Freedom of Speech

Media and government accuse students of being libertarian (encouraging reckless free speech) or of too much no-platforming (banning external speakers). Both accusations are exaggerated but influential and make it difficult for students to develop face to face conversations about difficult and controversial topics. Government policies on securitization (Prevent) encourage risk averse behaviour, particularly but not exclusively among Muslims. Staff also feel constrained by these pressures and so staff and students self-censor. Analysis of free speech models available in a liberal democracy show two main types, each of which can become an extreme version of itself. The liberal model advocates legal free expression; however if exaggerated the liberal model becomes libertarian and can be offensive. The second approach is the guarded liberal model that seeks to protect minorities but if exaggerated it can turn into no platforming. Students and staff can learn to use combinations of all four approaches and increase face to face discussions.

Multiple Hierarchies

Islamic Studies is slowly moving beyond the long-established divide between neo/orientalist and confessional approaches. A more integrated, reflexive model is in progress at a few Islamic colleges now accredited by universities, but even then, the support flows asymmetrically from the university to the college. In addition, assumptions about the criticality of believers still pervade and divide the field, which is largely configured by gendered, epistemic, and institutional hierarchies. Yet, the growing number of Muslim students and staff, the expansion in private provision aspiring to accreditation, and even problematic political changes such as securitization, are some of the changing conditions allowing for the boundaries of the field to be negotiated and redefined more collaboratively. This is beckoning a promising though cautious move away from monological—and hierarchical—constructions of Islam and Muslims, whether as objects of enquiry or as confessional staff and students subjected to epistemic and institutional monitoring.

Introduction

This book focuses on four main questions: · How do university staff and students view Islam and Muslims? · How do Muslim staff and students experience their faith identities in different ways on campus?· Where do they get their information from? · What role do different kinds of campus context play in shaping such perceptions? · What does this mean for our understanding of how universities function, particularly their capacity to foster critical thinking and cultural inclusivity? It is based on new research undertaken within a wide range of UK universities, including a national, sector-wide survey of over 2,000 students attending 132 universities and in-depth case studies of six very different campuses, including two Islamic colleges of higher education (the first study to include such institutions). The qualitative research has included conversations involving 253 staff and students across these six institutions, focus groups with Muslims and non-Muslims, analysis of teaching materials, observation of classes, and a variety of events pertinent to understanding how Islam is presented on campus.

Conclusions

These research findings show that the higher education research agenda can become distorted by imperatives coloured by political ideologies and a caricatured polarization of religion and secularity. These impulses originate outside the higher education sector and should be challenged. The UK universities need to improve the religious literacy of university students and to tackle ignorance towards Muslims in order for campuses to be inclusive spaces where all students can learn from the diversity around them. Islamic colleges need to interrogate some of their patriarchal assumptions about gendered roles in line with the important feminist work that their syllabi explore. This would be aided by recruitment of high profile women Islamic Studies lecturers and critical reflection on gender roles on campus. We call for the prophetic role of the universities and the Islamic colleges to be reclaimed through a transparent, joint programme of robust and critical cultural engagement for all.

Islam and Gender on Campus

Discussions about Islam and gender on campus have generally focused on Muslim women’s dress and status in Islam. However, the processes that make Muslim women’s dress on campus so salient have received little attention. This chapter explores gender and Islam on campus, contextualizing it within the politics of dress, with a particular focus on Muslim women’s negotiations of how to dress. We argue that gendered stereotypes about the headscarf or niqab contribute to the construction of Muslim women as extremists or oppressed. We show that Muslims sometimes faced scrutiny or hostility from students and lecturers who read particular dress choices as symbolic threats. Taking an intersectional perspective, the chapter illuminates how some Muslims modify their dress in different contexts to increase a sense of belonging or reduce stigma. We also explore how some Muslims challenge misconceptions about Islam and gender.

Diversity in the Muslim Student Experience

This chapter addresses the experience that Muslim students have of higher education in the UK. It is divided into three main sections, the first focusing on the individual level of analysis, the second and third on the collective. First, survey data is used to paint a picture of how Muslim students experience university and relate it to their identities as Muslims. Second, a theoretical framework for situating this experience within broader contexts is proposed, based around a three-fold distinction between governing discourses, contexts of teaching and learning, and the campus interaction order as stratified dimensions of university life. Third, this framework is built upon in introducing the six case studies from which our qualitative data is drawn. The four universities are described and compared, before the two Muslim colleges are also introduced.

‘Radicalization’

This chapter examines the ways in which the policy language of radicalization contributes to the securitization of the university campus. It addresses the phenomenon of ‘radicalization,’ not as a process of identity transformation but as a discursive element of campus life that refracts wider perceptions of risk and risky identities. The chapter offers a critical engagement with the UK Government’s Prevent Strategy, building on previous scholarship in highlighting the importance of addressing the social contexts of policy implementation. The remainder of the chapter analyses evidence gathered from across our six case study campuses, tracing how perceptions of Islam and Muslims are framed by the idea of ‘radicalization’, particularly via a heightened anxiety and suspicion about extremism and a complex stigmatization of Muslims. It considers institutional variations of these patterns, including among Muslim colleges, before commenting on how the emergent picture speaks to current sociological debates about surveillance.

Islam and Religious Diversity on Campus

The higher education sector must facilitate discussions around inter-religious co-existence on campus and beyond. In our research, participants used different words to describe their relationships with others beyond their faith, often using ‘inter-cultural’ and ‘inter-religious’ interchangeably. For some religious people their religion may be a matter of cultural or habitual identity rather than a conviction—such as those who describe themselves as marginally, culturally, or nominally religious. Our focus on inter-religious relations repositions Islam and Muslims as equally valued collaborators in the cause of promoting ‘good’ inter-religious relations. We identified three modes of prejudice. Firstly, we identified subtle forms of discrimination and unfair treatment; secondly, a climate of prejudice against Muslims; thirdly, evidenced discrimination, where it is possible to legally prove an act of discrimination. Personal encounters are crucial. Four types of diversity can be found on campus: pluralist, incumbent, fragmented, and indifferent, of which the first two are more harmonious. We recommend that the higher education sector aim for the plural diversity model and that it learns from the incumbent diversity of the Muslim colleges.

How is Islam Known and Not Known on Campus?

The specific social, intellectual and historical trajectories that produce knowledge about Islam are complex and may be problematic. They are caught up in patterns of cultural othering and stereotyping that distort the ways in which Islam and Muslims are represented, patterns shaped by a narrative of securitization that stoke fear and prejudice rather than dispassionate awareness. University courses are surprisingly fertile as an occasional source of knowledge about religion, but only a small minority draw on them a great deal. Students find more knowledge outside degree programmes, in friendships, and in sacred texts. Both Shi’i and Sunni Muslims want to identify both differences and similarities between academic and spiritual needs. We identify the need to increase conversations about systems of knowledge and they need to be cross-cultural and collaborative to serve humanity at large.

Muslims in the Twenty-First Century University

Chapter 1 sets out the ways in which the status and identities of Muslims are caught up in the changing lives of universities. It begins with an account of the segregated seating controversy at University College London in 2013, illustrating how wider issues of power and cultural identity are evoked when the status of Islam within universities becomes the subject of public debate. This picture is developed and contextualized via an extended discussion of the nature of universities, set out as a series of contested histories, each of which privileges particular values and instates specific boundaries of cultural or academic legitimacy. Models considered are the university as public, as neoliberal, as a source of inclusion and exclusion, as postcolonial, and as a site of heightened risk. The chapter’s central aim is to consider how these strands contribute to the heightened ‘othering’ of Islam within ‘Western’ higher education.