ABSTRACT

This chapter traces the history of non-Islamiosity in Iranian society through something resembling a genealogy of the concept of freedom in Iranian modernity. It aims to contextualise Iranian presence in the UK by considering the history of the racialised politics that have shaped the country into which Iranians arrived and settled. In Iranian historiography, the issue of Islam and secularism is usually related to questions of 'reform'. However, it is also important to draw attention to the fact that the pre-Islamic and pro-Western elements in Reza Shah's nationalism did not necessarily come in a package already fused. The bulk of Iranian immigrants to the UK began arriving in the early 1980s following the Islamic revolution and the Iran-Iraq war. Community cohesion came about after multiculturalism was blamed for allowing Muslims' 'self-segregation'. The end of the Second World War brought with it many changes to Britain's domestic and imperial socio-political situation.