Transcript of part of an interview conducted by Dr. Tariq Ramadan with sister Myriam Francois-Cerrah, media representative of the Oxford University Islamic Society, UK, in the weekly TV program “Islam and Life.”

In the interview, sister Myriam, herself a convert to Islam, reflects on the general negative perception of female Muslims in the West and compares that to the reality on the ground, in answering the central question of the episode:

What is the Image of Muhammad (peace be upon him) in Mainstream Western Society? Myriam Francois: I think the “Inspired by Muhammad” campaign is to remind people that when Muslims are out there doing good, average Muslims are out there working in homeless charities, helping the elderly or be smiling helping them to cross the road, they are all doing it because that’s the model that Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) taught us.

And that’s what the objective is, to model that good behavior in everyday lives but as you said there is obviously a need to a kind of broader campaign. And we said that “Inspired by Muhammad” is just a campaign by one element. We hope that Muslims will take it upon themselves to go out there and reflect that good behavior, and to remember that Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) in his life had to deal with far worse persecution than we are going through today, and in fact did not react in anything of semblance to what we see on our television screens.

And you gave the example of a Danish cartoon. Unfortunately we can think of a whole array of other examples in which Muslims are behaving badly, such as what happened in some protests like the protests against the returning soldiers from Afghanistan, and the sort of slogans that we were seeing there. We lose the basic humanity to recognize this is still a mother and a father losing a son. Take away the politics and this is still a human soul that passed, and I think it is very unfortunate that we are politicizing every single aspect perhaps as a reaction as we were saying to what is going on in the public sphere and we need really to bring it back to the fundamentals of the faith, and try and make sure that we reflect those.

Tariq Ramadan: That’s very true. But what would you say to someone saying that all what we say about the Prophet (peace be upon him) is always show solidarity and show love. That’s all true. This is the way he was. But he was also someone when your rights are not respected, he was to stand up and say I’m not going to let you do that because this is against the human dignity, and he was ready to struggle for his rights or the rights of the community. And very often when we speak about this as Muslims it’s two extremes: On the one side everything is politicized, everything is about fighting. On the other side, it’s all about solidarity, love and during Ramadan we show love and kindness to the people etc. But in between it might be in fact the right way to follow in the footsteps of the Messenger is to have this balanced approach. Do you think that we are doing this now? It is really try also to struggle for your rights and don’t let the people show disrespect towards you because this is at the end of the day against your dignity, but also against their own dignity.

Myriam Francois: I do, and I think that one of the issues that we have is that we have not quite lashed on to the universal principles, and we keep advocating the specificity of Islam. So when we see for example Christians being banned from wearing a cross in their workplace, Muslim voices tend to be rather mute. But when it comes to somebody not allowed to wear the headscarf when they are serving in a restaurant in Disney Land for example, then we hear voices of the Muslim workers.

And this is a problem because we have got to figure out what it is we are standing up for. If we are standing up for people’s right to manifest their religious identity for that to be an acceptable facet of public life, then we need to manifest it for everybody. And I think that’s a double standard we are still playing unfortunately.

Tariq Ramadan: So we also have to be self-critical with the Muslims because they are not. We can also get a sense that the people around us in the West might have a bad perception because the Muslims are not that right, they are not doing the job, they are not enough involved in changing this perception. So we spoke about solidarity, we spoke about education; we spoke about also not to be silent when people of other faiths are themselves targeted or discriminated. Is there something else that you think should be done? And in which way we can move because what is the reality today in the west, and especially in Europe, is the populist parties are just now gaining more and more ground, and we can see this everywhere from the Netherlands to even here in Britain, France, Switzerland, or in Germany it’s quite worrying, and once again, there is something to be done here.

In which way you think we can change this perception and really because for me for example when I have to speak about Islam I say the best example, the best introduction to Islam, is the Prophet’s life (peace be upon him). This is what we have to go, so how can we change the perceptions about Islam by coming back to a better understanding of Islam. What could be done more? And in which way should it be done?

Myriam Francois: Well, I can think of a number of ways, but I think the most obvious if we are going to model on a very specific example of the life of the Prophet (peace be upon him) would be to say that he really worked at the grass roots. I mean it sounds almost like a catch phrase to say that now but he did. He went to the grass roots. He went to the people in the ground and he didn’t think of any mingle with the sort of high-strategy intellectuals who were in the ivory towers. And a lot of the issues we see with the rise of the far right across Europe has to deal with certain sections of the European society feeling neglected. They feel neglected politically and they feel neglected socially. They feel that people are not paying attention to their rights, and there are certain minorities within society are adamant about having their rights respected but completely ignore the rights of others. Now we might say that to some extent that might be true when Muslims are very concerned about their own rights but sometimes neglectful about the fact that there are working class white families in the UK who are struggling, who are having a really tough time.That’s double standards when we don’t stand up for those rights as much as we stand up for our own. And you were asking about a way which we can improve the situation is to outreach to these people. The Prophet (peace be upon him) never hesitated to approach his enemies and to show them kindness and to show them mercy and to show them compassion. And one of the ways in which in fact some of his enemies came round was with compassion that he showed them, and I think this is a very powerful thing that one can do.

We have an aging society throughout Europe. We have a society in which many elderly people are left dying throughout the winter. It’s such a simple thing to do. Open your door to the elderly. Show them that the new faces that are changing the nature of their society are not negative ones. They are here to bring something positive.

Tariq Ramadan: Thank you for that. I think that during the discussion we were able to at least touch some of the elements that are so important. The first is really the bad perception of the Prophet (peace be upon him) and Islam per se is coming from many reasons, two of them are of course ignorance which is widespread among the people but also orientalism and ideology the way it’s presented with specific agenda by some intellectuals and scholars.

And this is where the Muslims should be involved in all this discussion, spreading more knowledge around and behaving the right way as we were saying is something which is quite important, not only when it comes to speak about Islam, but when it comes to speak about rights, when it comes to speak about discrimination for Muslims and non-Muslims. This is the way the Prophet (peace be upon him) himself was behaving within his community and with the other people.

So reaching out, being vocal, and being present in the society and at the same time also not to be naïve with anything which has to do with ideology and orientalism because this is also another struggle which is important in the field of knowledge today.

SOURCE:onislam