...And now on Radio 4, the first part of an occasional series about aspects of the British Muslim Experience (TM) that have been overlooked by the commentariat...
Well, a man can dream.
Anyway, a question: what has been the most significant change in British Muslim social behaviour and habit over the least 10 years? Increased/decreased mosque-going? Perhaps engagement/disengagement with radical politics?
Answer: Nandos.
Why would a South African-inflected, Portuguese-motiffed (spelling?) chain of franchise grilled chicken outlets influence the daily lives of UK Muslims. Oh hell, this is starting to descend into Thomas Friedman territory (iswadda wajhuh), so let's get back to basics.
If you were a normally observant, halal-eating, suburb-dwelling British Muslim before Nandos, and you went out for a meal, you either ended up at an IndoBangloPak place, and you ate what you ate at home. Or, you might be daring and go to, say, Pizza Hut. Confronted with the menu, our practiced bon-viveur does the immediate ocular winnowing to knock out all the meat items, before deciding between the, say, two options left for the halal eater. GastroMuslim then swallowed his doubts about carelessly shared kitchen implements and the perils of pig molecule pollution on his plate.
Not much table service eating out happened, to the undoubted benefit of our collective iman.
Nandos changed the rules by using halal chicken in many of its restaurants. Unwittingly or not, it did so at a time when a new generation of British Muslims were showing signs of wanting of to go out and have, well, fun. A safe fun. Safe in two ways. Laudably safe in the sense of wanting to keep to halal meat. And safe in the sense of not challenging our suburban sensibilities too much. Whatever you think of the food, a visit to any Nandos gives ample demonstration of an aesthetic of safe corporate funkiness-think jokey menus, informal waiting staff, MOR rock. This is an experience that has been cold bloodedly designed to encourage its customers to kick back and relax a bit.
When it comes to the food, GastroMuslim can now gaze down at the laminate and can choose anything on the menu. I don't know what it says about me that sort of feels like progress, of some sort. There's a far fetched metaphor in there to do with coming in from the margins and taking our place at the table, but it's a silly metaphor, and we're not anywhere bloody close yet, in any case.
So on any given night, you can see many Visibly Muslim Muslims enjoying a chicken dinner. But you just want to know how this measures on the integrationometer, don't you? Well, I'll say that this perfectly reflects a pattern of increased eating out in urban Pakistan. We are becoming more Pakistani in a different way. So there.
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