“The religions are engaging: tick, well done”: the invisibilization and instrumentalization of Muslim climate intermediaries

ABSTRACT “Climate intermediaries” are “go-betweens”, operating between levels of governance and/or between different types of actors. Faith-based actors (FBAs) are one populous yet neglected type of potential climate intermediary. In the UK, Muslims are the second largest group of religious adherents, yet are “othered”, and face widespread Islamophobia, alongside multiple other intersecting inequalities. Drawing from 21 interviews, we analyse data from individuals self-identifying as Muslim and their experiences of intermediation with state and non-state actors, to understand how such roles manifest. We find that Muslim FBAs are invisibilized and/or instrumentalized as climate intermediaries when engaging with state actors and “mainstream” ENGOs, but can assume such roles effectively when liaising with others from the shared faith or acting in interfaith contexts. The outcome of this obstructed action is a lack of representative or transformative strategies for climate action within “mainstream” fora, leading to subjective fatigue, poor policy design, and Muslim communities instead electing to intermediate through interfaith channels and between other Muslims. Through this article, we seek to redress the invisibilization of Muslim climate intermediaries, and raise critical questions about how climate intermediaries are understood, both within the policy literature, and in policy-making circles.

climate intermediaries when liaising with state and "mainstream" environmental actors. Successful climate intermediation by Muslim individuals and groups is often achieved through interfaith work, and with other Muslims (see also Hancock 2018). Fourth, we discuss our findings, arguing that the invisibilization and instrumentalization of intermediaries generates unrepresentative and less transformative climate strategies, hindering policy effectiveness and alienating minoritized actors away from the state actors who claim to want their insights.

Literature review: intermediaries, environmental action, and intersectionality
Non-state actors can play important roles within climate policy networks (e.g. Betsill 2002;Hadden 2015;Newell 2006), particularly intermediaries that bring actors together. In line with the other articles in this Special Issue, we understand climate intermediaries to be "go-betweens" that act "between different types of actors and/or between levels of governance, acting directly or indirectly to affect stakeholders" behaviour and/or policy goals on climate change" (Tobin, Tosun, and Farstad, forthcoming). Abbott, Levi-Faur, and Snidal (2017) identify four categories of function that "regulatory intermediaries" can provide, namely: operational capacity to support implementation; issue-specific expertise; independence from the state; and legitimacy. However, because of the focus of Abbott, Levi-Faur, and Snidal (2017, 19) on regulatory intermediaries rather than climate intermediaries, the latter may possess other capacities to regulatory intermediaries that have been overlooked. Indeed, the roles of regulatory intermediaries as outlined in Abbott, Levi-Faur, and Snidal (2017) necessarily instrumentalize these actors: they are a means to a specific endnamely implementation of state goals. For example, expertise is understood to include "knowledge of target behaviour … so that compliance can be best assisted, monitored and enforced" (Abbott, Levi-Faur, and Snidal 2017, 20). There is no discussion of these intermediaries challenging the goals or assumptions of the regulators in the first place, or contributing to agenda-setting via more inclusive and democratic policymaking within those diverse societies. Climate intermediaries may play such roles, but there has been limited empirical exploration of their efforts to do so due to their nascent conceptualization (Eitan and Fischhendler 2022;Farstad et al. 2022;Hague and Bomberg 2022;Solorio and Tosun 2022).
Faith-Based Actors (FBAs) are potential intermediaries, yet they are commonly overlooked as such (excepting Herzog 2018;Koehrsen 2015;Hague and Bomberg 2022). In their study of intermediaries within sustainability transitions studies, Kivimaa et al. (2019, 112) describe religious congregations as "sometimes" acting as sustainability intermediaries, doing so within mandates given to them by dominant actors, rather than seizing or creating space for intermediation. Koehrsen (2015) identifies "campaigning and intermediation" as one of three methods that religious groups use to contribute to environmental sustainability, alongside participation in projects and dissemination of values that support environmental actions. However, Koehrsen (2015) examines broader environmental action, rather than climate change specifically. This distinction matters: climate change and other environmental issues often overlap in their goals and supporters, but can sometimes reflect distinct and even opposing groups and strategies (Tobin 2017, 42). Thus, in this article we focus solely on intermediaries' action on climate change.
Although FBAs have not been conceptualized as "climate intermediaries" prior to this Special Issue (see also Hague and Bomberg 2022), studies do exist of FBAs being influential climate actors more generally, and sometimes playing roles that are akin to intermediation. For example, Glaab (2021, 148) finds that at global climate negotiations, FBAs may assume the role of "knowledge brokers" by "taking part in expert meetings and mediating between scientific knowledge and policymakers". Locally, FBAs hold the capacity to connect activism across multiple levels, and draw from strong relationships with local communities (Glaab 2021, 149). Hence, they can intermediate between types of actors and levels, as outlined by the definition of climate intermediaries (Tobin, Tosun, and Farstad, forthcoming). Yet, large ENGOs may see religious groups as "an avenue for information dissemination rather than as legitimate collaborative partners" (Kidwell 2020, 343). Veldman, Szasz, and Haluza-DeLay (2014) propose that much more research is needed on religious groups as climate actors, especially with regards to coalition organizing. Moreover, in the Global North at least, much research has focused on Christian FBAs as climate actors (see Bomberg and Hague 2018;Hague and Bomberg 2022;Jenkins, Berry, and Kreider 2018, 93-94), while there has been limited social science research on structurally disadvantaged minority communities, such as the Muslims in the UK (Koehrsen 2021, 14). We seek to address these gaps by analysing the roles and experiences of Muslim groups and individuals as climate intermediaries in the UK.

Muslim communities as environmental actors in the UK
The overwhelming majority of people working in the UK environmental and climate sectors are white (Bell and Bevan 2021). We could find no comparable data regarding the involvement of Muslim communities in this sector, but propose that consideration of marginalization within the environmental sector caused by structural inequalities is necessary in any analysis of Muslim involvement in climate policy. Muslim communities are under-researched climate actors, with much scholarship focusing on Islamic environmental ethics (see Koehrsen 2021, 14). Certainly, the hadith (discourses) that many Muslims follow include many sentiments that favour sustainability and environmental protection. Yet, despite research on Islamic environmental ethics, there has been limited research on Muslim actors' roles as "intermediaries" that bring together actors. Indeed, as Hancock (2018, 19) notes, "Muslim environmentalists live and act in two worlds that, usually, are not thought to overlap: the world of their Muslim communities, and the world of the environmental movement". Thus, these worlds are often understood as distinct, rather than intersecting. Koehrsen (2021) provides an overview of the existing research on Muslims and climate mitigation, noting that of the limited number of studies to date, the UK and Indonesia have featured more heavily than elsewhere.
Although Islamic Environmental Organisations can share much in common with New Social Movements (Hancock 2015), environmentalism may be marginalized compared to other priorities (Hancock 2020, 147). This context shapes the strategies employed by UK Muslim environmentalists. Resultantly, political participation can become part of religious practice (Gade 2019;Hancock 2020). For example, DeHanas (2009) analysed a "Women's Hour" radio show during Ramadan in 2007, highlighting how guest presenters integrated Islam, environmental concern and women's political representation through their hosting of the show. Gilliat-Ray and Bryant (2011) found that Muslims in 2009-2010 engaged in a variety of environmental conservation and sustainable horticulture initiatives, albeit in small numbers. Nita's (2014) study of Muslim and Christian participation in the UK Transition Towns Movement during 2007-2010 found that interviewees were motivated by their faiths but struggled to negotiate their simultaneous identities as religious people and environmental activists. Muslims and Christians both felt marginalized from environmental groups because of their faiths, but also from their faith communities for engaging in green behaviours and activities (Nita 2014). Finally, in a comprehensive volume examining the US and UK, Hancock (2018) analysed Islamic environmentalism between May 2012 and July 2013, finding that at that time in the UK, campaigners engaged "in moderate forms of action that effect mostly individual change, not the radical systemic change necessary to realise their vision of the future" (Hancock 2018, 137). In summary, research on Muslim communities in the UK has found multiple examples of local environmental engagement. Yet, these studies have rarely sought to examine the experiences of Muslim communities in playing "mainstream", strategic roles by intermediating with state actors or highprofile ENGOs.

Conceptualizing intersectionality
Muslim communities wishing to act as climate intermediaries face multiple intersecting inequalities in the UK. Islamophobia is extensive: for example, in England and Wales, Muslims are often the primary victims of hate crimes that target a specific religion (Home Office 2015). Racism represents an intersecting, compounding dimension which frequently shapes the experiences of Muslims in the UK. In 2011, 92.2% of UK Muslims were People of Colour (ONS 2018), with Islamophobia a manifestation of the racialisation of Muslims (Meer and Modood 2019) that has been exacerbated by widening economic inequality caused by government-imposed austerity since the early 2010s, among other factors (Ali and Whitham 2021). Women face a unique form of gendered Islamophobia in the UK, facing attacks both online and in person (Zempi 2020). Thus, an intersectional approach is needed to understand the diverse experiences of Muslim communities in the UK.
Hill Collins (2019, 35-36) argues that intersectionality, as well as participatory democracy, allow "renewed visibility" of those being examined through prospects of "equality, fairness, inclusion and social justice". Intersectionality is a way of seeing connections between multiple axes of similarity, difference, and inequality. It is an approach that not only ensures avoidance of problematic homogenization of people who are described by simple labels (e.g. "Muslims", "women") but also "keeps the analytical gaze steadily on the dynamics of structural power" (Wilson 2013, 3). The deployment of intersectional reflections within political research thus enables analyses of "the interconnections of particular systems of power" to be disrupted (Hill Collins 2019, 24). Intersectional considerations enhance analysis by providing clarity on how multiple identities are constituted, and which, in turn, interact with political institutions and movements (Smooth 2013). In the field of environmental politics, intersectionality offers valuable challenges to existing, single-axis analyses of power relations and institutional practices, as well as to the dominant framings and understandings of climate change, through features of relationality (or interconnections) and by unsettling systems of power and privilege. Moreover, according to Kaisjer and Kronsell (2014: 419) an intersectional lens "can generate alternative knowledge crucial in the formulation of more effective and legitimate climate strategies". In turn, intersectional approaches can facilitate the development of anti-racist and feminist responses to climate change (see Stephens 2020; MacGregor 2009), by giving those who have previously been silenced, a voice.
Applying an intersectional lens to the study of Muslim communities, we aim to highlight the structural inequalities that cause the "othering" of some groups while privileging others who are often unmarked by race, gender, class or immigration statusresulting in the "invisibilisation", and/or "instrumentalisation" of these groups. We understand invisibilization and instrumentalization to be processes, not outcomes, that result from othering (Herzog 2018;Kaufmann 2011). That is, Muslims are not invisible, but they can be invisibilized as climate actors, in the policy process and also by a lack of engagement from white-centric scholarship. Moreover, we examine how intersecting forms of inequality (for example, religion and race), for Muslim intermediaries, can feed into and (re)construct new spaces of inequalities (and oppressions), which are underpinned by wider systems of domination within the environmental sector and field, and also how (political) resistance may be mobilized to counter this (see also Hancock 2018; Hill Collins 2019). The fact that most people involved in UK environmentalism are white is taken for granted, with few studies acknowledging, much less questioning, this exclusivity, in addition to the paucity of research regarding other structural inequalities within environmental movements (Bell and Bevan 2021;Runnymede 2022). Thus, to present a holistic understanding of the engagement of Muslim actors as climate intermediaries in the UK, our analysis opens by outlining some of the intersecting obstacles identified by our interviewees, before exploring how these influence intermediation with both state and nonstate actors.

Methods and data
Muslim communities in the UK are highly diverse. Islam comprises multiple denominations, of which the largest is the Sunni community, with the Shia community much smaller. The Ahmadiyya and Mahdavia movements are smaller still, while the Inclusive Mosque Initiative promotes an intersectional feminist Islam, and many Muslims do not identify with a specific denomination at all (Pew 2012). Although Naqshbandi (2017) suggests there were up to 1975 mosques/masjids in 2017 in Britain, the UK's Office for National Statistics (ONS 2018) could not provide a breakdown in numbers of followers for each of the denominations. Furthermore, because many UK Muslims have either immigrated to the country or are the grand/children of people born outside the UK, the cultural backgrounds and ethnicities of Muslims in the UK differ greatly. Additionally, some Muslims have converted to Islam from other religions or none, while the age stratification of the UK Muslim community may also bring diversity in viewpoints; the median age of UK Muslims is 25, compared to 40 in the overall population (MCB 2016). Finally, of course, the experiences of the individuals we spoke to will have been influenced by their own lived experiences, and shaped by factors including their class, gender, sex, nationality, sexuality, and any disabilities, which should be seen though an intersectional lens, as discussed above.
There is no singular "Muslim experience" or Muslim identity (Dwyer 1999, 135), and any suggestion that there is homogeneity holds the potential to "other" the experiences of Muslims further. Scholars have explored the "othering" of Muslim communities where they are minoritized, such as in the USA, Britain, and Australia (Hancock 2018;Kabir 2016). We understand "othering" as a process "in which a dominant group imposes an identity on a subordinate group" (Modood 2019, 780). By acknowledging the potential for and impact of "othering" Muslim communities via research as well as well as practice, we seek to avoid doing so in our analysis.
We conducted 21 semi-structured interviews between May 2021 and February 2022 with individuals based throughout the UK (listed in the Appendix). 3 We do not claim that this sample is representative of all of the views and experiences of Muslims involved in climate action. Interviewees included Muslims who were: local councillors; faith representatives and spokespeople; a civil servant; an employee in the not-forprofit climate sector; and environmental campaigners. We also interviewed two non-Muslims involved in interfaith activities with Muslim communities. We interviewed a wide range of individuals to analyse the experiences of different types of potential Muslim climate intermediaries, and the strategies, interactions, and impacts they demonstrate. Because any type of actor can be a climate intermediary (Tobin, Tosun, and Farstad, forthcoming), we took a deliberately broad understanding of potential Muslim climate intermediaries to include anyone who self-identified as Muslim and played a role in representing a community or acting on climate change with others. Meaning, they were not required to have passed any threshold for said involvement in climate action, because such criteria may have led to the exclusion of valuable perspectives regarding stymied involvement in climate action.
We identified interviewees by purposive sampling and searching online for climate activities within the UK that referred to Muslim participants or Islam. From there, the snowball method was used to expand our range of contacts. Interviews were conducted online, and interviewees were assured anonymity. Interviews ranged from 30 to 90 min in length, with the majority being around an hour, and were recorded on Zoom and then transcribed by professional transcription companies or by one of the co-authors. Themes were identified inductively during the coding process, and to aid analysis, were allocated labels, including but not limited to "roles of structural inequality", "invisibilisation in state climate action", "instrumentalisation", and "alternative intermediation activities".

Analysis
It is impossible to distil a single representation of Muslim communities' experiences of climate action in the UK that encapsulates the diversity of lived experiences (4B), or the many climate activities orchestrated by Muslim communities. For example, as one Muslim climate campaigner and organization leader (10B) explained, "I do everything. I do campaigning, I do movement building, I do organising, I do advocacy". Similarly, interviewees were divided as to whether discussing the plight of individuals in Muslim-majority countries would be a helpful starting point for initiating conversations around climate change with individual Muslims in the UK (1B; 4B; 11B; 12B), reflecting the diversity of ethnic origins, and strategic views, of different interviewees. As such, we do not purport to offer any generalizable claims, but rather suggest that by exploring a topic in which there has been limited research within policy studies, the insights from a small sample of Muslim climate intermediaries are intrinsically valuable. In response to these varieties of experiences and perspectives, our attempt to reflect Muslim communities' narratives as climate intermediaries is explored through intermediation attempts with: (i) state bodies; and (ii) non-state actors.
A key theme that cut across all types of climate intermediation was the impact of intersecting forms of structural inequality. As stated earlier, Muslims are the lowest paid faith community in the UK, and multiple interviewees highlighted the levels of poverty experienced by Muslim communities in the UK as an obstacle to climate intermediation (4B; 6B; 7B; 8B; 12B; these findings build on Hancock 2018, 77-79). Summarizing such struggles, a Muslim community leader (12B) noted, "I'm a Muslim, I'm female … So, I have two glass ceilings going on there. In fact, they're not even glass, they're opaque". As a result, many individuals are forced to prioritize food and shelter over taking time to act on environmental concerns (4B; 12B). At the organizational level, Muslim community groups face similar challenges, as Mosques juggle the provision of food for the poor (4B), international solidarity initiatives (7B), and support for refugees (8B) alongside other daily work. Contextually, the UK Government's implementation of austerity measures since 2010 has weakened local councils' environmental capacities (Eckersley and Tobin 2019), which in turn leads to cuts in funding for local community initiatives. As one local organizer (6B) stated, "the local authority used to give us some funding for our youth projects. That all ceased many years ago … [now,] the agenda's huge and [there is] so much work to do", thus pushing climate change to the side-line. These myriad structural inequalities impact upon Muslim climate communities' capacities to intermediate with state and non-state actors alike, as we explore below.

Intermediation with state actors
As defined earlier, climate intermediaries may seek to shape policy goals, rather than solely implement them. Yet, interviewees expressed that they were stymied in playing such an agenda-setting role; they are invisibilized in the policy-making process. For one interviewee (12B), the government believes that Muslim communities "are not cocreators of policy and they're not creators of policy, full stop". For another local organizer (6B), "we would love to be able to [influence policy decisions] but at the moment we don't really have that much of a say in things". Due to this lack of engagement in the design of policies, interviewees suggested that Muslim groups perceived their involvement in climate intermediation as instead a "box-ticking" exercise for policymakers. In the run up to COP26 in Glasgow, in October-November 2021, the perceived view at government level was: "'the religions are engaging. Tick, well done.' Not, 'wow, the religious groups can bring so much to the table.'" (12B). This lack of opportunity to shape the core assumptions behind policy design producedand was reproduced bythree dimensions that we explore in turn: (i) (a) structural inequality leading to invisibilization and a loss of morale; (i) (b) the instrumentalization of Muslims who are treated as "others"; and (i) (c) the design of intermediation initiatives that did not function effectively. Yet, we conclude our analysis of intermediation with state actors by identifying (d) the potentially influential role of committed individuals in mitigating these downfalls.
First, (i) (a), even if Muslim individuals join state-led initiatives despite the undercurrent of structural inequalities, they may still be invisibilized, doubling the difficulty of climate intermediation and damaging morale (12B). Multiple interviewees identified experiences of invisibilization while trying to engage with state actors (5B; 10B; 12B; see Herzog). One local organizer (5B) attended local council meetings to develop local climate initiatives: "I felt I was just being ignored … the group didn't particularly like me speaking up". This othering was compounded by racism and (un)conscious biases; one community leader found a repeated obstacle to involvement was the assumption that they would not be able to speak English or understand the contents of the meeting, despite having been awarded a Master's degree (12B). Even if participants could attend meetings, and get their voices heard, the preferences that were expressed such as the creation of a low-carbon eco-mosque (1A)were never implemented (6B), leading to a further loss of morale. These experiences of trying to intermediate with state actors led one Muslim faith representative leader (4B) to feel marginalized from the very schemes that were designed to engage directly with Muslim communities on climate change: "We're not 'others'; we're also part of this [struggle to address climate change]". The outcome of these experiences was that interviewees identified a widespread sense of fatigue; even if Muslim individuals wished to be more involved, state-led initiatives could feel like a waste of time. As one interviewee (10B) with over ten years' campaigning experience lamented, "I only have so much energy to be continuing to keep working in spaces that are not necessarily reflecting or able to reach the communities that we need to". This loss of morale compounded the difficulty of shaping state climate strategies.
Second, (i) (b), many interviewees felt instrumentalized through tokenistic initiatives (e.g. 2A, 5B), as if used as a tool of national or local government. According to Abbott, Levi-Faur, and Snidal (2017), one of the categories of regulatory intermediary functions is the implementation of policies; in contrast, Muslim communities seeking to act as climate intermediaries were of course not state-designed in their origins, yet interviewees felt instrumentalized as such. The interviewee (5B) whose questions were ignored at local council meetings had wished to lead an environmental project, but was instead asked to engage in litter-picking and repeatedly photographed at council meetings for press releases. Frustrated, the interviewee (5B) said it was "demeaningwe were being … subjugated". Regarding similar experiences, another interviewee (2A) noted that: people just want to tick the resident engagement box, and ask the same questions over and over again, and not really get anywhere with them […] and then I'm like, "why am I doing this? I am not responsible for this, I could be doing something else".
Although climate intermediaries may act "directly or indirectly to affect stakeholders" behaviour and/or policy goals", (Tobin, Tosun, and Farstad, forthcoming), if these actors face wider structural inequalities, intermediation with state-led actors may engender tokenistic and/or exploitative practices.
Third, (i) (c), the obstruction of Muslim actors from participating as climate intermediaries in state actors' strategic thinking can result in the design of policies that are ineffective, due to their lack of specificity or representativeness. Here, we explore the case of funding, which is a state-led means of encouraging climate intermediaries to support policy implementation, and was widely discussed by interviewees. Some Muslim communities are at a further financial disadvantage compared to other nonstate actors in the UK, as they may perceive as forbidden (12B) the funding that many non-Muslim groups receive from the gambling-based National Lottery. Similarly, the undertaking of loans to install renewable electricity often entails interest payments or usury that is commonly contrary to many Muslims' interpretations of their faiths (6B). Even when Muslim communities can apply for certain grants, the structural inequalities outlined earlier pose obstacles. For one Muslim faith representative leader (4B), "[t]he forms are so complicated that most of the mosques gave up trying to fill them in … you've actually inserted a barrier, not taken one away". Instead, the grants were awarded to organizations that already had enough funds to pay grant writers; in other words, those groups least vulnerable to existing inequalities. Even when funding was secured through private investors, such as for the building of a low-carbon ecomosque, there would be further obstacles down the line: for one group, "the funding was never the issue, it was the planning issue. And it was the support issue" (1A). In short, generic state-led funding initiatives that in principle can be accessed by any climate intermediary group may reflect or even perpetuate wider structural disadvantages, unless policymakers develop them with a more diverse range of communities' needs in place from the start.
Finally, (i) (d), in response to these challenges, committed individuals with an awareness of the relevant challenges amongst marginalized communities can facilitate climate intermediation by critiquing the existing system (12B, 15B). For example, one Muslim civil servant actively encouraged minority groups that were likely to be marginalized from funding schemes to apply for grants (15B). While effective, such activities are reliant on the determination of the individual in question to encourage specific communities to submit application. 4 Additionally, the fourth co-author of this article was highlighted as an influential figure (12B), having created an ethnic minority environment network that sought to create a body of experts from ethnically diverse communities who could then engage with policy makers and ENGOs. One Muslim women's group used funding to "deliver environmental information, training, activism … which meant that Muslim women could engage in an environment that was safe and … open to them" (12B). Other groups used funds to invest in cycling initiatives for Muslim women (4B; 14B). These initiatives in turn led to the creation of further new groupings that then acted as climate intermediaries, creating a chain reaction of climate actor generation that could trace their origins back to the activities of one of a small number of committed individuals (see Jordan and Moore 2020, on self-reinforcing, "durable" policy communities).

Intermediation with non-state actors
Because many people in Muslim communities feel invisibilized, or instrumentalized, when engaging with state-led climate activities, they often seek to intermediate with non-state actors instead. Yet, many of the patterns identified above also apply to engagement with "mainstream" ENGOs. Here, we analyse: (ii) (a) how a lack of involvement in the design of "mainstream" ENGOs' activities produces inaccessible tactics; and (ii) (b) how these experiences lead many Muslims to intermediate with other types of actors instead, particularly through interfaith work, and/or; (ii) (c) to intermediate between different types of Muslim actors.
First, (ii) (a), during the design stage of civil society climate actions, interviewees reflected on being the only Muslim in the room (12B). One Muslim climate campaigner and organization leader (10B) lamented that "not having diverse spaces means [they] prioritise things that are not important to me and people who are like me", with the outcome that there are "strategies or assumptions that can be quite racist in nature". Another interviewee (1A) said that they often face Islamophobic discourse: "they feared that some fringe extreme Muslim group would take over". As a result, as with the creation of state-led policy goals, interviewees expressed being unable to design mainstream ENGO strategies. Thus, othering once again shaped Muslim individuals' experiences and capacity to act as climate intermediaries.
The impact of a lack of Muslims' influence as co-designers of ENGOs' strategies was clear. Although two interviewee discussed attending a protest as a manifestation of their climate intermediation (3B; 9B), many interviewees found the idea of participation in marches, demonstrations and civil disobedience to be unappealing or even impossible. Obstacles to participation include the holding of values that discourage rebelliousness (4B) and a perspective that a primarily white, middle-class environmentalist space would not be welcoming or would hold different norms creating new spaces in which they were, again, othered in addition to their multiple intersections (4B; 7B; see Nita 2014). More insidiously, due to the higher rates of arrests for Muslims and People of Colour in the UK (UK Government 2020), a frequent obstacle to involvement with civil society activities was the fear that involvement will lead to being arrested, which would lead to even greater difficulties when trying to visit family overseas (10B), or gain UK citizenship (12B): "it's a massive deterrent for individuals to engage in any kind of activism" (12B). This comment resonates with the findings of Bell and Bevan (2021), who explored barriers to involvement in majority white middle-class direct action protest groups (namely Extinction Rebellion) that were commonly expressed by BAME communities. In response, Muslim interviewees explained to us that they instead preferred to intermediate with other types of non-state actors than ENGOs, namely through professional spaces, via interfaith work, and within the Muslim community specifically.
Second, (ii) (b), several interviewees noted that Muslims in their community preferred to practice their commitment to climate action through their professional lives (3B; 4B; 6B). One local organizer (6B) was also a governor/volunteer for three different schools in the city, and heavily involved in the local Traders' Association. These partnerships enabled the interviewee to integrate climate concerns into other schemes and initiatives, thus intermediating with a wider range of actors than otherwise would have been the case. Likewise, another interviewee (8B) discussed how they were heavily involved in national educational events in the UK, where they spoke to young people about possible future careers in the climate sector, and especially the benefits ofand obstacles on the way tosuch professions. Thus, these findings demonstrate that climate intermediation by Muslims need not involve state, environmental or religious actors; indeed, the wider the range of actors involved, the more that diverse perspectives can be shared across a "polycentric" climate community (see Jordan et al. 2018).
Nevertheless, for our interviewees, the most common means of undertaking climate intermediation with non-state actors was through interfaith activities; that is, networks of climate intermediaries (3A, 1B, 2B, 4B, 6B, 7B, 9B, 12B, 14B), such as talks to Christian schools (6B). These activities were facilitated by a shared sense that "as faith communities … we can't do it alone. We have to work together" (4B). Such collaborations offered unique benefits. In addition to a shared sense of spiritual motivation, one notfor-profit climate organization leader was heavily involved in leading interfaith initiatives (7B) because "I feel more protected … whereas if I was just working with Muslims, with a Muslim organization, I wonder about the risks" of speaking out. This statement once again reflects the influence of Islamophobia on Muslim communities' strategies for acting as climate intermediaries. In particular, the interviewee discussed the utility of working with Christian organizations that have the funding that Muslim groups lacked, adding that Christian groups were aware of these resource inequalities and often actively sought to provide such support, to achieve shared goals. At times, though, such intermediation strategies led to a sense of being overshadowed by Christian organizations (3A), thus fuelling further invisibilization. Nevertheless, in the months prior to COP26, there was increased interfaith climate intermediation in the UK (2B, 4B, 6B, 9B, 12B). Mosques held interfaith events on how to "Make COP Count" (2B) in the run-up to the conference, and in Glasgow, home of the COP, they worked with other religious groups to advertise free spaces within their places of worship, from which activists and campaigners could work and "Climate Fringe" events could be hosted (12B). Yet, despite these activities, prior to the COP's arrival in the UK, "climate change has rarely been on the agenda, if I'm honest. With interfaith work, it's more about resilient communities" (6B). The challenge for such intermediaries will be keeping climate change on already stretched agendas.
Finally, (ii) (c), interviewees noted myriad forms of intermediation with different types of actors and across levels within their own religious community, often involving the local mosque as a focal hub for activities (4B, 6B, 12B, 14B). Weekly Friday Sermons were a key site for climate intermediation with local worshippers. One community group wrote a Friday Sermon statement and disseminated booklets and infographics that day (4B), while another organized a mass cycle-to-mosque day for women and children, to attract attention onto climate change before the Sermon had even begun (14B). Eco-subcommittees within mosques are becoming increasingly common, as are lectures from the local council (6B), and cycling clubs (4A, 14B). There has also been a drive to ensure that mosques are as climate friendly as possible (8B), such as the Cambridge Central Mosque that features extensive bicycle parking, solar cells in the roof, and heat pumps in the basement. Outside the place of worship, Muslim communities across multiple denominations of Islam in the UK worked together to express a national joint statement on climate change in 2021 (MCB 2016;also, 4B). Thus, in the face of the invisibilization and instrumentalization by state and non-state society actors alike, "making [our] own space, I think, is where the Muslim community are really coming into their own" (12B).

Discussion
The research conducted for this article analyses the obstacles to UK Muslim communities acting as climate intermediaries, and the impacts of these patterns. The utility of our study derives from its detailed, policy-specific "thick description" that examines the experiences of our interviewees while seeking to address climate change. Our literature review discussed previous studies that analyse the roles of intermediaries (Abbott, Levi-Faur, and Snidal 2017;Kivimaa et al. 2019), as well as examinations of Muslim climate actors in the UK (e.g. Koehrsen 2021). In neither field was there a discussion of the role of intermediaries as critical voices at the start of the policy cycle, in which they can disrupt existing assumptions to as agenda-setters. Our analysis shows how challenging it can be for Muslim climate intermediaries to provide strategic insights, with the outcome that engagement initiatives led by state and "mainstream" ENGOs continue to invisibilize and instrumentalize their target audience. These experiences, in turn, demoralize their intended partners, as well as producing policies that do not achieve their aims. Thus, just when the government and "mainstream" ENGOs are seeking to engage with more diverse voices to aid the implementation of their goals, Muslim communities are experiencing fatigue from the structural inequalities that have hindered their involvement in previous initiatives.
The products of these inequalities are othering, invisibilization and instrumentalization within environmental spaces. When climate intermediaries are structurally disadvantaged, attempts at facilitating intermediation can quickly feel exploitative. Fatigue, frustration and alienation were identified by almost every interviewee, potentially keeping minoritized intermediaries out of the sector, thereby maintaining a exclusivity within the sector, which had been the cause of invisibilization in the first place. Instrumentalizing policies or one-size-fits-all civil society campaigns are also unlikely to be effective for this reason. Acknowledgement of the reality that Muslim communities are as diverse as the general population in the UK, as is their behaviour, practice and motivations for environmental work, is a necessary starting point for designing effective policy.
Despite the invisibilization and instrumentalization that can result from structural inequalities, we also learned of manifold initiatives led by Muslim climate intermediaries. Here, these actions reflected the four capacities expected of regulatory intermediaries by Abbott, Levi-Faur, and Snidal (2017), namely operational tools, expertise, independence, and legitimacy. Yet, these capacities could only be realized when "committed individuals", with awareness of the structural challenges, played an active role in challenging existing assumptions, as we explore in point (i) (d), above. These roles went beyond the provision of "knowledge of local conditions, so that regulations can best be adapted" (Abbott, Levi-Faur, and Snidal 2017, 20). Instead, these committed individuals sought to challenge the foundational assumptions of policy goals, and created new initiativessuch as original funding development programmes, ethnic minority networks, or even charitiesso that activities could be designed effectively from the start. However, the presence of such individuals cannot be relied upon, and these individuals often lack the resources needed to make the kinds of changes they wish to see. Here lies the crux of the challenge: due to the widespread intersecting structural inequalities we have discussed, there are only a limited number of individuals who have yet attained the positions needed to create such policy outputs or campaigning strategies.

Policy implications and conclusions
Our contribution has sought to fill a gap in recent literature: because "climate intermediaries" are a nascent conceptualization via this Special Issue, there has been no inquiry of how structural inequalities may obstruct certain communities from fulfilling such roles. Responding to this gap is important. Scholars have identified "polycentric" networks as salient systems for mitigating climate change (Jordan et al. 2018), and so the actors that interlink different groups and different levels within these networks could play an especially influential role. Yet, with inequalities worsening in many Western states, actors who would wish to act as such "go-betweens" may be hindered from doing so. The existing literature on Muslim environmentalism in the UK identifies a complex policy landscape in which communities face competing concerns, and hostility from other actors, resulting in the prioritization of more localized initiatives that often take place in Muslim and interfaith contexts (Hancock 2015(Hancock , 2018(Hancock , 2020, rather than between different types of actors or levels of governance. We have shown that in the UK, Muslim communities have sometimes functioned as climate intermediaries when engaging with state actors, depending on the presence of committed individuals who seek to facilitate such engagement. In the absence of such initiatives, Muslim communities have been hindered from intermediating, leading to a loss of morale regarding this urgent policy issue, and the design by policymakers of ineffectual policies that do not take the needs of "policy targets" into account. Regarding non-state actors, many "mainstream" ENGOs were found to other and invisibilize Muslim insights in a similar fashion to state actors, by creating inaccessible campaigning tactics, leading Muslims to instead intermediate elsewhere, namely within professional settings, and with other faiths and those who are fellow Muslims. In short, the members of Muslim communities we interviewed expressed myriad strategies for acting on climate change, but were often felt excluded from mainstream initiatives, thus removing valuable perspectives and knowledge from the policy process. Several policy and campaigning implications result from our research. At the state level, greater involvement of the Muslim community in agenda-setting is vital to ensure that funding programmes and climate projects are designed effectively from the start. Yet, to do so, those in position need to identify and support Muslim individuals wishing to be involved and, as discussed, Muslim individuals are often inhibited from speaking at local policy meetings, let alone being able to reach regional or even national policy-making contexts. Thus, we return to the already well-known reality that for effective climate action to be developed, we need institutionalized antiracist, feminist climate leadership from within structures of power (MacGregor 2009; Stephens 2020), rather than time-limited initiatives that target selected representatives of certain communities who are engaged with on an ad hoc basis. A similar reality is the case within nonstate organizations. We encourage non-state actors to consider further the myriad benefitsand avoid the multiple pitfallsthat can result from deliberately diversifying leadership and questioning the foundational assumptions that guide their strategies.
We suggest four research questions that may build on our work. First, what patterns exist that enable committed individuals to orchestrate effective intermediation with invisibilized communities? Investigations that uncover the motivations and facilitators for such important "nodes" with policy networks would be especially useful. Second, how do other marginalized communities within specific contextssuch as other minority faiths, people with disabilities, or LGBTQ+ groupsexperience attempting to function as climate intermediaries? Do they encounter similar challenges, and how do they mitigate them, if at all? Third, to what extent are activism and advocacy around climate change in Muslim-majority contexts relevant or motivating for Muslims in the UK? Sherilyn MacGregor is Professor of Environmental Politics at the University of Manchester specialising in environmental (un)sustainability, gender (in)equality, and theories and practices of citizenship.
Zarina Ahmad is a PhD scholar at the University of Manchester researching environmental sustainability of individuals from underrepresented groups in society.