Charles III: Will the British Empire be an Islamist king
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| Photo:Charles III |
In the history of British,this government is
considered to be the most islamophobic government and last week Liz Truss took
over as prime minister of this British government.
This government always avoid engaging with the largest
representative body of British Muslims The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) and
they framed an invidious security regime (Prevent) which marks them; in which a
minister was dismissed because her “Muslim woman minister status was making
colleagues feel bothered ”. A government blamed this week of behave towards
Muslims like second-class citizens.
Little surprise: more than half of the members of the ruling
Conservative Party entertain wild conspiracy theories about British Islam.
Two days after Truss became prime minister, King Charles III
acceded to the British throne. A thoughtful man, he has studied Islam deeply,
even going to the lengths of learning Arabic in order to read the Quran.
The new king is the most Islamophile monarch in British history. The contrast with his government is stark.
An electrifying speech
In a series of statements dating back several decades, King
Charles III has rebutted the "clash of civilisations" thesis which
argues that Islam is at war with the West. On the contrary, he argues that Islam, Judaism and Christianity are three
great monotheistic religions which have far more in common than is generally
appreciated.
Since 1993, the new king has been a patron of the Oxford
Centre for Islamic Studies. In that year he delivered its inaugural address,
entitled "Islam and the West". It wasn’t the sort of speech
on religion that most people expect from politicians and royals; they tend to
utter little more than empty platitudes.
Then Prince of Wales, he launched into a sophisticated
musing on Islamic civilisation and its relationship with Europe. The prince
said that Islam is "part of our past and our present, in all fields of
human endeavour. It has helped to create modern Europe. It is part of our own
inheritance, not a thing apart.”
He urged people in the West to see past contemporary
distortions of Islam: "The guiding principle and spirit of Islamic law,
taken straight from the Quran, should be those of equity and compassion."
He noted that women were granted the right to property and
inheritance in Islam 1,400 years ago, paid tribute to the “remarkable
tolerance” of medieval Islam, and lamented western “ignorance about the debt
our own culture and civilisation owe to the Islamic world”.
The then-prince described Britain’s Muslim communities as an
"asset to Britain" who "add to the cultural richness of our
nation".
Unlike those who demand that Muslims discard their identities in order to assimilate,
Charles called for a process of two-way integration: Muslims must “balance
their vital liberty to be themselves with an appreciation of the importance of
integration in our society”, while non-Muslims should adopt a “respect for the
daily practice of the Islamic faith and a decent care to avoid actions which
are likely to cause deep offence.”
It was an electrifying speech: here was the heir to the
throne telling Britain’s Muslims, most of them migrants from the former
colonies, that their presence in the country was not just welcome
but valued.
It’s hard to conceive of a greater contrast with recent
interventions by Britain’s most senior politicians.
The 'controversial' prince
In more recent years Charles’s attitudes towards Islam and
the Muslim world have often caused controversy.
A 2018 book by royal correspondent Robert Jobson, written
with the cooperation of Charles’s office, revealed that he opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq,
privately voicing his objections to Prime Minister Tony Blair. According
to Jobson, Charles believed that “marching in carrying a banner for
western-style democracy was both foolhardy and futile”. Charles has also told ministers that he no longer wishes to have his
connections with Gulf leaders used for British arms companies to sell weapons.
Charles has come under fire for his charity work. Last June,
the then-prince was in the headlines after the Sunday Times revealed that he accepted a suitcase containing a
million euros in cash from Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, the
former Qatari prime minister. Charles’s charitable fund denied wrongdoing and
there’s no suggestion at all that he benefited personally.
He may have made errors of judgement, but much of the press
reporting has been ignorant and unfair.
Consider the flurry of sensational articles in July about a
million-pound donation his charitable fund received from the family of Osama
Bin Laden in 2013. There was no wrongdoing: the Bin Laden family is one of the most
established in Saudi Arabia, and the implication of a connection with terrorism
and Al Qaeda was nonsense.
A devout 'traditionalist'
Anti-Muslim commentators mock Britain’s new king for his
intellectual curiosity. The American neoconservative commentator Daniel Pipes
is one example. His blog post entitled: "Is Prince Charles a Convert
to Islam?" cites numerous pieces of "evidence" that he himself
has become Muslim, including that Charles took part in a fast-breaking ceremony
in Ramadan and his criticism of Salman Rushdie for insulting the
“deepest convictions” of Muslims.
A century ago, similar false rumours once swirled around Winston Churchill.
In truth, the king is a devout Anglican whose deep engagement
with Islam (as well as Judaism and Orthodox Christianity) is connected to
his interest in Traditionalism, the esoteric 20th-century
school of thought whose early proponents railed against the modern world,
believing that all the great religions share universal truths that could be
antidotes to contemporary woes.
Charles has engaged in particular with the works of Rene
Guenon, one of Traditionalism’s most important thinkers. Writing in the early
20th century, Guenon - a French intellectual raised as a Catholic and educated
at the Sorbonne - saw Western modernity, which “developed upon material
lines”, as representing an “anomaly” in human history.
“If [Traditionalists] defend the past,” Charles said in a 2006 speech, “it is because in the
pre-modern world, all civilisations were marked by the presence of the sacred.”
By contrast, our current era is one of “disintegration, disconnection, and
deconstruction”.
In an address to the Church of Scotland’s General Assembly
in 2000, Charles warned that our age is "in danger of ignoring, or
forgetting, all knowledge of the sacred and spiritual”. It’s this concern which
underpins his environmentalism. Charles believes that the modern West “has become increasingly
acquisitive and exploitative”, suggesting that we can re-learn the “trusteeship
of the vital sacramental and spiritual character of the world” from Islam.
Guenon himself looked to the east, writing several books on Hinduism and
Taoism before leaving Paris for Cairo. There he became initiated into the
Ahmadiyya Shadhiliyya Sufi order and studied at Al Azhar, one of the world’s
centres of Sunni Muslim scholarship. He died a Muslim in Cairo in 1951.
Guenon’s role in shaping the king’s worldview has bewildered many
mainstream commentators. Military historian Max Hastings is one case in point.
In a review of Charles’s 2010 book Harmony: A New Way
of Looking at Our World, he wrote in the Daily Mail that the “chief peril to
our royal institution in the decades ahead lies within his well-meaning,
muddled, woolly head.”
Brutal criticism
Undeterred by the disapproving gaze of the British media,
Charles used his position as Prince of Wales to further his ideas in a
practical sense. In 1993, The Prince’s Foundation began to house the Visual Islamic and Traditional Arts
Programme.
There, students produced Mughal miniatures, Ottoman tiles
and Arabic calligraphy. Two prominent Traditionalist scholars were visiting
tutors - philosopher Seyyed Hossein Nasr and scholar Martin Lings, who wrote a
famous biography of the Prophet Muhammad and felt “struck by lightning” when he first read Guenon.
The programme became The
Prince’s Foundation School of Traditional Arts in 2004.
Charles’s love for Islamic art is on display in his personal
life. Hence the Carpet Garden, inspired by Islamic gardens, at his
Gloucestershire home Highgrove. Charles explained: “I planted fig, pomegranate and olive trees in
the garden because of their mention in the Qur’an.”
All this places King Charles dangerously out of step with
the Truss government and the Conservative Party she leads. If Charles returns
to the subject of Islam, he is certain to open himself up to brutal criticism
from the neoconservative right which sets much of the agenda for this
Conservative government.
It remains to be seen whether, on the throne, he will
continue to speak about religion as openly as he did when he was Prince of
Wales. He needs to bear in mind the lesson of his mother, who astutely steered
clear of public controversies. It is nevertheless profoundly significant that
we have a king who openly admired Islam.
A bold statement
Mosques across the country wished their condolences on the death of Queen Elizabeth, and many
Muslims have been noting the new king’s attitudes towards Islam.
In his sermon before
the prayer last Friday in Cambridge’s eco-friendly mosque, Shaykh Abdal Hakim
Murad, the University’s Shaykh Zayed Lecturer in Islamic Studies, quoted
extensively from Charles’s 1993 speech on "Islam and the West",
reflecting that Charles’s generous interest in Islam set him apart from much of
the British political class. Noting that Charles learnt Arabic to read the
Qur’an, he asked:
“How many people in Parliament would do that?”
Will Charles follow the gentle example of his mother
and quietly emphasise
Britain’s traditions of tolerance and multiculturalism,
in contrast to the nationalism of the Johnson and Truss governments?
There is some evidence that he will.
Consider King Charles III’s first address as sovereign: “In the course of the last
seventy years, we have seen our society become one of many cultures and many
faiths,” he said, before promising that “whatever may be your background or
beliefs, I shall endeavour to serve you with loyalty, respect and love”.
This was a bold and unequivocal statement of pluralism. And
anyone who has paid attention to Charles’ pronouncements and actions as Prince
of Wales will know that he means it sincerely. It is a position that sets him
apart from the British government.
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