‘Untold’ story of WW2 stirs Muslim youth pride
** Muslim role in Second World War, fighting and dying alongside Britons against Nazis, being used to wean young men away from extremism and alienation*
BIRMINGHAM: Taunted by racists as a “Paki” and “terrorist”, Haroon Bin Khaled spent his teenaged years feeling rejected by mainstream Britain and increasingly drawn to Al Qaeda extremism.
But the young Muslim of Pakistani descent found an unexpected answer to his alienation the day he heard the story of how Muslim soldiers, many from what is now Pakistan, fought and died alongside Britons against the Nazis in World War Two.
Almost at a stroke, the jobless young man with an unpromising future felt a sense of belonging. As he examined the facts, he began to shed beliefs that Britain despised him or that fighting alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan was a worthwhile idea.
“Truthfully, it touched me,” said the former gang member, now 21 and with a prison stretch for fraud behind him.
“If that could be shown to other youths it could make a big difference.”
That ‘difference’ could be better community relations, hurt in the years after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States and especially after four young British extremists carried out suicide bombings in London in July 2005, killing 52 people.
It could also help security by dissuading Muslim men from joining the Taliban war against Western forces in Afghanistan, or from taking part in attacks at home such as the London bombings or attacks in Madrid in 2004 that killed 191 people.
Bin Khaled is one of dozens of youths of Pakistani descent in Birmingham to have attended a workshop by academic Jahan Mahmood that uses the Muslim role in the Second World War to wean young men away from extremism and alienation.
Jahan says his presentation is intended to counter the notion of perennial confrontation between Christians and Muslims that Al Qaeda seeks to present as an immutable fact of history.
Another attendee was Sabeel Saddique, 19, who used to watch videos of Al Qaeda beheadings on his mobile phone for kicks and still feels Britain does not fully accept him.
“I’ve always thought that we were on our own,” the burly former gang member said in an interview in the largely immigrant Sparkbrook district, a drab district renowned for drug dealing.
“We used to think, ‘Taliban - yeah!’ We admired them, we just wanted to be like them because everyone was always on about ‘Muslims are terrorists’ and it just used to make us angry.”
Saddique said when New York’s World Trade Centre was attacked “we all thought it was cool … But now I see it in a different way. That’s all just wrong. It’s killing innocents”.
He still opposes Western armed action in Muslim countries. But he says his sense of belonging to Britain and his distaste for Al Qaeda is real and stems from Jahan’s lecture, which showed “what our grandparents have done for the country”.
He just wishes white Britons knew that history as well.
“We are part of this country no matter what, because we did fight. You just don’t feel like it, because the people don’t know about it, and they don’t treat us like we’re part of it," he added.
Basharat Najib, a youth counsellor in the nearby town of West Bromwich, said Jahan’s workshop got a “very, very positive” reaction among the alienated young men he works with, many of whom are of Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin. Many often ask why they weren’t taught this information about the war at school.
“The vision they had from school was Germany on one side, Britain on the other, and the Americans coming in at the end,” he said.
“They have no affinity with Britain though they may be born here. But the soldiers’ story gives them a sense of belonging. It gives the missing ingredient of affection for the country.”
The workshop tells how soldiers volunteered in the army of Britain’s then Indian colony and fought in north Africa and Italy.
India’s army grew from 200,000 in 1939 to 2.5 million in 1945, with Muslims making up about a third of the numbers at any one time. Most Muslim recruits came from what is now Pakistan.
In all, 87,000 Indian army soldiers were killed in the war, according to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
Jahan’s study, which focuses on 5,500 Indian army deaths in Italy, fascinates its audiences because it breaks down Muslim casualties according to recruitment areas within British India, and then traces links between today’s British Pakistani communities and the areas where recruitment took place.
Young Muslims specially identify with Jahan’s finding that of the 122 deaths of soldiers under 18 in Italy, 90 were Muslim. Among them were three 15-year-olds – Amir Khan from Attock, Gulab Khan from Rawalpindi, and Mian Khan from Kohat.
In a lecture at Oxford University in April, Jahan spoke of a “a pressing need to restore a sense of identity and self esteem for young British Muslims today”.
“If more was known about the contribution of so many Muslim soldiers of the British Indian Army, it would help to restore a sense of pride, cement the social bonds of different communities in British society, and turn the idea of a shared heritage into a meaningful weapon against prejudice,” he said.
The workshop was funded by a state programme called “Positive Futures” which supports local initiatives to help disengaged and vulnerable young people. reuters
Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan
Muslims have always played an important and pivotal role to shape the world for better. From the best educational institutions of Baghdad and Spain, to the industrial innovations, one worth mentioning Damascus Steel, the refined medical procedures of Islamic arab world, and so much more all this while Europe laid wasted in the “Dark Ages”…it was the muslim world that gave sanctuary to those yearning to escape the ruthless control of Church which prohibited so much as even the study of Sciences, which were readily taught in Spain under Muslim rule.
But history is witness to the fact that despite all the contribution muslims have made to better the world, fought side by side against evil ideologies that posed a threat to the peace-loving world, the sacrifices of muslims are often overlooked, if not totally ignored. The minimal lipservice in the form of “Allowed immigration” is a tiny fraction of the gratitude that is owed to the muslims across the world for their positive role. The negatives associated with some nutcases who happen to be muslims are in a tiny fraction, but often magnified to shadow the entire community.
