The political attitudes of muslims studying at British Universities in the post-9/11 world (Part I)

Abstract

This is the first of two articles based on small-scale empirical research involving several hundred Muslim university students in Britain that was conducted between December 2003 and April 2004. In this paper first I will explain how the data was collected: a written survey concentrating on the West/Muslim world dialectic, followed by in-depth interviews with some of the survey respondents. Second, I delineate three strategies undertaken by British Muslims to express their religio-political identities: turning away from Islam by assimilating entirely into British society; subscribing to a culturally transcendental form of Islam by arguing that British cultural outputs are alien and threatening to Islam; and accepting that Islam is practiced differently in different contexts, and that British Muslims must understand their religion in light of their context. Finally, I discuss competing claims on the students' political loyalty: from the Muslim ummah and the British state. Part II of the research to be published in the next issue of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Volume 25, Number 3, will present the major survey findings including students' views of the events of September 11, 2001 and the influence of these events on the lives of Muslims in Britain as well as an analysis of their views of the West/Muslim world dialectic.