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Being, Becoming and Belonging: YoungMuslim Women in Contemporary BritainKaye HawPublished online: 14 Jul 2010.

To cite this article: Kaye Haw (2010) Being, Becoming and Belonging: Young MuslimWomen in Contemporary Britain, Journal of Intercultural Studies, 31:4, 345-361, DOI:10.1080/07256868.2010.491273

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Being, Becoming and Belonging:Young Muslim Women inContemporary BritainKaye Haw

This paper is based on a piece of inter-generational research that follows up the young

Muslim girls and their families who took part in my PhD research 15 years previously.

In this paper I present the ‘everydayness’ of these same young Muslim women, many of

whom now work and some have children of their own. The theme threading through the

paper is Young’s notion of a reversal of structures of tolerance (Theoretical Criminology,

3, 387�407, 1999). I use this to explore the nexus of religion, culture, identities and

education. The paper argues that a re-structuring of structures of tolerance over the

15 years between both pieces of research has influenced the playfulness of these

individuals to dance with the discourses positioning them.

Keywords: Difference; Gender; Hybridity; Islam; Multiculturalism; Muslim

Communities; Social Exclusion; Tolerance

Introduction

This paper draws on recent research that re-visits a similar piece of work carried out

15 years ago in a single-sex state school with a high proportion of Muslim girls and

a private Muslim girls’ school (Haw 1995, 1998). The original research was carried

out in the early 1990s. Within this context the research set out to understand the roles

In 15 years’ experience as a researcher Kaye Haw has worked on a range of projects in inner city areas, mainly

with young people and minority ethnic groups; increasingly over this time using ethnographic participatory

research methods and a range of multi-media approaches such as video. This has included work on the

educational experiences of Muslim girls, issues of domestic violence in European Muslim communities, full body

search procedures in prisons with reference to gender and ethnicity and more recently issues around young

people and crime. Currently there are two main strands to her work: first, researching methodological issues to

do with working with video and ‘voice’ in participatory projects with young people. Second, this AHRC/ESRC

funded piece of work with Muslim communities originating from the Azad Kashmir region. Correspondence to:

Dr Kay Haw, Principal Research Fellow, University of Nottingham, Dearing Building, Jubilee Campus, Wollaton

Road, Nottingham NG8 1BB, UK. Email: Kaye.haw@nottingham.ac.uk

ISSN 0725-6868 print/ISSN 1469-9540 online/10/040345-17

# 2010 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/07256868.2010.491273

Journal of Intercultural Studies

Vol. 31, No. 4, August 2010, pp. 345�361

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played by schools in socialising pupils into British society by exploring the debates

around how excluded groups are drawn into democratic life and the key tensions

arising from notions of inclusion and exclusion. It did this through the lenses of

feminist theory, poststructuralism, multiculturalism and identity.

The schools were representative of two different forms of socialisation: the state

school based around a multicultural perspective and the Muslim school around a

community perspective concerned to educate girls in an Islamic context and

environment. In the intervening time the education system has moved away from

centralised bureaucratic structures to place increasing emphasis on specialisation,

personalisation and increased participation of local communities in governance

structures through partnership working (Cantle 2001) and although Muslim schools

are still the focus of contentious debate they do nevertheless ‘fit’ more clearly into

these current initiatives.

The theoretical and analytical frameworks shaping the research at this time drew

on concepts in social and cultural studies to explain phenomena such as

discrimination, identity formation, culture and citizenship that shaped these girls’

lives. The framework for theorising the research was one that emphasised a structural

analysis of discourses linked to agency to account for how these young people

simultaneously constructed, inhabited and moved between different groups and

contexts and their apparently ‘different’ and ‘contradictory’ behaviour in this process.

The analysis focused on issues around agencies and identities of girls who found

themselves positioned by a range of discourses often framed by contemporaneous

research and media as potentially contradictory and conflicting. It explored notions

of being Muslim, being a Muslim woman and being a British Muslim growing up and

going to school in 1990s Britain. The research revealed the extent of their agency in

relationship to these discourses and the playfulness which many of these young

women exhibited in managing these tensions and contradictions within their own

communities and outside of them.

The current research, carried out between 2008 and 2010, re-visits some of the

original participants and their families with the help of two co-researchers whose

families took part in the original research. Many are now wives and mothers and

employed within the local area in a variety of occupations ranging from managing the

services of a Primary Health Care Trust and community organisations, to social work

or returning to education. The aim of this research was to reveal the shifts and

changes that have occurred over the intervening years between both pieces of work

and to explore the ‘everydayness’ of Muslim families in contemporary Britain as an

international religious resurgence (Kepel 1997, 2003, Esposito 2002), heightened

political sensitivities in response to the events of 9/11 and 7/7 and the notion of

‘home grown’ terrorism has put what it means to be a Muslim in Britain, claiming

an Islamic identity, under the spotlight yet again.

The theme threading through the paper is that of the re-structuring of structures of

tolerance as these young Muslim women grew to become independent adults through

the late 1990s and the early years of the twenty-first century. This period is conceived

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of by some as being one of risk (Giddens 1990, 1991, Beck 1992) and individualisa-

tion (Beck 1992) and dubbed as one of reflexive modernity (Beck 1997) or liquid

modernity (Bauman 2000) or late modernity (Fornas 1995). It is also a period which

Young (1999) argues has witnessed a corresponding reversal of structures of

tolerance:

The transition from modernity to late modernity, I wish to argue, involves aremarkable change: almost a reversal of structures of tolerance. The modern worldis intolerant of diversity which it attempts to absorb and assimilate and is relativelytolerant of difficulty, of obdurate people and recalcitrant rebels which it sees asmore of a challenge to rehabilitate and reform. The late modern world celebratesdiversity and difference which it readily absorbs and sanitises, what it cannot abideis difficult people and dangerous classes which it seeks to build the most elaboratedefences against, not just in terms of insiders and outsiders, but throughoutthe population. (p. 387)

As an ‘in-between’ generation, and in the intervening 15 years between both pieces of

research, these young women have witnessed changes within their own communities

in terms of a broadening of attitudes to education, work, marriage and the role of

women, in part as a reflection of the broader changes in British society. Unlike their

parents these young women and their children are now perceived to be part of a more

fragmented society where labour markets are unravelling accompanied by a

widespread individualism concerned with identity and self-actualisation.

To accommodate these trends the current research carried out in 2008�2010

required a theoretical framework that partially positioned it within the socio-cultural

concepts employed by the previous research while taking account of these shifts in

attitudes in British society over the intervening decade and a half. The aim was

to trace this half generational shift through the original research participants as

representative of an ‘in-between’ generation. The framework devised was one

designed to explore a fuller notion of agency and how immediate context and

locality is a mediating space actively created by individuals. It also needed to have the

potential to explore the connections between the external lived worlds of individuals

and their internal ‘felt’ worlds.

Within this framework the analysis used the notion of a ‘mythic feedback loop’

(Losev 2003) as a heuristic device to understand how individuals combine and link

their internal worlds to their external environment. The loop designates a narrative

movement by individuals from their internal worlds to their external worlds, moving

from the one to the other. The movement is a dynamic that flows from the resolution

of an internal ‘felt’ contradiction, synthesised as fact in the social world, which in

consequence takes on a symbolic function that in turn has the potential to shape the

internal sense-making of individuals. The loop therefore breaches the boundary

between the internally ‘felt’ world of the individual and the external world of social

action by linking thinking, feeling and action. For example, a range of ‘mythic

feedback loops’ to do with Muslim women as the ‘oppressed other’, the ‘mothers of

home grown terrorists’, ‘my son the fanatic’ are circulated from internal ‘felt’

Journal of Intercultural Studies 347

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individual worlds and moved between families, their communities, their wider social

contexts and back again. Decisions and reactions to these choices occur within

specific contexts creating yet more internally ‘felt’ contradictions amongst different

individuals. In this generative dynamic the hijab, the mosque, the ‘madrassah’ and

private Muslim schools, particularly for girls, come to assume symbolic significance

as religious and socio-cultural practices around them become intensified via various

‘mythic feedback loops’ generated in part through the mass media. As symbols they

function as linguistic short cuts (Barthes 2000) encapsulating complex and contra-

dictory debates, around oppression, protest and compliance, and creating the spaces

for a re-structuring of structures of tolerance as the notions and intentions of others

come to appear natural and ‘reasonable’ over time.

In summary the theoretical and analytical frameworks adopted for this piece of

inter-generational research shape an analysis situated somewhere between the cultural

and the social. This is considered to be a particularly useful lens through which to

explore the shifting and fluid identities of these participants given the micro-cultural

world they and their families live in, and the way individuals are increasingly

recognised as active consumers and producers of culture. These frameworks are now

applied to the data generated by the research which was generated in two ways. First,

through video diaries that filmed aspects of everyday lives to reflect different stories of

life in Britain over different generations and how this has changed. Second, through

a series of individual and group interviews focused around the three themes,

educational and school experiences, notions of identity and citizenship, and notions

of religious identity. These interviews used a ‘trigger video’ made for the European

Year Against Racism (Hadfield and Haw 2000), newspaper articles and photographs

as prompts. The methodological issues arising from these particular research tools are

discussed more fully elsewhere (Haw and Hadfield 2010). Using the materials

collected in this way a final DVD was produced aimed at promoting discussion about

citizenship and identity.

The paper is based around three main sections focusing on notions of ‘being’,

‘belonging’ and ‘becoming’. Each section is concerned to track changing perceptions

of diversity and difference underlying Young’s re-structuring of tolerance by tracing

a narrative arc through different generations of these families. While the concern is to

trace an overarching narrative using the ‘voices’ of a diverse group of individuals, it is

also recognised that the research is contextualised within specific and localised

communities and therefore its contribution is only as a tentative indicator of trends

rather than an explicator of generalised and grand movements or moments.

The first section is about these families ‘being’ in Britain; as Muslims from the

Mirpuri region of Pakistan started settling in cities, such as Bradford, from the 1950s

with the bulk arriving from 1960 onwards (Saifullah-Khan 1977, Anwar 1979,

Werbner 1991). This sparked fierce debates in Britain about the best way to maintain

cultural and religious identity while massaging the spaces between opposing views so

the result was neither ghettoisation nor assimilation. Multicultural practices in

response to these debates focused on easing access to education and employment

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using initiatives such as ‘bussing’ and intensive language programmes (Haw 1998).

The second section concerns the issues arising from the establishment of settled

communities. As their children were born and educated in Britain ideas of returning

to Mirpur became less attractive, the so-called ‘myth of return’ (Anwar 1979). In this

period identity politics increasingly came to be about governance, participation and

democracy and how to forge links, allegiances and connections through new

citizenship initiatives in schools. The third section is concerned with the process of

‘becoming’ as these settled and vibrant communities post 9/11 and 7/7 consider who

they are and where they are now.

The argument threading through these sections is, as an ‘in-between’ generation

that visibly mark a shift in perceptions about diversity and difference, understanding

the ‘everydayness’ of these individuals opens up the possibility to explore how their

multiple identities intersect, are enacted and embodied. Over this 15-year period, it is

argued that diversity has become conflated with difference and difference with the

difficult and dangerous, bringing about an inversion of structures of tolerance and

influencing the playfulness of these individuals to ‘dance’ with the discourses

positioning them.

Being in Britain

In Britain early multicultural initiatives were based on a liberal assumption that all

people are more or less similar and aimed at absorbing diversity. These participants

recalled parents who were not as educated, did not ‘know the system’ and were no

trouble because they often remained ‘silent’:

When my Dad came over, they didn’t have any language skills, they didn’t know thesystem all they were doing basically was getting up in the morning going to workdoing 12 hour shifts, coming back. The wives just stayed at home because theycouldn’t speak English, couldn’t integrate with the local community. So you had allthe Asian community staying together with Asian community until suddenly thechildren started growing up. They learnt English so they could start to integrate at abetter level and then the third generation and so on. My parents’ generation theycould only make decisions according to what knowledge they had you know.(Returnee to higher education, single mother of one teenage son)

As first generation Muslim communities, their parents’ overriding concern was to get

a ‘good education’ for their children, particularly their boys, and they prioritised this

above everything else:

The main priority I think at that time was not holding on to religious values.I always remembered our parents being very keen to hold on to traditional valuesbut sometimes that got a bit mumbled jumbled with religion. Those things oftenget a bit mixed up from people but I think there was more of an importanceattached to acquiring some kind of economic benefit from being here and mostimportant of all that the children receive an education that they can take into thefuture. (Professional male)

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Their parents’ ‘drive’ to educate their children stemmed in part from their own lack

of formal learning that presented ‘hurdles’ in an increasingly competitive British job

market and their desire for it to ‘be better’ for their own children. Although they

lacked confidence in some areas of British life they were confident enough in their

own identities to ‘fit themselves in’ with the idealised notion of British society they

brought with them from Azad Kashmir. This perception of their parents’ generation

as one of individuals strong in their identities ‘because they brought them with them’

and tolerant of integration, contrasted with the experiences of their children born

into one culture, yet brought up in and exposed to another:

When we were kids it was really strange because we were definitely living in twocultures, we celebrated Christmas, we had the lights in the front room, presents andgave present to neighbours and to Muslims as well, but we were still told that wedon’t celebrate Christmas because of the intentions behind it. (Female communityconsultant)

These participants remembered their primary schools fondly and parents who joined

in school events:

We did have prize giving days where parents were invited [ . . .]. You were handedout your certificates [ . . .] My Mum used to come and actually sing hymns notknowing what she was doing and I used to love singing hymns. I even had afavourite hymn and everything. (Mother of two young children)

As these communities became settled and as they acquired more information,

partially through their children, they became increasingly confident to articulate their

religious/cultural concerns about the British education system. Girls began to test

state school uniform policy by wearing trousers and the hijab to school and the

resulting lag between schools putting initiatives in place to accommodate these

needs together with the closure of an increasing number of single-sex state schools for

girls prompted some members of these Muslim communities to establish private

schools for Muslim girls. Once established they campaigned for these schools to

receive state funding in line with the 1944 Education Act and other faith schools.

These moves led to often media-driven debates about the role of the church and of

denominational schools in integrating religious minorities and enhancing their

symbolic citizenship in Britain that coalesced around specific events like the Salman

Rushdie affair (1988), the first Gulf war (1990�91), and later between 1992 and 1995

the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The effect was an increasing realisation amongst

a younger generation of Muslims more formally educated in British schools that:

Thinking about Salman Rushdie Affair it was a big thing. I was pretty young then.I was still kind of a home-body at that time. I can remember thinking why is thisperson allowed to write something against a religion? People started to becomemore religiously aware and thinking we’re fine we don’t have a problem in living inBritish society as long as we are allowed to be ourselves and be respected forourselves. When they felt threatened by things and people writing things about

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them and putting down the religion they thought hang on a minute what’shappened here? I think that would’ve happened with any person of any culturalbackground. It just so happened that it was Muslims and predominantly PakistaniMuslims. It became a blow and they kind of thought we can’t actually remain silentabout this because it’s something we feel quite strongly about. It’s our religion. It’sour identity. If they ridicule our religion and they’re ridiculing Islam then they areridiculing us. They felt it was a personalised thing against them. Whereas in the pastthey were living quite contentedly within society it wasn’t so much of an issue.(Social worker)

This participant is highlighting a range of mythic feedback loops in circulation as the

tensions between religion and secularism are acted out around a symbolic event, the

publication of the Satanic Verses. Emotionalised reactions to the book, heightened

and intensified through the media and public demonstrations where the book was

burnt fed and re-created the loops. It came to be about ridiculing Islam, our identity,

ridiculing us, a ‘personalised thing’. As cultural and religious values were questioned

in a ‘hang on a minute what’s happened here’ moment, it evolved to be about ‘feeling

threatened’ and ‘not being able to be ourselves and be respected’.

Events such as this, and paradoxically initiatives in schools aimed at increasing

toleration of diverse communities through the celebration of their difference, ‘the

saris, samosas steel bands’ approach had the unforeseen consequence of making these

young women very aware of their difference:

At school we were made to feel different it highlighted differences but we are morearticulate. We are not scared to be Muslim like my parents generation. We are quitelucky for us to be accepted as well so that’s good we have that freedom nobody cantake that away from us. It’s not your identity. We’ve got the right, it’s our rights.We’re British born. I think we are a different generation. We are more vocal and weare being allowed to do that. We can stand up for our rights, be more vocal about it.Everything is turned round to a religious debate. It shouldn’t be. (Nursery assistantand mother)

Individuals positioned by these discourses were faced with making choices about who

they were, and where they fitted in to British society. As diversity and difference were

simultaneously normalised and reified through debates about how their communities

could be drawn into democratic life the more thorny issue was one of the difficulty of

‘integrating’ a social group that partially defined its identity in religious terms. This is

the focus of the following section.

Belonging in Britain: From Dupatta to Hijab, Niqab and Jilbab

In the period up to the early 1970s, when these families were becoming established,

employment in Britain was full and monolithic, careers tended to span a lifetime and

domestic and leisure roles were tightly cast and designated. These parents were

aspirational, even more so because they were aware of their own lack of formal

education. They wanted it to be different for their own children. With the weakening

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of their ties to the traditions and culture of Mirpur their religion operated as a

constant thread even though many of them at the time could not read the Q’ran and

were unable to translate it:

When they first came there was a lot of issues around religion. I remember as achild being forced to read the Q’ran with my brother. We used to get up at sixbefore we went to school just to get a few chapters in. We almost used to race witheach other and see who could finish first because of course you were showered withpraise and gifts. But what people need to remember is that our parents when theywere taught the Q’ran didn’t understand a word of it. It was in Arabic and in ourvillages in Pakistan nobody was translating it was just you have to read this. So theywere unable to translate anything. It was just us learning sentences and words.Sometimes we knew what the odd sentence, the odd word meant but in a lot ofcontexts we had no idea about the meaning of this book and neither did ourparents. I think that reflected in our day to day life then. (Male social care worker)

In comparing attitudes to culture, religion and education with those of their parents

these participants painted a picture of a generation of young Muslims growing up

with a different sort of confidence. This was not based on confidence in a strong

cultural identity ‘brought with them’ from Mirpur, instead it was the confidence of

individuals who had been educated to ‘voice’ their opinions. This was a generation

who through their formal and religious education were made aware of their rights as

British citizens, which they were not afraid to ‘push for’ balanced by the recognition

that ‘pushing and pushing too much can cause more harm than good’.

These shifts in confidence in their identities can usefully be explored through

the range of mythic feedback loops circulating around dress to highlight how these

individuals learnt to strategically ‘dance’ with the discourses of diversity and visible

difference. When their parents arrived in Britain it was commonplace for women to

wear the dupatta; a loose thin scarf that was worn over the shoulders and draped over

the head as and when required. Over the years and increasingly these young women

have instead taken to adopting the hijab that is pinned over the head at all times in

public:

One morning I just woke up and didn’t even think of wearing the hijab, the nightbefore, the week before, the year before, [ . . .] I just had this urge to wear it [ . . .].I thought what am I thinking, I tried to get rid of these thoughts [ . . .] the moreI pushed it out, the stronger it come to me, and I thought if I push this thought atcompletely, I will never, ever wear the hijab, so while I am feeling so strong about it,I think I should wear it, so I put on a cloth around my head and I thought I wouldwear it to my mum’s house. My family when they saw me that morning with thehijab on they thought OK she’s got conformed at last. I was the first to wear it inmy family, in the whole of my mother’s side and my father’s and even my husband’sside I was the first and I got a lot more stick from them than the white people, thenon-Muslims.

Different participants spoke in similar reflective ways, about their own decisions with

regard to wearing the hijab and jilbab and the internal ‘felt’ contradictions they

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resolved in doing so. Some adopted it only to abandon it and then more recently wear

it again:

I went on to college and I started wearing my headscarf, I think I only wore it for9 months before I took it off. I was going to France with friends from college andfor some bizarre reason, because I wanted to fit in there, I took it off and then whenI came back I just never put it on again. Basically this is my 3rd attempt at wearingthe scarf. I went on to university and I wasn’t covering the first year or maybe the2nd year as well. The 2nd time I started wearing it was when the whole Afghanistanthing happened [ . . .]. And after 9/11. I was passionate about being a Muslim andI wanted people to see me as a Muslim. I wore it at of the blue the whole Jilbabthing as well, [ . . .] one day I just walked in and everybody was like really shocked.(Mother, hairdresser and beautician)

Labelled by others as symbolic of the ‘oppressed woman’ by wearing the hijab their

response was initially one of frustration and resentment and they learnt to

‘strategically deploy’ the hijab and re-define it as a symbol of defiance, independence

and assertiveness (Poynting 2009).

Reflecting back now it was the different group I was hanging around with. It wasmy first job, I was trying to build a career and I started socialising with peoplethrough work who were covering. They introduced me to study circles and I wasquite apprehensive that if I didn’t wear the hijab I would get pointed at, andmocked. The circles opened my eyes to all the educated career women who werewearing the hijab. I was really excited by the fact that there were all these educatedcareer women who were wearing the hijab. It wasn’t to make a statement I’m aMuslim it was like I’m going to get punished from God. I didn’t wear the outergarment but I started wearing the hijab. It was very fashionable it had to match myoutfit, the right colours, wear it in a particular way. (Female graduate andcommunity organisation manager)

This participant wore it for a ‘few years’ and then took it off. Her reflections on this

choice involve complex interactions between her working, social and personal lives.

Although she was working in an all female Asian community organisation she did not

feel supported, for example, when she went to pray although nothing ‘was actually

said’ they gave her ‘funny looks’. She described the study circles as becoming ‘quite

radicalised’ and places where religious discourses were ascendant, no listening to

music, no nationalism. But she worked as a manager in an environment where

cultural discourses dominated. She was required to take the lead and be proactive in

celebrating Pakistan Day for example and did not feel comfortable. To resolve the

contradictions she was constantly presented with she took the hijab off: ‘‘In a gesture

that was almost like to be re-born, to take everything off and come out of my skin

and start again.’’

Several years on she has now decided to wear the hijab again but in a different way.

She is older, still unmarried and has a different job as an independent consultant, and

it is less about career and fashion and more about religious practice. The debate for

her has now shifted to one that has overtones of boredom. Her priority is to contest

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discourses still prevalent within some sections of her community to do with gender

roles rather than challenge the erroneous perceptions of others:

We are getting bored. We have got a life and other struggles to go through rather

than wearing hijab. We are still in a male dominated society and still need to fight

to be respected within our own community. There is still a cultural element about a

wife still making sure they do all the cooking having to be accountable to her in-

laws. These are still elements Pakistani men are practicing. It is embedded you can’t

filter the culture out of them. We have to balance the lifestyle of a working mother

and wife. Muslim women now are more educated more interested in developing

and helping the community and taking a leading role in the regeneration of the

community. Men don’t like it. These are internal struggles. I’m absolutely fed up

with the media, everything has to go back to the hijab. Move on [ . . .] There’s no

argument for it anymore because if you look women are still independent, have

their careers and some of them are completely financially independent. (Female

community organisation manager)

One thread running through these narratives is the opposition they encountered from

older generations who were prompted by their desire to fit into mainstream British

society by not drawing attention to their difference. But as wearing the hijab within

their communities has come to be normalised and made reasonable over time, and as

cultural identity has slowly come to be subsumed under religious identity, the trend

is also for their mothers to increasingly swap the dupatta for the hijab. Some

individuals are also choosing to push the boundaries of ‘dress’ by deciding to wear the

jilbab and more controversially the niqab (see also Haw 2009). Those who make this

choice are coming under similar pressures from their elders who still cling to notions

of ‘fitting in’ to British society, while feeling increasingly marginalised by it, and who

also construct visible difference with being difficult:

My cousin who wears the niqab is educating herself and everything but the family

still have got problems they will not find an appropriate marriage proposal because

she wears niqab and will not be accepted in the Muslim community, because

nobody has got to that level. She’s got pressure to take it off because she won’t find

a suitable partner within our own extended family. They say she doesn’t need to

wear it but it’s her choice so what do you do then? (Female community consultant

and researcher)

These concerns are interesting. They are on one level to do with protecting the girl

from becoming isolated from her family. On another and more complex level, the

fear is that she will need to go outside of her community and marry someone from

another culture that finds this dress code more acceptable and so isolate the whole

family from the community. In the emotionally charged family exchanges, choices

such as these are politicised and intensified by events and debates occurring outside

of the community. It is argued, for example, that in the post-9/11 climate of

Islamophobia women wearing hijab, ‘the mohajabehs’ are making a political choice:

‘‘They are publicly branding themselves as Muslims at a time when such a label

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carries the potential fear of making them vulnerable to open hostility’’ (Afshar et al.

2005, p. 262).

Drawing the debate so firmly into the religio-political sphere is not something

these participants would necessarily ‘buy into’ because the complexity of their choices

can only partially be explained by such structural perspectives. These individual acts

may or may not be political and they may or not be politicised. These very personal,

contradictory and shifting narratives cannot be ‘pinned down’ to any one domain. In

choosing to adopt a dress code that has not in the past been part of their tradition or

culture these participants are responding emotionally to their own uncertainties to

gain some control:

The media picks up on it. Every Muslim young man within a certain age is a

suspected terrorist. It can work in a very contradictory way. They’re sensationalising

so much that these young men are quite proud. They have got control and the

media are fuelling it. I’ve got a beard, wear Muslim clothes, in an Islamic class

whatever. Every single one of you I’ve got control here as I sit next to you. Can you

imagine their self-esteem, they’re worthiness � I’ve got control of the Government.

To an extent it’s psychological. (Female classroom assistant)

For some individuals the issues and the contradictions they present are just too

complicated. In a bid to reconcile these tensions the answer is to ‘distil’ their choices

to an essence: ‘‘I would just say I was Muslim I wouldn’t even say I was a Pakistani

Muslim or a Kashmiri Muslim or a British Muslim. It’s too complicated’’ (Female

postgraduate student).

For these subsequent generation Muslims born in Britain with a ‘paper’

entitlement to British identity the debate has also shifted almost imperceptibly to

one that conflates diversity with difference while confusing citizenship with identity/

ies. As young people they were provided with a strong sense of British identity via

their parents’ moral discourses often based on espoused ideals of respect, tolerance

and fairness. One participant described the community he grew up in as follows:

We weren’t politicised; we were passive and we were just there to do our work and

we had this huge and unbelievable respect for the British. They gave us railways and

they were civilised. They had uniforms and they had etiquette. Everybody

considered the British to be very fair, very liberal, very open minded very tolerant.

(Male youth worker)

Prepared by their parents to live and be educated within this idealised society, and

embrace its values, they have instead grown up with the rise of the ‘lad’ and ‘ladette’

culture. Their ‘felt’ contradictions, between these contemporary and traditional

moral views of ‘Britishness’, have had to be resolved against a backdrop of

globalisation and nationalism. In the process political discourses in Britain have

come to be dominated by notions of tolerance less based on their parents’ traditional

concepts and increasingly based on absorption of diversity and difference that aims to

‘pulverise its ethnic peripheries and stubborn minorities in the cultural blender of

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nationalism’ (Werbner 2005) and problematise the ‘difficult’ through an increasing

intolerance to that regarded as non-British.

What’s happening now is that their parents are born here and they’re born here. But

when it comes to something like work or something in their life they see the

difference and then they’re thinking I’m a British person the same as this person

but then I am not valued the same as that person so he starts questioning his

identity and when he starts questioning his identity � I was born here and they’re

not accepting me � it’s a confusion. I was born here I went to school here so why am

I treated differently? (Mother of three graduate sons)

Britain is their place of birth, the country to which they belong but their identities are

fluid and fractured through a synthesis of South Asian culture, Islam and Western

culture. They identify themselves as British citizens but perceive that others do not

yet fully accept this. As British citizens they do not feel themselves to be British in the

conventional sense of national identity, because for them identity and citizenship are

not the same thing:

Because we’ve been thrown into this society, I wanted something to tell me who

I was and that something was Islam as a religion. I wasn’t Pakistani any more, I was

brought up here, so I wasn’t Pakistani and I didn’t feel very British, because when

you hear racist taunts all the time, especially as a youngster, you think ‘‘gosh I’m so

different’’, I must be so different. (Mother independent business owner)

This increasing confidence as they question who they are, and where they belong, in a

society that is socially constructing them as becoming ‘more Muslim’ can mean the ‘felt’

need to be visibly identified: ‘‘I’m just quite confident with myself because of my religion

and the way I dress. I just love to be seen as a Muslim by others’’ (Female solicitor).

Their response is a complex mix of indignation at the way Muslims are represented

in the media as violent and terrorists, the need to demonstrate their solidarity with

other Muslims through visibly identifying themselves and confusion about their

‘Britishness’. It is a reaction to their gradual realisation that they are living in a

contemporary British multicultural society that is increasingly intolerant of those

causing difficulty because difficulty has become conflated with risk and danger. While

they acknowledge that their actions can be interpreted as political acts it does not, as

I argue in the next section fully do justice to the reflexive process of what being a

Muslim born and brought up in Britain really means.

Becoming British Muslims? The Inversion of Structures of Tolerance

The discussion in this section explores the uncertainty of these young Muslim women

as they are positioned by discourses of ‘Britishness’ that have become increasingly

tolerant of diversity accompanied by an equivalent intolerance of the difficult because

this has come to be conflated with being dangerous. It does this through the

metaphor of distillation.

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Newer generations of Muslims in these communities are simultaneously being

positioned outside of British multicultural society by dominant and powerful

discourses to do with Islamophobia and are reacting to this by positioning themselves

outside of it. Heightened emotional reactions to recent and violent events combined

with new senses of pluralism and a re-construction of notions of tolerance have

intensified this reflexive process:

Even within the Muslim community there is a big debate going on who are we?

How do we combat negative stereotypes? What are we contributing to that, and

how are we perpetuating that, and what responsibilities do we have? As a Muslim

community we’ve got a lot of stuff to sort out internally and I think with what’s

happening externally I don’t think that debate is even taking place. (Female

Primary Health Care Trust Manager)

In Learning to Labour (1977) Willis describes how the young men created a macho,

anti-female, racist and anti-intellectual identity in order to resist the way they were

socially constructed by others to both preserve their sense of dignity and survive. This

‘hardening of identity’, is akin to the process of distillation and occurs wherever

groups or communities are marginalised. Distillation facilitates the process of social

exclusion because it is a process of intensification that while being open to blockages

and contamination has the potential to create essences that in turn confirm exclusion

and realise essentialism. This process is mediated through a series of mythic feedback

loops operating through three interlinked phases. First, social exclusion threatens the

sense of identity of these individuals and the group they identify with, it makes them

ontologically insecure and open to the embracing of essences. Second, these

individuals as social actors may or may not choose to embrace these essences in

order to compensate for the lack of identity but even so it still shapes the notions

individuals have of themselves. Third and crucially, social exclusion by blocking off

opportunities, both materially and in terms of the possibility of embracing alternative

identities becomes self-fulfilling.

This piece of inter-generational research by juxtaposing different generations

within individual families reveals trends within these particular, local and localised

communities that highlight these three phases of social exclusion through an

inversion of structures of tolerance.

These families are now being confronted with images of them as being difficult and

dangerous. The confusion created by this representation contrasted to a period where

their diversity and difference were absorbed and tolerated, is a marker of the first

phase of social exclusion as these individuals and the group they identify look for

direction:

For young Muslims of the next generation like my brother’s children they will have

a stronger identity not such a confused identity because our generation we’re still

getting pulled by Mum’s generation and trying to go forward but we can’t. It won’t

be a British identity it will be a strong Islamic identity. It’s definitely not going to

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happen now. It may have done if things were addressed and before all this terroristaction and the media. (Female independent business woman)

In this process of creating an essence one part of the distillation process is

accomplished. These individuals as social actors may or may not choose to embrace

these essences in order to resolve ontological uncertainty but even so it still shapes the

notions they have of themselves. This is another phase of the social exclusion process.

The images projected upon marginalised groups by the wider public who conflate the

difficult with the dangerous have a tendency to essentialise by apportioning the blame

for society’s ills on certain, usually vulnerable, parts of the social structure (Werbner

2005).

There was a period when every morning I absolutely dreaded putting the TV on.I dreaded it. What am I going to face today at work? How are people going to seeme today out on the streets because of what the media have said? If it’s not in themedia then it’s not in your psyche in the same way. (Female Primary Health CareTrust Manager)

These women form part of an ‘in-between’ generation who visibly mark a moment

within British multicultural society in terms of being British, being Muslim and being

British Muslims. They are an ‘in-between’ generation in the sense that their identity is

in part defined by their active re-construction and re-evaluation of the relationship

between the traditions they inherited from their parents, the role of religion within

that and the relationship of those traditions and religious beliefs with British culture

and identity. For individuals in these particular communities who perceive they are

pressured from ‘inside and out’ the movement seems to be one from not ‘being

British’ to one of ‘being just Muslim’ by re-visiting the essence of an Islam

unadulterated by cultural practices. This is a process perceived as one of reversion

because according to Islam children are born with an innate sense of God (fitrah). For

this reason the preference is to use the term ‘revert’.

All these pressures from inside and out, it’s better to marry a revert but there’smassive problems for the acceptance of a Pakistani woman who does that. Mendon’t like their daughters marrying a revert, they’re contradictory, because she’sgoing out, completely out and marrying someone with no cultural sort of element,background and she will have to adapt to him more than them, but if you have gotIslamic culture then it really doesn’t matter. To be honest it is better to marry arevert, no baggage, no stress, no cultural influences, it’s just pure Islam, it’s so mucheasier, pure Islamic expectations. (Unmarried female professional)

Thus reversion to Islam is perceived as a return back to this original pure faith which

in terms of the distillation metaphor is akin to a process of ‘becoming more Muslim’

and divesting Islam of its cultural practices and influences.

Accompanying this shift, third and crucially, social exclusion by blocking off

opportunities, both materially and in terms of the possibility of embracing alternative

identities can be self-fulfilling:

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I often get abused, go back home and I’m thinking well where’s home? I was born

here, my son visibly isn’t white, if he gets that abuse thrown, his mother was born

here, he was born here, how far are we going to take this? What constitutes

Britishness? I would like to really know that, when do you truly become British?

When can you stop being abused about going home? Where is home? (Single

mother and health worker)

The identities these young women and their families are forging for themselves, based

on their own mythic memories and those of their parents, reflects their immersion

into mainstream Western civic society as much as their exclusion from it. This is a

generation of young Muslim women who have had to make difficult choices about

who they are and what they want:

I think today’s generation rather than putting their head in the sand and kind of

denying who they are I think they’d actually stick their heads out of the sand and

say ‘‘yes we are Muslim and we’re very proud’’. What I am trying to say is people

don’t aspire to the negative image that we are given by the media of Muslims being

terrorists or women being oppressed. I am not oppressed I can actually speak for

myself and speak very confidently. I will tell you about Islam. I think similarly for

young Muslim men. They’re very proud and able to talk about international

politics and also be able to say ‘‘and we are not bloody terrorists either’’. (Mother of

young family)

In the movement from and between exclusion and essentialism the distillation

process operating through a series of mythic feedback loops inverts and reverses

structures of tolerance both inside and outside of the communities. The Britain of the

1950s, encountered by their parents, slowly embraced their differences and diversities.

But even as it celebrated difference and diversity through a notion of tolerance that

insisted in reality that people are more or less similar for younger generations born

and brought up here it re-enforced their difference. In a world of growing ontological

insecurity where emotional distance from its problems is being replaced by emotional

engagement with them one solution open to them is recourse to a ‘heightened’

Muslim and Islamic identity that also has the potential to essentialise and exclude.

Conclusion

The question for this very diverse group of young women and their families in a

world that celebrates difference and diversity while defending itself against the

difficult and dangerous is simply how their lives will be in the twenty-first century.

This generation are in the process of re-constructing and re-integrating both their

parents’ traditional and cultural notions of being Muslim, and their idealisation of

British identity with the re-assertion of their religious values. In doing so they are

being socially constructed as becoming ‘more Muslim’ and this has further intensified

their reflections on how these prevalent social constructions impact upon them and

their families. Many are now part of communities that are beginning to draw back

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into themselves in response to living in a society where fear of ‘the other’ is

widespread.

It is perhaps unsurprising if this research carried out in these local Mirpuri

communities has revealed young women with identities shaped in equal parts

through a process of ‘resistance’ to social constructions of Muslims and Islam filtered

through a mass media that fails to recognise the diversity/ies of Muslim communities,

and a re-positioning of many of the traditions of their parents. In the process of

subsuming notions of diversity under the construct of difference possibilities have

been opened up for others, both inside and outside, of Muslim communities to make

clear associations between what is different with what is dangerous.

As they re-construct their identities in response to what is happening around them

they are as likely to consider themselves to be part of ‘resistant’ communities, who

reject many of the social constructions of Muslims, as it is for them to perceive

themselves as part of newly confident and articulate expression of a contemporary

Muslim identity through engagement with a process of the re-contextualisation of

Islam. They have become ‘more confident to be seen as Muslim’, but are often in a

dialogue with their own children and parents, as to what constitutes being Muslim in

Britain and in contention with those, who often through the mass media, seek to

homogenise them as Muslims and then label them as terrorists. It is simplistic to

attribute the more fragmented but assertive identities that have emerged from these

processes as a failure of multiculturalism or perceive them as a set of docile bodies

‘trapped’ between cultures. Through them this research highlights a significant

question for debates around issues of multiculturalism: when did diversity and

difference become conflated with the difficult and dangerous?

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