The Study Circle
Page 8
‘Man, you lot are so full of crap. A complete bunch of muppets,’ Ishaq spewed, the words out in a venomous torrent. ‘I spoke to one guy who hangs around your circles…he says you don’t need to pray or give to charity until the Khilafat is established. You know you really piss me off. I wouldn’t trust you monkeys to run a kebab van, let alone an Islamic state. You think the authorities are really worried about a bunch of puffed up Ali G boneheads like you?’
Marwane started laughing but turned his face away to avoid Ishaq’s gaze. He had seen the same cycle before, of Ishaq trying to be reasonable and restrained, and then getting so hacked off and hyped that he effectively blew up. And he had seen how he handed this group a victory and greater vindication. But he had never seen Ishaq this unrestrained. Real anger deformed his face.
Ishaq’s nose was nearly resting on Abdul-Majid’s forehead. ‘Also plain foolishness. The thing about the nutters you encourage is that they go on and on about Sharia and rule of law, but somehow they then think it’s ok to be the whole law themselves. Like they see someone with a Teddy bear called Mohammed and they think it’s legit to go and do that guy over for blasphemy. Sharia is law, a set of jurisprudence, not some petty excuse for mob rule or to use it against the poor. Waxing on about Sharia and Khilafa without character or community building. I’m not dealing you with Maj. You’re proper retarded. Which, by the way, is why you don’t know that no one here past the age of ten uses the word ‘wasteman’.’
Abdul-Majid was red-faced and shouting. An inflated space hopper about to burst. ‘Astagfirullah, that is a slur. Ishaq, you’re an ignorant jackal. I will testify against you on the Day of Judgement for defaming all the righteous Muslims.’
‘You’d love that, wouldn’t you. Yea, I’m ignorant, alright, but at least I know it. I know my limitations. Hundreds of years of Islamic scholarship and you’re so certain about everything. Abdul-Majid, you’re like me. You hardly know any Arabic. We’re basically kids. Just children. If you think you know it all then you’re a proper fool. Seriously, get out of my face, I’ve had enough.’
Ishaq’s voice was cracking. Marwane pulled him back. ‘What’s wrong with you? Let it go, bruv. You always let these guys get to you.’ Marwane looked to his friend’s opponent. ‘Abdul-Majid. Just leave it out, right? This kind of stuff doesn’t solve anything. You got your kicks.’
With a disdainful wave, Abdul-Majid said, ‘Go, take him. This is the reason why we are in such discord – people like him.’ Abdul-Majid smiled at his entourage in triumph, acknowledging their nods and a couple of congratulatory back-slaps. As he moved back to the picket he muttered to the others, ‘His boy Shams knows better, and he knows it’.
Pulling him away by his collar, Marwane saw that Ishaq was shaking. ‘I’m always telling you, there’s no point. It’s just a show for them. It makes them feel better. Seriously, they get off on it. It’s their go-go juice.’
‘I know,’ Ishaq said, wiping at his face, brushing fingers through his hair.
‘Yea, but it’s not up to you to solve everyone’s issues. You’re intense today. What’s up with you?’
Ishaq looked up at Marwane then down to the ground, as they started walking. He thought about telling him about the conversation with his tutor but felt queasy in his stomach. It was a bad idea. He needed to keep dragging this around, hug it tight, so that it didn’t fall and break into pieces.
‘…nothing. Just, it’s annoying. The world is going to pot and all people seem to care about is whether they’re going to be attacked in their canteen by bacon sarnies or a jihadist pizza.’
6.
It was just after sunset, and blushed rays transformed the white steel and glass of the Excel Centre. Bubbled laughter greeted Ishaq as he arrived in East London. Looking in the direction of the sound he saw a puce-faced white man standing outside, on a small set of builder’s steps. Mounting a solitary, puffing vigil against the conference, his fist pounding the air while he bellowed to the skies.
‘We are the new aborgines. We’re forced to keep shtum…Islam is an ideological cult that is all about death and hatred. It’s a threat to our country, our great land that is Britain, our sacred Albion. But ohhhh noooo, we’re not allowed to say that are we?’ He said. Through a megaphone.
His voice bounced off the bobbing heads of the horde that teemed around him. A niqabi woman draped in black, only her sparkling jade eyes to communicate with, floated by. Her words ringing like Bow Bells, drifted in her wake, ‘We get it. You hate us. Wanker.’
He had heard it all before. The man was King Canute raging. For his people, history was out of sight. Never to remember their society’s own sins. No recall or retention. The privilege of yesterdays, falling light as a feather into a void. The prerogative to forget. No ancestral memory of indiginity or humiliation. No struggle to to pay homage to your past, to your forefathers, whether they were antecedent through blood or belief. And why should they? They were triumphant in modernity. Every war, every structure and conveyance, all-enveloping construction and creation, exulted all that had preceded, and sanctified all determinations. It reinforced any sense of what was right and just. Anything that curdled ill for others was not an inherent flaw, just the slag of history, unfortunate by-products of creating in iron and steel, enforcing man’s will on the world and realising their fitter destiny.
Ishaq fled the ranting. Inside, a blue-grey carpeted concourse ran down the centre. To the left and right was a stream of fast food chains and coffee shops. Ishaq noted how many had put up signs, some in hastily written scrawls, proclaiming how their meat was halal so as to attract delegates’ cash. He allowed himself a smile as he thought that maybe those university students should bring their protest here.
Taking in the full vista, he could see all the varieties of Muslim. To an acute observer, a believer’s choice of clothing and grooming habits helped indicate their religious and political leanings. For men: length and type of beard, whether they were clean shaven, the presence of turban or type of hat, a full face of hair, a shaven moustache line, wearing leather socks, wearing trousers that stopped above the ankle, western clothing, type of foreign clothing, were they openly wearing something silk or gold. For women: presence of a head or face covering, if so how they wore it, was it patterned or plain, an abaya or a burka or skirt, use of jewellery and make up. And so it went on and on. All formats in all types of configurations were present, but nowadays it was just a free-for-all. Cultures within cultures, a din of apparel and clashing accoutrements like some mystifying border town.
Adding a layer to this reverie, half the building seemed to be taken up by a Dr Who exhibition and fan-meet. Abdul-Majid would have loved it, or at least loved it in his heart. Ishaq looked over the poster of some bloke with what he recognised as a sonic screwdriver. At least he knew that much about this stuff. He wasn’t a fan of superheroes. As a kid he had read the comics and watched them on tele, he still torrented the odd movie but, as he grew, they disappointed. Too jarring against the backdrop of the real world. Characters who could save lives and planets at the last minute with a rubber band or a bit of sticky-back plastic. Super-powered beings, or implausible geniuses in robotic suits, making last-minute reprieves, and thwarting reassuringly obvious evil. No, Ishaq thought, they should make more realistic movies. They should make the same film, but where life, family, or planet is in peril and you can only watch on and do nothing. Impotent, unless you’re prepared to do something monstrous yourself.
Ishaq rushed to find a room so that he could make salat al-magrib. Having found a space and made his prayer Ishaq marched back down the walkway. He saw a man in his eye-line wearing a blue steel suit. He raised his pace, altering his route, zigzagging through the other attendees as if he was trying to thwart a sniper. Too late. Zulfi had seen him. A son of one of his father’s friends, Zulfi did something in the city. Not a full-blown banker but something involving project management, and trading metals on the side. Zulfi always wore a suit with pride, his spe
ech always rushed as though he were a man of great import. It pressed upon the recipient that he was busy and they should be appreciative of the attention.
‘Assalmu alaikum, dude, surprised to see you here.’ Zulfi took Ishaq’s hand in a way that was more of a gregarious slap than a shake. He felt that Zulfi always tried to overwhelm with a display of energy that conveyed his dynamism.
‘Wa alaikum salaam, well I’m trying to open my horizons.’
‘Good, good, we need smart people like you. You studying or done yet?’
‘Still there. Not long to go, how about you?’
‘Well you know, business is going from strength to strength. I got hitched. You might see my wife around here, she’s doing an Islamic fashion stall. Not a hijabi herself but she used to be a model so it’s a good starting business for her. Just got a new car and house…yea so all good.’
Ishaq forced the best smile he could and nodded. He paused, not knowing what to say, ‘…Mazeltov.’
Zulfi, his hair oiled a little too well to a gleaming wetness, pushed back curved strands as he regarded Ishaq.
‘Haha…you’ve still got that sense of humour. Like I said, I didn’t expect to see your face here. Had enough of the fundies have you?’
Zulfi’s overfamiliarity made Ishaq resentful. It was an encroachment, an intrusion; but maybe that was the point. Zulfi didn’t pretend to be a sympathetic character. In every part of his life he had a mission.
‘Uhh…no, not really. Still friends with those fundies . Just wanted to take a look around.’
‘Well good, good, that’s exactly what we’re about. We want Muslims to indulge in blue-sky thinking, think outside the box and challenge any traditional or retrogade paradigms.’
Ishaq looked at Zulfi for any signs that he was having him on, wishing Marwane was here to hear that sentence. Ignoring the exotic use of language, Ishaq decided to take Zulfi’s bait. ‘Backwards? What do you mean?’
‘You know, cultural vestiges, ghettoised mindsets.’
He tried to let the comment pass. Zulfi seemed to think that he had ascended past the primitive social mores of the working class into a new dynamic form of Islam that was in harmony with modernity. Ishaq would have been more interested in this mystical journey of advancement if Zulfi did not come from an uncomfortably frank family. When Zulfi’s father ever encountered Ishaq alone, he would talk about how much Zulfi was earning, what property he had purchased and the latest BMW that he had acquired. Zulfi’s father would also tell him how much of that wealth had been illegally earned, how much cash had to be kept in a safe to avoid the taxman. All told in such a resigned manner that he could never tell if Zulfi’s father was proud or ashamed. But then again, maybe Zulfi had it figured out like his English peers. As Ishaq used to tell mates, there’s no point doing lengthy jail time for nicking a pair of trainers or a mobile phone when you can play a longer game and get a slap on the wrist for white collar crime. That was real gangsta.
‘But all the organisations here seem to have partnered with banks. You can be as sophisticated or paradigm-challenging as you want, but making money from money is usury. It’s haram, right?’ said Ishaq.
‘See this is the backward thinking that we are trying to challenge. With that train of thought, we wouldn’t have engineers, doctors, teachers, or be able to participate in any western industry.’
Ishaq caught his reflection in Zulfi’s buffed, shiny shoes. His face distorting on the leather.
‘No…hmm…not really, everything else you mentioned would be fine. Just the banks would stop making excess amounts on the backs of the poor.’
‘Well, we are involved with Islamic mortgages and loans. Loaner and loanee sharing the risk in a sharia-compliant way. I don’t expect someone like you to know about sophisticated financial instruments.’
He knew well enough about these ‘sophisticated financial instruments’. It was funny how those at the top of the pyramid, pilfering and earning shed loads, were so confident that they knew better. As if the simple plebs could only understand it as magic, and need only trust them. Once, ships from all over the Empire traded their timber, sugar, grain and textiles here. Trade in actual things. Things that you could hold and feel, taste and eat. History had left behind a lifeless husk that showed little of its former glory. This light and airy building itself had been built in the regeneration of formerly moribund London docklands. A building that had now been bought by the Gulf Emirate of Abu Dhabi. White men created white elephants, printed money and debt, bailed out by the illiterate and bare-footed who siphoned wealth from the earth. He knew how it worked.
‘Well, that’s a joke though. They are just repackaged interest bearing loans and are even more expensive than the high street stuff. Everyone knows it. Those bankers definitely know it and just laugh at it. And laugh at us.’
Zulfi’s Gillette-shaved face edged downwards. ‘See, you lot are always negative. We want to support visionary thinking, but anything we say, people like you put a downer on. It’s not all about sitting in a mosque, praying while the world burns.’
Ishaq could imagine Zulfi shaving in the mornings, pleased at his mirror image, thinking, The best a man can get. ‘Maybe, but you guys go on about being visionary and in reality that means jettisoning the fundamentals. I’m not interested in being a cultural Muslim.’
‘How very noble of you, Ishaq,’ Zulfi said with dripping condescension, ‘but that’s not how the world works. We need people who are active and integrated, who are politically networked through the power structures of this country. Rational and modern, who are accepted as equals in this society…’
Ishaq cut Zulfi off, ‘You can do both!’
As they conversed, a woman and two men passed. Ishaq figured they were his age but the sailing manner of their walk made them come across younger. One was wearing an autumnal frock coat, a ridiculously long stripy scarf, and a puffed up brown wig. Next to him, a pimply boy, with shocking pasty skin, wore a cream jacket and trousers, teamed with what was most definitely a cricket jumper. The woman wore a tweed jacket and bow tie, her hair shaped into a short, masculine, floppy style with a subtle comb over. Ishaq and Zulfi cut to silence as they passed.
The girl said to one of her companions, ‘I’ll kill myself if they change canon, willy-nilly.’ The pimply boy replied in the affirmative. ‘Yes, me too. They’ll have to be really smart to do a retcon like that, otherwise it’s all an epic disaster. I won’t get over it. I don’t know what I’ll do.’
As he had learned, Ishaq gave them a quick reassuring smile, and they responded accordingly. Once out of earshot, he said, ‘Look, that’s not true.’ He could see Zulfi stiffen, clench his fists slightly. ‘I don’t disagree with your politics, Zulfi. Maybe you’re right, I should do more. Which is why I am here – listening. Doesn’t mean that you need to harangue everyone who doesn’t do what you want. Just remember, the Prophet peace be upon him, said, “Actions are only by intentions, and every man has only what he intended.” So both the intention and action has to be correct.’
‘Ah, typical preacher boy. So what do you do?’
Ishaq stalled. What do you do? More like what should you do. These were always the questions that followed him about. ‘Look, I’m sure you work hard on your causes but I’m not going to give details of my life just to win an argument.’
‘Ah ha, so that means you probably do nothing. Just another person stuck in analysis paralysis.’
‘Yea, well, I never see you in the mosque on Friday, in the community you want to save. And I’m being careful here, I’m not chastising,’ said Ishaq, his own fingers crimping, almost claw-like.
Zulfi looked vulnerable, his face reddened and strained. ‘I’m busy. I can’t make it most weeks.’
Ishaq had hit a sore spot and he felt regret. Threatened by Zulfi’s accusations of inaction, he had hit with a petty counter-attack rather than genuine brotherly concern. He looked at Zulfi’s eyes, a bit more uncertain but still holding that lupine glare.
If you couldn’t count it, size it, value it, own it, then this guy couldn’t comprehend. Ishaq was a bit like his dad. He tried to make do without causing waves, he believed in caution. That you should watch, examine and study before charging ahead. Yet he had this feeling, like a lancing needle at the base of his spine, that his community was trapped. Captive in a burning building and all he was doing was standing back, looking on as the heat encroached; that maybe, by the time he was ready, it would be all too late; that the stabbing needle was making a relentless piercing of his skin, penetrating layer upon layer and inducing the panicked desire to do something – to do anything.
He felt his body judder and took a deep breath through his nose. ‘Well…we’re all learning new things. I’ll keep what you say in mind. Maybe I should be doing more. Zulfi, I hope you haven’t been offended. People like you and me, we should talk more often, right?’
Zulfi replied with a cursory shake of a limp hand. ‘Yes. No offence taken. Anyway, I have to go to the main talk, salaams.’
Ishaq watched Zulfi trudge away. It was obvious that they were going to the same auditorium so he waited, pretending to check messages on his phone. After a short while he followed and took his seat in the packed hall. The temporary seating was arranged as in an amphitheatre, with banked rows descending to a well-lit stage, upon which lay a bare wooden podium. Next to that was a simple trestle table, behind which sat a range of grandees, each ready to take their turn on the soapbox.
The voices from the stage felt edged as they cut and boomed. He struggled to make out words; in his head they were sounded out by the man outside and his megaphone, and then by Abdul-Majid, Zulfi, and finally that harmless chat earlier in the day. He looked for the exits but the hall was now full. He was wedged in and couldn’t extricate himself without causing needless fuss. He forced himself to settle, cleared his throat, and tried to calm a wagging leg.