John Eade and David Garbin
Introduction: Local/global processes and political struggles
It is now appreciated - in some academic circles at least - that despite the popular image of authentic local practices struggling against the hegemonic power of global forces, there is a more complex process of interaction at work.
Analysts have carefully explored the interweaving of global and local processes where the binary opposition of global and local is replaced by what
Roland Robertson has called `glocalisation’ – a process which involves ‘the reconstruction, in a sense the production of home», «community» and
«locality»’ (1995: 30).
This global/local relationship is mediated through structures of power and hierarchy across what Appadurai has aptly described as a disjunctured global cultural economy. Local territories are reinterpreted by migrant workers, for example, as hybrid ‘homes’ through transnational networks and global imagined communities. Such long-established concepts as the Islamic umma may be reworked by Muslim citizens in western nation-states where they occupy the uneasy position of an ethnic minority. Global migration has established other glocal imagined communities which have been analysed through the development of such concepts as hybridity, transnationalism, diaspora, scapes, cosmopolitanism, and fundamentalism and a keen sensitivity towards the global flows of people, capital, goods, ideas, information and images (see, for example, Appadurai 1990; Hannerz 1990;
Hall 1992; Metcalf 1996; Eade 1997, 2000; Vertovec 1999).
Defending one’s turf, therefore, can no longer be understood as an activity where ‘indigenous locals’ resist the intrusion of ‘foreigners’, who are crossing the boundaries of an essentialised nation-state – even if some locals definitely interpret what is happening in these very terms (see Back 1996). The model of
1

gradual assimilation into the dominant culture of a locality which reflects the national hegemonic culture still shapes the perspective of Bradford’s outgoing
Senior Race Relations Adviser, for example, who detected a process of foreign colonisation involving some of the city’s Muslim population:
Immigrants…can and often do maintain key elements of their culture for generations, but in many other ways they accept the dominant culture. Colonists do not. They come into the country to displace the existing culture and left establish their own. From colonist to immigrant is the dominant pattern historically. However, this process seems to have been thrown into reverse in Bradford.
The interweaving of global and local processes challenges these highly influential oppositions between local-national, on the one hand, and alien cultures on the other, between colonisers and immigrants, between insiders and outsiders, between dominant majorities and subjugated minorities.
In a number of instances political struggles do not conform so neatly to these binary logics despite the weight of nationalist traditions where local politics has been conventionally seen as contained within national frontiers. They may challenge already established power structures and hierarchies but may also create new modes of domination which accompany or supplant what is already there. The hybrid third spaces celebrated by postcolonial writers are not so emancipatory as is often assumed. As Afshar (1994) has argued, South
Asian migrants in Britain may encourage beliefs and practices which entail a conservative reaction to the `corrupt’ western world around them. (Her use of the term `conservative’ may be questioned but her argument is a useful challenge to the more uncritical celebrations of multiculturalism).
In this paper we also want to investigate the strategic values of ethnicity, religion, global and local processes as resources for political mobilisation, struggle and resistance in the global city. This analysis can, in turn, provide us with an understanding of the role played by migrant groups and especially their leaders in the context of a contemporary multicultural Britain.
Finally, our discussion will explore how the practices involved in political and ideological struggle relate to violence and lack of violence. How does our discussion relate, for example, to (a) ideas about the violent creation of nations and (b) perceptions of a global Islamic umma struggling to assert its presence in the world?
2

Bangladeshis in Tower Hamlets
Tower Hamlets contains the largest Bangladeshi concentration in Britain and the community has been successful in establishing political, cultural and religious institutions since the 1970s. The migration process began with the arrival of seamen (lascars) recruited during the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century from Sylhet, in the north eastern corner of Bangladesh
(Adams 1987). A number of them jumped ship after arriving in London’s docks and established a base, mainly around Spitalfields, in the western side of the borough. The first generation of Bangladeshi migrants worked in small cafés and restaurants and were soon followed by their male kin who found employment in the local garment industry or factories in London or in
Northern England. From the mid-sixties the growing demand for labour and the first restrictions on immigration led to the reinforcement of the chain migration which linked specific areas of Sylhet with Britain. The men were joined by their families and the settlement in Tower Hamlets was characterised by the growing development of an ethnic economy and the creation of community and religious organisations.
The historical process of chain migration since the 1970s has had a twofold impact on both sides of the transnational continuum once ‘the myth of return’ began to fade. It has produced a highly localised ‘geography of prosperity’ in rural Sylhet. At the same time it has divided the ethnic enclave of the borough into sub-regional belongings and to some extent shaped the whole mapping of the Bangladeshi settlement across London.
The spatial distribution of the Bangladeshi community in East London had also been shaped by the discriminatory housing policies of the 1980s and the hostility of a persistent white working class in some parts of Tower Hamlets which forced entire families to seek accommodation in specific zones of the borough, often in the worst and older council properties. The issue of housing thus became a prominent battleground where different ethnic groups competed for the allocation of a scarce resource by local government institutions. The growing development of a service economy in London also put pressure on the local area. The combined effects of gentrification and the
City expansion towards the western parts of Tower Hamlets led to more and more restrictions in the housing opportunities for Bangladeshis, while altering the local character of the area through the immigration of a gentrifying white middle class. Furthermore, the massive ‘Docklands’ redevelopment in the south of Tower Hamlets attracted high tech industries and businesses, excluding white or Bangladeshi working class residents who did not to possess the adequate skills to be incorporated in the new economic function of an area reflecting the role of London as a global city (see Sassen 1991; Eade
1997, 2000).
3

As an increasing number of second and third generation Bangladeshis has entered higher education, the prospects of employment, for a long time restricted to the restaurant and textile industry, have changed. Yet despite having access to local white-collar jobs, mainly in public organisations, many young Bangladeshis still experience long periods of unemployment or occupy low skilled or unskilled jobs at the margin of the service economy.
Political developments in Tower Hamlets
Bangladesh was created through violent struggles, of course, and these origins have influenced debates about local struggles in Tower Hamlets down to the present day. These debates frequently revolve around an opposition between a secular Bangladesh nation-state and a Pakistan united through
Islam, although developments since the early 1970s have undermined such a simple polarity.
The war of independence against Pakistan in 1971 resonated deeply in
London where first generation leaders engaged in fund raising, campaigned against Pakistani institutions and worked for the (inter)national recognition of the ‘liberation war’. Although the ties with Bangladesh remained strong, political orientations changed at the end of the 1970s with the involvement of the second generation in the struggle for local resources. Some alliances with local white activists were secured during this period of anti-racist resistance and mobilisation against discrimination in the housing, educational and cultural spheres. These alliances were justified in terms of the language of struggle and sometimes the practice of public demonstrations (see Eade 1989).
Consequently by the end of the 1980s a group of second-generation secular activists had entered the Labour Party and sought to break into local political and administrative institutions. They challenged their elders as community representatives through seeking to forge an alliance between the Bangladeshi nationalist heritage and Bengali cultural identity, on the one hand, with class and other ethnic identities on the other (Eade 1989). The political fragmentation of the community and the adoption of different community discourses thus reflected the diversity of Bangladeshi interests.
The division of the political arena through the factionalisation of secular politics, produced by the competition for ethnic leadership and positions in various public organisations, is today reinforced by the existence of two interdependent levels of community representation. While the second generation activists have integrated local council institutions, the members of
British branches of Bangladeshi political parties -Awami League and
Bangladesh Nationalist Party - are active in building networks through kinship and village links with Bangladesh and particularly with Sylhet, their district of origin (see Gardner 1996).
4

Diasporic networks and civil society in multicultural Britain
In Tower Hamlets, the issues of social exclusion and participation in the civil society were at the centre of the debates since the community organisations were set up. The struggle for economic and cultural resources was linked to anti-racist and anti-discrimination approaches involving both self-defence strategies and alliances with pre-existing structures. Yet Bangladeshis were not the only settlers. Tower Hamlets has long been characterised by a rich history of immigration since the settlement of the French Protestant
Huguenots in the 17th century. The tradition of resistance was mainly associated with the Jewish presence and their reaction - along with local white workers - against the local impact of growing anti-semitism during the 1930s.
Here a parallel could be easily drawn with the public mobilisation of the
Bangladeshi community against racist violence in the 1970s already referred to. However, this more recent struggle was associated, to some extent, with the reinterpretation of the struggles leading to Bangladeshi independence.
This development raises the question of how mainstream political discourse echoed the migrants’ collective memory. Moreover, it encourages us to examine the meaning and the social/political dimension of the maintenance of ties with the country of origin.
The issue here is to assess the various effects which the transnational links of this migrant group and the articulation of local and global forces had on the discourses of ‘assimilation’ or ‘multiculturalism’ which were articulated by state policies and by some migrants’ political activities and mobilisation.
The nature of the relationship between Bangladeshis in Britain and their country of origin has to be understood, therefore, according to different interconnected arenas (local, regional, national, transnational). The first generation living in London might have kept a strong attachment with their ancestral villages through regular visits, the improvement of their family properties and regular remittances. Since the mid-1980s this financial involvement was institutionalised through the work of many ‘development groups’ (Jonokollan Shomittee) controlled by lineage leaders closely linked with the activities of Bangladeshi political parties in London, in particular the
Awami League. The objective of these organisations was to support the construction of educational or religious facilities in rural Sylhet. The creation of these groups coincided with a sub-regional decentralisation of governance in Bangladesh which reinforced the role that probashis (expatriates) could play in local Sylheti politics. The networks established across the transnational space, in turn, provided a political platform for Bangladeshi leaders coming to
Britain and seeking alliances with probashi organisations for electoral purpose in Bangladesh.
The relationships between these political spheres and the second-generation secular activists were determined by the scope and meaning of political involvement at a local and more broader level. The intense competition for
5

the leadership of the Awami League in London highlighted the factionalisation of the political space where business interests, regional affiliations and kinship belongings were embroiled. The claim for a need to occupy a strong position in British mainstream politics through their participation in local authority institutions led the second-generation secularist leaders to reexamine the role of their older elites. The latter were criticized mainly for their inability to mobilise their political resources and the strength of their social networks for the social/economic advancement of the local ‘Bangladeshi community’ in Tower Hamlets. Yet the slowly changing role of probashi politics in London complicated the relationship because
‘regional culture’ was not only mobilised in community events but was also handed down to British Bangladeshis ‘born and bred’ in Britain. The leaders of regional groupings were in other words willing to show that they were concerned about the cultural and educational context of the Bangladeshi community in London as well as about the ‘development’ of their area of origin.
Islamists, secularists and the competition for local resources
The increasing importance of the Islamisation of space in the East End of
London shed light on the new involvement religious actors intend to show in the local arena, particularly the leaders of East London Mosque (see Eade
1997; Eade, Fremeaux and Garbin in press). The purpose-built mosque offers many activities including providing Islamic literature, study groups, conferences, and social support to the local Bangladeshi and also Somali
Muslim community. The close links established between the East London
Mosque activists and youth groups – mainly the Young Muslim Organisation
- and their participation in public funded bodies and various anti-drug project legitimated their claim to occupy a central role in the local landscape of community representation which had been dominated by secular activists up to the late 1980s.
At a religious level this claim to centrality was contested by other wellsupported mosques in Brick Lane and St Katharines’ ward, as well as by the plethora of prayer rooms and mosques scattered across the borough. In the political context the debate over political representation has also been connected with the prioritisation of Islam as a unique and encompassing identity linking Bangladeshis in Britain with the umma, the global Muslim community. While the Brick Lane Mosque, remained associated with first generation nationalist politicians, the East London Mosque benefited from the financial support of Middle East countries and Pakistan.
For the East London Mosque activists, the prominence of a Muslim identity rooted itself both in the complete code of conduct that Islam has to offer and in the ‘authenticity’ of values often opposed to the ‘syncretic’ cultural practices of the Indian sub-continent. With high rates of unemployment, poor
6

housing conditions and drug problems young Bangladeshis in Tower
Hamlets were described as increasingly attracted by Islamist alternatives to the ‘gang culture’. Violence, crime related behaviour and the development of an informal economy would be perceived as a reaction to their very limited local prospects. At the same time they could also be seen as the product of the deficiency and ‘lack of morality’ of secular western education. College unions and youth groups thus became the sites of increasingly polarised identity politics as new forms of social control based on religious principles have emerged among the second and third generation Bangladeshis (Glynn, 2001).
To counteract these Islamist initiatives, secularists strengthened the idea that a Bengali cultural heritage remained central to an educational approach aimed at a greater integration of young British Bangladeshis. A presentation of the objectives of the newly created Shadinata (freedom) Trust explains that:
[…] an absence of documentation and social data representing
Bengalis’ heritage, historical presence and achievements internationally, can contribute towards a sense of marginalisation, low self-esteem and alienation of young people in particular, as part of a minority ethnic community within wider society. This in turn, can limit their participation and contributions to mainstream culture.(Lamarche,
2000: 6)
Moreover: the projection of negative images of Bangladesh from the west have exacerbated conflicts naturally arising for young people growing up between two very different and cultures, leaving many feeling insecure about their identity as a fresh generation of British Bengalis (Lamarche,
2000: 8)
The division of the political arena over transmission of values and the prioritisation of religious or cultural identities became embroiled in a process of competition for the appropriation of space. It is important to note here that during the last decade public funding in Tower Hamlets for the organisations managed by secularists declined while support for mosques, and Islamic community organisations increased. On its adjacent site, the East London
Mosque is now engaged in a large-scale expansion programme. Worshippers can purchase a piece of land and donate it to the mosque following the injunctions of the Islamic property law known as Waqf. The planning permission on the site previously owned by a private developer was secured after an intense campaign against secular councillors on the grounds that religion provided the unique basis for community identity. For the East
7

London Mosque activists, the successful conclusion of a two-year conflict over the disputed land demonstrated their strengthening position both within the community representation sphere and in the struggle for local resources.
However, in a context of rapid urban change and increasing public-private partnership through regeneration programmes, secularists are still forging powerful alliances with public agencies, local entrepreneurs and important
City firms. The organisation of various local ‘multicultural’ festivals and, above all, the introduction of a reinvented tradition, the Baishaki Mela, celebrating the ‘Bengali New Year’ on Brick Lane, reflected this trend. In the western ward of Spitalfields, the new urban image of a local space renamed officially ‘Banglatown’ was also designed to provide a sense of multicultural identity which would attract tourists and visitors from outside the area, following the successful model of Chinatown in Soho. Along Brick Lane
Bangladeshi entrepreneurs and restaurant owners participate in the exoticisation of local place despite the fierce competition between them. Yet as
Jacobs points out, the process also highlights the changing and sometimes contradictory definitions of a ‘local community’ for the political actors of the local left:
The Left is reinstated as guardian of the inner city – not a working class inner city but a multi-cultural inner city. But this new Spitalfields of difference often took forms that unsettled the `pre-modern’, anti-urban, communal nostalgias that gave affective drive to the Left’s alliance with the Bengali community. (Jacobs 1996: 97)
For the secular Bangladeshi activists, one of the objectives behind the symbolic and economic transformation of the urban space was to link the
Bangladeshi diaspora in Britain with their homeland through the organisation of ‘multicultural’ events which transcended religious divisions. Here, the critiques of the Islamists were related to moral concerns concerning mixing between young males and females and unIslamic practices. Traditional religious celebrations such as Eid restricted to the private domain, were seen as the only ‘authentic’ festivals while the Baishaki Mela was presented as encouraging unrespectable behaviour influenced by western secular values and Sikh/Hindu practices (Eade, Fremeaux and Garbin in press).
Struggle, legitimacy and resistance
In Tower Hamlets, the competition for resources was strongly articulated with different strategies and discourses of community representation based on identities situated beyond the local urban space. This process has to be
8

understood through the maintenance of transnational flows of ideas between
Bangladesh, Britain and the other parts of the globe where there is a substantial population of Bangladeshi migrants and also through historical developments surrounding the independance of Bangladesh.
At the heart of the nationalist/secularist project in London are the members of the Nirmul Committee whose role was central to the creation of various
‘Youth Movement’ groups in the 1980s and today’s Banglatown and Shadinata
Trust. The essential objective of this organisation founded in Bangladesh in
1992 by Jahanara Imam, the mother of a ‘freedom fighter’, is the
`rehabilitation of Bangladesh liberation war ideals and the trials of
Bangladeshi war criminals’ through an active promotion of Bengali secular nationalism in Bangladesh and abroad. The idea was also to link the controversial events during and following the war of independence against
Pakistan with a universal definition of justice emerging from the Second
World War:
However, unlike the Jewish people or the nations of Europe; justice has eluded the people of Bangladesh for 23 long years. The Pakistani war criminals, who had surrendered to a joint Indo-Bangladesh force on
December 16, 1971 on the basis of the Geneva Convention governing treatment of prisoner of war, were able to get away with their crimes.
The international community, which had a duty to see that war crimes and crimes against humanity were investigated and the culprits brought to justice, showed little interest in the Bangladesh case, despite obligations under UN covenants. (Imam, 1994: 4)
Thus, exploring the legitimacy of these discourses of ‘justice and crimes’ and drawing an interesting parallel with post-war France, Sélim (1998) notes that:
According to the vision developed by the Nirmul Committee, the world is divided between ‘liberators’ and ‘collaborators’ […]. The model which frames this binary opposition is directly inspired by the
Russell trial example and some of the trials conducted in France against the ‘collaborators’ with Germans during the Vichy regime. This model is reinterpreted according to the indigenous experience and nationalist
Bangladeshi activists often intend to reproduce the ideal that seemed to have incarnated France, which would have in their eyes eliminated without any problems its own ‘collaborators’. (Sélim 1998: 60, translated by Garbin)
In London, the spirit of resistance to ‘anti-nationalist force’ was at the forefront of the Nirmul Committee thinking, even if their members were keen to emphasise their independence from the more traditional activities of older political parties such as the Awami League which had fought for the national liberation in 1971. They adopted the view that Islamist activities represented a
9

violent and radical threat to the transmission of a Bengali heritage and accused some leaders of the East London Mosque of being razakars - former collaborators of the Pakistani regime during the war. These assertions were used during public meetings and in youth group publications defining
‘cultural awareness’ strategies. Attempts were also made to lobby British state institutions to denounce the fact that some razakars involved in ‘war crimes’ were freely operating in London.
The political debate developed across national boundaries with the involvement of Bangladeshi migrants abroad and an important use of media and communication technology-as instanced by some Internet sites listing the names of the supposed ‘collaborators’ (such as http://www.razakar.com). The tensions between Islamist and secular ideologies, which greatly influenced the political definition and expression of a Bangladeshi identity after the war, reflected the articulation of global and local forces and the increasing dynamic role of transnational networks. In London, the issue of democracy in
Bangladesh was discussed by Islamists who saw in the secular Awami League government a threat both to religious scholars and ‘ordinary people’ for whom the authentic values of Islam occupied the essential part of their daily experience. The links between the East London Mosque and Islamist political parties such as the Pakistan-based Jamaat I Islami – also a member of the opposition alliance in Bangladesh - provided a platform to resist the westernisation/secularisation of the political sphere in Bangladesh and elsewhere.
For both Islamists and secularists the debate, therefore, served to question the political relationships between India, Pakistan and Bangladesh and also the role of Islamist and democratic movements in the world. While secularists sought to draw attention to ‘fundamentalism’ and emphasised resistance to the Islamisation of Bengali identity and culture, religious activists discussed the meaning of and the possibilities for the creation of an Islamic State through Jihad – a ‘holy war’ - along with concerns over Islamic practice in a non-Muslim country.
The circulation of secular and Islamist elites between Bangladesh and Britain further reinforced the ideological conflict surrounding public space. When a
(non-Sylheti) Jamaat i Islami MP in Bangladesh was denouncing the
‘immorality’ of Sylheti people in a mosque in Oldham, violence erupted in
Tower Hamlets between secular activists and members of young Muslim organisations. Here, the incident involved leaders opposed on ideological grounds but also rallied those who wished to defend their regional identity.
For the majority of the elder generation who maintained strong ties with their district of origin, these criticisms touched a sensitive nerve. The events also reflected the increasing identity division within the private/domestic space, as one Awami League activist recalls:
10

He is a Jammat leader, he simply uses the money of Sylheti people here to make his political publicity back home for his constituency. His speech was not acceptable for the Sylheti community here […] that day you could see families protesting on one side of the street and their children on their other side supporting or following the young Muslim groups…it was very bad to see that violence and the parents crying and shouting because their children were there as well…
The growing polarity between secular nationalists and Islamists was not restricted to the political arena, therefore, because more and more young
British Bangladeshis found it hard to identify with the ideology that characterised the liberation war despite the legitimating efforts of the secularists. The commitment of their elders to the Bangladeshi politics through kinship and business networks was also perceived as a distant concern compared to their perspective of future in Britain. For those who defined themselves first and foremost as Muslim, the traditional form of Islam in the sub-continent based on syncretic practices and the cult of holy men
(pirs) seemed irrelevant to their present economic and political environment.
The issues of discrimination and social exclusion were far more important to them. Furthermore, the fight against Islamophobia replaced the older antiracist campaigns which had helped to stop the National Front and British
National Party activities in the western part of the borough. The mobilisation surrounding the publication of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses was also a key moment for many who could unite under the banner of a universal and global Muslim identity in order to act publicly and express their religious attachment.
Oldham as another Bengali space
When violence in Bradford, Oldham, and other northern English towns erupted it echoed the struggles occurred in Tower Hamlets in the late 1970s.
At that time, debates about segregation, anti-racism and community selfdefence were articulated with urban issues concerning the unequal distribution of resources. Given that there is a substantial Bangladeshi population in Oldham and that many Bangladeshis in Tower Hamlets moved from there to London when the recession hit the northern mill towns, the members of the Bangladeshi local community were keen to express their concerns. The secular leaders in Tower Hamlets drew a parallel between the past struggles in London and the situation in Oldham but emphasised the differences which in their eyes reflected the existence of two distinct community spaces. As this former Tower Hamlets councillor explained:
11

The regeneration in Oldham to be honest I don’t think it will help to solve the gap between the communities. Maybe it is easy here because of the City with the role of the City, and the Docklands, there are more money available here. And the racists groups like the BNP have been stopped. We fought for that in Tower Hamlets.
Others, such as the coordinator of a youth project in Tower Hamlets discussed the question of urban regeneration more ironically:
The Bengali there are suffering from disadvantages and discrimination but money will flow soon in Oldham. It is the right time to invest and buy a house there. You could make a fortune in 10 years time. It will be like Tower Hamlets now while arguing for the necessity of autonomous self-defence and anti-racist strategies: we are concerned by the events in Oldham…If needed we can help but we are here and not there. They have to struggle and stand up for their rights as we did…and the society starts realising that they and we are here to stay for good…The kids will not act the way their parents used to act. They will fight back and that is what we see now developing up north
The relative dispersal of Bangladeshi community groups in Britain and the loose networks between them meant that very few direct initiatives were taken from Tower Hamlets in order to assist the leaders in Oldham. Yet a delegation of community leaders from Oldham was received by Baroness
Pola Uddin and the newly appointed High Commissioner for Bangladesh visited the Bangladeshi neighbourhoods to show his concern as did the
Pakistani High Commissioner in Bradford. The meetings at a local level and the debates at a broader level were aimed at discussing the institutional responses to urban segregation and racism. As shown by the debates triggered by the events, the issue of ‘integration’ remained central, either connected to the divisions of the urban socio-economic environment or the place of ethnic minorities in multicultural Britain. Among young British
Bangladeshis, the events were also an occasion to re-examine the role of ‘their community leaders’. Here, their comments very often echoed Kundnani’s vision of the processes at work regarding the Asian leaderships in Bradford and Oldham when he argued that :
12

A new class of ‘ethnic representatives’ entered the town halls from the mid-1980s onwards, who would be the surrogate voice for their own ethnically-defined fiefdoms. They entered into a pact with the authorities; they were to cover up and gloss over black community resistance in return for free rein in preserving their own patriarchy.
(Kundnani, 2001: 3)
Many of these criticisms, especially when made by Islamist activists and young Muslims about the role of community leaders, were linked to the fact
‘that they were only working for their personal promotion’. These representations were naturally opposed to a discourse defining Islam as a political space where hierarchy was clearly not an issue. Critics also alleged the traditional patron-client relationship structure of Bangladeshi society and the dependence of all secularist members on a nationalist and ‘backward’ way of conducting political and social action. Islamist activists in Tower Hamlets sought to expose the inability of secular politics to deal with social marginalisation, and emphasised the need for a religious morality in order to eradicate urban violence. Education should prioritise Islamic values and thereby bridge the gap between parents and their children, preventing them from taking drugs or using violence. The ‘Muslim community’, which in their eyes was targeted by the BNP and racist organisations, should campaign to attract more funding and increase their participation in the political arena.
The fact that the conflicts were exacerbated by the police was also linked to claims for the recognition of specifically Muslim rights in civil society.
Finally, the issue of ‘integration’ recurred in the narratives of Islamic activists in Tower Hamlets. Here a two-sided approach was advanced: on the one hand, the authorities should be aware that the politics of segregation in northern cities has led to the urban riots and, on the other hand, young
Bangladeshis should as ‘British Asian Muslims’ be willing to integrate successfully the society though education, work and a strong commitment to religious morality.
Conclusion
In this paper we have analysed the political and ideological interpretations of locality in London’s East End which are influenced by debates and events occurring beyond the national frontier in people’s country of origin –
Bangladesh. Locality and nation are brought together through transnational links and involve a language of struggle where fighting for civil rights in
London is associated with the birth of a secular nation-state. Yet these secularist claims concerning Bangladesh’s origins and their relevance for struggles in the East End have been challenged by Islamist constructions of place and people. Here self-determination is framed within certain
13

interpretations of Islam and associations with another imagined community – the global community of fellow Muslims transcending national boundaries.
We must be careful to avoid suggesting that secularist and Islamist discourses were homogeneous and inevitably opposed to one another. Yet it is also evident that despite the differences among secularists and Islamists, activists have developed conflicting policies and practices in local arenas.
Furthermore, these local struggles have drawn on conflicts between secularists and Islamists in Bangladesh and around the globe. These struggles are embodied in local space through contests over the expansion of the East
London Mosque, for example, and the elaboration of the Bengali New Year celebrations. In a few cases these contests briefly flare up into open public violence.
The conflicts, as an expression of the relationship between self-determination and struggle, also raise the issue of collective memory. As those who can remember the events leading to the birth of Bangladesh get older they are faced with the challenge of what memories should be passed on to the second and third generation of British Bangladeshis and for what purposes. This involves, of course, the contemporary politics of Bangladesh and the role of the Awami League leader, Sheikh Hasina, who is the daughter of the murdered `Father of the Nation’, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. The self-seeking and ‘corruption’ of her supporters can establish the moral high ground for
Islamist opponents who have to resist the accusations of supporting Pakistan
(now or in the past). As Bangladesh becomes more formally Islamicised so
Bangladeshis in London and elsewhere in the West come under pressure to conform to everyday practices which reflect this Islamicising development.
These political and ideological changes clearly influence people’s daily lives at the local level through, for example, how they dress, who they mix with, what kinds of books they read and the television programmes they look at.
These local struggles raise other issues – (a) which agenda should provide the basis for resistance to what forms of oppression or domination? and (b) how should the struggle be waged? While secularists and Islamists focus on the same local issues and strategies for tackling those issues, their paths begin to diverge when they consider the reasons for choosing these strategies.
Islamists are much more interested in the impact of local action on a particular community’s moral life. Fighting against drugs is part of a wider campaign to preserve an Islamically ordered family within a hostile environment.
Jihad here means not violence against Islam’s enemies but an urgent struggle against the effects of corruption within the home and on London’s streets. For secularists struggle also involves moral issues and self-determination for individuals and communities.
For secularists struggle also involves moral issues and self-determination for individuals and communities. However, it is framed within assumptions about a secular nation-state where Islam is confined to the realm of personal
14

belief and practices and is not the basis for public action. Although these assumptions dominated the political arena in the early 1980s, they now have to compete with Islamist activists and the disillusion of a third generation of
British Bangladeshis facing the social and economic problems of the global city.
References
Adams, C. (1987) Across Seven Seas and Thirteen Rivers, London : THAP Books.
Afshar, H. (1994) `Some remarks about growing up with conflicting views of self and society amongst Muslim families in West Yorkshire’. In H. Afshar
(ed.), The Dynamics of Race and Gender in Britain, London: Taylor and Francis..
Appadurai, A. (1990) `Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy’. In M. Featherstone (ed.), Global Culture, London: Sage.
Back, L. (1996) New Ethnicities and Urban Culture, London: UCL Press.
Eade, J. (1989) The Politics of Community, the Bangladeshis in East London,
Aldershot: Ashgate.
----- (1997) (ed.) Living the Global City, London and New York: Routledge.
----- (2000) Placing London, New York and Oxford: Berhahn Books.
Eade, J., Fremeaux, I. and Garbin, D. (in press) `The political construction of diasporic communities in the global city’. In P. Gilbert (ed.), Imagined London,
Albany: SUNY Press.
Gardner, K. (1995) Global Migrants, Local Lives, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Glynn, S. (2001) ‘Bengali Muslims : the new East End radicals ?’, conference paper, Fresh Perspectives on Identity, Sussex University, April 2001.
Hall, S. (1992) `The question of cultural identity’. In S. Hall et al (eds),
Modernity and Its Futures, Cambridge: Polity and Milton Keynes: Open
University Press.
Hannerz, U. (1990) `Cosmopolitans and locals in world cultures’. In M.
Featherstone (ed.),
Global Culture, London: Sage.
Imam, J. (1994) ‘Preface’. In Report on the Findings of the People’s Inquiry
Commission on the Activities of the War Criminals and the Collaborators, Dhaka:
15

National Coordinating for the realisation of Bangladesh War Ideals and Trials of Bangladesh War Criminals of 1971.
Jacobs, J. M. (1996) : Edge of empire, postcolonialism and the city. London :
Routledge.
Kundnani, A. (2001) `From Oldham to Bradford: the violence of the violated’.
In Institute of Race Relations, The Three Faces of British Racism, London: IRR
Lamarche, D. (2000), Shadinata Trust, Creating a centre for excellence In Arts,
Research and Education. Unpublished.
Metcalf, B. (1996) Making Muslim Space in North America and Europe,
Berkeley:University of California Press.
Robertson, R. (1992) Globalization, London: Sage.
Sélim, M. (1998) `Les politiques de l’islamisme au Bangladesh: entre libération et collaboration’. In Heuzé, G. and Sélim, M. (eds): Politique et religion dans
l’Asie du Sud contemporaine. Paris: Karthala.
Vertovec, S. (1999) (ed.), Migration and Social Cohesion, London: E. Elgar.
16