Charity is not just for Ramadan – even ‘positive’ media portrayals of Muslims are becoming a problem

Ramadan is here and Muslims all over the world are embarking on holy month. During Ramadan, Muslims are expected to fast from sunrise to sunset and it’s also a time for internal reflection, prayer, charity and reconnecting with loved ones.

People will also try and connect with people within (and outside) of their communities with special emphasis on those who are most in need. In Britain, mosques will open up soup kitchens and zakat (charity) will be highly encouraged.

However, it is not only during the month of Ramadan that the British Muslim community acts in a charitable way. Charity is one of the five pillars of Islam and deemed essential for anyone wanting to practice the faith. The focus on British Muslims and their charitable acts at this time of year ignores this, and brings problems of its own.

It has become a staple of media coverage around Ramadan. Charitable acts by British Muslims are highlighted and positively presented. And if it helps in combating Islamophobia that can only be a good thing. However, it can also be dangerous and “othering”.

The truth is that we simply don’t place the same emphasis on other religions and their philanthropic acts. It’s important that we normalise the good deeds carried out by Muslims rather than sensationalising them. The Ramadan spike in coverage serves to make it seem uncommon, like we are trying to justify Islam.

There have been plenty of examples worldwide of the British Muslim community helping its own and other communities during times of need. One recent moment was after the tragic Pittsburgh synagogue shooting last year. Muslims across the globe raised funds and organised projects to help those affected.

For that matter, it seems to me that the only other time the British Muslim community’s charity work is highlighted in the media is when it’s in direct response to a terror attack.

At those moments, Muslims are portrayed as magnanimous and all-forgiving as they participate in the rebuilding of whichever community has been affected. Why is this damaging? Well, it perpetuates the notion that Muslims must always actively be showing signs of generosity in order to work against the image fostered by rising Islamophobia.

I accept and concede that there is not one image of Muslims presented by Islamophobia. There is a a multifaceted impression left that is fuelled by a lack of understanding.

This is substantiated by society’s need to constantly prove that Islam is an essentially peaceful religion. And one way of doing this is to highlight cases of altruism in the British Muslim community and times when it has worked in unison with communities of other faiths. However, this happens all the time.

Communities of different faiths are always working together in the UK. If they didn’t, then we wouldn’t be able to have a workable society at all.

We don’t need the media’s clumsy efforts to help build the narrative that Muslims are “just like everyone else”. The simple fact that we need to state this shows that mainstream perceptions of Islam are woefully misinformed.

As we have said, charity is very common in Islam (as it is in most religions) and highlighting it only during Ramadan or just after a hate crime devalues the work that goes on all year round and makes these high-profile acts seem trivial or disingenuous.

What we can do is normalise Muslims and the constant flow of encounters both within and outside our community.

We can do this by either reporting these instances more frequently, or stop reporting the empathy and charity in the Muslim response to events as something remarkable or even counterintuitive. That approach has only served to bolster the false image about Muslims that we have allowed to take hold.