Islam in Britain

This paper is based on a chapter in Islamophobia: A Challenge For Us All, compiled and published by the Runnymede Trust in 1997.

Summary of concerns

Islam in Britain, like Islam in the world, has many facets. British Muslims have links with a range of cultural, regional, ethnic and national traditions, are involved in British society and public life in a range of different ways, and are influenced by a diversity of strands and schools of thought within Islam itself. In Islam, as in other faiths and systems of belief, there are lively explorations and debates. Key topics include the practical interpretation and application of historic teachings; the distinction between what is authentic, abiding and essential in the inherited traditions as distinct from localised and an accident of history; the training, responsibilities and authority of leaders, and how to prepare the younger generation for the future.

Our concerns in this chapter were well summarised in a submission which we received from a local authority which has many Muslim residents:

"Currently, many young South Asian Muslims grapple with complex issues of identity of which there are many facets, religion being one. Young people may be influenced easily, as they are alienated by society at large: also because of high unemployment levels, a lack of educational opportunities and racial issues. Fundamentalist groups may identify this problem and exploit it by attempting to influence disaffected youths ... The strategy to counteract Islamophobia should offer genuine alternatives to young people, and counteract the influence of the extreme groups that seek to recruit young impressionable individuals, usually leading them up a blind alley and causing considerable damage to the cause of Muslims and to the well-being of British society." Our overall intention in the chapter is twofold: to counter Islamophobic assumptions that Islam is a single monolithic system, without internal development, diversity and dialogue, and to note and stress some of the principal dangers which Islamophobia creates or exacerbates for Muslim communities, and therefore - as the quotation above stresses - for the well-being of society as a whole. The chapter has two main parts. First, we recall the development of Islam in Britain over the centuries and, more especially, over the last 30 years. Second, we look to the future. We note in this connection two sets of issues, to do respectively with pressures and influences on young Muslims and the concerns and agendas of Muslim leaders.

Historical summary

There has been a Muslim presence in Britain for at least 300 years. The East India Company recruited seamen from Yemen, Gujarat, Sind, Assam and Bengal, known by the British as lascars, and a number of these created small settlements in port towns and cities in Britain, particularly London. Also there were a number of Muslim businesses in the nineteenth century, of which one of the best-known was the fashionable, 'Mohamed's Baths' founded in Brighton by Sake Deen Mohammed (1750-1851). By 1842 three thousand lascars were visiting Britain every year. Following the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, seamen originally from Yemen settled in small communities in Cardiff, Liverpool, London, South Shields and Tyneside and set up zawiyahs (small mosques or prayer rooms).

These were the settings for the rites of nikah (marriage), aqikah (birth), khitan (circumcision) and Janazah (funeral), and for the celebration of Eid. One of the best known leaders was Sheikh al Hakimi, the imam of the Cardiff zawiyah, who died in 1934. In the 1920s and 1930s a large proportion of the South Asian seamen in the
merchant navy were Muslims and a number of them stayed on in Britain after the second world war. Many of these were the pioneers who, ten or so years later, acted as initial points of contact and sources of assistance for the substantial chain migration from East and West Pakistan which took place in the 1950s.

Also groups of Muslim intellectuals emerged in Britain in the late nineteenth century. In the period 1893 to 1908 a weekly journal, The Crescent, was distributed from a base in Liverpool. Its founder was William Henry Quilliam (known within the Muslim community as Sheikh Abdullah Quilliam), who by profession was a lawyer. He had become a Muslim in 1887, following time spent in Algeria and Morocco, and as author of the influential The Faith of Islam was famous throughout the Islamic world.

The Liverpool Muslim community set up the Islamic Institute and the Liverpool Mosque in Broughton Terrace, the Medina Home to care for children and orphans, the Muslim College, and a Debating and Literary Society with weekly meetings. In 1889 Britain's first mosque was established, at Woking in Surrey. The funds for this were largely provided by Shah Jehan, the ruler of Bhopal, India. It was the base for the journal Muslim India and the Islamic Review, re-named as the Islamic Review in 1921, and people associated with it included Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din, a barrister originally from Lahore who was seen by the British press as the spiritual leader of all Muslims in Britain; Lord Headley, who had worked in India as a civil engineer and had converted to Islam in 1896; Rt Hon Syed Ameer Ali, an Indian jurist and well-known Islamic scholar, and to the present day the only Muslim privy councillor ever; and Abdullah Yusuf Ali and Marmaduke Pickthall) known for their influential translations of the Qur'an.

In 1910, a group of prominent British Muslims, including Lord Headley and Syed Ameer Ali, met at a central London hotel and formally established a fund, the London Mosque Fund, to finance the building of a mosque in the capital. In 1941 the East London Mosque Trust purchased three buildings in Commercial Road, Stepney, and
converted them into London's first mosque. In the 1980s the East London Mosque moved to its present site in Whitechapel Road. In the meanwhile, major purpose-built mosques had been built in Birmingham, Glasgow and Manchester. The site for the Regents Park mosque in London was donated by the British government in 1944, in recognition of a similar donation by the Egyptian government to the Anglican community in Cairo. The building itself was completed in 1977. The first large mosque in Bradford was established in Howard Street in 1959. Migration of Muslims to Britain on a large scale began in the 1950s. In 1951 the probable Muslim population of Britain was about 23,000. Ten years later it was about 82,000 and by 1971 it was about 369,000(1). Migration mainly involved men in the first instance. In Bradford in 1961, for example, all but 81 of the 3,376 Pakistanis in the city were men (2). Migration was encouraged because there were major labour shortages in Britain, particularly in the steel and textiles industries of Yorkshire and Lancashire, and particularly for night shifts. The workers who came were needed by the economy, were actually or in effect invited by employers, and as Commonwealth citizens had full rights of entry and residence, and full civic rights. They came principally from the Mirpur district of Azad Kashmir in the country which at that time was known as West Pakistan (now Pakistan), or from the North West Frontier region of Pakistan, or from the Sylhet area of north eastern Bangladesh, known then as East Pakistan. In all of these largely rural areas there was a longstanding tradition of young men migrating for lengthy periods to other countries or regions to raise money for their families back home. The migration to Britain was thus from a rural setting to an urban one as well as to a different country and culture, and involved an increase in wealth and income as well as a change of occupation. In the case of the Mirpuris it was affected by the building of the Mangla Dam on the river Jhelum in the years following independence, which displaced the populations of some 250 villages, about 100,000 people altogether. Many of the villagers received compensation money, and some used a portion of this to finance their journey to Britain.

Migrant workers came also from India. About a sixth of the Indian-background people who came to Britain in the 1950s and 1960s were Muslims, a high proportion of these being from three districts of Gujarat - Baroda, Surat and Bharuch. Gujarati-background Muslims are influential in several northern cities in Britain through their involvement in the management and leadership of mosques, seminaries and Muslim schools. About 15 per cent of the 150,000 Asians who came from East African countries in the late 1960s and early 1970s were Muslims, with their family roots in Pakistan or Gujarat. They included Muslims belonging to the Ismaili tradition of Islam. It was also in the 1970s that substantial communities from Turkey and Middle Eastern and North African countries began to be established. Latterly, substantial Somali, Iranian, Arab and Bosnian communities have been established in many cities, and there are considerable numbers of students from Malaysia. There are currently at least five thousand converts to Islam within Britain(3), about half of whom are of African-Caribbean origin. Overall, we estimate the present Muslim population of Britain to be somewhere between 1.2 and 1.4 million. The basis for this estimate is explained in Appendix C .

More than half of all British Muslims have their roots in Pakistan. (Table 1) shows the ten local authority districts with the largest numbers of Pakistani residents in 1991. Almost one in seven (14%) of all Pakistanis, lived in Birmingham and almost one in ten (9.5%) in Bradford. The other main areas of settlement were Rochdale in Lancashire, Kirklees in West Yorkshire, and Newham and Waltham Forest in East London.

Table 1: the ten districts with the largest numbers of Pakistani residents, 1991

Table Two is similarly about the distribution of the Pakistani population. It shows also, however, the main areas of Bangladeshi settlement. It interestingly links population distribution to parliamentary constituencies, and estimates the numbers of voters (i.e. persons over 18) at the time of the 1997 general election. It lists the parliamentary constituencies in which at least 8% of the voters were of Pakistani or Bangladeshi background.

Table 2: The constituencies in which voters of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin constituted at least 8% of the electorate in the 1997 general election.

Source: Ethnic Minority Data Archive: University of Warwick.

The age-profile of South Asian communities in Britain is different from that of the majority population. A higher proportion is under twenty and a lower proportion is over sixty. Because of these demographic facts, the communities are bound to increase in size over the next twenty years, both absolutely and relatively. By the year 2001 there are likely to be over 700,000 people of Pakistani background in Britain, of whom two thirds will be British-born (4). It has been estimated that the Pakistani population will eventually stabilise towards the year 2020 at about 900,000, and the Bangladeshi population at about 360,000(5). The total Muslim population at that time is likely to be approaching 2,000,000.

The development of Muslim identities

In the early days most Pakistani migrants to Britain saw themselves as temporary visitors who would one day return to their country of origin. By the 1960s, however, they began to see themselves as settlers rather than as temporary residents. They established families whose future, it was increasingly entirely clear, was going to be spent in Britain. A major spur to permanent settlement was the Commonwealth Immigration Act of 1962, for it was as a direct result of this that families had to choose, in effect, between being together in Britain or divided for lengthy periods between Britain and Pakistan. In five years between 1961 and 1966 the Pakistani population grew by over 400 per cent, from about 25,000 to 120,000. Between 1973
and 1981 a further 82,000 people came as settlers, almost all of them being the dependants of men already here.

The voucher system introduced by the Act consolidated kinship and friendship patterns. It also involved the issuing of 'B vouchers', as they were known, for people with professional backgrounds, and contributed therefore to the more rapid creation of a Muslim middle-class than would otherwise have happened. In the period 1965-1967 vouchers were issued to 1,264 doctors from Pakistan, 577 teachers and 632 engineers and scientists. South Asian Muslims also created a wide range of small businesses, of which the 8,500 or so Bangladeshi restaurants up and down the country (usually referred to confusingly as 'Indian' restaurants) are particularly well-known to non-Muslims. Incidentally, the Bangladeshi catering industry now employs more people (about 60,000) than steel, coal and shipbuilding combined, and has a yearly turnover of £l .5 billion (6).

The spur for self-employment in the service sector was provided by the restructuring of manufacturing industries in the 1970s, and the disappearance of many of the jobs in northern Britain for which South Asians had originally been recruited. It was affected also by religious and cultural factors. A survey in the 1990s found that two thirds of self-employed Pakistani people mentioned that being their own boss meant it was easier for them to perform their religious duties, and suggested that their strong religious faith gave them confidence to set up on their own despite a lack of formal qualifications and poor access to finance. (7)

As both a reflection and a reinforcement of the transition to seeing themselves as settlers, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis established in the 1960s a wide range of community organisations. They began at the same time to be more self-consciously Muslim than previously in their sense of identity, and more observant in the practice of their faith. Factors affecting this strengthening of religious belief and practice included:

• The desire to build a sense of corporate identity and strength in a situation of material disadvantage, and in an alien and largely hostile surrounding culture;

• The desire, now that communities contained both children on the one hand and elders on the other, to keep the generations together, and to transmit traditional values to children and young peopl

• The desire for inner spiritual resources to withstand the pressures of fascism and Islamophobia, and the threat to South Asian culture and customs posed by western materialism and permissiveness.

Further, the choice of Muslim as a self-definition involved a defiant rejection of racist stereotypes in the majority population ("No more Paki. Me a Muslim," says a character in a novel set in the 1980s (8)), an opposition to 'Western' values ("pleasure and self-absorption isn't everything," the character continues), the shedding of an identity based on a specific country or region of parental origin, and the embracing of an identity which was seen on the contrary as international and global, surpassing both Britain and South Asia. Researchers at the Policy Studies Institute in the mid 1990s asked a wide range of British people about the importance of religion in their lives. 74% of the Muslim respondents said that religion was 'very important'. This compared with around 45% for Hindus and Sikhs, and only 11% for white people who described themselves as belonging to the Church of England. Amongst Muslim men over the age of 35, four in five reported that they visit a mosque at least once every week.

The increased influence of Islam in the politics of Pakistan and Bangladesh in the 1970s, and the increased influence in international affairs of oil-exporting countries, most of which were Muslim, contributed to Muslim self-confidence and assertiveness within Britain. In addition, a sense of community strength grew through the 1980s from successful local campaigns to assert Muslim values and concerns, for example for halal food to be served in schools and hospitals, and from the extremely high-profile campaign to protest against the insulting vilification of Islam, as Muslims in Britain almost unanimously saw it, perpetrated by Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses.

The building of mosques

Before 1964 only seven new mosques had been registered in Britain. But in 1964 itself a further seven were registered and over the next decade there were about eight new registrations each year. From 1974 onwards new registrations were running at 25-30 a year (9). The creation of mosques was both a cause and a consequence of increased Muslim observance and self-definition. In the first instance most mosques were converted from existing buildings. But increasingly from the 1970s onwards they were purpose-built. In autumn 1996 it was estimated that there were 613 mosques in Britain, of which 96 were purpose-built (10). In most of them the imam is from a South Asian background and there is a majority of South Asian people on the mosque management committee.

Mosques are essentially places for prayer. In all the larger ones there are five acts of corporate worship each day, every day. The jum'ah prayers and sermon at noon on Fridays are particularly important for Muslims and involve large numbers of worshippers. Some of the larger mosques in Britain operate also as cultural centres and community centres, and as vehicles for social welfare and philanthropy, since it is through the mosques that zakat (Muslim alms-giving) is channelled. They organise visits to the sick and bereaved, and play a significant role in providing religious education classes in order that children may be nurtured in the Muslim faith, and that Muslim beliefs and culture may therefore be transmitted and maintained. Latterly a number of imams in Britain have begun to assume pastoral roles, broadly similar to those of a Christian chaplain, in hospitals, prisons and universities.

In the 1960s mosques such as the Howard Street Mosque m Bradford catered for Muslims of all traditions, ethnicities and geographical regions. But as communities became more established and confident, they began to define and develop their religious identity in terms of Islam's principal strands and schools of thought, particularly those influential in South Asia. Also they began to reflect and re-create cultural, regional and linguistic diversity in South Asia and indeed in the worldwide Muslim community (ummah) generally. Coordinating organisations such as the Council for Mosques in Bradford and similar organisations in other cities, and national bodies such as the UK Action Committee on Islamic Affairs (UKACIA) and the recently formed Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), all determinedly non-sectarian, have helped the diversity to be dynamic rather than divisive, and have consistently stressed that Islam is a single world wide faith and that Muslims belong essentially to the world wide community of the ummah. However, anyone wishing to understand the dynamism, and through such understanding to have a sense of the future for British Muslims, and of how Islam in Britain is likely to develop, needs to appreciate some of the diversity within Islam as well as its essentials and fundamentals.

Most non-Muslims know if they know anything at all about Islam, that the religion has two main strands, Shi'a and Sunni. They may know also that these strands began to develop within a hundred years of the Prophet Muhammad's death in 632; that Shi'a Muslims are in the majority in Iran and Iraq (though not in Iraq's government and ruling elite) but not in any other Muslim country; that about nine tenths of all Muslims in the world are Sunni, and that this proportion is even higher amongst South Asian Muslims in Britain. They realise, it follows from these points, that to understand religious influences affecting the development of Islam in Britain it is more important to appreciate different strands within Sunni Islam, particularly in South Asia, than differences between Sunni and Shi'a. But most non-Muslims in Britain have only the haziest notion or no notion at all, of what these are. The key distinctions between Barelwis and Deobandis, for example, and the key features of the Tablighi Jamaat and Jamaat-i-lslami movements, are a closed book to most non- Muslims.(11) It is not the task of this report to elucidate these distinctions and features. There is clearly a need, however, for an authoritative brief account for non-Muslims of Islam's principal strands and schools of thought. Such an account would valuably counter the false belief that Islam is monolithic, without internal diversity and debate. Someone with extensive experience of teaching about Islam within church settings in Britain told us that he finds that there is no more powerful way of dispelling the image of Islam as monolithic and threatening than that of explaining the rich diversity in Islam's various strands and schools of thought.

Pressures and influences on young Muslims

Young British Muslims, like all other young British people, shape their identities within parameters set by the wider world. They seek a sense of their own worth and contribution within family, peer-group, neighbourhood and community affairs, and within the institutions, systems and organisations (particularly those relating to education and employment) to which they belong. The influences and pressures on them come from a range of different, often conflicting, directions. In the notes which follow we recall briefly seven of these.

1) The family. Muslim families, like all families, vary in their approaches to child rearing and in the freedoms they permit to teenagers, and vary in their own loyalties and sense of belonging. Young Muslims, like all young people at all times and in all places, may be impatient or critical regarding some of their parent's loyalties and priorities.

2) The mosque. Up to the age of 14 most Muslim children attend a local mosque school. The pedagogical style is typically different from that which they encounter at their mainstream school, for it puts much emphasis on learning the Qur'an in Arabic by heart and on oral repetition (tartil/tajwid), and gives relatively low priority, in the first instance, to discussion and intellectual understanding. The imams and other teachers at the mosque schools mostly received their own education, both secular and religious, outside Britain. There is an increasingly widespread perception in Muslim communities that imams are not equipped by their own training to help young British Muslims cope with issues such as unemployment, racism and Islamophobia, drugs, the attractions of Western youth culture, and so on. By and large mosques do not provide educational activities for young people over the age of 14, and thus are not well placed to support them if and when they question, as many in their mid and late teens are inclined to do, the pedagogy which they encountered at the mosque school and the interpretations of Islam which were presented.

3) Muslim youth organisations which seek to promote understanding of the Muslim faith within the setting of a non-Muslim country such as Britain.

Their publications are in English, as are the meetings which they organise. For many young Muslims there is a disparity, they feel, between what they hear and learn from such organisations and what they were told at the mosque school or by their families (12). At the very time that they become more devout and observant in their own personal Muslim beliefs and in their determination to live according to Muslim principles, they feel that the mosques and imams are often unable to respond to their particular needs and concerns. Later we quote from a recent essay competition for Muslim students, to show the kinds of religious, social and ethical issues which concern them.

4) Extremist Muslim organisations.

These too use English in their publications and meetings, and are implicitly or explicitly critical of aspects of traditional Islam which they consider to be cultural accretions rather than essential. Also their discourse is frequently anti-western and they have closed and hostile views of other religions. Their references to Judaism and Israel are indistinguishable from crude anti-Semitism. Their phobic hostility to all things western is a mirror image of western Islamophobia and indeed helps to feed it. Their simplistic messages can be attractive to young people, since they appear at first sight to give a satisfactory picture of the total world situation (the West is the root of all evil) and appear to have a clear practical agenda (resistance and struggle), However, they have far fewer active supporters than the mainstream media claim.

5) The Islamophobic messages of the mass media.

These often have the effect of undermining young people's self-confidence and self-esteem, their confidence in their parents and families, and their respect for Islam. A young Muslim teacher working in a secondary school wrote to us that "Muslim youths of the third generation are ignorant of their religious identity because of the prejudice surrounding them. The distorted image portrayed by the media is so profound, it is believed by Muslim elders that 60-80% of young Muslims will never practise Islam other than ... rituals."
Islamophobia makes extremist organisations, however, even more attractive. An editorial article in a Muslim periodical has put the point as follows:

"For many youngsters, Islam is proving to be a genuine way out, a way to make sense of the bewildering maelstrom of currents surrounding them. For many others, it is a reactionary grab at something they see as a source of opposition. The irony is that by demonising Muslims the mass media is also erecting a romantic notion of opposition to mainstream culture." (13)

6) The largely secular culture of mainstream society, encountered through the education system and the mass media, and in employment and training.

Mainstream western culture is largely indifferent to all forms of religious commitment, not only to Islam. Also, at the same time, it seems distinctively hostile to Islam, since so many Muslims meet rejection when they apply to mainstream employers for jobs, and since so many are unemployed. The Policy Studies Institute's recent research showed a clear decline in religious observance amongst younger Muslims. (14)

7) The street culture of the young people themselves.

There are trends amongst young British Muslims, particularly those who are unemployed or who expect to be unemployed, towards territoriality and gang formation, and towards anti-social conduct, including criminality. In the prison population of England and Wales the numbers of Muslims increased by 40% in the period 1991-1995. Such trends exist everywhere in the world where young people feel dispossessed and disadvantaged. Amongst other things social exclusion is a fertile seedbed for extremists.

To be concerned about British Muslims is to be concerned with Muslim youth, for around 70% of all British Muslims are under the age of 25. We have sketched above seven main directions in which they are pulled, or by which they are repelled, as they seek to make their way in the world. The tensions, threats and attractions raise issues for the whole adult generation - their parents and relatives, their teachers, lecturers and youth workers, and their religious and community leaders. In a later chapter we consider the implications for the mainstream education system. We continue and conclude the present chapter by considering the impact of Islamophobia on Muslim leaders and elders. But first, here is an extract from an essay competition, to show some of the debates and discussions which young British Muslims have with each other.

Questions for young Muslims

The following questions were set in an essay competition organised in summer 1995 by the Federation of Student Islamic Societies

1 "Islam is a restrictive and authoritarian religion that prohibits individual freedom". Defend the case of Islam.

2 Is membership of any particular Islamic group a necessary condition for engaging in effective da'wah (invitation to Islam)? What are the advantages and disadvantages of being a member of a group when giving da'wah?

3 Should Islam condone practices such as genetic engineering, egg transplantation, etc, as examples of scientific progress for the benefit of humanity, or should such practices be condemned as giving scientists the opportunity to play God?

4 Is democracy a hypocritical concept which has no place in Islam as claimed by some, or is it a misunderstood concept that is compatible with Islam and something Muslims could benefit from.

5 Muslim communities in the UK have adopted and display many different cultures originating from the East and from the West. How much of this adoption of cultures is correct and within Islamic rules and regulations?

Tasks and concerns of Muslim leaders

In our consultation paper we asked whether Muslim organisations and leaders have distinctive responsibilities in relation to the overall task of combating Islamophobia. Below we quote some of the responses to this question which we received, drawing mainly on submissions from Muslim individuals and organisations. First, we cite some words of warning on this general theme from one of the submissions which we received:

"Islamophobia is a classic demonstration of the formula that 'prejudice + power = discrimination '. We must recognise, therefore, that this issue, like all racism, is the responsibility of those with power, rather than a problem for the Muslim communities to overcome themselves"

This warning cannot, in the present context, be over-emphasised. Although Box 11 is addressed to Muslim leaders its principal importance within the framework of this report is in stressing points which those with power in wider society need to bear in mind when intending to help, and when doing their best not to hinder, the tasks which Muslim communities themselves undertake.

Tasks for Muslim organisations

Dispelling myths and misunderstandings

"We do not under-estimate the role Muslims themselves must play in the process of generating goodwill in the wider community. Racism and Islamophobia have many similarities and the underlying cause for both is only one - ignorance. Muslims are aware that they must take the first initiative to reach out to the society around them to dispel the myths and misunderstandings."

A Muslim organisation in London

Accessing established power structures

"The ways in which Muslim opinion leaders can assist are, in my view, the same as those with influence in any other community, whether the minority or majority. They need to assist their communities to develop so that they can access established power structures. They should encourage participation in democratic politics and encourage respect for the values of other communities, recognising that life in all societies requires some measure of compromise."

A city councillor in the West Midlands

Assurances of goodwill

"Muslim communities and their opinion leaders have a responsibility to guide their followers as to how they should react to cases of Islamophobia. The Qur'anic teaching on this is quite clear: (41:34) 'Repel evil with what is better; then will he between whom and thee was hatred become as it were thy friend and intimate' In respect of other people they have the duty to speak out and correct misapprehensions, as well as give assurances of the goodwill of Muslims towards others."

A national Muslim organisation

To educate themselves

"Muslims should be educated about British culture and Islamic principles - how Islam can be applied practically in modern day Britain... Muslims must take responsibility to educate themselves to reason and distinguish culture from Islam and be able to apply principles of Islam to modern day life. The problem has been compounded as the imams have generally been called from the Indian sub-continent with no understanding of issues facing the British population and therefore have been unable to properly guide and lead British Muslims, especially the young".

A Muslim organisation in the West Midlands

Visibly active

"The Muslim community has a great responsibility in promoting the teaching of Islam and its values. Many mosques and Muslim organisations have dismally failed because they do not have the vision, purposefulness and cohesion to deal with the challenge of living with others. To some extent, Muslims have contributed to the negative image of Islam. Often some of the opinion leaders have played to an eager media gallery and have used intemperate language to articulate knee-jerk reactions, alienating public opinion in the process. Muslims must be visibly active in the political, social, educational, economic and cultural activities of the country. Parents should actively encourage their children towards such participation".

A national Muslim organisation

Both message and method

"There can be no doubt that Muslims have an important, indeed pivotal, role in correcting Islamophobia... Islam is both a message and a method. For example, Muslims should resist responding to provocation in kind but should repel evil, in the words of the Qur'an, by 'that which is better'. Reasoned discussion and persuasion is ultimately the only way forward in promoting understanding and cooperation."

A national Muslim organisation

Specific tasks which were mentioned to us, within the approaches and perspectives outlined above, included:

• creating and developing a national body to represent British Muslims to government, and to other public bodies;
• the production of more high quality books about Islam for schools and libraries, and persuading major publishers to employ Muslim writers for this purpose
• taking steps to ensure that imams and other religious leaders have training and expertise in helping young British Muslims to cope with the problems and pressures of modern secular society;
• encouraging Muslims to train as teachers, but only as teachers of religious education;
• undertaking training in media relations;
• providing awareness-raising seminars and training for journalists;
• getting involved in making a range of TV and radio programmes, and writing articles for the press;
• setting up media monitoring projects, and routinely complaining about inaccurate, misleading or distorted coverage;
• setting up voluntary welfare projects to help non-Muslims as well as Muslims;
• making common cause with non-Muslim organisations to secular bodies;
• setting up Islamic financial institutions to fund apprenticeships and training, and to encourage more Muslims to start well-planned business initiatives.

We hope that Muslim organisations will continue to discuss and implement ideas such as those listed above, and that they will receive assistance, understanding and support from non-Muslims, as appropriate. We recommend that Muslim organisations should discuss this report and identify the recommendations on which they themselves can take immediate initiatives. Further, we recommend that both locally and nationally Muslim organisations should press for the implementation of the recommendations in this report.

Information about the full report from which this extract is taken can be obtained from the Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia at bmicom@freenet.co.u.k. The report itself can be ordered through any bookshop (ISBN 0 9022397-98-2). A progress report entitled Addressing the Challenge of Islamophobia, published by the Commission in late 2001, can be downloaded as a PDF document from elsewhere on this website.

Notes

1. Ceri Peach, "The Muslim population of Great Britain', Ethnic and Racial Studies, ml 13 no 3, 1990.

2. Cited in Philip Lewis, Islamic Britain: religion, politics and identity among British Muslims, I.B. Tauris 1994, page 16.

3. Jargon Nielsen, Muslims in Western Europe, Edinburgh University Press, 1991, page 43.

4. As estimated by Muhammad Anwar, 1996, page 131.

5. Estimated by Roger Ballard and Virinder Singh Kaira. The Ethnic Dimension of the 1991 Census, pages 14 and 16.

6. Figures cited in an article by David Bowen, Independent on Sunday, 3 March 1996.

7. Hilary Metcalfe Tariq Modood, Satnam Virdee, Asian Self-Employment, Policy Studies Institute 1996.

8. The Black Album by Hanif Kureishi, Faber and Faber 1995, page 107.

9. Figures given by Jorgen Nielsen, director of the Centre for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations. Birmingham, November 1991
.
10. Figures given by Sher Azam, formerly president of the Bradford Council for Mosques, in the newspaper promoting Islam Awareness Week, 23-29 September 1996.

11. These strands of thought are described in detail by, for example, Philip Lewis (1994) and Ron Greaves (1996). There are interesting references also in Kepel (1997) and LeBor (1997). Full details in the bibliography in Appendix D.

12. This point is discussed at length in 'British Muslims and the Search for Religious Guidance' by Philip Lewis, in J. Hinnells and W. Menski, eds. From Generation to Generation: religious reconstruction in the South Asian diaspora, Kegan Paul 1997.

13. Quoted in a paper by the Revd Molly Kenyon, The Bradford Disturbances: healing the wounds, Bradford 1995. Also we draw on this paper in our account of sources of pressure and influence on the young.

14. Modood and Berthoud (1997), tables 9.9 and 9,13.