Islam on Campus : Contested Identities and the Cultures of Higher Education in Britain

Scott-Baumann, Alison and Guest, Mathew and Naguib, Shuruq and Cheruvallil, Sariya and Phoenix, Aisha (2020) Islam on Campus : Contested Identities and the Cultures of Higher Education in Britain. Oxford University Press, Oxford. ISBN 9780198846789

Abstract

This book explores how Islam is represented, perceived and lived within higher education in Britain. It is a book about the changing nature of university life, and the place of religion within it. Even while many universities maintain ambiguous or affirming orientations to religious institutions for reasons to do with history and ethos, much western scholarship has presumed higher education to be a strongly secularizing force. This framing has resulted in religion often being marginalized or ignored as a cultural irrelevance by the university sector. However, recent times have seen higher education increasingly drawn into political discourses that problematize religion in general, and Islam in particular, as an object of risk. Using the largest data set yet collected in the UK (2015-18) this book explores university life and the ways in which ideas about Islam and Muslim identities are produced, experienced, perceived, appropriated, and objectified. We ask what role universities and Muslim higher education institutions play in the production, reinforcement and contestation of emerging narratives about religious difference. This is a culturally nuanced treatment of universities as sites of knowledge production, and contexts for the negotiation of perspectives on culture and religion among an emerging generation. We demonstrate the urgent need to release Islam from its official role as the othered, the feared. When universities achieve this we will be able to help students of all affiliations and of none to be citizens of the campus in preparation for being citizens of the world.