Converts: Has the Muslim Community Failed Them?

David Rosser Owen:

"The answer to the question is "Yes, consistently". And not just failed us, but ignored, marginalised, and excluded us, and willingly presided over our unemployment and poverty: and this in the teeth of the sunnah.

They have imported into this country, which had its own institutions of Islam when they arrived, the attitudes and practices of villages in the Indian Sub-Continent and refused to learn or change.

Years ago, in 1969, my wife and I and a Malay Azhari friend were travelling through east London and were refused permission for my wife to make wudu and pray at a prominent mosque of the area until our friend took the "imam" aside and gave him the dressing down of his life: about five years ago I was asked by a friend whether there were any mosques in London where his (convert) wife and daughter could pray because there were none in Leicester - so nothing much had improved in 40 years in learning the Sunnah of Migrations.

It has been reported to me that there have been "imams" who have taught that goras can't become Muslims, that it is haram to speak English in mosques because it is the language of the devil (and recently that it is haram to speak Welsh in mosques - I've not heard whether Gaelic is haram, yet). 

There was a tragic road traffic accident some years ago when four young men died, one of whom was a convert. The community refused permission for him to be buried along with his mates in the community cemetery because he wasn't a Baruchi Patel. 

An Afro-Caribbean convert friend, who married a woman from a Sub-Continental community and had picked up some Urdu, told me he was tired of over-hearing remarks by his wife's family and friends referring to "that nigger".

It goes on and on, and never does the community seem to learn or want to learn - with some outstanding exceptions."