Whilst SalafiPubs has become an epicenter for a grassroots Islamic revival in the West, a detailed study of British Salafism’s history shows that its origins were humble and began life when a small group of highly motivated individuals studying at British universities in the late 1980s through to the mid 1990s, decided to establish a cooperative body (working predominantly on university campuses) under the title OASIS (Organisation of Associated Sunni Islamic Societies) in 1996.[1] Like myself, OASIS’s founders Abu Khadeejah Abdul-Wāhid, Abu ʿIyād Amjad Rafiq and Faisal Malik,[2] were the descendants of first-generation migrants who had settled in Britain following the post-World War II labour shortages, and typical of those young second-generation British Muslims who had come of age and were beginning to enter colleges and universities as a means of upward social mobility. The founders of OASIS were also typical of those young British Muslims who faced the challenge of how to adapt the fundamentals of a Muslim heritage to a secular society and its increasingly progressive politics.[3]
[1] Abdul-Wāhid 2013.
[2] Faisal Malik—an Essex University PhD science student, would later go on to lecture as part of the Quran and Sunnah Society (QSS) whilst studying at Manchester University alongside Abu Khadeejah. Soon afterwards, he moved on to focus on his profession as a teacher, and is no longer active in national daʿwah.
[3] Leiken 2012:153-154.
Be the first to comment