Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs in the New Religious Landscape of England Author(S): Ceri Peach and Richard Gale Reviewed Work(S): Source: Geographical Review, Vol
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American Geographical Society Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs in the New Religious Landscape of England Author(s): Ceri Peach and Richard Gale Reviewed work(s): Source: Geographical Review, Vol. 93, No. 4 (Oct., 2003), pp. 469-490 Published by: American Geographical Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30033938 . Accessed: 08/11/2012 16:34 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. American Geographical Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Geographical Review. http://www.jstor.org MUSLIMS,HINDUS, AND SIKHSIN THE NEW RELIGIOUSLANDSCAPE OF ENGLAND* CERI PEACH and RICHARD GALE ABSTRACT. This article examines the dramatic changes brought to English townscapesby Islam, Hinduism, and Sikhism.These "new"religions have arrivedwith the large-scaleim- migration and subsequentnatural growth of the minority ethnic populations of GreatBrit- ain since the 1950s.The article tracesthe growth and distributionof these populations and religions,as well as the developmentof theirplaces of worshipfrom front-roomprayer rooms to cathedral-scalebuildings. It exploresthe way in which the Britishplanning process,dedi- catedto preservingthe traditional,has engaged with the exotic.Keywords: England, Hindus, Muslims,Sikhs, urban planning. In 2001 Wilbur Zelinsky published a stimulatingarticle in the GeographicalRe- view extolling the exceptional nature of the American cultural landscapeof reli- gion. He arguedthat the United Statesis a land without the homogenizing effectof Europeanstate religions. New peopleshave brought new religionsand made a highly diversified and pluralistic impact on the American cultural landscape. Places of worship range from Episcopaliancathedrals to storefront churches,from mega- churches to ethnic churches,and an almost random scatter of sites where Chris- tians,Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and a wide varietyof other religionsare represented, with an equal variety of signage in the streetscape.Zelinsky described a unique pluralisticreligious landscape. On the other side of the Atlantic,dramatic changes are happeningas well to the European,particularly the English, Christiancultural landscapes of religion. The homogenizing effect of state religion, to which Zelinsky referred,is being decon- structedand in some casesreconsecrated under the impactof new religiousinfluxes. The ethnic minoritypopulations of the United Kingdom and other WesternEuro- pean countries have expanded dramatically(Peach 1997).Embedded within these minority ethnic populations, especially those of South Asian origin, has come a great expansionin "new"religions-Islam (Peach199ob), Hinduism, Sikhism-and with them the new "cathedrals"of the Englishcultural landscape: Muslim masjids, Hindu mandirsand Sikh gurdwaras.Exotic religious buildings, some of exquisite beauty,have been built on unlikelyinner-city sites. The Shri SwaminarayanMandir, handcraftedin the Gujaratin India from white Romanianmarble, was shipped to * We aregrateful for the constructivesuggestions of threeanonymous referees. We would also like to thankthe followingthree funding agencies for researchgrants: ESRC grant ROOO239765, Social Geography of BritishSouth AsianMuslim, Sikh and Hindu Sub-Communities; the Leverhulme Trust grant F/773, Ethnicity and Cultural Land- scapes:Mosques, Temples and Gurdwaras:A DomesdaySurvey; and the NuffieldFoundation small grant SGS/ 01044/G, Muslimand Christian Places of Worshipand the Planning Process in Birmingham.We further gratefully acknowledgeour researchassociates on earlierparts of the continuingproject: Dariusz Wojcik, University of Oxford;James Ryan, now at Queen'sUniversity, Belfast; and Simon Naylor, now at BristolUniversity. DR. PEACHis a professorof social geographyat the Universityof Oxford,Oxford oxI 3TB,En- gland, where DR.GALE is a researchfellow. TheGeographical Review 93 (4): 469-490, October2003 Copyright C 2005 by the AmericanGeographical Society of New York 470 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW Growth of Mosques, Gurdwaras, and Mandirs in England and Wales, 1964-1998 700 yMuslim 600 Sikh 500 -Hindu 400 300 200 100 0 1964 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 1999 FIG.1-Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu registeredplaces of worship in England and Wales, 1964-1998. Sources:Data transcribedby Simon Naylor from manuscriptrecords of the GeneralRegister Office Registerof Places of Worship,kept at Southport,Merseyside; data published annually in Marriage, Divorceand AdoptionStatistics, Series FM2(London: Office for National Statistics;see, for example, ONS2001). No separateHindu data are given in the publishedrecords. Our data differslightly from the published sources because our fieldworkrevealed disused sites. (Graphby Ceri Peach) England and assembledinto an astonishinglybeautiful temple off London'sNorth Circularring road-opposite an IKEAfurniture store. The elegant Dawoodi Bohra Shi'a Masjid in Northolt is hidden awayin a London industrialestate. The largest Sikh gurdwarain the Westernworld has been built almost under the flight path of HeathrowAirport in suburbanSouthall. PREVIOUS STUDIES The extent of the transformationbrought about by the appearanceof the Muslim, Hindu, and Sikh places of worship can be gauged from readingJohn Gay'saccount of The Geographyof Religionin England:"Hinduism has not made any real impres- sion on the English social landscape"(1971, 199). "The future for the EasternReli- gions in England ... rests almost entirelywith the Muslims and the Sikhs,... the Hindus leave their religion behind in India"(p. 201). Gay was correct about the Muslims'and Sikhs'future impact on the Englishsocial landscape.But although,of the three religions, the Hindus have produced the fewest places of worship (Fig- ure 1), their impact has been among the most spectacular(Figure 2). ENGLANDS NEW RELIGIOUS LANDSCAPE 471 FIG.2-The ShriSwaminarayan Mandir in Neasden,North London, with springcrocuses in the foreground.(Photograph by MartinBarfoot, School of Geographyand the Environment,University of Oxford,spring 2001) A considerableliterature has developedon the culturallandscape of religionin Englandsince Gay's 1971 book. Largely these studies are analyses of particularbuild- ings ratherthan an attemptat an overallgeography. Among the notablecontribu- tionsare those on a LondonHindu temple (Vertovec 1992, 2000), on theHare Krishna BhaktivedantaCenter set up by BeatleGeorge Harrison in a ruralmanor in Hert- fordshire(Nye 1998),on a Jaintemple in Leicester(Gale 1999), on an Ahmadiyya mosquein a Londonsuburb (Naylor and Ryan2002), and on the politicsof plan- ning (Galeand Naylor 2002). Thisliterature links up with thatof scholarsin Aus- tralia(Dunn 2001), Canada(Isin and Siemiatycki 2002), and Singapore (Kong 1993a, 1993b,2002). Importantpapers have also been presentedat conferences(Dwyer 2ooo;Phillips and Brown 2000). This article follows more the NorthAmerican tra- dition of studyingthe religiouslandscape, that of Zelinsky(1961, 1988,2001) and DianaEck, the Harvardsociologist of religion(1997, 2002), but alsoDavid Sopher (1967, 1981), James Shortridge (1976), and G. J.Levine (1986). Thefirst decade of thetwenty-first century is anopportune time to analyzethese changesin the Englishcultural landscape. England and Wales have an officialregis- ter of placesof worshipbeginning in 1854,which allows one to trackthe growthof Muslim,Sikh, and Hindu places of worship(oNs 2001). The 2001 decennialcensus forthe United Kingdom included questions on religionfor the firsttime and a ques- tion on ethnicityfor the secondtime.' 472 THE GEOGRAPHICAL. REVIEW U.K. the Wales87.8 98.4 95.7 97.6 99.6 98.8 99.2 97.4 91.7 95.3 98.5 88.5 97.5 England of in and % KINGDOM % 1.8 1.3 1.2 1.0 0.8 0.5 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.2 7.9 92.1 100.0 UNITED 97,585 No. 747,285677,117565,876 485,277 283,063 247,664 247,403 230,615 2001 1,053,411 4,635,296 54,153,898 58,789,194 GROUP, 666 255494 252 194 387 ETHNIC 1,567 3,319 4,1451,290 12,569 BY NORTHERNIRELAND1,672,698 1,685,267 KINGDOM, 1,7785,118 1,981 6,196 9,5711,129 15,03731,79312,764 16,310 101,677 SCOTLAND UNITED 4,960,334 5,062,011 THE OF 745 8,2618,287 17,661 2,5973,727 5,436 3,464 6,267 5,135 61,580 WALES 2,841,505 2,903,085 I-POPULATION 95,324 TABLE 706,539643,373561,246 475,938 275,394 237,810 220,681 214,619 1,028,546 4,459,470 ENGLAND44,679,361 49,138,831 individuals. biracial ethnic to 2002. refers ONS GROUP populationminority CaribbeanAfricanAsian Other population "Mixed" TotalToral a Source: ETHNICWhiteIndian PakistaniMixeda Black Black Bangladeshi OtherChinese Other Black ENGLANDS NEW RELIGIOUS LANDSCAPE 473 Thisstudy links these sources with a majorsurvey carried out at the University of Oxfordon Muslim,Sikh, and Hinduplaces of worship.Our project selected all 916 Muslim,Sikh, and Hinduplaces of worshiplisted in the Officefor National Statistics(oNs) officialregister for 1998.2Between 1999 and 2001, all siteswere vis- ited andphotographed. Details were collected on schoolsof thought,religious tra- ditionsand movements,patterns of worship,sizes and locations of congregations, datesof establishment,languages spoken, organization, sources of funding,com- munityfacilities