Stephen H. Jones - Islam and the Liberal State: National Identity and the Future of Muslim Britain

ISLAM AND THE LIBERAL STATE

ISLAM AND THE LIBERAL STATE

National Identity and the Future of Muslim Britain

Stephen H. Jones

I.B. TAURIS

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK

1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA

BLOOMSBURY, I.B. TAURIS and the I.B. Tauris logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First published in Great Britain 2021

Copyright Stephen H. Jones, 2021

Stephen H. Jones has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.

Cover design: Adriana Brioso

Cover image Shaz Begg

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN: HB: 978-1-8386-0585-8

ePDF: 978-1-8386-0588-9

eBook: 978-1-8386-0587-2

To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters .

CONTENTS

Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION: ISLAM, LIBERALISM AND THE NATION STATE

Chapter 2
THE SHIFTING FOUNDATIONS OF ISLAMIC BRITAIN

Chapter 3
ISLAMIC EDUCATION: SCHOOLING FOR NAQL -HEADS?

Chapter 4
WHAT IS THE FUTURE FOR MUSLIM PERSONAL LAW IN BRITAIN?

Chapter 5
MUSLIMS AND THE STATE: NEITHER AGENTS NOR ENEMIES

Chapter 6
CONCLUSION

When I was a postgraduate student, I took a short course in academic writing with a teacher who liked to begin classes by remarking that writing always involves making the claim that you have something to say worth reading. This was his way of trying to convince my peers and me that we should regard writing as a craft and as something to take time and care over. What it suggested to me, though, was that writing for a public audience involves a certain amount of arrogance. We live in a time when attention is a prized commodity and vast sums of money can be made by convincing people to spend 30 seconds reading a listicle about cats or the current whereabouts of 1990s film stars. Writing a book means asking for at least two days worth of many total strangers concentrated attention: no one, surely, could decide to do this without first convincing themselves they have something vitally important to say and that they are the best person perhaps the only person who can say it.

For anyone who doesnt have an ego the size of Texas, this means that anxiety is always present during the writing process, like background noise. In my case, this has been amplified because of the nature of this books subject matter and my relation to it. A person picking this book up might well wonder why I a person who is not Muslim feel able to opine on, among other things, Islams relationship to Britishness. Or then again, perhaps they wont: if there is one thing Anglophone public discourse is not short of right now it is people who are not Muslim telling people who are how their religion needs to change. Nor is it short of writers who boldly claim to have a unique and vital insight into Muslims lives or Islams nature; just look at the many recently published books with some variation of the title Islam Unveiled. Many of these books teach their readers little more than how to be more rigorously prejudiced, and so a large part of my nervousness in writing this book is that I will end up being allocated to a club that I have absolutely no interest in becoming a member of.

The other reason for my nervousness is that I am getting involved in deliberations about theology and Muslim identity, despite not having skin in these games myself.