Sadek Hamid

British Muslim activism has evolved constantly in recent decades. What have been its main groups and how do their leaders compete to attract followers? Which social and religious ideas from abroad are most influential? In this groundbreaking study, Sadek Hamid traces the evolution of Sufi, Salafi and Islamist activist groups in Britain, including The Young Muslims UK, Hizb ut-Tahrir, the Salafi JIMAS organisation and Traditional Islam Network. With reference to second-generation British Muslims especially, he explains how these groups gain and lose support, embrace and reject foreign ideologies, and succeed and fail to provide youth with compelling models of British Muslim identity. Analyzing historical and firsthand community research, Hamid gives a compelling account of the complexity that underlies reductionist media narratives of Islamic activism in Britain.

Explores how a new generation are redefining what it means to be a Muslim in Britain today. How is the new generation of British Muslims navigating relations across three distinct religious and social worlds? This book looks at how they are balancing expectations from traditional Islam imported from their ancestral homeland, expressions of Islam drawn from across the global Muslim community the Ummah and from Britain itself. Composed of activists, academics, religious scholars and professionals, this generation is drawing on new reformist thinking emerging from outside their parents' or grandparents' ethno-Muslim tradition and is using this to inform their activism. The social change that they are leading as well as the resistance which they encounter is the focus of this book.

Explores how a new generation are redefining what it means to be a Muslim in Britain today