Muslims in the UK

Abstract

Muslims in the United Kingdom (UK) are diverse and heterogeneous and include different ethnicities, ‘races’, classes and identities. Britain’s colonial history (including in Muslim majority lands), years of migration, and the growth of indigenous white Muslim communities has meant that the British Muslim population is a mosaic of the global Muslim ummah. Therefore the questions that logically precede the writing of this chapter, namely: ‘who is a British Muslim?,’ or ‘what does it mean to be a Muslim in Britain,’ are necessarily complex ones which require nuanced and detailed answers, but which inevitably entail the privileging of particular aspects of these groups—their ‘Muslimness’, as well as to a certain extent, their ‘Britishness’—from within the multiple identifications to which they may subscribe.