Thesis Title: Seeking a long history of British Muslim identity in north-west England, c. 1870-1950: Converts, Sailors and Merchants
Supervisors: Professor Heather Shore and Dr Shirin Hirsch
My research seeks to understand whether British Muslim identity existed before the Rushdie Affair. Scholarship on Islam in Britain has posited that a communal, public and political British Muslim identity developed through the 1990s and early 2000s in response to events such as the Rushdie Affair, 9/11, the War on Terror and the Iraq War. I argue that distinct forms of British Muslim identity existed in Britain much earlier. This study considers British Muslim identity for different groups including converts and sailors in Liverpool, and Arab merchants in Manchester, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.