BIRMINGHAM // Located on the edge of a rundown council estate just off a main road that connects central Birmingham with its suburbs, Masjid Al Taqwa was previously home to a crack den and then a seedy pub before becoming a mosque.
Recently, on a bitter winter afternoon, six men sit in the building’s carpeted back room, quietly praying, reading the Quran or leaning against the radiators to keep warm until the mosque’s imam, 28-year-old Hassan Salim, arrives to lead prayers.
A ten-minute drive from Birmingham’s smart town centre, the Sparkbrook neighbourhood where Masjid Al Taqwa is located, is a world away from the iconic architecture and shiny shopping centres that define the high-profile regeneration of Britain’s second city.
A working class and overwhelmingly Muslim area, the busy streets are lined with £1 shops, Arab bakeries and Pakistani travel agents.
Since describing Birmingham as a “no-go area” for non-Muslims during a broadcast last month, Fox News pundit Steve Emerson has admitted to never having actually visited the city.
But here in Sparkbrook there are few who have not heard about his comments.
“I grew up around here and that is not the situation. Our neighbours are Catholics; we sent them a Christmas card and they send gifts to us on our religious holidays. They like us being here. This place used to be full of drug addicts and they don’t get their windows broken anymore,” said Imam Salim.
Mr Emerson’s comments have been both condemned and ridiculed on social media as well as in the mainstream British press, but Birmingham’s association with immigration — and especially immigration from the Muslim world — is well established.
The city is home to 37 different nationalities and Muslims make up more than 20 per cent of the population, compared to 12 per cent in London.
It is such statistics and the diversity they represent that is a source of pride for many “Brummies” — a widely-used term for Birmingham residents — not least the city’s Lord Mayor, Shafique Shah.
Mr Shah is the third Muslim mayor of Birmingham, a ceremonial position on the city council, and joins the city’s two Muslim MPs and seven Muslim councillors.
“For many years people have been coming to Birmingham to make a better life for themselves and their families,” he said. “My grandfather came here in 1937 with nothing. It is one of the things we are proud of here, that we have people from different backgrounds, faith or no faith, who live and work together.”
This is a widespread view and one that many — if not most — Britons adhere to. But it also ignores a fairly large elephant in the room: namely the hundreds of British Muslims who have travelled to Iraq or Syria to fight with ISIL. A Birmingham MP, Khalid Mahmoud, said this figure could be as high as 2,000, but the UK foreign office suggests it is closer to 500 — many of them impressionable, alienated young men who have been recruited online. These include Junaid Hussein, a Birmingham hacker, who is suspected of being a major figure within ISIL’s media operations.
Lord Mayor Shah says that singling out Birmingham is unfair, and points to the fact that mosques across the city condemned the recent Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, while local Muslim and Christian groups held interfaith rallies with hundreds in attendance.
Despite this, Mr Shah believes that in the current climate of austerity and high unemployment engagement with young Muslims should be a priority of Muslim community leaders. This is particularly important in Birmingham, he says, where as many as 35 per cent of the population is under the age of 25.
“When I talk to young Muslims, one of the messages I give is that our forefathers came here to make a better life and that in this country, great opportunities have been provided,” he said. “We have fantastic health care and education, and everyone is treated equally here. This is our country and we should be proud of that.”
This is a message that Imam Salim, himself a young Muslim, believes is best communicated in Birmingham’s mosques and one that he frequently focuses on in his sermons.
The imam says that young Muslims often ask him whether they should move overseas to a place “more accepting” of their faith. But he always tells them no.
“I forbid it. I say stay here and make an effort here. You have to try to integrate so people accept you,” he said. “And I think Britain is an accepting country — if people turn their back on that then it is a big shame.”
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A short walk away from Masjid Al Taqwa, Birmingham Central Mosque is about as far removed from Imam Salim’s humble building as is architecturally possible. One of the biggest mosques in Western Europe, the Central Mosque towers over the Belgrave Middleway that connects the centre of the city to its suburbs.
Sat behind a cluttered desk in the mosque’s reception area, Imam Usman Mahmoud offered his thoughts on the Fox News “no-go area” scandal.
“The majority of us just laughed it off. It was the only time when I saw Muslims and non-Muslims being together, united, taking it all as a joke. But there is a serious side to it,” said Imam Mahmoud.
“The media always attacks Islam rather than the people who cause the problems. It is not the religion that is responsible for what is happening … either in Paris or with this Jordanian pilot. We condemn these things.”
He added that Birmingham Central Mosque works closely with the city’s police and counter terrorism unit, and urges parents to keep an eye on what their kids are doing online. As a mainstream mosque, pro-ISIL views — at least outspoken ones — are rare, and the imams keep a close eye on smaller, more radical mosques in the city.
But extremism cuts both ways. A far-right group, the English Defence League (EDL), which staged at least three anti-Islam demonstrations in Birmingham in last year is rumoured to be organising another major rally later this month. And after the Charlie Hebdo shooting, eight local businesses in the city’s Kings Heath suburb — another predominantly Muslim neighbourhood — were attacked.
As a result of incidents like this, the Central Mosque now has a direct line to local police.
“There have been incidents … but you will find bad apples in all areas,” Imam Mahmoud said. “We’re not scared. Even when the EDL come, we have no problems. If [they] want to understand Islam our door is open, [they can] come in and we will teach [them].”
On Sparkbrook’s Stratford Road, the city’s main shopping street, views are mixed on whether the Birmingham culture of tolerance and multiculturalism that has been widely praised since Steve Emerson’s comments on Fox News is a reality or simply wishful thinking.
One British-Indian shopkeeper, who has run his jewellery store on Stratford Road for 40 years, described Sparkbrook as “ghetto” and said he could see why people would talk of it as a no-go area for non-Muslims.
“Do you see any other white people around here?” said the 55-year-old, who moved to Birmingham in the 1970s with his parents.
In a nearby bakery, Ali, 37, disagreed. Although Sparkbrook and its neighbouring Sparkhill may be overwhelmingly Muslim, “Brummies” of other religions and nationalities often come to visit Asian areas, he said, not least Birmingham’s “Balti Triangle”, where the city’s famous curry-houses are mostly concentrated.
Not that Muslim areas do not have their problems. Ali cited unemployment as a huge factor in the social exclusion felt by many young Muslims in Birmingham, and when the EDL's rumoured return to Birmingham demonstration happens, he said that plenty of young Muslims he knew wanted to go out and confront the far right group.
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“The younger generation just want a ruckus. They have no work, they have no jobs and they smoke weed everyday,” Ali said. “They are young and they have nothing else to do.”
Imam Mahmoud understands better than most the challenges that young Asian men face in Birmingham — whether religious or not. As a teenager, he was drifting into a life of crime before he left his home city for Cape Town in South Africa, where he trained to be an imam with an Egyptian university.
“I started taking drugs at 14. I got in with the wrong crowd, doing drugs, stealing cars. It was messed up,” he said.
Now, Imam Mahmoud leads the youths at the mosque, holding weekend classes for young Muslims in Birmingham. He is optimistic that with the right kind of attention, the next generation of British Muslims can be persuaded to shun both extremism and crime.
Mr Shah, meanwhile, believes that when he walks around the city’s various neighbourhoods, meeting with locals, people see him only as the lord mayor rather than as a Muslim. He regularly attends Christian services and last year was asked to read the Bible during a memorial ceremony for Birmingham-born industrialist and entrepreneur Matthew Boulton, for whom a memorial was unveiled in London, at Westminster Abbey.
“I was proud of that. I have done many readings from the Bible at public events and I think that is the great thing about Birmingham,” he said, before adding: “All religions are pretty similar anyway.”
foreign.desk@thenational.ae
