Some thoughts from Arzu in memory of the late Maz (Masarrat) Saleem.
It’s just gone 40 days since the news that Maz Saleem passed away. If you don’t know who she was, you can read an obituary here, and listen to her in her own words here.
I had met Maz many times in the years since her father’s brutal murder in 2013. A shocking and appalling event that catapulted Maz into the life of an anti-racism activist. Ironically though, it is the last few years, when I actually couldn’t meet her, that I really got to know her. We became regular correspondents via messaging. I have wondered since her passing, how much, if at all, I should share of our discussions. I want to keep those memories special, the jokes, the asides, the Crossroads jokes (you have to be of an age), the moaning about life, middle age, politics, the works. But there are questions we need to ask ourselves as Muslim community members, and in Maz’s blunt fashion, I think in her honour, I need to ask them.
What the hell is wrong with us?
We have maybe more than 2000 Mosques in the UK. The figure was already at 1000 or thereabouts when a small group of us set up IHRC in 1997. Since then Muslim civil society in the UK has sprawled into every sphere, so it seems, of everyday life. In fact many of the essential services our organisations provide, we provide to whole communities, not just our brethren in faith: soup kitchens, out of school activities, to name just two.
So why is it we still can’t, as a community, here in Britain, in big and small cities, towns, villages, provide support and help to the most vulnerable and lonely? Not just those who accept help with gratitude and quiet, but those who are “difficult”. How is it (still) left to other individuals to offer help at the risk of their own exhaustion and physical and mental health.
I say this because Maz was ill for a while. Ill health means, no work. No work means no money. No money means no security, no heat, delayed rent, no repairs. “I’m exhausted from fighting a broken system whilst being seriously unwell,” Maz said earlier this year. Despite needing help, she was, until her last hospitalisation, trying to still help others. This included batch cooking for the homeless, and for her neighbours.
The assumption that many still hold, that the services of the British state will help, is one that should have been jettisoned long ago, at the same time the state dropped whatever help – financial, community medical and so on. And Maz was not alone. Our society, whatever background you are from, is full of people barely or not at all coping.
Instead of the ever increasing prayer centres to cater for the ever decreasing circles of a Muslim community whose sectarianism outstrips its numbers, or the glut of organisations latently concerned about Islamophobia and fighting over a definition, it is now time someone – one of the big umbrella organisations that keeps boasting its concern and representativeness of Muslims – started dealing with this.
Maz, till the end was fighting and calling out this failure – of state, society and us. She was, as in so many things, brutal to the point, but right.
Maz did a lot for which we should honour her memory. But maybe facing up to this serious lack in our pretensions to be an ummah – a community of justice, love and care – is the first step in properly doing so.
Fatiha for all the marhumeen.
Arzu is a writer based in London, UK
Photo: PressTV
