Background: Muslim Political Mobilizations in Britain

Abstract

Since the late 1980s, British Muslim activism developed a distinctly religious character. Some scholars interpret the emergence of a distinctly religious Muslim leadership as the result of Muslim agency, which challenged the dominant basis of the race equality framework at the time (Meer, 2010; Modood, 1990, 2005, 2009); whereas others perceived this to be state-sponsored attempt to co-opt sections of ethnic minority leadership, fragmenting a more critical anti-racist politics, and resulting in a more conservative generation of political leadership amongst ethnic minorities (Kundnani, 2007; Sivanadan, 1990). Regardless of the interpretation, however, it was clear that during the 1980s the distinctly religious character of the political mobilization of Muslim groups ran into tensions with the existing anti-racist movement and the left more widely. This tension was further exasperated by a conflict with feminist political mobilizations. Although, there were already long-standing frictions between anti-racism and feminism, these came to a head over the Rushdie Affair and the formation of Women Against Fundamentalism.