British Muslim Identity: Past, Problems, Prospects

Muslims are now the largest religious minority in the United Kingdom. Some media accounts have even suggested that the country is now home to more practicing Muslims than practicing Anglicans. Many studies have investigated British Muslim communities and their strategies of accommodation to the host society, yet there has been little interest in identifying the cultural paths by which Islam in Britain might become a British Islam, given both the historical tenor of British religion and longstanding native perceptions of Muslims. This experimental survey of the issues seeks to explore the possibility of grafting Muslim religion onto the tree of the country's religious and cultural life, as an alternative to illiberal agendas of rejection, or liberal and postmodern affirmations of an external radical otherness. It is suggested that the 'Pelagian' possibility recurrent within British religion offers a suitable point at which this hugely important grafting might take place.

Timothy John Winter (born in 1960), also known as Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad, is a British Sunni Muslim Shaykh, researcher, writer and academic. He is the Dean of the Cambridge Muslim College, Director of Studies (Theology and Religious Studies) at Wolfson College and the Shaykh Zayed Lecturer in Islamic Studies at Cambridge University. His work includes publications on Islamic theology and Muslim-Christian relations. In 2003 he was awarded the Pilkington Teaching Prize by Cambridge University and in 2007 he was awarded the King Abdullah I Prize for Islamic Thought for his short booklet Bombing Without Moonlight. He has consistently been included in the "500 Most Influential Muslims" list published annually by the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre and was ranked in 2012 as the 50th most influential.