Diversity in Islam in British RE

Discussion of religion in the classroom is caught between two poles. How do we give sufficient weight to the lived experience of the followers of a religion while also recognising the authority of religious leaders and canonical scripture to define religion? Especially in subjects relating to Islam and Muslims, teachers of RE often feel ill-equipped to come up with their own answers. This frequently means that they veer towards reproducing a textbook religion that reproduces the official answers of religious leaders.

Where teachers report their own lack of subject knowledge, the prescribed solution is sometimes to involve more Muslim voices in curriculum writing or to provide more teacher training. Both are laudable initiatives in themselves, but they need to be combined with an understanding that all individuals who seek to define Islam have their own positionality and are, to some degree, gatekeepers, trying to decide what should and should not be termed Islamic.

This special issue aims to foreground the experience of teachers as practitioners, as they wrestle with the conundrum of how to square the diversity of lived Muslim experience with the discourse of the Islamic theological tradition. The position that is advocated by many of the papers collected here is, broadly speaking, anti-essentialist, and aims at giving space to unofficial or minority positions, without ignoring their relationship to the Islam of the theologians.

Islam today

Islam is currently more salient in the media than any other religious tradition. Islam is often claimed to be the fastest growing religion in the UK. Muslim demands led to the addition of religion as a category in the UK census (Hussain and Sherif 2014). Muslims make up the majority of non-European immigrants to European countries (Modood 2012) and they are unusually successful in transmitting their religious identity to their children (Scourfield et al. 2014). They are visibly successful in UK politics: British politicians from Muslim backgrounds have held the offices of Mayor of London, Scottish First Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer within the last decade.

But much of the salience of Islam and Muslims has been negative. During the Cold War, Muslims were often identified as potential allies of the West against the Soviet Union (Aydin 2017). But after 9/11 Muslim states have increasingly been identified as untrustworthy incubators of anti-Western interests, in Iraq, Syria, Iran, Yemen and Somalia, the targets of Donald Trump’s ‘Muslim ban’, but also in Pakistan and Palestine. This geopolitical context means that Muslim loyalties are often under scrutiny, and this scrutiny can extend to the classroom in initiatives such as the Prevent programme (Lockley-Scott 2019).

No other religion is associated so regularly with a geographic moniker: we speak of the Muslim world and juxtapose it with continents such as Africa and Europe, but we do not speak of the Christian world or the Buddhist world in this way. There is a tendency to ascribe religious motivations to inhabitants of the Muslim world, where we would be much more willing to look to other motivations or identities in other parts of the world. This tendency facilitates negative stereotyping, which presents ‘the Muslim world’ as unchanging and people of Muslim background as defined by religion, rather than by ethnicity, class, citizenship or political or economic interests. It is a kind of stereotyping that serves Western powers who may represent Muslim-majority states as incapable of development or equal participation in the international order, as well as sectarian entrepreneurs, including those in the diaspora, who wish to mobilise their followers on religious lines (Aydin 2017; Al-Azm 1981; Panjwani 2017). In Pakistan and Turkey, for instance, this religiofication of politics has diverted attention from the economic criticism of those in power and undermined attempts to protect the rights of women, LGBT+ and religious minorities (Cerami 2021; Lall and Saeed 2019). In Pakistan in particular, teaching about Shi’ism is seen as divisive, and the curriculum tends to ignore confessional differences (Nelson 2009). These discourses are significant for a UK context because diasporas retain close connections with countries where the discussion of rights now has a heavy religious, conservative inflection.

Thus, Muslims face an especially high degree of scrutiny, and their religion is especially politicised. Islam and Muslims are a growing part of UK and European societies. But UK RE teachers often feel under-equipped to teach about Islam and to teach Muslim students in the classroom. Degrees in Theology and Religious Studies (TRS) have often been focussed on Christian and Jewish material, with relatively little provision on Islam. And many teachers of RE in school do not have a specialist degree.

RE curricula are particularly distant from developments in TRS at university: TRS does not have the institutions that link schoolteachers and tertiary educators in the same way as History or Geography. Increasingly, the study of religion in universities has tended to focus on what people designate as religion, without attempting to define religion itself or to engage in normative thought to criticise or improve a given religious tradition (Bergunder 2014; Hughes and McCutcheon 2022, 6–8). There is a growing reluctance to generalise on the basis of the statements of religious authorities, both because these views are contingent and the product of historical processes and because of the danger of re-inscribing these views as straightforwardly true (Hughes and McCutcheon 2022, 189–91; Schubel 2023, 27; Tolan 2019). By contrast, in Britain at least, the position of SACREs gives an elevated role to religious leaders that can result in privileging gatekeepers of a religious tradition (Revell 2008).

Though there have been significant improvements to curricula in the past decade, textbooks do not always reflect the full range of Muslim lived religion or give the nuance of terminology against the context of a developing tradition (Revell 2015). Of course, there are limitations to what textbooks can capture or what teachers can realistically deliver (Otterbeck 2005), but this special issue seeks to develop the discussion of how the diversity of Islam and Muslims can be presented in the classroom and how it should be approached conceptually.

All/most/some/few

One recent approach to teaching Muslim diversity has been Matt Vince project to record brief podcasts from Muslims on a variety of subjects, to give students direct access to a range of Muslim views (Centre for the Study of Islam in the UK 2019). Often textbooks and marking criteria use the language of all/most/some/few Muslims believe or do x. Vince’s approach is powerful because it allows students to form their own opinions based on actual speech. Classroom discussion of how students interpreted the statements in the podcasts may reveal that not everyone understood the statements on the podcasts in the same way. There is an important learning point here: the data we draw upon to form generalisations are not the same, and that we interpret these data through the lens of our own preconceptions. Students who have been exposed to ‘progressive’ or ‘reactionary’ discourses in the home environment may bring these lenses when they listen to the podcasts, and this may affect what they then emphasise in classroom discussion. An awareness that our own listening, and that of our peers, is not neutral, but is preconditioned by prior experience, is an important hermeneutical training for young people exposed to a diversity of data on what Muslims think and do in the news, social media and real-world interactions.

Other approaches to the all/most/some/few questions might include classroom discussions of Pew surveys of Muslim-majority contexts or teacher-curated discussions of social media. This exercise is important because it illustrates the areas where we can make safe generalisations, and where only a few Muslims support a given idea and where the extent of this is exaggerated. Here, we might acknowledge the existence of a kernel of truth, but also understand that it is unrepresentative.

Another advantage of these data-rich approaches to the all/most/some/few question is that it prevents individual informants being allowed to present their own view as majoritarian or orthodox without challenge. In the past, it has often been classroom practice to ask members of religious minorities to act as experts on their own faith, sometimes to compensate for a teacher’s lack of specialist knowledge and sometimes for the laudable aim of helping them to feel included and valued (e.g. Ezzani and Brooks 2015, 427). This kind of personal testimony can be powerful, but teachers also need to recognise the potential risks this has to others, who belong to the same faith tradition but do not practice in the same way. We have heard of several cases of Muslim students stating clearly that the hijab is mandatory, and female Muslims then being told by their peers, both Muslim and non-Muslim, that they were not real Muslims unless they wore the veil. The all/most/some/few questions seek to obviate this kind of flattening of how Muslim practice is represented by puncturing the notion that all Muslims act in the same way. But, of course, this question is not enough on its own, and must be followed by at least further questions that relate to how this diversity of practice is legitimised: who says so? And ‘who’ here can refer to textual traditions, the rules of exegesis and to human authorities.

Who says so?

Questions of legitimacy are intertwined through the discussion of religion in various forms of print and television media, and discussion by ‘official’ sources are continued, received and assessed in online social media. Schoolchildren are online natives, and the analysis of how religion (as a general category) and Islam (as a more specific category) are defined and used by different agents is an important function for religious education. Here teachers can showcase good academic practice, whereby students of religion do not have to endorse a position, but can take a step back from the issues at hand to look at how different agents apply different definitions of religion to appeal to distinct constituencies.

A recent example in which the legitimacy to define Islam or speak on behalf of Muslims was all brought up in a controversy concerning Humza Yousaf, now Scottish First Minister, during his election campaign in February 2023. Former first minister Alex Salmond accused Yousaf of deliberately scheduling a diary clash to avoid voting on the gay marriage bill in 2014. Yousaf’s rival, Kate Forbes, a member of the Free Church of Scotland, had been asked whether she considered gay sex to be a sin and how she would legislate on it. She consistently answered that she would have voted against gay marriage but that she would not seek to alter standing legislation. A Sky journalist repeatedly asked Yousaf similar questions to those put to Forbes. He responded that he did not use his faith as a basis for legislating and, ultimately, stated that he did not consider gay sex to be a sin. He added that he was a practicing Muslim and that ‘you cannot change what’s in certain faiths and you cannot change what’s in Scripture’. He was successful over Forbes in his campaign, but by a very narrow margin (https://news.sky.com/video/snp-race-humza-yousaf-states-i-believe-in-equal-marriage-12820474).

The affair was criticised in many ways. Usaama al-Azami, an alim and Oxford academic, stated on Twitter that the questioning was Islamophobic, since to deny that gay sex was a sin placed someone outside Islam and Yousaf was being coerced to do this by a hostile interviewer. I think rather than Yousaf was being honest in his answer, and had been reluctant to commit himself because he wished to play a role as an elected politician, rather than an Islamic reformer. I understand his position to be that the interpretation of Scripture could change with context, but that, in many areas, opinions will legitimately differ. He may also have recognised that a potential support base of Muslim voters might have disagreed with him on the issue.

In the aftermath of Yousaf’s statement, he was condemned by a number of prominent Muslim influencers, most prominently Mohammed Hijab. He called Yousaf a ‘kafir’ (an infidel): ‘you are excommunicated from the religion of Islam’.¹ But other commentators, including al-Azami, criticised Hijab in turn. Al-Azami pointed out that Hijab was not an alim and had no right to pronounce on whether an individual was a kafir. He clarified that, while saying that gay sex was not a sin was an act of kufr (unbelief), in contradiction to the Quran, only an alim could pronounce an individual to be a kafir, since to do so made him an apostate, liable for capital punishment under the sharia.

Two questions of legitimacy were interwoven in this discussion. Can statements in the Quran be re-read based on a changing historical context? (a subtext may be as follows: can Muslims turn to alternative sources of ethics as part of this context, such as human rights law?) And who has the authority to pronounce on proper belief, or the status of individuals within the community, among other things, what level and form of training is required?

Though the issues have differed, similar tensions were already present in the nineteenth century when ulama were criticised by both Muslim modernists and Islamists of different kinds. The discussion is also a good indication of the misrepresentation involved if we allow any one of these figures to define Islam for students. Individual Muslims may have varied commitments to an institutional manifestation of Islam; they give precedence to different authoritative texts or personal experiences. Nor will everyone agree on who counts as a Muslim, whether from the point of view of personal beliefs and actions or membership of different confessions (the Muslim council of Great Britain’s rejection of the Ahmadis is a case in point). And there is disagreement on who gets to define the boundaries of Islam, of who is entitled to define ‘unbelief’.

Doing justice to lived religion

The sources of knowledge are a particularly important means for theologians to dominate the everyday practice of Islam. Since the early middle ages, some Muslim intellectuals, supported by statements drawn from the hadith, had seen the role of the ulama as the protection of the masses from dangerous questioning and that ilm (religious knowledge) should be left to the ulama (Brown 2014, 214–5). But we should be aware that their powers of correction have been greatly increased in fairly recent times. Thomas Bauer (2021, 24, 196) has written of medieval Islam’s tolerance of ambiguity, where ulama also wrote poems in praise of wine and homoerotic verse (cf. El-Rouayheb 2003). The Quran, he argues, could be read in many different ways, and this diversity was seen as a stimulus to contemplation of the holy text (Bauer 2021, 57). And while some hadith scholars did aspire to impose their models of piety onto others, this was not the norm of ninth- or tenth-century Baghdad (Bauer 2021, 136; Cook 2001). Yet these normative texts of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) have received the lion’s share of attention in the academy and generated a dangerous presumption that these are more significant discourses that are more correct or representative of Muslim beliefs than (say) literature. This has a substantive effect on how Arabists are trained as well, it is, Bauer argues, as if scholars of English literature would be expected to get PhDs in Anglican sacramental theology (Ahmed 2015; Bauer 2021, 137; Schubel 2023).

Michael Cook (2014, xvi-ii) has argued that, among religious traditions, modern Islam is particularly attached to foundational texts in the Quran and the hadith, which limits the degree to which potential reformers can act. He asks what happens if believers become aware of a new doctrine that contradicts previous practice. Does this affect your adhesion to your identity, alter your practice, cause you to advocate for reform or simply ignore it? He gives the example of Cham Muslims in Vietnam, who, in the nineteenth century worshipped multiple gods, celebrated Allah’s birthday, practiced a three day fast in Ramadan and knew that the Quran described a sun god and a moon goddess. All of these beliefs disappeared rapidly after Chams started to make the pilgrimage to Mecca in 1891 and encountered ‘true Islam’, a process mirrored in the disappearance of local forms of religion across the world in the era of industrialised travel (also see Bayly 2004, chp. 8).

One option for us in how we understand this ‘correction’ of the Cham is to simply repeat the terms of the sources, and of the modern day Cham, in seeing this as a movement towards correct practice. Cook’s Cham example may be an extreme case of how public adhesion to a religious community might bear little relation to how followers of the tradition are supposed to act. But an interesting strand of the anthropology of Islam has argued that we should not presume that all Muslims do allow their behaviour to be guided by theologians (or at least not all the time). As one scholar put it, ‘there is too much Islam in the anthropology of Islam’ (Schielke 2010). Jonas Otterbeck (2022) has argued that the Islam of the ignorant, of madmen or children, is just as worthy of study and analysis as expressions of Islam as those of theologians. He has suggested that we should write of people of Muslim background, rather than ‘Muslims’, to highlight that they do not necessarily act in accordance with Islam (even of their own definition of Islam). This perspective opens our eyes to a world of half Muslims, occasional Muslims and cultural Muslims who are sometimes ignored in a scholarship that assumes ‘the Muslim world’ to be peculiarly religious, or assumed that being Muslim is an exclusive worldview that always precludes membership of other worldviews (Hughes 2022).

In a similar vein, Norenzyan’s (2013, chapter 3) study of the stimuli for religiously motivated behaviour has given substance to the idea of occasional Muslims: Norenzyan noted that Muslims were many times more likely to donate zakat (the charity tax given to the Muslim poor) in the aftermath of the call to prayer. From the perspective of social psychology, we might consider religious identities to be reactions to specific stimuli, which cause people to relate to one of a number of imagined communities to which they are affiliated. An atheist of Muslim background may still feel attachment to a Muslim community if she feels it is under attack or experiences affection for Islamic symbols and spaces. In this sense, people do not either believe or belong in the same way all the time, but express both belief and belonging to different groups in response to their context (Bilgrami 1992).

A common criticism that is made against expressions of Islam by reformists, especially conservative or patriarchal practices, is that it is mere culture and that it is not representative of true Islam (Bolognani and Mellor 2012). A similar argument is made using the language of heterodoxy, where the confessional language of false religion is used by British politicians as well as by Muslim actors (Hughes and McCutcheon 2021, 187; Schubel 2023, 243). There is an obvious attraction here for teachers: a good, true Islam can be celebrated and cleanly differentiated from behaviour that is patriarchal or endorses violence or criticises democracy or pluralism. One example of this tendency is Prime Minister David Cameron’s statement on the Leytonstone Tube attacker in December 2015, when Cameron echoed the words of a bystander in the station when the attack occurred: ‘you ain’t no Muslim bruv’. The culture–religion dichotomy is often invoked by teachers when deciding the claims of students for special treatment: if it is religion, it is accepted, but if it is mere culture, it can be safely ignored.

The problem with both of these dichotomies, of orthodox/heterodox and religion/culture, is that the ends are assumed to justify the means. If we can use these strategies to delegitimise anti-progressive actors or violence in the name of religion, then this makes them acceptable. But these dichotomies can also be employed to other ends: Bengali festivals in the east end, for instance, often linked to secular political movements, can be presented as peripheral to British Bangladeshi identity because they are not Islamic, and this argument can be used to starve such movements of funding (Eade and Garbin 2010; also see De Hanas 2013). Likewise, the precedent of endorsing the use of the language of heterodoxy in the public sphere places a great deal of power into the hands of clerical elites, in ways that could be used to silence critics of clerical authority or reformist ideas. Both of these dichotomies can be appropriated by a variety of actors, and here an important role for teachers is to point out the positionality of these actors and to ask what kinds of political languages allow for open discussion and an effective public sphere.

The range of questions

So far we have looked at Islam on two axes: what do Muslims believe, and how are these beliefs legitimated. If we begin the question with ‘Muslims’, broadly defined, and what they do and say, then we can see Islam as a discourse they produce through their statements and their actions. There is ambiguity here, of course: when a Muslim does x, we may not know they consider it an Islamic act unless we ask them. Likewise, the degree to which an individual identifies as a Muslim will vary by context. But the ambiguity is a reflection of the lived reality of how different individuals will develop personal Islams, drawing on the institutional religion learnt in the mosque, where the Quran and hadith are interpreted by ulama, but blending this with religious ideas learnt from parents and grandparents, ideas encountered on the internet and with ideas drawn from other discourses in British society (such as human rights discourse). A worldviews approach is well equipped to capture the diversity of sources of personal beliefs, and it has the advantage of recognising that individuals often draw on multiple sources in constructing their view of the world, and how they may differ widely in how they reconcile the differences between these sources. To my mind, this approach has many advantages over beginning with a specific theological definition and then using this to decide who should count as a Muslim. Institutionalised worldviews may be extremely important, and their internal logic needs to be understood, but they can rarely monopolise how individuals actually exercise moral reasoning, especially in a modern society where one is faced with new situations that have no established solution. Religious traditions have to be reinterpreted or adapted to these situations, and the forms of adaptation will often be ad hoc or idiosyncratic, and blended with other traditions of moral reasoning, both religious and non-religious.

A worldviews approach allows students an insight into the real complexities of Muslim identities, and to understand why there is a diversity of attitudes in some areas but not in others. We can put aside the problem of whether or not ISIS, or the veneration of saints, or Ahmadis or an LGBT+ mosque qualify as ‘real Islam’ and see them all as manifestations of the Islamic tradition in different contexts. This approach allows students to pose nuanced questions about the place of religion in public life. Or, to state the problem another way, to ponder the social effects of different behaviours that are justified by religion.

That said, a study of religions/worldviews approach that sees religion as the product of people, rather than the outgrowth of a set of core ideals from the seventh century, is only one approach and only answers one set of questions. Students may still reasonably want to ask another order of confessional questions that the study of religions approach normally side-steps: is this religion true? Which version of Islam is the real one? (Whether in the sense of going back to the Prophet or meeting God’s approval). These are questions where it is important for teachers not to lead students or endorse for a given position, but they are likely to be questions that students will ask, if only to themselves. The study of religions approach aims to use non-normative language as a way of keeping the discussion open, but we should be aware that students may ultimately pose normative questions of the material. Students will form their own opinion of how different sources of religious authority will interact and judge the results accordingly. Some of the questions they pose may be theological (does God exist? How can we describe God or know about Him/Her? Can there be human prophets?), but others will be ethical, historical and sociological (What can we know about Muhammad’s behaviour?; Is Muhammad’s behaviour consistent with the behaviour of a prophet?; ‘Who are the successors of the Prophet in leading the Muslim community?; Are the statements of the Quran consistent with prophecy?; Do the contributions of Muslims to society serve to prove the truth of Islam?).

Curricula and the classroom

The papers gathered here were presented in a conference in June 2022. They aim to explore how a worldviews approach to Islam can work in the classroom by exploring issues of Muslim internal diversity and different forms of religious authority. A number of authors respond to the dangers of essentialism in curricula, where textbook writers appeal to a typical (Sunni) Islam that can be evoked in a limited set of symbols (the domed mosque, the hijab) without considering a broader range of expressions.

Lynn Revell and Kate Christopher investigate how a worldviews curriculum can escape essentialisation, decontextualization and stereotype. Their work triangulates a critical, contextual curriculum; practical resources to deploy this in the classroom and the immediate contexts of RE teachers in Britain. They reflect on two working principles for teaching Islam: that worldviews start with people (their beliefs, behaviours, situation and internal diversity) and pupils’ own engagement with critical knowledge and the framing of questions. On the other hand, their work also wrestles with the strong perceived demand from Muslim parents for a ‘traditional’ curriculum that covers an idealised ‘basic knowledge’, and is wary of treating the diversity of lived Muslim experience because of a fear of being perceived as promoting heterodoxy or controversy.

Al-Karim Datoo and Alexis Stones address Edward Said’s (1993) concept of ‘worldliness’ as a companion to the worldviews approach in teaching. Drawing on ethnographic research among Canadian Muslims, they propose that the location of many students within evolving diasporas, with their own inter-generational tensions, is part of the context for how Islam is practiced.

Hina Amirali surveys four recent textbooks and identifies areas of best practice for the future. She identifies the importance of situating Muslims in Britain, through their recent history and their active participation in politics. She stresses that Muslims do not simply act out a pre-existent blueprint, but play an active role in shaping their different Islams in their different contexts. She suggests a way forward in a hermeneutical approach to RE, which understands that Islamic ideas may be rooted in Scripture, but that they evolve through time, and that their interpretation is a matter for activists, artists and poets as well as ‘theologians’.

Anar Amin and Anisha Lakhani respond to the reified vision of Islam in many curricula by describing a pedagogical model developed by the Institute for Ismaili Studies for their own curricula. This model offers three complementary objectives that aim to offer an antidote to reified or essentialist views of Islam (or any other tradition):

1. to acknowledge the situatedness of descriptions of Islam, where there is no neutral or objective description

2. to understand how scripture fulfils a social function, and how understanding this context allows modern scholarship to better comprehend the significance of a verse.

3. to appreciate how a religious tradition evolves over time, with each generation in conversation with its predecessors.

Thomas Hoffmann’s paper explores the controversial issue of the teaching of the Jyllands Posten Muhammad cartoons of 2005 in school classrooms. He argues that these images form part of the recent history of Islam in Denmark and therefore merit discussion. He argues that teaching conflict, and the debates that surround it, is a key way for students to develop critical thinking and practical tolerance. In the conference, an alternative viewpoint was provided by Waqar Ahmad Ahmedi, which was published in REToday, a periodical aimed at UK RE teachers (Ahmedi 2022).

Anders Ackfeldt’s contribution considers the potential for Hip-hop-based education (HHBE) to consider Muslims’ role in forming a major genre of American music that has worldwide appeal. Using Richard Bulliet’s (1994) model of how Islam has been developed by encounters on its periphery, rather than its supposed centre in the Middle East. HHBE allows students to examine how ‘Islam’ can be expressed by a palette of symbols and aural forms and YouTube provides a useful tool to see how different audiences will respond. Ackfeldt suggests that a multivalent figure like Malcolm X can be examined in the classroom as an example of how media creators will pick and choose different aspects of the same figure and construct different versions of Islam (and different kinds of hip-hop).

Finally, Chris Cooper-Davis and Zameer Hussain address the functioning of the formal Islamic tradition, namely the rules of ijtihad (the derivation of principles from the Quran and the hadith). Cooper-Davis and Hussain’s paper offers a series of examples of how students can be introduced to scaffolded examples of ijtihad in practice in a British setting, as it relates to clothing and music. These examples serve as practical illustrations of how the jurisprudential tradition has an internal variety and rules for the application of general principles.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Philip Wood

Philip Wood is the Tejpar Professor of Inter-Religious Studies at the Aga Khan University, Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations. He is a historian of the Middle East, specialising in cultural and religious history. He recently published What is Islamic Studies? European and North American Approaches to a Contested Field (Edinburgh: EUP, 2021), together with Leif Stenberg.

Notes

1. https://muslimcentral.com/mohammed-hijab-is-humza-yousaf-muslim/; https://twitter.com/mohammed_hijab/status/1641481886068293632. Note other criticisms of Hijab such as https://twitter.com/SabreenSafiyyah/status/1641717062568677376.