Towards a Synthesised Muslim-Consciousness

Abstract

In their authoritative survey of social attitudes towards ‘belonging’ in Britain, analysed according to religious groupings, Heath and Roberts (2008: 14) make the interesting finding that while Christians tend to report the ‘strongest sense of belonging’ to Britain, Muslims are considerably more likely that any other religious group to report belonging ‘fairly strongly’ to Britain. While the authors report a small variation between Muslims born in Britain and those who migrated to Britain, Muslims are no more likely that their Christian counterparts to insist that they ‘do not belong’ to Britain, and much less likely than those with no religion at all. This is an interesting finding because it implies a steadfast but qualified confidence within the self-identifications of British Muslims in a manner that goes to the heart of this book. This is because the discussion throughout the preceding chapters has explored how an emergent Muslim-consciousness connects to the sorts of civic status that Muslims in Britain are seeking compared to that they are presently afforded, and how accounts of minority consciousness gleaned from the work of W. E. B. Du Bois can elucidate our understanding of this phenomena.