Medina in Birmingham, Najaf in Brent: Inside British Islam

242 Pages·2014·3.042 MB·English

by  Innes Bowen

MEDINA IN BIRMINGHAM, NAJAF IN BRENT

INNES BOWEN
Medina in Birmingham,
Najaf in Brent
Inside British Islam
HURST & COMPANY, LONDON
First published in the United Kingdom in 2014 by
C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd.,

41 Great Russell Street, London, WC1B 3PL
© Innes Bowen, 2014
All rights reserved.
Printed in the USA
Distributed in the United States, Canada and Latin America by
Oxford University Press, 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016,
United States of America.
The right of Innes Bowen to be identified as the author
of this publication is asserted by her in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
A Cataloguing-in-Publication data record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1849043014
www.hurstpublishers.com
This book is printed using paper from registered sustainable
and managed sources.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vii
Glossary ix
Introduction 1
1. The Deobandis: The Market Leaders 11
2. The Tablighi Jamaat: Missionaries and a Mega Mosque 35
3. The Salafis: ‘Don’t call us Wahhabis!’ 57
4. The Jamaat-e-Islami: British Islam’s Political Class 83
5. The Muslim Brotherhood: The Arab Islamist Exiles 101
6. The Barelwis: Sufis and Traditionalists 115
7. The Shia ‘Twelvers’: Najaf in Brent 135
8. The Ismailis: The Dawoodi Bohras and the Followers
of the Aga Khan 165
Notes 187
Index 211
v

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book could not have been completed were it not for the help of
those whom it is about: the followers of Britain’s most important Islamic
networks. I am grateful to the many individuals who made time to be
interviewed and trusted me to tell their stories. They are too numerous
to mention here by name but most are attributed in the chapters that
follow. Some of those I interviewed and who helped me in my research
deserve special thanks for their time and patience: the Muslim Brother-
hood activist Dr Kamal Helbawy; Abu Khadeejah of Salafi Publications
in Birmingham; Mehmood Naqshbandi, creator of the indispensable
website muslimsinbritain.org; Faruqe Master; and Yahya Birt.
Writing this book has been a part-time project, undertaken in the
evenings, weekends and holidays around my full-time job as a BBC jour-
nalist. It has therefore taken a long time to complete—almost seven
years, in fact. Thankfully I had a patient and encouraging publisher in
Michael Dwyer of Hurst. He made finishing the manuscript feel achiev-
able at a time when I was ready to give up. I am grateful to his team:
copyeditor Tim Page and proofreader Hannah Wann, cover designer
Fatima Jamadar, and the rest of the team: Jon de Peyer, Rob Pinney and
Georgie Williams. They have done a wonderful job in producing and
marketing the book.
I have colleagues, friends and family to thank too. First among them
is my editor at the BBC, Nicola Meyrick, who encouraged me soon after
I arrived in her department in 2002 to develop an interest in this topic.
When that interest grew into an extra-curricula obsession she regarded
it as an asset rather than a nuisance. This book is not a BBC project but
it was prompted by the journalism I did and the radio programmes I
vii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
made under Nicola’s editorship. Other early inspiration for this topic
came from Dr Aminul Hoque who presented my first BBC programme
about Islam in Britain and from my colleague Mukul Devichand who, as
ever, was ahead of the game in getting to grips with an important subject
that few of us understood. Andrew Bowen urged me to channel my
interest into a book and never seemed to doubt that I would complete it.
Without his encouragement, I would not have embarked upon such a
huge task. Fiona Leach, a fellow BBC journalist, read the whole book in
draft form and did much to help me improve the structure and content.
Former Woman’s Hour colleagues Sharmini Selvarajah, Katy Hickman and
Jenni Murray read some of the draft chapters and suggested ways of
making them more accessible to readers who do not share my preoccupa-
tion with the subject. Helen Grady, another BBC journalist, read some
of the draft material and suggested people to interview and stories to
pursue. Sajid Iqbal from BBC Monitoring was on hand at short notice
to translate from Urdu into English and to offer wise advice.
Finally, I wish to thank my mother, Janet. When I have needed time
and a lack of distractions to write, she has taken care of all the essential
things in life like food and a place to stay and has never uttered a word of
complaint about my reclusiveness or expected anything in return. With-
out her support I might never have finished.
Innes Bowen February 2014
viii