Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Summary
This book aims to provide an accessible introduction to the history, the institutions and the diversity among Muslims in Britain, drawing upon the academic scholarship of the past three decades. As the television journalist Rageh Omaar has observed, there is ‘a hunger for an understanding of Islam in relation to British experience’ (Omaar 2006: 11), but so far there are few sources to which students of contemporary religion might turn. This book aims therefore to meet the need for an introductory academic text, which reflects and synthesizes the wealth of interdisciplinary writing and research about British Muslims that now exists.
Writing about communities of people, including British Muslims, is in any circumstances difficult:
It is inadequate to seek to define what Islam is and what being a Muslim implies primarily or even exclusively on the basis of observations of the actual behaviour of a group. The most accurate description of a Muslim community does not necessarily reflect what Islam can and does mean to many Muslims. In all religious traditions and communities, there are persons and events that obscure rather than reflect what many of those who live in it see as the true character of their faith.
(Bijlefeld 1984: 220)The religious label accorded to Muslim citizens does now appear to have some problematic dimensions. Increasingly, Muslim identity is viewed as reified and exaggerated. A criminal is now a ‘Muslim thief’, the local GP is a ‘Muslim doctor’, and so on. The trouble with this is that Muslims cannot be seen simply as human beings: they have to be perceived mainly through the religious prism. […]
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- Muslims in Britain , pp. xi - xivPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010