Transcript

SHANON SHAH

There was a campaign in Indonesia once by a group of progressive Muslims with the strap line Islam [SPEAKING NON-ENGLISH] which translates in English as ‘Islam has many colours’. We can talk about different Islams or when we talk about Islam there is also a way to celebrate its vast diversity, culturally, ideologically, doctrinally. And I think that’s always been there historically.

What’s changing now is a lot of people who identify as progressive Muslims are starting to organise and mobilise politically, and they’re taking advantage of new technologies, and they challenge traditional authority structures in a way that’s quite unprecedented. Having said that, it’s very difficult to get into the traditional authority structures.

There is a Saudi Arabian scholar - very influential, I think he’s called Salman al-Ouda - who had what were for a Saudi, quite progressive views on a lot of things, including homosexuality. He’s just been sentenced to death by the regime. And you find this repeatedly in different Muslim regimes that are not entirely democratic.

So I don’t know if it’s about Islam. I don’t think it’s about Islam per se, it’s about political power. It’s about a lack of democratic space. But the more I speak to progressive Muslims in Malaysia and in the UK, I think the more Muslims that I know now are getting fed up with these kinds of authoritarian manoeuvres against different ideas amongst Muslims.