Abstract
This article examines the Muslim organizational field in Britain based on interviews with activists. It applies a political opportunity perspective to address the degree to which organizations’ aims and activities have been shaped by the contextual factors confronting them, or more independently, by ‘bottom-up’ beliefs and commitments drawn from their relationships to the community. Specifically, the empirical part examines, first, how activists perceive media representation as an opportunity or constraint, and second, how their organizations have constructed collective identities in order to advance their aims within the UK context. Generally, we find that organizations have come together using under a broad ascriptive ‘Muslim’ label that works across denominational, national and ethnic differences. Not only is this orientation a direct response to the pressures of community cohesion policies and discourses but it also has a strong independent and faith-based component in serving the community and its social needs. The resultant Muslim organizational field is strongly acculturative to UK society, but remains critically independent of governing authorities. Finally, organizations have responded to what they see as poor media representation of Muslims by proactively engaging in media work.
Introduction
It is well documented that the visible presence of Islam within liberal democratic societies has led to resonant public debates about the position of Muslim minorities across Europe. Contentious debates about supposed ‘clashes of civilizations’ between Muslims and the West, the presence of religious symbols in public and state arenas, and whether ‘multicultural’ policies and the attribution of particularistic group rights are beneficial or detrimental have been highly visible on news and policy agendas (Statham et al., 2005; Koopmans et al., 2005). Public discourses carried by mass media have been regularly cited as an important factor in shaping a hostile political climate towards Islam as a religion and Muslims as a group. Other articles in this edition have tried to empirically test some of these hypotheses by analysing media contents while contributing to understanding of the public representation of Islam and Muslims, comparatively, across several European countries. However, it is also important to look at how this mediated political reality interacts with the sets of social relationships that it depicts and how it might shape the opportunities of people represented. Obviously, the degree of mass media coverage and the way that Islam and Muslims are depicted has an impact on the life chances of people from that community, as well as the way that non-Muslims are likely to perceive and treat them. This article fits into the special issue by trying to gain access into how the mass-mediated political climate operates as a contextual factor that can shape the behaviour of those who try and advance the political interests of the Muslims community, i.e., representatives from Muslim associations.
Given the complexity arising from national differences in policy approaches for cultural diversity, as well as cross-national differences in the compositions and types of ethnic and religious ‘Muslim’ groups, we restrict our study to one country, thereby holding the political environment constant. We study the UK case, whose multicultural policies recognizing some degree of cultural and religious rights have been seen as a political environment that is relatively conducive to ‘Muslim’ claim-making, compared with other European countries, but whereby ‘Muslims’ are often depicted publicly in ways that places them in opposition to the norms of the UK state (Statham et al., 2005; see contributions in this edition for further cross-national comparisons). Rather than examining the perceptions of ordinary members of the public who are Muslims in the UK, we focus on the group of associations that have formed to politically represent and advance the interests of the Muslim community. Specifically, we want to examine how activists have tried to negotiate and work with the political climate over Islam in the UK that faces them, first, in the form of mass media representation, and, second, in the state-sponsored ‘community cohesion’ policies which try to shape a political environment where different ethnic and religious groups will ‘bridge’ and work together.
Before starting, we add the caveat that discussing the multi-organizational field of Muslim associations itself risks reification, because of the wide heterogeneity and diversity (homeland country, ethnic, denominational) of organizations that define themselves as representing Muslims. As we wanted to capture the narrative of their perceptions of the UK political climate facing them, we aimed to interview activists from a broad range of different types of organization and operating at different political institutional levels (local, city, national); see below. In this sense, we want to tell their ‘story’, including minority experiences and views, rather than claim that we are offering a representative view of Muslim associations.
First, we ask activists what impact they think that the UK media coverage of Islam and Muslims has in shaping the scope of their activities and their potential for ‘successfully’ achieving their goals on behalf of their constituency. To what degree is the ‘mediated politics’ (Bennett and Entman, 2001) over the relationship between Muslims and Britain perceived as a constraint or opportunity, and how have they tried to work within this mediated and politicized environment?
Second, we examine how organizations from the Muslim associational field have transformed their collective identities and actions in their responses to the specific field of political and discursive opportunities that have confronted them. To what degree have organizations been shaped by UK state policies and public legitimizing discourses on ‘community cohesion’, or by those from ‘homeland’ or foreign-based states or religious institutions? Alternatively, is the path that the associations have taken better accounted for by ‘bottom-up’ explanations, driven by their desire to provide for their community’s ‘group’ needs, or inspired by their religious faith? In this way, our findings speak to the literature on ‘institutional channelling’ and the mobilization of collective identities by migrants (Ireland, 1994). The associational field is also a competitive environment, both for funding and in some cases for constituents. How have organizations adapted? To what degree have they been able to work together, and what form does this interaction take, given the potential for divisions along lines of faith, ethnic and national background, among the communities that they represent? Finally, they also provide an understanding of the direction in which they see Muslim associational activity moving and its relative contribution and importance to UK civic life.
Political opportunities for ‘Muslim’ associational life
Political opportunities are defined by Tarrow (1994: 85) as ‘consistent – but not necessarily formal or permanent – dimensions of the political environment that provide incentives for people to undertake collective action by affecting their expectations of success or failure.’ This literature emphasizes that levels and forms of mobilization by social movements, interest groups and citizens’ initiatives are strongly influenced by the institutional structure and public discourses of the political systems in which these groups operate.
Building on this perspective, and applying it to acts of mobilization and public claim-making by migrants in their societies of settlement, cross-national comparative research has emphasized the importance of the relative degrees to which, and ways in which, nation-states grant formal access to political and cultural rights that are legitimized by cultural notions of citizenship and national identity carried by public discourses. Generally, these factors have been shown to explain overall cross-national variations in the degree and forms of mobilization by migrants in the public domain (Ireland, 1994; Koopmans and Statham, 1999, 2000; Koopmans et al., 2005). The main exception to this rule has been groups mobilizing with ‘Muslim’ and ‘Islamic’ forms of identification. In the UK, groups were more likely to mobilize as ‘Muslims’ than with the ‘Asian’ identity ascribed to them by official policies (Statham, 1999). In addition, two-thirds of cultural group demands made in the UK used religious identities, and more than six-tenths of these were made by minorities with ‘Muslim’ or ‘Islamic’ identities (Statham et al., 2005). Such findings indicated that, from the side of the society of settlement, the related aspects which define the political context of a state’s cultural pluralism are minority integration policies and the political accommodation of religion.
Religion is an important aspect of a state’s political accommodation of migrants’ cultural difference, which is often overlooked or simply subsumed under a discussion of integration policies. Many liberal states attempt consciously to shape the identification of migrants towards their society of settlement as ‘ethnic’ or ‘minority’ groups, but do not attempt to shape religious identifications in a direct way, not least because they uphold freedom of religious practice. Religion also matters as a form of identification that can shape a Muslim organization’s action in a ‘bottom-up’ way. The global Islamic upsurge is not only a political movement, but also a revival of commitments that have explicitly religious underpinnings (Berger, 1999). It has led to a restoration of Islamic beliefs and lifestyles based on ideas about the relation of religion and the state, women and the moral codes of everyday behaviour that sometimes contradict the ideas of liberal states. Islam is not a ‘homeland hangover’ but a source of identification for second and third generations, who attempt to find their place between the culture of their parents and experiences of discrimination in the societies of settlement where they were born. ‘Muslim’ has become a salient and resilient identity in Europe.
Muslim organizations are intermediaries that try to serve and represent a community while operating within a political environment shaped by contextual factors. First, policies for minorities and the political accommodation of religion define the opportunities and legitimizing discourses facing them from the side of the society of settlement. Second, there may be opportunities for support from outside the UK domestic context, for example support from ‘homeland’ governments keen to retain ties and remittances among the community, or from foreign religious institutions keen to support a specific faith. Third, organizations also have to be appealing to the constituents they represent, so, for example, faith or social provision requirements of the ‘community’ can also be a factor which shapes the direction an organization takes. In the following, we examine how the Muslim organizational field has negotiated the opportunities and constraints confronting it in the UK. First, we briefly outline the policy context it has faced.
The UK policy context facing Muslim organizations: Community cohesion
Historically, UK political elites adopted ‘race’ as a category to address the disadvantage of minority populations caused by discrimination. Race relations politics was extended to Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis under the generic term ‘Asian’, which means that groups with self-identifications that are non-racial, principally Muslims, were served less well by the institutional apparatus (Modood, 1988; Statham, 1999). In contrast to this ‘racialized’ sponsorship of minorities, religious institutions receive little direct state support. Religion is relegated to a matter of private individual conscience within public institutions, but the state does privilege its own Church of England within politics. Several interpretations of the Race Relations Act 1976 have not extended group rights against discrimination to Muslims, although two ethno-religious groups, Sikhs and Jews, have been legally considered ‘ethnic’ groups since 1983. However, over the last decade, there has been an incremental ‘bolting on’ of recognition for and accommodation of ‘Muslims’ as ‘Muslims’ within UK public policy understandings of integration and cultural pluralism.
There have been several policy initiatives targeting issues that are perceived to relate directly or indirectly to the presence of Muslim communities in the UK, including ‘community cohesion’ policies, interfaith dialogue initiatives, efforts to prevent extremism among Muslim youth, and attempts to stimulate more British-oriented forms of Islam. As a result there has been a significant increase in the degree and range of opportunities for Muslim organizations to gain access to positions on state-sponsored consultation forums as representative bodies, and receive public funding, at national and local levels. Among others, examples include the Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board (MINAB) (Lewis, 2011), the government’s Prevent Agenda combating extremism in Muslim communities, and Faith Capacity Building grants (Dhir, 2009).
These policies have been conducted under the rhetoric and ethos of so-called ‘community cohesion’. Initially coined by the Cantle Report, which that responded to riots in northern towns between Muslim and white youths in the early 2000s, the ‘community cohesion’ agenda has become the UK brand of a shift away from multiculturalism towards a more civic universalist understanding of the cultural obligations of citizenship for minorities. Hence the Singh Report 2007 from the Commission on Integration and Cohesion emphasized the ‘need for all communities to speak English’ and flagged up the importance of shared values, expressed through civic pride locally and within the framework of a UK national identity. A variety of community cohesion initiatives have been implemented by local authorities, including Community Cohesion – An Action Guide for Local Authorities (2004: 7), which defines a ‘cohesive community’ as one where: there is a common vision and a sense of belonging for all communities; the diversity of people’s backgrounds and circumstances is appreciated and positively valued; those from different backgrounds have similar life opportunities; and strong and positive relationships are being developed between people from different backgrounds and circumstances in the workplace, in schools and in neighbourhoods.
This shift away from earlier ‘multicultural’ approaches that emphasized benefits of cultural diversity and group differences per se (see Parekh report, 2000), has gathered further momentum since the Conservative-led coalition government came to power in 2010. The Prime Minister, David Cameron, has been willing to join the ranks of European leaders criticizing the perceived ‘failure of multiculturalism’ while advocating national civic pride and community voluntarism under the slogan of the ‘Big Society’. What these approaches share with multiculturalism is a focus on communities and culture, with relatively little reference to the social investment by the state, i.e. conditions that would allow more cohesive communities to develop; at least, that was the view expressed by Cantle, even if it was subsequently ignored by the Labour government (Statham, 2003). This is the UK policy and discursive framework in which our Muslim organizations have had to try to advance their aims and activities.
Sample of organizations
Muslim organizations interviewed.
The Dialogue society has Gulen roots, but when asked the interviewee was keen to stress that the organization is not ‘Gulen’.
Public representation of ‘Muslims’: Working within a mass-mediated political environment
A first aspect we examined is how the Muslim organizations deal with the way that they and their constituencies are publicly represented in the news media and the impact this has on their activities. From one side, media coverage can be the result of journalists’ attempts to select, cover and report on issues which they consider to be of political significance according to a set of ‘news values’ they apply. From another, it can be the outcome of ‘successful’ mobilization attempts by organizations to make their voices and opinions heard about an issue that is important for their constituency (Gamson and Wolfsfeld, 1993).
What interests us is how activists from the Muslim organizational field, who face this ‘mediated politics’ (Bennett and Entman, 2001) over the presence of Islam and a Muslim minority population in the UK, perceive these discursive opportunities and constraints as an contextual aspect of their political environment. How does media coverage of Islam and Muslims shape the scope of organizations’ activities? Is it important, and do their experiences vary? What are the organizations’ perceptions of the representativeness of the ‘Muslim voice’ that has appeared in the UK public domain? Have they taken steps to try and change this? Do the pressures for engaging in ‘media work’ lead to tensions, internally, within organizations and the overall field?
A general point arising from our interviews with activists was the important emphasis that Muslim organizations placed on the impact of media coverage in shaping the context within which they operate. Indeed most interviewees cited ‘the media’ as one of the greatest constraints, either directly or indirectly, that confront their respective organizations’ efforts to survive in a competitive environment. In addition, regardless of the size, type and geographical scope of an organization’s activities, there was a significant congruence in the views expressed, which suggests that there is a shared common experience of dealing with the media’s representation of Islam and Muslims.
A first way in which they consider the media a constraint refers to the interviewees’ perceptions that the UK media are biased in a negative way in its coverage of Muslim issues. Out of all our interviews, only one organization, the Ahmaddyas, 1 failed to raise the media’s coverage and representation of Muslims as an important constraining factor that shapes the potential for their activities. Most organizations either related stories about their own organization’s negative experiences with journalists, locally, or were critical of the UK national media’s coverage of Muslim issues. These factors importantly shaped their organizations’ activities and in particular their efforts to locate their community interactively within UK community life.
Interviewees expressed frustration with journalists, who were seen as limited and lacking in imagination in their coverage of Muslim affairs. Taji Mustafa, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, an organization that has been on the verge of being banned a few times, told a story about how difficult it is to get ‘good news’ stories across: Among our women there is a joke: in the Quakers’ house near here, Hizb-ut-Tahrir women had an event on cohesion and Muslims living with others, inviting non-Muslims, and they had nearly 1000 women … and there was nothing [in the media] on them. If it had been five of them who did something wacky, something that could have complied with the narrative, the papers would have been full of them.
This illustrates a difficulty that Muslim community representatives faced in fitting what they consider to be the full range of their organization’s work and engagement with the wider British community within the available news space and news frames for Islam and Muslims provided by journalists. It seems that they see journalists’ ‘news values’ for stories about Muslims to be restricted to a negative focus and limited to only a few oft-repeated clichéd cultural issues, usually on wearing a burqa or niqaab, or claims about the treatment of women in Islam, 2 instead of the important range of social activities actually undertaken. This view probably does not differ greatly from many other political actors who are covered in the news, which tends to focus on controversial issues that have a high news value, for example because of their presumed ‘novelty’. However, the difference for these Muslim community organizations is that the constituency that they represent is the topic of the media coverage. Because the coverage shapes others’ perceptions of them, the Muslim organizations (and the Muslim communities they represent) bear the direct consequences of this public representation in their activities and relationships in the social world. In this sense, it matters a great deal for the organizations’ efforts to reach their stated wider societal goals whether British Muslims are depicted as ‘bad news’ or ‘good news’.
In addition to concerns about which stories journalists select, most interviewees were also critical about which individuals the media select to represent the opinions of Muslims. It was widely felt that the media’s need for sensationalism meant that to a large extent the national representation of Muslims was left in the hands of a bunch of camera-friendly but unrepresentative individuals. In some cases, it was claimed that the individuals were selected precisely because their views were extreme and not representative of Muslims. For example, more than one interviewee used an analogy of the media’s selected spokesperson being as representative of Muslims as Nick Griffin, the leader of the extreme right-wing British National Party, would be of the majority ‘white’ population. While some interviewees recounted this perceived problem of the media’s selection bias in terms of a conspiracy theory, i.e. the media wanting to represent Muslims in this way, others saw it simply as poor professional journalism due to lack of education, and pointed out that some sections of the UK media were better than others. The following two quotes are representative: British media could be a lot better … how many times has Anjem Choudary been on TV? How is he supposed to be representative? His 16, 20 followers … that is nothing compared to the 2 million Muslims in the UK. It is like giving Nick Griffin a platform, or the EDL
3
person … it gives them a degree of respectability. […] it is not consistent across the board, that is why I do not believe in a conspiracy theory. (Paul Salahuddin Armstrong, Association of British Muslims, AOBM) The national media is terrible. Omar Bakhri Mohammed was interviewed on UK TV even if he had been expelled, to comment on a UK issue. They like calling Anjem Choudhry as he will say everything bad that people want to hear. So, on the whole the media in UK is worrying. […] Nationally, even Channel 4
4
shows stories that are not even stories, they are fabrications, and people believe it. When the audience hear similar things all over again, they may start believing them. It is not openly hostile … but if you only put Nick Griffin on every day, people would think that all British people are like that, so the media can create misconceptions. (Rizwan, BMCS)
Overall, the representation of Islam and Muslims within the publicly visible field of politics carried by the mass media was seen as something that was so important to the organizations’ existence that many had responded by trying to generate effective media strategies to get their own messages across. For example, a number of organizations, including Bradford Council of Mosques, Bradford Muslim Women Council, Islamic Society of Britain (ISB) and Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), set up training courses so that their members could deal with inquiries from journalists. More generally, the aim was to be proactive and achieve media attention for the whole range of activities that an organization undertook for the ‘common good’ of the whole community and thereby counteract what were seen as the prevalent negative narratives and stereotypes about Muslims. Here Ishtiaq Ahmed from the Bradford Council for Mosques discusses media training courses and recounts how adaptation was necessary for the community’s ‘voice’ to be heard publicly: The faith leaders generally are not very good at interacting with the media. There are many positive stories and many positive examples of work which should be shared widely. The media offers us the opportunity to do this. However, often the view is taken that the media is only interested when things go wrong. However, we could do more to be proactive about our relations with the media. All this is about confidence and skills.
In addition to generating media skills internally, many organizations have implemented public campaigns, in part through the Internet, as part of their action repertoire to shape the public representation of Muslims. At the time of our interviews, the case of Usama Hassan was salient. He is an Imam at a London mosque, who was threatened after delivering a sermon on Darwin and evolution in spring 2011. Here the key issue for Muslim organizations (and subsequently for the reporting mass media) was ‘freedom of speech’. Several of the organizations that we interviewed –Bradford Council of Mosques, British Muslims for Secular Democracy, AOBM, ISB and MCB – had participated in mobilizing a public campaign in support of Usama Hassan to defend freedom of speech in mosques. 5 This public campaign was driven in the first instance by an online petition. In addition, the British Muslims for Secular Democracy and ISB invited Usama Hassan to speak at public events that they organized. Such mobilization activities achieved a limited degree of mass media resonance that presented Muslims on the side of ‘freedom of speech’. The point here is that Muslim organizations have adapted their communication strategies over such cases, in a way that has tried to transform and shape the set of issues they are linked to, and the positions that have tended to be attributed to them. At the same time this activism has also had a transformative effect on their internal discourses and the issues they campaign on, within individual organizations and across the field. Nearly all organizations that we interviewed mentioned their stance on the Usama Hassan case as proof of their commitment to a specific set of civic values, including ‘free speech’. Not that they were ever against ‘free speech’, but they have learnt collectively to address the UK public domain in order to try and shape the way they are publicly represented (by others), while getting across their own views (which they often trace back to Islamic inspiration).
Percentage share of claims over ‘social’ and ‘cultural/religious’ issues of minority integration in claim-making over ‘Islam/Muslims’ in UK national newspaper sample 1999–2008 (by newspaper).
: Systematic random sample of claims collected from five newspapers over 10 years.
Our interviewees defined their organizations’ key activities to be in the domain of social equality and welfare, and referred to specific issues, including employment, housing, health and education. Some organizations are also service and information providers. For example, the ISB runs soup kitchens for the poor, while the MCB has a research group on health issues. However, frustration was expressed that the media basically ignore what the organizations consider to be their most important activities and contributions to society. Our interviewees thought this was because their engagement within social activities with the wider UK community did not fit within the media’s established lens for viewing and reporting on Muslims in terms of ‘culture clashes’ and a focus on Islam as a problem religion in the West. Abu Kawser’s experiences as representative of the Becontree Heath Islamic Society are instructive: We approached the local media to report about a bike we gifted to the local police for community cohesion and fight anti social behaviour, but they never published it; instead they created a story about us being anti-Semitic; we explained that was not true, but still after that … they took a statement from the Quran and did not contextualize it. We gave them the context but they did not accept it. They did not mention the community service we are aiming to do … free IT tuition, weekend classes, they completely ignored it, and used the word mosque in every statement, and it does not mention it is a community centre.
Taking this account at face value, we see that the local media’s ‘news framing’ of the organization’s activities is resistant to reporting their social activities and societal contribution, but has a proactive selection and framing bias for depicting them only in religious terms, and in this instance negatively as a cultural problem (anti-Semitic). Beyond this individual case, similar perceptions were expressed by activists from other organizations.
With regard to their advocacy for social issues, it is also important to stress that most organizations did not promote these only as group specific concerns for their constituency, but they often explicitly emphasized the contribution that they aimed to make generally to UK society. While perhaps not quite a demand for ‘social welfare universalism’, it is clear that the organizations consider improving the welfare of Muslims to be strongly contextualized within advancing social welfare for the whole of UK society. As the following quote from Paul Salahuddin Armstrong, AOBM, underlines, the Muslim organizations in the UK embed their social demands in a way that is strongly associative with those sectors of UK society who face common problems. We want to revive the Muslim community in UK, but not only – we want to be constructive of society as a whole. There are a number of problems which are common, education, for instance. There are social and economic problems on all sides, among whites and Asians, and the community is split around in the middle because the communities have been divided by policies. We have a vision of a more united society where everybody is brother in humanity.
It is also interesting to note, considering the UK emphasis on integration policies based on a rhetoric of ‘community cohesion’, that such policies are actually blamed for dividing communities, while social and economic consequences are seen as shared across ethnic differences. In the next section we return to this point about the organizations’ apparent opposition to policies framed in the language of cultural groupness and preference for a more universal and social understanding of community cohesion. Regarding the ‘representation’ issue, we learn that, as well as what the media represent and makes visible of the views and opinions of the Muslim organizational field, it is also important to see which issues, framings and positions the organizations feel are difficult to achieve media visibility and resonance for. Here we see that, for the organizations, the media’s selection and framing tends to exclude coverage of its primary focus on social welfare as well as the way it tries to advance such demands.
Operating within a political environment of ‘community cohesion’
In this section, we examine the degree to which Muslim organizations have transformed their activities, or not, in relation to UK policies for integration and cultural pluralism and the legitimizing public discourses which support them, and other contextual factors, such as support from foreign or ‘homeland’ states and religious institutions, as well as more ‘bottom-up’ motivations, such as their own commitment to represent and serve a religious or ethnic or local community.
Muslim organizations have participated in available policy initiatives to such a degree that they are considered to be a significant feature on the landscape of UK civic life (Birt, 2006). However, what impact has the availability of these opportunities, and the constraints which participation require, had on the transformation of the Muslim organizational field?
A first point to make is that there is a considerable amount of turnover and flux within the Muslim organizational field. Interviewees relayed to us how their organizations tended to go through cycles of activity and passivity. New ones emerged, while others fell away. So, although there is clearly a present field of Muslim organizations within UK associational life, the shape and form which this takes is somewhat fluid. Turning to the active organizations we interviewed, community representatives claimed that their activities have been strongly shaped in recent years, first, by the opening up of new opportunities to participate within official consultative forums and bodies over ‘Muslim issues’, and, second, by the conditions set for them to receive funding from within the framework of a community cohesion policy agenda that requires ‘bridging’ across communities.
An indication of how the organizations are transforming can be derived from looking at the collective identities that their organizations use. The type of collective identity that a Muslim organization uses to advance its aims and activities is not self-evident, but signifies a specific construction of the group’s self-image, its relationship to its constituency, its relationship to the state and religious bodies of its society of settlement and homeland, and to wider society, including other migrant, faith and minority groups. Moreover, identities and labels may be used strategically in the attempt to optimize the impact and legitimacy of the organizations’ aims and activities. It is possible to specify at least four types of collective identity (Koopmans and Statham, 1999). First, organizations may identify themselves across ethnic and cultural boundaries on the basis of their common status as ‘immigrants’ (ethnic) ‘minorities’ or ‘foreigners’. Second, they may identify, or be identified, with a certain racial group, such as ‘blacks’ or ‘Asians’. As a powerful cultural marker, religion can be a third possible basis for organizations. Fourth, organizations may identify themselves on the basis of their common national ‘homeland’ or ethnic descent. In addition, each identity may refer to the society of settlement, e.g. British Muslims for Secular Democracy Action or Bradford Council of Muslim Women. It is worth noting that these possible types of identification overlap and to an important degree are in competition. For example, whether an organization representing migrants with origins in Bangladesh calls itself an ‘immigrant’, ‘Bangladeshi’, ‘Muslim’, ‘Asian’ or ‘black’ organization is a political outcome that gives important information on the nature of the relationship between migrants, the receiving state and the society of settlement.
First, we found very few organizations that used identities referring to their national ‘homeland’, which shows that the Muslim organizational field is much more oriented towards UK society. In line with the fact that the majority of Muslims in the UK have Pakistani heritage, most of interviewees were of Pakistani origin. However, the only organization using the label ‘Pakistani’ declared that it was renaming itself in order to be able to reach out to more recent migrant groups and obtain more funding. In this respect the reasoning of Zahir Malik, from the Bristol Pakistani Welfare Association, is instructive: When we opened up, there were not any organization truly Pakistani, we were the only organization so we were getting quite a bit of money – we were the flavour of the month […]. Our identity is quite important. We looked at changing the name because at the moment we get mainly Asians through the door, ‘Pakistani’ is putting a lot of the others off. We are losing a lot of customers from other communities … they think it is just for Pakistanis. So it is detrimental, although it is quite a nice thing to have, a unique identity. But in this day and age when funders are looking that you cater for all communities … Pakistanis have been here for 60 years, they’ve had their money worth … they just need to move on. We are still debating about what is the name we need to change to, but I definitely, definitely, definitely want that name, Pakistani, out.
It is important to note that funding incentives to comply with the state’s community cohesion norms for including other groups were influential in the organization’s decision to change its name. The Muslim organizational field is seen as an internally competitive environment, not only for state funding, but also to attract the constituents (or ‘customers’) from Muslim groups to represent. Our only other organization using a national ‘homeland’ identity, the Bangladeshi Education Achievement Project (BEAP), had also adopted a policy of including other Muslim groups to ensure its survival. It had opened up to Pathans, and other Pakistani communities, with the effect that, according to our interviewee, they now ‘stop waging war to each other’. Also, the organization had initiated events with non-Muslim minorities, including ‘a picnic with the Dominican elderly’ and celebrating Ukrainian culture with another day centre. Again, the need to comply with diversity standards set out by ‘community cohesion’ norms had accelerated this process, but once it was under way, the organization felt that future collaborations with non-Muslim groups might go beyond socializing to become something more substantive, politically.
Many organizations have taken an acculturative ethos to the core of their identity and organizational structure. These usually have religious identities, with many also incorporating their local city or region, or national identity (calling themselves ‘British’ or ‘Scottish’), within hyphenated identities. The Bradford Council for Mosques is the organization which appears to have advanced furthest along this path towards representing constituencies across different faiths, national origins and ethnic origins, under a single umbrella identity combining society of settlement and religion. As Ishtiaq Ahmed recounts, this is a self-conscious and proactive approach: It is important that we have a deliberate policy of being inclusive. Inclusiveness does not happen instinctively, you have to plan and you must have a deliberate commitment. We have tried and have succeeded in achieving denominational and ethnic mix.
The aim to represent and serve across Muslim groups leads to a multi-denominational and multi-ethnic approach that is structured into the organization’s formal constitution: Our constitution makes it clear that we remain multi-denominational, meaning that all denominations have an equal presence in our management structure. We came up with the practice of rotating the positions of the president and the general secretary between the two large denominations (Deobandis and Barelwis) in the district, every 2 years. […] The two vice-presidents come from two minority denominations, Shia and Ahl e Hadith (Salafi). We also attempt to achieve an ethnic mix in the ways in which the positions are allocated in acceptance of the fact that the Muslim community is ethnically and culturally very diverse. […] At the present, our president is Pakistani Kashmiri, the General Secretary is a Pathan, the treasurer is an Indian Guajarati.
To some extent the scope of the Bradford Council for Mosques is unique, as it represents, serves and draws from the largest concentrated Muslim population in Britain. However, it is interesting to see how far and in which direction this organization extends this commitment to inclusiveness within the local community. As we mentioned earlier, most organizations see social welfare provision as a primary goal. The BCM has extended its ambitions in this respect, not only across the different faith and ethnic groups of Muslims, but to build an interactive role that serves the ‘non-Muslim’ local community. Our clientele is from all communities, both in staff and clients. Majority of users, over 60%, of the sport hall are non-Muslims. We built the sports hall in partnership with two local primary schools on the other side of the road. They did not have enough money and we did not have either, so we combined the money to create a facility. During the working days, schools use it as a gymnasium, after 4 till 9 it is open to the community. It is open 6 days a week with the exception of Friday and majority of users are from other communities here. These facilities are for the local neighbourhood. If you walk around the centre you will not find a single religious symbol, and this is deliberate. We do not want, in any way, our users to come into the centre and think this is a religious centre and not for them. We do not want anybody to feel they cannot use it.
In this instance, the Bradford Council for Mosques has decided not to use visible religious symbols in a public environment in which it has invested, in order to make it open, symbolically, to the wider non-Muslim local community. This example runs counter to the media-resonant stories of ‘culture clashes’ in which Muslims are seen to make claims for the presence of Islam in public spaces. It demonstrates an instance in which a Muslim organization has prioritized a shared common need for providing a social service through interaction with the local non-Muslim community. Indeed this example demonstrates that, away from the media spotlight, demands for group-specific cultural recognition may not turn out to be so incommensurable, or so important (to Muslims), as they are often presented, after all.
In another example, also from Bradford, representatives from the Bradford Council of Muslim Women speculated that in the future they might even remove ‘Muslim’ from their organization’s name; once, as they put it, ‘community problems’ had been resolved, their remit could be expanded to the whole of society. However, this would not be a rejection of Islam, but be a mission inspired by it. Many interviewees saw Islam as the source of inspiration for pursuing goals of social provision and explained their mission towards improving society as a whole through the notion of khidmat (community service).
Away from Bradford, which is unique given the strength of Muslim organizations within the local community, other organizations have also moved towards accommodating different groups of Muslims. Indeed more than one interviewee referred to this process as ‘true community cohesion’, contrasting it with the official version. Hence the Al Khoei Foundation, the only Shia organization in our sample, is a member of MINAB, and was also keen to emphasize that it includes a variety of Shia groups, Ismailis, Itnasheris and Jafaris, and that their school was also attended by Sunni children and some Christians. Also Sohaib Hassan, of the Sharia Council, made it clear that it deals with Sunni and Shia cases, claiming ‘we make any effort to accommodate everybody’. Of course, some dividing lines remain: the Muslim Association of Britain includes only Sunnis, albeit from different denominations. Overall, however, there is an emergent interactive framework that either links or cut across groups from different faiths and ethnic heritages. Against the thesis that an increasing number of smaller mosques would lead to sectarianism and fragmentation (Ansari, 2004: 346), we have found concerted efforts by Muslim representatives to work together through organizational frameworks, and compromise to avoid conflicts. For example, a number of religious organizations have explicitly refrained from issuing religious opinions or taking sides on potentially divisive theological matters in order to be able to work alongside other denominations.
Not every organization has felt able to join in; the Ahmaddyas and Alevis 6 stand out as exceptions that prove the rule in this respect. Their organizations remain largely exclusive to their own ethnic and religious group. However, some Ahmaddyas do participate in the Association of British Muslims, though mostly on an individual basis. The exceptional status of the Alevis is further underlined by the fact that it is the organization that retained the strongest focus on participating in ‘homeland’ politics, and had lobbied the UK government over human rights in Turkey. Although we found some evidence for non-homeland-specific transnational political orientations in the Muslim Association of Britain, which has strongly criticized UK foreign policy in the Muslim world, and in Hizb-ut-Tahrir, which has a long-standing anti-imperialist commitment, the overriding political engagement of most organizations was strongly focused on domestic and local arenas.
Conclusion
Overall, we see that, although the ‘mediated politics’ over Islam has been widely seen as a constraint facing the organizations, in many instances Muslim organizations have had sufficient ingenuity and resources to respond by learning media skills, so that they try to shape the message that appears about Muslims in the news. Although there is ample evidence of a general mistrust about the public representation of Muslims and fatigue with ‘media work’ among community activists (Bolognani 2007), over time the organizations have come to view participation in mediated public debates as an opportunity for advancing their aims. Indeed, a new generation of skilled and media-savvy Muslims activists has emerged who regularly engage with journalists, policy makers, academics and activists from other faiths, in a self-conscious attempt to redress perceived biases in media coverage. Muslim organizations now mobilize to try to shape the way they are represented in the UK media. This initiative grew from an earlier dissatisfaction with the media’s performance in representing Muslim affairs in the UK. Today it is recognized that the organizations need to try to be participants in the media debates about their constituency. Even if they do not always succeed in reframing the debate, activists see a media presence, and their being seen to take up positions which actually reflect their activities, as important for their organizations’ legitimacy. This can help support an organization’s efforts to carry out its non-media-oriented social activities too, which most of them consider to be their principal aim.
Turning towards our general inquiry on the transformation of the organizational field, we found significant evidence for a shift towards using broader ascriptive general identities that serve as an umbrella for pulling together constituencies of Muslims from different faiths and national ethnic origins. Some interviewees indicated that their organization had formally changed, or intended to change, its name, in order to be able to include a wider set of groups of Muslims within their remit. In this sense, the identification label ‘Muslim’ increasingly serves as a catch-all for stimulating interaction between different faith, ethnic and national groups of Muslims, within the framework of an organization. This trend has received a direct impetus from the demands of the community cohesion agenda. However, many Muslim organizations have also proactively adopted a broad view of their representative and service provision role in relation to the various groups of Muslims in the UK. Indeed, they have played an important part in constructing a ‘Muslim’ associational environment that tries to speak with a general common voice and represent concerns that are shared by most groups of Muslims, and, in some cases, also by non-Muslim minorities and local populations in their region. By creatively buying into this idea for defining the specific concerns of Muslim faiths and ethnic groups within a broader ‘Muslim’ framework, the organizations have constructed an associational infrastructure which looks towards the society of settlement in an acculturative way. A further consequence has been the transformation of the organizational field, so that larger organizations broadly representing ‘Muslims’ succeed, while smaller organizations that represent a single faith or national ethnic group either wither away or become marginalized.
To be clear, we do not think that the organizational field is shaped only by the contextual factors of the opportunities from community cohesion policies, discourses and norms. Instead, the organizations retain considerable autonomy of action and are driven by goals defined and framed in a religious commitment that is expressed in a committed and genuine sense, but which prioritizes social needs of the community. In Bradford, an organization was even prepared to drop religious symbolism to extend its constituency to provide also for the needs of the local non-Muslim community. Generally, a specific combination of top-down political opportunities and bottom-up faith-motivated community commitments produces a coming together of groups under the broad label ‘Muslim’ in the UK. In this way, Muslim associations are strong enough to have a confident and independent collective presence on the organizational landscape in UK public life, but remain a critical independent voice over government policies and media representations of Muslims. They steer a path inspired by faith commitments to community service while recognizing the need to interact constructively within the policy arenas of government and local authorities to achieve their primary goals of social provision. This is not always an easy route, and can lead to contradictions and conflicts, both between Muslim organizations and with policy makers and the media. For the most part, however, organizations have advanced their representative role for Muslims under common general goals, and have self-consciously avoided issues that could be internally divisive, to become accepted as an important player within UK civic political life.