Full text of the Chairman's address at the City Circle's iftari event on 22 October 2005, entitled: The Dignity of Difference organised jointly with the US-UK Fulbright Commission at the LSE. Speakers at the event were Professor David Garrow and Professor Tariq Ramadan. Chaired by Carol Madison Graham.

"My thanks to Professors David Garrow and Tariq Ramadan for a really interesting and productive session. Many thanks also to Carol Madison Graham, executive director of the Fulbright Commission, for jointly organising this event. As Carol mentioned earlier, this is the second collaborative event the City Circle and the Fulbright Commission have organised. I think our relationship is an important one, dare I describe it as a 'special relationship'.

Since our last iftari event 12 months ago we have all had an incredibly challenging year. One such challenge was 7/7.

"As many of you know, the City Circle holds its weekly public meetings on Fridays just off Edgware Road in London. So a day after the 7th July on Friday 8th July we had to make a decision whether to go ahead with our meeting to be held just yards away from the bombed out tube station. This was a time when many Muslim groups were cancelling their meetings citing safety concerns. The Mayor of London however was urging Londoners to continue life as normally as possible. We decided to take the Mayor's advice and went ahead with our meeting. I was surprised that we actually had a full house that night. It simply showed graphically how, in a crisis, we instinctively reacted, not as Muslims per se, but as Londoners, just like everyone else. And this is what wider society must see more of: their fellow Muslim citizens acting and reacting in ways no different from them. But to do so we still have some distance to travel.

"The idea that Muslims need to rally under a Muslim banner on all issues has had its day. The idea that there needs to be a 'Muslim' viewpoint or a 'Muslim' response to every issue under the sun is simply nonsensical. If Muslims are concerned with foreign policy they should go join Amnesty International, if they have an issue with civil liberties they should go join Liberty. These are professional organisations, amongst many other mainstream bodies, that understand how the law works. Muslims should join mainstream bodies as fellow citizens, not just as Muslims.

"The City Circle is not a Muslim organisation. Allow me to explain: The values that drive us to do good community work are the same values that drive people of other faiths and none to do good work. Islam is a very broad church and we should keep those doors open.

"The City Circle offers the wider community an open space on which to honestly have a two-way dialogue with the Muslim community, not to discuss inter-faith issues (which we leave to those qualified) but rather the social problems we all face together. We do our soul searching in public. There is no holy cow that we will not slaughter in pursuit of bringing communities together.

"If sectarian interpretations of Islam get in the way of Muslim unity then ideologically-obsessed interpretations of Islam get in the way of bringing Muslim and non-Muslim communities together. We should not be importing religious or political ideologies from the Middle East or Pakistan but instead be developing a distinct compassionate British Islam - or a European Islam as our speaker Tariq Ramadan would say - and exporting that to the Muslim world. The Muslim world needs as much help as we can give them and importing their conflicts into the UK does not help them nor does it help us.

"The next 12 months will, I am sure, be full of new uncertainties. Beware of anyone who claims to offer you certainly in such uncertain times. The only certainly we have are the core compassionate values of Islam. We need to continue to be challenging, continue to think outside the box, continue to be internally critical and continue to push the agenda for the community forward without any dogmatic, party-based, pre-determined templates that limit our thinking.

"Those who are interested in being a part of this journey and would like to be in the service of the community should get in touch with the City Circle detailing their skills-set".

Asim Siddiqui
Chairman, The City Circle
London, 22 October 2005