Muslim Britain. In the melting pot

A distinctively British sort of Islam is slowly emerging

IN NORTH ILFORD, an affluent Tory-voting part of eastern London, there is a mosque where people from Pakistan used to run the show. Recently some Muslims from Somalia turned up. Things were awkward at first, but now the newcomers have been fully accepted; ties of faith have prevailed over difference of culture.

At Islamic Channel, a television station in London, the young sound assistants chat in Urdu, the language of their south Asian forebears, as they record an interview with Brian Paddick, a senior London policeman. But when the channel's director, whose native tongue is Arabic, walks in, the language switches seamlessly to English, interlaced with Muslim greetings.

For a new generation of British Muslims, such behaviour represents the stirrings of a new identity whose common denominator is not ethnic origin, but religion. Viewed in the rosiest of lights, this could be a sign that British-born Muslims are “coming of age ” - -rising above the linguistic and sectarian differences that constricted earlier generations.

But this month's attacks on London laid bare a community that lives in limbo between Yorkshire and Pakistan, and revealed the limits to that process. Especially in the north of England, Muslim communities from different regions have reproduced the ideological and social divisions of their home countries - which has hindered their ability to function as British citizens, let alone prosper.

Because specific Muslim groups settled in specific British cities, there was little pressure at first to leave the ghetto. Immigrants from Mirpur, part of Kashmir, settled in Birmingham and Bradford from the 1950s onwards, to be joined later by those from Punjab and north-western Pakistan. Some northern English cities, like Huddersfield, attracted Indian Muslims, especially from Gujarat. Bangladeshis flocked to east London, while North Africans and other Arabs went to parts of west London.

From different places, there came different religious trends; among immigrants from Pakistan, most adhered to the Barelvi tradition, which reveres local saints and shrines and stresses the eternal presence of the Prophet Mohammed. Many Indian Muslims preferred the Deobandi school which puts less emphasis on the prophet, or on any other human figure, and more on the worship of God. Among British-born Muslims, this trend has proved more robust. Among the Arabs of London, some of the most devout have been attracted by the Muslim Brotherhood teachings which combine purist theology with a longing for Islamic forms of governance and law, at least in Muslim countries. In addition to all these shades of Sunni Islam, Britain hosts small Shia groups from many coutries, including Iraq.

If a distinctively British variety of Islam is fully to emerge, it will be out of the encounter between these traditions. Both in universities, and through the huge social melting-pot of London, such an encounter is beginning to happen, among a generation whose common language is English and which is keener on a shared Muslim identity than on shades of difference.

But will this generation be more “moderate ” - -as non-Muslims would define the term - than its predecessors? Yes, if moderation means the willingness to dispense with cultural taboos, and to participate in democratic politics.

But, as young British Muslims gain in sophistication, they still tend to see world politics through an Islamic prism, identifying with their co-religionists in any place where conflict is raging. Soon after America's invasion of Afghanistan, a poll of British Muslims found that among those over 35, some 30% saw religion as their main source of identity. For those under 35, the figure was 41%.

A distinctly British sort of Islam is slowly emerging in the United Kingdom.