An Interview with Liban Saleh (President 2011-12)

Liban Saleh did his undergraduate degree -an MChem- at the University of Liverpool. He then undertook his DPhil at New College, Oxford, matriculating in 2009 and he completed his studies in 2014. He was President of the ISoc in 2011/2012

Q: What was your defining memory of ISoc?

A: The day we got the email from the Vice-Chancellor’s office saying he wanted to meet us about building the Prayer Room! The second one was the first-ever ISoc election that we had - it produced an excellent committee that year alhamdulilllah!

Q: As you mentioned, you were the first ever elected committee of ISoc as elections had not been carried out before. Why was this change introduced and how was it received?
A: People wanted an election process for choosing committees as they wanted to have more of a say in the running of ISoc. They wanted their views to be heard. We weren’t really sure how elections would be carried out but knew that it would benefit the society. 

In Michaelmas 2010, the term before I became President, the society wasn’t doing particularly well and there was a lack of cohesion. It was a very difficult time and much of the committee and the members of the society had become quite disillusioned and didn’t want to be involved. There really wasn’t very much happening in terms of events either - the only two regular events were Jummah and Friday football.

As I said, there hadn’t been elections before - the previous committee would get nominations and would decide the incoming committee. We felt that introducing a change in the selection process would hopefully improve engagement with the society. We carried out our first elections by having people nominate individuals, and they’d then deliver speeches. Committee was elected on the same night, so it was effectively done the same way as it is now.

The first committee I was part of was actually an interim committee as the previous committee had disbanded during MT. I and four others formed this interim committee, which I was chair of. This committee helped get ISoc back on its feet, and we rewrote the constitution to introduce the electoral process. People had become quite apathetic, so we held 3 consultation meetings with our members to hear their views. Some members had some pretty strong views and were quite emotional but the consultations were really useful in getting everyone back on side. People were largely supportive of the shift to an electoral process. There were a few complaints - in particular, that anybody could turn up and potentially ruin the society from the inside! But alhamdulillah the process went well and helped make ISoc self-sustaining.

Q: What inspired you to go for presidency?

A: It was quite a tricky time for ISoc and no one really wanted to take on the presidency or committee roles. Coming into the ISoc from the outside, as a DPhil student, I found the society to be really welcoming and I just wanted to help it develop. The other reason I got involved was because of my other vision for ISoc, which was to get the PR.

Q: Could you tell us more about the process of lobbying for a Prayer room? What inspired this decision?
A: For me, getting the Prayer Room was absolutely the number 1 goal. Having come from the University of Liverpool, which had its own Prayer Room, I knew the difference it could make. Even if I didn’t achieve anything else, I wanted to the leave the ISoc with a Prayer Room. I wasn’t the first to have this idea - I know at least stretching back to the 1990s people were lobbying for a PR.

I had a chat with a lady called Layla who was part of the Equality Unit of the University. She was really good in terms of letting us know what had happened before and updating us on the University administration process. The Vice-Chancellor at the time was Andrew Hamilton. He had come over from the US and was a chemist, which was great! His group worked down the corridor from mine and he’d walk past our labs every Thursday, so that helped with recognition when we eventually met with him. We decided that I’d lead the Prayer Room campaign, but needed somebody who would be a campaign co-ordinator. Adam Ali was asked to do that. He had done his pre-clinical degree at Cambridge, and they’d had a PR since 2004 so he also understood the benefit of it. We solicited some very specific contributions from the ISoc members. We wanted a list of the UK universities which had a PR for Muslim students or multi-faith rooms. From this, we found that around 80+ universities had a PR. We had some case-studies of some of the larger universities with pictures of their prayer rooms etc. The idea was we’d show this to the Vice-Chancellor and say that if these universities have the capacity to build a prayer room, so does Oxford.

This was really useful in counter-acting one of their arguments, that Oxford lacks space. The other argument from them was that each college has rooms which students can hire for the purpose of prayer. So, we had to think of a new approach. We knew they wouldn’t necessarily listen to emotional approaches and instead made a business case. This was quite easy - we simply stated that they’re losing students to other Universities, due to the lack of a PR. It’s a simple fact that losing students is losing money. This really helped convince them. We sent off our document demanding a PR to the vice-chancellor in September 2011, and a couple of weeks later received a response saying that he wanted to meet us to discuss this proposal. Before we went to the meeting, we had a message from Layla saying: “I don’t know what you guys said, but they’re all panicking a bit!”

We had the meeting and they were cagey, but we knew they were listening. Andrew Hamilton (the VC) had himself come from Yale and knew it was important, for the reputation of the University, to have these sorts of facilities. This is where we were lucky. Other people had campaigned for a PR like us but may have come up against a VC who didn’t fully appreciate the significance of a Prayer Room. Andrew Hamilton was really understanding, and this definitely helped.

The university then got back to us saying that they’d found a space for the PR within the Robert Hooke Building. It used to be an old lecture theatre so it had to undergo a complete renovation. Alongside building a wudhu area at the back, the entire project cost around £125,000. This was all done over Summer 2012, by which point I was no longer president, but continued to co-ordinate the process.

The PR was pretty much finished by August/September 2012, ready for MT 2012. We had an official opening ceremony with the VC, Pro VC for Equality amongst others. I made them all sit on the floor which was great! They were all very serious about it though and alhamdulillah the PR’s been kept in good shape ever since. 

Q: In your eyes, how did ISoc change after the establishment of the PR?

A: The biggest change for ISoc was we didn’t need to think about finding and paying for rooms for Jummah and iftaar. Before the PR, every term you’d have to find a room for Jummah to take place in. There would be a lot of difficulties as we had to make sure the room would be big enough, had to organise keys and have someone take all the prayer mats there. To remove that burden was really important. For iftaar during Ramadan, we now finally had a single space where everyone was able to congregate which was great. I think having a PR was especially important for Oxford as a collegiate university, as many of us had friends from different colleges and we now had a space to gather together - the usual opportunities were just Cowley Road, which is fine for people from Hilda’s but difficult for everybody else!

Q: As president, what was your favourite event?

A: I love football, so Friday football will always win this! Also, it was a brilliant way to catch up with the ISoc brothers at the end of the week alhamdulillah!

Q: What notable speakers did ISoc manage to invite during your presidency?
A: We had quite a few notable speakers come actually. We had Sheikh Akram Nadawi’s talks - he’s always fantastic. We also had Sheikh Hamza Tzortzis and Sheikh Ajmal Masroor come in. Ajmal Masroor gave a talk on Valentines’ day on marriage and Islam with a Q&A - people really enjoyed that one as they had a lot of questions which the sheikh was able to answer. We also did an event on Palestine and had George Galloway come to deliver a talk on this - this was held in Oxford town hall and had a very good turnout of both Muslims and non-Muslims. Other speakers included Lauren Booth and Yvonne Ridley.

Q: Your year delivered the first and only ever ISoc play! Could you tell us a little bit about this unique event?
A: The play was not an ISoc play, but a play written and produced by ISoc members for the benefit of ISoc!  It was mostly done because someone mentioned that they wanted the ISoc to do more creative things. Our non-religious events were usually sport or food-based, so this would make a nice change!

It was a fun process, but as with all things that you are trying for the first time, mistakes are made (too much swearing!), but ultimately, I think most people appreciated what had been done.

Q: How did you communicate with people in the society at the time?
A: We had term cards but didn’t go as far as printing them out like you guys have now. We instead would email the term cards out to the mailing list. Every week we would also send a list of the events going on in that week.

Q: Is there anything you would have done differently/ if you had more time, what else would you have done?
A: My approach to getting the sisters more involved in the society was not as subtle as it should have been! I definitely would have been smarter about that.

Q: Has being president of ISoc had any influence on yourself as a person, after you graduated from University
?
A: It made me appreciate how the Muslim community can be a powerful force for good when engaged in the right way. I’ve taken this with me wherever I go alhamdulillah!

Q: What are your thoughts on ISoc today?

A: I check in from time to time and it seems like things are going well. The community seems to be very involved and participation seems high. The PR is also being used well masha’Allah. Looks like the society is doing well!

Q: In one sentence, can you summarise why ISoc was important to you?

A: ISoc was super welcoming and this was especially important as Oxford and the University is very central and away from the main Muslim areas. It made a huge difference to my time here, and I made life-long friends through the society.