Muslims In Britain Research Articles

Twelver Shia in Edinburgh: marking Muharram, mourning Husayn

Research on the Shia in Scotland and of their spaces of worship and gathering continues to be under-represented in the research field of Muslims in Britain. According to the 2011 census, there are just under 77,000 Muslims in Scotland, with Edinburgh, its capital, home to about 12,400. This article aims to fill in some of these gaps by focusing on a Muharram procession emerging out of a Twelver Shia imambargah in Edinburgh. Drawing from fieldwork conducted from 2011 to 2013, the article provides an ethnographic account of this annual jaloos (ritual procession) in Leith district, examines its evolution, and analyses the jaloos’s signage and related proclamations in English and Urdu. In juxtaposing these elements, I argue that even as the procession is a normative means to commemorate and transmit the core values of the Twelver Shia through the events of Karbala, it actively engages with and responds to stereotypes about Muslims in the West and thus serves simultaneously as a wider public presentation on, and defence of, Islam. By closely examining these Muslims’ public performance of Islam, this article offers a case study of an alternative narrative of Muslims in Britain and sheds new light on the rituals and experience of the Twelver Shia in Scotland.

A minority within a minority?: the complexity and multilocality of transnational Twelver Shia networks in Britain

Academic scholarship on Shia Muslim minorities in the West has described them as ‘a minority within a minority’ (Sachedina 1994: 3) or as ‘the other within the other’ (Takim 2009: 143), referring to a certain sense of double-marginalization of Shia Muslims in non-Muslim societal contexts. They need to undertake particular efforts to maintain both an Islamic as well as particular Shia identity in terms of communal activities and practices and public perception and recognition, responding to the rise of Islamophobia more generally and anti-Shia sectarianism more specifically. This article problematizes this notion of a double-marginalization of Shia minorities in the West as too simplistic. The article investigates the dynamics around the creation of transnational Shia communal spaces in north-west London, the public representation of Shia Muslim identities by networks and organizations based there to illustrate their multilocal connectivities and internal heterogeneity. The article is based on research in the borough of Brent, north-west London, and presents novel insights into Shia spaces in Britain and thereby makes an important contribution to complexifying academic discourse on Muslims in Britain which has focussed on Sunni Muslims almost exclusively. The ethnographic data is contextualized by providing background information on the historical and social formations of the networks and the centres examined in the article. To analyze the multilocal spatial manifestations and connections of these network, the article utilizes Werbner’s notion of ‘complex diasporas’ (2002, 2004, 2010) and recent contributions to the development of a spatial methodology in Religious Studies (Knott 2005; Vásquez 2010; Tweed 2006; McLoughlin and Zavos 2014). The article thereby constitutes the very first attempt to apply recent contributions on the nature of diasporic religions and their spatial multilocality to the case study of Twelver Shia networks based in London.

Between Tradition and Transition: An Islamic Seminary, or Dar al-Uloom in Modern Britain

Based on detailed ethnographic fieldwork, this article provides an insider account of life inside a British Dar al-Uloom, or a traditional Islamic religious seminary, for the first time. Given that Dar al-Ulooms play an important role in the British Muslim landscape in providing training for religious leadership, the article argues that, far from the Dar al-Uloom tradition being static, it is undergoing continuous adaptation and change. After mapping the historical and geographical lineage of the modern Dar al-Uloom, the article explores its pedagogy. The postural tradition and adab (broadly translated as comportment or code of behavior) embody the notion of humility, as the classroom has become the locale for balancing a curriculum with depth and coverage, especially given the challenges young Muslims in Britain are facing. The current students of the Dar al-Uloom will become imams and faith leaders primarily responsible for addressing the changing needs of young Muslims. What has emerged is a traditional Dar al-Uloom that is in a dialogical relationship both with the modern world outside of it and within it. There is the need to embody a ‘tarbiyyatic pedagogy’ that is one that emphasises the student-teacher relationship where the student is transformed in the process of learning while interpreting Islam through the lens of the Deobandi universe. Ultimately, it will be the younger generation of teachers who determine the particular trajectory of the Dar al-Uloom.

The Making of the Good British Muslim

Abstract This article investigates the meaning and political implications of the poppy hijab, a headscarf sporting British World War Remembrance poppies and intended to give British Muslims a new way of showing their social integration in public. Based on fieldwork with Muslims in London, I argue, however, that instead of furthering Muslims’ equitable inclusion in British society, the poppy hijab rather represents a Foucauldian “technology of the self” for them to prove that they are “good British Muslims”. As such, it reflects the unequal relations of power in society and may foster rather than lower general suspicion towards Muslims in Britain.

Britain Through Muslim Eyes: An interview with Claire Chambers

Claire Chambers is a senior lecturer in global literature at the University of York. She is the author of Britain Through Muslim Eyes: Literary Representations, 1780–1989 (2015) and British Muslim Fictions: Interviews with Contemporary Writers (2011). She edited (with Caroline Herbert) Imagining Muslims in South Asia and the Diaspora (2014). In this 2017 interview with Anastasia Valassopoulos, she discusses her exploration of literary representations of Muslims in Britain and South Asia, and her engagement with audiences and scholars in that field. She also discusses her current writing and reflects on sources such as the Making Britain archive that have helped to shape her current work. Finally, Claire explores crucial questions around liberalism and contemporary multicultural politics.

A Bangladeshi Muslim Woman Wearing a Sari and Ice-Skating in London in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane

Monica Ali’s immigrant family saga, Brick Lane (2003) has been praised as an important novel about Muslims in Britain and has been a huge success for a realist narrative with a postcolonial story. Ali’s diasporic narrative poignantly capsizes the prevailing images of Muslims in the contemporary world and switches the plot from London to Dhaka to narrate the stories of Bangladeshi sisters, Nazneen and Hasina. In terms of Muslim diaspora genre, this paper explores Brick Lane which portrays Bangladeshi immigrants and the second generation in an East End community in London, where after 9/11, Islamophobia much aggravates racism and marginalization of ethnic minorities. Also, the transforming process of the subaltern Muslim sisters from 1967 to 2003 is discussed. Nazneen in the East End immigrant community transforms herself into a self-willed independent worker in London; likewise, Hasina becomes a battered wife, a factory worker, a prostitute, and a housemaid but keeps fighting for her own happiness against a patriarchal society in Dhaka. Ultimately, both Muslim women come to develop political consciousness, sexual awareness, and a sense of belonging in their own ways.

Reaching out in a climate of negativity: perceptions and persistence among Muslim sources engaging with news media

The conceptions sources have of journalists influence whether and in what ways those sources engage with the news media. In this paper, I consider the contribution of Muslim sources to news in a context of perceived negativity. Scholarship on the content of British news stories about Muslims has found a consistently negative tone; my study examines the impressions of sources as co-producers of that content. My data come from qualitative fieldwork conducted in Glasgow, Scotland, studying relationships between journalists and Muslim sources through a combination of methods, with an emphasis on interviews. In these interviews, sources articulated an overwhelmingly negative conception of journalists and news organisations. I consider different constructions of negativity and what they suggest about how participants perceive the media, and I problematise the minority instances of positive conceptions. Finally, I evaluate why sources who identify as Muslim would bother participating in media production, given this perception of negativity. This discussion is informed by Couldry’s concept of ‘media meta-capital’ (Couldry 2003), which a macro-level power that imposes other fields of public life, and Schlesinger’s attentiveness to source strategies (Schlesinger 1990), a form of agency at the micro-level. This case study suggests that, whatever sources think of media coverage, their choice to contribute to its production is conditioned by strategic considerations, revealing development in the media’s relations with Muslims in Britain.

Believing and Belonging: The Aesthetics of Media Representations of Islam and Muslims in Britain and Its Relationship to British Civil Religion

Increasingly, debates are dealing with the integration and the compatibility of Islam with British values and society. Media narratives are used to conceptualise Islam in Britain. The existing protocols of religion, media, and public space characterise that environment, as well as dictating the participation of members in that space. This paper discusses how media constructions of Islam are linked to civil religion. It does so by discussing: (1) how the media’s protocols of public discourse affect the framing of religious identities; (2) how the media defines the aesthetic parameters of religious expression; (3) how the conceptualisation(s) of civil religion are used to regulate Islam in Britain. This study utilises a qualitative content analysis of media frames. Findings suggest that the aesthetic elements (media representations of Islam and Muslims) regulate Islam and Muslims through the codes and conventions (civil religion) of British society.

Sadek Hamid, Sufis, Salafis and Islamists: the contested ground of British Islamic Activism

The diversity of Muslims in Britain is apparent even to one whose familiarity with the subject goes no further than a distinction between Sunni and Shi’a. Yet the phrase ‘Those Muslims are all the ...

Conversions to Islam and Identity Reconfigurations among Poles in Great Britain

In recent decades, a significant number of Polish citizens have not only left the country but also moved away from the religious traditions in which they were brought up. The article sheds light on the phenomenon of religious conversions and identity reconfigurations within the Polish community in Great Britain. It delves into the intricate processes of religious self-transformations and their impact on other forms of identity among Poles who have embraced Islam in the context of migration. It also assesses the processes of converts’ distancing themselves from the elements of ethnicity and religion in which they were born and adopting new ones amid an atmosphere of increased anti-Muslim sentiments and stigmatisation. The paper draws from fieldwork data carried out amongst Polish Muslim converts living in different British cities between 2014 and 2016. It analyses their relations with the Polish community in the United Kingdom, the British Muslim population, as well as their larger sending and receiving societies. It argues that the processes of religious conversion and migration are frequently interrelated, as a significant proportion of the over 2,000 Polish Muslims in Britain embraced Islam either after their arrival in the country or elsewhere before coming to the UK. The paper also shows how the change of religious identity leads to the adoption of new traditions and habits and to a process of at least partial distancing from non-Muslim relatives and elements of non-Muslim Polish culture. The converts thus engage in construction of hybrid identities, linking elements of Polishness with super-diverse British Muslimness.

Are British Muslims alienated from mainstream politics by Islamophobia and British foreign policy?

This paper uses the 2010 Ethnic Minority British Election Study to look at the political attitudes of Muslims in Britain. It tests the relationship between political alienation and political participation on the one hand, and Islamophobia and disapproval of British military involvement in Afghanistan on the other. The principal findings are that perceptions of Islamophobia are linked to greater political alienation, to a greater likelihood of non-electoral participation and to a lower likelihood of voting among Muslims. Likewise, disapproval of the war in Afghanistan is associated with greater political alienation and a greater likelihood of some types of non-electoral participation. There is strong evidence that British Muslims are more likely to interpret discrimination they experience as motivated by their religion and that they perceive more prejudice at the group level. These findings have two theoretical implications. First, they support the theory that non-electoral participation is motivated by dissatisfaction with the party political system. Second, they suggest that perceptions of sociotropic discrimination (for minorities) and a rare salient political issue in which all parties are in opposition to most voters can lead to negative affect towards the political system and stimulate non-electoral participation at the expense of voting.

Review of the Contemporary Literature on Islam and Muslims in the UK through the Lens of Immigration Issues, Civic Participation and International Constraints

The following article explores the development of academic scholarship on the presence of Muslims in Britain through the lens of immigration issues, civic participation and international constraints. It intends to identify the key players in the field over the last forty years. In doing so, it will inevitably overlook the historians now working on the earlier presence of Muslims in Britain. However, the article hopes to demonstrate the increasing academic interest in the study of Muslims in Britain and some of the trends and transformations in academic interest. The article does not detail the networking activities of the important Muslims in Britain Research Network established by Jorgen Nielsen when he worked at Selly Oak College in Birmingham in the 1980s or the Centre for the Study of Islam in Britain based at Cardiff University. However, many of the contributors to the study of Muslims in Britain will have benefitted from the work of the Network and the Centre. In some ways the existence of both is an indicator of the growth of the subject area and the role of the study of religion.

Engaging with the Muslim Community in Cardiff

Since the 9/11 attacks in 2001, there have been a number of terrorist suspects arrested in the UK, but ¾ of those people are released without charge (Choudhury & Fenwick 2011). This has led to claims from within these communities that counter-terrorism legislation is both heavy handed and counter-productive. This article presents findings from a pilot research project that examined how best to engage with Muslim communities and to examine perceptions from these communities with regards to counter-terrorism legislation. There were two aims for the pilot study. The first was to provide members of the Muslim community in Cardiff with information about the nature of the study, its objectives and the individuals who would be undertaking the research. The second, following from the first, was to assess the feasibility of different methods of undertaking the research with representatives of Cardiff’s Muslim communities. This in turn would help address issues such as how to gain access to participants; how to obtain informed consent for participation in the research; identifying appropriate methods of data collection; appropriate venues for the fieldwork; identifying ethical concerns arising from the research; and identifying any risks to participants and researchers arising from the research, as well as the strategies needed to overcome these risks. This was a qualitative case study which utilized grounded theory principles to generate a theoretical model and involved interviews with 6 people and a focus group consisting of 3 people. In short, this study offers a blue print for further research into the impact of counter terrorism legislation on Muslim communities in Cardiff and makes a unique contribution to the literature on Muslims in Britain as well as counter terrorism studies as Cardiff’s Muslim communities remain under-researched.

BÜYÜK BRİTANYA’DAKİ İSLÂMÎ AKIMLAR

In this paper, the Muslim presence in Great Britain is examined, beginning with some historical facts about Islam in that country. In the introductory section, some information such as, how Britain received the news of Islam, the establishment of socio-economic relations with the Ottoman State, how first Muslim migration to Britain happened and which regions and cities they settled down, and demographic data, is given. It is then considered how Islam has been institutionalised in Britain as an important aspect of the Muslim Diaspora in the West. Having provided some statistics about the number of Muslims in Britain and Islamic institutions, I align current representatives of Muslim movements and groups not only from the Middle East but also from the Indian Subcontinent. They are, namely, Deobandi, Tabligh-i Jama’at, Barelwi, Jama’ati Islami, Salafiyya (including Hizbu’t-Tahrir and al-Muhajirun) and Shi’a groups. Having dealt with the historical information about these groups and their affiliations in Britain, the article ends with an evaluation of Islam in Britain and the communication that took place between the British government and these groups through the medium of some national level umbrella organizations.

Diaspora Diversity: Bangladeshi Muslims in Britain and the United States

This article offers a comparative analysis of the multifaceted dimensions of generation in the Bangladeshi Muslim diaspora communities of Britain and the United States. Studies of Muslim immigrant communities in North America and Western Europe have noted a growing social, cultural, and political chasm between the immigrant foreign-born and their non-immigrant second-generation progeny. At the heart of this “Muslim generation gap” are the intensified engagements and identifications of youth with pan-national Muslim institutions in host societies, coupled with their distancing from the ethnonational ones that anchor the immigrant generation. In the case of the Bangladeshi-origin communities in Britain and the United States the gap has emerged quite differently, in ways that reflect the differential influence of the “1971 generation”—a political generation formed in relation to Bangladesh—in the two settings.

Faith and Photography

This article explores the usage of the innovative method of auto photography in eliciting perceptions of religious identity. The article explores auto-photography as a research tool assisting in understanding religious identity and identification. Using static images in auto-photography triggers the respondents in expressing their connection to their faith. These images have a potential to generate further discussion on the subject matter of faith, religiousness and belief. Auto-photography is a helpful instrument in bridging spiritual feelings/thoughts and religiously oriented actions. It encourages respondents to express their feelings regarding faith after exploring the images taken using a camera. This article debates the use of auto photography through the case study of young Muslims in Britain. Based on this research project, the auto-photography method will be analysed as a research tool, revealing its usefulness in exploring faith matters and the challenges of using this method.

Diaspora Diversity: Bangladeshi Muslims in Britain and the United States

This article offers a comparative analysis of the multifaceted dimensions of generation in the Bangladeshi Muslim diaspora communities of Britain and the United States. Studies of Muslim immigrant communities in North America and Western Europe have noted a growing social, cultural, and political chasm between the immigrant foreign-born and their non-immigrant second-generation progeny. At the heart of this “Muslim generation gap” are the intensified engagements and identifications of youth with pan-national Muslim institutions in host societies, coupled with their distancing from the ethnonational ones that anchor the immigrant generation. In the case of the Bangladeshi-origin communities in Britain and the United States the gap has emerged quite differently, in ways that reflect the differential influence of the “1971 generation”—a political generation formed in relation to Bangladesh—in the two settings.

Neighbourhood Ethnic Diversity and Orientations Toward Muslims in Britain: The Role of Intergroup Contact

AbstractA persistent theme in the British and international debates about immigration and diversity is the controversial claim that living in diverse areas has negative consequences for intergroup attitudes and community relations. In the present paper we test this claim by investigating the impact of neighbourhood diversity and self‐reported intergroup contact on orientations (outgroup attitudes and social distance) toward one religious outgroup: Muslims. Respondents were both White British majority (N=867) and non‐Muslim ethnic minority (N=567) residents of neighbourhoods in England which varied in their proportion of ethnic minority residents. We tested both direct and indirect (via intergroup contact) effects of diversity on outgroup orientations toward Muslims. Results show that individuals living in more ethnically diverse areas—regardless of whether they are White British members of the majority or non‐Muslim members of ethnic minorities—have more positive contact with Muslims, with positive consequences for intergroup relations with Muslims.

A ‘System of Self-Appointed Leaders'? Examining Modes of Muslim Representation in Governance in Britain

Research Highlights and Abstract This article Contributes to theoretical debates about the significance of group identity and political representation; Contributes to academic research into the shift from formal and hierarchical to more informal and network-based styles of governance; Contributes to research on the integration of Muslims in Britain by elucidating the emergence and diversification of Muslim representative organisations in Britain since 1970; Demonstrates the multifaceted and dynamic nature of Muslim representative claims-making in contemporary UK governance by identifying and analysing a range of modes of Muslim representation. Since the turn of the century Britain has seen a proliferation of Muslim civil society organisations and an increase in the number of points of contact between Muslim spokespersons and government. Yet, this increased participation in UK governance has been a source of fierce controversies centring on the role of conservative male leaderships and the influence of radical Islamic groups. Drawing on interviews with 42 national elites who have engaged in UK Muslim–government relations in the past decade, this article charts the emergence of national-level Muslim representation and assesses its relationship to democratic participation and accountability. Building on the work of Michael Saward, we argue that unelected civil society representatives can act as an important supplement to elected representatives. We show how four modes of Muslim representation have emerged in the last decade—‘delegation’, ‘authority’, ‘expertise’ and ‘standing’—creating dynamic competition among representative claims.

Misrecognition and Political Agency. The Case of Muslim Organisations in a General Election

Research Highlights and Abstract This article: Examines the meaning of claims for ‘recognition’ and struggles against ‘misrecognition’ by working through aspects of Muslim political agency in contemporary British politics; Contributes to research on the political mobilisation of Muslims in Britain by examining how civil society organisations respond to perceived stigmas and project a Muslim civic identity; Contributes to research that investigates dilemmas of political agency between the pressure to conform to standards of neutrality and maturity, on the one hand, and creativity and opposition, on the other; Demonstrates how minority actors manoeuvre and position themselves in the unsettled environment of contemporary British politics. It is a common complaint among Muslim civil society organisations that their presence in British politics is misconstrued. An increasing number of activists and groups are concerned to repudiate what they perceive to be the misperception of their political agency as exceptional and difficult to accommodate. Organisations and initiatives thus project and practice civic identities, to demonstrate that they are committed to the ‘common good’. This article explores how a number of organisations positioned themselves in response to experiences of ‘misrecognition’ in the context of the General Election 2010. With this conceptual focus we explore one of the most pertinent characteristics of Muslim political agency in Britain today: how actors respond to perceived pressures, make claims and project identities in opposition to alleged misperceptions or the refusal to acknowledge their desired self-descriptions. The article draws on a set of qualitative interviews with representatives of advocacy organisations that mobilised Muslim constituents in the run-up to the General Election 2010.