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Thursday 20 November 2008

An evening with the Muslim Facebook crew

Sarfraz Manzoor celebrates an iftar meal with homeless people and his fellow Muslims, a web-generated ‘flashmob’ observing an Islamic tradition of generosity to the needy

As I was talking to Fatima and Farah I could see numerous small groups of young Muslims engaging in conversation. Since the event was organised online most of those who had decided to turn up did not know who else would be attending. Adlan, a young Sudanese student, had heard about the Facebook group earlier in the day and had headed to his local kebab store to buy food which he was enthusiastically distributing to the homeless. He was joined by 16-year-old Hamza, who is studying for his GCSEs and is part of a local Islamic organisation who had told him to turn up at the iftar. Looking at Hamza, with his earnest eyes and wispy beard, it struck me that in many ways he was the embodiment of what so many non-Muslims would consider with weary suspicion: an observant young Pakistani Muslim man whose religion lies at the heart of his world. And yet for Hamza, and the other Muslims I met in Holborn, the manner in which they articulated their Islamic identity offers hope that there need not be any contradiction or clash between the values of liberal democracy and Islam. To these young Muslims Islam is about community and charity, values that sit rather well in today’s Britain.

The flashmob iftar has already been repeated in Manchester by 22-year-old Oxford graduate Arzoo Ahmed, who was inspired by the London example. ‘Islam says you follow the law of the land you are in,’ she told me. ‘So for me it’s very important to reach out to non-Muslims.’ The Manchester flashmob iftar drew 80 young Muslims in its first week and Ahmed is planning on setting up a long-term sustainable project that can capitalise on the interest that has been generated.

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