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Apr 6, 2021 · In Being Muslim, the episode highlights how British Muslims from across the faith mark some of life’s biggest moments - from birth to coming of age, marriage and end of life. Jermaine...
Oct 2, 2024 · Talented Muslims are rising high in the City, in the arts and sciences and other spheres. Muslim migrants yearn to come here because they see what is possible in spite of Islamophobia.
Sep 11, 2021 · The War on Terror actually felt like a war on Muslims. As America and the UK went to war in Afghanistan, at home the UK went to war on Muslims; or at least that is how it often felt.
- ‘Our Histories Will Be Lost’
- Post-War Migration
- ‘Transient Guardians of Our History’
- The Birth of An Archive
- Not Expecting to Stay
- Halal Chickens and Jewish Butchers
- With Love, from Walthamstow
- ‘Throwing Matches’ at Women’s Hair
- Busses, Beer and Boiled Eggs
Ahmed set up the Everyday Muslim Heritage and Archive Initiative (EMHAI) in 2013 to document the history of British Muslims. “Future generations need to understand that Muslims have historic roots in Britain that actually go back centuries,” she says. The first Indian restaurantin London was established by a Muslim surgeon in 1810, and the first pu...
Like the post-second world war migration from the West Indies to the United Kingdom, many South Asians came to plug Britain’s labour shortages, with migrants from Commonwealth nations often working in transport or factories. But, says Ahmed, while “the stories of unskilled labourers from South Asia that came to work in factories is a true portrayal...
Ahmed, the oldest of nine children, was born in Walthamstow in east London, to an Asian-Kenyan mother and a Pakistani father from Wazirabad, which is “affectionately known as the Sheffield of Pakistan because of its stainless-steel industry”, she explains. Her motivation “to do something” to document and share Britain’s tapestry of heritage has alw...
Ahmed’s ultimate goal is to create a museum or “museum-style” learning space, but she realised there was a more immediate need to create something “more tangible” that has “historical significance”. And so EMHAI was born. “Archives are what a legacy is built on, and these are what my community were missing. I soon realised that the archives are our...
The EMHAI archives are a collection of video or audio oral history interviews, transcripts, photographs, documents and ephemera and are partially catalogued and archived in locations across the UK, including Bishopsgate Institute and Vestry House Museum. We Weren’t Expecting to Stay, is another of its collections. This one documents the lives of Br...
Food is a common theme that weaves through the archives, with many mentioning the difficult quest to find halal meat in 1960s’ Britain. One interviewee remembers receiving parcels of it sent to his west London home from Bradford where there was a more established Muslim community. Another recalls a kind Jewish butcher in east London who allowed Mus...
Another contributor, Nazeea Elahi, 46, tells how her father’s encounter with a London cabbie led to her family settling in Walthamstow. Fazal Elahi was 36 when he arrived in London from Pakistan, leaving behind his wife and four children aged below 10. “[My father] had no fixed address to go to [when he arrived at Heathrow in 1963], all he knew was...
Ansari describes how there was an “anti-immigrant sentiment that started to spread among layers of white society, as did racism towards minority ethnic communities, reaching a crescendo in Enoch Powell’s ‘River of Blood’ speech in 1968 in reaction to the arrival of South Asians from East Africa”. “Residentially concentrated and segregated, South As...
Others recall less harrowing experiences. Ghulam Haider, 87, arrived on a scholarship in 1957 to pursue his MSc in engineering at Imperial College in London. He returned to Gujranwala in Pakistan’s Punjab province after graduation and worked for Pakistan Petroleum before returning to the UK in 1962 to continue his career in civil engineering, build...
Britain is home to one of the most diverse Muslim communities on Earth. The largest communities originate from south Asia, but there are also many Arab and African communities, as well as Muslims from south-east Asia, the Balkans and Turkey.
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Feb 12, 2015 · The report shows that while 47% of Muslims in England and Wales were born in the UK, 73% state their only national identity is British, and only 6% of Muslims say they are struggling to speak...
Mar 26, 2018 · There is a long history of research on Muslims in the UK. Researchers have differentiated Muslim communities on the basis of national or ethnic origin, areas of settlement, and sectarian identity. Research on young Muslims has become important in recent decades.
