The conversation will only be cyclical and breed resentment until we all fully understand this:
No More Male-Only Panels, Meetings, Edited Volumes, etc., Muslims!!
Dear male Muslim scholars, we need you to act not talk. We need you to change a religious culture with your actions because they count for more than your words. If you’re invited to join a panel, a study group, a published anthology etc, don’t do it unless there are also female contributors.
Dara at National Theatre: An Orientalist’s wet dream
Dara at Lyttleton Theatre, National Theatre
20th January – 4th April 2015
Written for Critical Muslim to be published in their July 2015 issue (hopefully)
Imagine a world where wudu is sexy. Not the soothing, somewhat impractical habit it can be, but real come hither performance of ritual ablution. I can guess what you’re thinking but it turns out such a feat is indeed possible and they managed to depict it in the recent National Theatre production of Dara, a play exploring the conflict between two of the Mughal empire’s defining leaders: Shah Jahan’s sons Dara Shikoh and his brother Aurangzeb.
What does sexy wudu look like? It looks like this:
Wudu here is imported into the life of Hindu dancing girl Hira Bai, by her Muslim master. While pouring water up her nose, Prince Aurangzeb’s favourite sassy slave girl takes on a coquettish air, enlivening his measured palace existence and mitigating his tense relationship with his father. To Aurangzeb’s dismay, Hira’s positivity is lost forever when she dies young and he becomes a dogmatic, despotic ruler in her absence. Intent on controlling his family’s vast and varied empire through conservative Islam, he locks himself in an ideological power struggle with his Sufi-inclined brother, Dara.
Originally written in Urdu by multilingual Pakistani writer Shahid Nadeem in 2010, this adaptation by Tanya Ronder has been commissioned by departing artistic director Nicholas Hytner and covers the years 1659-1707 during which time Aurangzeb held power. Does the choice to adapt a play by a fluent English-speaking playwright, rather than commission him to translate it concern you too? Let’s talk about it later. Suffice to say this adaptation could have been an exploratory philosophical freewheeler of a play. Instead, Ronder squeezes its themes into a family saga, binds it in an unconvincing love story and seals it with uncomfortably reductive notions of Islam that come to a head in a crowd-pleasing court room scene.
For director Nadia Fall, who has worked with National Theatre for over ten years, Dara is her biggest production to date. Her previous work includes the 2013 Bush Theatre production of Ayad Akhtar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Disgraced, which follows Amir, an atheist lawyer living in New York battling with his career prospects, his Muslim background and his loyalties. Like Dara, Akhtar’s play was hailed for its consideration of contemporary headline themes, specifically the discussion on Islamophobia and the identity of Muslim Americans. But while Dara is rooted in its historical setting, it is similarly en vogue in its desire to pit Aurangzeb’s emotionally fuelled enforceable Islam against Dara’s rationally conceived liberal interpretation. It’s another theatrical search for the ever elusive moderate Muslim and it seems the spiritually enlightened Dara model, is what we should all be aiming for.
Critics across the board have lauded the show’s production values and on that point, they’re hard to argue with. The show’s beautifully constructed set by designer Katrina Lindsay is staggering in its grandeur and her eye for opulent costumes with intricate layering and embroidery is remarkable. The music, performed by a live qawali band, is comfortingly atmospheric and Neil Austin’s lighting design expertly illuminates Shah Jahan’s palace, hollows Dara’s prison cell and takes us into Aurangzeb’s troubled hallucinations.
But while the production is alluring to the eye, it’s entirely frustrating to any mind that wants to consider the moral ambiguity that makes up most faith systems, particularly those that are used in the creation of empires. On the surface, small things irritate immediately, like the Anglicised pronunciations of basic Arabic terms. In a production of this magnitude, which unashamedly pats itself on the back for reaching out to British Asian audiences, it’s hard to believe they couldn’t get a dialect coach to double-check every one on stage can get “Ramadhan” out convincingly. I admit I’m still torn about whether this is just quibbling or if my instincts that this is something that should be treated with care are valid. Maybe it only matters to a few people but the depiction of Muslims saying words and phrases like “Bismillah” and “Lailahaillalah” with Lawrence of Arabia-esque distance from such everyday phrases is jarring. These are yet more mainstream depictions of my history that make me feel invisible.
The performances only add to this. Dara, played with regal assuredness by a bearded Zubin Varla, has a presence that seems modelled on filmic depictions of King Richard the Lionheart, while his brother Aurangzeb, a brilliantly unlikeable baddy played by Sargon Yelda, takes after envious Prince John. Unintentional though it may be, the manifestation of these characters on stage smacks of Western royals storming around foreign lands. The Mughals have historically been used to justify the later British rule in the region as the Mughals also arrived uninvited and set up camp for centuries. When, after meeting a spiritual leader who explains life in a few handy metaphors, Dara begins sharing his newfound spiritual understanding, it feels like European proselytising even if, like me, you agree with almost everything he says. While his philosophies are technically Eastern and centuries old, under Fall’s direction they are delivered in a recognisably Anglicised way.
Ronder’s script doesn’t help. She presents us almost immediately with the hackneyed old image of a Muslim drinking alcohol to exemplify all that is contradictory and confusing in the practices of Islam and the behaviour of its followers. In 2015, it feels patronising and repetitive when the drinking challenge is posed not only to Dara’s younger brother Murad in a functional move used to explain that his grandfather, Jehangir, had a relaxed take on religious observance; but also to Aurangzeb by Hira in a test of his love for her. For South Asian audiences, especially majority Muslim audiences such as the ones Nadeem’s original would have been performed to, the knowledge that many Muslims drink is nothing new, nor is it that contradictory. For some it’s a vice albeit a serious one, for others, it has become an accepted, if secretive, norm. In Britain however, it’s still a reliable old trope that the majority of audience members seem to accept. It’s time we called for a more sophisticated depiction of the relationship between faith and conviction.
Add to this the excessive discussion – mostly by men – on the questionable necessity of hijab and one begins to suspect this adaptation exists solely to explain the National’s centre-left take on multiculturalism. It may have been necessary for the prophet’s wives, says Dara, but it is tied to a time and a culture that doesn’t exist anymore, he insists. Awkwardly, he uses the word “hijab” which wasn’t common term in Dara’s time nor a common practice in his father’s vast empire which would have included Persian, East Asian and South Asian interpretations of the head covering. None of which would have looked anything like the contemporary Arabised hijab worn by myself and countless others in Britain today. Like much of the discussion on Islamic practices in Ronder’s adaptation, talk of hijab here is unhelpfully oversimplified. Nothing of individual agency or political relevance or the combination of religion and patriarchy is addressed. For a British audience to gain something beyond an introduction to the subject, I’d argue these aspects are essential to the theme. Without proper consideration of them, I’m tempted to use the O-word. But I’ll hold off for now.
I hesitate to completely pan the show because the family element is handled with complexity although it is overused in many ways. In flashback scenes, we see Aurangzeb’s relationship with his father break down spectacularly when Shah Jahan chooses to believe an apple conjuring Faqir over his son. Scantily clad, and eschewing all mainstream notions of what it is to be a Muslim, the Faqir turns up at the palace and reluctantly reveals, at Shah Jahan’s insistence, that Aurangzeb will eventually facilitate his father’s downfall. In a fit of rage Shah Jahan almost drowns his son and Aurangzeb is considered a suspicious adversary from that moment on. What that does to his notions of power, loyalty and supremacy are key to the familial ties explored in his relationship with Dara.
Similarly, Dara’s sister Jahanara (Nathalie Armin) has a curious co-dependent relationship with Shah Jahan who is simultaneously abusive and loving towards her. Her sister Roshanara (Anneika Rose) is a sprightly, engaging rebel whose sense of self-determination is miles ahead of Jahanara’s. Each is loyal to one brother and their understanding of themselves as Muslim women and social leaders is cleverly teased out. But in this wordy play, we don’t get a full picture of Aurangzeb’s working mind. He isn’t really allowed to show himself as a strategist, employing Islam to preserve the family power that Dara appears to take for granted. Instead his fear of Dara’s inclusive, optimistic Islam is explained as a deep seated emotional trauma from his childhood coupled with a broken heart.
The play also skirts over the abuse of religion to satisfy ego, of which both Aurangzeb and the more popular Dara could be accused. Rather, the text focuses on an overly defined good Islam vs. bad Islam showdown in the key court room scene where Dara must defend himself against charges of apostasy. Dara believes all spirituality, including Islam, is useful to the soul and the land but also that it should not be forced into something tribal. He sees it as a path to understanding intangible divinity and the solid earth around him. His Islam is far beyond a set of enforceable rules. He makes his poetic case to a group of bumbling mullahs who appear to be imported from modern day Iran and a prosecutor (Prasana Puwanarajah) whose infantile arguments are intentionally laughable. So when Dara asks “Who cares which door you open to come into the light?” they mock him but are noticeably dumbfounded.
Dara’s discovery and expression of a less distinctly visible Islam, one that’s more palatable to British audiences in these dark times, could be interrogated to great theatrical effect. But alas, here it is padded out with lacklustre fables about a dehydrated king giving up his kingdom for a sip of water. Watching this kindergarten explanation unfold in a court of lumbering religious traditionalists, is what convinces me the O-word is called for here. What else could a Western view of stupid, yes-men clerics and optimistic objectors be but Orientalist? The idea that Aurangzeb cannot think for himself and remains cocooned in his past is Orientalist. The image of Dara gaining relevance only in his rebellion is Orientalist. The excessive, male-dominated discussion on hijab and the fascination with Muslims who drink is Orientalist. Sexy wudu is definitely Orientalist! And it makes me wonder whether this production of Dara isn’t one of the most successful examples of 21st century cultural imperialism in contemporary British theatre.
With this in mind, I feel we should question the need for a British writer to pen a new version of a play by a fluent English-speaking playwright like Shahid Nadeem. Given what a great opportunity the development of this production has been, it feels more relevant to ask what a Pakistani playwright would like to convey to a British audience about our intrinsically linked history, than to ask a white British playwright what she would like to convey to British audiences about a figure like Dara. In a recent panel discussion called “The Global and the Local in the Arts: Translating Pakistan’s vibrant cultures,” this idea of cultural imperialism was posed by an audience member to Nadeem himself. “The best thing” he replied “would maybe be to stage the play in the original Urdu with surtitles.” I wonder if National Theatre would consider this such an impossible task. At what point can we stop expressing our gratitude to mainstream powerhouses for engaging with “international” theatre on a basic level and start demanding that they play their part in its evolution?
Radical Pluralism: An interview with Dr. Amina Wadud
This Friday 6th March, just ahead of International Women’s Day, the Inclusive Mosque Initiative (IMI), a UK-based group who convene inclusive spaces for worship and community work, have invited Dr. Amina Wadud to lead their mixed-gender Friday prayer (Jummah).
It’s been 10 years since Dr. Wadud made headlines when she did the same thing in New York in 2005 and became the first woman to lead both men and women in prayer in the global North. Now IMI are continuing the process she started and potentially turning it up a notch. With their ardent approach to ensuring their events are accessible to disabled people and their eagerness to provide spaces where Muslims of all sects, all genders and all sexualities can meet as equals, their work raises questions about what a truly pluralistic Islam looks like today.
I recently had the opportunity to speak to Dr. Wadud, author of Qur’an and Woman and Inside the Gender Jihad over Skype. She chats causally about her travels to the global south where she feels “indebted to women and oppressed people who take me to task for attempting to perfect an interpretation that might be irrelevant to people’s lives.” She laments the energy she spends in the US “eking out the space between the sort of apologetic neo-liberal articulation of Islam and the conservative projection of Islam. Neither one of which,” she tells me, “is going to push us forward the way we need to go.” I ask her about the liberation theology she’s been working on and what she calls “radical pluralism.” She explains: “the future of Islam means we need to be taking some spiritual-radical, liberal-radical turns at this time in history.”
~
On 6th March, the IMI are going to be opening up the congregational prayer space to everyone including people who have, perhaps, proactively avoided those spaces of ritual worship because historically, those spaces have excluded them for myriad reasons. Do you have any advice for them on reclaiming that space?
Yes. I like the way that you’ve formulated this question because you are expressing it from what I would describe as the base level upwards and I’ve been looking at it as far as reformist theory. One cannot wait to have ownership of Islam granted, one has to actually feel confident of the necessity for asserting that ownership especially when it is being neglected or deprived. So, the power lies at that basic level as well as at the top. There is a need to arrive at the confidence to be able accept that despite differences of opinion, despite outright obstacles and objections, one has to go forward with a sense of ownership. I think it’s a process of self-affirmation and transformation.
You know, when more ordinary Muslims arrive at that place, then the achievement of democratisation of authority will be met. I continue to work on what I call radical pluralism and that means that there is and has always been, a diversity of Islams in accordance to the people who live it. It means that every person who confesses to be Muslim has the right to say what the public understanding of Islam is and if there are different public understandings of Islam, great, ‘cause the more the merrier.
It’s likely that there will be an outer circle of attendees at the inclusive prayer. They’re going to be the Muslim allies of the people who are praying. Although those allies might not be taking those steps towards ownership themselves, they are going to be there. What message would you want to put across to those people who may not feel it’s okay to join in, but they’re still showing their support?
Alright. To them my message would be: get off the fence. I don’t feel that they’re helpful to themselves or to anyone by presuming that when such a thing as inclusive prayer gets the approval of whatever parties they are waiting to have approve it, only then can they openly participate. That is simply a form of hypocrisy and cowardice and it doesn’t do anyone any good to have them sit on the periphery, which they do on the basis of taking some efforts to preserve their I’m-still-a-good-Muslim-ness, according to other people’s expectations of what is a good Muslim.
I think a little more concern needs to be put on the honesty and integrity of their own hearts. If their heart is in support, then their body needs to be following suit.
In the fight for gender equality and inclusivity in religion, you’ll have come across people who feel that the reality of those who say they are excluded or marginalised is perhaps exaggerated or distracting from more so-called important issues. How do you bring people into awareness about anything that they believe is not their reality?
This really is more of a pedagogical issue. This is about the ways that we imagine knowledge can be explained. What does it take to build empathy in people so that they will respect that there are differences even in the perceptions of the same experience and that each of those different perceptions are equally important? I have seen a few mechanisms that work. I’m especially thinking about Toni Morrison’s acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for literature because one of the means is through storytelling. We need to cultivate the capacity to listen, to learn, to witness other stories as equally significant because they are, in fact, significant aspects of the total conversation of Islam in our day.
I think we need to multiply the number of stories that are told about Muslim realities and right now, we are on a repeat cycle for certain formulas and these formulas have outlived their utility. We have played out certain stories to such an extent that the people who are experiencing stories outside of those overplayed ones, do not realise how valuable their contributions are. We have not moved to a global awareness about Muslim diversity so our notion of, for example the hero, is still where it was many years ago. We still love the trope of the Muslim woman that needs to be saved by something. The something could be education, fashion etc. We love that story, we love that victim being made hero trope. We can move beyond that.
Which has been more difficult, getting men to see women differently or encouraging women to see themselves differently?
I have to say, personally, I put little attention into how men see women. They’re not my audience, they’re not who I aim at when I make certain statements because the historical record indicates that men have had undue privilege. So I think in a way, that they’re doing okay. I guess you could say that I’m working on women changing their minds about themselves. However, I find that articulation a little problematic because it seems to start from a place of disapproval. I’m not stressing so much that women change as much, as I’m stressing that women become greater in self-acceptance.
The language of change presumes that they have something wrong that needs to be corrected and I am trying to work philosophically on the grounds of: you’re okay just as you are. When I talk about change, I use that word in terms of transformation and I usually articulate it this way: the universe is always in motion and God himself is alive so if we are not continually moving then the universe will move on without us, so not paying attention to that transformation is not stagnation, it is in fact, regression. Because in order to keep up with the universe, we have to keep moving. But I don’t give a direction to that movement and I don’t give an evaluation to what I think would constitute a “proper” or “good” location within it. I just think we have to keep up with the universe.
Best of London Feb-April
Some stuff I’m going to over the next few months that I thought you might like:
Antigone at Theatre Royal Stratford East
From 19th February
In ancient Greece, Creon has his own understanding of power and loyalty. When his treacherous nephew is killed, Creon refuses to let him be buried but he’s challenged by his niece, Antigone, whose principles propel her to inspire a revolution. In Roy William’s version he looks at the world of contemporary gangs in London. I know how that sounds but in this Guardian interview (yeah, I know how that sounds too) he says: “Creon learns this lesson but at great cost. It is a dominant male culture, in which girls are seen as accessories for their boyfriends and often exploited.” So there’s a level of awareness to his writing that banishes the usual anxieties over a reimagining like this one. Image credit: Robert Day
Out-Spoken at The Forge
Tuesday 24th February
Reliably good mix of poetry and music hosted by The Ruby Kid aka Daniel Randall and Anthony Anaxagorou.This month they showcase work by Chimene Suleyman, Adam Kamerling and Dorothea Smart. I’ve been to a hot ton and this is probably the best spoken word night in London.
Chill Pill at Canada Water Culture Space
26th February
If you’re going to Out-Spoken as well, be warned, there’ll be cross-overs. Adam Kamerling, for example, is performing at both. There probably will be some repeated material, not necessarily from Adam, but it’ll still be worth it. This particular Chill Pill brings together Raymond Antrobus, Deanna Rodger and Simon Mole. I hope Mole does “I was cycling down the Edgware Road”
Monologue Slam at Theatre Royal Stratford East
2nd March
There’s certainly an element of poetry to this but essentially it does what it says on the tin: fills an evening with some spectacularly good monologues from actors fine-tuning their talents and sharing their successes.
Inclusive Jummah Salah with Dr. Amina Wadud at St. John’s Church
6th March
This is gonna be HUGE. Dr. Amina Wadud, one of the most thoughtful, no nonsense writers of our time is coming to the UK to lead an inclusive Friday prayer at St. John’s Church. Friday prayers are one of the most significant combinations of spirituality and community in Islamic practices and this one, organised by the Inclusive Mosque Initiative, will proactively make efforts to include everyone. Here’s to blasting the lazy, exclusionary practices of the past.
Women of the World Festival at Southbank Centre
1st-8th March
A week celebrating International Women’s Day on 8th March with some truly exceptional panels (others look completely trite: Caitlin Moran AND Shazia Mirza?? No thanks). There’s one on Saturday about immigration, featuring Shami Chakrabarti and Ghada Rasheed, which I’m glad is being included in a discussion about feminism. I also want to make it to ‘Disability and Feminism’ by Claire Cunningham who confronts the “widely-held assumption that disability is a negative state in which to exist.” There’s also ‘Beyond the Booty?’ about the over-sexualisation of black women featuring a key note address by Dr. Shirley Tate.
Radiant Vermin at Soho Theatre
From 10th March
This twisted tale from Philip Ridley sees his writing paired up with David Mercatali’s direction. They last coupled up for Vanilla Jungle which was superb! Gross, freaky, completely captivating, it left a thick residue and I reckon Radiant Vermin will be more of the same.
If you’re Muslamically inclined, there’s this in April:
Muslim Leadership in Britain Conference at University of Central Lancashire
1st April
This is about leadership in Muslim communities in the UK. It’s happening up north which I think will help conversation steer away from a London-centric focus. There’s also a specific bit on northern perspectives. Slightly annoyed that there is a female leadership talk billed as something that warrants its own section rather than being addressed at every stage of the conference. Then again, it may be necessary at this stage of reforming hierarchical community structures.
Homebody: An interview with Michaela Coel
If I were handing out awards for theatre, last year’s best performances would have gone to Michaela Coel and Toby Wharton. Coincidentally, they’d both have won for best writing too. Toby’s co-written og and Michaela’s Chewing Gum Dreams were undoubtedly two of the best shows on the London fringe scene last year and with both of these performers cast in Nadia Fall’s verbatim play Home, it topped my list of things to see. But I didn’t like the title for this National Theatre Shed production. Home seemed so generic, so familiar, so simple. Titles for plays, I think, should always be intriguing. On first hearing it, Home just wasn’t. Now that I’ve seen the show however, I’ve done an about-turn. It’s an entirely encapsulating title, clever and pretty perfect for this stellar production.
Michaela Coel confirms this within a few minutes of our conversation. Currently in Channel 4’s Top Boy as Kayla, Michaela, who plays two characters living at Target East hostel, a temporary housing solution for people who find themselves with nowhere to go. Michaela tells me about the hours spent talking to an environmental psychologist in preparation for her roles, “about what it is to be homeless and about what homelessness is really about.”
Having bound across the foyer with a huge grin and limitless energy, she sits straight up and talks thoughtfully about the emotional state that emerges from an understanding of where one comes from and where once can safely go. “There’s a difference between just having a home and knowing that this here is my parent’s land. Knowing that they own it and when they die, I’m going to own it and no matter what happens in the world, I have this that I stand on, that I own. And when you don’t have that, your mentality changes because there’s no sense of surety, your standing on something that can be ripped from your feet at any moment.”
That relationship to our environment is made crystal clear in Home, it becomes something that extends beyond the people who live at Target East and into the audience. That feeling of living somewhere temporary, somewhere you might not be able to afford soon or somewhere you don’t feel you belong is what brings us close to the range of characters in this play. Michaela talks about a similar feeling when she tells me about her own childhood: “My dad came here as an illegal immigrant and he was caught and sent back to Ghana. Me and my mum, we don’t own no home, we’ve been moving from flat to flat since I was born and it makes me feel very invested in this play. When we’ve gone into the real hostel to do drama workshops with the people who live there, I look at them and I think, there is no difference between me and you. I know the same people as some of them, you know, mates from my secondary school. That’s why I have to make sure I honour these stories.”
And while Home might be a picture of people in dire straights, it’s not remotely preachy or guilt-inducing. “What this play doesn’t do is make people feel bad,” says Michaela, “it’s not saying shame on you and it’s not saying lucky you, it’s just saying this is what it’s like for these people. There’s just something quite unifying in the play, this sense of struggle.”
To Nadia’s credit, she’s found some great ways of creating a sense of unity and at the same time honouring the stories she tells. There is for example, Grace Savage, a beatboxer who doesn’t say a word but instead becomes the voice of the silent. “When you see Grace” says Michaela, “you’ll understand why no one else in the world should even try beatboxing because, she’s just the best. But even some of her beatboxing is harrowing and you kind of think how can something like beatboxing have that much of an effect? She sort of represents the people who refused to talk to Nadia, the people who didn’t want to share their stories, her character is those people who are so frustrated that they can’t speak or they don’t want to relive what happened to them or they’ve gone through such an experience that they only have a few words and can’t go any further than that.”
Grace also provides a lot of the lightness in the play, the humour and the comic relief that comes with an environment like that of Target East, where there are little babies, middle-aged security guards, wise case workers, stubbornly positive managers and persistent drug dealers. One of Michaela’s characters has a uniquely hopeful take on life and it can land her in some disastrous situations. “None of these people are stupid, that’s clear. But we all come with our own prejudices and Nadia’s been a great help in showing us that we’re here just to tell these stories. One of my characters for example, she’s caught Chlamydia four times, twice from her current boyfriend and you want to go: What the hell is wrong with you? But you hear her backs story and it makes it easier to step back and see why she might make the decisions that she does.”
The other character Michaela plays is Young Mum who has one scene that makes me laugh out loud just thinking about it. “She’s so happy. She considers herself a chairman of the hostel. She’ll give you a tour, she’ll show you the garden and say ‘yeah it smells of wee sometimes but today it’s nice’. She’s still together with the father of her child, he’s at uni and she’s climbing. A lot of these people are climbing, they’re just starting from a much lower place.”
Written for Spoonfed