Orientalism in Reverse: Early Muslim Travel Accounts of Britain

Abstract

Muslims now number almost 2.7 million in Britain or approximately five per cent of the population (Office for National Statistics, 2011). The rise to the current figure became markedly steep after the late 1940s, mostly due to the aftermath of empire and a post-war demand for manual labour. However, it is important to recognize that Muslims have visited, lived, and worked in Britain for hundreds of years. As Sukhdev Sandhu observes:

Blacks and Asians tend to be used in contemporary discourse as metaphors for newness. Op-ed columnists and state-of-the-nation chroniclers invoke them to show how, along with deindustrialization, devolution and globalization, Englishness has changed since the end of the war. That they had already been serving in the armed forces, stirring up controversy in Parliament, or […] helping to change the way that national identity is conceptualized, often goes unacknowledged. (Sandhu, 2003: xviii)