British muslim identity

Though individual genres have been studied in relation to postcolonial criticism, there has not, until now, been a critical intervention that considers what it is about genre itself that makes it useful for a postcolonial project and for writing contemporary Britain. This study analyses four new genres of literature and film that have evolved to accommodate and negotiate the changing face of postcolonial Britain since 1990. It reads shifting genre boundaries as a means of understanding shifting constructions of Britishness, arguing that both genres and nations have unstable boundaries that are, at least imaginatively, redrawn when the implications of postcolonial texts and contexts are taken into consideration. Questions of categorisation are always political, as borders are redrawn and criteria of inclusion and exclusion are negotiated, so genre fiction and film provide a unique space for exploring a contested national identity.

Written by six Muslim women who are academics, journalists and activists, this report explores the feelings, thoughts, aspirations and desires of second and third generations of British Muslims. Commissioned by British Muslims for Secular Democracy (BMSD), this report has had excellent media coverage.

For my chapter, I conducted a series of interviews looking at Muslim identity which reveal that pressures such as dysfunctional families, socialising, integrating, marriage issues, and sexuality can cause psychological and emotional problems which affect well-being, and that young Muslims are not getting the help they need.
This report raises pertinent questions: What are the welfare provisions for Muslims in Britain? And what are their inhibitions in accessing those services, such as counselling.

Looking into the well-being of young Muslims in Britain, this report has revealed that there is an unaddressed crisis in the community, with young Muslims unable and unwilling to access support for mental health. Many are content and thriving, but many are not and for too many years these citizens have been investigated through the security paradigm. As Jenny Roe writes in the Lancet: ‘statistics on child and adolescent mental health by ethnicity are woefully lacking the UK, with the last comprehensive national study done 14 years ago’.

Young people across the UK - Muslim or not - are in the grip of a mental health crisis, but generic research is inadequate because it fails to take into account the multiple pressures on children in minority families.

When British teenager Shamima Begum’s citizenship was revoked on February 19th 2019, advocates of citizenship withdrawal justified the response in the name of protecting national security. But at the heart of Begum’s banishment is the question of ‘Britishness’, a national identity pivoting violently on gender, race, religion, and more recently, liberalism. In this paper, I will critically examine the factors which led to her denationalisation. I argue the rationale for Begum’s banishment is entrenched not only within her racialised and gendered essence as the unassimilable ‘Other’, a British-Muslim woman of Bangladeshi heritage. The canonisation of liberalism into ‘British values’ discourse has added yet another prerequisite to Britishness under which only liberal subjects can claim the privilege of belonging. Viewed through this lens, Begum’s cardinal sin then as a woman no less, was not her endorsement of ISIS. It was her rejection of a distinctly British ‘muscular liberalism’ which failed on its masculinist crusade to convert and liberate her from Islam’s mediaeval anti-Enlightenment, only to ensnare her within its own illiberal web.

In recent years, Black British Muslim communities has witnessed the growth of a new religious and social institution, known as the Third Space. The ‘Third Space’ refers to an institution that seeks to fulfil the particular needs of a faith community which are not being met by mosques, schools or traditional religious institutions. A Third Space can be a community centre, library, or social media networking site. In the context of Black British Muslims, Third Spaces place a greater focus on meeting the social, cultural and spiritual needs of its participants. Broadly speaking, the Black Muslim Third Space seeks to provide a safe space for black/mixed-race Muslims to come as they are, free of religious, racial and cultural discrimination. In this presentation, I will provide a brief overview of the Black Muslim Third Space, why it exists, and the importance of online Third Spaces going forward, particularly for young people.

License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0  This short working paper looks at Bexhill town centre and the seafront promenade architecture at Marina Arcade and Marina Court Avenue. In particular the intercultural relations between the secular seafront architecture and Mughal-Indian (Hindu) and North-African Muslim influences.      License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (2021 revised edition).

A pdf of my book Sufis Salafis and Islamists: The Contested Ground of British Islamic Activism. It helps to explain how three globally influential religious paradigms have shaped the religiousity of second and third generation British Muslims as well as contextualising  current debates about religious radicalisation.

Two opposite trends in religiosity or, more broadly, spirituality, have been gaining in strength lately. On the one hand, increased levels of piousness and devotion are being observed. On the other, the number of people identifying themselves as “non-believers” or “secular” is on the rise. This paper is an attempt to characterize a segment of society that fits into the latter group, albeit in a heterodox way: namely “cultural Muslims,” who break the traditional dichotomy between Muslims (“us”) and not-Muslims (“them”), introducing the concept of a gradual identity. My analysis will aim to determine both who cultural Muslims are and how they are perceived by both religious Muslims and disaffiliates from Islam, and will attempt to evaluate their place in the public discourse on religion and in British society in general.

Diasporic Muslim women living in the West undergo a series of labels and stereotypes for a long time. The humiliation further developed ever since 9/11 and 7/7 incidents. In literature too, Muslim women are being caricatured and misrepresented by the dominant literary figures that include Muslim writers such as Salman Rushdie, Hanif Kureishi, Monica Ali, and so on. Apart from this well-known and dominating group, in the past decade of the current century, a new genus of contemporary British Muslim writers seems to have come into sight with an impressive list of novels. This burgeoning group of writers explores their experiences and choices in a unique manner that was rarely heard before. While living in the sturdily Islamophobic Western society, they uphold religious beliefs and  practices in a sharp contrast to the prevailing group of British Muslim writers who arguably participate in the neo-Orientalist venture of distorting and misrepresenting their religion and culture.

In numerous European countries, there has been a wave of prohibitions
against Islamic practices ranging from ritual animal slaughter
to the building of mosque minarets, from male circumcision to
women’s headscarves. Moreover, religious conservatives among the
Muslim minority are almost completely excluded from the national
legislatures. As such, there is a “representation gap” between conservative
Muslims and their leftist representatives. This ideological
disconnect between the Muslim constituencies and their representatives
can be observed in almost every continental European country,
and it seems to persist across time. Despite major improvements
in some countries over the last decade, Muslim minorities are still
underrepresented in the national legislatures of most Western European
countries. Unfortunately, the descriptive representation of
Muslim minorities, that is, Muslim-origin MPs in the national legislatures,
does not necessarily translate into the substantive representation
of the religiously specific interests of the Muslim minorities.

Globalisation, postcolonialism and migration have contributed to a more complex perception and interpretation of space as an intercultural encounter. Space thus has become not only just a geographical entity but also a comparative and conceptualized literary term that occupies an important position in understanding identity formation. In Lela Aboulela's literary works, the notion of space and identity formation is fraught and problematic within this polemic interaction between Orient and Occident. From a postcolonial feminist critique, this essay explores dislocation and the significance of spaces as a cultural entity in immigrant identity formation in Aboulela's Minaret (2005). I explore the areas of cultural encounters where space and identity become a reflection of the complexities of postcolonial diasporic realities through the main character in the novel.

In Maps for Lost Lovers (2004), Kaukab is the mother of a Pakistani family living in a close-knit community of an English town. Although she feels isolated in the British society due to her poor knowledge of English, she is presented as a dominant woman in her household. Nadeem Aslam introduces an ambivalent character that must confront opposite discourses in the aftermath of the murder of her in-law and his lover. The aim of this article is to show not only how Kaukab fulfils the category of the subaltern proposed by Spivak but also how she subverts it. For such purpose, the context and the role of the reader will be key aspects to define in which way the unspeakability of the subaltern can be challenged and still remain a subaltern.

This obituary offers some personal memories of Fuad Nahdi (1957–2020), based on my interactions with him, as well as some reflections on the historic importance of Q-News, the British Muslim periodical Nahdi founded, which was published between 1992 and 2006, partly based on short impromptu interviews done with some who worked on the magazine with Nahdi. In Q-News, Nahdi created the most consequential UK Muslim publication of its day and helped shape how a whole generation of young Muslims saw their identity and faith. He should be remembered alongside Abdullah Quilliam (1856–1932) and Dr Kalim Siddiqui (1931–1996) as among the great journalists-cum-activists that British Islam has produced.

April 23 marks National Shakespeare Day, an annual celebration commemorating the life of one of the world's greatest poets and playwrights - William Shakespeare.  In 2011, 1st Ethical Charitable Trust commissioned a research paper highlighting the significance of his life and works for British Muslims.

Radicalisation, prévention, désengagement, dé-radicalisation : quatre mots-clés intrinsèquement liés, devenus, dans les sphères académiques, étatiques et sociétales concernées, des termes courants depuis les attentats du 11 septembre 2001. Face aux attaques terroristes récentes en France et ailleurs, ainsi qu’au vu de la participation croissante de djihadistes européens dans le conflit en Syrie et en Iraq, les sociétés européennes sont amenées à traiter le phénomène d’une façon plus globale pour remédier à cette situation dangereuse. Nous avons tenté avec ce rapport une analyse qualitative des différents mesures et programmes de prévention, dé-radicalisation et désengagement mis en œuvre dans trois pays européens avec des modèles politiques et sociétaux différents : l’Allemagne, la Grande Bretagne et le Danemark. Notre but était d’éclairer les diverses approches de la société civile ainsi que des institutions étatiques, de recenser les similarités et différences stratégiques existantes dans les trois pays et d’évaluer leur efficacité et durabilité. Dans ce sens ce travail constitue d’une part un aperçu international et général des différents projets de prévention et dé-radicalisation. D’autre part, il met l’accent sur des thèmes plus spécifiques et essentiels, dont la dé-radicalisation en prison, l’intégration des communautés musulmanes locales dans le travail de la prévention et de la dé-radicalisation et le rôle des femmes. L’objectif est d’identifier ainsi les initiatives les plus prometteuses pour la France ainsi que les problèmes récurrents qui y sont liés.

In the absence of clear-cut guidance from the primary sources of the shari‘a, how do Muslim scholars derive a workable religious praxis in changing circumstances and which authorities do they invoke in the process? This article explores possible answers to these questions by conducting a detailed analysis of a debate between two groups of Deobandi scholars in Britain over establishing the correct time for the commencement of morning (Fajr) and the onset of fasting for Ramadan. I argue that besides the primary sources, these Deobandi scholars invoke alternate forms of extra-scriptural authority such as the weight of precedence deriving from the akabir (elders) of the Deobandi tradition, as also their reliance on modern scientific knowledge. The article highlights the complex interplay of factors which determines the way that Muslims in Britain negotiate the practice of their religion in new socio-cultural milieu and the way they attempt to incorporate these changes within the parameters of an established religious discourse.

License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0  A short history essay that details the development, between 1995 and 2013, of a seaside town mosque residing in southern England: Eastbourne, East Sussex, UK. (The full 40-page extended article is available on Amazon.co.uk.) This work is a 2021 revised edition.

Cottee’s book, in essence, is a moving and empirically rich collection of tales of human suffering.  Beyond the intergenerational incomprehension hinted at by Farhad above, one also senses the basic tension of the autonomous post-Enlightenment subject struggling against the structures and strictures of religious conformity.  Yet the epiphany of disavowal proves to be a double-edged sword; the liberating wave of relief and exuberance (sometimes accompanied by bouts of gung-ho hedonism) reported by many respondents soon gives way to an aching farrago of angst.  Beyond searing stabs of guilt (for the pain caused to loved ones), festering anger (for “a crushing awareness of lost time and missed [sexual] chances” (p. 68)), frustration (at ongoing inhibitions and damaged relationships) and residual anxiety (what if I’m wrong, after all?), the prospect of inhabiting a godless universe stripped of all metaphysical telos proves, for many respondents, daunting.  Jean-Paul Sartre’s pithy maxim can well be paraphrased here: “[The ex-Muslim] is condemned to be free.”  Or, in the anguished cry of Nietzsche’s madman: “God is dead.  God remains dead.  And we have killed him.  How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers?”  The apostate’s existential co-ordinates, which had once seemed so precise and immovable, are now scattered across the distant reaches of nameless galaxies.

This chapter makes two arguments. The first is that William H. Quilliam's Masonic and esoteric background shaped both his understanding of Islam and his leadership of the Liverpool Muslim community. From the time of his conversion through the last trace of his activities in England using the Quilliam name, the connection between Islam, Masonry, and esotericism played a significant role in the prominent Muslim's religious career. By examining Quilliam's involvement with various Masonic and esoteric groups, and setting this involvement within its late-nineteenth century context, I show why Quilliam saw Islam as deeply connected to the Craft and why he frequently brought together these different currents within the Liverpool community. In addition to exploring the roles of Masonry and esotericism within Quilliam's own life and activities, this chapter also looks at the larger context of the mixing of Islam, Masonry, and esotericism in the Euro-American world at the turn of the century. This chapter argues, in fact, that Quilliam played a role in the development of a broader, Euro-American cultural current in which esotericists and esoteric-leaning Masons came to place a high value on Islam. In the twentieth century, this current not only influenced Islamophilia within numerous non-Islamic esoteric organizations, it also produced a variety of Islam-based movements with strong elements of both esotericism and Masonry, including the Sufi movement of Inayat Khan, the Traditionalist-based Sufism of Guénon and Schuon, and several early African American Muslim groups. By highlighting Quilliams' intellectual and organizational links with these various movements, this chapter reveals the emergence of an international network of esoteric-Masonic Islamophilia that has since the late 1800s has transformed Western religious culture.

This one-day conference brings together academics and activists to explore issues of leadership, authority and representation in British Muslim communities.  Who speaks for British Muslims?  How is authority construed, constructed and exercised in an age of mass media and the Internet?  What internal and external factors shape leadership structures and modalities of representation for British Muslims living as a minority in a culturally Christian but largely secular social context?  Where do leaders come from in a decentralised religious tradition lacking a priestly hierarchy?  How do government discourses and media representations impact upon dynamics of leadership and authority in British Muslim communities?

This conference has been organised in conjunction with a special issue of the international journal Religions jointly edited by Professor Sophie Gilliat-Ray and Dr Riyaz Timol.  Delegates may be invited to submit a paper for publication, subject to normal peer-review procedures, after the event.  The deadline for final paper submissions is 25 April 2019.

In The Map of Love, Ahdaf Soueif describes the liberation of the post-colonial subject as a palimpsest of competing claims, histories and painful dismemberments that cannot be separated from painful memories. She weaves post-colonial perspectives on history, memory and hybridity and writes a revisionist and contrapuntal history of Egypt. In this post-colonial novel, Soueif relates two cross-cultural love stories, which are set in different centuries, and structures them as doubles. The story of Anna Winterbourne and Sharif al-Baroudi passes in England and colonial Egypt after the Omdurman War (1898) and continues till 1913. The story of Isabel Parkman and Omar Ghamrawi takes place in contemporary Egypt and USA in 1997. Amal, sister of Omar, integrates the stories and acts as the author-character. In this historically dense novel, the story moves between colonial past and post-colonial present to emphasise overlapping histories, national insecurities and new forms of colonialism.

The integration of British born young Muslims into wider society is one of the most topical issues challenging policy makers in modern Britain. As citizens with diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds they have aspirations, values and interests which may seem difficult to accommodate within a Western European social and political context.

For an intelligent and well informed analysis of the dynamic nature of social and political integration, we need to listen to the voices of young British Muslims, males and females; and record the diversity of their experiences as citizens. Understanding their motivations and political concerns are key factors in illuminating their identity and predicting their political action. The challenge for informed policy-making is to avoid simple stereotyping of faith communities and examine more deeply the key drivers of identity formation and political engagement of young British Muslims.

Drawing upon extensive fieldwork as an insider in a British Deobandi darul uloom, this paper explores questions around power, authority and identity in such institutionalized religious settings. Taking as the departure point the actual observation of a broken light bulb, the paper explores the cultivation of adab and embodiment and its relation with Foucault's concept of biopower, Bourdieu's religious habitus, and Anderson's imagined communities. Debates around who should replace the bulb relates to how the authority of the 'ulama is presupposed by the belief in the sharia to offer guidance independent of time, and the paper looks at how modernity poses challenges to this belief. The time taken to replace a bulb provides a fascinating lens to look at the inter-generational shifts and contestations taking place in the seminary. How to change a bulb allows contrasts between modern pedagogy with traditional forms, and the " recitational complex " (Messick, 1992) with the concept of suhba (discipleship) in Islam. Finally, the paper will provide for the first time an analysis of the social and religious processes that lead a young person to a darul uloom and what the 'ulama themselves see as their roles, and what they view as the challenges facing British Muslims.

Maps for Lost Lovers (2004) presents Kaukab, a Pakistani woman living in the close-knit community in an English town. Although she feels isolated in the British society due to her poor knowledge of English, she is presented as a dominant woman in her household. Nadeem Aslam introduces an ambivalent character that must confront opposite discourses in the aftermath of the murder of her in-law and his lover. The aim of this paper is to show not only how Kaukab fulfils thecategory of the subaltern proposed by Spivak but also how she subverts it. For such purpose, the context will be a key aspect to define in which way the unspeakability of the subaltern can be challenged and still remain a subaltern.

Primary data was used to analyse the views and opinions held by Pakistani-Scots in Greater Glasgow, Scotland, about whether they prefer Celtic or Rangers Football Clubs. The question is important, sociologically, due to Celtic’s Irish-Catholic-Republican sympathies and Rangers’ British-Loyalist-Unionist perspective, neither of which seems to naturally gel with the Muslim orientation of Glasgow’s Pakistanis (8.1% of the city’s population). The research method was a survey of 51 respondents, all ethnic-Pakistanis ordinarily resident in Greater Glasgow, and a total of 5 interviews. Results reveal that the majority of survey respondents prefer Celtic over Rangers and 86% would support a new Asian/Muslim club. But how it would be formed, whether all players would be Asian, and how it would be received were all hotly-debated topics.

The volume as a whole provides a welcome corrective to increasingly frequent rhetoric that pathologises young Muslims as either a threat to national security or a disgruntled underbelly of delinquents, dropouts and deadbeats. It also challenges the stereotypical characterisation of a monochrome British Muslim community inhabiting a rigid, static structure called Islam. But, alas, it seems the exorbitant price-tag will restrict its readership to those with access to university libraries. Read in conjunction with other recent publications, such as Maruta Herding’s Inventing the Muslim Cool or Shelina Janmohamed’s vivacious
Generation M, this book documents an important shift in intergenerational dynamics as hybridised modes of cultural expression drawing simultaneously upon multiple repertoires of lived experience develop organically in the Western Muslim diaspora. Alternatively, one also detects a basic synergy with the poignant yet provocative invective delivered by Afua Hirsch (2018) against the unspoken structures of racial and class hegemony that continue to permeate British society. A diaspora-born generation, clearly, has come of age amidst an aching vortex of questions concerning ethnicity, identity and belonging. The
contributions gathered in this volume shed light on how Muslim-inflected responses play out in the ordinary life experiences of young British citizens.

Sevket Hylton Akyildiz, Introducing Seaside Muslims,
Journal of Muslims in Europe, Vol. 4, Issue 2, 2015, pp. 197-222.


The majority of British Muslims live in cities such as London, Leicester, Birmingham and Bradford—and academic research thus far has reflected a city and post-manufacturing town emphasis. This paper investigates the as yet undocumented history and mosque politics of Muslims living in the small town of Eastbourne, East Sussex, using participant observation and unstructured and semi-structured interviews. Firstly, I conceptualise my case study group by highlighting some differences found in a small town in terms of the origins of its Muslims, their ethnic heterogeneity, and residential spatial distribution. Secondly, I explore mosque politics in terms of mosque planning, public reactions to mosque rebuilding, and mosque management issues.

This paper provides a reading response to Francis Robinson's "The British Empire and Muslim Identity in South Asia." Specifically, this reading discusses the major ways in which British rule in South Asia affected Muslim identities, the impact of Islamic reformist and revivalist movements on Muslim society, and how the concepts of community and the individual changed during the time of British rule in India.

This obituary offers some personal memories of Fuad Nahdi (1957-2020), based on my interactions with him, as well as some reflections on the historic importance of Q-News, the British Muslim periodical Nahdi founded, which was published between 1992 and 2006, partly based on short impromptu interviews done with some who worked on the magazine with Nahdi. In Q-News, Nahdi created the most consequential UK Muslim publication of its day and helped shape how a whole generation of young Muslims saw their identity and faith. He should be remembered alongside Abdullah Quilliam (1856-1932) and Dr Kalim Siddiqui (1931-1996) as among the great journalists-cum-activists that British Islam has produced.

This project aims to answer the following research question: How has the development of a securitised lens impacted on Hizb ut-Tahrir in Britain and Denmark? To achieve this, it will explore the construction of a securitised lens, the impact of securitisation processes and the difference between responses within Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) in Britain and Denmark through the following three sub-questions: 1. How do we know securitisation is an issue for Hizb ut-Tahrir in Britain and Denmark? 2. How can we understand securitisation as creating patterns of repression through perception? and 3. What are the long-term effects of this experience of perceived repression in the different contexts? It aims to do this through an approach that brings together the two theoretical discussions of social movement theories and securitisation theories through the nexus of repression. This enables the project to understand patterns of repression and mobilisation response, as well as respond to the limitations of both theoretical facets – social movement theory’s difficulty in understanding subtler, long-term and multi-spatial forms of repressions and securitisation theory’s disposition to assume power only travels downwards, from monolithic repressor to repressed, without an interactive response amongst all actors.

The project took an empirical approach grounded in interaction with members, ex-members and those who operate in and around security – something considered particularly important in the study of an organisation that is semi-clandestine in its operation. This included attendance at demonstrations, public talks, da’wah stalls, Friday prayers and mosques talks, as well as halaqat (private study circles), social events, meetings at coffee shops, family meals, weddings and even participation in football practice, with fieldwork conducted between 2015 and 2018. Conceptually, the thesis is designed to fill gaps in contemporary study of the Islamic Activist organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir, updating the literature on an organisation that study has largely neglected in recent years but has become more relevant with the addition of discourse about ‘extremism’ in European counterterror. However, this thesis aims to offer a basic framework not just for understanding Hizb ut-Tahrir or even Islamic Activism, but for any forms of activism that are problematised under the increasing rubric of ‘extremism’, and explore how different groups from diverse movements change tactics in response to the threat or perception of repression by policies, practices or policing under the counterterror lens.

It suggests the following findings: 1. Increased securitisation has been instrumental in the decline of HT in Britain and Denmark; 2. However, securitisation has had different effects in the UK than in Denmark, leading to adaption and institutionalisation in the British context and a continuation of contention in the Danish context; and 3. This is because different perceptions of repression have been created by the use of different securitising mechanisms, suggesting that the concept of counterterror securitisation needs to be reconsidered as a more interactive and diversified process, to account for the quanta of securitisation and mobilisation responses produced.

The mosque occupies a central position in the social as well as religious life of Muslims. It is not only a place of worship where rituals are performed, but also serves as a social space where Muslims take part in welfare activities. The design and architecture of the mosque have local as well as global influences, representing religious, economic, and esthetic dimensions of Muslim social organization. Therefore, Muslims' association with the mosque has much significance from social, political, and economic perspectives. Based on an ethnographic example, this report aims to highlight the use of mosque space in the cultural context of rural Pakistan. In addition to discussing the sociospatial relationships around the mosque, I discuss how Muslims' beliefs about the world and the afterlife shape these relationships.

This article explores how Syrian refugees were portrayed in the British press following the death of Aylan Kurdi, a Syrian toddler who drowned along with his mother and brother while trying to reach Europe. It begins with a literature review of previous studies, which have explored how refugees, asylum seekers and migrants (RASM), and Muslims are portrayed in the British press. This review reveals that, although there is clearly overlap between how RASM and Muslims are represented, there has been little in depth examination of what happens when the two concepts are brought together, such as in the case of Syrian refugees. This article analyses three representative British newspapers and argues that the British press largely avoids identifying Syrian refugees as Muslim while identifying violent groups, which have caused Syrian refugees to flee, as Muslim. The article argues that the British press portays them through an existing discourse of migration, which places them within debates about immigration and Britain's place within the European Union. In the articles analysed, Syrian refugees were rarely identified as Muslims and were instead primarily described as innocent civilians whose religion was not specified. Rather than presenting Syrian refugees as moderate Muslims in opposition to the violence of Islamic State, Syrian refugees' religion is largely overlooked. This denotes the tendency of the British press to present a homogeneous Islam stripped of its internal diversities and debates, through the failure of identifying Syrian refugees as Muslims who oppose the violence and values of Islamic State. Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011, over four million Syrians have fled their country and registered as refugees (UNHCR 2015). The majority of refugees have settled in the surrounding countries of Egypt, Iraq, Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon; however, an increasing number of people have begun to travel to Europe (UNHCR 2015). This has steered extensive British media coverage of the civil war in Syria and Europe's response to those fleeing from it. This media coverage spiked following the death of Aylan Kurdi, a Syrian toddler who drowned alongside his family while trying to reach Europe on the 2 September 2015 (Yazkan et al. 2015: 187). This article aims to explore this spike by using content and discourse analyses methods described below to survey depictions of Syrian refugees in three national British newspapers. Initially, it outlines the methodology and assesses the current literature concerning portrayals of refugees and Muslims in the British press. Although there is extensive literature on both subjects, there has been no in-depth exploration of how Syrian or Muslim refugees are characterised by the British press. The article analyses how Syrian refugees are depicted in the British press and explores whether they are primarily presented as Muslim refugees fleeing from conflict or as migrants-the latter referring to people who move from one place to another for work or better living conditions. This analysis will demonstrate that the British press avoids identifying Syrian refugees as Muslims and instead primarily refers to Islam in connection with the violent terrorist group, Islamic State, which has caused Syrians to flee their country. Comparatively, Syrian refugees are primarily identified as migrants by both liberal and conservative newspapers; newspapers place them within a wider discourse of migration. This wider discourse concerns larger debates regarding Britain's place in the EU and concerns about immigration.

"The foreigner has usually been labelled as the other. Nadeem Aslam (Gujranwala, 1966) proposes a reversal of this in his novel Maps for Lost Lovers (2004). Set in an unnamed English town (or rather an unnamed town in English), Dasht-e-Tanhaii and the close-knit Pakistani community that live there become the focus of the novel. In addition, the English landscape is exoticised by including constant references to species from the Subcontinent. Therefore, the reader is immersed in a setting in which the weather is the only reminder of England.
The aim of this paper is to show how Aslam relates otherness to the native, so that the English are seen as the other. In fact, this subversive movement responds to the diasporic subject’s perception of England as a hostile environment. In addition, white England’s absence points out the fact that the cultural differences are two-way so that the white English are unjustly accused, reflecting the situation in which Pakistani migrants are usually placed.
Furthermore, the novel also portrays the little existing interaction between the migrant community and the rest of the society. Thus, references to the white world will be scarce but of a high significance. Special attention will be paid to Kaukab, the mother figure in the protagonist family who still reproduces the colonial discourse in which she perceives herself as inferior to white women but she still concentrates her efforts on concealing it."

This new volume seeks to showcase the latest research into Muslim political participation both in terms of electoral politics and civil society initiatives.
Muslims play a prominent role in British political life yet what do we actually know about the involvement of British Muslims beyond the existence of a handful of Muslim MPs? What is unique about political participation in Muslim communities? All the major parties actively seek to court a ‘Muslim electorate’ but does such a phenomenon exist? Despite the impact that Muslims have had on election campaigns and their roles in various political institutions, research on this topic remains scant. Indeed, much of the existing work was couched within the broader areas of the participation of ethnic minorities or the impact of race on electoral politics. The chapters in this volume address this lacuna by highlighting different aspects of Muslim participation in British politics. They investigate voting patterns and election campaigns, civil society and grassroots political movements, the engagement of young people and the participation of Muslims in formal political institutions.
Written in an accessible style, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of political participation and religious studies.