Living under a cloud in UK

Javed Iqbal fasts during Ramzan and prays at least once during lunch break.
Of course, he never misses Friday prayers. He’s worked in a bar, but has never drunk or smoked. And everything he eats must be halal. So conscious is he of this that he looks at all the ingredients at the back of the product before buying to see if it contains gelatin. For him, gelatin means animal fat, and that makes the product haram.Shopping with this meticulous, 30-something British Pakistani shopper can therefore take double the time of other shoppers.
Javed is a fine example of Britain’s integrationist policy. From having worked as a manager in McDonalds to starting his own cleaning firm, to working as a security guard in a leading department store, Javed has always got on well with everyone. But the recent arrest of five men, four British Pakistani like him, changed all that. The fact that most of the men allegedly knew the July 2005 bombers has hardened people’s attitudes, feels Javed.
‘‘It’s not something you can define,’’ he says in a telephonic interview. ‘‘It’s not as if someone has come up to me and said ‘terrorist’ or ‘Paki.’ But there’s a change. Earlier, my co-workers and I would share a laugh or a joke. Now that’s stopped. We are much more formal and careful now in the way we interact.’’
Javed isn’t the only one feeling this way. Nasser, a young policeman in Luton too feels attitudes towards Muslims have hardened since the London July 2005 bombings. But Nasser says that thanks to strict anti-racism laws, none of it has so far been overt.
‘‘My colleagues and I used to go to the pub after work every Friday. They all knew I didn’t drink, so while they filled their pitchers, I was downing glasses of orange juice. Now, on Friday, it’s, ‘See ya later Naz’ which I guess means they’re off to the pub without me.’’ Does he feel excluded? Nasser shrugs, ‘‘It’s a free country. If they don’t want me, then I’m not hanging around.’’
Javed and Nasser could shrug off their colleagues’ attitudes. But things are a little more complicated for 25-year-old Shariyar Khan. An avid cricket and football player in his university, Shariyar was as far from the Muslim stereotype as one could get. He smoked, drank, loved to go clubbing and was by his own admission ‘a bit of a ladies man.’ Considering Shariyar and his family lived in Kensington, a London area not known for its Asian population, it was inevitable that most of his friends were not fellow Pakistanis or Asians. Shariyar wanted it that way.
But things began to change after 9/11 leaving Shariyar with many questions. Why was Britain so eager to side with the US in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? How come Israel could bomb Lebanon without being pulled up by the West? How come the same rights didn’t apply to Palestinians? Why were most Muslims portrayed by the western media as madmen? These nagging questions prompted him to seek answers in the Koran. After much study and thought, he decided to ‘reclaim’ his faithf.
‘‘I felt the time had come for me to change my style of living. I was not anti-anyone.’’
And with the recent arrests, hostility towards Muslims, and specifically British Pakistani Muslims, is likely to get worse, say some. Others feel UK’s famed reputation for tolerance will eventually restore relations back to normal. Will it? Let’s hope so.