We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
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. […]
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
