Salahuddin Haider
FOR quite a few decades that I have been in this world, I had not seen or heard, and even now when it is naked reality, I have begun to think that Islam, reching us as Muslims anywhere in the world, have to have faith that God, created of this universe is Almighty and that his messages reaching us through His Messenger Holy Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) in the form of Quranic verses revealed to him are the real thing. God is savoir, king and benign and never lets his believers down under any circumstances.
This has been proven when Quranic verses were recited in a Church in presence of President Donald Trump, and Azan (call for prayers were heard in Germany, Holland and a couple of other neighboring States Azan, together with the sound of church bells, an unfamiliar and evocative symphony, as religious institutions offer support not only to their constituents, but to whole, shaken societies. What does that mean? Obviously Allah’s message is supreme, a belief strengthened by the fears of death by the Corona Virus, abbreviated as COVID19 or pandemics An America writer Elizabeth confirmed my contention, She admitted fearlessly that for the first time in history, both countries have allowed the Azan to regularly penetrate public space.
This is, in her own words, unquestionably a response to the COVID-19 crisis, a desperate grappling for social unity and Godly protection. Calling out, with the knowledge that no one can come together, over a hundred mosques seek to soothe collective wounds. These wounds, of course, cut deeper in particular communities, as we have seen in African American communities in the United States—those already marginalized are affected at far more devastating levels than the economically and socially sheltered. Will, this public call to prayer is remarkable not only in sound but even more so in its social meaning. Just months ago, such a move would have appeared nearly impossible.
In my forthcoming book, Mosques in the Metropolis, I critique the European project of modernity by unsettling assumptions about ‘progress’ and ‘civility’ through two mosque communities in London and Berlin. Exposing the deep and unrelenting inequality faced by diverse Muslim populaces, as well as their capacities to exert agency, the mosque rises as both a threshold space and an interstitial opportunity for building solidarity. Such solidarity may center on fomenting deep mutual support within, and yet extending beyond, Muslim communities into the cities and states in which they live.
This includes focusing on shared concerns, from the natural environment’s decay to supporting vulnerable populaces, and building knowledge that can transcend taken-for-granted assumptions about Islam. In Berlin, such solidarity emerged at the Sehitlik Mosque under the leadership of Ender Cetin, who invited the whole city into the mosque through daily tours, and yet also encouraged mosque community members to deeply engage in the city, through participation in civic activism, educating on pluralism in schools, and running for political office.
Today, as the world comes to a grinding halt, the mosque rises as such again, offering an opportunity for deepened solidarity through a medium that can touch us even in isolation, uniting us through sound. As an author, Elizabeth says frankly that her personal surprise in the public Azan, are both rooted in the reality that Europe has long resisted the inclusion of its Muslim populaces, who largely migrated as post-colonial migrants and guest workers, called to rebuild fractured European countries after World War II.
It has since delimited their rights, resisting the bestowal of citizenship for decades (for instance, Germany only changed its citizenship laws from blood-based to birth-based in 2000). Even with legal equality, politicians and media outlets long continued to suggest that Muslims and/or Islam cannot fully belong to European nation-states. Over the last few years, Dutch and German politicians like German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer have continued to debate whether Islam belongs to their respective nation-state. Muslim bodies, and institutions like mosques, have been regulated, even demonized in European public life.
We have seen the Muslim body as site of conflict emerge in the so-called headscarf debates, which limit Islamic garb in public life, across countries like France, Germany, Spain, and Denmark. We have witnessed the securitization of Muslim bodies in xenophobic and violent government anti-radicalization agendas. And we have watched the form of the nation-scape shaped by fear, such as through the banning of minarets by popular referendum in Switzerland in 2006. Until recently, the far-right wing has been on the rise, building its base specifically on anti-immigrant and anti-Islam platforms.
In Germany, for example, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) Party, capitalizing on discontent with the massive refugee migration in 2015, received enough votes to enter parliament in 2017. In such contexts of resistance to plurality, discourses of tolerance have emerged. As Wendy Brown critiques in her book Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire, ‘tolerance’ is at once a ‘discourse of power and practice of govern mentality’ (8) achieved through a practice of toleration, a making do with that which makes the dominant group in society uncomfortable.
Tolerance, often attached to rhetoric about Muslims in Europe, is a bitter civilizing discourse disguised by a saccharine rhetorical wrapper of the enlightened, liberal sensitivity—a contronym, perfectly synonymous with its own antonym: intolerance. Instead of tolerance, late sociologist and philosopher Zygmunt Bauman argued in ‘Postmodernity, or Living with Ambivalence,’ that we must move to solidarity; in the words of Bauman scholar Shaun Best, true solidarity emerges when ‘the ‘I am responsible for the Other’ and ‘I am responsible for myself’ come to mean the same thing’ (317).
As another Bauman scholar Keither Tester asserts, this shifts the goal away from being ‘with’ the other to being ‘for’ the other. Solidarity in this sense does not equalize but rather locates value in each person and each community on its own grounds.
A public adhan is arguably an expression of such solidarity, rather than tolerance, as it transcends the usual attempts to reshape Islam vis-à-vis mainstream secular norms. COVID-19 has changed everything, turning our worlds upside down. It is as if we have all tumbled down Alice’s well to Wonderland, where big is small and small is big, and nothing looms larger than our new, collective fear. This new normal has, in many ways, lifted us out of ourselves. And it holds pain and lessons for us all.
