World religions. Рахимбергенова М.Х. - 67 стр.

mosques and prayer centres, of which the most important (in all Western              share their religion and their British culture and education. This is leading to a
Europe) is the London Central Mosque at Regent’s Park. There are probably            “Britain-specific” form of Islam. As a result, in the words of one religious affairs
900,000 Muslims who regularly attend these mosques. Most are of Pakistani or         journalist, “For every child who drifts into the moral relativism of contemporary
Bangladeshi origin, but there are also an increasing number of British converts.     Western values, another returns home with a belief in a revitalised form of Islam.
Apart from London, there are sizeable Muslim communities in Liverpool, Man-          Many parents find the second just as difficult to come to terms with as the first”.
chester, Leicester, Birmingham, Bradford, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Is-             British Islam is sufficiently vibrant that a Muslim paper, Q-News, now ap-
lam gives coherence and a sense of community to people of different ethnic           pears regularly. One of its editors is a woman, Fozia Bora, itself a statement on
origins. It also gives Britain informal lines of communication with several Mus-     the relatively liberal culture of British Islam. Indeed, a new sense of self-
lim countries.                                                                       confidence emerged out of the initial feeling of alienation over The Satanic
     During the past quarter century, since large numbers of Muslims arrived in      Verses. It is partly self-assertion against anti-Islamic prejudice, but it is also the
Britain, there has been a tension between those Muslims who sought an ac-            comfort felt in a relatively tolerant environment. Fozia Bora believes that “Brit-
commodation between Islam and Western secular society, one might call them           ain is a good place to be Muslim. There is a tradition of religious and intellec-
modernists, and those who have wanted to uphold traditional Islamic values           tual freedom”. In the opinion of Dr Zaki Badawi, one of Britain’s foremost
even when these directly conflicted with secular social values. The tension has      Muslims, “Britain is the best place in the world to be a Muslim – most Muslim
been made worse by the racism Asian Muslims feel in British society. Until           states are tyrannies and things are harder elsewhere in Europe”.
1989 it might be said that those Muslims who were relatively successful eco-              Anti-Islamic feeling, however, remains a factor in racial tensions in Brit-
nomically and socially were the prevailing example of how Muslims could live         ain. In the words of the Runnymede Trust, which concerns itself with race rela-
successfully in the West. However, in 1988 many Muslims were deeply of-              tions, “Islamophobic discourse, sometimes blatant but frequently subtle and
fended by the publication of Salman Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses, which         coded, is part of the fabric of everyday life in modern Britain, in much the same
they considered to be blasphemous.                                                   way that anti-Semitic discourse was taken for granted earlier this century”.
     Many Muslims were offended by the reaction they saw from the rest of so-             There are other areas of Muslim frustration. Some want Muslim family law
ciety and from government. The blasphemy law, mainly on account of its age,          to be recognised within British law, a measure which would allow Muslim
only applied to Christianity, so they were unable to prosecute Rushdie. But per-     communities in Britain to follow an entirely separate lifestyle governed by their
haps what they found most offensive was the patronising attitude of non-             own laws. Others want state-supported Muslim schools, where children, par-
Muslim liberals, who lectured them on the values of a democratic society in a        ticularly girls, may receive a specifically Muslim education in a stricter moral
way which was dismissive of Muslim identity and feeling. Muslims found               atmosphere than exists in secular state schools. The state already provides such
themselves in conflict with those who had previously been perceived as their         funding for Anglican, Catholic and Jewish schools within the state system. It
friends, those of the secular left who had championed immigrant rights and           was only in 1997 that the first Muslim school obtained financial support from
most strongly opposed racism.                                                        the state.
     After the Rushdie affair other external factors also stimulated a Muslim re-         Smaller communities include about 450,000 Sikhs who mainly originate in
vival, including the Gulf War (1991) and also the suffering of Bosnian Muslims       the Indian Punjab. They live mainly in London, Manchester and Birmingham.
(1994–1996).                                                                         There are over 200 gurdwaras or temples in Britain. There are about 320,000
     Within the British Muslim community as a whole, which like Jewish and           Hindus living mainly in Leicester, London and Manchester. There are about
Christian communities, is divided into different sects and traditions, modernists    150 mandirs in which Hindus worship, the largest, in Neasden, north-west Lon-
lost influence to traditionalist leaders. Mosque attendance increased and reli-      don, is also the largest outside India.
gious observance became an outward symbol of Muslim assertion. In 1985 only               Outsiders sometimes see possible tensions between one religion and an-
about 20 per cent of Muslims were actually religiously observant. By 1995 that       other. They are less aware of the often greater tensions within each religion or
figure had risen to about 50 per cent.                                               sect between conservatives and liberals. In many religious groups there is a
     Yet the Islam of young British Muslims is different from that of their par-     conservative wing which has little time for, or interest in, other religions and
ents. It is less grounded in the culture of the countries from which their parents   which disapproves of its own liberal co-religionists. By contrast, these liberals
came. Young Muslims come from several different ethnic origins but they all          usually welcome dialogue and warm relations between religions, and enjoy the

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