Understanding Islam: In the second part of a series on Islam, Muslims tell Róisín Ingle about the difficulty of living in a land full of temptations
Muhammad Sabbadh, a 16-year-old from Blanchardstown, in Dublin, is not your average Irish teenager, and, while being different can sometimes be difficult, he wouldn't have it any other way.
"It's a challenge, definitely," he says, talking about growing up Muslim in predominantly Christian Ireland. "Friends might tempt you to come to a bar, and it's hard, because you don't want to drink alcohol but you also don't want to be isolated. Relationships with girls outside of marriage are not permissible under Islam, but girls can be tempting the way they dress and act. I am actually lucky, because nothing bad has ever come to me. My friends know me so well and I know how to stay away from temptation."
Muhammad's parents came to Ireland from Syria about 20 years ago, at a time when Muslim women in headscarves were a rare sight even in Dublin. Now the Islamic Cultural Centre, in Clonskeagh, built in 1996, is a vital resource for the city's growing number of Muslims, with its national school, library and restaurant, while halal butchers and Asian stores have sprung up around the thriving Muslim community that has been established near the mosque on South Circular Road. When a pretty girl walks past you in central Dublin wearing a traditional headscarf and a FCUK T-shirt it might seem contradictory, but it's not a sight likely to turn too many heads these days.
However, at just under 20,000 strong, according to the last census, with centres in other Irish cities such as Galway and Cork, the Muslim community here is still relatively small. This means Irish-born Muslims need to be as vigilant as Muhammad if they want to keep the faith. It hasn't been easy growing up as a minority, he says, and because of this he would like to live in a Muslim country when he gets older. He has Muslim friends who have succumbed to drink and drugs and thinks he is fortunate not to have also been tempted. He tells you that when, recently, he tried to organise an after-school Friday prayer session not one of the 20 or so Muslims at his Dublin school turned up. "It was quite a failure," he says.
His strict morals - practising Muslims don't drink, smoke or have sex before marriage - don't necessarily mean he will be made fun of by his non-Muslim peers, but he knows some people pity him because of his lifestyle choices.
"It's not so much that they criticise me for not joining in, more that they feel sorry for me, because they think I am missing out. They show sympathy that I don't really need, because I know this is a better life," he says. "About the girl thing, they say 'that's pretty gay', because I don't have any friends who are girls, but they could not be more wrong there. I am looking forward to getting married. Irish girls, fair play to them, are very good looking, but I would say I will eventually get married to a Muslim girl."
As youth co-ordinator at the Islamic Cultural Centre, Mostahfiz Gahi, a 29-year-old, is well aware of the challenges faced by Muslim youth in Ireland. "The community is less established here compared to somewhere like Birmingham and the pool of volunteers smaller, which makes it harder to find alternatives to the mainstream activities of sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll," he says. A poster beside the centre's restaurant advertises an event called Between Paradise and Hell - "a truly spine-tingling Hallowe'en alternative", it reads - which was run at the centre during the recent Muslim festival of Eid. Among the activities were memory competitions and single-sex Arabic-themed quizzes, which must take some selling when your main competitors are Bacardi Breezers and Britney Spears.
Gahi came to Ireland 10 months ago from Birmingham, where he was teaching Arabic and Islamic studies. He was used to living with mosques on every corner, and the lack of places of worship in Dublin means he and his wife, Hannah McWann, who is 26, find themselves ducking into clothing-store changing rooms for their daily prayers more often than ever since the move to Dublin. The couple live in Churchtown, where the neighbours have been "really welcoming" and where, along with the respect they have been afforded, there has also been some curiosity about their religion.
"We don't mind answering questions," he says, adding that he does find it frustrating when the actions of terrorists, whether in the September 11th attacks or suicide bombings in Palestine, are linked with Islam.
"People come up and ask what I think about things like 9/11, and I say, well, what do you think I think about it? No religion is going to condone the killing of innocent people," he says. "The situation in the world is so volatile at the moment that people are going to react. They are behaving like any community would in those oppressive circumstances, regardless of their religion."
Other misperceptions he is used to correcting surround the treatment of women. He explains that forced marriages are not sanctioned by Islam despite the fact that they are carried out in certain cultures. It is true that Muslim relationships are carefully chaperoned and monitored by families, but, in accordance with the religion, a woman has the right to refuse marriage.
"Men and women are equal before God, but they have different roles," he says. "In Islam the man has the main responsibility to earn money for the family while the woman has the primary child-caring role." He explains about the Muslim code of dress, which means both sexes wear modest clothes so as not to attract unwanted attention. He wears a beard, because "our role models are not people like David Beckham, they are the prophets of Islam, who wore beards".
While not of Taliban proportions, occasionally incidents happen here that put the spotlight on women in Islam. Last June a professional Muslim singles evening, where like-minded people planned to meet up with a view to marriage, was cancelled. One woman, a 29-year-old doctor, claimed senior community spiritual leaders told her parents that the event - at which no alcohol would be served and Muslim traditions would be honoured - was the work of the devil. She said her parents were told that if they were desperate to find a mate for their daughter they could "just ship her back to Pakistan and the rest will be attended to. We need to control our girls more and make sure they remain in acceptable bounds".
But Gahi's wife, Hannah, a tour guide at the Islamic centre, paints a different picture of what life is like for Muslim women in the West. She views the headscarf as a liberating piece of clothing; she began wearing it, by choice, as a 14-year-old schoolgirl in England.
"I was a normal teenager under the same pressures every teenager is subjected to. I felt when I put on the headscarf all those pressures relating to smoking or drinking or relationships disappeared," she says. "I felt clear about what I wanted in life, and other people could see that when I wore the scarf, so I felt more comfortable. I was the first person to wear a scarf in my school, but when I went back a few years ago there were many students wearing them."
When she talks in schools around Ireland, she says, the first reaction of students is to snigger behind their hands, "but when they listen they hear that you are like any other teacher, and the experience becomes a positive one".
She says one of the questions she is asked most often is: If Islam means peace, then how do you explain terrorism? She says that religion is not the issue and that Muslims should not be tarred with the same brush. "For a lot of people who live in Iraq and Palestine their situation has gone beyond thinking about religion. They are now questioning why the world is letting this happen to them. It isn't about religion for them any more," she says.
She believes Irish people like to hear the other side of the story and mentions that after September 11th people sent flowers to the mosque, with notes saying they didn't blame Muslims for the attacks. She says the centre's stock of Korans also sold out around that time, as people tried to discover for themselves the true meaning of Islam.
Lamia Chakir Aaoui, a 30-year-old who arrived in Dublin in September and is living in a flat on South Circular Road with her husband, Ridha Daoud, says she often has conversations with local women at bus stops or other places around the city. She enjoys finding out about a different culture and exchanging information about religions.
As she makes tiny cinnamon and honey biscuits from her home country, Morocco, the former kindergarten teacher and librarian explains what it means to be a Muslim woman. "I am so happy as a Muslim woman. In Islam a woman has all her rights, and when she reads the Koran she knows those rights well," she says. "When I wear the hijab I feel people speak to me as a person with ideas and intelligence. The modern material world views women according to how they dress, not about what they think or what they can do, and that's why I like to wear the hijab. In Islam men and women have the same responsibility to Allah, and we will be judged the same by him whatever our gender."
Her husband has been in Ireland for nine years. "I have found many people want to know about terrorists and Muslims," he says, "and what I say to them is that there are good Muslims and bad Muslims, good human beings and bad human beings. Nobody who does bad things represents Islam." He is unemployed after five years of working in the computer industry, but he is hoping to set up a business in the near future; the couple are selling Alaoui's sweet and savoury creations in markets around the city. Alaoui says she misses her family and her cat, Douce, back in Morocco but plans to make a life here. "Life is fine in Ireland if very, very expensive," she laughs.
For some Muslims the challenge of living in a country where your values are not shared by the majority is even more of a disincentive than the growing rip-off culture. "I want to live in a Muslim country eventually," says Muhammad Sabbadh, who, at 16, believes he is destined for some kind of career associated with his religion. "I want to live in a country that would be good for kids and where they could be raised with Muslim values, away from temptation. Although I was born in Ireland I don't feel that Irish, really. I do feel glad that so far I haven't been tempted away from Islam, but to be honest with you I think I just got off lucky."
