Muslim Identity Politics

Islam, Activism and Equality in Britain

Khadijah Elshayyal

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781786723536
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia dell'India e dell'Asia meridionale

The surge in divisive and far-right politics and growing Islamophobia in Britain pose new challenges for Muslim advocacy organisations. British Muslim activism has taken centre stage in the public sphere as a result. Yet for over fifty years Muslim advocacy groups have worked to preserve religious identity, lobby the state and provide concerted responses to the political establishment.
This is the first book to chart critically the national and global factors influencing the political mobilisation of British Muslim activists as Muslims. Khadijah Elshayyal traces the changes of thought, direction and method within Muslim identity politics after 1960, noting key organisations and turning points such as the Rushdie Affair, the 9/11 attacks, the 7/7 bombings and the current conflict in Syria. The book argues that the Rushdie Affair prompted new debate around the subject of freedom of expression, which has continued to be a point of contention ever since. Providing a history of the interaction between Muslim advocacy groups and the state, and the impact of state policy on Muslim communities, Muslims Identity Politics shows that that Muslim citizens continue to experience an `equality gap' and recommends where transformation and progress can be made. Based on primary sources and in-depth interviews, this book is a vital resource for government officials, policy-makers and researchers interested in multiculturalism, Islamophobia and security issues in Britain.

Notes

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

1.Gilliat-Ray, Sophie, Muslims in Britain: an introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 6–7.

2.Matar, Nabil, Islam in Britain – 1558–1685 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

3.I use ‘Muslim world’ advisedly in this book, as shorthand for Muslim-majority countries, but acknowledge the problematic nature of the term as ‘a Western idea built on the faulty racial logic that Muslims live in a world of their own – that Islam is an eastern, foreign religion that properly belongs in a distant, faraway, dusty place.’ Grewal, Zareena, ‘The “Muslim World” Does Not Exist’, The Atlantic, 21 May 2017; available at: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/05/the-muslim-world-is-a-place-that-does-not-exist/527550/ (accessed 28 May 2017). Indeed, a key argument of this book is that British Muslim activism is now in a large part expressive of Islam as a British religion, thus prompting us to consider whether Britain can also be regarded in one way or other as part of the ‘Muslim world’.

4.Ali, Sundas, British Muslims in Numbers: a demographic, socio-economic and health profile of Muslims in Britain drawing on the 2011 Census (London: Muslim Council of Britain, 2015). Elshayyal, Khadijah, Scottish Muslims in Numbers: understanding Scotland’s Muslims through the 2011 Census (Edinburgh: The Alwaleed Centre, 2016).

5.Ansari, Humayun, The Infidel Within: Muslims in Britain since 1800 (London: C. Hurst, 2004); Gilliat-Ray, Muslims in Britain.

6.Visram, Rozina, Ayahs, Lascars and Princes: Indians in Britain 1700–1947 (London: Pluto Press, 1986), pp. 97–102; Ansari, Humayun, ‘Introduction’ in The Making of the East London Mosque 1910–1951 – minutes of the London Mosque Fund and the East London Mosque Trust Ltd. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 6–9. Ali was a British-educated Indian lawyer who became the first Indian to be appointed to the Privy Council. His earliest political activity was focused on the Muslims of India, co-founding the All-India Muslim League to promote educational and economic ‘advancement’ among Muslims. But by 1904 he had retired and settled in Britain, and in due course became chairman of the Committee of the Woking Mosque, as well as the London Mosque Fund, campaigning enthusiastically for a mosque in central London (which became the East London Mosque).

7.Khwaja Kamaluddin is credited with having revived the Woking Mosque after a period of dormancy, and establishing the Woking Muslim Mission, cf. Ansari, The Infidel Within, pp. 88 and 126.

8.Geaves, Ron, Islam in Victorian Britain: the life and times of Abdullah Quilliam (Leicester: Kube, 2010).

9.Klausen, Jytte, The Islamic Challenge: politics and religion in Western Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Laurence, Jonathan, The Emancipation of Europe’s Muslims: the state’s role in minority integration (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), as well as edited volumes including Cesari, Jocelyne and Sean McLoughlin (eds), European Muslims and the Secular State (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005) and Modood, Tariq, Anna Triandafyllidou and Ricard Zapata-Barrero, Multiculturalism, Muslims and Citizenship: a European approach (London: Routledge, 2006).

10.Vertovec, Steven, ‘Islamophobia and Muslim recognition in Britain’, in Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad (ed.), Muslims in the West: from sojourners to citizens (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 19–35. Peace, Timothy (ed.), Muslims and Political Participation in Britain (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015) is a notable exception – a volume devoted to the study of Muslim participation in the UK.

11.Lewis, Philip, Islamic Britain: religion, politics and identity among British Muslims (London: I.B.Tauris, 1994).

12.Mustafa, Asma, Identity and Political Participation among Young British Muslims: believing and belonging (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2015); Lewis, Philip, Young, British and Muslim (London: Continuum, 2007); Kabir, Nahid Afrose, Young British Muslims: identity, culture, politics and the media (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010).

13.Halstead, Mark J., Education, Justice and Cultural Diversity: an examination of the Honeyford affair, 1984–85 (London: Falmer, 1988); Weller, Paul, A Mirror for our Times: the Rushdie affair and the future of multiculturalism (London: Continuum, 2009).

14.Examples include: Modood, Tariq, Multiculturalism: a civic idea (Cambridge: Polity, 2007); Modood, Tariq, Multicultural Politics: racism, ethnicity and Muslims in Britain (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005b); Modood, Tariq, ‘Muslims and the Politics of Difference’, Political Quarterly 74/S1 (August 2003), pp. 100–115.

15.A term used by Newsweek in the cover of its 24 September 2012 edition, which was swiftly reclaimed as a focus of satirical parodies by users of Twitter and other social media sites across the world. See Alexander Hotz, ‘Newsweek “Muslim rage” cover invokes a rage of its own’, US News Media Blog, Guardian (17 September 2012). ‘Muslim rage’ was used as early as 1990 by Bernard Lewis in his From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East (New York: Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, 2004), where he describes it as the ‘irrational but surely historic reaction of an ancient rival against our Judeo-Christian heritage, our secular present, and the worldwide expansion of both’, p. 330.

16.They were originally published in late 2005, although worldwide protests only really gained momentum by January 2006.

17.Aaronovitch, David, ‘Is this the reaction of a grown-up religion?’, The Times, 20 September 2012.

18.Cf. the Samina Malik and Ahmed Faraz cases, discussed in Chapter 6.

19.This concept is one that I have developed to summarise the justifications presented by Muslim activists in the UK for their engagement in identity politics over the years, and shall hereinafter be referred to as the Equality Gap.

20.See Chapter 4.

21.Amartya Sen, Identity and Violence: the illusion of destiny (London: Allen Lane, 2006).

22.Amartya Sen, ‘The uses and abuses of Multiculturalism’, The New Republic, 27 February 2006.

23.By this I mean the dominant stereotype of minority community leaders – male, middle-aged, self-appointed, self-inflated, out of touch and unrepresentative of his community. This image has been recently caricatured in popular culture by the BBC TV sitcom Citizen Khan, which features a Mr Khan who self-identifies as a ‘community leader – they all know me!’, but is barely recognised in public and is out of touch with even his own immediate family’s concerns.

24.See for instance Okin, Susan Moller, ‘Is multiculturalism bad for women?’, in Joshua Cohen et al. (eds), Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 7–24, and, specifically on Muslims in Britain, Manea, Elham, Women and Shari’a Law (London: I.B.Tauris, 2016).

25.Phillips, Anne, Multiculturalism without Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007) presents one such argument where she makes the case for a multiculturalism that is focused on individuals and individual rights, rather than one with groups and cultures as its primary concern.

26.For instance, a 2006 poll found that less than 4 per cent of British Muslims felt that the MCB represented them, and 12 per cent felt that it represented their political views – NOP/Channel 4, ‘Dispatches Muslim Survey’, results broadcast on ‘What Muslims Want’ Dispatches, Channel 4, 7 August 2006.

CHAPTER 2 SETTING THE SCENE: HISTORICAL AND THEORETICAL CONTEXTS

1.Elmarsaf...