The State, New Muslim Leaderships and Islam as a Resource for Public Engagement in Britain

In this chapter I start from the premise that scholarly accounts of Muslims in W estem Europe ought to reflect more deliberately on the relationship between all three of the structure of particular states, the cultural capital of social actors and the 'resources' of the Islamic tradition. Where Islam is a resource for the articulation of quite different strategies of adaptation to minority status, I want to explore two short case studies of the ways in which mainly middle-class Muslim activists, with a good deal invested personally and professionally in the 'mainstream', are prioritizing 'engagement' over 'isolation' or 'resistance' (Lewis, 2002: 219) in the context of contemporary Britain.