An international research network exploring the representation of Muslim identities in contemporary cultural discourses.

Workshop Muslims Making Britain

Last Updated on Tuesday, 04 May 2010 23:25

Muslims Making Britain
This one-day workshop was jointly run by the AHRC-funded research projects Making Britain and Framing Muslims and was held on 14 July 2009 at SOAS, University of London

This one-day workshop explored facets of the historical and contemporary South AsianMuslim experience in Britain, focused on the cultural productions of writers, artists, activists and workers from 1870 to the present in order to explore how they have negotiated, interacted with and sometimes resisted majority British culture; their varied and complex identifications and affiliations; and the ways in which they might have re-imagined the nation. By focusing on how South Asian Muslims have helped to shape British cultural and political life across the period, this collaborative workshop foregrounded the depth as well as the breadth of their contribution to the making of Britain. A report of the day is available further down this page

 

 

 

 

Complicating the common perception that a homogeneous British culture only began to diversify after the Second World War, the Making Britain project explores how an early South Asian diasporic population impacted on Britain’s literary, cultural and political life. Framing Muslims is concerned with the cultural, artistic, social and legal structures which ‘frame’ contemporary debates about Muslims in the West. The projects share a concern with the ways in which South Asian Muslims in Britain have been depicted in a range of discourses, and how individuals and communities have responded to and subverted these externally imposed definitions. Combining the contemporary focus of Framing Muslims with the historical depth of Making Britain will enable an exploration of how representational structures have evolved through time.

Speakers included: Humayun Ansari; Aamer Hussein; Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, Salman Sayyid; Sara Wajid; Rehana Ahmed; Florian Stadtler and Ali Zaidi

 

A Report of the Day written by Madeline Clements

Two AHRC-funded research projects, Making Britain and Framing Muslims, recently combined forces to run a one-day workshop entitled Muslims Making Britain, hosted by SOAS on 14th July. This provided a welcome opportunity to explore a mutual interest in the experiences of Muslims living in Britain, both in the earlier period of 1870-1950 covered by the Making Britain project, and in the contemporary moment, which the Framing Muslims initiative seeks to examine. The workshop focused on the literary, cultural and political contributions South Asian Muslims have made and continue to make to the shaping of British culture and society. Most importantly, as the projects’ Principal Investigators Susheila Nasta and Peter Morey were keen to emphasise, it was hoped that the day would enable delegates to address shared concerns regarding the reductive representation and contrasting self-representation of South Asians and Muslims and to place their evolution in a broader historical perspective.

 

 

Humayun Ansari of the University of London’s Royal Holloway presented the keynote lecture which opened the workshop, which was entitled ‘ “A Mosque in London Worthy of the Tradition of Islam and the Capital of the British Empire”: The Struggle to Create Muslim Space, 1910–1944’. Informed by an awareness of how mosques as community institutions have become a site for scrutiny and concern regarding Muslim identity in the period post 9/11 and 7/7, his paper explored how Muslims have attempted to establish themselves as an integral part of British society through place-making by analysing the efforts made and oppositions mounted toward the building of a London mosque in the earlier part of the twentieth century.

Click here to listen to an MP3 of the keynote Address by Humayun Ansari

 

In the first panel Salman Sayyid, the Director of the Centre for Ethnicity and Racism studies and a Reader in Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds, addressed the timely subject of ‘Answering the Muslim Question’. Leaping forward, his paper focused on the period from 1990 to the present day. It considered the way in which, particularly since the declaration of the ‘war on terror’, anxieties about Muslim threats to national security have raised questions about national identity and belonging. It then went on to explore how the concept of a European Islam may –problematically – be articulated as a way of bringing about cultural and national integration. Rehana Ahmed and Florian Stadtler of the Open University, both Postdoctoral Research Assistants on the Making Britain project, then gave a thought-provoking paper entitled ‘Eastenders Go West: The Jamiat-ul-Muslimin’s Protest Against H. G. Wells’ A Short History of the World’. Particularly interesting was their cautious placement of the enunciation and reception of the protests of this particular disadvantaged group within the context of wider debates surrounding the freedom of speech and the representation of minority communities sparked by parallel incidents such as the 1989 Rushdie

affair. Lastly, in ‘A Muslim Woman in Edwardian London: Empire, Society and Diasporic Communities’, Siobhan Lambert-Hurley of Nottingham Trent University, gave an engaging account of her recent research into the writings of Atiya Fyzee, who came to London from Bombay in 1906, and whose roznamchah (a ‘travelogue-cum-diary’) illuminates the diversity and fluidity of Britain’s diasporic Muslim community at the time.

Click here to listen to an MP3 of the first panel

 

 

 

In the afternoon, delegates reconvened in more leisurely mode to listen to a series of talks from writers, artists and critics on cultural productions by and featuring Muslims from the mid twentieth century to the present day. These began with Ali Zaidi’s ‘Journeys’. Zaidi, the leader of the organisation motiroti, which makes and produces interdisciplinary arts and creative projects working with collaborators across cultures, ‘Indian by birth, Pakistani by migration and British by chance’, presented a sample of his vibrant artwork. This was accompanied by a provocative and open-ended commentary on a wide range of subjects, including the fixity of contemporary perceptions of migrant cultural identities, and the erroneous positioning of Islam in opposition to the West. Following on from Zaidi, cultural commentator Sara Wajid’s lively discussion, ‘England People Very Nice: Depictions of Young Muslims in East London’, offered some alternative perspectives on Richard Bean’s controversial play, recently staged for ‘Middle England’ at the London’s Royal National Theatre. Wajid suggested that the protests over its disrespectful characterisation of Muslims, and the resultant debates about the drama’s racist content obscured the piece’s more interesting project of historicising ethnic minority involvement in Britain.

 

 

Finally, the author, critic and academic Aamer Hussein presented his 'Transplanted Flowers: Mid-Century Fictions of Britain and Pakistan': a lyrical discussion of the inspirations behind his latest work, the novella Another Gulmohar Tree. These included an Urdu storybook for children, written by Ghulam Abbas and beautifully illustrated by his wife, the Karachi-based artist Christian Vlasto (known as Zainab), which Hussein circulated as part of the talk. This, like Hussein’s subsequent readings from his novella, offered attendees a perhaps rare opportunity to view the results not of a clash but of a positive collaboration and reverse transfusion of cultures, in this instance from Britain to Pakistan in the post-war years. In summing up, Amina Yaqin, Project Partner of the Framing Muslims research network, observed that Hussein’s talk again highlighted the importance of returning to a historicised understanding of how South Asian Muslims have been represented and have represented themselves, and of non-stereotypical depictions which challenge externally imposed definitions of their identity.

 

Click here to listen to an MP3 of the Second Panel

 

 

 

The events concluded with a roundtable discussion with the workshop’s speakers, chaired by Elleke Boehmer, Co-Investigator for the Making Britain project. This provided a forum within which all delegates could reflect on what the term ‘Muslims making Britain’ might mean to them, and on the different frameworks proposed during the day for reading migrant identities, from the ‘immigrant imaginary’ to multiculturalism.

 

Click here to listen to an MP3 of the Roundtable Discussion

 

Abstracts and Biographies

Humayun Ansari (Royal Holloway, University of London)
‘“A Mosque in London worthy of the Tradition of Islam and the Capital of the British Empire”: The Struggle to Create Muslim Space, 1910–1944’

Post 9/11 and 7/7, the mosque, as a socially dynamic and influential multi-purpose community institution, has come under increasing scrutiny as academic and political debates surrounding identity and belonging, the radicalisation of young Muslims, struggles for power within and beyond Muslim communities and policies on integration and social cohesion reach a new pitch. For a Muslim to feel at home or for a non-Muslim to recognize a Muslim space, the presence of certain Islamic symbols is important. In Britain, the construction of mosques has been part of a process of identity formation, a process that has become concerned with non-Muslim anxieties over visible and audible Muslim presence. By exploring historically the dynamic interplay between Muslim experience and the institutions of British society with regard to the efforts for establishing a mosque in London, this paper attempts to deepen our understanding of how Muslims have sought to establish themselves as an integral part of British society, through a specific kind of place-making.

Humayun Ansari is Professor of Islam and Cultural Diversity and Director of the Centre for Minority Studies, Department of History, at Royal Holloway, University of London. His research interests include radical Islamic thought, ethnicity, identity, migration and multiculturalism. He has written extensively on the subject of Muslims in Western society, South Asia, ethnic diversity and cross-cultural issues. He is author of The Emergence of Socialist Thought Among North Indian Muslims, Managing Cultural Diversity at Work, ‘Attitudes to Jihad, Martyrdom and Terrorism among British Muslims’, ‘Islam in the West’, and ‘The Infidel Within', Muslims in Britain Since 1800. He has advised and addressed a wide spectrum of organisations and provided consultancy and training in the field of ethnicity and equal opportunities for organisations in the public, private and voluntary sectors, including government departments and agencies, further and higher education, and within industry and commerce. Professor Ansari has provided briefings to senior policy-makers and contributed extensively to local, national and international print and broadcast media. Professor Ansari was awarded an OBE in 2002 for his services to higher education and race relations in the community.

Salman Sayyid (University of Leeds)
‘Answering the Muslim Question’

Since at least the 1990s, there has been a huge growth in interest about the Muslim presence in Western plutocracies. Part of this interest has been due to series of moral panics which have centred on the figure of the Muslim. The mobilization of Muslims as Muslims has raised questions about national identity and belonging. Increasing interest is also due to the way in which the security threat – as posited by the ‘war on terror’ – has been focused on the Muslim question as a means of reconfiguring the liberal-democratic contours of Western plutocracies. The responses to the attacks in the United States on 11 September 2001, Madrid on 11 March 2004 and London on 7 July 2005 have been the most obvious examples of the way in which issues of national security have become conflated with issues of national cultural integrity. The very continuity of Western liberal-democratic traditions is being contested around the Muslim presence. This paper explores the problematization of a Muslim presence outside Muslimistan, by interrogating the concept of a European Islam.

S. Sayyid has taught at the Universities of East London, Manchester and Salford. He is currently the Director of the Centre of Ethnicity and Racism Studies and a Reader in the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds. He is the author of A Fundamental Fear: Eurocentism and the Emergence of Islamism, a book that was nominated for the British Sociological Association’s Philip Abrams Prize in 1997 and banned by Malaysian government in 2006. Sayyid co-edited A Postcolonial People: South Asians in Britain (2006), an American edition of which was published by Columbia University Press in 2008. He is a co-editor of the monograph series Decolonial Studies, Postcolonial Horizons, published by Pluto Press. He has been a frequent contributor to media both nationally and internationally. In 2008 he was short-listed for the Allama Iqbal Award for Creativity in Islamic Thought.

Rehana Ahmed and Florian Stadtler (Open University)
‘EastEnders Go West: The Jamiat-ul-Muslimin’s Protest against H. G. Wells’ A Short History of the World’

This paper discusses the 1938 protest against H.G. Wells’ A Short History of the World (1922) by the east London based Jamiat-ul-Muslimin because of references to the Prophet Mohammed perceived to be offensive. The paper will consider the position of enunciation of the protesters, their class and religious background, and their marginal status as citizens of Empire. It will also examine the official response to the protests, which took the India Office and the Indian High Commission (headed at the time by Firoz Khan Noon, also a Muslim) by surprise. It will explore the protest and its reception in the context of wider debates about freedom of expression and respect for the religious and cultural sensitivities of minority groups, with reference to other protests against representations of the Prophet Mohammed and Islam both at the time and more recently.

Rehana Ahmed is a Postdoctoral Research Assistant on the AHRC-funded project ‘Making Britain: South Asian Visions of Home and Abroad, 1870-1950’ and based in the English Department at the Open University. Her doctoral research was in representations of multicultural Britain in contemporary British Asian fiction, with a focus on class and Muslim identities. She has published articles on work by Moniza Alvi, Hanif Kureishi and Kamila Shamsie, and on the television film Yasmin, and is the editor of Walking a Tightrope: New Writing from Asian Britain (Macmillan, 2004).

Florian Stadtler is a Postdoctoral Research Assistant on the AHRC-funded project ‘Making Britain: South Asian Visions of Home and Abroad, 1870-1950’ and based in the English Department at the Open University. He has published on Vikram Chandra, Salman Rushdie, and Hindi cinema. Recent publications include ‘Cultural Connections: Lagaan and its Audience Responses’, Third World Quarterly 26.3 (2005); ‘Nargis and Aurora Zogoiby: Imaging Mother and Nation in Mehboob Khan’s Mother India and Salman Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh’, in Once Upon a Time in Bollywood: The Global Swing in Hindi Cinema, ed. Gurbir Jolly et al. (Toronto: TSAR, 2007); and ‘Terror, Globalisation and the Individual in Salman Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown’, Journal of Postcolonial Writing 45.2 (June 2009).

Siobhan Lambert-Hurley (Nottingham Trent University)
‘A Muslim Woman in Edwardian London: Empire, Society and Diasporic Communities’

In 1906, a young Muslim woman called Atiya Fyzee (1877-1967) left her home city of Bombay to spend a year studying at a teacher's training college in London. She was far from the first Indian Muslim woman to travel to Britain at the height of empire, but she does appear to have been one of the earliest to have written about her experiences of ‘the West’ in any detail. While abroad, she kept a travelogue-cum-diary (roznamchah) that was first serialised in the Urdu women's journal, Tahzib un-niswan, then published in book form under the title Zamana-i-tahsil [A Time of Education] in 1921. A particular feature of this narrative is Atiya's lively accounts of her meetings with local elites and prominent Indians abroad. These sketches of nearly 150 different individuals – from former colonial officers and British gentry to renowned Muslim reformers and later nationalist leaders – are analysed in this paper for what they reveal about politics, society and diasporic communities in Edwardian Britain.

Siobhan Lambert-Hurley is, from September 2009, Lecturer in Modern History at Loughborough University. Her research focuses on women, gender and Islam in South Asia with current interests in autobiographical writing and the culture of travel. Her publications include Muslim Women, Reform and Princely Patronage: Nawab Sultan Jahan Begam of Bhopal (2007), A Princess's Pilgrimage: Nawab Sikandar Begum's 'A Pilgrimage to Mecca' (2007) and Rhetoric and Reality: Gender and the Colonial Experience in South Asia (co-edited with Avril Powell) (2006).

Aamer Hussein
'Transplanted Flowers: Mid-Century Fictions of Britain and Pakistan'

Ghulam Abbas, one of the finest Urdu short story writers of the mid-20th century, wrote a humorous short story about a Pakistani student who meets a young woman at a dance in London and takes her back to Pakistan to build a brave new nation, with ironic consequences. In fact the story is a fantasy reflection of Abbas' marriage to British illustrator Christian Vlasto, who as Zainab Ghulam Abbas had a long and varied artistic career in Karachi, which ended with her death earlier this year. I will trace the trajectory of this Muslim/British relationship through the artistic practices of husband and wife, which also inspired my novella Another Gulmohar Tree. I will then give a brief reading from the novella.

Aamer Hussein was born in Karachi in 1955 and moved to London in 1970. He studied Persian, Urdu and History at SOAS, and is the author of four works of short fiction including Turquoise (2002) and Insomnia (2007). His most recent work is a novella, Another Gulmohar Tree. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2004 and is currently Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Southampton. For additional material, please see: aamerhussein.com

Sara Wajid
‘England People Very Nice: Depictions of Young Muslims in East London’

England People Very Nice, the controversial National Theatre play about the long history of migration in Bethnal Green ‘left a sour taste’ in the mouth of the Guardian theatre critic and was denounced as trading in ethnic stereotypes by Hussain Ismail, a Muslim playwright working in Tower Hamlets. The controversy that followed itself felt almost staged and featured a familiar cast of ‘white liberal artists defending free speech’ versus ‘beleaguered and offended local Muslim community representatives demanding redress and respectful representation’. Using the play and its critical reception as an entry point, this paper will discuss and challenge the thesis of From Fatwa to Jihad – The Rushdie Affair and its Legacy by Kenan Malik, which argues that multi-culturalist policies have compromised free speech in Britain since the Rushdie affair.

Sara Wajid is a cultural critic, feature-writer and editor of untoldlondon.org.uk – a website about historical multi-cultural London. She has written for the Guardian, New Statesman, Prospect, Mslexia and Wasafiri. She specialises in race, cultural identity, gender politics and cultural history. Sara has previously worked as a broadcaster and lecturer and edited two artists’ books about British Muslim identity: Sheikh 'n' Vac by artist / comedienne Yara El-Sherbini and I'll Get my Coat by Sukhdev Sandhu.

Ali Zaidi
‘Journeys’

Indian by birth, Pakistani by migration and British by chance, Ali Zaidi draws upon this cultural displacement to pursue creative explorations of commonality and difference through art. Zaidi creates fresh participatory experiences for new audiences by inviting them to collectively reflect on issues around identity and question static perceptions of culture. Moving fluidly between diverse art forms, including film, live art, installation and digital technology, he fuses them with great ease and ingenuity.

Zaidi leads the artistic vision of motiroti, which he co-founded with Keith Khan in 1996. motiroti is an internationally acclaimed and award winning organisation that makes and produces interdisciplinary arts and creative projects working with a range of participants and collaborators across continents and cultures. For over fifteen years, complex socio-cultural interrelations and divides have been made accessible to global audiences through motiroti’s multiple perspective and vibrant artworks.