For over 20 years, Fiyaz Mughal OBE, the Director of Faith Matters has worked with faith communities. Having successfully set up national projects, like Tell MAMA, which he left in January 2017 after completing the set up and expansion of the project, he has been engaged in an area of work exploring the reasons why people leave the respective faiths that they were born into. He has also been exploring the fluidity of people’s identities and outlooks and how they can develop new identities. 

His latest book is entitled, ‘Leaving Faith behind: The Journeys and Perspectives of People Who Have Chosen to Leave Islam’. You can purchase the book through this LINK.

Fiyaz Mughal also stated the following in relation to the completion of the book:

“Why did I co-edit and put this book together? Well, part of my identity remains as a Muslim though being a Muslim does not mean that I feel defensive of my faith nor do I feel that people cannot and should not question any belief. People have the right to question belief and religion and sometimes vocally so, but they do not have the right to harass and intimidate people.

What is also a fact is that for numerous reasons, some people leave faith and reject it. This happens in every faith and the degree to which this happens is led by numerous reasons. This is also the case with Islam and these personal experiences are things that should be explored and the reasons why.

 

 

“Do I agree with people leaving Islam – well, people have a choice as to how to live their lives and they make their own decisions. Have I left Islam – no and I find much beauty in it but there are things that I think need to be interpreted in a modern context if the faith, like any other faith, is to remain relevant to a younger generation.

I also want to add that people who leave Islam do so because of a range of reasons and experiences and these experiences are their personal ones. Who am I to question or undermine them, but I can listen and reflect and ensure that I protect their right to speak up, just as I would expect other’s to protect my right to.

 

 

“With Aliyah Saleem, my co-editor, we have put these experiences of people who have left Islam in this book and which I hope you will reflect on when reading. I believe that by speaking, listening and reflecting, we can all learn from each other. For Muslims reading this post – I ask one thing. Let us reflect on some of these stories and they should not cause anger or fear. They are experiences that should make us, I hope, want to reach out, engage and talk about these issues with others. In fact, there is nothing to fear, and ignorance, which causes fear is the greatest facet that we must all challenge”.

Speaking at the Communities and Local Government Committee today, Dame Louise Casey made the case for the findings of her review into opportunity and integration which took over 14 months to complete.

Speaking with a sense of purpose, Casey suggested that “integration was not a two way street”, and that in fact she saw it much like a motorway moving in a specific direction with smaller feeder routes joining the main motorway. She said that whilst some accommodation needed to be made by drivers in the middle of the road, significant adjustments had to be made by the cars joining the motorway and therefore integration was not a ‘two way street’. This was further explained by her belief that new communities needed basic support in understanding the normative customs of the country and they required basic items of information such as when to put out bins, how to queue and how to be courteous to one another. She made these responses to questions put to her at the Committee by Bethnal Green and Bow MP, Rushnara Ali.

There were a number of areas that also highlighted the difficult nature of the work undertaken by Casey. She highlighted deep generational and gender based divides in faith communities and in particular singled out the Glasgow mosque for issues. She also added that her report had made clear that British Muslim women of Pakistani heritage were significantly disadvantaged and whilst deprivation and other issues played a role, she could not rule out that misogyny and gender based prejudices had held some of these women back. She added,

“My job is to hold a mirror up and report on things, whether some like it or not.”

Another area that came under her spotlight was the issue of conservative religiousity. This she regarded as sometimes being a cover for actions that went against equalities and her comments highlighted her desire to reduce the space for religious conservatism when it impacted on the lives of others within public institutions.

Furthermore, Casey also highlighted how far right and Islamist extremism were areas of threat to integration and cohesion. The latter fed the narratives of the former, though she also stated that whilst local authorities were able to challenge and tackle far right narratives and groups, they were ill-equipped and sometimes unable to speak out against Islamist narratives.

Speaking on her comments, the Director of Faith Matters, Fiyaz Mughal Said:

“Dame Louise Casey’s comments will no doubt, continue to promote debate and discussion on issues of integration and if there is one thing that comes across, it is that a real and tangible integration strategy is needed, instead of the tea, samosa and steel band narrative that has been pushed around for so long.

“What is also a fact, is that Casey and her team worked long and hard taking evidence from hundreds of sources for the review. It cannot simply be dismissed and there are some serious issues that need to be discussed. Gender targeted barriers within some faith institutions, values that are so far from the norm of society and which are dressed up as religious conservatism need to be tackled. Furthermore, we have to seriously listen to her advice on integration being a concept where new and settled communities have to accommodate more to normative values of wider society.

“These are all challenging concepts where work will be required. Like it or not, Casey has brought a much needed debate on integration that no other Government touched. If it helps to ensure gender equality in core faith institutions such as in governance, then I warmly welcome these debates.”

Download this report

We have been co-ordinating and running a number of sessions over the last 6 months which have involved engaging serving members of our armed forces and serving chaplains, with diverse and mixed communities across London. The work has involved holding numerous events in boroughs across London and we have also produced the following booklet as part of the ‘Building Our Futures Together‘ project. Further information on the Bridging Our Futures Together project can be found through this link to the armed forces project.After the murder on the streets of Woolwich of Lee Rigby in May 2013, it became clear to us that a lot of work needed to be undertaken to ensure that a wide range of communities engage with our armed forces and that communities tackle some of the perceptions that may affect their views of our armed forces.

We are aware that some people do not agree with conflict and they have strong reasons for not engaging with our armed forces. We also understand that some conflicts may have affected perceptions of our armed forces and the booklet below addresses some of these issues.In fact, our engagement with this project showed us an institution that is undertaking a process of change to be reflective of the communities it serves and protects, yet it conducts the will of Parliament and our serving men and women are led by the will and decisions of politicians. We were also pleasantly surprised to find that, for example, there are over 840 serving soldiers in our armed forces who are also Muslims and this is a fact that is not highlighted enough, nor is the fact that there are serving soldiers from a variety of different faith groups. Many of these soldiers from our armed forces served in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo and Bosnia and helped in ensuring that civilians were protected and that refugees were also protected in their plight to safety, sometimes from genocide, as in Bosnia.

Whilst we understand that serving men and women in our armed forces go into conflict areas and sometimes have to do so with force, there are also a range of other functions that our armed forces undertake. The Building our Futures Together project is therefore an opportunity for interested members of communities to engage in dialogue with and be aware of the diversity of serving soldiers in our armed forces; and for our armed forces partners, it is a chance to reach out, confront some stereotypes and listen to the views of different communities.

We therefore hope that the booklet below can be a resource for you if you are looking to hold engagement sessions between serving members of our armed forces and community groups. If nothing else, we hope that inspires you to want to ask questions and to want to find out more. You will be surprised as we were, as to the willingness of our armed forces to engage and to be part of wider discussions.

Finally, the last thing we all want, is to see such brutality and murder on our streets where a young man simply walking the streets of our capital is killed just because he has served in the armed forces. Such hate should never again have a part to play in our capital and we hope that the Building Our Futures Together project, can play a small part in reducing such threats in the future.

(A full statement from the Director of Faith Matters, Fiyaz Mughal OBE, can be found in the booklet. Fiyaz Mughal can be contacted for press interviews through info@faith-matters.co.uk)

Faith Matters undertook the fieldwork and write up on the ‘Mosques in the Community‘ programme which was conducted on behalf of MINAB (the Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board). This report builds good practice and ensures that mosques become not just institutions but living parts of their local communities, thereby ensuring that they play constructive civic roles. There are a number of recommendations made in this report which touch upon (i) Communication and inclusion (ii) Governance (iii) The role of Muslim faith leaders / imams (iv) Operational delivery in mosques (v) Relations with local authorities and (vi) Engaging with civil society organisations. We hope that mosques, mosque executive committees and imams find the recommendations practical and deliverable.

It is really hoped that this report can begin some of the discussions about how such institutions can play greater outreach roles in what will be a difficult economic climate over the next few years. We all have core responsibilities in that journey and in realising that we all have local social responsibilities to each other and for the common good.

The British National Party has been accused of attempting to exploit tensions between Muslims and Sikhs in a Government-funded report into relations between the two communities. The report is entitled the ‘Adab’ research report produced by Faith Matters.

Academics have warned of a “real danger” of “serious communal disorder” in the future in some towns and cities as the BNP attempts to build on differences between the two groups.

The study, carried out for the inter-faith group Faith Matters, said tensions included “serious acts of violence” between Muslim and Sikh youths over the past nine years in some areas and allegations of “forced conversions” of Sikh girls by Muslim boys.

Click here to read more Source: Press Association