Nick Ahad: Forget racial role models, just do the right thing

Never before have there been such loud and persistent calls for so few to speak on behalf of so many.

These self-appointed spokesmen, who purport to speak for Islam, do nothing but create an unhelpful atmosphere in which all British Muslims are treated as a conglomerate mass rather than a set of individuals with differing beliefs, ideas and ways of life.

Despite there being a spectrum of people in Muslim Britain – good, bad and ordinary, just as there is in any strata of society – the call for representative role models is constant.

This issue was pertinent long before the killing of bin Laden and has insidiously crept into my own life.

I’ve recently started my first season as captain at my cricket club.

The reason I chose my club in Keighley was because it was most ethnically diverse of all the teams in the Craven League.

This continues to be a great source of pride to our members. Most teams in our league are almost entirely white or entirely Asian.

In the pre-season, as our first game approached, one unsporting issue perturbed me. As the Craven League is one of only three that straddle the Lancashire-Yorkshire borders, we do get involved in matches that end up being fiery in temperament.

Things got a little out of hand a couple of years ago, with far too much “sledging” during one game. Tempers were frayed and one of our British Asian players was particularly vexed. He was spoiling for a fight.

As a senior player, I took him to one side and told him that the cricket pitch was not the place for such behaviour. More than that, I also explained that the only meaningful contact some of our English team mates and opponents have with Asian people is on the field of play.

His behaviour, like it or not, reflected on all of us. He wasn’t just representing himself, but all Asian players in the league. It’s an uncomfortable fact, but a fact all the same.

Ahead of my first game this season as skipper, I wondered how the entire side should uphold cricket’s proud tradition of gentlemanly conduct.

Should I talk separately to the Asian guys in the team? Or would that be too divisive and undermine the club’s approach to integration?

I felt uncomfortable with the prospect, but it needed reminding that, as Asian players in a predominantly white league, we are role models.

Then, on my way home and as I pondered this, my car broke down.

Standing at the intersection on Canal Road in Bradford, shivering and attempting to warn drivers away from the back of my clapped out motor, I was delighted that eight drivers stopped to see if I needed help.

Someone let me borrow their mobile phone.

Someone drove past and shouted. I turned to wave a gesture of thanks and received a burst of laughter and a couple of less than helpful gestures from a car full of English girls.

It just so happened that every person who stopped to offer help was Asian, the only ones laughing at my misfortune, English.

Would this have any effect on the way I think of people who happen to be of different races? Obviously not.

Fortunately, and probably because I was fortunate to grow up in a house with an English mother and Asian father, I made no value judgment about what happened with the people on that night based on race.

My mother always repeated the mantra to her children: “There’s good and bad everywhere.” Never a mention of race.

I thought of my mother, and her values, when I finally tackled my cricketing conundrum and decided to give my team-mates a pep talk about playing the game in the right spirit, while also enjoying ourselves.

Role models and race never came into it.

The killing of Osama bin Laden is part of a deeply complex story that defines our contemporary world; it will take commentators and historians many years to fully explain its significance in the narrative of a much changed world.

This is why I was annoyed when various media pundits, purportedly speaking on behalf of all Muslims, talked about the ongoing importance of role models following bin Laden’s demise.

We live not in a world that needs role models or community spokesmen, but where people need to recognise that stereotyping leads us nowhere positive and that ultimately we are all our own role models.

Nick Ahad is the Yorkshire Post’s arts correspondent.