Islam in the West: Key Issues in Multiculturalism

Abstract

As Shaykh Ibrahim Mogra so eloquently writes in his foreword to this timely volume, open debates on questions of multiculturalism, integration, and assimilation can “help us to move forward as a diverse but cohesive nation.” This statement and the majority of the essays in this book address issues related to being Muslim in the West via specific examples from the British context. Yet the questions of belief, identity, hybridity, diversity, and social cohesion that they raise can be found at the center of social and cultural political agendas not only in the United Kingdom and mainland Europe, but also much farther afield. Throughout the western world, Muslims in all their diversity find themselves repeatedly constructed in public debates as a homogeneous group whose lifestyles and values are ill-suited to the countries they regard as home by dint of birth or settlement. (Often they share this experience with refugees, asylum seekers, and other minorities who are widely regarded as problems.) The essays in this book take issue with assumptions about homogeneity and incompatibility, stressing both the diversity of Muslims in the West and their complex relations with the wider societies in which they live.