Journal of Religion and Popular Culture

Yasmin Moll
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

Abstract

There is an emerging identity discourse among young British Muslims in the twenty-first century that strives to create a space for itself in the public sphere beyond both assimilation and isolation. Its articulators seek to affirm their Islamic identity within its Western context and through interaction with it, re(defining) and (re)constructing in the process what it means to be British as well as to be Muslim. An important way in which such redefinitions take place is through British Muslim particularistic media. Through a critical analysis of the content of two British Muslim magazines, this article examines the way in which these media construct an identity open to the possibility of multiple ways of simultaneously being Western and being Muslim.

I. Introduction

[1] At the time of writing this paper, four British Muslims blew themselves up on London’s underground, killing 52 people and injuring 700 in what were the first suicide bombings in Western Europe. The ramifications of the terrorist attacks of July 7, 2005– or 7-7 as they have come to be known–still remain to be fully played out for Britain’s Muslim community. What is clear, however, is that the bombings–perpetrated by “born and bred” British Muslim men–brought sharply to the fore of public discourse issues of loyalty, citizenship, belonging, shared understanding of “values” between British Muslims and their co-citizens and, of course, the place of Islam within the “imagined community” as hate crimes against Muslims rose by 600%[2] in the moral panic that ensued.

[2] Officially numbering 1.59 million,[3] British Muslims have been in the UK since the late 1800s, although the vast majority arrived in the immediate postwar period, hailing mainly from Britain’s former colonies, in particular the Indian subcontinent. Mirroring the experience of their coreligionists elsewhere in Europe, the first Muslim communities in Britain were comprised mainly of immigrant working-class labourers, economic migrants who came with the idea that they would eventually return to their home countries once they “made it” financially.[4] As self-perceived and, indeed, expected sojourners, there was little to motivate them to participate in, or deeply interact with, their host society. As Ansari points out, “they had come to Britain to raise their living standards, not change their way of life.”[5] While these first immigrants were usually single men, the announcement of what became the 1962 Commonwealth Act–which greatly curtailed immigration to Britain–saw a pre-emptive rush by these men to bring over their families,[6] thus ensuring that the “myth of return” would remain just that, a myth.

[3] The emergence of an explicitly British Muslim consciousness involves mostly the children and grandchildren of these immigrants. Young,[7] British-educated and increasingly socially and politically active, it is they who are attempting to think critically about their place as Muslims in a Western society and come to terms with that society’s dominant world-views, cultures and values. This involves constantly negotiating between competing, and often conflicting, identities. Complicating this negotiation is the relatively recent, and apparently growing, emphasis on religion as a (if not the) marker of identity by young British Muslims. This assertion, however, is contested within academia. While Ansari feels that “British Muslims have seldom viewed Islam as the sole form of social and political identification and usually it is not even the primary one” and that occasions of Islam being the “main” or “sole” identity are “rare,” [8] others–such as Jacobson–have argued that Islamic identity is increasing in salience for young British Muslims, who more and more view Islam not merely as a religion, but as an all-encompassing “way of life.” [9] Indeed, data from the Fourth National Survey on Ethnic Minorities show that religion is the most significant identity marker for South Asians in Britain (the vast majority of whom are Muslim), with 90% saying that religion was “important” to them, compared to only 13% of white Britons.[10] For these Muslims, a central challenge is how to retain an explicitly Islamic (religious and cultural) identity in a predominately and explicitly non-Islamic society with an ostensibly entrenched secular public ethos.

[4] Muslims in Britain (and in the West in general) have formulated different responses to this challenge. Some chose to simply ignore it, assimilating completely into the hegemonic culture of the white, nominally Christian majority. At the other extreme, others set up and retreated into virtual Islamic ghettos, living as if the rest of society simply didn’t exist–or if it did, it existed only as an example of what not to do. A significant section of the Muslim community, however, has adopted a mid-way approach. Its members seek to publicly affirm their Islamic identity within the Western context and through interaction with it, rather than in spite of it, re(defining) and (re)constructing in the process what it means to be British as well as to be Muslim. An important way in which such redefinitions take place, or at least articulated, is through the establishment of Muslim community/particularistic media in Britain.

Scope of Study

[5] The Muslim media in Britain are diverse and constantly evolving. The entire spectrum of contemporary Muslim/Islamic thought and tendencies is represented, with Islamist publications like Crescent International, the neo-fundamentalist, Hizb-ut-Tahrir linked Salaam and Khilafah, the socially conservative and politically moderate Muslim News, and the decidedly ambiguous Muslim Weekly all competing for space on the shelves of bookshops and news-agents across the country. The diversity of these community newspapers and magazines–all claiming to be written by Muslims for Muslims–underscores the fact that there is no one, homogeneous British Muslim identity that can be neatly, easily defined.[11] At the same time, however, each of these media constructs its own vision of British Muslim identity, with varying levels of clarity, coherence and cogency. For magazines like Khilafah, the term British Islam is an oxymoron, while for a magazine like Crescent, the first sphere of concern for British Muslims should be the global (politicized) umma, rather than their own country.[12] What is constant is the fact that all, to paraphrase the editor of Q-News, are consciously and deliberately “selective” when it comes to what to report and how to report it,[13] underscoring Hall’s perhaps obvious, but nonetheless frequently overlooked, point that “the media do not simply and transparently report events which are ‘naturally’ newsworthy in themselves. ‘News’ is the end-product of a complex process which begins with a systematic sorting and selecting of events and topics according to a socially constructed set of categories.”[14] Media thus create their own “reality.”

[6] This paper, then, is an attempt to make explicit these “socially constructed categories” as they relate to mediated expressions of British Muslim identity. While there is a plethora of studies on Britain’s Muslim communities coming from a variety of disciplines,[15] and while some incorporate, albeit in a summary fashion, an examination of British Muslim media,[16] there is a definite dearth of literature specifically focused on this subject. An exception to this is a recent contribution by Ahmed in Abbas’ edited volume Muslim Britain: Communities Under Pressure.[17] Ahmed examines Muslim community media from a production and audience reception angle, arguing that “as the Muslim communities developed a more distinctly religious identity, alternatives to mainstream media were sought through which to express this identity, and Muslim media became an important means by which information was obtained and ideas developed.”[18] From her research, she concludes that “Muslim media are indeed playing a role in establishing and developing a sense of being a British Muslim.”[19] She doesn’t, however, problematize this sense of “British Muslimness” to show us its social meaning, but treats it as a pre-defined entity with features that are apparently so obvious, there is no need to spell them out.

[7] This article attempts to remedy this literature gap[20] through a critical in-depth examination of the content of two British Muslim bi-monthly and monthly magazines–emel and Q-News, respectively – in order to highlight, problematize and deconstruct the construction of “British Muslim” and its corollary, “British Islam,” put forth on their pages. Analyzing such Islamic media production is important to shedding added light on the dialectics of identity construction/consolidation/redefinition of Muslims in the West and their resistance, accommodation or reconfigurations of pressures to conform or recast that minority identity within the dominant socio-cultural modes.

[8] For the purposes of this study, I have chosen to focus on publications with a “liberal” and “accomodationist” editorial slant (although this slant is by no means always consistently adhered to and is, at times, subverted),[21] rather than more conservative, isolationist papers like, say, Khilafah, because I am interested in how a hybrid British Muslim identity is constructed, rather than simply negated or trivialized. In addition, I chose magazines with a heavy feature, as opposed to merely news, content as features – with their greater length and more human-interest slant – allow for subjectivities and value judgments to be expressed more explicitly. Thus, this paper does not aim, nor claim, comprehensively to cover all (often conflicting) regimes of representation produced by Muslim media in contemporary Britain, but it only aims to deconstruct one representation of British Islam/Muslims put forth in the mediated sphere that explicitly identifies itself as British-Muslim (as opposed to South Asian-Muslim, Arab-Muslim or just Muslim, etc). Limiting the study to media that have a self-declared intent of “creating” a new British Muslim identity allows me to interrogate more closely what this identity would look like and its implications for British Muslims who identify with it.

[9] To that end, I look at emel and Q-News, which both target a similar audience–18 to 35-year-old professional, middle class Muslim men and women (although emel, with its lifestyle sections, is tilted more towards women) with a higher education. In other words, they target the upwardly mobile sections of the Muslim British population and those more likely to play an active role in their own communities as well as in the wider society.[22]

[10] I analyze 12 recent issues of each magazine (totaling 562 articles) to draw up a typology of dominant themes through both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies in the form of content and discourse analyses as well as an in-depth interview with one of the editors of Q-News.[23] While the content analysis is key to documenting the specific occurrences/frequencies of each theme, the discourse analysis and interview are vital to explaining why these themes matter, what they imply and how they are inter-related. Six such themes were identified, namely: Muslims are “victims;” the “real” Islam is a moderate Islam; Islam and the West are perfectly “compatible;” British Muslims must assert their belonging through mainstream participation; British Muslim identity is uniquely “new” and part of a greater Western Islam; and Muslims in the West have a “prophetic” role to play.

Conceptual Framework and Core Arguments

[11]The starting assumption for this study is that identity is not “inherent,” “primordial” or “essential,” but rather “constructed.” The social constructionist approach to identity “rejects any category that sets forward essential or core differences as the unique property of a collective’s members” but rather argues that “every collective [is] a social artefact – an entity remodeled, refabricated and mobilized in accord with reigning cultural scripts and centers of power.”[24] Thus, British Muslim media “construct” a sense of British Muslim identity (and its specifics will be examined) through their choice of which stories to include/exclude, which issues to editorialize (or not), which questions to ask and who is allowed to answer them. Through-out this process, several themes and sub-themes are consistently and repeatedly presented and highlighted, leading to the formation of what can be termed a dominant, if not hegemonic, discourse. At the same time, this discourse is counter-hegemonic to that other far more dominant and visible discourse on Islam/Muslims, the one most people encounter daily in the mainstream British (and Western) press and through which runs, as numerous studies have documented, an undercurrent of latent Orientalism.[25] Muslim minority media thus serve the dual role of simultaneously deconstructing mainstream discourse through a construction of their own discursive alternative, in an almost defiant act of “auto-interpretation” or “talking back.”[26] If Orientalism is about an other defining the Other for itself, this discourse is about defining the Self, for both it and others. In other words, these media show us how some British Muslims see themselves and would like others to see them, thus moving them beyond the subjugation of what Werbner calls “external definition.”[27]

[12] So what does this identity look like (and what do we even mean by identity)? Borrowing Castells’ sociological definition, identity here means “the process of construction of meaning on the basis of a cultural attribute, or related set of cultural attributes, that is/are given priority over other sources of meaning”[28] (emphasis added). As we shall see, “Islam” as a source of meaning is given priority by the media in question over other sources of identity available. Again utilizing Castells’ categorisations, I argue that the type of identity constructed is a “project” one–that is, an “identity that seeks to redefine the group’s position in society and in doing so transform the overall structure of society to allow them to realise their new self-definition.”[29] (Since this study is focused on the construction of an ideal-type identity, I will not examine audience reception to see how this identity is received/remade/re-interpreted, although such an avenue of research would no doubt be a rich one). Finally, I argue that this type of identity engenders a certain mode of interaction with the majority culture, which, following Ansari, can be termed “enculturation.”[30] Enculturation ultimately changes not only minorities’ conceptions of themselves, but also their conceptions of the majority culture, leading to the formation of new, hybridized, identities.

[13] The second section of this article contextually addresses some of the impetus behind the formation of Muslim media. The third section, representing the bulk of this study, undertakes a critical in-depth analysis of the dominant themes of British Muslim identity as put forward by each magazine. Throughout this analysis, I show how these themes form part of a project identity as well as link them to wider trends in Islamic thought. The fourth section explores the integrational model within which these media fall and its wider implications for Muslims in Britain and the West. The final section briefly summarizes the main conclusions of this paper.

II. Contextualizing British Muslim Media

[14] British Muslim particularistic media evolved out of the community “watershed” moments of the late 1980s and early 1990s, notably the Rushdie affair and the first Gulf War.[31] These events, which thrust the Muslim community into the national spotlight, “raised serious doubts about whether one could be British and Muslim simultaneously.”[32] The British Muslim communities, especially their younger members, would become increasingly vocal and assertive participants in these debates, often using their community media as a platform.

[15] At the time, the satirical magazine Muslimwise began printing and eventually morphed into Q-News in 1992, which over the years transformed itself from a weekly to a glossy monthly. Q-News is a heavily editorial magazine (which makes it a particularly rich resource for this study) that covers mostly social and political news related to British Muslims, Muslims in other Western countries and, to a much lesser extent, events in Muslim-majority countries. Its editor in chief is a prominent member of the British Muslim community as well as a seasoned journalist with experience working for mainstream media outlets, including the Reuters news agency and liberal broadsheets like the Guardian. The magazine holds no official ties with any organization or Muslim denomination and is financially independent. It recently branched out into the US market, where it is now publishes an American edition. The magazine’s website declares its “chief interest” to be “the development of a unique and relevant Western Muslim discourse” and its mantra is “dealing with the fundamentals, liberally.” Part of this “liberalism” (not to be confused, of course, with conventional Western understandings of the term) is an almost syncretic, Sufic religious world-view that stresses an individual, decidedly apolitical, spirituality.[33] Regular contributors to the magazine include prominent community activists, feminists, university students, professors and professionals, both Muslim and non-Muslim. According to its own statistics, the paper is read by 60,000 people per month, the majority of whom are second and third generation British-Muslims, as well as educators, policy-makers and parliamentarians.

[16] emel, the second magazine examined in this study, is one of the latest newcomers on the British Muslim media scene, beginning publication only in 2003 and with a circulation of 20,000. Branding itself as a “Muslim life-style” magazine (“em” stands for Muslim and “el” for Life, while “emel” is Arabic for hope), it features articles on parenting, marital relations, work, as well as covering political and social current events of interest to Muslims. Its editor is a white female convert to Islam with long-standing ties to the Islamic Society of Britain and its youth arm Young Muslims UK. Both of these organizations advocate an active and participatory sense of British Muslim citizenship through engagement with wider society.[34] Highlighting its “liberal” slant, emel also features a regular column by Ziauddin Sardar, a prominent (Western) Muslim intellectual who is a fierce critic of Islamism, especially its violently radical varieties.[35] emel’s inaugural issue declares that “the name emel encapsulates all that we are trying to achieve with this magazine: talking about Islam in a vibrant and dynamic way; showing Islam as a living reality in Britain; creating a new culture of expression that blends tradition with the modern world.”[36]

[17] The most salient element of both these magazines is their overtly Muslim (if not Islamic) thrust. While at first glance this might seem trivially self-evident, it is important to highlight this element to show these media privilege some markers of identity (in this case religion) over others. This becomes even more significant when we remember that a contemporary Muslim in Britain could potentially hold and choose from a vast plurality of identities (for example, Punjabi, Pakistani, South Asian, British, Londoner, politically Black and racially Caucasian, as well as any combination of these together). As I shall show, not only do these media favour Islam as an identity basis, but they also fix across time and space the meaning of Islam, even while they champion the right to ijtihad (independent reasoning).

[18] The perpetuation of these media is driven by several factors.[37] First, there is a desire to counteract mainstream coverage of Islam and Muslims, which is quite correctly perceived as highly biased and inaccurate.[38] As Poole shows her in-depth study of the representations of the British Muslims/Islam in the British media, the largely negative coverage of Muslims in the broadsheets and tabloids leads to a solidifying of the “belief that Muslims are wholly different” thereby excluding them from inter-subjective constructs of ‘Britishness.’”[39] To corroborate her research, she points to the 1997 Runneymede Trust report on Islamophobia, which found that eight specific discourses about Muslims are widespread in the British press, including Muslim cultures are “unchanging and monolithic,” “wholly different from other cultures,” Islam is “inferior, different, barbaric, irrational, primitive and sexist and threatening” and Islamophobia is “unproblematic.”[40] These findings demonstrate how Orientalism (in the Saidian sense) is still very much alive in Western popular and mediated imaginaries, and how the space for “alternative” viewpoints on Muslims/Islam within the mainstream media is so small to the point of being inconsequential. British Muslims thus aim to create their own alternative spaces through the establishment of alternative media.

[19] Second, emel and Q-News fill this space with their own media content with the aim of constructing an alternative identity to the one ascribed to them, both from without (by the dominant mainstream press) and from within (by non like-minded Muslims). Indeed, the editorial missions of both these magazines stress their role in defining/creating/articulating an explicitly British Muslim identity. Scholars of British Islam have also noted that these media are “contributing to the emergence of a British Muslim identity.”[41] For example, in its first issue, emel’s lead editorial claims that the magazine “will capture the ground-breaking work in Britain which has seen us creating a new culture based on Islamic values.”[42] Similarly, the contributing editor of Q-News said in an interview that “part of the work [of Q-News] is to both chronicle and define the emergence of a uniquely British Muslim identity.”

[20] The second motivation is thus dialectically linked to the first in that the identity these media seek to construct ultimately functions as an oppositional mirror-image to the hegemonic discourses on Islam and Muslims in Britain as pinpointed by the Runneymede Trust. For example, as I will show throughout the next section, great stress is laid on representing Muslim culture as “compatible” with, if not integral to, the West and Islam as “superior,” “familiar,” “civilised,” “egalitarian” and “highly rational.” Taken together, these two motivations support the contention of various researchers that minority media act as a means of empowerment.[43]

III. Constructing British Muslim Identity

[21] A close reading of emel and Q-News reveals several recurring themes. These themes are never explicitly presented as such – the categorizations are my own. These themes were articulated in the majority of the articles I examined (357 out of 562) and constitute the essential pillars around which secondary themes are woven. It is important to note that the boundaries between these themes are quite porous and serve to add force to one another. (For example, the theme of the compatibility of Islam and the West reinforces the theme of belonging and participation).

Victims, Not Villains

[22] Both Q-News and emel repeatedly and consistently represent Muslims as victims, whether as a result of Islamophobia, legal, social and political discrimination, or media stereotyping, although this theme enjoys much greater prominence in Q-News (see Appendix A). This leads to the discursive construction of what Werbner, also commenting on British Muslims, calls a “community of suffering.”[44] The perceived victimization of Muslims in contemporary Britain is traced back, according to these media, to long-standing prejudices since “fear of the Muslim ‘other’ has been around for more than a millennium. This fear has become entrenched in the European psyche, becoming institutionalised through literature, history, and politics.”[45] In fact, says another writer, “the lasting impression left from the era of the crusades lingers in the same vein that runs in today’s media. Crusading propaganda served as an effective catalyst, using the power of words to stir men into aggressive action by projecting vulgar portrayals of the enemy.”[46] Thus, these media claim that Muslims are victimized due to an ancient, almost ingrained, “fear” of Islam by the majority culture, implying that white Britons see British Muslims as outside the shared “imagined community” of the nation. For example, one article on the proposed government scheme for compulsory identity cards (seen as thinly-disguised way of keeping tabs on the Muslim community) argues: “It is clear the government thinks ID cards will not only keep us ‘safe’… but they will also protect ‘British identity’. It is also clear that the government has a narrow view of what constitutes “British identity” and a definite idea of where the threat to it comes from”–i.e., the British Muslim community.[47]

[23] This “fear” of Islam–Islamophobia–has to be confronted head-on asserts the discourse, which means that “Islamophobia needs to be recognised as a distinct form of hatred as heinous as racism and taken as seriously as racism.”[48] Existing anti-racism legislation therefore needs to be revised to protect religion explicitly. One of the long-standing grievances of Muslims as articulated in these magazines is that it is legal in Great Britain to discriminate against Muslims as Muslims since current legislation only protects those groups officially recognized as a “race.”[49] Since Muslims, unlike Jews and Sikhs, are not defined as a mono-ethnic group, they consequently fall outside the legally protected ambit. Using the language of pluralism and civic rights, and operating through the official regime of multiculturalism, these media are asking that Muslims be protectively recognized as a religious community. Of course, as one observer points out, “Islam has to be the most definitive marker of identity… for that recognition to have any meaning.”[50] Other markers of identity that might lead to discrimination–such as ethnicity or socio-economic class–are therefore marginalized in this discourse.

[24] The “plight” of the global umma, not just British Muslims, forms an integral part of this discourse of victimization with numerous articles written on the situations in Palestine, Chechnya, Iraq and Kashmir. For these magazines, part of being a British Muslim is having an active interest in, and awareness of, Muslims elsewhere. This interest is sacralised in the discourse, represented as stemming from the very “nature” of Islam as a borderless, organic entity. This “nature” is authoritatively grounded by these media in the religion’s core texts. For example, commenting on the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse, one writer declares: “As a Muslim, I have a special connection to these victims, personified by the notion of the ummah. The prisoners of Abu Ghraib are not just my brothers and sisters, they are an integral part of me–the very essence of my being. ‘The believers,’ the Prophet Muhammad said, ‘are like a human body: when one part hurts, the entire body suffers.’”[51] At the same time, however, there is no suggestion that attachment to the umma supersedes one’s attachment to the nation-state (although it might, at times, be a source of tension as in the case of British Muslim soldiers fighting Iraqi Muslims). Indeed, emel and Q-News readers apparently need to be wary not only of Islamophobes at home, but also of their more “extreme” co-religionists outside the West. For example, one article, commenting on the US’ so-called “war on terror,” posits that while “some radical Muslim commentators have been insisting that the war on terror is actually a war on Islam … For Western Muslims, this is an unacceptable interpretation of what is happening.” In fact,

Muslim commentators who continue to propagate these claims are trying to insert a wedge between Western Muslims and their homelands. They wish to use Western Muslims as a weapon to subvert the West from within, but in the process sacrificing the community.[52]

So, while British Muslims are constructed as part of the global umma, at the same time they constitute their own special sub-section of it, along with other Western Muslims. What ties the two imagined geographies together is their common “victimization,” a victimization that results from simply being Muslim.

[25] The theme of Muslims as Victims is a projective identity in that it negates the Orientalist conception of Muslims as “aggressors.” As numerous scholars have convincingly documented, European identity “was created in opposition to others–who were named ‘infidels’ or ‘barbarians.’ In fact, in many cases it was the defense of Christian identity against Islam that set the ground for the existence of so-called European culture.”[53] By transforming themselves from aggressors against which Europe must “defend” itself to victims of this very Europe, these Muslim media seek to transform Muslims from an Oppositional Other against which Europe is defined to a beleaguered European minority against which the majority culture/system has sinned. To atone, Europeans must “rethink their own collective identities”[54] to make room for Islam/Muslims in it. But as these media demand that Europe adopt a more inclusive definition of itself, they simultaneously construct, as the next section shows, a more inclusive definition of what it means to follow Islam and be a Muslim.

The “Real” Islam

[26] For these media, just as Muslims are victimized, Islam is also a “victim” of the distortion of its “true” message of peace, justice, and equality by older generations, extremists and the Western media. This “real,” moderate, Islam forms an integral part of British Muslim identity for both emel and Q-News. The tilt towards such an interpretation of Islam is explicit, with one article finding a survey which shows that that almost 40% of Detroit Muslims have a “flexible” approach to Islam “very important and promising” since

This allows the American context to shape Islamic practice and often leads to facilitation of greater gender equality in mosques, a more positive attitude towards democracy, freedom and human rights. It also fosters better inter-faith relations and higher engagement with the mainstream culture, politics and society.[55]

In other words, this Islam is put forward as a panacea for Western Muslims.

[27] To uncover this Islam, one has to bypass not only the “culturally blinkered interpretation of Islam held by members of the older generation” (which apparently leads to “extremist understandings of the faith,”[56] although what this means exactly is not said), but furthermore return to the core sources of Islam, the divine text and Prophetic praxis, these media argue. These sources “emphasise the values of equality, religious freedom, respect of diversity, and fair dealings”[57] and “love,” which, according to one writer, is “highest religious virtue in Islam.”[58] The discourse stresses that these texts can be legitimately subject to continual reinterpretation by Muslims as “there are eternal principles in the Qur’an and Sunnah in so far as governance is concerned, but Allah has left to the believers the mechanisms by which they can operationalise these principles.”[59]

[28] There is no monopoly, then, on religious knowledge. The Qur’an itself mandates this as one Q-News article frames it: “Many Muslims have come to believe that only male experts can produce legitimate religious knowledge. Yet the Qur’an proclaims itself to be a book of universal religious knowledge. Muslims generally need to start reading the Qur’an for themselves.”[60] Positive concrete examples are offered of British Muslims who have done this: “I became a Muslim and stopped singing ... I was being advised that music was prohibited. At the time, I didn’t think for myself, but later I closely studied the sources of Islamic law and not just the fatwas (opinions).”[61] The interviewee consequently resumed singing since his study showed that music was not “haram” (forbidden). On a much more serious subject, the author of an article–a convert barrister– undertakes a detailed personal exegesis of various Qur’anic verses and Prophetic sayings in order to, he writes, debunk once and for all the idea that suicide bombings are acts of “martyrdom.” He categorically concludes: “I cannot see, in the light of these verses of Qur’an and hadith, how any well-informed Muslim can believe that blowing him or her self up and killing and maiming anyone in the vicinity will take him or her to the Garden.”[62] While this may in fact be true, the point here is that the author in question did not revert to the thick tomes of classical jurisprudence to reach this conclusion, but rather went straight to “primary sources.” Such an approach to religious knowledge matches a trend Jacobson observed in her research on young British Muslims. She found that

Increasing numbers of young people appear to be committed to the notion that they should learn for themselves what it means to be a Muslim, rather than simply accept what they are told by their parents and the local imams. This attitude to Islam appears to go together with a willingness to question not the basic tenets of Islam, but aspects of traditional interpretations of the religion.[63]

Here, we can clearly see the reformist ethos of Islamic modernism at work.

[29] Beginning in the late nineteenth century, Islamic modernists (led by prominent figures like Abduh in Egypt and Khan in India) sought to effectuate a revival of the Islamic world not through a super-imposition of Western institutions and values on Muslim societies,[64] but by arguing that concepts of modernity as articulated by the West already exist within Islamic principles and are in fact integral to the Islamic world-view. They believed that “the [modern] changes which were taking place were not only permitted by Islam, but were indeed its necessary implications if it was rightly understood.”[65] To bring out these implications, Muslims had to return to an imagined pristine Islam by bypassing 14 centuries of Islamic thought and consensus and undertaking a fresh ijtihad based on the Qur’an and, to a lesser extent, the hadiths. This trend had an enormous impact on Islamic thought in the twenthieth century, leading to the emergence of, among others, two diametrically opposing trends: a Wahabi-type puritanical Islam and “liberal” Islam.[66] While the former “calls upon modernity (for example, electronic technologies) in the name of the past … liberal Islam calls upon the past in the name of modernity.”[67] Liberal Islam–understood loosely here as an umbrella term bringing together a diverse range of thinkers who might not always agree with each other–encompasses notions such as the belief in democracy, human rights, pluralism and progress within, of course, an Islamic frame of reference.[68]

[30] The media examined here clearly are part of the latter trend, although those producing it may not always self-identify as such and may, as do several Q-News writers, prefer to hark back to scholastic traditionalism, even as that “traditionalism” is necessarily re-imagined.[69] For example, an important attribute of the “real” Islam as put forward by these media is its apparently limitless inclusivity. To illustrate: A profile of an atheist “global justice campaigner” positively highlights how he has been “forging links within the Muslim community in recent years.” Islam, it is implied, is (or should be) tolerant enough to include even those who don’t believe in God. Indeed, the article continues, such an inclusive approach was epitomized by the Messenger of God himself: “If the Prophet Muhammad (swt) did not have alliances with non-Muslims, we would not have Islam today. He dedicated much of his life to building bridges with non-Muslims.”[70] In another article published during Ramadan, one Muslim woman says: “Ramadan is a month where you don’t distinguish between people who are in need. The people we are helping are not just Muslims. Islam is about helping all our neighbours.”[71] (Conversely, there is a fatwa from Saudi Arabia’s highest ranking religious body expressly prohibiting cooperation with non-Muslims).[72] Finally, one writer argues that just as she supports her Muslim “sisters’” decision to wear the hijab–considered a religious obligation by most orthodox scholars–they must also support her decision not to wear one.[73] Again, recognizing that Islam “says” nothing and only Muslims do, the point here is not which view is more accurate, but that these media selectively put forward certain interpretations of Islam as authoritative or more “authentic,” leading to the construction of a specific British Muslim identity. So the important question is why this construction and not others?

[31] This construction of Islam mirrors the official discourse of tolerance, inclusivity and pluralism in Britain, thus allowing British Muslims to participate more fully in the body politic. This demonstrates the important ways in which majority norms are appropriated by a minority for its own counter-hegemonic project. Indeed, I would argue that this idealized notion of Islam forms part of the projective identity discourse of these media in that it turns on its head the dominant (Orientalist) imagination of Islam as an exclusivistic, intolerant and repressive religion. Instead, it talks of tolerance, inclusion and pluralism. This allows British Muslims to not only transform conceptions of themselves, but also transform the overall structures of society by appropriating the official model of a pluralist nation-state and Islamizing it, a clear illustration of the project identity constructed by these media. As Ansari argues, “British Muslims…are questioning not only the West but also Islam itself. In this process they are seeking to create a kind of Islam better able to meet the dilemmas of British life in a rapidly globalising context.”[74] In fact, it is this construction of Islam that paves the way for the construction of a third dominant theme in these media: the compatibility of Islam and the West.

Conjuring Compatibility

[32] Muslim Spain, or Andalusia, figures prominently in these media. Whether in the form of travel pieces or feature articles, there are many references to the medieval Islamic caliphate of Spain. These references usually serve two purposes: first, to highlight the spirit of convivencia (co-existence) that apparently flourished between the three monotheistic religions under Muslim leadership (thereby reinforcing the preceding theme of a tolerant, inclusive “real” Islam) and to argue that far from being an alien religion, Islam has deep “roots” in Europe.[75] Such an image epitomizes the third dominant theme of these media: that of the compatibility of Islam and the West (and, by extension, the reigning systems of the West such as democracy).

[33] There is a discursive stress on Islam/Muslims being of the West rather than merely in the West. As one writer argues while there is “significant resistance from many quarters to seeing Muslims and Islam as something ‘European,’” this, however, is changing (he points to the increasing currency of the phrase “European Islam” as evidence). “Muslims and Islam are being seen as something in Europe that cannot, and will not, leave,” the writer continues. “They are here to stay – an integral part of Europe’s mosaic of populations and beliefs.”[76] Western Muslims therefore should to be assertive in claiming their respective countries as their own – in fact, the discourse goes, their religion has played an important role in “making” Europe itself: “Muslims are a part of Europe and we need to demonstrate that fully in every respect…We need to be confident in the knowledge that Islam has played a major part in the development of European culture and civilisation, and so we can claim a rightful ownership of this society.”[77]

[34] Besides a shared history, the compatibility of Islam and the West is projected to stem from the very “nature” of Islam itself since

Islam is a religion of inclusivity, believing that the message of Muhammad was nothing new, but rather a continuum of the message of God to humanity since Adam … this idea that Islam is nothing new has to be got across to people and then maybe there would not be the view that Muslims are a thing apart…Much of Europe believes that Islam is not compatible with it. It is up to us to change that perception … we must persuade all who we meet that Islam is a part of Europe; a set of positive values that will build our societies. It is not a culture, but rather a continuum of the message of God to man through the ages.[78]

This conceptualization of a “culture-free” Islam is another component of the British Muslim identity put forward by these media, one that ultimately serves to buttress the compatibility of Islam in the West. As Roy astutely points out “the construction of a ‘deculturalised’ Islam is a means of experiencing a religious identity that is not linked to a given culture and can therefore fit with every culture.”[79] (Indeed, only four articles in the sample period make ethnicity their central focus).

[35] One way of showing how Islam can (literally) be embraced by individuals from all (and especially non-minority British) cultures is by highlighting convert stories. emel has a regular section titled “Face to Faith” that features convert, or what it calls “revert,” experiences. Of these features, the vast majority (24 out of 27) are about white converts to Islam.[80] The cumulative effect of these articles is to construct an image of British Muslims as an “indigenous” people (due to the shared racial background of white converts with the majority culture). Often, it is these converts who are most vocal in stressing the compatibility of Islam and Britain/the West, frequently making conversion (always a process of “rational” reflection, they say) a direct function of this claimed compatibility. For example, one 24-year-old white convert asserts that “Islam and the West are highly compatible. I don’t think you would have so many people converting to Islam otherwise. I think Islam appeals to the common sense of the English people, and its foundation on knowledge, logic and a scientific approach to religion would make it particularly appealing.”

[36] He goes on to say: “There are many things in British culture, such as politeness, hospitality and a sense of equality and justice that are engrained and that are very compatible with Islam. I think these things we need to bring out and emphasise in our dealings with non-Muslims, in order to show how ‘British’ Islam can be!”[81] Another convert tells us that “when I first came to Islam I thought you had to be a certain way … I didn’t realise that there is no problem with being white, English, a Londoner, a girl and Muslim. There is so much in the newspapers at the moment about Islam and the West and whether the two mix. They can and they do for me as I am comfortable with who I am.”[82] So, as Lewis argues, “new Muslims can thus serve to legitimize the faith, remind South Asians [as well as white Britons, I would argue] that Islam is a universal faith, loosen the link between ethnicity and religious identity, and … may contribute to the contentious evolution of Islam helping to mould it to fit the conditions of contemporary European society.”[83]

[37] In sum, this discourse constructs a British Muslim identity that is firmly and unproblematically rooted in the British-European-Western context, rather than in the countries of (now increasingly distant) origin of the Muslim community. Islam, then, is not something that the current generation’s parents and grandparents brought with them since it was already here anyway (and if it wasn’t, it can fit quite easily into the existing landscape), for these media. This is an implicit rejection of the (in)famous clash of civilizations thesis,[84] and illustrates another facet of the projective identity proposed by these media since it transforms both Muslims’ understanding of Islam (to something compatible with the West) and the West’s understanding of itself (to something compatible with Islam). Since Islam and the Britain/Europe/the West are constructed as being in perfect harmony, the discourse then argues that there is nothing to hinder British Muslims from participating in, and fully belonging to, the nation’s public sphere. This leads us to the fourth dominant theme, that of participation and belonging.

Asserting Belonging

[38] The discourses of these magazines reject the passive, “obedient” Muslim immigrant of yesteryear as a model. Instead, they put forward an assertive British Muslim identity that takes its participation in, and belonging to, Britain as a given. On one hand, this identity contests Asad’s assertion that “Europe (and the nation-states of which it is constituted) is ideologically constructed in such a way that Muslim immigrants cannot be satisfactorily represented in it.”[85] On the other hand, it also contests one Islamic argument that such a representation is forbidden anyway. Indeed, Islamic jurisprudential debates concerning the “permissibility” of participating in a non- (and for some un-) Islamic political system are dismissed as “not only reactionary, but unwise” as well as “lacking maturity, astuteness and strategy.”[86] The debate is turned on its head, and political and social participation becomes not only permissible, but obligatory from an Islamic point of view. As one emel editorial proclaims “[British Muslims] have a civic responsibility to fully participate in the processes of the country that God, in His Divine Wisdom, placed us in … Make this country a better one by your active engagement and in so doing fulfil your obligations as God’s steward on this Earth.”[87] Such an emphasis Islamizes the public rituals–voting, etc.–of secular democracy by grounding them an Islamic rationale.[88] At the same time, this appropriation stretches the symbolic borders of Islam to subsume what are usually perceived as areligious acts. For example, while one article argues that the Qur’an stresses that positive change begins in the “hearts” of individuals, it rhetorically asks:

But does affecting change mean more piety, more mosque attendance? There is certainly nothing wrong with either, but our mosques are bursting at the seams, yet where is the change? We are not short on prayers, piety or pilgrims. What we need is to direct that religiosity, which feeds the inner souls of individuals, and channel it so that it brings justice and beauty to society.[89]

The article goes on to delineate the channels in question as being civic engagement.

[39] As the above quote makes clear, participation for these media is more than merely, say, voting. It is about bringing no less than “justice” and “beauty” to society. This would seem to belie the claim by some scholars that “Britishness” for Muslims is just “pragmatic,” meaning that “there is some reluctance to assert Britishness in terms that might suggest anything more than legal entitlement … hence Britishness is often described in terms of citizenship, a birthright, but not really a deeply-held emotional and cultural bond shared with the white secular or Christian majority.”[90] Conversely, according to the discourse of these media, being a “true” British Muslim means “being guided by the same factors that steer other people in this society: concern about the plight of others elsewhere, of the challenges facing the young, the old, the sick, the less disadvantaged and the future.” [91] British Muslims are an “integral” part of the nation, not mere sojourners who remain only because they have nowhere left to go to. As one writer asserts

I, as a second-generation British Muslim, like so many throughout the country, am proud of the role our people have played. I am also proud of the contribution we have made to the country’s economy, to its social, cultural and spiritual life, and, more importantly, in making this country great in its diversity and in the way it has and continues to embrace pluralism despite all the challenges.[92]

[40] With this discourse of ownership comes a new sense of assertiveness, which is paradoxically linked to the first theme of victimization. Jacobson pinpoints something similar in her study of Muslim youth in a London borough, arguing that there is an emerging “assertive Muslim identity” that is characterized by forms of political and social protest, often at a grass-roots level, against racism and social exclusion.[93] According to these media, this assertiveness is mostly the purview of young, British born Muslims who, we are warned, “will wield measurable economic influence. Most have grown up fully acculturated into British society and nobody would dare deny them the right to participate fully in public life (in contrast to popular resentment against new immigrants). Muslims must now be courted.”[94] This assertiveness is framed within a European-wide awakening of the “new generations” of citizen Muslims. Commenting on the Netherlands’ Muslim community, one writer says “people must realise that even though we are Muslim, we have a red passport. We are Dutch citizens. If people don’t respect our passport, they don’t respect the law. We will keep on asserting our citizenship without conflict.” “They,” (the authorities? the Dutch in general?) the author continues, “need to get used to it.”[95]

[41] Part of being one of the new assertive British Muslims for these media is not shying from changing the status quo to better accommodate one’s religious identity. For example, one article interviews several young Muslim professionals working in the City (London’s financial centre), all of whom have asked their employers to accommodate their religious needs at work. One of them explains: “Some people resign themselves either to the Western professional corporate way of life where Islamic values are limited, or a more secluded traditional Islamic way of life where integration is limited. By adopting a more proactive approach we have shown that if circumstances don’t agree with your values, you can adapt them and be part of the change to introduce integrated work practises.”[96]

[42] These examples contradict one scholar’s contention that “Muslim identity in Britain … is evolving as an identity of ‘un-belonging’ in a ‘culture of resistance’ and in contest with hegemonic British identity.”[97] Rather, the British Muslim project identity constructed on these magazines’ pages seeks to belong to, and ultimately accommodate, the dominant British identity, even as it discursively transforms it and itself in the process, leading to the emergence of a new hybrid identity as the next section shows.

New Identity, Silent Revolution

[43] A recurring assertion in these media is the “universalistic” tendencies of Islam which, paradoxically, allows for the emergence of very particularistic different “islams.” As the editor of Q-News put it to me in an interview:

In the same way that we look to the past and see an Anatolian Islam, a Chinese Islam, a Syrian Islam, a Palestinian Islam, we want to see a British Islam that is going to be linked to the universal principles of our faith but at the same time represent those universalities in a very particular experience. Part of the genius of Islamic civilization was this incredible malleability, the ability to belong in a place and time while maintaining that connection to the divine.[98]

A dominant theme, therefore, is that British Muslims need to develop their own version of “Islam.” For these media, part of this process involves firstly understanding Islam only as a religion as we have seen and, secondly, fusing that religion with a cultural, political and social understanding of Britishness to come up with something uniquely new and different.[99]

[44] To begin with, the new British Islam apparently has to have its own culture, with one writer saying “We at Q-News have always believed in the power of culture in bringing people together. We are convinced that for Islam to take root and prosper healthily in Britain and other Western societies, it is vital that we invest and develop a comprehensive cultural agenda.”[100] While Roy discounts the idea of an “Islamic culture” as nonsensical,[101] the fact remains is that these media are actively highlighting cultural (usually meaning artistic) expressions that they feel can lead to the creation of an explicitly Islamic, explicitly British, culture. For instance, an article on a British “Islamic graffiti” artist quotes him as saying: “With my work, I hope to inspire youth by introducing a new kind of Islamic art that is born in the West and, therefore, something that belongs to us. It’s a question of identity.”[102] Several other articles look at home-grown “Islamic rap” groups such as Mecca2Medina and Native Deen.[103] The new British Muslim identity also has its own heroes, heroes who are products of the West as much as they are Muslim. For example, one article asserts that Malcolm X is “our 20^th century Islamic hero.” He is “a moral guide” for “Western Muslims,” enjoying a stature no less than “many of the blessed ancients that [sic] embraced Islam in Mecca and Medina.”[104] In fact, another says, Malcolm X changed the way “we define and imagine a ‘Western Islam.’ He was both thoroughly Western and Muslim, the kind of role model we urgently need for our young today.”[105] These, then, are the new role models for British Muslims–artists, singers, activists – not bearded old men preaching in long-forgotten madrasas.

[45] Even while a uniquely British Islam is asserted, it is discursively embedded in a wider Western/European Islam, which is, according to emel and Q-News, nothing less than a “new Islamic civilization” in its own right – or at least, a potential one.[106] British Muslims must be conscious of this it is argued, with one article going as far as to say that “London is not just the capital of British Islam, it is recognised as the capital of European Islam” with a mandate “to fly the banner for European Islam” against the Islamophobic political Right.[107] At work here is the assumption that Muslims living in the West share common concerns/predicaments/experiences that set them apart from Muslims elsewhere. For example, the French ban on the hijab in schools was a cover story for both magazines and the general angle was “France today, Britain tomorrow?” with one young British Muslim woman protesting the ban saying: “If we just stand here and do nothing about it, it might become a reality in London. Many of my friends wear hijab and they’re scared about the new law in France.” [108]

[46] The new British Muslim identity seeks to transform hegemonic notions of who “belongs” to include itself, all the while projecting a new definition of itself. Decrying the narrow, static definitions of Britishness put forward by some politicians, the editor of emel argues that “it is important that Muslims in Britain use the excellent foundation of historical tolerance to show the creation of a Western Muslim identity is possible and desirable.”[109] The discourse of a Western Muslim identity echoes closely the ideas of Swiss Muslim thinker Tariq Ramadan, who over the sample period was featured several times in the magazines. Ramadan argues that

We are currently living through a veritable silent revolution in Muslim communities in the West: more and more young people and intellectuals are actively looking for a way to live in harmony with their faith while participating in the societies that are their societies….they are drawing the shape of European and American Islam: faithful to the principles of Islam, dressed in European and American cultures, and definitively rooted in Western societies.[110]

The next chapter critically examines the role these emerging generations of Western Muslims, as constructed by British Muslim media, (should, will) play in the West.

New Medina, New Prophets

[47] In Western Muslims and the Future of Islam, Ramadan argues that the classical jurisprudential divisions of the world into dar al-islam (abode of peace: Muslim countries) and dar al-harb (abode of war: all other countries) are outdated and in need of urgent revision at a time when vast numbers of Muslims are voluntarily immigrating to non-Muslim countries. To this end, he offers an alternative conceptualization of the West as dar al-shahada, or the abode of proclamation/testimony, a place where Muslims are free to practice and, more importantly, proclaim their religion to all. Thus, he argues, “Muslims living in the West … are the bearers of an enormous responsibility: they must remind the people around them of God and spirituality… They should not submit to their environment, but, on the contrary, once their position is secure, they should be a positive influence within it.”[111] Indeed, for him Western-Muslims have a decidedly crucial role to play since they are located “at the heart” of the “system that produces the symbolic apparatus of Westernization.”[112] Muslim-American scholar and activist Al-Faruqi argued (albeit much more polemically) for a similar conceptualization of the role of Muslim minorities in the West with his redefinition of the West as the “New Medina” for the Muslim immigrant who God has entrusted to “call the people to the truth.”[113] This provides Muslims in the West “with a sense of mission … they are people with a cause, with the noblest cause!”[114]

[48] The British Muslim media examined here closely reproduce this discourse. One editorial says:

Few of us have grasped the uniqueness of our modern situation. There has never been so many of us outside the traditional lands of Islam in our history. And there has never been so many who have made hijrah (migration) out of dar ul-Islam because of the injustice, intolerance and inhumanity which exists there. But like the Companions who followed the Blessed Prophet, peace be upon him, to Madinah we can only return to Makkah if we succeed in creating a Madinah.[115]

This Medina has to be created in “zones where religion was vanquished on different levels a long time ago.” To bring God back into these zones, the discourse continues, “our communities need to become model communities that exhibit the best qualities that Islam gave us ... This model community will shine in the darkness that envelops society.”[116] For these media, this is not far from the role played by the prophets of old who “invariably began their invitation with the words ‘O, my people …’ and were sent as members of these peoples. For whom better to deliver the message than one of their own, who knew their ways, inside and out, even if he chose not to partake in them?”[117] The responsibility is thus great, another articles stresses, for “if the ‘West’ becomes synonymous with the term ‘barbarism’ in truth instead of merely polemics, then part of the responsibility will be with the millions of Muslims who reside in these lands and who have not made the necessary contribution to prevent that from happening.”[118]

[49] By presenting Islam as providing all the cures to the social problems engendered by Western culture and lifestyle,[119] the role of Muslims in the West is valorized and imbued with new meaning/symbolism by these media. Far from being mere economic migrants or a numerically insignificant minority, they are the new prophets of the West. The implications of this new role apparently also extend beyond the West–it concerns Muslims everywhere, if not humanity itself, for “Europe, and the West in general, is an ideal place for Muslims to work out a universal worldview that will bring the ummah closer to itself as well as to the whole world,”[120] argues one article.

[50] According to this discourse, then, Muslims in the West are refusing to “privatize” their religion by making it irrelevant to public life and relegating it to the ultimately rather confined parameters of the individual conscience. This would seem to be a counter-example to Cesari’s assertion that “new forms of religiosity” are emerging among Western Muslims that are “characterized by individualism, secularism and privatization.”[121]

[51] In any case, this new valorization of “minorityness” (as far as I know unprecedented in Islamic thought) and the projection of a potentially revolutionary and unique role for Muslims vis à vis Western civilization mostly clearly illustrates the project identity constructed by British Muslim media. Not only is the self-definition of Muslims transformed (for both Muslims and non-Muslims), but the overall structure of society is discursively transformed as well, from abode of war to abode of proclamation, from simply the West to the evocative New Medina. And, as one observer notes, “the critique of Western cultural hegemony is not necessarily sustained by a valorisation of existing traditional cultures, but more often by modern reconstructions of new identities, even if they resort to historical themes.”[122]

[52] This constructed identity as the new prophets for the West is the meta-narrative of British Muslim media, within which all the previous themes discussed can be subsumed. This meta-narrative acts as the ultimate legitimizing frame for the remaining discursive constructions. It can perhaps be best achieved by that British Muslim identity which, as we have seen, is persecuted/victimized (as were the Qur’anic prophets), is tolerant/inclusive, compatible with the society it seeks to reform (not replace), is assertive in its active belonging to it all the while making additional space for itself in it through the construction of a uniquely Western Islam.

[53] To conclude, emel and Q-News both put forward a similar regime of representation on British Muslims and Islam that effectively privileges some components of Muslim/Islamic identity over others, some members of this identity over others and some articulations of this identity over others. The identity constructed is a project one in that it not only redefines what being a Muslim in contemporary Britain means, but also seeks to transform imagined notions of Britain to enable the realization of this new self-definition. The next section positions this idealized identity within the context of minority integrational models and examines its implications for British Muslims.

IV. Enculturating Identities

[54] The responses of Muslims in the West to their minority status and their engagements with the majority culture have been varied and are in constant flux, making any neat categorizations an exercise in futility. For the sake of analysis, however, one can demarcate three idealized approaches. The first approach is that of complete assimilation by the Muslim minority into the dominant culture, whereby the two become virtually indistinguishable, leading to what Ramadan characterizes as a “European Muslim without Islam.”[123] At the other extreme, one finds an isolationist approach, where contact with wider society is kept to a bare minimum in an effort to keep “authentic” identities “untainted.” Muslims who follow this approach argue that developing deep ties to Western society will only serve to “pollute” their community with values and ideas that directly contradict their own sense of who they are (including culture and religion, of course).[124] Somewhere between these two approaches (or perhaps, more accurately, beyond them), there is a trend among Muslim communities that stresses the retention of a visibly Islamic identity while at the same time positioning that identity within a Western frame of reference. This approach presumably leads to an “original” Muslim identity that is neither a rejectionist reaction against its Western context nor an uncritically wholesale embracement of it.[125]

[55] The media analyzed here clearly belong to this trend. As we have seen, these media are working from within the dominant cultural, social, political and symbolic system to effect change, rather than working apart from it or against it. By working from within, certain aspects of the system are internalized and reframed, leading to a new definition of what it means to be a British Muslim, a projection of a new transformative identity. Ansari calls this “enculturation,” a process in which “people may identify with certain characteristics of another group without forgoing their own ethnic group allegiance, and thereby redefine or update conceptions of their own ethnicity. It is viewed as change through the incorporation of cultural elements, as opposed to acculturation, which is seen as change towards the dominant culture.”[126] It is a largely positive and encouraging process since “there is no loss of self-esteem, no sense of inferiority and much more reaching out for a vibrant and positive synthesis that enables an increasing number of Muslims to live relatively easily within British society.”[127] Others like Kumar share Ansari’s optimism, arguing that “the future appears as one of ‘hyphenation’, ‘hybridity’, ‘syncretization,’ ‘creolization’ and the creative inventions of ‘diaspora’ cultures. Immigrant communities, in an eclectic mixing of the resources at hand, will transform not only themselves but the societies they inhabit for the better.”[128]

[56] These rather rosy pronouncements, however, can be critiqued on several grounds. Firstly, one must remember that this trend of “enculturating” identities is still very much marginal (and, as 7-7 shows us, awfully precarious). Nielsen argues that while some, mostly young, born in the West, Muslims are “becoming increasingly articulate in expressing forms of Islamic practice and priorities relevant to their European situation,” they still constitute a minority sub-section against which “is weighted the experience of a majority of young Muslims, who have not been successful in education and who are growing up into unemployment and other forms of social marginalisation.”[129] Indeed, the social and economic exclusion experienced by British Muslims, as well as the feelings of alienation and disempowerment they generate, is well documented.[130] Consider the following statistics: over 40% of Muslims in Britain hold no educational qualifications; Muslims have the smallest percentage of their population working in the top three professional occupations, and are the most under-represented of religious minorities in managerial levels; Muslims are the most dependent group on “social housing” in Britain; Bengalis and Pakistanis (92% of whom are Muslim) are the most economically marginal groups in the country.[131] Clearly, the British Muslim media analyzed here–with their articles about how to hire “Muslim nannies,” becoming a successful “Islamic” architect and setting up a prayer room at an investment bank–only speak to the experiences of an elite few. As Morley argues, while it is very in vogue to talk about “remaking” and “refashioning” identity “many people are still forced to live through the identities ascribed to them” as they lack the social/cultural power to reset the terms of the debate.[132]

[57] Secondly, it is groups/movements like the Deobandis and Barelwis which seem to enjoy the widest community support within Britain,[133] although, significantly, their popularity among youth has been in decline over the past two decades.[134] Such groups, originating in the Indian sub-continent, often exacerbate sectarianism within the Muslim community in Britain and espouse a conservative theology that sits better with South Asian traditional mores than it would with a liberally hybrid British Muslim identity. In addition, “the institutionalisation of Islam in Britain has been shaped to a great extent by the predominance of male leaders who see ‘modernist’ interpretations of the position of Muslims in Britain and discourse on Islam as a threat to their legitimacy.”[135]

[58] Finally, it must be remembered that I only deconstruct here one particular discourse which I deliberately selected due to its espousal of an integrative British-Muslim identity. Missing here is a plethora of identities constructed by other media that do not subscribe to this representation of British Muslim, and might flatly and explicitly (as in the case of Khilafah) contradict it. Thus, the discursive identity presented in this study cannot be said to have achieved any degree of hegemony over British-Muslim consciousness(es).

[59] Nevertheless, despite these limitations, it can still be legitimately argued that the enculturating mode of identity and interaction with the majority culture, if it prevails, possesses enormous empowerment potential for British Muslims. This is because it engages both the West and Islam on their own grounds, and in their own terms. To put it more clearly, these media construct an identity that simultaneously redefines conceptions of the West and Islam, all the while embracing both. It shows how there are multiple ways of being Western, being Muslim. As such, it occupies what Khan, writing on Canadian Muslim women (and adapting from Bhabha), calls a “third space,”[136] a space which contests both hegemonic notions of the “West” (for example, Europe is white and Christian) as well as “Islam” (for example, non-Muslim ruled lands are dar al-harb). This is also the space where the project identity – an identity which, as previously delineated, simultaneously redefines a collective’s position in society as well as the overall symbolic structure of society to allow for the realisation of that new self-definition – is fully formed. For an increasing number of believers, this approach/space/project is fundamental because it saves them from a perpetual existence on the peripheries of the imagined nation, their own communities within it, as well as the global umma. It allows them to move into, and comfortably inhabit, the centre of these overlapping identity sites–a centre where there is, it seems, a British Muslim identity “beyond beards, scarves and halal meat.”