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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Humayun Ansari
Title: ‘The Infidel Within’: Muslims in Britain since 1800 / Humayun Ansari.
Description: Oxford [UK]; New York: Oxford University Press, [2018]
ISBN 9780190909772 (print)
ISBN 9780190934804 (updf)
ISBN 9780190935023 (epub)
PART II
STAYING—1945 ONWARDS
LIST OF MAPS AND DIAGRAMS
GLOSSARY
alim Islamic theologian, jurist, religious teacher ayah nanny, lady’s maid
bhangra Punjabi folk music/dance
batin ‘inner’, esoteric meaning
biradari family, clan-like, connections
burqa complete covering for the female body
dar al-ahd house or land of pact
dar al-ahl al-kitab house or land of the People of the Book
dar al-aman house or land of peace
dar al-harb house or land of war
dar al-kufr house or land of unbelief
dar al-sulh house or land of truce
dar al-ulum house of knowledge and learning; religious seminary; school dargah shrine
darura doctrine of necessity that allows for concession and transgression of religious prescriptions under conditions of absolute need
dawa preaching, to invite non-believers to Islam
dhikr a remembrance of God
dossandh religious tithe paid annually to the Imam by Ismailis
dupatta scarf
Eid al-Adha
Feast of Sacrifice celebrating the end of the annual pilgrimage to Makkah
Eid al-Fitr
GLOSSARY
Feast marking the end of Ramadan (the Muslim month of fasting)
farman Imam’s edict
fatwa expert advice of a jurist on a specific legal problem
fez brimless male headcovering, usually red fiqh technical juristic elaboration of detailed content
gaddi position of pir, literally seat upon which he sits
ghee clarified butter
Hadith Traditions of the Prophet Muhammad hajj pilgrimage, annually to Mecca and Medina
halal permitted or sanctioned within Islam
haram prohibited or unsanctioned within Islam
haya modesty
hijab headscarf
hutbe sermon
ibadah worship
idda period of three months in which the paternity of an unborn child can be determined
ijma consensus of opinion
ijtema large congregation
ijtihad the exercise of human reason
ikhtilaf differences of opinion in respect of fiqh (Islamic legal science)
imam
religious leader, one who leads prayers in the mosque; title by which the Ismaili leader, the Aga Khan, is known
istihsan method of reasoning employed in the absence of textual precedent; to make a particular interpretation of the law as a result of one’s own deliberation
istislah reasoning based on search for the common good izzat honour
jalabiyya headcovering
jalsa large congregation
jamaat-khana Ismaili assembly and prayer hall
jihad struggle, strenuous effort; the greater jihad is
GLOSSARY
considered to be the struggle to overcome inner personal weaknesses while the armed struggle or ‘holy war’ is the lesser jihad
kafir one who is ungrateful to God, unbeliever
kamadia mukhi’s deputy
khilafah global Islamic state
khula a legal process under Islamic law which allows women to seek divorce independently of their husband’s wishes
Koola-Izzat hat of honour
kufr system of unbelief
lascar maritime worker
lillah for God
madrassa religious school
mahr dower
mahrem a close relative with whom marriage is prohibited masjid mosque
Milad-i Nabi the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday
Mirza a prefix adopted by scribes, secretaries and other educated men; as a suffix it denoted ‘prince’
moulvi title used by an alim
muallam Muslim high priest
muballighin voluntary preachers
mudaraba a contract of joint partnership
muezzin one who gives a call to a congregational prayer
mufti specialist on Islamic law
mujahideen those who wage jihad, holy warriors
mukhi
(female: mukhiani) official of the Ismaili jamaat-khana
mullah title often used by South Asian Muslims for a Muslim religious man, often a leader
munshi clerical official
muqaddam literally one who commands a troop or a ship; similar to serang
murabaha instalment sale contract
murid disciple, follower of a Sufi pir murshid spiritual guide
GLOSSARY
naat devotional poem
nashids a form of vocal music in praise of God
Nawab title for Indian Muslim prince or noble
pir spiritual guide, often a Sufi leader
purdah female seclusion
qawwali rhythmic group (usually devotional) singing
qiyas reasoning by analogy, analogical deduction
Quran Islam’s Holy Book, revealed to the Prophet Muhammad
qurbani sacrifice
Ramadan Muslim month of fasting
sadaqah religious voluntary alms or donation
sajjada-nashin literally ‘one who sits on the carpet’, head of pir family
salah prayer
salam praising Muhammad by Barelwis
serang (ghat serang) labour agent, money lender and lodging-house keeper rolled into one
Sharia the path to be followed; Islamic law
Shia Those belonging to the Party of Ali; general name for all those Muslims who regard Ali, son-in-law and cousin of the Prophet Muhammad, and his descendants, as the only legitimate leaders of the Muslim community after Muhammad’s death
silsila Sufi order
Sufism (Sufi) Islamic mysticism
Sunna ‘the trodden path’; the practice and example of the Prophet Muhammad which Muslims should follow in order to live a correct life
Sunni literally ‘one who follows the trodden path’; the majority community within Islam
tabligh preaching
talaq divorce
taqwa piety
tariqa Sufi (Muslim mystic) order
tawil allegorical interpretation
tawiz amulets
GLOSSARY
topi hat, head covering ulama plural of alim
umma world-wide community of Muslims
urs annual commemoration of the death of a Sufi saint or pir, often the occasion for a pilgrimage to his tomb
zahir superficial, exoteric meaning
zakat religious tax
zawiya literally a corner or nook; a centre of social and religious activity in Sufi Islam
zikr the remembrance of Allah through repetitive ritual chanting of divine names or religious verses intended to cultivate religious experience in Sufi circles
PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION
Since this book was first published, life in the UK for Muslims has grown more precarious: their ‘othering’ has become much more acute. British Muslims have increasingly come to represent the ultimate stranger in the British imaginary, their bodies often the site of antiMuslim racism and xenophobia. Identified as an ‘outsider inside’ and marked by name, religion, skin colour, dress and language, they have been perpetually at risk of stigmatisation.1 The increased mobilisation of Muslims across transnational space—the so-called Muslim invasion—has only served to entrench the view of Muslims as a dangerous, socio-cultural threat. Terrorist attacks since 9/11 have undeniably resurrected latent stereotypes of Islam as an anachronism, a civilisation trapped in a time warp, and ‘the Muslims’ as irrational, fanatical, intolerant, misogynistic and violent ‘folk devils’, constituting a constant danger to public order. Against the backdrop of heightened securitisation, they have been re-framed as a problematic outsider or, even worse, the enemy within. Being born, bred and raised in Britain has not guaranteed automatic membership of the British nation. Instead, a performative belonging has been demanded through articulations and practices of ‘proper’ political and cultural behaviour.
Since the first edition of this book in 2004, there has been a surge of interest in the life and experience of Muslims in British society. Published ahead of the London bombings in July 2005, The InfidelWithin anticipated a growing socio-political crisis that since then has steadily deepened. London’s terrorist attacks since 7/7 reignited the debate about the putatively malign presence of Muslims in Britain. Since then, the lives of
British Muslims have become increasingly on edge. A high degree of mutual distrust, resentment and even hostility was stoked between British Muslims and the majority population, as the former increasingly came under political, media and policy scrutiny, with a focus on immigration, securitisation, integration and citizenship. Events since 7/7 have further fed the securitisation narrative, ratcheting up anti-Muslim tension. In the wake of the 2017 Westminster, Manchester and London Bridge attacks, shrill calls for internment, Muslim bans, treason charges and even an end to Islam in Britain were raised.2 The perception that the British society and state are pitted against an alien, antagonistic religious minority has intensified in many quarters; in the British imaginary, Muslims have become the ultimate threatening Other.3 What is the context in which this has happened?
This new preface seeks to scrutinise these shifts by providing a nuanced assessment of British Muslim experience since the beginning of the twenty-first century. It looks at changes in the profile of British Muslims and the resultant impact on the perceptions, attitudes and behaviours of both Muslims themselves and the wider British population. It explores and challenges the dominant discourses on Muslim identities, and the conceptual shifts surrounding ‘the Muslim community’ in the twenty-first century UK.
First, a few updated facts and figures. Since 2001, the Muslim socioeconomic profile has undergone significant changes. According to an analysis from the Office for National Statistics, in 2014 there were 3,114,992 Muslims in the UK (excluding Northern Ireland), compared with 2.71 million in 2011 and 1.55 million in 2001. With 1,554,022 (a shade under 50%) born overseas, they made up 5.4% of the population of England and Wales (4.8% in 2011 and 3% in 2001).4 Many Britons have felt that the growth of Britain’s Muslim population presents a threat to national identity.5 Negative perceptions in wider society concerning Muslim residential concentration in separate communities have heightened tensions and perpetuated the stigmatisation of British Muslims. The reality, however, is more complex. On the one hand, British Muslims have spread out into more mixed areas and mingled with the rest of the population:6 so while Tower Hamlets’ Muslim population (34.5%) grew 19% over the decade to 2011, that was far slower than the UK growth of 75%, or even London’s figure of
35%. At the same time, and on the other hand, they have formed bigger clusters in particular areas. For Muslims, the ‘index of dissimilarity’ (a measure of integration) has gone down from 56% in 2001 to 54% in 2011, meaning that over the ten-year period there was a slight shift towards greater integration. By comparison, in 2011 Sikhs were slightly less integrated (61%) and Hindus slightly more (52%). And surprisingly, the only religious group to have increased its separation during the last decade is the relatively small Jewish population (63%), the most separated of all religions in the 2011 Census.7
More significantly, though, Muslims have remained disproportionately concentrated in areas of deprivation (for instance, Tower Hamlets and Newham in London). Measured against all other religious groups, they had the highest level of household overcrowding, with more than four times the national figure.8
Research has shown that socio-economic constraints, individual and group choices, ‘white flight’, and institutionally discriminatory policies and practices from local authorities to estate agents had all contributed substantially to the formation of segregated communities.9 In 2016, while numerically Muslim communities still remain largely concentrated in the areas in which they settled from the 1960s, the picture appears to be more complex. Professor Ted Cantle, who inquired into the ‘race riots’ of 2001, accepted that ‘there is more mixing in some parts of our society. But there is also undoubtedly more segregation in residential areas, more segregation in schools and more segregation in workplaces …’10 In his 2016 study, ‘Is segregation on the increase in the UK?’, however, he cites other research, which concluded that ‘while mixing between all minority ethnic groups is growing, as ethnic minorities disperse out of their historic concentration, it is also the case that the minorities, when grouped as a whole, are in most cases becoming more isolated from White British people in urban areas’.11
Be that as it may, the 10% of council wards that count as the most deprived parts of the country were, in 2011, home to 1.22 million Muslims: around 46% of their total, compared with 10% of the overall population. Only 1.7% lived in the 10% least deprived local authority areas in England, compared with 10% of the whole.12 28% of Muslim households lived in social housing as compared to 17% of overall households. A much smaller proportion of Muslim households still
owned their own property outright as compared to the overall population (15% versus 31% overall). A much greater proportion of Muslims continued to live in privately rented accommodation (30% of Muslim households as compared to 18% overall).13 Neighbourhood deprivation and low family income have been shown to have had a disproportionately deleterious impact on their health and educational achievement. While successful business ventures in property, food, services, and fashion have emerged and, for younger Muslims with higher qualifications and a wider range of skills, social mobility has increased, they remain on the whole more likely than members of other faith communities to be economically inactive. According to the 2011 census, 21.3% of British Muslims had never worked, compared with 4.3% of the UK as a whole. The rate of unemployment among British Muslims (12.8%, of which 65% were women) was over twice that of the population as a whole (5.4%).14 19.8% of the Muslim population was in full-time employment, compared to 34.9% in the overall population.15 While the higher levels of unemployment compared to the overall population have been the outcome of numerous factors, there is now enough evidence to suggest that they face the double penalty of racial discrimination as well as Islamophobia in entering the labour market.16 In terms of occupational status, while in the higher managerial and professional groups Muslims are only slightly under-represented, moving lower down the scale they represent just 10% of those employed in lower managerial, administrative and professional occupations, compared with 20% overall. However, on a more positive note, recent research shows that the number of British Muslim millionaires had doubled from 5,000 in 200217 to 10,000 in 2013.18
Research shows that British Muslim women still face multiple discrimination in the shape of ‘the triple whammy’ of gender, ethnicity and religion, facing prejudice when searching for employment, in career progression, and in gender-based pay equity. They are much less likely to have a graduate level job than Christian women with exactly the same qualifications and are also less likely to receive replies to job applications.19 A combination of factors is likely to account for their less favourable outcomes in the labour market. For instance, 18% of Muslim women in the 16–74 age band are ‘looking after home or family’, compared to 6% in the general population. While 44% of the
Muslim women surveyed were reluctant to go out to work because of their domestic obligations, 25% of the employers admitted to being reluctant to recruit Muslim women due to concerns that they would put family commitments and caring duties above their professional duties: British Pakistani women, it would seem, were more likely to be asked whether they had plans to get married or have children, with 1 in 8 being asked, compared to 1 in 30 white women.20
Muslim communities in the UK in 2011 were comparatively better educated than in 2001: ‘the proportion of Muslims with no qualifications [had] fallen from 39% to 26%; however, it still [remained] above the population as a whole, where the figure [was] 23%’. While 26% of Muslims had no qualifications, the percentages for Hindus and Sikhs were 13.2% and 19.4% respectively. The reasons for many young British Muslim males doing worse than their peers included ‘overcrowded housing, the relative absence of parental English language skills in some Muslim communities, low level parental engagement with mainstream schools, low teacher expectations, the curricular removal of Islam from the school learning environment, racism and anti-Muslim prejudice’.21 Moreover, the growth of widespread antiMuslim prejudice and discrimination in the wake of the so-called ‘War on Terror’ has made a negative impact on young Muslims’ education through the pathologised framing of Muslim pupils in the implementation of certain strands of the PREVENT policies in schools.22 This environment has had an alienating and potentially provocative effect on an increasingly frustrated Muslim youth.
While the number of Muslims with degrees rose from 20.6% to 24%, over the same period the educational level of the overall population accelerated faster: the share of British adults with degrees went from 19.8% to 27.2%. Other religious groups have also outperformed British Muslims: 30.1% of Sikhs and 44.6% of Hindus had degrees. Muslim underperformance at the level of higher education was at least partly down to gender dynamics. In the population as a whole, young women were more likely to go to university than young men. But among British Muslims, the pattern was reversed, with three Muslim boys going on to higher education for every two girls. And when British Muslims did go on to university, some studies suggest they were less likely than other groups to attend the best institutions.23
Over the last decade and a half there has been a demonstrable rise in Islamophobia. This went hand in hand with a wider backlash against multiculturalism. Detractors argued that instead of being an effective strategy for managing an increasingly ethnically and religiously plural Britain, multiculturalism encouraged ‘cultural apartheid’ by elevating difference and acceptance of distinct identities. It was blamed for ‘perverting young Muslims’, and fanning ‘the flames of Islamic extremism’. British Islamist terrorists were, it was alleged, a ‘consequence of a misguided and catastrophic pursuit of multiculturalism’.24 To the liberal columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, the discourse of multiculturalism no longer offered a shared narrative of who the British were. For the conservative philosopher Roger Scruton, ‘multiculturalism [was] a recipe for disintegration’.25 For its critics, the government’s multiculturalist doctrine had facilitated Islamic extremism, as these policies (often perhaps unwittingly) imposed Islamist leadership upon Britain’s Muslim communities. When David Cameron, in his speech at the Munich Security Conference in February 2011, suggested that ‘under the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and the mainstream [and that] we have even tolerated these segregated communities behaving in ways that run counter to our values’, it was clear that his target was primarily British Muslims.26 Recurrent Islamist terrorist attacks, combined with on-going conflicts in Libya, Syria and Iraq, the rise of ISIS and security fears generated by the arrival in Europe of thousands of refugees from the war-ravaged zones, further heightened antipathy towards Muslims. Negative coverage and opinions in the media, comments from political circles, and the drip feed of policy related announcements in these contexts have further deepened an increasingly anti-Muslim climate.
Sustained by the relentless negative media coverage and vitriolic political rhetoric, Islamophobia moved beyond small fringe far right groups to circulate instead within broad sections of the population. Already in 2011, the then Co-Chairman of the Conservative Party Baroness Sayeeda Warsi’s declaration that Islamophobia had crossed the threshold of middle class respectability and ‘passed the dinner-table test’, suggested its extensive permeation within British society. AntiMuslim bigotry, she surmised, was accepted as normal and uncontro-
versial.27 Since then, an extensive range of people and social groups— politicians, judges, journalists, intellectuals, universities, middle and working classes, even members of the communities under suspicion themselves—have felt sufficiently persuaded to be co-opted into the process of detecting, monitoring and reporting ‘suspect’ Muslim individuals and behaviours. This response has been found in official policy documents, and heard in voices of state institutions and of those holding authoritative positions. In millions of daily speeches and acts it became increasingly normalised. Thus, a broad undercurrent of secular polemics against Islam and Muslims as a focus for wider opposition to organised religion provided credibility and authority to the Islamophobic discourse.
Arguably, a key player in the normalisation and intensification of Islamophobia in Britain was the media. During the early decades of the twenty-first century, as research amply demonstrated, anti-Muslim sentiments became increasingly prevalent, conspicuous and explicit in the British media.28 Evidence supported the existence of widespread and systematic discriminatory practices in reporting on Muslims and Islam, with a trend towards disproportionately negative, distorted and even fabricated coverage.29 These helped to reinforce wider popular beliefs that Muslims, as a supposedly violent and intolerant people, were prone to extremist behaviour and actions, and possessed the potential for undermining social and political cohesion.
Cultural controversies highlighted in the mass media, such as socalled ‘honour killings’, female genital mutilation, and the grooming for sex and sexual abuse of young white girls by Muslim men, further exacerbated this negative image. Through their exaggerated and sensationalised take on oft-repeated news stories, the tabloids in particular increased such fears, threats, and suspicions by disproportionately reporting on the growth and vociferousness of fringe Muslim groups possessing anti-western and isolationist ideologies. This, in turn, went some way towards both shaping and simultaneously reaffirming public anxieties that were subsequently—and quite inappropriately—attributed indiscriminately to all Muslims.
The public, in effect, was fed messages regarding Muslims’ inherent difference and incompatibility with ‘normal’ values and ‘normal’ ways of life, which were then offered as reason enough to view ‘anti-Musli-
mism’ as acceptable and justified. For instance, a 2008 analysis of newspaper coverage of Muslims revealed that four of the five most common discourses used about Muslims in the British press associated Islam/ Muslims with threats, problems or in opposition to dominant British values. By contrast, only 2% of stories contained the proposition that Muslims supported dominant moral values. The Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, commissioned by Channel 4 to examine reporting of Muslim issues, found that of the 974 stories it analysed approximately two-thirds of all ‘news hooks’ for stories about Muslims involved either terrorism, religious issues such as Sharia law, highlighting cultural differences between British Muslims and others, or Muslim extremism, concerning figures such as preacher Abu Hamza.30 These stories all portrayed Muslims as a source of trouble. By contrast, only 5% of stories were based on problems facing British Muslims. Hence, while different sections of the press participated in the construction of Muslim communities as ‘suspect’ in public discourse, to varying degrees and in divergent ways, the broad tendency was to magnify and extend the perceived threat posed by Muslims to entire communities.31 Similarly, in the aftermath of the murder of soldier Lee Rigby in 2013 by Islamic extremists in London, Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, and that of Mohammed Saleem by a far right extremist, Pavlo Lapshyn in Birmingham, an analysis of over 1,022 UK newspaper articles showed that ‘news coverage had generalised about Muslims … in an overtly prejudicial way’.32
Moreover, it revealed apparent double standards regarding media reporting on terrorism. For instance, the Islamist extremist motivation of the murder of the off-duty soldier Lee Rigby contrasted with that of eighty-two-year-old Mohammed Saleem. Member of Parliament Jo Cox’s murderer, Thomas Mair, who is alleged to have said ‘Britain first’, ‘this is for Britain’, ‘Britain always comes first’ and ‘keep Britain independent’ as he attacked the MP, and who in court gave his name as ‘death to traitors, freedom for Britain’, was described as a ‘helpful and polite loner with mental health issues’.33 The Finsbury Park Mosque attacker of Muslims in London in June 2017, Darren Osborne, who was heard shouting, ‘I’m going to kill all Muslims’, was reported as a ‘complex … troubled man’ on medication but ‘no terrorist’ according to his family.34 By contrast, Lee Rigby’s murderers were cast as ‘butchering’, ‘depraved’, ‘Islamist fanatics’.35
