Chapter 4
The Twentieth Century
By the twentieth century attitudes to Islam had begun to turn more in its favour. Sir George Bernard Shaw, the cranky, intrepid campaigner for social progress and Socialist thinker, ‘the irresponsible clown GBS’,[155] demonstrated a positive and prescient approach to the future of British Islam. Born into an aristocratic Irish family in Dublin in 1856, he became one of the most influential playwrights and writers of the early twentieth century London literary, artistic and local political scene. He spent the first twenty years of his life in Ireland, but he felt that he was ‘a foreigner in every other country’. His genealogical line descended from firmly Protestant stock. So as a committed teetotaler and fully bearded, he was already in shape to be a good Muslim; he believed in fresh air, sensible woolen clothes, cycling and moral probity, but his arrogance and self regard were not Islamic traits. And as the author of the stage play ‘Pygmalion’ that was turned into the musical ‘My Fair Lady’, his influence on British culture was stratospheric. He made a very strong declaration, in an interview conducted in Mombasa, in favour of Prophet Muhammad that has remained a rallying point in British – Islamic relations until today:
I have always held the religion of Muhammad in high estimation because of its wonderful vitality. It is the only religion which appears to me to possess that assimilating capability to the changing phase of existence which can make itself appeal to every age. The world must doubtless attach high value to the predictions of great men like me. I have prophesied about the faith of Muhammad that it would be acceptable to the Europe of to-morrow as it is beginning to be acceptable to the Europe of to-day. The medieval ecclesiastics, either through ignorance or bigotry, painted Muhammadanism in the darkest colours. They were in fact trained both to hate the man Muhammad and his religion. To them Muhammad was Anti-Christ. I have studied him — the wonderful man, and in my opinion far from being an Anti-Christ he must be called the Saviour of Humanity. I believe that if a man like him were to assume the dictatorship of the modern world he would succeed in solving its problems in a way that would bring it the much-needed peace and happiness. But to proceed, it was in the 19th century that honest thinkers like Carlyle, Goethe and Gibbon perceived intrinsic worth in the religion of Muhammad, and thus there was some change for the better in the European attitude towards Islam. But the Europe of the present century is far advanced. It is beginning to be enamoured of the creed of Muhammad.[156]
He also continued in the same interview to say that: “I also very much admire the forcible and striking diction of the Quoran. What elegant grace and beauty characterises that passage which depicts the dreadful scene of the doomsday field, …”[157] His interviewer confirmed that Shaw had previously expressed the sentiment that: “The future religion of the educated cultured, and enlightened people will be Islam” and continued, “I would like to speak to you about the profound philosophy and psychological truths that the Quoran expounds, so that a gifted and erudite savant of your parts and genius, perfectly familiar with the tastes and mental tendencies of the civilised world can present them to it in an effective and desirable manner.”[158]
Bernard Shaw’s attitude to morality, or at least middle class morality, can be gauged from his play ‘Pygmalion’, in which Eliza Dolittle, the daughter of dustman Alfred P Dolittle is taken on by the English language Professor, Henry Higgins to transform her from a street flower seller into ‘a lady in a flower shop’ or ‘a duchess at an ambassador's garden party’. The father of the flower girl soon attends at Professor Higgins’ house at 27A Wimpole Street and, despite some prevarication by Higgins and his friend Colonel Pickering, declaims the immortal lines: “I'm willing to tell you. I'm wanting to tell you. I'm waiting to tell you.”
The purpose of the dustman’s visit is to offer to hand over his daughter to the famous linguist in return for payment:
DOOLITTLE. …I can see you're one of the straight sort, Governor. Well, what's a five pound note to you? And what's Eliza to me? [He returns to his chair and sits down judicially].
PICKERING. I think you ought to know, Doolittle, that Mr. Higgins's intentions are entirely honorable.
DOOLITTLE. Course they are, Governor. If I thought they wasn't, I'd ask fifty.
HIGGINS [revolted] Do you mean to say, you callous rascal, that you would sell your daughter for 50 pounds?
DOOLITTLE. Not in a general way I wouldn't; but to oblige a gentleman like you I'd do a good deal, I do assure you.
PICKERING. Have you no morals, man?
DOOLITTLE [unabashed] Can't afford them, Governor. Neither could you if you was as poor as me. Not that I mean any harm, you know. But if Liza is going to have a bit out of this, why not me too?
HIGGINS [troubled] I don't know what to do, Pickering. There can be no question that as a matter of morals it's a positive crime to give this chap a farthing. And yet I feel a sort of rough justice in his claim.
DOOLITTLE. That's it, Governor. That's all I say. A father's heart, as it were.
PICKERING. Well, I know the feeling; but really it seems hardly right—
This is the point at which Shaw explains his concept of the ‘deserving’ poor, those who are entitled to receive charity, and the ‘undeserving’ poor who can claim and receive nothing…
DOOLITTLE. Don't say that, Governor. Don't look at it that way. What am I, Governors both? I ask you, what am I? I'm one of the undeserving poor: that's what I am. Think of what that means to a man. It means that he's up agen middle class morality all the time. If there's anything going, and I put in for a bit of it, it's always the same story: "You're undeserving; so you can't have it." But my needs is as great as the most deserving widow's that ever got money out of six different charities in one week for the death of the same husband. I don't need less than a deserving man: I need more. I don't eat less hearty than him; and I drink a lot more. What is middle class morality? Just an excuse for never giving me anything. Therefore, I ask you, as two gentlemen, not to play that game on me. I'm playing straight with you. I ain't pretending to be deserving. I'm undeserving; and I mean to go on being undeserving. I like it; and that's the truth. Will you take advantage of a man's nature to do him out of the price of his own daughter what he's brought up and fed and clothed by the sweat of his brow until she's growed big enough to be interesting to you two gentlemen? Is five pounds unreasonable? I put it to you; and I leave it to you.
So Higgins agrees to take on the flower girl as a pupil upon payment of a five pound note, but the moral complications of the arrangement, with a young woman living under his auspices, soon arise, as the song in the musical has it:
Let a woman in your life, and you're up against a wall,
make a plan and you will find,
that she has something else in mind,
and so rather than do either you do something else
that neither likes at all. You want to talk of Keats and Milton,
she only wants to talk of love,
You go to see a play or ballet, and spend it searching
for her glove, Let a woman in your life
and you invite eternal strife… [159]
The original text of the play declares that if the bachelor, Higgins, lets a woman make friends with him: “she becomes jealous, exacting, suspicious, and a damned nuisance.” But he finds that as soon as he allows himself in turn to make friends with a woman, he becomes: “selfish and tyrannical. Women upset everything. When you let them into your life, you find that the woman is driving at one thing and you're driving at another.”[160]
Later on when Alfred Dolittle becomes the beneficiary of a Wannafella inheritance that only involves giving the occasional lecture, his stance becomes that of conformity to middle class morality: now he says:
DOOLITTLE. It ain't the lecturing I mind. I'll lecture them blue in the face, I will, and not turn a hair. It's making a gentleman of me that I object to. Who asked him to make a gentleman of me? I was happy. I was free. I touched pretty nigh everybody for money when I wanted it, same as I touched you, Henry Higgins. Now I am worrited; tied neck and heels; and everybody touches me for money. It's a fine thing for you, says my solicitor. Is it? says I. You mean it's a good thing for you, I says. When I was a poor man and had a solicitor once when they found a pram in the dust cart, he got me off, and got shut of me and got me shut of him as quick as he could. Same with the doctors: used to shove me out of the hospital before I could hardly stand on my legs, and nothing to pay. Now they finds out that I'm not a healthy man and can't live unless they looks after me twice a day. In the house I'm not let do a hand's turn for myself: somebody else must do it and touch me for it. A year ago I hadn't a relative in the world except two or three that wouldn't speak to me. Now I've fifty, and not a decent week's wages among the lot of them. I have to live for others and not for myself: that's middle class morality.
But the prospect of giving up his new found wealth and middle class status is too difficult to contemplate, so he explains his predicament, whilst Higgins’s mother tries to placate him::
MRS. HIGGINS. But, my dear Mr. Doolittle, you need not suffer all this if you are really in earnest. Nobody can force you to accept this bequest. You can repudiate it. Isn't that so, Colonel Pickering?
PICKERING. I believe so.
DOOLITTLE [softening his manner in deference to her sex] That's the tragedy of it, ma'am. It's easy to say chuck it; but I haven't the nerve. Which one of us has? We're all intimidated. Intimidated, ma'am: that's what we are. What is there for me if I chuck it but the workhouse in my old age? I have to dye my hair already to keep my job as a dustman. If I was one of the deserving poor, and had put by a bit, I could chuck it; but then why should I, acause the deserving poor might as well be millionaires for all the happiness they ever has. They don't know what happiness is. But I, as one of the undeserving poor, have nothing between me and the pauper's uniform but this here blasted three thousand a year that shoves me into the middle class. (Excuse the expression, ma'am: you'd use it yourself if you had my provocation). They've got you every way you turn: it's a choice between the Skilly of the workhouse and the Char Bydis of the middle class; and I haven't the nerve for the workhouse. Intimidated: that's what I am. Broke. Bought up. Happier men than me will call for my dust, and touch me for their tip; and I'll look on helpless, and envy them. And that's what your son has brought me to. [He is overcome by emotion].
The great moralist, Shaw, had a keen understanding of the effects of money on morality and the ironies of different social positions, such as the Higgins’s, the Eynsford Hills’, the Dolittle’s and the Pickering’s, where, like in Islam, rich and poor each have their proper station, especially in Edwardian England where the divide between rich and poor was quite marked and where it was difficult to rise between classes of society, except perhaps by marriage or extra – marital relationships.
Sufism began to be a preoccupation of writers in the early twentieth century, and an interest in dervishes and their Sufi whirling dances developed. These remain customary dances performed in a worshipping ritual or dance through which path dervishes try to reach a kind of nirvana, or fount of excellence, where all earthly cares have departed and the spiritual world has been achieved. Among followers of the thirteenth century Jalal-ad Din Mohammad Rumi,[161] the mysterious Iranian poet and spiritual founder of Sufism, was Arthur Arberry. Born in Portsmouth on 12 May 1905, he became Professor of Classical Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. His translation of the Holy Qu’ran, ‘The Koran Interpreted’, was respected from a non Muslim author. Arberry caught quite well the cadences and rhythms of the Quran and no doubt it was a competent and professional translation or ‘interpretation.’
But, of course, his task was complicated because of the human factor which becomes more difficult when it is realised that, firstly, Arabic words often have more than one meaning, secondly, the grammar of Arabic is sophisticated with extensive conjugations, where, for example, plurals are more abundant depending on the number involved whether one, a couple, two or three or more, thirdly, the vocabulary is extremely rich, and because the uses of words have changed between the original, Classic Arabic and the modern, and lastly because the original meaning of the Quranic verse may not be evident to non-native speakers due to cultural, contextual, historical, religious and other undefined reasons. It is even the case that some words and fragments in the holy text like ‘Alif Lam Mim’ (الم) and Ha Mim (حم)[162] are unclear and not even fully understood by the Arabic reader.
The conflict arises also between different translations of the Arabic text of the received word of God, where, to take the well known and somewhat contentious example, the word ‘wadarabu’ (وَأضْرِبُو) ‘and beat, chastise or flog /slap/hit/touch them’ has been variously translated:
‘But those [wives] from whom you fear arrogance [first] advise them; [then if they persist], forsake them in bed; and [finally], strike them. But if they obey you [once more], seek no means against them. Indeed, Allah is ever Exalted and Grand;’—
—translated by Abdullah Yusuf Ali.
Yet Pickthall has rendered this verse as:
‘As for those from whom ye fear rebellion. admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them . Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them. Lo! Allah is ever High Exalted Great,’
—translated by Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall.[163]
In a Shi’a version, it is unequivocally ‘beat’:
‘As to those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them and leave them alone in the sleeping-places and beat them; then if they obey you, do not seek a way against them; surely Allah is High. Great.’ —
—translation of M H Shebir, Ansariyan Publications Qum: Iran [164]
One or two commentators have suggested that the word does not mean beat them but suggests only verbal admonishment or separate, and ‘beat’ can mean ‘win’ in English, of course. As the Arabic word is in the imperative, it inclines towards the beater himself rather than the victim of beating, and yet Pickthall never claimed to translate the work exactly, but rather to provide an exegesis.
Translation increasingly means a view of translating, not as a technical exercise as such, but as a process that finds a way of expressing the texts in one’s own voice, and thereby unavoidably including a political and ideological dimension into the writing which colours it, informs it and ultimately influences the reader to whatever purpose the translator may have.[165]
George Sale’s 1734 translation of the Qur’an meant translating the Qur’an became an attempt to convert its readers away from Islam and towards Protestantism. And the biographer, Davenport reassures readers of his ‘A Sketch of the Life of George Sale’ in the same edition of Sale’s ‘The Koran’, that Sale never equated Islam on a par with Christianity.[166] With the subtle use of words like ‘pretext’, Sale accuses the Prophet of aggrandising his power by the subterfuge of blaming it on “the treachery he had met with among the Jewish and idolatrous Arabs…”[167] Yet Prophet Muhammad made peace treaties and alliances with opposing tribes such as the Jewish tribes and the Quraish in order to spread his influence, and not to territorialise.
Sale translates paradise in Islam as a place where the residents will need ‘’neither to ease themselves nor even blow their noses for all superfluities will be discharged and carried off by perspiration, or a sweat as odoriferous as musk.’’ Another rendition from the report of ibn Hibbaan explains: "They relieve themselves by perspiring through their skins, and its fragrance will be that of musk, and all stomachs will have become lean." Such bodily functions are mentioned in the Qu’ran, but rather paradise is a mysterious metaphor of an eternal garden where fruits and sustaining drinks will be in abundance, where rivers flow beneath cooling, shady trees, and chaste maidens are on hand to please every desire.[168]
The contention that Prophet Muhammad was somehow dubious in authenticity is challenged by W Montgomery Watt who argues that his genuineness is undoubted and that the burden of proof is on those who make such accusations to uphold them. These accusations appear on a regular basis throughout the corpus and it is not until Montgomery Watt begins to bring rationality into the argument that a modern, even handed approach to Islam appears:
His readiness to undergo persecution for his beliefs, the high moral character of the men who believed in him and looked up to him as a leader, and the greatness of his ultimate achievement - all argue his fundamental integrity. To suppose Muhammad an impostor raises more problems that it solves. Moreover, none of the great figures of history is so poorly appreciated in the West as Muhammad.... Thus, not merely must we credit Muhammad with essential honesty and integrity of purpose, if we are to understand him at all; if we are to correct the errors we have inherited from the past, we must not forget the conclusive proof is a much stricter requirement than a show of plausibility, and in a matter such as this only to be attained with difficulty.
‘A Short History of the World’, by H G Wells, first published in 1920, promised to be an edited form of world history for the middle brow reader. In the Chapter headed 'Muhammad and Islam', Wells writes some critical remarks about Prophet Muhammad, describing him as a man of ‘’very considerable vanity, greed, cunning, self-deception and quite sincere religious passion’’. Although he writes that Islam remains an ‘’empowering and inspirational religion’’, he engages in sweeping inaccuracies about the faith. Wells's view of the Qur'an was no less contentious. For him it was '’unworthy of its alleged Divine authorship'’. This led to protests against the book in August 1938 by a group of South Asian Muslims in the East End of London.[169] For a writer of his foresight and intellect, having predicted in 1930 that men would walk with giant strides on the moon,[170] it is surprising that he did not follow a similar line to Shaw, who was his superior.
With the discovery of a substance like helium, called Cavorite, the narrator of his story, ‘The First Men in the Moon’ - a playwright, and a zany inventor - are able to travel in a ball like capsule to the moon, where they discover ample supplies of gold. Wells, who was trained scientifically, is able to tell a convincing story of a craft landing on the moon, describing the effects of weightlessness in the cabin and of the low gravity on movement on the moon’s surface. Presciently, his astronauts took great leaps of thirty or more feet. He imagines its extreme coldness and its lengthy days and nights. He describes the desolate nature of the moon’s surface with its crevices and hills, its ridges and its vast craters.
However, the discovery of a form of life, the Selenites, in “their blue-lit caverns” with “their helmet faces, their gigantic and wonderful machines”[171] proves to be an imaginative leap unsubstantiated by Neil Armstrong and Buz Aldrin whose mission to be ‘One small step for [a] man, one giant step for mankind’ was completed by Apollo 11 on December 23, 1968. Without much velocity to take off from the moon, they succeed in leaving the thin atmosphere of its surface and returning to earth safely with their store of gold. However, the effects upon the narrator’s mind from close contact with the moon did not go unnoticed by the writer: ‘’I tell it here simply to show how one’s isolation and departure from this planet touched not only the functions and feeling of every organ of the body, but indeed also the very fabric of the mind,,,’’[172]
Terrorism was not unknown as early as the end of the nineteenth century. It Is not only Muslim fundamentalists, Irish Sein Fein terrorists or home grown right wing anarchists and Chechen rebels who bomb and maim innocent civilians and bystanders. In Joseph Conrad’s ‘The Secret Agent’ Russian terrorism was being kept under control by the police department of the 1900s. Mr Verloc, married to Winnie, and an innocent seeming ‘Private’ shopkeeper is in league with an undisclosed foreign embassy which, from hints given and names supplied in the text – Mr Vladimir and “Comrade Alexander Ossipon, special delegate of the more or less mysterious Red Committee” – could only have been that of Russia. Meeting them clandestinely, he arranges for a bomb plot to be carried out at the Greenwich Observatory – the very centre of the Western hemisphere. The embassy man confirms what action is required: ‘’’what is desired,” said the man of papers, “is the occurrence of something definite which should stimulate their vigilance.”’
When one of the anarchists is attempting to blow up the Observatory and knock the bourgeoisie over, Ossipon is speculating with Vladimir about what human beings want. Then he leans back in his chair, and one cannot see him because of the light, but he announces, “Mankind does not know what it wants.” This confusion about wants is essential to Conrad’s outlook on life.
The real reasons for their anarchic activities are a dislike and a distrust of capitalism, as Vladimir’s intentions are explained: “He saw Capitalism doomed in its cradle, born with the poison of the principle of competition in its system. The great capitalists devouring the little capitalists, concentrating the power and the tools of production in great masses, perfecting industrial processes.”[173] It is only through the activities of the vigilant police department, the precursor of today’s Scotland Yard, that the anarchists’ activities are brought to light, and the bomb which claims the life of an unfortunate dupe who is given the task of carrying it to the Observatory in Greenwich Park, is discovered. But when Verloc is dumped by his Russian masters, because of the failure of the plot, revenge is his only ambition before he serves his two year prison sentence for the crime. This is forestalled by his murder by Winnie who makes off with Ossipon, only to be cheated out of Verloc’s money, and to be deserted by the Russian spy who jumps from a moving train. The story ends in her suicide by flinging herself from the cross-channel ferry, providing a classic Conradian mystery of intrigue, anarchy and murder.
Orientalism remains a deep seated and pervasive element in the corpus. From Byron’s interest in the Orient and his resultant pseudo-orientalism to E M Forster’s rites of passage novel, ‘A Passage to India’,[174] there is an obsession with the mysterious East and also a taint of racism. In Forster’s novel, Mrs Alice Quested’s rejection of, and supposed sexual abuse by Dr Aziz, and his subsequent remission from guilt by her own inability to make a sworn statement in court, and the English community in India’s continued belief, despite the exoneration by the court, in Alice’s rather than Dr Aziz’s innocence, could be seen as little less than class and race intolerance spawned by a century or more of misunderstanding, hatred and mutual suspicion.
After centuries of disabuse and disparagement, it is refreshing to find that authors could rank Prophet Muhammad in the very top position as statesman and leader. Many Muslims would argue that Prophet Muhammad held that position indubitably in their hearts and minds, and the faithful, believers and those whose faith was slight, had nevertheless always ranked their spiritual leader in the top position of all. It was the ‘’combination of secular and religious’’ import that persuaded Michael Hart in his book listing the top one hundred influential leaders to choose Muhammad as the number one in ranking:[175]
My choice of Muhammad to lead the list of the world’s most influential persons may surprise some readers and may be questioned by others, but he was the only man in history who was supremely successful on both the secular and religious level. ...It is probable that the relative influence of Muhammad on Islam has been larger than the combined influence of Jesus Christ and St. Paul on Christianity. ...It is this unparalleled combination of secular and religious influence which I feel entitles Muhammad to be considered the most inf luential single figure in human history.
I now take a look at modern representations of Muslims in the diaspora and try to relate Muslim issues in these novels to the believers in the ‘Ummah’. Set in Kabul and San Francisco, ‘The Kite Runner’ by Khaled Hosseini[176] recounts the story of Amir, a boy of twelve years, and his friend, Hassan, both of whose passion is climbing tress and flying kites, like most boys of that age. The novel gives us an insight into the history of the Pushtun and the Hazara people of Afghanistan. After the fall of the monarchy, life in Kabul continues at its own pace with the economic reforms of the Kamal era, and the boys carry on with their glorious, vibrant, soaring and diving, twisting and turning kite flying. It explores the guilt and pain of parenthood, while Amir’s father is forced to flee with his family to America upon the invasion of the Russians. Once in the United States, Amir spends a lot of time at a local car boot sale where he meets and then later marries Soraya in an Islamic ceremony. By 1992 to 1996 the Northern Alliance had overtaken Kabul and Amir travels to Pakistan to get a clearer picture of what is happening at home. ‘’When the Taliban rolled in and kicked the Alliance out of Kabul, I actually danced on that street’’ his character, Rahim Khan says. Amir affects a reunion with his childhood friend, Hassan who had removed to Hazarajat. They travel together by car to Kabul to take up life there again. Hassan is joined by his mother after a long search for him, and dies four years later; Amir seeks redemption, the only thing he cannot find after a life’s search.
The novelist has been criticised for portraying the Taliban as evil,[177] citing for example, Assef as a rapist, Nazim’s drug taking and sadism, and the portrait of him as an executioner.[178] To seek to make a connection between the authorial voice and his characters is often difficult, even though it is often made. A moving and bewildering story of Muslim life, it engages with the intricacies of Afghan family life and never relaxes its emotional grip on the reader.
Monica Ali's novel ‘Brick Lane’ was published in 2003 and it achieved immediate literary success as a seemingly representative novel of the Bangladeshi community resident in Whitechapel, London, that opens up ways to discuss a new, if problematic, inclusion of Bangladeshi women in the international world. On the publication of the novel, the Greater Sylhet Development and Welfare Council wrote an 18 page letter to Monica Ali protesting against its portrayal of their community. In 2006, filming of the novel on Brick Lane itself caused further disturbances: about 100 protesters marched through the streets, and the film crew eventually pulled out to produce the final scenes of the film in another location. Being excluded from the discussions around a novel, that is to all intents and purposes engaged with their culture and their background, was for them provocative. While there is a great deal of literary merit in Monica Ali’s account of Nazneen, trapped in a forced marriage and her lover, Karim, a fiery Muslim who wants to radicalise the local community, the plot entails promiscuity, so it was not likely to appeal to the deeply conservative Bangladeshi community.
‘In the Kitchen’, Monica Ali’s next novel, is set among immigrant workers in a hotel restaurant. It features the basement kitchen in central London, where Gabriel Lightfoot, the main character, is the executive chef, and a former mill town in Yorkshire, where Gabriel’s dying father, Ted, had worked all his life.[179] Ted has strong views on everything – what it means to be British - he suggests in a discussion with a New Labour politician, one of the backers of the restaurant project, that Britishness has itself been commoditised. The Labour politician remarks, "We talk about the multicultural model, but it's really nothing more than laissez-faire. Britishness is or has become essentially about a neutral, value-free identity.’’ On economics and the balance of payments, Ted rants
When we were the workshop of the world we sold to everywhere and we’d a healthy surplus, you see. But we’ve a huge deficit now because all as we can do is shop. We’re not a trading nation, we’re a nation of consumers, that’s all. [180]
Gabriel is dissatisfied with his progress in life, dislikes change, and wants a return to former values. His greatest dislike is of immigrants, and he mistreats his restaurant w