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Background Issues
Intro | MI5 Recruitment | Islam and Spies | Racism | IdentityBritish-Muslim Identity
The growing number of self-formed, unfunded support groups for women in Britain’s Muslim communities have largely welcomed the greater government attention recently paid to Muslim women. However there is also caution about the government’s objectives. For example, a funding stream has recently become available for capacity-building among younger Muslim women. But it is under the Communities Preventing Extremism rubric, and not because the state recognises that Muslim women have a need and a right to a greater voice within and outside their communities.
Since the 1990s, younger women and men in the Muslim community have been leading the way in building a positive, new, combined British-Muslim identity. Setbacks came with the polarisations of the ‘war on terror’ but there is evidence that, particularly among women, the process has picked up again recently.
Women are increasingly challenging stereotypes about ‘Muslim women’ held both within and outside the community. Often they are doing this by referring to human rights concepts seen through an Islamic framework. There are also growing links with the dynamic women’s rights movements in Muslim majority contexts like Turkey, Pakistan and Indonesia.
Britain’s secret services and terrorists may operate at the international level, but so too can young British Muslims seeking to find their own positive voice.
Feature by Cassandra Balchin
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