The conversion narratives of all South Asian respondents show that, without exception, religion played an important role in their upbringing. Migrant parents clearly fought hard to stave off the effects of living in a secular Western environment, mainly because many first-generation South Asians had every intention of returning to their homelands as soon as it was economically viable (Anwar 1985:168; Rex, 1979:15; Scourfield et al, 2013:5). In the meantime, they worked hard to establish religious facilities to preserve their Muslim way of life, especially by providing religious instruction to their children. These religious institutions would become a force in culturally binding ethnic groups together in much the same way as they had for Jews, Poles and the Irish when they came to Britain as immigrants (Anwar 1985:168).
In a study of religious reconstruction among generations in South Asian diasporas, Geaves (2007) categorises this first stage of migration as a period where major interactions between British culture and ethnicity took place, and “Islam principally play[ed] a functional role as a marker of identity as first-generation Muslims engage[d] in micro-politics focused on community building” (Geaves, cited in Hinnells 2007:18). However, as Eade’s (1989) study of the Bangladeshi community in 1970s and 80s shows there are exceptions to these findings and the South Asian experience[1].
Consequently, the childhood memories of all MH respondents featured references to celebrating religious events such as the two Eids and Ramadaan and being instructed in the five pillars of Islam, including how to perform the daily salaat—although these rituals were seldom enforced:
I wasn’t praying five times a day … I wouldn’t leave what I was doing for Dhuhr or wake up especially for Fajr …We weren’t encouraged by our parents … they wanted us to get on with our studies, and prayer wasn’t important. (Inayah)
All but one respondent mentioned regularly attending a girls-only after-school or weekend madrassa where they learnt how to recite the Qur’an in Arabic; this remains a popular practice within Muslim communities today and is considered an important way for parents to fulfil their religious responsibilities (Gilliat-Ray, cited in Scourfield et al, 2013:77). However, many British-born and postmigrant young Muslims found the methods employed by imported imams within such madrassas during the 70s and 80s unappealing and, on occasion “the religion was literally beaten into students … with canes, despite the state ban on corporal punishment” (Leiken 2012:154). Nasreen, a second-generation British-Pakistani of Ugandan origin in her forties who arrived as a child refugee with her parents in the UK in the 1970s, shared her experience of this:
My sisters went to mosque and were beaten with sticks by the imam because of their recitation, so my parents took them right out of that class!
Growing up in the UK in the 1970s, Nasreen was the only respondent who did not attend a madrassa. She was taught the Qur’an at home by her father who used to be a schoolteacher in Uganda, unlike other migrants who came from South Asia who were largely illiterate, indicating a class difference between the experiences of second-generation offspring based on the socio-historical origin/location of their parents. However, during this time (1970s and 1980s) it was more usual for mothers to teach their children, since fathers were usually out working. Moreover, because “mothers [were], in general, much more heavily involved in childcare than fathers”, they also tended to be in charge of religious nurture (Scourfield et al 2013:79). But most migrant mothers were illiterate, since many “South Asians who came to Britain for work in the post-war period were from poor, rural areas and they had rarely received any formal education” (Scourfield et al 2013:8)—they were only able to orally transmit religious norms and customs related to the practice of ‘folk’ or ‘low’ Islam,[2] which would have serious repercussions for how future generations understood their religion:
Mum taught us everything because in those days [1970s and 1980s] there weren’t books or tapes … [about] the proper way of following Islam, people just learned from each other. My dad taught us the Qur’an from the Qa’idah [foundation level Quranic Arabic]. (Nasreen)
Comparing these extracurricular (religious) activities with those of British children it is no wonder that the ‘ordinary’ socialisation of Muslim children in early and middle childhood produced a stronger sense of religious identity than expected within a secular society (Scourfield et al 2013:1). In considering how such religious practice ‘makes’ Muslims (Scourfield et al (2013) focus on “how the cognitive science of religion can aid us in the understanding of the particular strength of the transmission of Islam in a broadly secular context” (Scourfield et al 2013:92). For example, practices such as “the five daily prayers and the repeated recitation of the Qur’an … which is predominantly characterized by frequent repetition of low intensity teaching” came “close to Bourdieu’s (1984) unconsciously-learned (and sociological version) of habitus” (Scourfield et al 2013:92,93). Thus, even though many children did not properly understand the verses they were memorising or the religious norms they were learning, the “gradual socialization into particular ways of thinking and doing” became an implicit part of their memory—part of their ‘habitus’” (Scourfield et al 2013:92,93).
The intergenerational transmission of religion that took place within African-Caribbean and South Asian heritage respondents thus helps us understand why “God is [clearly not] dead” for certain sections of an otherwise secular British society (Bruce 2002, cited in Scourfield et al 2013:9). Indeed, Voas (2003) argues that while individuals can find religion at any age in their lives, “religious fertility” or “religious reproduction through the initiation of children … is the most important component of growth in the long term” (Voas 2003:94, cited in Scourfield et al 2013:10).
However, despite the hard work of these migrant parents, their efforts did not immediately achieve the desired results—mainly because at the time, the respondents, like other postmigrant children, were struggling to live “between[two very contrasting]cultures” (Anwar 1998). Geaves (2007) largely attributes this to the fact that the “second-generation [and third-generation] find themselves drawn towards British identity as a natural allegiance of birth and as a result of socialisation processes”, where the tensions “between the loyalties of parents towards ethnic identity at the place of origin, and the social norms of the new culture can be very difficult to negotiate” (Geaves, cited in Hinnells 2007:18). Jacobsen’s (2003) study found that in such circumstances, religion appears to have had an especially strong appeal for the children of immigrants. It overrode other sources of identity, such as nationality and ethnicity[3], and offered guidance in navigating a social environment that:
The social environment inevitably contains many contradictions for young people who have grown up in Britain as the children of immigrants from Pakistan. I would suggest these contradictions are a potential source of uncertainty; and that a large part of the appeal of religion to young people lies in the fact that Islam provides a means of dealing with ambiguities and dilemmas of their circumstances. For many of them, its teachings are a source of clear and coherent guidance on all aspects of day-to-day life (Jacobsen 2003:4).
Thus, even though all MH respondents were proficient in reciting the Qur’an in Arabic, knew how to perform their daily prayers and had a relatively strong sense of God’s presence in their lives, all struggled with the inculcation of a faith they did not understand. For example, the transmission of ‘folk’ Islam failed for Bangladeshi heritage Fatima, who grew up in a predominantly white English town in the 1980s:
There was no tarbiyah (Islamic cultivation) given in the Masjid … I lost out by living in such a town because I see kids in Birmingham getting a lot of tarbiyah in something I’m only beginning to understand.
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