Imam Pay

Hyphen, Low pay and high demands: the UK is facing a shortage of full-time imams

Interesting article, long-standing issue (going back to my 90s research). "Despite their central role in guiding Muslim communities on religious, spiritual and familial issues — and in some cases, working on financial management of the mosques they are attached to — imams are often paid very little. Many don’t receive the UK’s minimum wage and are expected to supplement their pay with benefits. Some don’t have contracts and most are on call 24 hours a day to serve the community’s needs."

Cardiff Community Coffee

BBC News, Cardiff Barista Training Aims to Boost Confidence

Empire: 28. The Tudors and the Turks

This is an excellent series. Episode 28 - The Tudors and the Turks hold particular relevance in this blog. The link below is for Apple Podcasts, but the series is widely available elsewhere.

"Slave raids in Cornwall. Englishmen spying for the venetians. The East India Trading Companies’ older brother. Join William and Anita this week as they discuss the relationship between Britain and the Ottoman Empire, all of which centre around the Levant Company."

Fatima Cates

BBC News, Fatima Cates: Victorian woman who helped set up UK's first mosque honoured "Born Francess Elizabeth Murray, she is believed to be the first woman to convert to Islam on British soil when she became a Muslim in 1887." Also see Hamid Mahmood and Yahya Birt, Beacon Books, Our Fatima of Liverpool: The Story of Fatima Cates, the Victorian woman who helped found British Islam

Shamima Begum

BBC News, Shamima Begum accepts she joined a terror group, 11 Jan 2023 "In interviews spanning more than a year, Ms Begum - who was stripped of British citizenship as a national security risk - revealed that she was fed detailed instructions by IS members, but also undertook her own planning for the journey in 2015." This is based on a BBC Sounds' podcast "The Shamima Begum Story: I am not a monster". I haven't listened to this yet.

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Islamic Spirituality

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Islamic Spirituality has just been published. Congratulations to the editors Bruce B. Lawrence and Vincent J. Cornell for bringing this volume (and team of contributors) together:

"The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Islamic Spirituality is an authoritative reference work comprising twenty-eight scholarly essays that explore the expressive and performative dimensions of Islamic spirituality. Edited by two of its most prominent scholars, and bringing together a stellar cast of contributors, this wide-ranging volume covers religious practices, sacred texts, history and places, gender, music, poetry, the visual arts, and politics."

I was pleased to contribute a chapter on ‘Islamic Spirituality and the Internet’ to the book.

Waheed Arian

BBC, Hardtalk, Waheed Arian: Migration in the Western world iPlayer needed for this. "War and extreme poverty drive millions of people from their homes every year. Some of them try to reach the rich Western world, where such inward migration routinely prompts fear and draconian counter-measures. Stephen Sackur interviews Waheed Arian, who fled war in Afghanistan as a child, made it to the UK and is now a doctor running his own medical charity. Do perceptions change when the story of migration is personalised?"