Introduction

Social work is a profession that is committed to the values of social justice, human rights, poverty alleviation and anti-oppression (International Federation of Social Work 2007) This requires that social work academics and practitioners are aware of the roots of oppression and its various changing forms (Thompson 1993), and that they can implement these insights, acting in ways that are anti-oppressive, anti-discriminatory and just (Penketh 2000).

Yet the problem for social workers is that these requirements are often difficult to operationalise in a shifting, complex and ‘messy’ world. How do we combine, for example, a commitment to anti-racism, cultural awareness, and opposition to women's oppression when working with families whose country of origin and cultural practices are different to our own? How do we avoid a vapid cultural relativism or, alternatively, a crude imposition of ‘Western’ values and modes of living onto service users who live their lives differently to ours? These are not abstract questions but complex and sensitive issues for all practitioners. These questions are made more difficult as a result of changing socio-political contexts and the many ways in which they impact on perceptions of culture, religion and ‘race’.

This has clearly been the case over the past decade with regard to understandings and perceptions of Islam in Western Europe. The launch of the ‘War on Terror’ by the US Government in the aftermath of the attack on the Twin Towers on 11 September 2001, led to the questioning of the presence of both Islam and the Muslim presence in ‘Western’ societies; a development that included interventions by media commentators, academics and politicians, as well as right-wing political fanatics on the streets.