Mixing It

This novel deals with the great divide in present-day society, between Muslims and non-Muslims, and how it impacts on the lives of young people in a multicultural society. Two teenagers, Fatimah, a committed Muslim, and Steve, who has never belonged to any faith, are caught in the crossfire between two sections of a divided Britain. They are both on their way to school one day when a bomb explodes in a church, killing Fatimah’s best friend and injuring Steve, whose life Fatimah saves.

Given the fact that the book’s theme – Muslim/non-Muslim relations – is by now a well-worn one, I was hoping to find more than the usual cast of characters: the manic Muslim terrorist countered by the good peace-loving Muslim family, the bigoted working class white British man balanced out by a more tolerant wife, the cast of Muslim girls who keep themselves to themselves except for the one who wants to go clubbing with white boys, the white kids who, even in this day and age, go to a multicultural school but know nothing about the Muslims who go to school with them. As the parent of a teenager of Muslim ancestry who mixes with a wide range of Muslims and non-Muslims, observant and secular, I know that there are a lot more people in multicultural Britain than these stereotypes.

I was also hoping to find something a bit more thought provoking than having this cast of usual suspects play out the expected scenarios – the Muslim bombers score an own goal by killing a Muslim girl, the good Muslims dissociate themselves from terrorism, they get together with their Christian neighbours to try to live together and in the process win the white father from bigotry while the bomber turns out to be just a poor misguided boy.

Then, too, the book suffers from a certain didacticism which slows down the beginning by explaining every move Fatimah makes and every thought she holds – all good Muslim ones – so that she comes across not so much a character, as a vehicle through which the author explains how Muslims observe their faith. Given the sudden explosion of books on this subject, it might have been best to exclude or footnote the rituals. After all, no author these days goes about explaining each act of observance of a Catholic, for example. It also means that, given the good intentions of the book towards devout a-political Muslims, the character of Fatimah is rather one-sided – totally pure and virtuous in thought and deed. For these reasons and more, I found this book rather less of a riveting read than its blurb suggested and rather less thought-provoking than its theme warranted.