Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Religious Architecture: Anthropological Perspectives
- Stability, Continuity, Place: An English Benedictine Monastery as a Case Study in Counterfactual Architecture
- The Biggest Mosque in Europe!: A Symmetrical Anthropology of Islamic Architecture in Rotterdam
- Golden Storm: The Ecstasy of the Igreja de São Francisco, Salvador da Bahia, Brazil
- Works of Penance: New Churches in Post-Soviet Russia
- Divining Siddhivinayak: The Temple and the City
- The Djenné Mosque: World Heritage and Social Renewal in a West African Town
- The New Morabitun Mosque of Granada and the Sensational Practices of Al Andaluz
- The Israelite Temple of Florence
- The Mosque in Britain Finding its Place
- About the Authors
- Index
The Mosque in Britain Finding its Place
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 February 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Religious Architecture: Anthropological Perspectives
- Stability, Continuity, Place: An English Benedictine Monastery as a Case Study in Counterfactual Architecture
- The Biggest Mosque in Europe!: A Symmetrical Anthropology of Islamic Architecture in Rotterdam
- Golden Storm: The Ecstasy of the Igreja de São Francisco, Salvador da Bahia, Brazil
- Works of Penance: New Churches in Post-Soviet Russia
- Divining Siddhivinayak: The Temple and the City
- The Djenné Mosque: World Heritage and Social Renewal in a West African Town
- The New Morabitun Mosque of Granada and the Sensational Practices of Al Andaluz
- The Israelite Temple of Florence
- The Mosque in Britain Finding its Place
- About the Authors
- Index
Summary
Before the census of 2001, there was no way of accurately determining the size of the Muslim population in Britain, as previous censuses did not categorise religious affiliation. The best estimates, in 1991, concluded that the Muslim population at the time stood at one million, with 80% being of South Asian origin. The remainder were drawn mostly from the Arab world, Malaysia, Iran, Turkey, Cyprus, and East and West Africa (Lewis 2004: 14). With natural growth, continuing globalisation and post-colonial migration fuelled by economic hardship and conflict, more migrants arrived in Britain from other parts of the Muslim world. By the 2001 census, the Muslim population had risen to 1.5 million, now with some 65% of South Asian origin, indicating the increasing multi-ethnic make-up of Britain's Muslim population.
Although references to Muslims in Britain date back to the fifteenth century, the first settled communities emerged in the late nineteenth century. The country's first mosque was created not by Muslim migrants but by an English convert to Islam, Abdullah William Quilliam, who adapted a house in Liverpool into the first recorded mosque in 1887. In 1889, a Hungarian Jew had built the first purpose-built mosque in Woking, south of London (plate 20). There were then only two more built examples to follow before the Second World War, one in south London by the Ahmadiyya community in 1925 and the other in Cardiff in 1946.
Imperial Britain had over centuries established multiple political, cultural and social links with its colonies, where most of its subjects were Muslim. It was through these imperial projects that Muslim communities first settled in Britain, coming to the country, for example, as seamen, students and scholars. These early settled communities formed in the port areas of Cardiff, Liverpool, South Shields and East London. A series of mosques were established in converted houses, and one was built by the late 1940s by Yemeni sailors in Cardiff 's Tiger Bay. The Muslim community until the Second World War was mostly limited to port towns or was otherwise intellectuals, students, dignitaries or converts in and around London.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Religious ArchitectureAnthropological Perspectives, pp. 185 - 204Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2013