Louise Nousratpour
Saturday July 16, 2005
The Morning Star
INTERVIEW: SALMA YAQOOB talks about the long, hard road to becoming a leading Muslim peace activist and Respect candidate.
DRESSED moderately and wearing a headscarf, Salma Yaqoob seems no different from other conventional Muslim women.
But, as the chairwoman of the Birmingham Stop the War Coalition (StWC) and a founding member of Respect, she has long defied often repeated stereotypes of Muslim women.
I catch up with Yaqoob at a noisy coffee shop in Euston Station during a flying visit to London.
Mother-of-three and qualified psychotherapist, she explains how she has been pushing back cultural boundaries by publicly engaging in politics against war and injustice - a role once deemed unacceptable for women by many in her community.
'I got support because I spoke out when no-one else would - even amongst the Muslim men.'
But having to struggle against barriers is nothing new for Yaqoob. She recalls how she debated with her father for the right to study at university.
"My upbringing was strict, but, invariably, I saw restrictions placed on me because of my gender as being rooted in cultural Pakistani practices rather than having Islamic justification.
"I used verses from the Koran on the rights of all - male and female - to pursue knowledge to argue with my Dad about why I had the right to go to university. It was there in black and white and he could not argue against it!"
This determined streak has helped her through some difficult recent times.
"There was no precedent in our community of Muslim women playing the role that I was attempting to play, but now there are real changes taking place within the community about women having high-profile leadership roles," she explains.
"The shift in attitudes around women and the 'normalisation' of women speaking out - at one of our recent rallies, the Muslim women speakers were getting the biggest cheers from a largely Muslim audience - is one of the achievements I am most proud of in our campaign," Yaqoob says passionately.
But the road to this "revolutionary change" has been difficult and often dangerous. Yaqoob has been subjected to horrific threats of rape and abuse throughout her public anti-war activities and during her general election campaign for Respect in Birmingham.
Despite the abuse, Yaqoob battled on and stunned observers by finishing in second place with nearly 30 per cent of the votes.
"As a woman, to stand up in public and express your views was not an easy thing to do in the Muslim community and it was personally a risky thing to do," she concedes.
"After I criticised (Islamist group) Hizb-ut-Tahrir on a live Sky News interview, I received a call saying that my children were illegitimate and that I would be 'buried with the dogs.' My billboard posters in the election campaign were defaced with the word 'Kafir' - Arabic for unbeliever.
"Since the elections, it's calmed down, although I did receive a call the other day threatening rape," she says matter-of-factly.
Yaqoob seems concerned but is not deterred by these vile threats from what she describes as "a spoof group with no real base or roots anywhere.
"Most people think that Hizb-ut-Tahrir is an MI5 creation," she adds.
Nevertheless, she recalls that the community was at first "embarrassed" to support a Muslim woman politician.
But, with her inspiring speeches and practical campaign for justice and peace, Yaqoob won the trust of a community starved of political leadership.
"There was a tacit acknowledgement that few Muslim men had played this role effectively during the recent past and the Muslim community needed people who were prepared to speak up."
Even high-profile Muslim religious leaders who were hostile to the idea of women taking part in politics eventually pledged their votes, she recalls.
"I was breaking a convention, so it was quite a revolution which is not always understood outside that community. 'Salma is a Muslim. Of course, she'll get the Muslim vote.' But reality is not always that straightforward," insists Yaqoob.
"I got support because I spoke out when no-one else would - even among the Muslim men."
She stresses her continued determination to unify factions in the community - Shi'te, Sunni, hardliner, moderate, man, woman - "with a message that concerns them all," because "the enemy is so strong at the moment that we can't afford to be divided. We need to have a dialogue and include everyone in the big issues of the day."
Her triumph in winning the hearts and minds of the Muslim community in a way that the US never could has had its price.
Aside from the abuse, she has had to put her hard-won career on ice.
But she knows first-hand the importance of a strong, progressive Muslim voice in these troubled times. She remembers clearly the moment that plunged her into active politics.
"The specific event that propelled me into activity was being spat on and racially abused in Birmingham city centre shortly after 9/11 when I was shopping with my three-year-old son," says Yaqoob.
"The act was shocking, but the fact that nobody did anything to help was even more shocking."
After the appalling incident, she went along to a StWC meeting and helped to set up the coalition's Birmingham branch. "Of course, I never knew then that I would also be part of setting up a new national party!" she laughs.
"We felt very threatened after 9/11. It was the solidarity of the anti-war movement that gave me hope that we were not powerless and for that I will be eternally grateful."
But a hijab-wearing woman among the founding members of a socialist party? Having myself experienced women being forced to wear the hijab under the brutal Islamic regime in Iran, I can't help but see the hijab as a symbol of oppression and gender apartheid.
So, I am curious to know why a progressive woman, who has been tearing through long-established gender prejudice in her Muslim community, chooses to wear the headscarf.
"For many women, it is an expression of a form of 'Islamic feminism'," Yaqoob argues.
"In light of the fact that women are increasingly depicted as sexual commodities in capitalist society, many Muslim women also see the wearing of hijab as a form of cultural and political resistance to that process and pressure."
However, she makes clear her strong opposition to Iran and Saudi Arabia's policy of forced hijab, "just as I'm against the ban in France and Turkey, because both policies remove the women's choice in the matter."
I wonder if she feels that her religious beliefs clash with her active role in the British left.
'There is a lot of concern and fear within the Muslim community about a backlash.'
"Not really," she replies. "I think religiously centred values of peace, social justice and equality obviously overlap with socialist ideology.
"That's why, from the civil rights movements in the Deep South in the 1950s and '60s to struggles against injustice in Latin America in the 1970s and '80s, religiously motivated people have found some of their staunchest allies and comrades in the struggle against injustice to be socialists."
"The existence in this country, France, Italy and Spain of strong Christian socialist currents is for the same reason.
"Those currents emerged out of the struggles against fascism and poverty in the last century. It should not be surprising to socialists to see a similar process of radicalisation taking place among the Muslim community in light of the attacks it has been subject to."
Last week's bombing of London has added more fuel onto the fire of racial hatred - a fact not lost on Yaqoob.
"Like everybody else in the country, I felt deeply shocked at the horror of it all as I watched the news break," she says.
"My thoughts quickly shifted to whether my brother, who lives in London and regularly travels through those areas, had been caught up in the bombings but, thankfully, he had not.
"Obviously, there is a lot of concern and fear within the Muslim community about a backlash and the media role in limiting that is crucial," she says.
"However, what is encouraging about the post-bombing reaction is that it is starting to move onto a deeper analysis as to why these events are taking place."
Yaqoob condemns the Bush administration for using the tragic deaths in New York to further "violence and its world dominance rather than learning the lesson."
She also accuses the US of being one of the main sources of world terrorism - be it against Iraqis, Latin Americans or Palestinians.
"Terrorism is nothing new, but it's the first time since Pearl Harbour that north America has faced it on its own shores.
"So, when they talk about 'war on terror,' that's just another cover and words like democracy and liberation are just decoys.
"The US economy is very much tied up in having arsenals and a strong military, which has to be justified through warmongering.
"The mentality is 'why trade with a country when you can invade it and take the resources'?"
Yaqoob maintains that the recent upsurge in imperialist hostilities in the Middle East are not against Islam or Muslims and she rejects claims of a "clash of civilisations."
"Jews were seen as the enemy within during Hitler's fascist war and communists were the red enemy in the latter part of the last century.
"But, after the end of the cold war, the US needed a new bogey man to justify spending billions on weapons and furthering its violent aims."
Her message to the warmongering world leaders is a "very simple equation - there cannot be peace and harmony in the world without justice and equality.
"Unless we start looking at the root causes of the problems of oppression and inequality, the violence and the starvation will continue.
"People are not looking for charity, they are looking for justice and their human rights.
"Whether it's in Iraq or Palestine, where people live under occupation, or Africa, where preventable poverty claims thousands of lives every day."
She adds: "Not only do I see no contradiction between Muslims engaging with the left in the current struggles against injustice but I think it is our religious obligation to do so."
Interview by LOUISE NOUSRATPOUR
