Rethinking British Muslim Identities As Discursive and Affective Processes

Contemporary Sufi-Sunni Revivalism and Sufi-Sunni Mosques in Manchester: Rethinking British Muslim Identities as Discursive and Affective Processes A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities 2021 George P. Rawlinson School of Arts, Languages and Cultures 2 Contents List of figures 4 Abstract 5 Declaration 6 Copyright Statement 7 Acknowledgements 8 Dedication 10 Chapter One: Introduction 11 Research questions 14 The field 18 Qualifications 31 Dwelling in gardens 34 Methodology 41 Roadmap 55 Chapter Two: Islam and Muslims in Process 62 Religion and culture, the world-religions paradigm, and lived religion 63 Islam as civilizational project, Islam, Islamdom and Islamicate 66 Islams, Islam as Mass-Signifier 68 Islam as discursive tradition, Islam as hermeneutical engagement 70 Islamic revivalism 75 The Ummah and the imagined community 77 The travelling Ummah 80 Community in practice, community in process 83 The affective politics of community 86 Living life, doing Islam 89 Conclusion 94 Chapter Three: Islam in Britain, Islam in Manchester 96 Approaches to Muslim community identity in Britain 99 Muslims in Manchester 118 Sectarian Contestations 128 Contemporary Sufi-Sunni Revivalism in Manchester 137 Conclusion 142 3 Chapter Four: Contemporary Sufi-Sunni Revivalism, Beyond Maslak 144 “It was all Qur’ān and Sunnah” 148 Qur’ān and Sunnah as “authentic”, unmediated Islam 149 Qur’ān and Sunnah as affirmation of Sufi-Sunni Orthodoxy 154 Qur’ān, Sunnah and ‘Alā Hazrat 162 Reconfigurations of the Barelvī maslak 163 Qur’ān and Sunnah as reflexive, embodied Islam in community 174 Qur’ān, Sunnah and Sanad: connected majālis 175 Affective bonds and boundaries 186 Conclusion 193 Chapter Five: Reviving Islam, Renewing Society 194 “Serving Humanity with Love, Mercy and Compassion”: the sanctification of civic service 199 “We need to show people the true Islam”: good Muslims as good citizens 215 “A bigger family”: cultivating the Mancunian Muslim community on Oxford Road 230 Conclusion 241 Chapter Six: Self and Community in Contemporary British Islam 243 The Public: contested authorities 248 What is the public? 258 The Public in the masjid 261 The Public in Manchester 277 Self and society 283 Conclusion 292 Chapter Seven: Towards a New Understanding of Muslim Community Identity 294 The current of contemporary Sufi-Sunni revivalism 306 Islam in Manchester and Manchester in Islam 310 Towards a new understanding of Muslim community identity 315 Appendix One: Table of Observations 319 Appendix Two: Ethical Approval Documentation 320 Appendix Three: Glossary 325 Bibliography 330 Word Count: 86,482 4 List of figures Figure 1. Coiling over. 91 Figure 2. Hamid's application of Ramadan's six major Islamic tendencies to the British Muslim context. 107 Figure 3. Converging dynamics between ethnicity, religion and adopted cultures. 112 Figure 4. South Manchester Madrasa, Fundamentals of Islam. 169 5 Abstract British Muslim identity has often been conceptualised as a complex of multiple distinct sectarian, ethnic and familial associations discursively informed by authoritative individuals and institutions operating within Muslim communities and in wider society. As such, taxonomies reflecting this have predominantly divided British Muslim identity according to sect and institution, with Sufi-Sunni revival movements figuring most prominently. Yet, emergent literature on everyday and lived religion demonstrates how such associations prove to be particularly fluid in how they are lived and done situationally. The unstable category of the “Barelvī” movement, often taken to be an umbrella term for South Asian Sufi-Sunni Islam in Britain, is one such case in point. This applies to predominantly discursive conceptualisations of community identity but becomes even further apparent with a consideration of affective associations, which variously imbue, contest, and confound seemingly stable discursive formations. These permutations attest to the processual nature of British Muslim identity, and to the brittleness of categories that have been constructed to describe it. Building further upon contemporary, processual approaches to Muslim community identity in Britain, I explore how the trend of contemporary Sufi-Sunni revivalism is manifest within, between and beyond Muslim communities. This way of doing Islam is characterised by an informed and affectively felt grounding in the Qur’an and Sunnah devotionally actualised in service to wider society. Drawing on field work in and around five mosques in Manchester, I advance a conceptualisation of British Muslim identity comprised not of boxes, but of lines of movement and process. These lines which I trace here reflect the coalescence of discursive and affective processes in the shape and ongoing constitution of Muslim community identity. They are thoroughly enmeshed in the wider societal context of Manchester itself to the extent that Islam is lived in Manchester and Manchester is lived in Islam. 6 Declaration I declare that no portion of the work referred to in the thesis has been submitted in support of an application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or other institute of learning. 7 Copyright Statement The author of this thesis (including any appendices and/or schedules to this thesis) owns certain copyright or related rights in it (the “Copyright”) and he has given The University of Manchester certain rights to use such Copyright, including for administrative purposes. Copies of this thesis, either in full or in extracts and whether in hard or electronic copy, may be made only in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended) and regulations issued under it or, where appropriate, in accordance with licensing agreements which the University has from time to time. This page must form part of any such copies made. The ownership of certain Copyright, patents, designs, trademarks and other intellectual property (the “Intellectual Property”) and any reproductions of copyright works in the thesis, for example graphs and tables (“Reproductions”), which may be described in this thesis, may not be owned by the author and may be owned by third parties. Such Intellectual Property and Reproductions cannot and must not be made available for use without the prior written permission of the owner(s) of the relevant Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions. Further information on the conditions under which disclosure, publication and commercialisation of this thesis, the Copyright and any Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions described in it may take place is available in the University IP Policy (see http://documents.manchester.ac.uk/DocuInfo.aspx?DocID=24420), in any relevant Thesis restriction declarations deposited in the University Library, The University Library’s regulations (see http://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/about/regulations/) and in The University’s policy on Presentation of Theses. 8 Acknowledgements Having initially intended to pursue postgraduate research from my beginnings in Manchester in 2012, what I am finally presenting here is the culmination of my academic life, towards which I have been working these past nine years. While at times the ways I have taken over this period have been driven by a clear sense of direction, when I was certain of where I was going, what I was doing and why, my paths have more often than not been laid through tentatively feeling forward, rather than forging ahead. Throughout my phases of conviction and confusion, I am most grateful to everyone who has guided and supported me through them. It is because of them that I am in a position to write this now, at the close of this particular story. I am grateful for the support and guidance of my supervisors, Dr John Zavos, Dr Kamran Karimullah and Dr Katherine Smith. Prior to my undertaking this thesis, John has supervised both my undergraduate and MA dissertations and as such, has been a continuous guide throughout my academic life thus far. From the classes taken with him throughout my undergraduate and postgraduate study, through to the many discussions we have had over the years, he has encouraged me to attend to how religion is lived and to be sceptical of the boxes we place around it. He has been my academic Murshid. On Sufism and all else Islamic, I have been indebted to Kamran and I have benefitted from his ṣuḥba. His advice and support throughout the most difficult phases of the thesis were grounding, and helped reorient me towards my immediate priorities. Katherine’s advice and suggestions have been particularly formative, especially in the development of my authorial style in ethnographic writing, and her recommendations really helped me find my own voice in this process. I am grateful for the support and advice of Dr Jacqueline 9 Suthren Hirst too, both prior to the thesis and especially through my field work year. On this point, I thank all of my respondents who gave their time to take part in my research. They, too, have opened new ways of seeing religion as it is lived and done for me, and in turn shaped how I live my own Islam in Manchester. I am especially grateful to my family, most of all to my father, to whom this work is dedicated. He would always be concerned to know how I was getting on with it, and even though in his words he “couldn’t pretend to understand it,” he was always interested to listen, and wanted me to do well. His support and his constant concern for me to do my best has carried me throughout my life both in and out of academia, and he has been my highest example. His quiet encouragement and belief in my work has sufficed for me when I have struggled to find it myself. At such times when I have, especially in more recent times, my mother has always made a point to remind me of what he would say. Her always being there to listen and to encourage, after every formative phase in the research process, has taken me back to myself and reminded me of what is important.

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