6 - Muslims in the United Kingdom
from Part III - A Case Study and Conclusions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2013
Summary
You're Muslim, remember; you'll never be English.
Mr Major promises us that 50 years from now, spinsters will still be cycling to communion on Sunday mornings – more like the muezzin will be calling Allah's faithful to the High Street mosque.
AROUND THE EU, the impression held by large segments of society is that there is something intrinsically different about Islam that makes it difficult to integrate Muslims into European societies. Some of these segments of society are non-Muslim, and are reluctant to allow such integration to take place; others are Muslim, as represented by a Muslim father's advice to his son in the first quote above.
These sentiments raise a number of issues relating to plural identities and their compatibility with modern-day Europe and Islam, and these have been discussed at a theoretical level earlier in some detail; however, all these discussions were more abstract than particular. Such issues find variable expressions in member states, and it is these expressions that most affect the lives of individuals and communities. In this regard, the UK represents an illustrative case study, having a long history of interaction with Muslims and being the home of a large Muslim population.
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- Information
- Muslims of EuropeThe 'Other' Europeans, pp. 143 - 176Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2009