Searching for my identity

Being a second generation Pakistani in Britain puts you in a strange
position. Your parents emigrated in the 60's, before the full brunt of
American Cultural imperialism took over Pakistan. But being brought up
in a liberal and licentious society certainly affects your values and
outlook.

When people are faced by challenges to their values, they tend to hold
onto them much more tightly and react in more reactionary ways than
others. They react in ways which befit their backgrounds and
upbringing. Someone once remarked that in Pakistan people tend to be
nominal Muslims. They fast during Ramadan and go to pray Jummah, but
they do not pray five times a day nor do they have a beard or wear a
Hijab. But in the West, people are either strict or they assimilate,
becoming coconuts who are whiter than white detesting their cultural
baggage. Like the Catholic trying desperately to expunge the guilt
from an upbringing that states that sex is sinful.

Thus your parents arrive in a country, post-sexual-revolution,
obsessed by personal freedom. They want the money and the luxuries
that it will bring. But they wish to retain their culture and values
and thus they react harshly and strictly.

They use a medicine which, as the doctor says, will either kill you or
cure you. They send you to a mosque daily so that while your friends
are watching TV, you are dodging the blows of a Moulana who is busy
picking his nose and wiping it in his beard, intermingled by reading a
book in a language unintelligible to you.

The idea is that indoctrination will help to curb assimilation, which
of course it doesn't. Transferring a village Madrassah based teaching
system to the West just doesn't work in a society where people
question everything.

So you age, gradually becoming more British than Pakistani. Your
parents speak to you in Urdu, you reply in English. You fast
occasionally in Ramadan when you can't avoid it or at least until
you're out of eyeshot. You have a semi-belief in God, like an agnostic
and go along with it and all the stories your parents feed you to make
sure you do not become a Christian. You pretend to respect their
traditions and culture, but actually file everything they say in the
section of your brain reserved for Santa Claus and the Bogeyman.

However you are in a crisis. You are living in a culture which is
trying to assimilate you, gently and gradually but persistently. TV,
teachers, friends - everybody has values and beliefs different from
you. You can either merge with the dominant culture or accept that of
your parents. What to choose? The culture of your parents, watching
plot-less Indian movies, listening to terrible music, believing in
fairy tales they spoon-fed you with a healthy dollop of superstition
and awe? Or the Moulana at the mosque, who sits on the floor all day
hitting children and picking his nose? What does he know about your
life and what life is like, he can't even speak English or relate to
you. You share no common cultural references. He doesn't know what
'Neighbours' is about or understand 'Darwinism'. He just reacts by
calling it all accursed kaffir plots and plans, not even seeking to
understand the phenomenon.

So you plod along, in your unhappy compromise - a Pakistani trying to
be English. You may listen to English music and watch football
(soccer), but you still eat roti and salan. You can't throw away all
of your cultural baggage and reject Islam completely. Something,
somewhere prevents you from doing so. But neither do you seek to
practise it. Children learn from example, and the only time you have
seen your parents pray is Eid. The practicality of your life doesn't
match the theory that the Moulana preaches, so you leave the theory,
or rather, you do not worry about it. What does an old man who doesn't
even have a job or speak English know?

Graham Greene famously became a Catholic, because he stated that
religion should have a strange incomprehensible mystic superstitious
side to it. If this is true your parents' religion certainly
qualifies. But then why don't they practise it instead of
merely shoving you off to a boring stuffy mosque to dodge canes and
read Arabic?

But something strange is happening: your mishmash culture is raising
questions that you would never have to address if you were purely
British (Materialist Atheist) or Pakistani (nominally Muslim). But you
have to because they clash and disagree vigorously on so many
things that even an ignoramus like you is going to have to deal with
them. That is unless you brush them under the carpet and do an ostrich
impression.

However, the beckoning call of disbelief is tantalisingly close, it
calls out to you from all corners. Assimilate! Become like us!
But you can't. You're the wrong color and have too many cultural
hang-ups. Things just don't relate to you.

So the search for identity begins, but you're a square peg, in a world
of round holes. Nothing fits you and you are still searching. Your
parents' traditions are ridiculous facades and throw backs to
their upbringing 30 years ago. You are looking for something to
hold onto to prevent you from being swept away in the current of
cultural diversity.

You can either become browner than brown or whiter than white. I did
neither and took a third path. I became a practising Muslim.

Why, when or how is not important but the way I did is relevant. I
wanted a nice clean package, no fuzziness or grey, just a clear black
and white handle. So I threw out my parents belief as superstitious
and warped, following the mistake they themselves made and failing to
understand the phenomenon or situation. I had a clean clear absolute
truth, and I rebelled in that way - a strange way for a
British-Pakistani teenager. I became a born-again Muslim or a
'bornie', one of the worst type of zealots you will meet, those who
are absolutely convinced that they are 100 percent right on
everything.

So I rejected everything. British Culture and Pakistani Culture,
trying to deny who I was by seeking a new perfect pristine
identity. But even in the way I did this was to follow the British
Western way of revolting and rebelling. I was running away from who I
was, but it was relentlessly pursuing me. Everything British must be
Devilish and accursed, and everything Muslim must be perfect and
Angelic.

Eventually, the zeal cools and you moderate down to a more reasonable
understanding; Idealism doesn't die - but is tempered by
reality. Islam doesn't require you to forsake your culture and accept
an Arab one - so I embraced who I am. A British-Pakistani who is a
Muslim. In reality more British as these are the cultural values I
have imbibed since I was a baby.

Diversity, like cross-pollination, can be a strength or a weakness. It
can allow you to appreciate both societies and cultures, warts and
all. Or it can cause you to live forever in a limbo, seeking out a
niche for yourself which is filled with other drifters like
yourself. Smoking a Spliff that would make Bob Marley green with envy,
but not eating Polo as it has gelatine in it.

I have accepted and embraced who I am, a second generation
British-Pakistani who has refused to be assimilated, which makes me
different from my parents, cousins and friends. Have you?