Introduction
The ‘Azan’, the call to prayer, invites worshippers in London to the mosque at Brick Lane and Regent’s Park, at Finsbury Park and Willesden, at Walthamstow Central and Cricklewood, and the faithful troop in for the evening prayers, cowering from the fog, rain and mist. Once inside, they settle into a calming and benign ritual that soothes their anxious spirits, and as they read the holy book in the English translation do they hesitate to recall how their religion may have been portrayed through the pages of British and specifically, English literature, it may be asked. The books and newspapers, television, the internet, and blogosphere all routinely portray the glorious religion of Islam and Muslims as a kind of third column, 3.4 million in number yet a suspected minority in the maelstrom of black, ethnic and third world immigrant population of London.
How has the situation come to pass where a mainstream journalist, Melanie Phillips, herself a member of a religious minority, castigates the arrivals to the city as constituting a ‘Londonistan’, and Phillip Hollobone, a prominent Member of Parliament, calls the wearing of an Islamic dress, the burqa, pejoratively as “going round wearing a paper bag over your head”, claiming that it was “offensive” for women to restrict others from making facial contact with them, refusing to meet them at his political office, and going so far as to introduce a Private Members Bill named the ‘Face Covering (Regulations) Bill’.
Islam and Muslims remain a religion and a group of religious believers not bearing an unique ethnicity like Jewish people who, numbering 13.4 million people worldwide, are an ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelis or Hebrews of the ancient Near East. Judaism is a monotheistic, Abrahamic and fatalistic faith originating in the ‘Tanakah’ or Hebrew bible. But for Islam it is a fact that Somalis, Saudis, Ethiopians, people from Western China, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Holland and even Wales make up the conglomerate of people calling themselves ‘Muslims’, a word meaning submission: submission to the will of God.
Yet, was it ever thus, and does British literature furnish a different record of integration, amelioration and harmony? Does the record of the canonical literature present Islam in its true light as a glorious world religion, or does it denigrate and despise the teachings and tenets of the religion? Unfortunately, what we will observe is a litany of abuse and misinformation about the religion of Islam and the relations between the Christian West and the Islamic sphere. Christian writers such as Roger Bacon, Charles Doughty, Edward Pococke, Henry Maundrell and William Muir were hostile, superior and arrogant towards Islam, and it is not until we move into the modern era that we see a more positive and welcoming approach to Muslims and to their ideology.
As an author, I accept responsibility for charting a long and difficult relationship between the English literature on record since Bacon and Chaucer and the adherents of the faith throughout the same period. In the final analysis, if the book becomes a lexicon of anti-Muslim phobias, its general theme and content (not its authorial opinions that are hopefully balanced and objective) opposing any rapprochement with Islam, then I shall have failed in the endeavour, despite my good efforts to include ephemera, verses, ballads, poetry and any realia that might help the pro-Islam cause. I hope it will show profound scholarship and the most meticulous care to present in good light research on the topic, otherwise it can only remain as a simple pamphlet of genuine and kindly pro Islamic work, for I can only be pro Muslim and not secularly uninvolved with the subject. Despite my care not to, I sincerely trust that it does not add to the weight of pro Christian message and proselytisation, rather than assist in a dialogue between Muslims and Christians. The present author does not wish to identify himself by default with any of the criticisms here recorded, and only sets them down as a matter of scholarly record in the hope that it will assist British Muslims to find their place in the complex discourse between East and West.
I find that I have needed to coin a number of words in this study such as ‘Muslimdom’ and ‘Islamistas’ rather than the dreadful secular terms ‘Islamic world’ and ‘Islamists’. I have not followed the convention of inserting the phrase Salalahu wa Salaam or SAW after each mention of the prophet’s name, since my reverence for the prophet is evident in every word that I write.