Sufis, Salafis and Islamists ─ The Contested Ground of British Islamic Activism

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.

Sadek Hamid is British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in Theology, Philosophy and Religious Studies at Liverpool Hope University, U.K. He has been a Research Associate for the European Muslim Research Centre at The University of Exeter and published widely on religious revivalism among Muslim communities and Muslim youth in Britain. He is editor of British Muslim Youth: Rhetoric and Realities (2014) and co-editor of Political Muslims: Understanding Youth Resistance in the Global Context (2014).