TV’s white, middle-class ghetto
There has already been acres of coverage and comment about Britz, even before its first episode was broadcast last night. Already on Cif Inayat Bunglawala has written about how some sections of the media appeared keen to suggest that British Muslims were outraged by the drama even before it was transmitted. Asim Siddiqui praised Britz for being uncomfortable and unmissable viewing while Ali Naushahi, a researcher on the drama, has argued that Britz is an important and much-needed step towards helping a non-Muslim audience understand something of what it feels to be a second generation Muslim in Britain today.
stars in their eyes
Last week, on a cold, brilliant blue morning I returned for the first time in 20 years to my old secondary school. The invitation from the head was asking me to speak to students to help mark the school achieving specialist status as a performing arts college. Having recently published a childhood memoir that revisited my school days, the invitation was hard to resist, which was how I came to be watching a succession of students sing, rap and dance in a cold, crowded gymnasium hall. The most positive consequence of the performing arts specialist status is that it makes available additional funds; more worryingly it also arguably makes such schools complicit in encouraging students to pursue pipedreams.
give it a rest
Some time ago, I was contacted by a BBC researcher on a politics programme who wanted my reaction to something relating to British Muslims. I gave my thoughts and was told that she would get back to me. When no call came, I contacted her and was told that my opinions were too moderate and not quite what the discussion required.
words are not enough
When Amir arrived in Britain last December he was 16, fleeing Iraq on a false passport after the kidnap and murder of his father. He landed at Heathrow with nothing except a scrap of paper on which his name was scribbled in English. “I did not know where I was; I could not speak English,” Amir recalls, his hands fidgeting nervously. “I was scared - I had no family, no friends. Who is going to help me? Who is going to give me support?”
a hard reign
I was 18 the first time I saw Bob Dylan in concert. Having discovered his music two years earlier, I was so desperate to secure tickets I travelled down from Manchester and spent a freezing December night outside the Hammersmith Odeon waiting in line with similarly crazed fans.
Leaving your Religion
My friend Saiqa is a successful, self-confident professional woman in her mid-thirties who was raised in a Muslim household but who would readily admit that religion did not play a hugely significant role in her everyday life. She enjoys a drink and would not dream of fasting for Ramadan but her religion still forms part of her identity: if you asked her to describe herself she would reply that she was a British Muslim.
Born to run, and run
When the first rumours began circulating that Bruce Springsteen’s new album would be called Magic it led to some apprehension among his fans. In the past, Springsteen albums have had titles that sounded like his best songs: epic, elemental and evocative. Compared to Darkness on the Edge of Town or Devils & Dust, Magic seemed to conjure up not so much a runaway American dream as an easy-listening soft-rock radio station. Happily our fears were unfounded: Magic is the finest Springsteen album since Tunnel of Love, which was released 20 years ago.
‘You can hide Earth behind your hand’
There are estimated to be six-and-a-half billion people currently living on this planet; only nine can claim to have set foot on another world. They are the surviving members of the Apollo missions to the moon that began in July 1969 with Neil Armstrong, watched by the largest television audience in history, and ended three years later with Gene Cernan, who remains the last person to have left the moon. In the years since, the story of the journey to the moon has been told and retold many times, so when the British documentary film-maker David Sington was approached to make a documentary about the Apollo missions, he was initially resistant. “My first reaction was that it had been done already,” he admits, “but then I started thinking that I had never seen a film which truly captured what sort of men the astronauts were.”
The language of loneliness
My mother has lived in this country for more than 30 years, and yet she cannot speak English. She arrived in Britain in the early 70s and spent the following three decades at home raising four children. The grocers, butchers and fabric shops she visited were owned by fellow Pakistanis, and visitors to our home were Pakistanis too. My father dealt with everything that necessitated speaking English; while he was having meetings with bank managers and estate agents, my mother remained at home.
Father to a nation, stranger to his son
Mahatma Gandhi once confessed that the greatest regret of his life was that there were two people he had not been able to convince. One was Mohammed Ali Jinnah, whose demand for a separate homeland for Muslims led to the partition of India and Pakistan in August 1947 and the end of the dream of a united, independent India. The other person was his own eldest son. Harilal Gandhi’s entire life was lived in the shadow of his father and it was spent rebelling against everything his father believed in. Gandhi’s stern morality, sexual abstinence and principled stand against Britain were all challenged by his son, who was an alcoholic gambler trading in imported British clothes even as his father was urging a boycott of foreign goods. Harilal even converted to Islam and changed his name to Abdullah before his death in 1948, only months after his father was assassinated by a Hindu extremist.
Greetings from Bury Park:
Race. Religion. Rock 'n' Roll
- ISBN-10: 0747592942
- ISBN-13: 978-0747592945
Sarfraz Manzoor was two yearsold when his family emigrated fromPakistanto join his fatherin Bury Park, Luton. His teenage years were a constant battle to reconcile being both British and Muslim. But when his best friend introduced him to Bruce Springsteen, his life changed for ever.