mbrn.org

Call for Papers: British Muslim Studies at 50: Retrospect and Prospect
2024-08-14 08:00 - 17:00 UTC
This conference will examine some of the main contributions to British Muslim Studies (BMS), including a specific focus on research institutes and centres.
Though still in its infancy as a sub-field, the academic study of British Muslims in UK institutions of higher education is now over five decades old. Since the 1960s/1970s, research and teaching about Britain’s Muslims has developed and expanded – advancing our understanding and knowledge of Britain’s diverse and dynamic Muslim population in myriad disciplines – including but not limited to sociology, history, religious studies, Islamic Studies, geography, politics, and their various intersections.
Over the past decade or so, British Muslim Studies (BMS) has seen the emergence and flourishing of successive cohorts of scholars from within Muslim communities – complicating and enriching the field by interrogating definitions, concepts and parameters of understanding. This, coupled with the long tradition of engagement and partnership with community institutions, practitioners and grassroots spaces means it is an exciting time for BMS and an apt moment to cast a retrospective glance over the past 50 years, while looking ahead towards future prospects.
This conference will examine some of the main contributions to BMS, including a specific focus on research institutes and centres. It will also pay tribute to two recently departed pioneers of BMS: Professors Mohammed Anwar and Ataullah Siddiqui.
We invite abstract submissions for papers, which showcase emergent research topics and directions in British Muslim Studies. We are keen to receive abstracts from PhD scholars and early career academics and are particularly interested in proposals corresponding to the following themes:

Co-production/collaboration between researchers and communities
Synergies (or tensions) between academe and practitioners
Innovative research methods and interrogation/problematisation of extant methods

To submit a proposal:

Please submit a title and abstract of no more than 300 words together with names and short biographies (150 words) of the presenter/s, institutional affiliation/s (if relevant), and contact details.
We welcome proposals from postgraduate researchers, independent scholars and practitioners.
Proposals should be sent to MuslimsinBritainRN@gmail.com
Academic enquiries should be sent to Dr Khadijah Elshayyal, ke3@soas.ac.uk
Deadline: 5pm on Wednesday 15th June 2022
Successful presenters will be notified by Thursday 30th June 2022.

http://ijtihadnet.com/call-for-papers-british-muslim-studies-at-50-retrospect-and-prospect/

Conference: Muslims in Britain, 1800‒1970, and Beyond: Historical Approaches & Why
2024-08-14 08:00 - 17:00
Muslims in Britain, 1800‒1970, and Beyond: Historical Approaches & Why
Date: Monday and Tuesday, 1st and 2nd of July, 2024.
Time: Day One – 10 am – 5:30 pm
Day Two – 10 am – 2:30 pm
Venue: Westminster University – Marylebone Campus (see map)
Registration
Conference Schedule
Day 1: Monday 1st July
09:30 am – 10:00 am – Arrival, Registration and Refreshments
10:00 am – 10:20 am – Words of Welcome – Westminster & MBRN
10:25 am – 10:45 am – MBRN launches new membership programme & AGM
10:50 am – 11:50 am – First Plenary Session – Abdul-Azim Ahmed
Islam in Wales
Chair: Sariya Cheruvallil-Contractor
11:50 am – 12: 05 pm- Break
12:10 am -1:05 pm – Panel Session 1 (Rooms tbc)
Sufi Communities of Britain: Tracing their Historic Trajectories
Chair: Dr. Hafza Iqbal

C J (Ted) Bearup (University of Manchester): The Growing Influence of the Shadhiliyya Tariqa in the UK
Qudra Goodall (University of East Anglia): Intergenerational narratives on belonging, ideology and British Islam
Farzana Hannan (Trustee of Hijaz Trust) & Imran Khan (Hijaz College): A Very British Islam: The Hijazi Naqshbandi Sufi Community in Warwickshire

Contemporary Trends and Future Possibilities in the Study of British Muslim History
Chair: Dr. Abdul Azim-Ahmed

Prof. Ron Geaves (Cardiff University): Contestation, Nuance and Consequence in Emic and Etic Approaches in Quilliam Studies
Prof. Gary R. Bunt (University of Wales, Trinity Saint David) & Prof. Sariya Cheruvallil-Contractor (Coventry University): Future Histories: Our Contemporary Archiving of Digital British Islam
Tamanna Taznin (Department for Health and Social Care): Is it Fair to say that Muslim Experiences in non-Muslim States are Still Largely Determined by the Legacy of Colonialism?

1:10 pm – 2:10 pm – Networking Lunch
2:15 pm – 3:55 pm – Second Plenary Session
Collaboration and Co-Creation in Documenting History – Community Practitioners and Academia
Chair: Sariya Cheruvallil-Contractor
– Everyday Muslim Heritage and Archive – Insights into community archiving and academic partnership
– Launch of muslimhistorymaps.com
Muslim History Maps is a digital mapping project that collects and shares the history of the global Muslim civilisation, past and present.
– Yahya Birt – Making Community History through Place, Poetry and Performance: the Commemoration of Fatima Cates
– Oluwatosin Daniju – Curating a Photographic Archive
– Asif Shakoor – My story researching BAME seafarers
– Muneera Williams – Spoken Word – Reflections on documenting and archiving family and community history
– Q&A
4:00 pm – 4:15 pm – Break
4:20 pm – 5:25 pm – Panel Session 2 (Rooms tbc)
Muslim Activism and Institutionalisation in British Muslim History
Chair: tbc

Tabassum Hawa (Royal Holloway, University of London): ‘A History in Shadow’ – Emotions, Identity, and Muslim Activism in Britain: 1933-1953
Muhammad Nabil (SOAS, University of London): Islamic Charitable and Philanthropic Organisations: Religiosity, Institutional activism and formation of British-Muslim Identities
Murid Shah Nadiri (University of Oxford): Resurrecting Muslim Intellectual Heritage in London/ A City of Shiʿi Muslim Institutions and Learning

British Muslim Knowledge Production and Resistance in Imperial Britain
Chair: Yahya Birt

Samuel Bartlett (Royal Holloway, University of London): Renegade in an Imperial Age: Tracing the Subversive Elements of Marmaduke Pickthall’s Scholarship
Omar Nasr (London School of Economics): British Imperialism, Knowledge Production and Islam in World War II
Hassam Latif (University of Durham): Lascars and the Pre-History of the Cardiff Race Riots 1919

5:30 pm Close
Day 2: Tuesday 2nd July
09:30 am – 10:00 am – Arrival, Registration and Refreshments
10: 00 am – 10:10 am – Welcome
10:15 am -11:05 am – Plenary (Room tbc)
Muslim Women in Britain, 1850-1950: 100 Years of Hidden History
Chair: tbc
11:10 am – 11:15 am – Coffee Break
11: 20 am – 12:25 pm – Panel Session 4 (Rooms tbc)
History of British Muslim Arts
Chair: tbc

Hassan Vawda (Goldsmiths University): Muslim Modern Artists in Britain: 1925 and 1962
Stefan Williamson Fa: Singing Sindhi Saints in Notting Hill: Aziz Balouch and his Sufi Society (1940- 1970)
Lynsey Haught (University of Birmingham): The Music of the Hemispheres: Halide Edib’s Transnational Voice and the Sound of East-West Fusion in Late Ottoman Constantinople

Travelling To, Through, and Within: History of British Muslim Migration and Travel
Chair: tbc

Talha Bhamji (University of Wales Trinity Saint David): Recollecting Hijra in the History of Deoband
Abdul Sabur Kidwai (King’s College London): Islam in/and Victorian Britain: Travel Writing of Sir Syed and Masihuddin Alvi
Nasima Hassan (Star Academies): 1967: The Journey of a Changemaker

12:30 pm 12:45 pm – Break
12:50 pm – 1:55 pm – Panel Session 4 (Rooms tbc)
Biographical Studies and Methodological Reflections in British Muslim History
Chair: tbc

Salim Ayduz (Independent Senior Researcher): The Astonishing Story of Ayuba Suleiman Diallo – An African Slave
Jaffer A. Mirza (King’s College London): Using oral history as a method: Documenting early Shi’a Muslim spaces in Britain (1960s-1970s)
Iman Dawood (University of Cambridge): A Post-Ideological Islam in the Making? Reflections from Preliminary Fieldwork in the British Muslim Community

Muslimahs in Britain: Injustices, Resistance, and Agency in the Past & Present
Chair: tbc

Muminah Hussain: Oral History Study into Muslim Female Agency, Late 20th Century Britain
Muhammad Zubair Abbasi (Oxford Brookes University): Religious Marriage as Children’s Play: Inequality, Uniformity, and Exclusion under English Matrimonial Laws
Farah Ahmed (University of Cambridge): British Muslim Women Educators’ Innovations to Counter the Securitisation and Demonisation of Muslim Youth.

2 pm – Close
——————————————————-
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Last date for submission of abstracts: Saturday, 11 May 2024
Muslims in Britain, 1800‒1970, and Beyond: Historical Approaches & Why
Venue: University of Westminster
Everyday Muslim Heritage and Archive Initiative (EMHAI) are delighted to announce a collaborative conference between the Muslims in Britain Research Network (MBRN), and the University of Westminster, which will be hosted as part of the Westminster Voices series. This unique partnership aims to bring together scholars, practitioners, and communities to delve into the multifaceted histories of Islam and Muslims in Britain from the 1800s onwards.
Muslims have been in Britain for centuries, but their presence grew in the nineteenth century, as did the first communities. The earliest Muslims had a transient presence in Britain as lascars (sailors), travellers, sojourners, soldiers, servants (including ayahs), students, notables, anti-colonial dissidents, as well as performing troupes including acrobats and ethnographic shows of colonised peoples.
The earliest Muslim communities in Britain evolved around the first mosques in Liverpool and Woking (both 1889) and also in and around the ports of Liverpool, Cardiff, East London, Manchester and South Shields, where from c. 1836 onwards, some ‘lascars’ took local wives and settled down. In the Liverpool and Woking mosque communities, many congregants were converts who encountered Islam through travel, mosque publications or public lectures, as well as sojourners and others who happened to be ‘passing through’. In port communities, working-class women converted to Islam to marry Muslim sailors, set up homes and have families. These conversions took place in social contexts that viewed Islam and Muslims with suspicion and ridicule (Gilham 2014, Ansari 2001). This remained a period of great mobility through imperial networks of sojourners to Britain. Take, for example, the itinerant scholar and thinker Mushir Hosein Kidwai, who stayed in Britain for 15 years over a 23-year timescale, making decisive contributions to the development of early Muslim political organising in Britain during this period, particularly his work on Islam and socialism (Fogg 2019). This conference is interested in uncovering both the transient and settled aspects of the Muslim experience, identity, Islamic beliefs and practices in Britain.
The two world wars saw the substantial contributions of Muslims, a third of the British Indian Army, to the war effort. According to the National Muslim War Memorial Trust, Muslims mainly from the Indian subcontinent (modern India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) and African countries fought on three continents, playing a decisive role in Britain’s first major land victory against Nazi Germany in North Africa. Throughout and beyond this period as Kidwai’s story indicates, Muslims were politically active, engaging in activism around a variety of Muslim issues of national and international significance (Cienkus 2018), including the Armenian-Ottoman conflict, the Khilafat movement and the Indian independence movement (which led to the formation of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh). This conference is keen to explore historical Muslim political activism in Britain.
Post-1960s, mass migration from South Asia, Africa and the Caribbean radically changed the demographics and ‘flavour’ of Islam and Britain forever (Gilliat-Ray 2010). These people from the erstwhile colonies often arrived in the UK, not solely as economic migrants but to help rebuild the mother country, Britain (Weller 2013). This was a new period of history-making, identity formation, and milestone moments. As Muslim communities grew in number and size, they encountered, experienced and challenged racism, anti-Muslim prejudice and Islamophobia (Weller et al 2013). The 1960s and 70s also saw the inception of Muslim institutions – mosques, seminaries, umbrella organisations – that, to date, remain foundational to the identity of Muslims in Britain (Elshayyal 2018, Peace 2015, Fazakarley 2014). Weller writes about the milestone moments in British Muslim history, including the Salman Rushdie affair, which, according to Weller (2009) and Hiro (1992), consolidated Muslim identity in Britain as distinct from South Asian identity. Despite being a period of significant flux and development for Islam in Britain, this period remains unresearched – a gap this conference aims to address.
The histories of Islam in Britain are growing (Ansari 2011, 2008, 2004; Cheruvallil-Contractor 2020, Cheruvallil-Contractor and Gilham 2023, Geaves 2010; Gilham 2023, 2014; Halliday 2010; Lawless 1995; Seddon 2014), but more nuance and granularity is needed about the complexity and intersectionality of Muslim identity and life in Britain, for example around gender, class, ethnicity and different ways of ‘believing’. The available insights provide valuable evidence of how different Muslims and any communities they were part of attempted to, not always successfully, negotiate conciliations between British and Muslim aspects of their identities, values, families, communities and loyalties. Discovering the stories of Islam in Britain has become increasingly important for modern British Muslims who want to better understand their roots in the country and celebrate their histories of activism, agency and nation-building. This conference aims to highlight these histories in all their richness and diversity.
We are eager to include perspectives from various backgrounds and positions, whether academic or non-academic. We encourage individual submissions at any stage of their academic or non-academic career. The goal is to foster collaborative efforts with community stakeholders, promoting knowledge exchange. We very much welcome submissions in different formats, including traditional academic papers, community heritage projects, poetry, spoken word, performances, and other forms of artistic expression. Topics for submissions can include but are not limited to:-

Intersectionality in historical Muslim identity in Britain
Post- and de-colonial approaches within history
Contemporary impact and influence of historical British Muslims
Experiences of racism and prejudice in early British Muslims
Histories of Muslim Organizations and Institutions
Contestations in ‘British Muslim’ identity
Socio-political activism to date
Significant ‘British Muslim’ public figures
Recent books/publications on the history of Islam and Muslims in Britain

To submit a proposal:

Please submit a title and abstract of no more than 300 words together with names and short biographies (150 words) of the presenter/s, institutional affiliation/s (if relevant), and contact details.
We also welcome proposals from academics, postgraduate researchers, independent scholars and community practitioners.
Proposals should be sent to MuslimsinBritainRN@gmail.com
Deadline: 5 pm on Friday, 11th May 2024
Successful presenters will be notified by 24th May 2024

Conference Organisers
Sadiya Ahmed, Samuel Bartlett, Sariya Cheruvallil-Contractor
Muslim in Britain Research Network, Everyday Muslim Heritage and Archive Initiative and University of Westminster

Conference: Muslims in Britain, 1800‒1970, and Beyond: Historical Approaches & Why

Conference Update: Muslim Converts in Britain and Beyond
2024-11-26 00:00 - 2024-12-19 01:00
We look forward to welcoming academics and practitioners at the conference Muslim Converts in Britain and Beyond: Transitions and Transformations, which takes place on Thursday the 9th of January 2025 at Cardiff University. Registrations have now closed.

Please check the timetable and relevant information by downloading the Programme.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to email us at MuslimsinBritainRN@gmail.com.

Call for Papers Muslim Converts in Britain and Beyond: Transitions and Transformations 9th January 2025, Cardiff University
2025-01-09 09:30 - 16:30
Call for Papers
Muslim Converts in Britain and Beyond: Transitions and Transformations
9th January 2025, Cardiff University
The Islam-UK Centre, Cardiff University & MBRN (Muslims in Britain Research Network) invite submissions for academic papers and professional contributions to a one-day conference about Muslim converts in Europe. This interdisciplinary conference is open to academic scholars, non-academic professionals and practitioners, and members of religious communities.
We will showcase contemporary research and practice in relation to Muslim converts in Britain, and identify topics for future research and practice by addressing the following questions:

What impact have British Muslim converts had on Muslim communities and wider British society?
What resources do British Muslim converts use to create progress and change in their own lives, and more widely?
What are the challenges and needs faced by British Muslim converts in the contemporary context, and how can research help to identify and address these?

State of knowledge
Over the past 20 years, conversion to Islam has captured the attention of academic scholars as well as practitioners and policy-makers from the criminal justice system, health and social care, religion professionals, and the media. In many European societies, conversion can be seen as controversial due to anti-Muslim prejudice and Islamophobia. For converts themselves, whilst conversion can be a joyous and fulfilling experience, it can also create tensions in their inter-personal relationships and in the wider public sphere, including in education and the workplace (Vroon 2014).
Research in Britain, and across Europe, has tended to focus on conversion experiences and the challenges Muslim converts can encounter (Alyedreessy 2016; Brice 2010). Specifically, conversion has been analysed in relation to: ethnicity, race and racialisation (Moosavi 2015; Piela & Krotofil 2023); gender and sexuality (Suleiman 2013, 2016; Van Nieuwkerk 2006); and, incarceration and terrorism/counter-terrorism (Flower 2013; Mullins 2015).
Conversion to Islam in Europe is most often characterised as a sudden and radical move to a ‘foreign’ religion. In contrast to this popular characterisation, research shows that conversion is a longer transformative process, motivated by a spiritual quest involving cumulative knowledge acquisition and a gradual shift in identity boundaries (Al-Qwidi 2002; Midden 2023). Scholarly attention has also been paid to historical evidence of Britain’s early encounters with Muslims and conversion, to counter such narratives (Ansari 2004; Gilliat-Ray 2010). Furthermore, the extent to which converts are shaping a specifically British or European Islam has been conceptualised as the ‘indigenisation’ of Islam (Zebiri 2014).
Convert Muslims have been described as ‘ambassadors of Islam’ in Europe (Van Es 2017). From this perspective, White Muslim converts can act as ‘bridges’ between born Muslims from minority backgrounds and non-Muslim majority populations (Roald 2004; Suleiman 2013). However, convert Muslim communities are ethnically diverse and a focus on whiteness can lead to further marginalisation of Muslim converts of other ethnic groups in both research and the practice of ‘convert care’ (Birt 2022). It is also important to note that converts’ positionality is complicated by colonial and historical legacies (Gallonier 2015).
More recently, scholarly interest in conversion has shifted to examine life (long) after conversion. The ‘Transformational: Muslim Converts in British Life’ is one such study, being conducted at the Islam-UK Centre Centre in collaboration with the Convert Muslim Foundation. This study aims to document and conceptualise the impact of leadership and changemaking activities of Muslim converts in Britain.
Conference Themes
We welcome contributions related to the following (non-exhaustive list of) themes:

Leadership and changemaking among Muslim converts
Second or third generation of converts
Intercultural integration
Conversion and Islamophobia
Conversion and social activism
Converts’ politics
Converts and (changing) religious authority
Converts’ long-term spiritual journeys
Evolved convert organisations
Gender
‘Race’, ethnicity and other dimensions of converts’ diversity
(Media) narratives on conversion
Conversion and da‘wah cultures
Other themes relevant to the conference questions

Submission guidelines
Please submit your abstract or description of your 15-minute presentation (300 words) addressing one or more of the conference questions, along with a short bio (50 words) using this online form: https://forms.office.com/e/bwKkwzHqDB
This call for papers will close on 31st October 2024.
You will be notified of acceptance by mid-November 2024.
Conference organisers
Centre for the Study of Islam in the UK: Sophie Gilliat-Ray and Asma Khan
Muslims in Britain Research Network: Sariya Cheruvallil-Contractor; Laura Mora, Qudra Goodall.
