ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses specifically on the multicultural accommodation of Islam and Muslims in Britain, and it will take into account a particular school of Islam that it is argued has been important in the creation and crafting of British multiculturalism. The book argues that this is quite often a very typically minoritarian response that quite often arises in the course of the desire to protect a smaller vulnerable minority identity from the corrosive domination of the majority and mainstream culture. The book thus deals very centrally with the question of the Enlightenment and more specifically the Enlightenment understood as a core and exclusively Western project. The movement in the argument is able to reinforce the central contention of the book, which is the need to recreate and rethink the Enlightenment for contemporary times.
