Editor’s Note: This is the first episode of AboutIslam Awards dedicated to British Muslims. Other episodes will follow covering other areas.
LONDON – If you’re Muslim then googling that word is an exercise fraught with emotional risk. Not even adding the prefix ‘good’ as in ‘Good Muslim’ will improve the experience.
You still get dragged (clicking and flinching) into a world of online editorials so deeply prejudicial they may could soon become US policy.
‘Good Muslim News’ is not something Google Search takes very seriously. We just don’t post enough of it. No more than four positive results down the first page and the name ‘Trump’ appears in the tagline taking you off down the rabbit hole yet again.
So, at the end of a bleak year globally, let’s take a moment to throw off the winter blues and enjoy Aboutislam’s 2016 Awards. We’ve chosen individuals and groups whose stories of courage, their ability to overcome adversity and whose generosity, gave us some much needed rays of sunshine this year.
God willing 2017 will be full of more stories like this and those google rankings will be forced to change for the better.
‘Not Giving In’ Award: Muslim Female Students
According to a government committee, there can now be a “triple penalty” impacting job prospects for Muslim women seeking employment, these are: being female, coming from an ethnic minority and our faith.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) found just 35% of Muslim women jobseekers from 16 to 64 are in employment. This suggests Muslim women are three times more likely to be unemployed jobseekers than women generally – even if they hold the same degree of education and language skills.
However, rather than cracking under the strain of this prejudicial climate, Muslim girls are working even harder at their studies in order to compete at the highest levels.
In some local authority areas, Muslim women’s participation in higher education is now higher than that of Muslim men. Whilst their degree attainment in 2016 outflanks their male counterparts for the first time.
You go girls!
Truth Will Out Award: Birmingham Hoax Victims
In February this year, the BBC reported that two of the teachers at the heart of the Trojan Hoax scandal had been ‘banned from the classroom for life.’
Inamulhaq Anwar, 34, and Akeel Ahmed, 41, always denied the central allegation laid against them that they had placed “an undue amount of religious influence in pupils’ education” at Park View Academy in Alum Rock, Birmingham. The original accusations against a series of educators in the area were made via an anonymous letter widely considered a fake.
On 14 October 2016, the decision to ban Ahmed and Anwar was overturned in the courts.
“Lifetime bans handed to two teachers after the so-called “Trojan Horse” inquiry have been quashed…A High Court judge has now ruled they were treated unfairly” reported the BBC.
Waseem Yaqub O.B.E and former chair of the board of governors at Al-Hijrah Islamic school, had also received a direction preventing him from assuming the post of governor again. This threat was withdrawn in 2016 after Yaqub instructed solicitors to challenge the Department of Education’s conduct.
After a painful two years, some semblance of normality can return to the lives of those who reputations were wrongly tarnished.
A result for common sense and (we may hope) the final nail in the Trojan Hoax coffin.
Escape To Freedom: Bana Al Abyed
As a convoy of Aleppo’s residents fled Syria to become refugees in Turkey, the tweets of one little girl and her mother pierced global apathy. Fatemah Al Abed runs a Twitter account with her daughter who speaks English. Together they provided a startling glimpse at the reality of barrel bombs and stop-start evacuation. From September, their powerful tweets and video clips called upon world players including Michelle Obama, to take pity on the plight of Syrian civilians.
One of Bana’s final tweets before leaving Aleppo read simply:
“My name is Bana, I’m 7 years old. I am talking to the world now live from East #Aleppo. This is my last moment to either live or die. – Bana”
Bana and her family were greeted by the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his wife, Emine, at the presidential complex in Ankara.
Bana’s message to the English-speaking world is more powerful than anything coming from the UN. It is simply ’We shall overcome someday.”
Long Overdue Award: Daily Mail and Katie Hopkins
Katie Hopkins attempt to bury the apology she was legally committed to make after writing lies about a Muslim family was an epic fail. Despite making public her regret at 2am on twitter her forced regret was retweeted more than 6,000 times.
The inaccurate pieces appeared in the Mail in December 2015. US authorities had stopped Mohammed Tariq Mahmood, his brother Mohammed Zahid Mahmood and nine children from travelling to Los Angeles for a Disneyland holiday. Hopkins, with no apparent need for nit-picking trivia such as ‘evidence,’ suggested the two brothers were extremists in not one but two comment articles.
Mr Mahmood, a respected member of his community, Waltham Forest, East London, said the lies had deeply affected his family and their reputation. In December 2016 having fought the Mahmood’s in the High Court, the Daily Mail was finally forced to pay the family £150,000 in damages.
Mail Online said: “We and Katie Hopkins apologize to the Mahmood family for the distress and embarrassment caused and have agreed to pay them substantial damages and their legal costs.”
The win for the Mahmood family provides a long overdue warning to publishers considering ill-researched or wanton slandering of innocent families and community members.
So Over It: Fatima Manji
In July, Sun Columnist and former editor, Kelvin MacKenzie asked the question ‘Is it appropriate for a woman wearing a hijab to front a TV news show on the night a Muslim driving a lorry has massacred 86 innocent bystanders in Nice?’ He was talking about Fatima Manji, correspondent for Channel 4 News since 2012 and Britain’s first hijab-wearing national TV newsreader.
Manji was at first as speechless that it should be proposed that a professional broadcaster be removed from certain stories because of her faith or for wearing a headscarf. When the story broke, Manji came out swinging.
“There’s a fixation with my headgear” she said in an interview “It’s either, “Oh, look at this terribly oppressed woman”, or, “Oh, how exciting, woman in headscarf can play football!”
She summed up her feelings about the issue in a succinct message to Mackenzie and other doubters.
“Let’s just get over it”. Ipso, the press regulator may have ruled against Manji and C4, but to us she is a real winner.
Love For Your Brother Award: Hope4Homeless, Bolton
December 22, the interior of All Souls Church, Bolton, dazzled with warmth, tables adorned with festive cloth, chocolates, individual gifts, specially laid out for awaited VIP’s; local people living with homelessness.
The special Christmas dinner event was the culmination of online fund raising efforts by the youngest Hope4Homeless ambassador, 10-year-old Billy Higham.
The charity set up by Jamilah Rashid, Billa Ahmed and their friend Louise Adamson was founded in 2014 off the back of their successful ’Soup Kitchen’ project. Already its positive impact on the lives of those facing housing issues, poverty and hunger has been profound.
The team runs a charity shop which both raises funds and doubles as an informal drop in center where the homeless enjoy a chat and a cup of tea. Hope4Homeless leads the way in delivering hot meals, sleeping bags, clothes and wash kits to people living on the streets of Manchester and Bolton week in and week out.
At All Souls Church Mandy Hemingway spoke to AboutIslam “This has brought the community together,” she said. What would she take away from the evening “Love’ she said simply.
Meanwhile, the English Christmas dinner (sprouts and all) was catered for in traditional style by corporate caterers Roxana and Irfan Khan of R and K Catering who give their time for free to help those less fortunate. 70-year-old Tommy living in a shelter told AboutIslam that he hadn’t enjoyed a festive dinner like this ‘for some years.’ Tears on his cheeks, he whispered. “I love to see everyone together. God bless those who did this.”