Julie Tomlin   

Thursday, February 17, 2005

Press Gazette

Fareena Alam, editor of Q-News, tells Julie Tomlin about her mission to explain - inside and outside her own community -what a Muslim magazine should be

WHEN I go with Fareena Alam to a cafe near Russell Square, the man behind the counter strikes me as a bit gruff when he serves us. He looks even more irritated when we then decide to order food as well - slamming the cups on saucers and shoving our order at us.

He might just be having and off day, or perhaps I got up his nose by asking him to toast the bagels.

But could all the huffing, puffing and cup slamming be due to the fact that Alam, managing editor of the Muslim magazine, Q News, is wearing the hijab, I wonder.

That strikes me as an even more likely explanation when I go for more coffee. He's on his mobile the whole time, admittedly discussing plans for the midweek match, but I get a far more easy-going reception - he even manages a smile as he hands me my drink.

Whatever it was that brought on his earlier bad mood, if I was expecting Alam to talk about how difficult it is being a Muslim in this country and rail against the hostility she encounters because of her headscarf, it quickly becomes apparent that this isn't what she - or Q News - is about.

Aimed at Muslims who are "English-speaking, educated, quite forward-thinking and quite comfortable being British," Q News [ ‘Q' because it's unquantifiable], prides itself on being "probably the only magazine that doesn't complain about the place we live," she says.

Alam closely identifies herself with Q News' mission to think beyond the hardline views which these days seem almost synonymous with Islam.

By refusing "to pander to the stereotypes Muslims hold about society around them," Q News walks a very different path from other magazines and newspapers: "They] tend to pander to our worries about Iraq, Palestine and Islamophobia. There's no vision - that beyond this, if there was no Iraq, no Palestine, no Islamophobia - what would we talk about?"

Editor-in-chief Fuad Nahdi has confidence enough in Alam to practically hand over the running of the magazine to her. And although devout, Alam shows a feisty determination not to submit to beliefs that she believes are a distortion of Islam - no easy task given that, even by doing the job she does, she's been accused of flouting her faith.

But when she was news editor of Q News and Shagufta Haqub - another woman - was editor, one of the religious leaders took exception to the fact that women were running the magazine.

"One of the imams from up north called and said ‘the downfall of Q News will be brought about by the women you have placed in leadership positions,'

she recalls. "Fuad said to him: ‘If you can find me 200 bearded smelly men like you who will do the job these two women do then I would accept your point!" recalls Alam.

Although prepared to be critical of it, Alam says she nonetheless has a strong sense of loyalty to the Muslim community and understands the inclination people have to close in on themselves when they feel under threat.

She understands that some people view the magazine with suspicion, but believes it is alone in having "struck a good balance between being critical of the community and also loyal to it".

Issues which don't often get an airing - such as mental health problems, teenage pregnancy and sexuality - have all been tackled in the pages of Q News.

Vulnerable in society

This month the magazine looks at the increasing phenomenon of young Muslim girls who go to university and, free from parental restraint, throw themselves into student lifestyle.

"It's difficult because these are things a lot of people don't want to hear," says Alam.

"Most people are so overcome by feelings of being vulnerable in this society that they cannot understand how, especially as we look like practising Muslims, we are speaking like we are outsiders."

Since the 2001 terrorist attacks against the US, the pressure to protect your own has been even stronger, says Alam.

"But we felt it was even more urgent that we continue to encourage debate,"

she says. "We had to stop being quiet and come out aggressively and reclaim the agenda of what it means to be a western Muslim.

"After 9/11 we thought - how could we have allowed this to happen? I'm not saying it's our fault.

But I think part of the reason this happened is because we don't put a stop to that sort of discourse in our community. Hating the west, hating the land you live on - it's completely opposite to what Islam teaches. So why have we allowed our faith to be twisted to such an extent that people of our community can commit such a heinous crime?"

The determination of staff at Q News to be open about issues such as terrorism has led to it being criticised by some of the umbrella Muslim groups such as the Muslim Council of Britain.

In a debate on Radio 5 Live, Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain, accused Alam and other Muslim journalists of perpetuating myths about terrorism to further their own careers.

Out of touch

Alam says she was furious when the MCB then issued a statement saying they had instructed the mosques to expose any terrorist activities.

Criticising it as a self-interested move, she also says it shows how far organisations like the MCB are out of touch with the Muslim community.

"The people who plan terrorism don't meet in the mosques. If you spoke to young people you would know that. They meet in the kebab shop, they meet in private homes, they meet on street corners," she says.

Like many Muslims, she says, she is tired of the same old voices supposedly representing her views in the mainstream media. In the same way that everyone who professed to be a Christian wouldn't necessarily want their views to be represented by the Archbishop, there are Muslims who are very frustrated that only the views of a few religious leaders and organisations are sought out, says Alam.

"The media still goes to the most obvious figures.

You have the same talking heads all the time who drown out the other local groups and grassroots organisations," she says.

Part of Q News' appeal is that it reflects attitudes of Muslims whose voices aren't often heard, she claims.

"A lot of people are saying, enough is enough, I've let you speak for me for the longest time, the mullahs, the imams, the extremists. I've let you dominate the television screen for long enough. It's my turn now and I have a stake in this too."

Alam has also been working hard strengthening the business side of the magazine to ensure that as many people as possible have access to it - at the moment it is subscription based.

"The last three or four years have been very hard," Alam admits. "Production costs have gone up and we used to have a patron who paid our rent. It wasn't a hostile departure but that made a big difference to our finance."

After some years of neglect of the marketing side of the magazine, Alam says it's "really exciting" that in the last three or four months the magazine is now in 150 Muslim bookshops. She is currently working on deals with two international distributors that could mean Alam achieves her goal of getting Q News outside Muslim bookshops and onto the shelves of Borders and WH Smith, as well as overseas in North America, Western Europe, the Gulf, North Africa and the Middle East.

"There's a tremendous demand there for something like Q News but we have never been able to sort out getting the magazines there," says Alam.

There are, she says, very few distributors who understand the Muslim market.

"Muslim News is distributed by the owner who goes up and down the country every month delivering to the mosques because there is just no distributor who understands the market, who knows where the Muslims are, where the bookshops are and how they work."

Alam's aim is to increase the print run from 10,000 to 25,000 within the next four months.

"By far then we will be the largest-circulating Muslim publication in this country," she says. It would be the first Muslim publication to get an ABC.

A link with the Federation of Student Islamic Societies will allow them to reach students in universities across the country and they also plan to distribute copies at regular events and talks.

"We don't think it's a bad thing to give it away for free because it's all about getting the copies out," says Alam. "We're becoming aggressive now."

White, upper class and male

Alam worked for The Observer from March 2003 when the US attacked Iraq. She acknowledges that the editor Roger Alton sought out her views but says it was a strange experience being the only Muslim working at the newspaper.

"It was very white, very upper class and very male,"

she says. "I felt the atmosphere in the newsroom would change whenever I walked in.

At the news meetings Roger would look at me as if to say ‘do you want to say something?' and I would grab the opportunity to say I think the story is misdirected or we should do a particular story. But at the same time I didn't want to sabotage my career because of my opposition to the war."

Alam says as a journalist she has to face up to the fact that she is also likely to be biased.

"I am trying to rise above my own bias and my own inclinations but it's very hard," says Alam. "I have to admit that Muslims can also sometimes refuse to examine an issue critically. They will never criticise their own community and will always point the finger of blame outwards."

But "no one is a value-free zone," she adds.

"There's this impression that Muslims are somehow the ones with values and bias, but there's no such thing as value-free. Even if it's ultra-secularist. Everything influences you."

Alam says having worked in the mainstream press she is aware of the "constraints and pressures" that journalists work under but is also frustrated by "misreporting" that goes on.

"We know, because we know the facts, and we see how so much is mis-represented. The media gets it wrong and barely scratches beyond the surface of a story," she says.

Alam says she has "a lot of complaints" about the press and, like many Muslims is also frustrated that it frequently focuses on "the headscarf, ritual slaughtered meat and terrorism" and bypasses the real issues.

Recently she was contacted by journalists from the BBC's Panorama , only to find that the subject of their investigation was the headscarf.

"We told them you need to move beyond the headscarf," says Alam. "Most Muslims don't even wear it."

At one time she imagined herself as a tireless campaigner against attitudes in the mainstream press towards Islam, but says for now she has decided to focus on bringing about change from within.

"I swing between the two because it takes a lot of energy to do both," she says. "There was a period when my main focus was to tell people that Islam was not what they thought, to influence non- Muslims and the press.

"But I am less into trying to change the mainstream media now. I'm more about trying to bring about change in my own community. I think after 9/11 it's been more of a struggle for the identity of Islam from within."