Identity.. home & away
There seems to be a sudden overload of provocative programmes and articles cropping up, all examining that elusive beast, ‘identity’.
- Militant secularism threat to religion, says Warsi – BBC News
- Proud and Prejudiced – Channel 4. The story of two of the most controversial men in Britain. Tommy Robinson, a tanning salon manager, is the leader of the English Defence League, the biggest far-right street protest movement for a generation. Sayful Islam, a former tax inspector, heads a small group of Muslim extremists, who have become notorious for abusing British soldiers and burning poppies on Remembrance Day. Both men enjoy a cult-like status with loyal followers, both are specialists in making highly inflammatory speeches and defying the authorities, and both are from the same town: Luton.
- My Hometown Fanatics – BBC Three. Stacey Dooley tries to find out why her hometown of Luton is known as the extremist capital of Britain, meeting both self-proclaimed radicals and those trying to counter them.
- Make Bradford British – Channel 4. In pairs, the eight residents of Bradford, ranging from a pub landlady to a former magistrate, will live each other’s lives. From visiting a mosque for the first time, to experiencing a traditional dinner party, each person opens their eyes to the world that exists around them, right on their doorstep. Can eight people from different worlds but the same city really define what it means to be British in 2012?
- How Pakistan city of Mirpur became ‘Little England’ – BBC News. Do watch the short video with the article!
Mirpur is an odd one. Having travelled there in 2010 with a group of young British people on the Journey to Pakistan, we saw and experienced much.
The grandiose mansions, of which there are many, stand empty for much of the year. Their owners back in Britain use them essentially as holiday houses. Word on the Mirpuri street back in 2010 was that come the summer, a glut of young British Pakistanis fill the town, zipping up and down the roads listlessly in cars, generally getting bored, doing very little and causing a nuisance.
These houses, plonked around the otherwise seemingly ‘normal’ Pakistani town, could give the impression of a place well-off; on the other side of the coin, as the team discovered, young Pakistanis are pitting their own funds and time together to run a school for the orphan and refugee children of the city. What is common among everyone’s experiences, including those in the news article, is the perceived failures of the Pakistani government in social, economic, and indeed security, matters.
We also took time to visit a madrassa. The separation, between madrassa and the rest of the local community, was tangible and obvious. There was however an openness and hunger for this to be very different; they too have been victims of suspicion – fear of the unknown – and it is on all sides to make this happen. The lads studying there were bright-eyed and eager for others to know them as people.
The growing desire of the one quite complex community split over two countries to engage in social and business projects may have slowed through the dragging austerity in the UK. It wasn’t exactly a ‘quirk’ of history that the majority of Pakistanis came to Britain from this one town; as those second and third generation immigrants return to grow businesses in Mirpur, and will be receiving the vote there as well as perhaps a few seats in the Pakistani parliament, it begs the larger question of who has, or should have, responsibility to do what? We all seem to have got stuck on the who part.
JFK’s words ringing in the ether.
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