A nice little brief insight into British converts to Islam and identity ....Political and media rhetoric almost always focuses on how Islam is incompatible with Britishness, and how Muslims must work harder to integrate (often code for assimilate). What about White British Muslims? With the emergence of new identities of White British Muslims, more research is needed into the stories of converts to understand how they are able to position themselves as both British and Muslim, in order for us to develop discussions on what this means for modern multicultural Britain and the discourse of integration/assimilation. We at the Myriad Foundation understand some of the challenges many new Muslims face when embracing Islam and one of those challenges is identity and belonging. Any place where the Muslims are a minority and within this minority, the majority seem to be non indigenous first, second or third generation British migrant Muslims will always face issues of identity . When it comes to assisting our convert/revert brothers and sisters, Muslims generally need to understand the position of urf (custom) within the shariah. Its important that first, second or third generation British migrant Muslims do not impose their cultural practises that arent necessarily religious on to new Muslims. It is important that the new Muslims from whatever background keep the positive aspects of their previous lives and enhance this with Islam. This is in fact a historical intrinsic value of the religion which allowed it to flourish and spread as far East as Indonesia and Malaysia and as far west as Morocco all the way up to Spain and Southern France. Dr Umar Abd-Allah quotes Shaykh Ba in an article, Islam is like crystal clear river and takes the colour of the bedrock it flows upon, therefore in Africa Islam looks African, in China Chinese, in India Indian and so on. If youre a new Muslim, why dont you join us at MYF New Muslims Group which runs every Thursday at the Muslim Youth Foundation. Were currently running an Islamic Foundation course called The Journey of Life | Establishing the Foundations every third and fourth Thursday of the month which covers what you need to know as a new Muslim for you to feel confident at practising your new religion. During these sessions, we also go into many of the important discussions about the challenges of being a new Muslim in todays Britain and how we individually and communally can over come them. (The Manchester New Muslim Network is the new Muslim support wing of the Myriad Foundation.)
Posted on: Fri, 31 Oct 2014 11:18:32 +0000
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