Segregated Britain. Farhaan Wali
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has somehow given way to cultural identity differences, allowing Muslims to express solidarity with those who reflect ‘the familiar’. So, if Muslims see themselves as culturally different to the majority, then has the creation of a ‘culture line’ accelerated their segregation from the dominant culture? At this introductory stage, it is a rather big leap to claim that Muslims living in Britain are segregated from British society at the cultural level.
The problem of segregation is often seen through the restrictive lens of numbers. Even though statistical evidence provides a picture into segregation, providing insight into the demographic scale and space of the problem, it does not go deep enough to answer why specific groups exist apart. This book asks British Muslims if they have opted out of the dominant culture to form segregated Muslim enclaves.
If the host culture sees only homogeneity amongst Muslims, then the commonality becomes ‘Muslimness’. To observe a community through the single frame of religiosity will naturally distort the image of British Muslims. In the popular imagination, British Muslims are expected to project a cultural identity that normalises religion and state. Trying to build a stable merger between these two aspects is not easy. We may see visible signs of separation between people and state. The Burka, for example, maybe seen as a concrete mooring that symbolises cultural separation. It might be easy to imagine the visible manifestation of segregation, especially at the ←29 | 30→individual and communal level, but placing connections between people in imagined spaces ignores social boundaries.
Another aspect relates to cultural visibility. If we discard naturally occurring instances of segregation, like the process of class stratification and urbanisation, which can invariably alter the social reality of a locality. Then, we might be left with selective formations of segregation rooted in cultural distinctiveness. The East End of London, for instance, is populated with a large number of Muslims. At the visible level, this disproportionate spatial ordering can be characterised as ‘residential segregation’ based on ethno-religious divisions. The Muslim residents of the East End are not a homogenous entity. They are split according to class and ethnicity. However, religion seems to play an important role at the community level, creating a source of communal identity and belonging. For instance, I spoke to many middle-class Muslims who choose to live within the Muslim dominated localities, seemingly drawn to the religious community.
For this reason, I want to explore Muslim perspectives of life in Muslim enclaves, in an effort to discover the underpinning reasons why some Muslims seek to ‘opt out’. Therefore, in order to understand Muslim segregation in Britain requires exploring the social and cultural fabric of specific communities across the British Isles. I have decided to focus on three distinct regions in the UK, namely London, Wales and Scotland, because these areas highlight the acute nature of the problem.
Studying British Muslims: Subjectivity and Objectivity
This book has faced numerous challenges, most notably in trying to gain access to large and small groups of British Muslims across the United Kingdom. This inquiry, which arises from a lengthy investigation undertaken over a period of four years amongst British Muslims, explores the changing relationship these individuals and communities have experienced living within the United Kingdom.
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When I began my fieldwork, I realised I was not a stranger to my research subject. This book is about British Muslims, and thus I could not ignore my membership and upbringing within the Muslim community. However, I did not consider this a methodological paradox. Instead, it is precisely this social experience, which gave me a deeper appreciation of Muslim enclaves. This meant trying to exclude my own experiences and values for neutrality and indifference towards research objects seemed unrealistic. Thus, respondents were not looked upon as simple research objects but as mirror images of me. Consequently, the respondents gradually lost their initial mistrust that I might misappropriate their histories. This allowed for an open conversation, as Mies (1983, p. 123) notes:
The researcher takes the side of a certain group, partly identifies, and in a conscious process creates space for critical dialogues and reflection on both sides. This enables both research ‘subjects’ and ‘objects’ to become more aware of the power differences and dynamics involved, and of distortions of perceptions to be corrected on both sides. Paradoxically, precisely through this process of partial identification a critical and dialectical distance is created between the researcher and the researched.
This ‘conscious partiality’ allowed me to express my own experiences of growing up in London, which led to an open and contextualised knowledge of subjective experiences. It was this method of collective perception of our experiences that lead to what Westkott (cited in Weiler, 1988, p. 62) described as ‘inter-subjectivity’.
Secondly, despite adopting less conventional approaches to research objectivity, I was fully aware of the lack of social distance between the respondents and myself. As a member of the Muslim community, I had already experienced and encountered the challenges I was studying. This meant I shared similar patterns of ethno-religious socialisation and life- experiences as the respondents. However, this is not a problem, as Mamak (cited in Roberts, 2013, p. 55) observed:
I found that my academic training in the methodological views of western social science and its emphasis on ‘scientific objectivity’ conflicted with the experiences of my colonial past. The traditional way in which social science research is conducted proved inadequate for an understanding of the people I was researching.
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In this respect, the traditional scientific perspective that views the researched as mere objects of data collection are outdated for this research, because to penetrate closed social groups required personal connection. On the other hand, as Adler and Adler (1987, p. 8) point out, when examining closed social groups, the ‘researchers must assume social roles that fit the worlds they are studying’. Therefore, using ‘conscious partiality’, I sought not only to hear the life histories of British Muslims, but also observe and compare their social reality and experiences to my own.
Therefore, from the commencement of my fieldwork, I was aware I could not divorce my personal experiences from my research. In actuality, my subjectivity was intimately embroiled in the research, as it guided my choice of topic, and it influenced the selection of my methodology. Consequently, I was concerned that my subjectivity might skew my reading of the social reality of Muslim lives. For this reason, I took steps to prevent this from happening. Firstly, respondents were selected in a random manner, which meant I did not know the respondents, so when they revealed their life histories to me, it was unknown. For that reason, I did not enter my fieldwork with a preconceived profile of British Muslims. Instead, I wanted to rely heavily on the data I collected. This meant utilising appropriate methodological techniques, namely interviews and surveys, to solicit complete and meaningful data that could be used to construct a picture of life in Muslim enclaves. I assigned ‘meaning units’ to interview transcripts, which identified distinct meanings within the respondent statements.
In most cases, a collection of statements formed a unit, for example, when respondents emphasised their ‘hatred for non-Muslims and British society’. However, I did also identify single words as meaning units (e.g. racism and Islamophobia). As Ratner (2002) asserts, meaning units objectively summarise the personal meanings of the respondents. Secondly, since the research focused on unravelling the backstories and identities of British Muslims, I disclosed from the outset my background. Therefore, as complete objectivity was considered impractical, I made every effort to acknowledge and integrate my subjectivity within a contained methodological standpoint.
Although my own experiences provided the backdrop for my research, it became clear that I needed to place British Muslims at the centre of my ←32 | 33→research. Constructing knowledge around the life experiences of British Muslims made it incumbent to tailor my methodology around the sensitivity of the respondents. This is because, as Collins (1990, p. 209) explains, it is an individual’s experiences that provide a concrete ‘criterion for credibility’. This enabled me to interpret my research findings while acknowledging my prior subjective experiences. As mentioned, I decided to use my previously gained knowledge to enhance my research. In this respect, my experiences gave me a distinct standpoint.
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