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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

White bradford teens convert to islam

08:05 / 31.10.03

totally amazing documentary last night, felt strangely moved at how these girls had adapted to their school and environment, how well they were doing in it and how islam had given them, i dunno, a sense of themselves and thier place in the world

their brother was coping quite badly, tho not as bad as you might expect and i thought their mum was great if understandably worried. i wondered about young women just hitting young adulthood getting into a religion that was so prescriptive about stuff like what you wear (they were wearing hijabs a lot of the time) and boyfreinds but it just seemed to give her something that seemed remarkable

anyone else see this? any thoughts?

andrew

09:51 / 31.10.03

Working as I do in the melange of Bradford I'd been looking forward to this. As it was, I was a little disappointed. Great subject matter, not so greatly executed. Too many unanswered questions for my liking.

Why wasn't there more exploration of why the girls had embraced Islam but the boys were vehemently opposed to it?

What about the Asian viewpoint - what did the Imams and the Asian families living around Manningham think of the girls? Apart from the guy in the kebab shop there wasn't much representation.

What could the girls expect in the future as they grew up? If they remained in the faith, what would their lives be like?

The little lad's claim that he was subject to racist abuse from Asians at school could have done with fleshing out a bit, too.

And what was at the real heart of the girls' interest in Islam, anyway? A desire to fit in with the predominantly Asian neighbourhood/community? A real, natural spirituality and need for answers? The longing for friends? Just a little girl's love of dressing up?

There was so much more that could have been done in the hour that wasn't, and so much fillery stuff in there as well, such as umpteen shots of the kids walking around the streets.

10:00 / 31.10.03

I saw it and I found it quite difficult to watch. Yes Islam did appear to give them some sense of self and their place in the world, but I'm not sure it was 'their' world. I think the girls were doing what most teenage girls would do in that situation - trying to fit in. But I don't think if they had been living in a more multicultural area (rather than one which was Asian dominated) they would have turned to Islam.

The little one in particular seemed to use her knowledge of Islam as a way to make friends, and whilst the older one did seem to be serious about her religious leanings she did also seem to see it as a way of 'belonging'. The boys didn't seem at all able to deal with the situation, and reacted in a diametrically opposite way - by moving schools and fighting with the Asian boys.

I think the whole family had been placed in a strange situation, almost as if they were living in another country with a culture that was completely different to their own, and if the girls had had more experience of their own culture and then turned to Islam perhaps I wouldn't have found it so worrying.

But I started to think what might happen if the family had to move to a less Islam centred area - the girls, who had turned to Islam to fit in, might suddenly find themselves completely outcast by their peers. The same situation in reverse.

10:07 / 31.10.03

loads of questions there i hadn't thought of...

my guess about local muslim reactions is that they would have been very good and welcoming, it is a religion that gladly accepts converts and i imagine seeing white women / girls converting would have been seen as positive proof of the value of islam

the racist abuse of the brother didn't surprise me much, nor did it's nature (mother is a whore etc), obviously very hard for him to fit in and something that would have been sure to worry white parnets in similar circumstances

as for the girls reasons, i did get some sense of a genuine benefit that they got over and above fitting in a free pizza, a making sense of themselves in the world that most teens look for, tho few white ones find it in islam i see an increasing amount of bengali and pakistani teens getting that round here in whitechapel

as for the future of those girls, hopefull we'll see a documentary in a few years time following them through, but when an intellectual and emotional adventure for them in the meantime

andrew

10:11 / 31.10.03

Yeah, I saw this last night too and, to be honest, found the documentary makers' tone pretty offensive. It seemed like a documentary completely pitched at the paranoia a lot of white people have in the UK regarding Islamic cultures, which I felt was a huge shame, as the actual footage and material they had to work with was an awesome testament to how vital and exciting it can be when cultures brush up against one another. Rather than having churned out three kids with very similar outlooks on the world and of completely predictable cultural backgrounds you saw all sorts of new identities springing up in a way that we should be proud of, not frightened by.

It felt to me that the documentary should have been far more positive about the girls desire and willingness to take on board this very different culture and far more mature in the way it portrayed their mother who, I thought, was doing a pretty fine job of managing what, for her, must have been a pretty difficult situation.

But instead you had a series of leading and accusatory questions aimed at the girls who must have just thought "why am I being got at by these TV people for just doing the stuff that all my mates do day in day out."

Like it shouldn’t be frightening that you get interested in the same stuff as your mates? That doesn’t mean that you’re going to end up at the extreme end of any of those things? As a child from a mixed-Asian background growing up in a very white area I had to go to C of E school, be interested in football etc. but haven’t turned into some evangelical terrace-trashing lout? I just thought the implication that this stuff inevitably was going to lead somewhere dangerous was, well, what you’d expect from the Daily Mail not Channel 4.

10:16 / 31.10.03

Yes, there was certainly that question in my mind at the end of the programme: would there have been as much fuss and pre-publicity (see the big double page spread in the Mail yesterday?) if it was a documentary about three Asian kids going to a predominantly white school?

However, while on paper we should be delighted about this cross-cultural pollination, the reality of it in Bradford is very different. It's a dual-cultured city and in most cases never the twain meet, unless it's to throw bricks at each other.

10:37 / 31.10.03

I just thought the implication that this stuff inevitably was going to lead somewhere dangerous was, well, what you’d expect from the Daily Mail not Channel 4.

I didn't really get that from the programme, I thought that at the end the children, in particular the oldest girl, all came across as having found a comfortable place for themselves within their chosen culture. I didn't feel like the programme makers were trying to portray it as leading somewhere dangerous. I think what they were trying to say was that for almost all teenagers the most important thing is to fit in, but that fitting in is not necessarily the right reason to take up the Islamic religion.

You're quite right though in pointing out that there wouldn't even have been a programme made about Asians at a predominantly white school, let alone all the publicity surrounding it.

11:04 / 31.10.03

The difference being, of course Olulabelle, is that Asian children who go to predominantly white schools while maybe becoming more "like" the other children in terms of speech patterns, what they find entertaining, shared experiences, and as Future Perfect pointed out, "have... to be interested in football" (although the "Asians don't play football" debate is a whole other barrell of snakes) tend to retain their culture and faith. Ie, if it's a C of E school, I think most Muslim children would be allowed to not attend or participate in overtly Christian events such as hymn singing or handing out of Gideon bibles, whereas the Gallagher girls embraced the whole hijab-wearing, Koran-reciting culture.

11:34 / 31.10.03

Do you not think they embraced the culture just to fit in then?

Perhaps they did initially, but then found a place they were happy with within Islam.

11:57 / 31.10.03

i really thought the kids, oldest girl in particular, had found something remarkable in their exploration of faith,
i thought the programme had a fairly nuetral tone that let you make up your mind about stuff like mum's reaction to it (which i thought was really alright, thinking about the challenge my family faced in me just marrying into an asian family without all the god stuff, and seeing how cool the mum was about her daughter wearing a jihab was great)

i wonder how they will begin to articulate their sense of themselves as women with islam in the future, especially when they start to fancy boys,

i hadn't stopped to think how the daily mail might see it though, was that article yesterday? you'd think they would be happy that these girls we less likely to be school age mums, boozing & taking drugs and had learnt the value of god and community. ahem. well maybe one day...

a

12:22 / 31.10.03

"Do you not think they embraced the culture just to fit in then?"

I think that's absolutely true but in a far subtler way than, I think, the documentary suggested. It seemed to me that the girls, really positively, had not started thinking about these things in racial terms until the documentary makers started questioning them in that light.

To us on the outside it obviously looks like "fitting" in but were they doing, really, anything more than just making sure they were hanging around with and doing the same sorts of things as their friends.

There is, I think, and this has something to do with the, in my opinion, ridiculous need of cultures to present themselves as static in order to preserve some sense of identity that's never been fixed before, an inability in this country to recognise the buzz and excitement of whole new cultures potentially developing from the 'melting pot' where we are lucky enough to see it happen.

It's not really my scene, but I'd always thought of the garage scene, in London especially, as epitomising that sort of movement, where black and white kids are just creating their own culture with very little overt reference to their racial identity as defining them. The media inevitably paints the garage scene as being black and usurped by white artists, but I'm not sure that's been the case. Especially when I see (the very few it has to be said) friends I have who grew up on estates in Peckham and the like. And, well, it's just their scene. And that's exciting.

Sax, you're obviously right about the particular issues Bradford faces (and I'm certainly of the belief that that kind of segregation in the name of multiculturalism is pretty regressive and unhealthy) but that's even more reason to make a really celebratory documentary about these pretty awesome girls (their Arabic was pretty shit hot, no?)

Don't get me wrong, I think you could see all of this stuff in the programme, but, y'know, I just kind of wished they'd upped it a little more.

"you'd think they would be happy that these girls were less likely to be school age mums, boozing & taking drugs and had learnt the value of god and community" - Exactly, but, if there's one thing you can expect from the Daily Mail, it's inconsistency.

12:34 / 31.10.03

future perfect on the...

'garage scene, as epitomising that sort of movement, where black and white kids are just creating their own culture with very little overt reference to their racial identity as defining them'

happened in jungle too for a while but then tech-step usurped it helped by mixmag et al & it all went very white for a long time

but i wonder if bhangra will ever be really cool amongst white & black teens beyond spicing up a few rnb hits with new rhythms, was no surprise that the bradford girls were into bhangra but i doubt it will cross over past a few novelty hits, although saying that asian culture has been massively mainstreamed recently so i may be totally wrong

a

13:42 / 31.10.03

Didn't see the programme but some idle thoughts:

I dunno about the music analogy here as I think it is easy for things like 2-step and garage to be, if not race-neutral, at least then expressed as multi-cultural products. Or rather products with a lot of different racial and other signifiers within them - London, a certain age group, reference to regga and hip hop, whatever. I can't see that a relgion like Islam as least as it's expressed in Braford, is ever going to be race neutral. Perhaps this could be an emergent form of something different. What I'd be interested to know more about is the progressive wings of Islam and how they are flourishing - or not - as a response to being in this country. Voices emerging from the Islamic community that are uniquely UK, and responding to the problems and opportunities for Islamic people in this country. I'm going beyond the remit of the programme now, I know, but it's an interesting area.

14:01 / 31.10.03

The whole youth subcultures thing is really important, I think, in relation to this. I have problems with traditionalism (that are completely to do with my mindset rather than any objective analysis, if I'm honest) in that, although I understand why it seems important to people (preserving their cultures etc.), it just feels like a really silly and defensive way to understand what culture is about. To me at least.

I mean, and Islam is a really good example of this, are we meant to accept that cultures are these weird homogenous things that are in some way foisted upon people's lives? One of my problems with the doc was that you had no sense (other than very fleetingly) of the diverse set of views, opinions and perspectives that sit within this thing we call Islamic culture.

That’s why youth cultures can be hugely positive, I think, because you’ll just make stuff up and want to rebel a bit and figure out new and exciting ways of doing and thinking about things, you’ll have ideas cross over far more fluidly that at most other ages in your life and you’re open to these things. I mean, do you perceive difference in a bad way until you’re told about it?

I guess what I mean is that my culture is just that. Mine. It's a pretty unique fusion of attitudes, tastes etc. that are informed through all the contact I have with people, media, institutions etc.

No-one (white and Christian?) on this board would, for a second, I'm guessing claim that that was enough to define them. And really good thing too. I just think it's a shame that you can see a documentary where you can really see that, potentially healthy and exciting, cross-pollination happen without more being made of it. Surely the title alone was meant to, on some level, scare the white audience?

(You'll have to excuse my rambling and ranting, guys! Blame the Rioja I had at lunchtime.)