowd was white, partners of the men and women in the community. They too were welcomed, and were sitting on the floor, eating biriyani, speaking our languages, dancing our traditional stick dances. We now have new arrivals joining our community – exiles from Afghanistan. They are in the process of being accepted and changing themselves. Stalls were selling books from Enid Blyton to Edward Said – and encouraging volunteers for charity projects. I am often very critical of my community but this was a reminder that to be a Muslim is not to be forever at war with the world and oneself.

Oldham, Burnley and Bradford are in a state of flux and a little too complicated for the simplifying minds of most journalists, politicians and traditional "community leaders", all of whom are as responsible as the evil racist extremists for the chaos we now find in these areas. I am referring both to internal and external chaos, and the ways in which both affect the brown and white inhabitants who are too readily aroused.

Many of the young Muslim men do not know who they are. Abused as "Pakis" all their lives, their parents and others have driven them to embrace a Pakistani identity that is a negation of their Britishness. Many in the older generation tell me that the youngsters are "too British, too much full of rights ... Bloody fools ... In Pakistan the police would kill them on sight."

If you talk to white locals, the same confusions about identity and self-esteem emerge. They hate it that their Brontë-land has become a Balti-land, even though most of them have never even watched a televised version of Jane Eyre and could not survive a week without a curry.

Both groups feel like aliens in the knowledge economy, which is passing them by, and in a society where you are what you own. Pimping and drugs offer prospects of control and money, which is why so many of these white and Asian rioters are involved in such activities. Police racism and violence provoke understandable hostility but some of the anti-police anger stems from irritation that the law intervenes in their business activities.

Asian thugs also hate Bradford police taking a hard line on forced marriages. A slight misunderstanding or absurd piece of gossip sweeps up rage like a vortex. Local whites in Oldham, for example, are convinced that a £1m local mosque, which was actually funded by the Muslim communities, was paid for by the local council; and in Bradford the series of eruptions is blamed on Barnie Choudhury, of Radio 4's Today programme, who "hates Muslims because he is a Hindu". You can see how this roaming restlessness seeks out scapegoats or victims, or gets pulled into right-wing politics even when material conditions have been improved. Manningham, when I was there during the general election campaign, seemed a lighter, happier and less mangy place than before. It still exploded.

Recent history feeds into these events, too, and most commentators fail to make these connections. In 1988, the Satanic Verses was set alight in the city, burning an image into the national psyche which, sadly, will never be forgotten or forgiven. As a section editor for New Statesman and Society (now New Statesman) I had tried in vain to persuade the editor to let me go to the city in the weeks before the book-burning, because I knew of the growing fury and hopelessness that had engulfed Muslims in Yorkshire. They felt Salman Rushdie had deliberately set out to insult their faith. The story was not of any interest I was told. For the metropolitan élite, excitable brown chaps who had read the Koran but not Proust were of no consequence. Then the book was burnt and Bradford made history. The young men who are burning cars today remember this lesson well. People in power ignore you until you make them fearful. White voters who supported the BNP think the same.

Local and national politicians, the Commission for Racial Equality, churches and mosques will now have to try harder to bring decency and peace and aspiration back into these areas (which are full of decent, hopeful and peaceful citizens of all colours), but they will only be able to accomplish these objectives if they ruthlessly examine their own failures and culpability, and if they stop trying to placate vested interests and work towards a greater good.

Text source:  The Independent 10 July 2001