ABSTRACT
National and international events periodically arise which generate significant media and political interest in the lives of British Muslims because they bring into sharp focus important cultural and religious differences between Muslim communities and wider, ‘mainstream’ British society. Most recently, the terrorist attacks in America on 11 September 2001, and the subsequent backlash against Muslim communities in the western world, spawned an array of articles and programmes about Islam as it is practised in Britain. Prior to this, the Bradford disturbances that took place in June 1995 and then later between April and July 2001, which involved (amongst others) Muslim Pakistani youths, also placed British Muslims in the public eye, as did the Salman Rushdie affair in 1989. Whilst the contents of this book have been influenced by the recent attacks on the World Trade Center, the book itself was developed as a response to a perceived need to address the issue of religious diversity and to produce a criminological textbook which specifically focuses upon the Islamic faith. There are over one million Muslims living in Britain and to a significant proportion of these individuals Islam is a central part of their lives. As a result, it was considered to be important to put together a collection of pieces which focus on the lives of some Muslims and which document their experiences of crime and criminal justice.
