Report: ‘Belonging, Belief & Britishness‘

I haven't looked into this report (or the 'Institute') yet:

Institute for the Impact of Faith in Life, Report – Belonging, Belief & Britishness: Exploring the British Muslim Experience on Their Own Terms, 31 March 2025

"This report by the Institute for the Impact of Faith in Life examines the diversity of British Muslims and the relationships they have with Britain today. The study combines quantitative and qualitative analysis, based on a poll of 815 adult British Muslims commissioned by IIFL and conducted by Whitestone Insight (a member of the British Polling Council), as well as a series of interviews with a smaller sample of British Muslims, who were asked about the findings of the survey and wider topics."

ONS Census 2021

BBC News, Less than half of England and Wales population Christian, Census 2021 shows, 29 Nov 2022

"Those identifying as Muslim rose from 4.9% in 2011 to 6.5% last year."

The ONS Results are here
PDF download here

Updated: the Trojan Horse Affair (podcast)

Updated: here's a link to my Virtually Islamic blog page on the Trojan Horse Affair podcast.
New York Times, Why Claiming British Identity Is Complicated

This long-read looks interesting, and has an accompanying podcast series.

"This article was produced in collaboration with a new podcast from Serial and The New York Times.

“The Trojan Horse Affair,” an eight-part mystery, investigates a strange letter that transformed Britain — and the lives of many British Muslims."

Direct link to podcast (from different providers)

And here's the trailer on Spotify:

Book review: Afua Hirsch

Guardian, Brit(ish) by Afua Hirsch review – everyday racism and a search for identity, 19 Jan 2018

Muslims in Wales

Jessica Walford, Wales Online, Abused and discriminated against yet thriving and proud: the life of Muslims in Wales "We found a community that is at once thriving and under-threat, both settled and unsure of its place, growing but vulnerable, integral to Welsh life but poorly understood and isolated." Good to see this article on an underrepresented subject. The following map is included in the article:

Opinion piece: Muslims are well-integrated in Britain – but no one seems to believe it

Muslims are well-integrated in Britain – but no one seems to believe it | Leon Moosavi | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk "In Britain today there is a mismatch between how non-Muslims often perceive Muslims and how Muslims typically perceive themselves. This disconnect is down to a tendency by non-Muslims to assume that Muslims struggle with their British identity and divided loyalties. These concerns were challenged a few days ago,in a report by the University of Essex that found Muslims actually identify with Britishness more than any other Britons."

Also see iSER, Ethnic minorities living in the UK feel more British than white Britons The Understanding Society: Findings 2012 report is here: Understanding Society: Findings 2012 [haven't read it yet!]

Diary of a Badman

Guardian, Diary of a Badman: 'I'm not a model Muslim, but I make people think', 10 Jun 2012 I have posted a more detailed piece about this, with videos, on my Virtually Islamic blog here

Channel 4, Make Bradford British

Channel 4, Make Bradford British

Forthcoming TV programme. Looks interesting ... first programme is 1 March 2012.

Muslims proud to be British - report

Guardian, Muslims Proud to be British? There's something to learn from the surprise, 23 Nov 2011. "The finding in Demos's report A Place for Pride that 83% of Muslims said they were proud to be a British citizen, compared with the national average of 79%, has been met with surprise in some parts of the press. Clearly many British citizens have both a strong religious identity and a strong national identity. Yet it also seems clear that many people see these identities as mutually exclusive. Why is this the case?"

Opinion piece: 'Time to break free?'

Ahmad Ali Khalid, Dawn.com, Blog, Time to break free?, 11 Sep 2011 "“No, Jihad does not mean holy war, it means struggle in Arabic,” this was a phrase that my Muslim friends and I repeated all too often in the aftermath of 9/11 in Britain. My generation who grew up in the shadow of 9/11 have had our religious experiences shaped not by moving Sufi poetry, reading philosophy, speaking about theology or researching about our religious traditions. Our religious experience has been shaped by an act of symbolic political violence; it has been shaped by questions of war, accusations of terror and interrogations about our loyalty which brought up the question of identy."

The search for Muslim identity

Qanta Ahmed, Comment is free, The Guardian, Face to faith: The search for Muslim identity, 11 Dec 2010 "[But] as a diaspora Muslim I feel I must belong to the real societies around me, even if I find that by doing so I am aligned with Israelis, Americans and Jews, groups increasingly repugnant to the mainstream Muslim Ummah. I am aligned with them as a physician, and as a Muslim, because we treasure the sanctity of life. The fabric of society is more important to me than any fabric of my clothing. As Muslims, that is our only authentic identity: one where we are human beings first, people of the book second."

book: 'Young British Muslims'

Just received Young British Muslims, Identity, Culture, Politics and the Media
by Nahid A Kabir (EUP), which I plan to review for these pages in due course.

New and Noted: Tariq Modood, 'Still Not Easy Being British'

Recently published, by Trentham Books: Tariq Modood, Still Not Easy Being British: struggles for a multicultural citizenship "The late 1980s and early 1990s saw dramatic shifts in race relations in Britain. It was the time of the fracturing of a political ‘black’ identity; of ethnic minority assertions to be British and about remaking what it is to be British; of the manifestation of the social mobility of Indians and, above all, the emergence of Muslim identity politics in the Rushdie Affair. These issues were the subject of Tariq Modood’s Not Easy Being British. One of the first books to note these developments and analyse their implications, Not Easy became an underground classic.

"In this new collection, Modood returns to some of these topics, considering especially the growth of Muslim political assertiveness and the reactions to it in the context of rethinking multiculturalism and Britishness. Modood’s reflections and bold interventions in controversies - which characterise his work and have made him a renowned intellectual commentator on Muslim politics and multiculturalism - could not be more relevant to our fraught and fearful times."

I haven't seen this one yet, which came out in September, but I'm familiar with Modood's 'Not Easy Being British'.