After about a month's rest, in August 1986 I started my work as a postdoctoral researcher at Royal Holloway College.
Into The World of Community Activism
IT WAS EARLY 1987, and my postdoctoral research on semiconductor physics at the Royal Holloway College started in earnest. The campus was in a pleasant hilly location, just over a mile west from the village of Egham, not far from Heathrow Airport. Royal Holloway College was a public research university within the federal University of London.
Working at Royal Holloway College was my first full time job in the UK, albeit on a temporary work permit and an initial contract for three years. Professor Jonscher excelled at securing research funding from various British and American industries. Our laboratory was quiet, as there were only the two of us working there, but Professor Jonscher often came to our lab to oversee and discuss the progress of our work and A-level students from the Greater London area occasionally visited us. After a few weeks of separate journeys by car, Enapu and I decided to car pool to share the burden of cost, as well as the long drive to and from London.
As I settled into my research with a few more publications, Sayeda and I also went through some serious thinking about our future with our two young children. I had a burning desire to return to Bangladesh and serve my own country, a place that had given me so much. 'How could I give something back' was always in my mind. I sounded out with friends and extended family members in Bangladesh whether there were any suitable job opportunities in the capital, Dhaka. I preferred Dhaka because it was near my home and it would allow us to provide better education facilities for our children. But I didn't get much encouragement and some even questioned my desire to return.
In the summer of 1987, we decided to visit Bangladesh to explore the situation directly. We stayed for couple of weeks but surprisingly both extended families, as well as close friends, advised us to stay in the UK, or even move to the US; they honestly felt we would not be able to financially survive in Dhaka. Both Sayeda and I came from modest financial backgrounds, with no other sources of income except the earnings from our jobs; if we decided to settle down in Dhaka we would have had to find extra work to top up our income. I turned to other friends, some of whom were in high positions already. Most of them suggested I would do better in the UK. Only one friend, a few years older than me, instantly offered me a senior non-academic job in a new private university. I was aware of the new emerging universities in Dhaka, and as I knew there were no pure science departments in any of them, I politely rejected the offer. However, we seriously considered such a role: could I give up physics and take a senior management job just for more money? I could not reconcile myself to the idea. We returned to the UK undecided, but I had not given up the idea of going back to Bangladesh – I just could not be so sure about that move, either.
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Life could have been relaxed if I had just stuck with my research, but I felt I should use my weekends and holidays to go to east London and extend my support to the young people there. I spent more and more time in the East London Mosque, which by now served a congregation of around 3,000 people, with a main prayer hall on the ground floor and a multipurpose hall in the basement. My friend Aziz and I continued to expand our efforts to help GCSE and A-level students, and we saw huge potential in them. Some were now gravitating onto adult education courses, switching away from work in the garment trade and restaurant business. We decided to talk to the parents of some of the most promising boys, trying to encourage them to be more 'aspirational' with their children.
Most parents felt that a good knowledge of Islam was important; many also had a special attachment with their local mosque, and wanted their children to be well educated. We convinced some religious scholars to join our side, adding more weight to our initiative. We used reminders from Qur'anic verses, such as: 'My Lord, increase me in knowledge' (Ta Ha 20: 114), and the Prophetic hadith (teaching): 'Seeking knowledge is obligatory upon every Muslim' (Ibn Majah) to encourage parents to guide their children into more fulfilling career paths. There is another powerful hadith: 'Whoever travels a path seeking knowledge, God makes easy their path to Paradise.' (Muslim) The need for better education was paramount, since Bangladeshi children were underperforming in Tower Hamlets. School attendance and punctuality were often poor, and many families suffered economic hardship and lived in overcrowded housing. What they needed was increased confidence and skills in order to create higher expectations at home and generate higher aspirations in their offspring.
With our small efforts, a few young men left their monotonous, low-skilled jobs and enrolled on vocational technical courses. Some even chose new careers, away from a life of catering or sewing. A few went on to positions in business and others in academia, while some came back to work with the area's growing number of charities. The ELM management was very supportive of this effort.
We slowly started to see improvements. During the past two decades, the results of Bangladeshi schoolchildren have improved significantly; they are now achieving higher than the national average percentages of A* to C in GCSEs, including English and mathematics. The outcome is that there has been a significant increase in the numbers of British Bangladeshi children going to university, and the trend has been encouraging for other communities as well. Tower Hamlets, being the spiritual home of the British Bangladeshi diaspora, has always been looked up to by other Bangladeshis in Britain. What is most needed now is to translate this academic success into even better employment and economic opportunities to fully contribute to the wider society. We need improved social mobility.
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Raising a community's educational as well as socio-economic standard has always been my passion. Those who find time beyond their regular daily job and make (often unnoticed) contributions to our social life are the unsung heroes of our society. In this age of egocentrism and greed, this service ethos (Arabic: khidmah) is vital to our society's wellbeing. For religious adherents this is also highly rewarding, and Britain's faith groups have always been pioneering in the voluntary and community sector. A community that is otherwise behind others in socio-economic factors needs intervention from some of its members to raise its standards. Those who have the vision to serve, and can find some free time to invest in their future generation, should not shy away. I gradually entered this world of community activism, perhaps through a latent push by my own family tradition, especially the work of my brother, or maybe drawn by my initial attachment to people from my own ethnic background in east London.
Physics research and the world of physics still brought me great pleasure. However, I gradually felt that my success in academia would be limited. As I was becoming drawn further towards youth work, I became less enamoured with research. I felt torn, yet only Sayeda really knew what was going through my mind. Until the end of the 1980s, I had been merely a volunteer at the ELM. I learned from various elders that before my involvement the mosque management had switched alignment from Tablighi Jamaat (a global Muslim missionary organization, born out of the South Asian Deobandi movement) towards Jamaat-e-Islami, the largest religious party in Bangladesh that sided with Pakistan against the country's breakup in 1971. Both these religious movements originated in British India during the British Raj, to educate Muslims in their own ways.
The primary aim of Tablighi Jamaat, created in India in 1927 by Maulana Ilyas al-Kandhlawi, was the spiritual reformation of Muslims at the grassroots level. Its 'Six Point' teachings are: Kalimah (Islam's declaration of faith); Salat (ritual prayer); Ilm (knowledge), Ikram-e-Muslim (respect for Muslims); Ikhlas-e-Niyat (purity of intention); and Dawat wa Tabligh (invitation and conveyance). Tablighi Jamaat claims it is apolitical and focuses on the Qur'an and Hadith.
Jamaat-e-Islami was founded by journalist-turned-Islamic theologian and socio-political reformist, Abul A'la Maududi (or Mawdudi) in 1941 in British India. Jamaat started as a socially conservative movement, but became an Islamic political organization in both Pakistan and Bangladesh. Maududi emerged as an Islamic revivalist and influential intellectual with a belief that politics was 'an integral, inseparable part of the Islamic faith'. Jamaat