Brick Lane

This picture looks pretty multicultural to me...








Two years ago I tried to get Monica Ali to come and meet a Bangladeshi women's group in Stepney. I was working on a regeneration programme there, and the area is full of girls who are not encouraged to do anything, & I mean anything, outside the home. It's hard to give them role models, when their mothers, aunts and older sisters are all in the same boat. Studying is taken very seriously, but only for grades. Jobs are good, but pretty much in the same way they were good for our foremothers in the 1930's. And, what with the loucheness of being among men and outside the home all day, the Bengali girls I knew at work there were very keen to cover their heads and be model Muslims. They didn't, for example, say anything in meetings. Or presume to aim much higher than admin.

Most of the most hard-core, jihad-preparing young guys I met on that job were in fact - predictably - the local thugs, gangsters, ex-dealers, who used the same strong-arm tactics from their days on the street to persuade everyone around them to become "righteous."

A video made for the programme, made up of interviews with young people on the subject of "what is art?" revealed girls who were very art-literate and desperate for more creative expression in their lives - they desperately wanted tp paint, put on plays, draw pictures, you name it. Asked what the programme could do to help them achieve it, they said things like, "build a theatre!" SO charming. But their parents are reluctant even to let them go to the all-girls craft activities at the local youth club. The boys - on whom more pressure is exerted as future leaders of the local community - were clearly terrified of appearing not Islamic enough, and said things like "art is all those naked people on telly, innit, it's all the song lyrics that go against God, we don't want that." One poor thing, about 14 years old, eventually said, in a trailing voice, "Art is like when people design clothes and things like that..." Asked by the interviewer if that was something he'd like to do himself, he said, "NO." "No, no .... .... no. YES." All the other boys in the frame just laughed.

So I thought a young, Anglo-Bengali novelist might be just the ticket for some of these girls: to meet someone who wrote about people like them and made a success. But nothing is that easy! And of course, I should have thought deeper. Ali doesn't cover her hair, and she speaks in public. They said no, we couldn't approach her, because they'd heard that she had said uncomplimentary things about Sylhet in her novel, Brick Lane.

That old chestnut! As I recall, one character makes one remark in the course of the book about a stereotypical prejudice about Sylhetis being like yokels. (Sylhet is the region in Bangladesh from which most of the Benali population of Whitechapel/Stepney etc is drawn. I gather it is rural, farming country made up of little villages which still feature traditionally-built, thatched houses.)

In the end, not only was no art provision made for the local kids, no one really ever saw the video either. No one cares. The kids are encouraged to improve grades, go to university, etc - things you can measure and count as outputs - but as to any kind of engagement with the wider culture, that is off limits. Because you can't ask questions that might have an "un-Islamic" answer. So what we have is a very dangerous thing indeed: a community that takes everything literally. And personally. And a government-funded regeneration programme allowing them to do just that. And because they aren't looking around them they have no means for critical thinking or comparison.

And before anyone goes and gets the idea that Ms Baroque herself is un-Islamic, I'll just say that I'm NOT. But this isn't really about Islam! (Can you even say that these days...?) It's about the confusion of national/cultural and religious values, and local powers-that-be who are scared to say boo to a goose. I am, though, in the true pre-Revolutionary spirit, un-Didactic. (Notice how "didactic" with a capital D looks like Diderot?) My notion is that novelists should be allowed to write novels and film companies should be able to make films, unmolested.

So now we have this predictable swell of protest, from local young people and others who have never been allowed - encouraged - given a mental space from which - to explore the world of ideas, thinking they can change the course of a river just because they heard a rumour that someone said something they don't like.

Apparently the protesters are planning to burn copies of Brick Lane - in actual fact a rather tepid novel - this weekend.

Remember the saying: When once they start burning books, they will end by burning people. But people are already burning, and in the name of this same thing.

How is our government going to respond if Londoners burn a sweet, polite fiction bestseller in a London street? How will Ken respond? London could easily become another Amsterdam. And I don't see anyone stepping back and defining their terms, so they'll be powerless to say anything.

Here, in an excerpt from an interview in The Guardian, is the chair of the Brick Lane Traders' Association, Abdus Salique:

He also claimed that community groups prevented Monica Ali from being awarded the Booker prize. "This book was contesting for the Booker prize," he said. "We stopped that."

Mr Salique raised the spectre of a worsening in community relations if filming goes ahead on location. "We are living in a multicultural society," he said. "We are in a peaceful situation. This film will make a lot of problems for local people."

He threatened mass protests if the company attempts to film on the streets of Tower Hamlets, saying that "the community feels strongly about this. We are not going to let it happen.

"Young people are getting very involved with this campaign. They will blockade the area and guard our streets. Of course, they will not do anything unless we tell them to, but I warn you they are not as peaceful as me."

Jolly good!

I've left this half an hour and feel the need to come back and make a disclaimer. I know lots of wonderful people in the East End, of allraces and religions. I don't for one minute think that the militant, closed-minded faction represents everyone, even within the Bangladeshi community, which is not, in turn, the whole community.

But this global failure to define our terms is what is keeping these issues locked inside the PC pen. And even if the shouting mobs speak only for a few, they do seem to the ones making the noise. I don't see anyone protesting to get the film made in Brick Lane.

There's more to say about this. A lot more. And the worst thing is this nagging feeling of being a little afraid to say it.