People, places and texts: re/presenting Islam in Edinburgh, Scotland
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Date
18/12/2019Item status
Restricted AccessEmbargo end date
13/12/2020Author
Alibhai, Fayaz Shiraz Dawood
Metadata
Abstract
Of Britain’s 2.8 million Muslims, nearly two-thirds originate from South Asia,
primarily Pakistan and Bangladesh, with the remainder from North Africa, East
Europe and South East Asia. Much of the scholarship on Muslims in Britain tends,
however, to be limited to Muslims in England, typically about Pakistanis, and
focusing on cities such as London, Leeds, Bradford, Birmingham and Manchester.
Within the field, the literature encompasses all manner of disciplines, tackling the
obvious — gender, media representations, political participation, and
Islamophobia — and the less common — architecture, conversion, and healthcare.
A small number of studies have also examined the experiences of particular
groups and communities such as Arabs, Iranians, Somalis, Turks, and Yemenis.
Despite these developments, there remains a dearth of scholarship on three
intersecting fronts: denominational, geographic, and thematic. Indeed, research
on the Shiʿa, Scotland, and Muslim spaces of worship and gathering in the West
other than the mosque, continues to be under-represented in the field of Muslims
in Britain. Additionally, the role that Muslims play in creating and contributing to
the wider social, cultural and intellectual capital of the communities and societies
within which they live, particularly in Western contexts, is often ignored.
With just under 77,000 Muslims in Scotland, this thesis examines the people,
places and texts beyond the mosque which re/present Islam in the festival and
capital city of Edinburgh, home to about 12,400 Muslims. Drawing upon
ethnographic fieldwork conducted from 2011-2013 and encompassing
participant-observation, and visual and textual analysis from a variety of primary
sources, the thesis additionally melds elements from human geography and
Islamic studies. Through four case studies, it analyses, in turn, how Islam and
Muslims generally are re/presented in Scotland as well as how Muslims in
Scotland specifically re/present Islam and themselves. Across the people, places,
and texts encapsulated by the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the
Edinburgh Festival Fringe, two large-scale Sunni conferences and a smaller Shiʿi
ritual procession, the thesis explores several inter-related themes — the concept of
space, notions of praxis, leadership and authority, the role of women, and the
production of knowledge as a function of cultural endeavour. In so doing, the
thesis provides an auditorium for fresh and ‘thickly descriptive’ new voices from an
ethnography ‘at home’ for Islam in Scotland, and which underscores the
importance of culture and cultural production. The public performance of Islam in
this context includes and re/presents insiders as well as outsiders — to other
insiders and outsiders, and from platforms and perspectives which have not
previously been considered in the literature, and/or whose reach does not rely on
long-standing traditional, institutional, or organisational foundations to be heard
or considered seriously. As such, this research aims to contribute to and expand
existing research on Muslims in Britain, and specifically Scotland, highlighting
crosscutting themes insofar as notions of ‘self’ and ‘other’ re/presentations of Islam bear upon other studies in the field vis-à-vis identity, praxis, gender,
education, and authority.