?Speak of me as I am,? said Othello, before he killed himself. It is the one request that every human being could be imagined to make, being perhaps the simplest, the most direct and moving appeal to the humanity of the audience through an assertion of the speaker?s own humanness. For Muslim Awareness Week, British Muslims have made Othello the chief example of Shakespeare?s nuanced understanding of different peoples inhabiting one society. In so doing, they seem to be scripting an intricate text of their own. The week is meant to highlight the contribution of Britain?s 1.8 million Muslims to society. Their message has been enriched ? and complicated ? by the choice of Shakespeare as intellectual mascot. There is a provocative wisdom in using The Globe to project images of Islamic culture, to host an Arab souk and an open-air market, and conduct a reading of Othello. It emphasizes the message of mutual belonging, while imparting to the cultural memories associated with the playhouse a new dimension rooted in the present.

There are many layers in the message of awareness. Not only are the British Muslims reminding the West of their contribution and presence through history, they are also looking to the English Bard ? and to his depiction of a culturally turbulent and colourful Mediterranean Europe ? for a representation of the ?heathens? as fallible human beings, fully a part of a Christian society?s political life. This representation is being highlighted as a conscious answer to the post-9/11 representations of Muslims. Shakespeare is also being seen as a way of reclaiming pride in Islam?s history in the West. The message of the Islamic scholar, Mr Shaikh Hamza Yusuf, that ?Poets have an immense amount to teach us?, is directed as much at his own community as at others.

The problem is with Shakespeare himself. He remains elusive, escaping even the gentlest appropriation, with precisely that teasing game of ?complexity? that has made him a central figure in the Muslim Awareness Week. Mr Yusuf is accurate in saying that his plays are not ?about a world in which you are either ?with us or against us??. There?s the rub. It may be legitimate to see Othello, being presented as the central text in the campaign, as a tragedy about a Moorish nobleman who fights for Christian Venice, with the Christian Iago as villain. But it may be disputed whether Othello was at all a north African Muslim. And it is impossible to forget that Othello kills himself in exactly the same way as he had killed the ?turbaned Turk? who had beat a Venetian and ?traduced the state?. The real meaning of his personal tragedy is inextricably bound up with his relationship with the state for which he has done ?some service?. Shakespeare does not deal in ?good versus evil?, or in black and white. But the shifting shades of grey make a challenging ? and bewildering ? palette.