Bad Australian Exports

Although the Australian Muslim community has a booming cottage industry in stupid ideas, we are usually forced to import the bigger ones from overseas. Islamism, jihadiism, super-salafiism and, of course, Anthony Robbins-style motivational schtick are four such examples of dodgy things we’ve brought into our community from elsewhere because we were unable to produce them locally. However, the cultural cringe may be over with the news that British Muslims have expressed an initial interest in importing one of our own stupid ideas and making it available in the United Kingdom. Yes, after apparently witnessing the miserable failure of our own confected mufti project, British Muslims want one too.

It could, of course, be that some British Muslims are suffering from a particular form of Munchausen by Proxy (common even here) that compels them to seek increasingly audacious solutions to problems that don’t really exist. Or maybe it is a defensive move because they fear that it is only a matter of time before our Mufti of Australia, Ashmore Island, Cartier Island, Christmas Islands, Cocas Islands, North Keeling Island, Coral Sea Islands, Thousand Island, Heard Island, McDonald Islands, Norfolk Island, Phillip Island, Coode Island, Australian territories in Antarctica, and New Zealand has his role expanded slightly to become Mufti of the Commonwealth?

However, more likely, it is naive romanticism [pdf] about the possibility of a unified Muslim community that drives this. In other words, most of us dream of a community in which we all get along, have political power “just like the Jews” (as the cliche goes), nobody ever says anything bad about us in the media, and the wolf lives happily with the lamb. And we imagine that what is preventing us from having all that and more is that we lack a single unifying leader. In a global context, we’re waiting for the khalifah to lead us out of the quagmire, but locally we look to a mufti or similar to help us ‘unite’.

Yet, as the Australian experience suggests, the idea of a single, supreme spiritual leader behind whom all of us must line up spiritually and politically is naive and ultimately destroys unity and cohesion within our communities. In the UK, with a substantially larger Muslim community and where the stakes and potential rewards are far higher, it is likely to be even worse. Every sect, ethno-linguistic group, every tribe and every political faction will want “their man” to be in the top position. If the battles over leadership in the Australian Muslim community often resemble a group of bald men fighting over a comb, a leadership fight for an officially recognised mufti position in the United Kingdom might resemble a group of bald men on PCP armed with knives fighting over a comb inside a phone box. In other words, messy.

Meanwhile, everyone who doesn’t like Muslims can now direct their energies at one man: knock down the mufti, knock down the Muslims. The mufti thus becomes the ultimate straw man. If he doesn’t already have disagreeable views, the media will find people around him who do. A conference twenty years ago, for example, with Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi in attendance will be cast as proof of hidden anti-semitism; and the sale of books printed in Saudi Arabia at his mosque (or a mosque he once led or attended) will be cast as proof of him being a Wahabi/Saudi shill/enemy of the British publishing industry (take your pick).

Given this pressure and given no one person can represent the diverse religious or even political views of the Muslim community, there will end up being multiple figures either calling themselves ‘mufti’ or fulfilling that leadership role in each of their respective communities. And that sounds awfully similar to what we have now, doesn’t it?