Product Description

This book explores of how the events of September 11 and the subsequent 'war on terror' have impacted on the lived experiences of British South Asian Muslims in their religious and ethnic identity, citizenship, Islamophobia, gender and education, radicalism, media and political representation. Specialists in sociology, social geography, anthropology, theology and law examine the positions of South Asian Muslims from a variety of analytical perspectives and methodological approaches. The book draws on post-9/11 primary empirical material while other contributions are more discursive, providing valuable polemics on the current positions of British South Asian Muslims.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #346196 in Books
• Published on: 2005-03-21
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Review
'A wide-ranging and invaluable guide to the highly complex and diverse nature of British Muslims from South Asia. Those wishing to get to the heart of Muslim communities should read this book.' - Professor Ziauddin Sardar, author of Desperately Seeking Paradise: Journeys of a Sceptical Muslim; 'Plunged into a post-Rushdie and now post-September 11 world British Muslims have had to face urgent issues of Islamophobia, gender, identity and media representation. Dr Tahir Abbas' excellent collection has brought together some of the leading authorities to help make sense of these issues in a rapidly changing and even threatening world'. - Professor Akbar Ahmed, Ibn Khaldum Chair of Islamic Studies and Professor of International Relations, American University, Washington DC, USA; 'We are at an important moment in the process of integration between British society and its Muslim communities. The events of 11 September 2001 focused attention on questions which had been simmering but only very carefully placed into the public debate. With increasing vitality, this process has come into the open, often in surprising and usually in surprisingly constructive ways. This collection of papers is a major contribution to that debate and will help move it forward.' - Jorgen S. Nielsen, Professor of Islamic Studies, University of Birmingham; 'This essential collection brings a variety of important new data, informed insights and innovative perspectives on key issues affecting British Muslims today. It is a highly welcome and important contribution to the subject.' - Professor Steven Vertovec, Professor of Transnational Anthropology, University of Oxford and Director of the ESRC Centre on Migration, Policy and Society

About the Author
Dr Tahir Abbas lectures in sociology and is director of the Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Culture at the University of Birmingham. He is a former senior research officer with the Home Office and research fellow in the University of Central England Business School. The contributors are specialists in the fields of sociology, social geography, anthropology, theology and law, based at various universities in the UK.

Customer Reviews

"South Asian Muslim Communities: Leading lights in Political struggle from 1970s & not just since 1990s or post 2001!
This book is an excellent guide to making sense of the highly complex and diverse nature of British Muslim communities that had originally migrated from South Asia. As someone who had identified as being "Asian" and with Asian Youth Movements (AYM's) politics and after the post-Rushdie 'identity crisis' of the left & my own identification with being a "Muslim" activist since 1990 and even much more pronounced since 2001 (9/11) events! It is welcome relief to read the analysis of leading authorities who write about us Muslims and the burning issues of Islamaphobia, gender, identity and media representation and remembering my own small contribution to the debate through "Facing the Book" (Satanic Verses Controversy) in May 1990 on British Television.

I found the discussion and analysis on political alliances of young South Asian Muslims with the left during the second Gulf war anti-war demonstrations - as an indicator of what drove these second generations Muslims aged 20 or over to protest against the war. Yet, for the older second generation Muslims like me aged 40 plus - who participated in protests against racism through the AYMs in which in which we united across communities, between black people, the working class and all progressive peoples- black and white are powerful legacies of secularism when Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus and Christians worked together in the struggle for justice. Many AYMs had majority Muslim membership and nowadays (2004) around 1.6 million Muslims in Britain.

Many of us were inspired by the anti-colonial movements, socialism and the black power movement of the United States; the AYMs spoke out against, not just racism, but wider exploitation and outrage. As Ron Geaves states at (p74): "...The political alliances forged by the Stop the War may be typical of modern politics, where number of identities are fleetingly taken on as alliances are formed that may not survive the particular issue..." It may be true that the issue of that Stop the war & alliances formed has not survived totally but the issue of racism has survived and the legacy of what the AYMs were in the 1970s and 1980s became powerful examples of political movements influenced by black politics without the overriding identity of religion or faith.

It is these issues that I felt were missing from this book and there some references to them indirectly and it would be useful to do further research on forging of political alliances with South Asian communities across the board without focusing on Muslim
Communities - who obviously form the majority of the South Asian settled in post-war Britain.

Overall, I found the book to be constructive and very wide-ranging in bringing politics, anthropology, theology, sociology and social geography to further contribute to the debate and move it forward.

Young, British and Muslim
Please note that this excellent book is not written by Jon Snow, who writes the foreword. The author is Philip Lewis who also wrote Islamic Britain published in 1994.