{"id":36126,"date":"2016-10-17T03:00:37","date_gmt":"2016-10-17T07:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=36126"},"modified":"2016-10-16T08:34:10","modified_gmt":"2016-10-16T12:34:10","slug":"islam-in-britain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2016\/10\/17\/islam-in-britain\/","title":{"rendered":"Islam in Britain"},"content":{"rendered":"

At Samizdata<\/em><\/a>, a look at a new book covering the Islamic communities of Britain:<\/p>\n

In the book Medina in Birmingham, Najaf in Brent: Inside British Islam<\/em>, the author \u2013 a BBC radio producer (boo, hiss) \u2013 attempts to provide an overview of the various strands of Islam in the UK. Her aim is not to tell us what to think but simply to provide the facts \u2013 what are they called? how many of them are there? where so they come from? what do they believe? etc. It is up to us, the readers, to draw conclusions.<\/p>\n

Along the way there are a number of surprises. One of them is how different Islam is from Christianity. You would expect them to be rather similar given that they are both book-based, mono-theistic religions that revere both Abraham and Christ. Not a bit of it.<\/p>\n

For example, in Christianity there is usually a close relationship between denomination and building. In Islam (at least in the UK) it is far more vague. A sect might be said to be \u201cin control\u201d of a mosque, the implication being that that control is temporary and could be lost. Many influential Muslim organisations such as Tablighi Jamaat<\/em> and Jamaat-e-Islami<\/em> have no mosques at all or very few.<\/p>\n

Another is that the largest two sects in the UK are the Deobandis and Barelwis. No, I\u2019d never heard of them either. For the record they are both Sunni (one definitely Sufi the other arguably so) and both originated in British India. It is worth pointing out that for the most part Bowen focuses on Sunni Islam but that is hardly surprising given that Sunnis vastly outnumber Shi\u2019ites both globally and in the UK.<\/p>\n

Another is that interest in Islam seems to be a second-generation thing. The first generation brought their Islam with them but seem to have regarded it as something they did rather than thought about. The second generation are much more inclined to read the Koran, take it seriously and ask questions. Even so, the most influential Islamic thinkers still tend to be based abroad.<\/p>\n

I said earlier that it is left up to the reader to draw his own conclusions. So what does this reader conclude? Well, my biggest takeaway was that despite there being many strands of Islam and many weird and wonderful doctrinal disputes within Islam, there is no \u201cgood\u201d Islam. The best you get is \u201cless awful\u201d Islam.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At Samizdata, a look at a new book covering the Islamic communities of Britain: In the book Medina in Birmingham, Najaf in Brent: Inside British Islam, the author \u2013 a BBC radio producer (boo, hiss) \u2013 attempts to provide an overview of the various strands of Islam in the UK. Her aim is not to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,4,11],"tags":[86,47],"class_list":["post-36126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-britain","category-religion","tag-criticism","tag-islam"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9oG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36126"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36127,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36126\/revisions\/36127"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}