MUSLIMS IN IRELAND

PAST AND PRESENT

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OLIVER SCHARBRODT, TUULA SAKARANAHO, ADIL HUSSAIN KHAN, YAFA SHANNEIK AND

VIVIAN IBRAHIM

© Oliver Scharbrodt, Tuula Sakaranaho, Adil Hussain Khan, Yafa Shanneik and Vivian Ibrahim, 2015

Edinburgh University Press LtdThe Tun – Holyrood Road12 (2f) Jackson’s EntryEdinburgh EH8 8PJwww.euppublishing.com

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ISBN 978 0 7486 9688 8 (hardback)ISBN 978 0 7486 9689 5 (webready PDF)ISBN 978 1 4744 0347 4 (epub)

The right of Oliver Scharbrodt, Tuula Sakaranaho, Adil Hussain Khan, Yafa Shanneik and Vivian Ibrahim to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements v

Introduction 1 Oliver Scharbrodt

I History of Muslim Presence and Immigration to Ireland

1. Sailors, Merchants, Migrants: From the Sack of Baltimore to World War II 27

Vivian Ibrahim

2. Muslim Immigration to Ireland after World War II 49 Oliver Scharbrodt

II Mosques, Organisations and Leadership

3. Early Muslim Organisations and Mosques in Ireland 75 Adil Hussain Khan

4. Political Islam in Ireland and the Role of Muslim Brotherhood Networks 91

Adil Hussain Khan

5. Mosque Communities and Muslim Organisations in Dublin and Other Cities 113

Adil Hussain Khan, Oliver Scharbrodt and Tuula Sakaranaho

iv ] Muslims in Ireland

III The Governance of Islam in the Republic of Ireland: Freedom of Religion and Islamic Education

6. Religious Freedom and Muslims in Ireland 139 Tuula Sakaranaho

7. Education and Muslim National Schools in Ireland 163 Tuula Sakaranaho

IV Diaspora and Identity

8. Muslim Women in Ireland 193 Yafa Shanneik

Conclusion: Being Irish, Being Muslim 216 Oliver Scharbrodt

Bibliography 230Index 255

Figures

Figure 1.1 Mir Aulad Ali of Trinity College Dublin 33Figure 2.1 Principal Economic Status National Average and Muslim

Population (above Age 15), 2011 59Figure 2.2 Social Class National Average and Muslim Population, 2011 60Figure 2.3 Highest Level of Education Completed National Average

and Muslim Population (above Age 15), 2011 60Figure 2.4 Students from Muslim-majority Countries in Ireland,

1998–2012 63Figure 3.1 Ballyhaunis Mosque, County Mayo 86Figure 5.1 Map of Ireland 127Figure 8.1 Mawlid doll in Sudanese Home, Cork 209

Tables

Table 2.1 Census Data of Selected Religions, 1991–2011 57Table 2.2 National and Regional Backgrounds of Muslims in Ireland,

2002, 2006 and 2011 57Table 2.3 Total of Employment Permit Holders from Muslim-majority

Countries, 1993–2013 62Table 2.4 Total of Asylum Seekers from Muslim-majority Countries,

1992–2012 (by 31 August) 62

[ v ]

Acknowledgements

This book brings together research produced by two funded projects. A major grant from the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (now the Irish Research Council) and the Department of An Taoiseach funded a three-year research project (2008–11) on the History of Islam in Ireland, led by Oliver Scharbrodt, which was based at the Study of Religions Department at University College Cork and involved Adil Hussain Khan, Yafa Shanneik and Vivian Ibrahim as post-doctoral researchers. The Academy of Finland provided funding for a comparative project on the Governance of Transnational Islam in Finland, Ireland and Canada (no. 1132479), based at the Study of Religions Department of the University of Helsinki, with Tuula Sakaranaho as principal investigator and Tuomas Martikainen and Marja Tiilikainen as post-doctoral researchers. Nina Maskulin worked as a research assistant in this project. A National University of Ireland Publication Grant supported the publication of this book. The authors wish to express their gratitude to these funding agencies without which this book would not have come into existence.

Various colleagues provided valuable feedback and suggestions in the course of the research and during the production of this book. First and foremost, we would like to thank Brian Bocking, whose experience, skills and prudence made sure that the Islam in Ireland project based at University College Cork came to a successful conclusion. Mansour Bonakdarian, James Carr, Nina Clara-Tiesler, William Clarence-Smith, Laurence Cox, Tadhg Foley, Brian Gurrin, James Kapalo, David Landy, Ronit Lentin, Denis Linehan, Piaras Mac Éinrí, Malcolm Macourt, Seán McLoughlin, Jørgen S. Nielsen, Caitríona Ní Laoire and Goolam Vahed provided suggestions and feedback in various ways. Other support and information were given by Michael Brabazon, Stephen Bean, Colette Colfer, Mary Fitzgerald and Colm McGlade. Marie McSweeney of the media office at University College Cork provided enormous help in giving the Islam in Ireland project the

vi ] Muslims in Ireland

publicity it needed. Noreen Byrne of the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner, Gill Roe of Education in Ireland and Aedín Doyle of the Employment Permits Section at the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation were happy to share internal statistics.

This book would not have been possible if Muslims in Ireland had not supported it by opening their mosques, community centres and private homes for us and making us feel welcome to observe, participate, talk and ask questions. We would like to thank all those who so generously supported our research. We would like to mention specifically (in alphabetical order) Dr Sami Ahmed, Sheikh Ihab Ahmed, Imran Ahmed, Dr Mustafa Alawi, Mohammad Alhourani, Sheikh Yahya Al-Hussein, Dr Nooh Al-Kaddo, Omar Al-Khattab, Sheikh Umar Al-Qadri, Sayyid Ali Al-Saleh, Adam Argiag, Dr Saud Bajwa, Mazhar Bari, Mian Ghulam Bari, Faheem Bukhtawa, Dr Ismail Coovadia, Ahmed El-Habbash, Kamal El-Taib, Dr Walid Faisal, Sheikh Salem Fatouri, Arzu Gorbil, Sheikh Hussein Halawa, Mia-Manan Hameed, Abdul Haseeb, Abdollah Karim, Dr Fasih Khan, Dr Mohammed Khan, Dr Saleem Khan, Sheikh Ismail Kotwal, Imam Ibrahim Noonan, Sheikh Khalid Sallabi, Dr Ebrahim Seedat, Dr Ali Selim, Sheikh Shaheed Satardien, Dr Abobakr Shadad, Mahmoud Shaladan, Dr Yusuf Vaizi, Ismail Yilmaz, Siraj Zaidi and Abderrazak Zeroug.

The Board of Trinity College Dublin gave us permission to use a photo-graph of Mir Aulad Ali. The photograph of the Ballyhaunis mosque was kindly provided by Glynn’s Photography, Castlerea in County Roscommon.

We would also like to thank the editorial team at Edinburgh University Press: Nicola Ramsey, Ellie Bush and Kate Robertson.

The authorsJune 2014

[ vi ]

[ 1 ]

Introduction

Oliver Scharbrodt

Mapping Islam in Ireland

In mapping of the growing Muslim population across Europe, Ireland has until recently been a blank spot. With the exception of a few contributions,1 little research has been undertaken on Muslims in Ireland. While this has changed in the last four years with a number of articles, book chapters and a special journal edition being published by the present authors,2 a comprehen-sive study of Muslims in Ireland has not yet been produced. This book aims to fill this gap and provides the first complete survey of Muslims in Ireland combining historical, sociological and ethnographic research approaches.

Located on the geographical periphery of Europe, Ireland has always experienced a delayed arrival of socio-cultural developments that shaped other Western European societies.3 Traditionally a country of emigration with a large global diaspora, it turned into a country of immigration in the mid-1990s with the beginning of the so-called Celtic Tiger, Ireland’s years of massive economic development from 1995 until 2008. During the Celtic Tiger years, Ireland underwent significant social, cultural and economic transformations, one of which has been the ethnic, cultural and religious diversification of Irish society. While the net migration rate was negative until the mid-1990s, Ireland experienced a major influx of immigrants who made up the shortage of labour or arrived as refugees and asylum seekers.4 The rapid growth of Ireland’s Muslim population is a direct consequence of the reversal of migration patterns. While there were around 4,000 Muslims in Ireland according to the 1991 Census,5 the number rose to almost 50,000 in the last 2011 Census,6 meaning that within twenty years there has been a more than tenfold increase of the Muslim population, which now makes up 1.1 per cent of the entire population of the Republic of Ireland.

One of the reasons for the relative scarcity of research on Muslims in Ireland is the very recent growth of the country’s Muslim population. Most

2 ] Muslims in Ireland

other Western European countries which received the bulk of labour immi-grants, arriving from Muslim-majority countries after World War II, have now quite well-established Muslim presences, with second, third and fourth generations residing in them and with historical ties that date back to the colonial period and even further. At the same time, academic research on Muslims in countries like Britain, France, Germany or the Netherlands is a relatively new endeavour, beginning in the late 1970s and early 1980s with basic ‘mapping exercises’ of new migrant communities in Europe’s chang-ing urban landscapes.7 Watershed events like l’affaire du foulard in France or the Rushdie affair in Britain in 1989 brought the religious background of Muslim immigrants to the fore and initiated research activities on Muslims in different European countries. Such initiatives were further strengthened by contested multicultural policies which either shaped the engagement of some European governments with Muslim communities such as in Britain or the Netherlands or were rejected by some other governments categorically as facilitating ghettoisation and preventing integration, as in France.8 Religion, as a marker of the distinct cultural identities of migrant communities, gained further attention both in public discourse and in academic research. Following the events of 9/ 11 in 2001, the 2004 Madrid bombings and the London 7/ 7 bombings in 2005, research on Muslims in Europe has reached an unprecedented level. Apart from general surveys on Muslims in Europe,9 studies have focused on the institutionalisation of Islam in Europe,10 trans-national Muslim networks,11 the preservation of diasporic identities and the emergence of new European Muslim identities,12 church–state relations and the governance of Islam,13 questions of integration,14 media and other public discourses around Islam,15 the securitisation of Islam post-9/ 1116 and Islamophobia,17 among many other themes.

Despite the profusion of research on Islam and Muslims in Europe in recent years, research agendas and discourses have been biased towards larger Western European countries, Britain, France and Germany in par-ticular, which have the most established Muslim presences and the largest Muslim populations in Europe. The particular experiences of these countries have become paradigmatic in both academic and public discourses around the formation of Muslim minorities across Europe, while those of smaller countries, located on the margins of Europe, have often been overlooked. Countries like Ireland, Portugal, Finland or Greece were traditionally coun-tries of emigration and have only experienced large-scale immigration with a concomitant growth of their Muslim populations in the last twenty years.18 Apart from sharing a very recent encounter with growing Muslim minori-ties, these countries also have their own traditions of church–state relations which inform their governments’ and societies’ interactions with Muslims, and have been through specific historical dynamics shaping perceptions and attitudes towards Islam in the present.

By providing a comprehensive study of Muslims in Ireland, this book makes an important contribution to understanding the diversity of Muslim

Introduction [ 3

presences across Europe in different national contexts. It covers the presence of Muslims in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century up to Irish independence in 1922 and the formation of a Muslim communal presence in Dublin in the 1950s. It continues with the massive influx of Muslim immi-grants during the Celtic Tiger years, which has changed the face of both the religious landscape and Islam in Ireland. This book is conceived as interdis-ciplinary in nature. It includes a history of Muslim immigration and settle-ment from the late eighteenth century up to the present, discussions of the different mosques communities and organisations in Ireland, of church-state relations and of the overall governance of Islam in Ireland and examinations of identity discourses among Muslim women in Ireland.

Ireland

Ireland has several meanings: it is the name of a geographical place, an island, the name of a country and nation-state and a concept that transcends its mere geography. Choosing Ireland as a context is not as straightforward as choosing other national contexts. Ireland is the name of the island which was partitioned into two separate political entities on the basis of conflict-ing ethnic identities which were informed by sectarian adherence. After centuries of British rule, the Irish Free State was created in 1922, while six counties in Northern Ireland with a Protestant majority decided to remain part of the UK. With the declaration of the Republic of Ireland in 1948, the newly independent state severed all ties to its former colonial ruler. A state emerged whose national identity was based on a mono-cultural understand-ing of Irish identity as defined by birth and ethnicity, Gaelic language and culture, Catholicism and the predominantly rural life of Ireland, which needed to be defended against foreign intrusion and cultural penetration.19 In Northern Ireland, the Protestant majority has considered itself to be British and insisted on the union with Great Britain, while its Catholic minor-ity has identified itself as Irish and favoured an end to the island’s partition. In twentieth-century Ireland, religion was, therefore, more connected with ethnicity and national identity than in other Western European countries.20

What Ireland and being Irish are is not solely contested on the island of Ireland, but has global repercussions. Ireland’s demographic development in the last 200 years is rather unusual. While in the early nineteenth century the island of Ireland had a population of over 8 million, the numbers decreased dramatically during the Great Famine (1845–52), in whose course around one million people died and another million emigrated. The population of the Republic of Ireland remained under 3 million until the early 1970s, with a current population of 4.58 million in the Republic and 1.8 million in Northern Ireland, making a total of 6.4 million on the entire island, which is still below the level before the Great Famine. Escape from poverty, lack of economic opportunities and also a repressive conservative social environment and emigration to Britain, the USA, Canada and Australia in search of a better

4 ] Muslims in Ireland

life, are important elements of modern Irish history. As a consequence of this long history of emigration, a global Irish diaspora has emerged.

Despite being a small country on the periphery of Europe, Ireland has received global attention because of its ties to the worldwide Irish diaspora. The Irish diaspora also facilitated the globalisation of Irish culture with St Patrick’s Day festivals and parades in Boston, Chicago and New York being of a much larger scale than any similar events in Ireland. However, while many segments of the Irish diaspora maintained family, political, cultural and economic ties with Ireland and identified themselves as being Irish in one way or another, Ireland’s own engagement with its diaspora has been more ambivalent. In Ireland, there was a sense that to be properly Irish a person must be Irish by ‘blood and soil’.21 Members of the Irish diaspora in Britain were referred to as ‘plastic Paddies’22 whose Irishness had been diluted by living outside the country. A stronger connection between Ireland and its diaspora only emerged during the presidency of Mary Robinson (1990–7), during which she gave an address to a joint session of the Houses of the Oireachtas (Irish Parliaments) in order to reach out to ‘the 70 million people worldwide who claim Irish descent’.23

Which of all these Irelands does this book cover? The historical part of the book, discussing the presence of Muslims in Ireland during British rule, includes the whole island. For the period post-independence from 1922 onwards, it focuses on the Republic of Ireland solely and does not discuss the Muslim presence in Northern Ireland. A number of factors account for this decision: a number of studies in the form of journal articles and book chap-ters have been produced on Muslims in Northern Ireland,24 while there has been little research on Muslims in the Republic of Ireland. The Northern Irish context is also different. Muslims are placed in a society with a long history of sectarian conflict and an immense politicisation of religion. Furthermore, Northern Ireland is more influenced by British debates on multiculturalism and the place of Islam in Britain – debates which had only a limited impact on the Republic of Ireland. While this was a pragmatic choice made by the authors, further research is certainly needed investigating the place of Muslims on the island of Ireland on both sides of the border, their interaction with each other and the similarities and differences between both contexts.

There exists an important but unexplored connection between the global Irish diaspora and the phenomenon of conversion to Islam. Many Irish con-verts, whether male or female, encountered Islam in the diaspora first. They worked in Muslim-majority countries for a number of years or encountered Islam while living in Britain or the USA. Research on the Irish diaspora has shown that the Irish in Britain have been part of a wider ‘diaspora space’25 which included other migrant communities experiencing similar degrees of racism, marginalisation and discrimination in British society. A recently completed study compared how both Irish and Muslims have been labelled and stigmatised in Britain as ‘suspect communities’.26 Relationships were formed within this diaspora space leading to conversions as well. Networks

Introduction [ 5

between Irish converts living in Ireland and in the diaspora in Britain have played an important role in transmitting religious knowledge from one side of the Irish Sea to the other.27 Given the significance of the Irish diaspora and the strength of academic research on it, there is enormous potential for inves-tigating Irish conversion to Islam in the diasporic context.

Ireland’s distinctive position as Western Europe’s only postcolonial nation has contributed to a sense of ‘national uniqueness’,28 referred to as Irish exceptionalism. It denotes the idea that Ireland is an anomaly among the nation-states of Western Europe in economic, cultural, political and social terms. Ireland has been characterised by a continuity of economic underde-velopment. Suffering from a lack of employment opportunities, Ireland had the highest emigration rates in the European Economic Community with peak periods in the 1950s and 1980s. The island’s different national identities have had strong confessional underpinnings, leading to a protracted history of ethno-religious conflict in Northern Ireland and the strong social power of the Catholic Church over public morality and its control of education and the health sector.29

Recent scholarship has questioned the notion of Ireland as an exception in Western Europe. Revisionist approaches to Irish history during British rule have problematised or rejected the discourse of colonial victimisation and argued that the notion of exceptionalism has been used to amplify and to internalise cultural, religious and political differences between Ireland and Britain in order to construe a postcolonial national identity.30 The ques-tioning of Irish exceptionalism has gained further momentum following the socio-cultural transformations of the 1990s.31 In the early twenty-first century, Ireland does not appear to be that exceptional any more. The Celtic Tiger countered the historical narrative of Ireland’s economic underdevelop-ment and turned Ireland from a country of emigration to one of immigration. Continuing and accelerating the trend that began in the 1970s, the increasing globalisation of the Irish economy and society and the revelation of clerical abuse scandals in the 1990s undermined the socio-cultural standing and the ‘moral monopoly’32 of the Catholic Church and resulted in the liberalisation of private morality and legislative changes which permit divorce or same-sex marriages. The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 saw the end of the military conflict in Northern Ireland and the formation of a power-sharing govern-ment between Protestants and Catholics.33

While the Celtic Tiger came to an abrupt end in 2008, its reverberations still shape contemporary Ireland, which is more secular, individualistic, con-sumerist and diverse than before. The new experience of cultural diversity poses particular challenges to traditional mono-cultural definitions of Irish identity. The perception of the Celtic Tiger as a watershed period turning a culturally homogeneous Ireland into one that is multicultural is simplistic.34 Thereby, the historical diversity of Irish society is ignored and the engage-ment of Irish people with cultures, societies, languages, traditions, religions and world-views outside Europe disregarded.35 While it is true that Ireland

6 ] Muslims in Ireland

has never been this diverse before, research on Irish religious history needs to forsake its conventional bi-sectarian lens and to rediscover Ireland’s diverse religions prior to the Celtic Tiger and Irish engagements with non-Christian traditions in the past.36

Ireland has several meanings: it refers to the island of Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, or the global Irish diaspora. In diachronic terms, there are several Irelands: from colonial Ireland under British rule, the establishment of a Catholic Republic and the formation of a conservative society that perceived itself as culturally and religiously homogeneous to the transformations of the Celtic Tiger years and their aftermath, with an Ireland of an unprecedented ethnic, cultural and religious diversity. Muslims have become an integral part of Ireland’s new religious landscape.

Muslims

This study of Muslims in Ireland is situated in the wider context of current scholarship on Muslims in Europe. By providing the first comprehensive survey of Islam and Muslims in Ireland, it makes a contribution to mapping Europe’s diverse Muslim populations in different national contexts. Unlike other pioneering ‘mapping exercises’ of Muslims in European countries, this study is able to incorporate research findings on Muslim minorities in other parts of Europe to draw comparisons. Given decades of research on Muslims in Europe, this book also benefits from crucial methodological considera-tions that have emerged to reflect on the premises, biases and shortcomings of research undertaken so far.

Muslims in Ireland appears to be a self-evident research topic. With the growth of the Muslim population in Ireland and in Europe overall, the continuous socio-economic marginalisation of Muslim migrants, the fear of an increasing Islamisation of the public sphere, the securitisation of Islam post-9/ 11 and public debates about the place of Muslims in Europe’s liberal democracies, this research is situated in a political context that deems Muslims in Europe to be a salient and crucial issue of public concern and academic research. With the increasing perception of them as a cultural, reli-gious, legal, political, demographic and security threat to Europe, Muslims have emerged as the continent’s ‘Significant Other’, a term which

refers to another nation or ethnic group that is usually territorially close to, or indeed within, the national community. Significant Others are characterized by their peculiar relationship to the in-group: they represent what the in-group is not.37

In contemporary Europe, Muslims immigrants in particular have become the ‘Significant Other’ of European societies, threatening assumptions of ethnic, cultural and national homogeneity.

The growing concern with ‘Muslims in Europe’ as an exclusive and dis-tinct social category in academic research can lead to an unreflective and

Introduction [ 7

superficial use of this label, and thereby essentialises Muslims and confirms their ‘Otherness’. Such an approach runs ‘the risk of reifying “Islam” as the principal identity for Muslims and making Muslims “all about Islam”’.38 At the same time, ‘religion’ has increasingly become a central marker of minority identities in contemporary Europe in the context of the politics of multiculturalism.39 In this sense, Muslims become members of a ‘commu-nity’ sharing particular religious needs and cultural values and lobby for their recognition by the state and majority society in order to assert minority rights.40 In addition, current debates around the place of multiculturalism in the liberal democracies of Europe have focused in particular on Islam and Muslim minorities.41 Whereas thirty years ago immigrants to Europe were categorised as Turks, Algerians or Pakistanis, their ‘Muslimness’ has been increasingly emphasised.42

Nadia Jeldtoft applies Richard Jenkins’ notion that ‘social identity is the outcome of the conjunction of the processes of internal and external defini-tion’43 to Muslim minorities in Europe. The label ‘Muslim’ is understood as an externally defined ‘category’44 whose purpose is to gain empirical data on Muslim minorities, for censuses and other statistics, for example. Such ‘mapping exercises’ of religious minorities undertaken by European majority societies are the result of ‘a power-related act of categorisation’.45 As such, a particular label is imposed on a minority population to gain demographic, socio-economic and other statistical data on a minority group. State-conducted censuses are one of the most powerful tools for socially categorising population46 and an important instrument in the governance of minorities. According to Jenkins, social identities are also the result of internal definitional acts. Given the power relation that is inherent in pro-cesses of social categorisation by a majority vis-à-vis a minority, an externally construed category can be internalised by a social group. This can be as part of a reactionary act to resist a particular label as it is imposed by a majority society.47 A label can also be used strategically by a minority group to carve out a space in the public sphere in order to achieve recognition by the state and majority society for its particular communal needs, whether cultural, lin-guistic or religious. Muslim organisations have capitalised on the prevalence of the Muslim category, given the communitarian approach of multicultural governance which has favoured faith communities in particular.48 Hence, the label ‘Muslim’ is not just externally attributed to a particular minority population but also designates a self-chosen identification with a ‘group’49 and differentiates Muslims from other social groups qua their ‘Muslimness’. Yet, it is important to recognise ‘the diversity of Muslims as a complex empirical reality’50 and to acknowledge their heterogeneity, their different levels of self-identification with and various degrees of belonging to this group. ‘Muslims are not simply and only “Muslims”’,51 but are positioned in a complex, contested and relational nexus of various other identity markers such as nationality, culture, language, social status, gender and others.

Most research on Muslims in Europe has tended to overlook the diversity

8 ] Muslims in Ireland

and heterogeneity of Muslim minorities because of its bias towards insti-tutionalised and organised forms of Islam. Muslim organisations, running mosques, Qur’anic schools and public relations offices, are easier to access for researchers as spatial manifestations of Muslim minority identities. Muslim voices included in public discourses often stem from activists of Muslim organisations and are hence important sources in analysing media coverage on Muslims in Europe. Given the inherited structure of church–state relations, governments as well as wider society search for and col-laborate with Muslim organisations that possess church-like structures.52 In addition, considering how Muslim minorities have set up institutional frameworks is important in mapping Europe’s Muslim population. These organisations are central in providing religious and educational services to Muslims and with further institutionalisation on national levels are instru-ments in the public representations of Muslim minorities and their interac-tion with state and society.53 Furthermore, these organisations give insights into the transnational connections of contemporary Islamic movements and the re-creation of their particular ideological and sectarian orientations in European diasporic contexts.54

A too-strong focus on organised and institutionalised forms of Islam in Europe, however, contains serious drawbacks. It ignores the fact that most Muslims residing in particular locality have no affiliation with a particular Muslim organisation running a mosque or Qur’anic school. While they might use the facilities available at a particular mosque, this does not signify their complete identification with or support for the particular form of Islam that is espoused by the mosque organisation.55 Transnational Islamist movements like the Muslim Brotherhood or the Jama‘at-i Islami (Islamic Association) have played a central role in organising and institutionalising Islam in various European contexts. In line with their overall ideological orientation, they promote a holistic understanding of Islam that covers all aspects of individual, social, cultural, economic and political life – a com-plete ‘way-of-life’.56 Furthermore, like most organised Islamic movements and pioneers of institutionalising Islam in Europe, European branches of Islamist movements have also claimed an overall representative status for the entire Muslim population of a particular country. Such a strategic posi-tioning of European Islamic organisations with Islamic cultural centres and ‘central mosques’ in capital cities and many umbrella bodies across Europe has contributed to the reification of Islam and Muslims in European public discourses. Academic research needs to engage critically with organisa-tions that claim to represent both ‘authentic’ Islam and all Muslims in a country:

. . . the concern for a researcher is not to identify the true, the most representa-tive Islam but rather to take a critical distance from those who argue that they ‘represent’ such an Islam. It is therefore important to analyse the ideological background and basis of legitimacy of Muslim organizations critically, taking

Introduction [ 9

into account the context of their positioning as well as their theological and political perception of Islam.57

In order to fully capture the heterogeneity of Islam in Europe, research needs to include the majority of Muslims in Europe outside organisational and institutional frameworks. Ethnographic research in particular has drawn attention to ‘non-organised’ Muslims who articulate their religious identities outside organised forms of Islam. While some individuals with a Muslim background would not consider themselves Muslims at all and fewer would openly speak out against Islam, the majority of European Muslims maintain ‘an “implicit relationship” to Islam’58 by identifying in one way or the other with their religion and by practising some of its aspects. ‘Non-organised’ Muslims develop a selective approach to Islam, with changing definitions of their religious identities. Research on this group of Muslims is necessary to document ‘real-life’ or ‘lived’ Islam across Europe.59

In the latest 2011 Census in the Republic of Ireland, 49,204 persons responded to the question ‘What is your religion?’ by ticking the box ‘Islam’. These persons accepted the category of ‘Muslim’ created for the purposes of the Census and identified themselves as members of a Muslim social group in one way or another. While this figure can be used to document Muslim demographics in the Republic of Ireland and to forward claims to recognise and accommodate the growing Muslim population in Irish society, it does not say anything about what being a Muslim means for these individu-als. Muslim organisations and their representatives in Europe would most vividly engage in normative definitions in Islam. Yet, the ‘real-life’ Islam of most European Muslims, who live out, approve, question, challenge, contest and negotiate certain aspects of Islam and develop diverse notions of ‘Muslimness’, merits to be studied as such as well.

Two examples from Ireland, one from the past and the other from the present, illustrate the problematic nature of the Muslim label which statis-tical data cannot encapsulate. One of the first Muslim residents of Ireland was Sake Dean Mahomed (1759–1851), who arrived in Cork in 1784.60 He was recruited into the army of the East India Company and accompanied his mentor Captain Godfrey Evan Baker, a member of the Anglo-Irish Protestant establishment, to Cork. In 1810, he moved to Britain, opening an Indian restaurant in London initially and later a masseur bath in Brighton. In Cork, Sake Dean married a girl from a prominent Protestant family of the city. Given that at this time inter-religious marriages were prohibited for members of the Church of Ireland, he must have converted to Anglican Christianity prior to his wedding.61 While Sake Dean’s Muslim background is obvious and was often highlighted by contemporaneous observers,62 it is difficult to consider him the ‘first Muslim’ of Ireland given the significant turns in his biography.

A contemporary example of the complexities between external categorisa-tion and self-definition is Moosajee Bhamjee (b. 1947). Born in South Africa

10 ] Muslims in Ireland

to a family of Indian descent, he studied at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin and moved permanently to Ireland to practise psychiatry. He was elected to the Dáil Éireann (lower house of the Irish parliaments) for the Labour Party in 1992 but retired from politics in 1997 after serving one term.63 While described as ‘Ireland’s first Muslim TD’64 (Teachta Dála: Member of Parliament) in Irish media, he himself prefers to be remembered as ‘the first Indian M.P. in Ireland’.65 Bhamjee is another example of an indi-vidual who has been labelled a Muslim by others but whose own identifica-tion with Islam, or lack thereof, is more complex.

Richard Jenkins’ distinction between external and internal definitions of social identities also differentiates between their ‘nominal’ and ‘virtual’ strands.66 While the former denotes the particular name that is given to a social identity, the latter describes what meaning this identity actually has and how it is experienced. In this book, these two strands are combined in the study of Muslim minority identities in Ireland. Using the name or label ‘Muslim’ as an externally defined social category is important in order to trace Muslim immigration patterns to Ireland, to document the changing religious demographics of Irish society, to examine processes of Muslim institutionalisation, to analyse media discourses on Muslims, and to discuss the governance of Islam in the Republic of Ireland.

At the same time, the virtual aspect of Muslim social identities in Ireland needs attention in order to illustrate the diversity and heterogeneity of the Muslim population. Ethnographic research on individual Muslims, their identity discourses and practices, their relationships to other identity markers such as nationality, gender and class and their place within Irish society is one important instrument for covering the complexity of self-definitional acts within Muslim minorities. By examining historical figures from a Muslim background who were prominent residents of Ireland like Sake Dean Mahomed, the extent of their ‘Muslimness’ vis-à-vis other more central identity markers is explored. Thereby, the creation of simplistic his-torical genealogies of a continuous Muslim presence in Ireland is avoided. Tracing institutionalisation processes among Muslims is equally crucial, as the various Muslim organisations in Ireland reveal the actual diversity of Muslim identities in their organised forms, on the basis of cultural, ethnic, national, linguistic, sectarian or ideological differences.

Insider/ Outsider Dynamics

The research focus on organised forms of Islam in European minority con-texts stems from the easier access points Muslim organisations provide. In the context of the research undertaken for this book, questions of access are directly related to gender, the religious backgrounds of the authors and insider/ outsider dynamics as they have been discussed in the study of religions more generally. While the so-called insider/ outsider problem has dominated debates in the study of religions over the last thirty years, recent

Introduction [ 11

contributions have questioned a simplistic dichotomy between two posi-tions and have emphasised their fluidity, the dialogical nature of research and notions of self-reflexivity. The fundamental issue of the insider/ outsider debate is ‘the question of whether one must be religious in order to under-stand religion’.67 While this is not the place to rehearse this debate,68 recent contributions have critiqued the simplistic polarity between insider and out-sider and have even characterised the debate as a ‘pseudo-problem’.69 Kim Knott illustrates the porosity of these boundaries by providing the example of ‘participant observation’ as an ethnographic research method adopted by outsiders so that they can be involved in and participate in the activi-ties of a religious community while maintaining their identity as academic researchers who are not members of the religious community under study. ‘Observant participation’ as another strategy describes the approach taken by insiders of a religion who analyse the beliefs and practices with which they are highly familiar using the critical apparatus, terminology and meth-odology of the social sciences in which they have been trained. While none of these approaches is without drawbacks, they demonstrate the fluidity of the insider/ outsider dichotomy, on the one hand, and the salience of ‘the distinc-tion between those doing religion and those observing it’,70 on the other. As a way forward, Knott adopts Gavin Flood’s recommendation of a research approach based on ‘dialogical and reflexive engagement between scholars and the religious people they study’.71

In the context of research undertaken for this book, accessing Muslims, both organised and non-organised, was also shaped by insider/ outsider dynamics. This book is based to a large extent on material of a textual and archival nature. Policy papers on integration of immigrants issued by gov-ernment departments, legal documents on church–state relations in the Republic of Ireland, newspaper articles on Muslims in Ireland, census data, and other statistical sources and historical documents on early Muslim resi-dents in Ireland have been used as sources. In addition, a significant amount of research has been fieldwork-based, in the form both of interviews and of ethnographic research. Much of the communal history of Muslims in Ireland, going back to Muslim students arriving in Dublin in the 1950s, is oral. Current processes of institutionalising Islam in Ireland and issues around authority and leadership within contemporary Muslim communities could only be accessed by interviewing a number of individuals who have been centrally involved in different organisations. Relations between Muslim organisations and the state were discussed by interviewing activists and officials of Muslim organisations who have represented Islam in the public sphere. Identity discourses among Muslim women of different backgrounds and their relationships to Irish society could only be explored through eth-nographic research, including participant observation and in-depth life story interviews.

In these fieldwork-based approaches, the question of access and the rapport established between interviewer and interviewee became important.

12 ] Muslims in Ireland

Gender was a central consideration in this regard. In order to map both male and female Muslim spaces in Ireland it was important to have at least one researcher with the ability to access the latter. In a research project on Muslims, this means that at least one researcher had to be a woman in order to enter the women’s sections of mosques and Islamic centres and – more importantly – to establish a rapport with Muslim women in more informal and private settings that a male researcher would not be able to achieve.72 The question of the religious background of the authors also emerged as a central issue. Assumptions were made about the Muslim background of the authors on the basis of their names. In some cases the Muslim background was more obvious and in others less, but in all cases, identification as a Muslim changed the rapport with the Muslim informants significantly. At once, the Muslim interviewees bestowed a level of trust and confidence on the researchers who identified themselves as Muslims, and many became willing to share information that they would not have shared with an ‘out-sider’ immediately. Access to privileged if not confidential information was given, information that would not be shared with the wider public and con-troversial aspects of the power dynamics among Muslim communities were more openly discussed.

It is not argued that the Muslim background of some authors gave easier access to the communities and allowed them to obtain information that a non-Muslim author would never have gained. Other researchers might have been able to acquire the same information and interview the same indi-viduals after winning the trust of their informants. However, the Muslim background of some authors accelerated access to such information and indi-viduals. Despite these apparent advantages, the authors’ self-identification as Muslims – in any case made for the sake of honesty and transparency – made the relationship between interviewer and interviewee more complex. While the status of being an academic researcher was immediately made known, this was perhaps not always in the minds of Muslims when they were inter-viewed. While controversial and confidential information was often shared with the authors, these were then provided with the proviso that they had to deal with the information responsibly and not cause ‘any problems for our Muslim brothers’. The rapport created between interviewer and inter-viewee, therefore, created particular ethical issues around the handling of the more problematic and controversial pieces of information received. Such issues were resolved by clarifying which information could be used and which not, and also by sharing drafts of publications with the interviewees to ensure that the information provided was accurate and was not misrepre-sented. Such a dialogical approach between interviewer and interviewee was deemed most appropriate in order to warrant and maintain the level of trust and confidence given to some of the authors. Maintaining critical distance and not merely becoming mouthpieces for particular Muslim organisations was equally important. In some cases, interviewer and interviewee had to agree to disagree.

Introduction [ 13

Another aspect of insider/ outsider dynamics in this book is less obvious and relates to the authors’ relationship to Ireland. None of this book’s authors is Irish, and most of them were temporarily based in Ireland for the purpose of research undertaken for this book. This position towards Ireland brings both advantages and disadvantages. Possessing expertise on modern Islam and its various dimensions and Muslims in Europe as researched from historical, sociological and ethnographic perspectives, the authors were well-placed to situate the Muslim presence in Ireland within the global dynamics of modern Islam and wider issues around Muslim minorities in Europe. Nevertheless, they had to acquire expertise on the cultural, social, legal and church–state parameters relevant to understanding Muslims in Ireland in the course of research. Their ‘outsider’ status in relation to Ireland also allowed them to approach the Irish context afresh, without any assumptions about the particularity of the Irish context, but with awareness of debates that have arisen in other European contexts and the ability to probe their relevance to the Irish situation. The novelty of this book is the result of the very recent experience of large-scale Muslim immigration to Ireland. It also stems from a significant disciplinary gap in Irish academia. While a significant amount of social sciences research on migration to and from Ireland73 has been undertaken, most of it has been uninterested in the religious backgrounds of immigrants, with only a few exceptions.74

Muslims in Ireland – A Triangulation

Given the wide scope of the book, it is difficult to use a single theoreti-cal approach as a starting point for the analysis of the Muslim presence in Ireland. As regards a methodological framework, this book is instead based on a triangulation whose dynamics unfold within Muslim minorities across Europe, consisting of community, context and individual.75

Community

Muslims in Europe are usually part of larger communities, which can be organised around particular mosques or, more loosely, refer to a broader affiliation to a particular ethno-cultural, sectarian or ideological orientation within contemporary Islam. These communities are in most cases transna-tional, with various social, intellectual, personal and pecuniary connections with their countries of origin and across Europe and the globe. Knowledge of the developments and currents of modern Islam is essential in order to understand the establishment of these communities in the European diasporic context, their sectarian and ideological orientations and their lead-ership structures and internal organisation. At the same time, such trans-national communities do not merely re-create themselves in the European minority context but adapt to the new situation by making ideological, discursive and pragmatic adjustments, by forging links and alliances with

14 ] Muslims in Ireland

other Muslim organisations, by creating European Muslim identities and by adapting to the particular constraints and requirements of European church–state models of interaction between governments and faith communities.76

Context

Muslims in Europe are situated in a national and more often a larger European context. The prevalence of ‘methodological nationalism’77 in research on Muslims in Europe has been rightly criticised as too limited in perspective, ignoring important global, transnational and pan-European dimensions of Muslim networks and organisations and of discourses around Islam and Muslims in Europe. However, national contexts retain their importance, as they shape the particular experiences of Muslims in a given socio-political setting and inform the dynamics and patterns of cultural, social, political and legal accommodations made towards Muslims, all of which occur within the particular jurisdiction of a nation-state with its own legal and political culture and traditions of church–state relations. Knowledge of the national context and its parameters is necessary in order to understand relations between Muslim minorities and European states and societies. When dis-cussing the interaction of individual Muslims and Muslim communities with the national and European contexts, it is important to recognise ‘the dialecti-cal relationship between group resources and their social environments’.78 Muslim immigrants do not simply adapt to the new minority context but likewise challenge and transform traditional understandings of ‘secularism, nationalism and multiculturalism’79 within European societies.

Individual

The third component in this triangulation is Muslim individuals, who can be part of larger Muslim communities or refrain from any affiliation to a par-ticular community and organisation. Individual Muslims also interact with state and society in terms of education, the professional world or political participation and civic engagement. In order to avoid a ‘top-down’ approach that focuses solely on the elite discourses of Muslim organisations, any research on Muslims in Europe needs to engage with ‘real-life Islam’. The lived experiences of Muslims in Europe, their identity discourses and reli-gious practices and their participation in the ‘non-religious’ activities of their societies, whether educational, professional, civic, political or recreational, need to be included in order to depict the multi-faceted and diverse Muslim presences across Europe.

Structure of the Book

On the basis of this triangulation, the book covers the following areas:

Introduction [ 15

• Muslim immigration and settlement in Ireland• Communities and organisations• State–community interaction and governance of Islam in Ireland• Muslim women

Part 1 traces the history of the Muslim presence in and migration to Ireland from the late eighteenth century to the present and consists of two chapters. The first chapter examines the presence of Muslims in Ireland before World War II, placing it in the context of British colonial history of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This presence was constituted among others by merchants, sailors or teachers at Irish universities. The second chapter provides an analysis of Muslim immigration to Ireland after World War II, from the arrival of the first cohort of medical students from South Africa in the late 1940s to the large-scale migration during the Celtic Tiger years. The different patterns of migration are discussed and the various backgrounds of migrants investigated.

Part 2, on mosques, organisations and leadership, discusses the various Muslim organisations and mosques in Ireland, including their histories, the purposes for which these organisations were founded, the sectarian orientations they represent and their success in establishing organisational cohesion among Irish Muslims and in representing Muslims within Irish society. International links and funding sources are also explored. Starting with the first Muslim organisation, the Dublin Islamic Society, established by South African students in 1959, the third chapter illustrates how an initially local initiative was increasingly connected to transnational networks of the Muslim Brotherhood in order to secure funding for the expansion of its activ-ities and the purchase of adequate mosque space. The Dublin Islamic Society, renamed the Islamic Foundation of Ireland in 1990 in order to demonstrate its role as representative Muslim umbrella organisation, also acts as patron of the two Muslim primary schools in Dublin.

How European networks of the Muslim Brotherhood have played a leading role in organising Muslims in Ireland is further demonstrated in the fourth chapter. The major Sunni mosque organisation, the Islamic Cultural Centre of Ireland (ICCI), established in 1996 and based in a large south Dublin mosque complex, heads a network of different mosques in Dublin and other cities of the country and convenes the Irish Council of Imams, a body comprising rep-resentatives of imams from around the country. It also hosts the secretariat of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, a body founded by the Qatar-based Egyptian cleric Yusuf Al-Qaradawi (b. 1926) to develop Islamic juris-prudence catering for the needs of Muslim minorities in Europe. In addition to the mosques and groups affiliated with and partially funded by the ICCI, there are other independent mosques associations for groups such as the Twelver Shiis, Ismailis, Ahmadis, Barelvis and different national groups, as well as individual initiatives by activists who challenge the claim of the ICCI to represent all Muslims in Ireland. These are discussed in Chapter 5.

16 ] Muslims in Ireland

Part 3, on the governance of Islam in Ireland, investigates the interaction between Muslims and the Irish state and society. The sixth chapter discusses the particular nature of church–state relations in the Republic of Ireland and the impact of the traditional denominational setting of Irish social and legal culture on Muslims. Governmental responses and legal changes made by the Irish state as a consequence of the religious and cultural diversifica-tion of Irish society are discussed with particular reference to Muslims. As a particularly important example, the seventh chapter discusses the provi-sion of Muslim schools in the Republic of Ireland. While the introduction of publicly funded Muslim faith-based schools has been controversial in other European countries, the establishment of the first Muslim school in Dublin in 1990 (the second to follow in 2001) did not arouse much public interest, as both were perceived as being in line with the traditional denominational set-up of the Irish educational system. The modus operandi of both schools is discussed, as well as the challenges both schools have faced since their establishment.

Part 4 explores the experiences of Muslim women, both migrants and con-verts, in Ireland. For migrant Muslim women, an attachment to the particu-lar cultural understanding of Islam in their countries of origin is dominant, limiting religious and social interaction with Muslim migrant women from other backgrounds or Irish converts. Irish converts likewise do not constitute a monolithic entity, but also espouse various understandings of Islam, from Salafism to cultural definitions of Islam deriving from their spouses. This part discusses how Muslim women of different ethnic and national back-grounds and socio-economic and educational status relate to and interact with Irish society. The different types of ‘diaspora spaces’ Muslim women carve out in Irish society are examined. The nature of these spaces depends on their sectarian-cum-ideological orientations and the reasons for their migration and settlement. This chapter also deals with the phenomenon of conversion to Islam in Ireland, with the overwhelming majority of Irish con-verts being women.

Future Research

Despite the comprehensive nature of this book, several areas wait to be explored. The very fluidity of the situation in Ireland necessitates ongoing research efforts. Muslim immigrants have become more tran-sient, moving across Europe and the globe, new communities and Muslim spaces have emerged, and significant transformations in Irish society have occurred. Further systematic comparisons between Ireland and Britain or other European countries are one important area of future studies. More research across the border between south and north will paint a full picture of Islam on the island of Ireland as a whole. There is also the need to produce more qualitative ethnographic research on Muslims in Ireland. Through an ethnographic engagement with ‘real-life’ Islam, researchers will be able to

Introduction [ 17

address the actual diversity of Muslim lives in Ireland. In this respect, more studies are required that pay particular attention to the issue of gender. Further ethnographic research will also map the increasing ethnic and intra-religious diversity of Muslims in Ireland and generational dynamics that are just beginning to unfold. A significant component of the Muslim pres-ence in Ireland are sub-Saharan African Muslims, primarily from Nigeria, whom this book does not cover and whose religious identities and particular Sufi-inspired practices need to be explored. South Asian Muslim communi-ties from both Pakistan and Bangladesh have grown significantly in the last decade. While major Sunni mosque organisation are usually led by Arab Muslims, the numerical rise of South Asian Muslims and the increasing presence of their communities challenge the dominance of Arabs within the leadership of mosque organisations. Focusing on South Asian Muslims also provides the opportunity to explore transnational connections between Ireland and the UK, given the strong and well-established presence of South Asian Muslims in British society.

Apart from particular ethnic groups in the Muslim population that need further research, other groups too are not covered in this book. No study has been produced so far on Irish men who have converted to Islam. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the majority of them converted to Islam in the diaspora, having lived and worked for several years in a Muslim-majority country or in Britain or the USA and having returned to Ireland as Muslims. Hence, there is an excellent opportunity to place the phenomenon of con-version to Islam in Ireland – both male and female – in the context of Irish diaspora studies. A more serious lacuna is the complete lack of research on young Muslims in Ireland, in particular the second generation of Muslim immigrants who were born, raised, socialised and educated in Ireland. Hardly anything is known about their identities and the challenges they face in twenty-first century Ireland. This generation of young Muslims is just coming of age, completing university degrees or entering the professional world of an Ireland that is challenged by new hybrid identity formations among the second generation of immigrants.

In this regard, equally important are the changing parameters of the Irish context. Despite the collapse of the Celtic Tiger, most of the changes it has brought are irreversible. The increasing secularisation of Irish society as well as its new religious diversity pose challenges to a traditionally denomi-national educational system in which the Catholic Church has played a hegemonic role. Recent initiatives to secularise the educational system to some extent and to divest the Catholic Church of ownership of an increas-ing number of schools respond to these changes.80 How Muslim children are integrated into the educational system remains a major challenge in Ireland. Other sectors of society likewise need to cope with Ireland’s new diversity and to address to what extent they can accommodate for and inte-grate religious practices of new migrant communities.81 A recent case of a Sikh member of the garda reserve (volunteers in the Irish police) who was

18 ] Muslims in Ireland

prohibited from wearing the turban while wearing his uniform82 illustrates the various challenges which will multiply in the future. With the growth of the Muslim population and the increasing visibility of Muslims and of mosques, anti-Muslim incidents have increased as well. While some research has been done on Islamophobia in Ireland,83 more work is required in this area. The participation of migrants in Irish politics has been minimal, and all parties across the political spectrum have a weak track record of including candidates from migrant backgrounds or addressing the needs of migrant communities.84 With over one third of the Muslim population now possess-ing Irish citizenship, they possess the same political and legal rights as other Irish citizens. How and to what extent Irish Muslims participate in and shape the public and political life of Ireland in the future is another development that further research needs to cover.

Notes

1. Tuula Sakaranaho, ‘Les rhétoriques de la continuité: les femmes, l’Islam et l’héritage catholique en Irlande’, Social Compass, 50:1, 2003, pp. 71–84; Tuula Sakaranaho, Religious Freedom, Multiculturalism, Islam: Cross-Reading Finland and Ireland (Leiden: Brill, 2006); Kieran Flynn, ‘Understanding Islam in Ireland’, Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations, 17:2, 2006, pp. 223–38; Mary Fitzgerald, ‘Ireland’s Muslims forging an identity’, The Irish Times, 13 October 2006, p. 14.

2. Special edition on Islam and Muslims in the Republic of Ireland of Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 31:4, 2011, edited by Oliver Scharbrodt and Tuula Sakaranaho; Oliver Scharbrodt, ‘Islam in Ireland: Organising a Migrant Religion’, in Olivia Cosgrove et al. (eds), Ireland’s New Religious Movements (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011), pp. 318–36; Oliver Scharbrodt, ‘Muslim Immigration to the Republic of Ireland: Trajectories and Dynamics since World War II’, Éire-Ireland: A Journal of Irish Studies, 47:1&2, 2012, pp. 221–43; Oliver Scharbrodt, ‘From Irish Exceptionalism to European Normality?: The New Islamic Presence in the Republic of Ireland’, Etudes Irlandaises, 39, 2014 (forthcoming); Tuula Sakaranaho, ‘“For God and Eternal Values”: Muslim National Schools in Ireland’, in Ednan Aslan (ed.), Islamische Erziehung in Europa. Islamic Education in Europe (Vienna: Böhlau, 2009), pp. 203–18; Adil Hussain Khan, ‘Creating the Image of European Islam: The European Council for Fatwa and Research and Ireland’, in Jørgen S. Nielsen (ed.), Muslim Political Participation in Europe (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), pp. 215–38; Yafa Shanneik, ‘Conversion to Islam in Ireland: A Post-Catholic Subjectivity?’, Journal of Muslims in Europe, 1:2, 2012, pp. 166–88; Yafa Shanneik, ‘Religion and Diasporic Dwelling: Algerian Muslim Women in Ireland’, Religion and Gender, 2:1, 2012, pp. 80–100; Yafa Shanneik, ‘Gendering Religious Authority in the Diaspora: Shii Women in Ireland’, in Niamh Reilly and Stacey Scriver (eds), Religion, Gender, and the Public Sphere (London: Routledge, 2014), pp. 58–67; Vivian Ibrahim, ‘The Mir of India in Ireland: Nationalism and Identity of an Early “Muslim” Migrant’, Temenos: The Nordic Journal of Comparative Religion, 46:2, 2010, pp. 153–73.

Introduction [ 19

3. Nathalie Rougier and Iseult Honohan, ‘Ireland’, in Ricard Zapata-Barrero and Anna Triandafyllidou (eds), Addressing Tolerance and Diversity Discourses in Europe: A Comparative Overview of 16 European Countries (Barcelona: Barcelona Centre for International Affairs, 2012), p. 249.

4. Piaras Mac Éinrí and Allen White, ‘Immigration into the Republic of Ireland: A Bibliography of Recent Research’, Irish Geography, 41:2, 2008, pp. 151–79; Piaras Mac Éinrí, ‘Immigration: Labour Migrants, Asylum Seekers and Refugees’, in Brendan Bartley and Rob Kitchin (eds), Understanding Contemporary Ireland (London: Pluto Press, 2007), pp. 236–9; Bryan Fanning, Racism and Social Change in the Republic of Ireland, 2nd edn (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012), pp. 91–110.

5. Central Statistics Office, Census 1991: Vol. 5 – Religion (Dublin: Central Statistics Office, 1995), p. 22.

6. Central Statistics Office, Census 2011: Profile 7 – Religion, Ethnicity and Irish Travellers (Dublin: Central Statistics Office, 2012), p. 48.

7. See, for example, Community Religions Project at the University of Leeds which began in 1976. More information available at http:/ / www.leeds.ac.uk/ arts/ info/ 125010/ the_centre_for_religion_and_public_life/ 1999/ the_community_re ligions_project_crp (last accessed 28 March 2014).

8. John R. Bowen, Why the French Don’t Like Headscarves: Islam, the State, and Public Space (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).

9. Jørgen S. Nielsen, Muslims in Western Europe, 3rd edn (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004); Felice Dassetto, La construction de l’Islam européen: approche socio-anthropologique (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1996); Brigitte Maréchal et al., Muslims in the Enlarged Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2003).

10. Jonathan Laurence, The Emancipation of Europe’s Muslims: The State’s Role in Minority Integration (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2012).

11. Brigitte Maréchal, The Muslim Brothers in Europe: Roots and Discourse (Leiden: Brill, 2008); Stefano Allievi and Jørgen S. Nielsen (eds), Muslim Networks and Transnational Communities in and across Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2003); Peter Mandaville, Global Political Islam (London and New York: Routledge, 2007).

12. John L. Esposito and François Burgat (eds), Modernizing Islam: Religion and Politics in the Public Sphere in Europe and the Middle East (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003); Jørgen S. Nielsen, Towards a European Islam (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999); Tariq Ramadan, Western Muslims and the Future of Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

13. Jytte Klausen, The Islamic Challenge: Politics and Religion in Western Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Joel S. Fetzer and J. Christopher Soper, Muslims and the State in Britain, France and Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Marcel Maussen et al. (eds), Colonial and Post-Colonial Governance of Islam: Continuities and Raptures (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2011).

14. Jørgen S. Nielsen (ed.), Muslim Political Participation in Europe (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013).

15. Hakan Yilmaz and Cagla E. Aykac (eds), Perceptions of Islam in Europe: Culture, Identity and the Muslim ‘Other’ (London: I. B. Tauris, 2012).

20 ] Muslims in Ireland

16. Jocelyne Cesari, ‘The Securitisation of Islam in Europe’, Challenge: Liberty and Security, Research Paper 15, 2009; Erik Bleich (ed.), Muslims and the State Post-9/ 11 (London: Routledge, 2010).

17. Chris Allen, Islamophobia (Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2010); S. Sayyid and Abdoolkarim Vakil (eds), Thinking Through Islamophobia: Global Perspectives (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011); John L. Esposito and Ibrahim Kalin (eds), Islamophobia: The Challenge of Pluralism in the 21st Century (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

18. Tuomas Martikainen et al. (eds), Muslims in the Margins of Europe (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming).

19. Rougier and Honohan, ‘Ireland’, pp. 250–2.20. Robbie McVeigh, ‘Cherishing the Children of the Nation Unequally: Sectarianism

in Ireland’, in Patrick Clancy et al. (eds), Irish Society: Sociological Perspectives (Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, 1995), pp. 620–51.

21. Rougier and Honohan, ‘Ireland’, p. 251.22. Mary J. Hickman, ‘“Locating” the Irish Diaspora’, Irish Journal of Sociology, 11:2,

2002, p. 16.23. Available at http://www.oireachtas.ie/viewdoc.asp?fn=/documents/addresses/

2Feb1995.htm (last accessed 28 March 2014).24. Gabriele Marranci, ‘“We Speak English”. Language and Identity Processes

in Northern Ireland’s Muslim Community’, Ethnologist, 25, 2003, pp. 59–77; Gabriele Marranci, ‘Pakistanis in Northern Ireland: their Islamic Identity, and the Aftermath of 11th of September’, in Tahir Abbas (ed.), Muslim Britain: Communities under Pressure (London: Zed Books, 2005), pp. 222–34; Gabriele Marranci, ‘Migration and the Construction of Muslim Women’s Identity in Northern Ireland’, in Cara Aitchison et al. (eds), Geographies of Muslim Identities: Diaspora, Gender and Belonging (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 79–92; Victoria Montgomery, ‘Are you a Protestant or a Catholic Muslim? The Path of Muslim Integration into Northern Ireland’, in Javaid Rehman and Susan C. Breau (eds), Religion, Human Rights & International Law (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 489–519.

25. Avtar Brah, Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities (London: Routledge, 1996); Mary J. Hickman, ‘Diaspora Space and National (Re)Formations’, Éire-Ireland: A Journal of Irish Studies, 47:1&2, 2012, pp. 19–44.

26. Mary J. Hickman et al., ‘Suspect Communities’? Counter-Terrorism Policy, the Press, and the Impact on Irish and Muslim Communities in Britain (London: London Metropolitan University, 2011).

27. Yafa Shanneik, ‘Conversion and Religious Habitus: The Experiences of Irish Women Converts to Islam in the Pre-Celtic Tiger Era’, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 31:4, 2011, p. 510.

28. Ruth Wodak et al., The Discursive Construction of National Identity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999), p. 27.

29. Michael Cronin, ‘Small Worlds and Weak Ties: Ireland in the New Century’, Journal of Irish Studies, 22, 2007, pp. 63–5.

30. James Livesey and Stuart Murray, ‘Review Article: Postcolonial Theory and Modern Irish Culture’, Irish Historical Studies, 30, May 1997, pp. 452–61.

Introduction [ 21

31. Linda Connolly, ‘The Limits of “Irish Studies”: Historicism, Culturalism, Paternalism’, Irish Studies Review, 12:2, 2004, pp. 139–62.

32. Tom Inglis, Moral Monopoly: The Rise and Fall of the Catholic Church in Modern Ireland (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 1998).

33. Cronin, ‘Ireland in the New Century’, pp. 63–5.34. Gavan Titley, ‘Everything Moves? Beyond Culture and Multiculturalism in Irish

Public Discourse’, The Irish Review, 31, 2004, p. 18.35. Menachem Mansoor, The Story of Irish Orientalism (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis & Co.,

1944); Tadhg Foley and Maureen O’Connor (eds), Ireland–India: Colonies, Culture and Empire (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2006); Joseph Lennon, Irish Orientalism: A Literary and Intellectual History (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2008); Laurence Cox, Buddhism and Ireland: From the Celts to the Counter-Culture and Beyond (Sheffield: Equinox, 2013).

36. Olivia Cosgrove et al., ‘Editors’ Introduction: Understanding Ireland’s New Religious Movements’, in Cosgrove et al., Ireland’s New Religious Movements, pp. 1–4.

37. Anna Triandafydillou, ‘Nations, Migrants and Transnational Identifications: An Interactive Approach to Nationalism’, in Gerard Delanty and Krishan Kumar (eds), The Sage Handbook of Nations and Nationalism (London: Sage, 2006), p. 286 (italics in the original). See also Anna Triandafydillou, Immigrants and National Identity in Europe (London: Routledge, 2010).

38. Nadia Jeldtoft, ‘Lived Islam: Religious Identity with “Non-Organized” Muslim Minorities’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 34:7, 2011, p. 1,135.

39. For an overview with reference to Islam see Tariq Modood et al. (eds), Multiculturalism, Muslims and Citizenship: A European Approach (London and New York: Routledge, 2006). See also Seán McLoughlin, ‘The State, New Muslim Leadership and Islam as a Resource for Public Engagement in Britain’, in Jocelyne Cesari and Seán McLoughlin (eds), European Muslims and the Secular State (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 55–69.

40. For a discussion of this development in the British context see Tariq Modood, ‘British Muslims and the Politics of Multiculturalism’, in Modood, Multiculturalism, Muslims and Citizenship, pp. 37–56.

41. Bryan Fanning, Immigration and Social Cohesion in the Republic of Ireland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), pp. 2–4.

42. Stefano Allievi, ‘How the Immigrant Has Become Muslim: Public Debates on Islam in Europe’, Revue européenne des migrations internationales, 21:2, 2005, pp. 135–63.

43. Richard Jenkins, ‘Rethinking Ethnicity: Identity, Categorization and Power’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 17:2, 1994, p. 201 (italics in the original).

44. Nadia Jeldtoft, ‘On Defining Muslims’, in Jørgen S. Nielsen et al. (eds), Yearbook of Muslims in Europe, Vol. 1 (Leiden: Brill 2009), p. 10. See also Felice Dassetto, ‘The Muslim Population of Europe’, in Maréchal et al., Muslims in the Enlarged Europe, xxii–xxiii.

45. Jeldtoft, ‘Defining Muslims’, p. 9.46. Jenkins, ‘Rethinking Ethnicity’, p. 215.

22 ] Muslims in Ireland

47. Ibid., p. 203.48. McLoughlin, ‘Islam as a Resource for Public Engagement’, pp. 55–69.49. Jeldtoft, ‘Defining Muslims’, p. 10.50. Ibid.51. Ibid., p. 11.52. Nadia Jeldtoft and Jørgen S. Nielsen, ‘Introduction: Methods in the Study of

“Non-Organized” Muslim Minorities’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 34:7, 2011, pp. 1,114–16.

53. Sara Silvestri, ‘Public Policies towards Muslims and the Institutionalisation of “Moderate” Islam in Europe: Some Critical Reflections’, in Anna Triandafyllidou (ed.), Muslims in 21st Century Europe: Structural and Cultural Perspectives (London: Routledge, 2010), pp. 45–58; Dilwar Hussain, ‘The Holy Grail of Muslims in Western Europe: Representation and Their Relationship with the State’, in Esposito and Burgat, Modernizing Islam, pp. 215–50.

54. Steven Vertovec, ‘Diaspora, Transnationalism and Islam: Sites of Change and Modes of Research’, in Allievi and Nielsen, Muslim Networks and Transnational Communities, pp. 312–26.

55. Jeldtoft, ‘“Non-Organized” Muslim Minorities’, pp. 1,134–6.56. Maréchal, Muslim Brothers in Europe, pp. 205–7.57. Safet Bectovic, ‘Studying Muslims and Constructing Islamic Identity’, Ethnic and

Racial Studies, 34:7, 2011, pp. 1,126–7.58. Jeldtoft and Nielsen, ‘Introduction’, p. 1, 115.59. Nathal M. Dessing et al., Everyday Lived Islam in Europe (Aldershot: Ashgate,

2014).60. Michael Herbert Fisher, The First Indian Author in English: Dean Mahomed (1759–

1851) in India, Ireland and England (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996).61. Michael H. Fisher (ed.), The Travels of Dean Mahomet: An Eighteenth-Century

Journey Through India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), pp. 136–7.62. Fisher, First Indian Author in English, pp. 297–301.63. Michael Oregon, ‘Moosajee Bhamjee: doctor and Labour TD’, The Irish Times, 2

August 2010, p. 6.64. Medb Ruane, ‘The Muslim-Irish prove to be a surprisingly moderate bunch’,

Irish Independent, 19 December 2006, p. 17.65. Dominic Fannon, ‘E-Interview Moosajee Bhamjee’, The Psychiatric Bulletin, 32:7,

July 2008, p. 280.66. Jenkins, ‘Rethinking Ethnicity’, p. 202.67. Jeppe Sindig Jensen, ‘Revisiting the Insider–Outsider Debate: Dismantling a

Pseudo-problem in the Study of Religion’, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 23:1, 2011, p. 31.

68. For an introduction see Russell T. McCutcheon (ed.), The Insider / Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion: A Reader (London and New York: Cassell, 1999).

69. Jensen, ‘Insider–Outsider Debate’, p. 30.70. Kim Knott, ‘Insider–Outsider Perspectives’, in John R. Hinnells (ed.), The

Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion (London: Routledge, 2005), p. 255.71. Ibid.

Introduction [ 23

72. For a discussion of gender dynamics in ethnographic research see Diane Bell, ‘The Context’, in Diane Bell et al. (eds), Gendered Fields: Women, Men and Ethnography (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 1–18.

73. For an overview see Mac Éinrí and White, ‘Immigration into the Republic of Ireland’, pp. 151–79.

74. Dermot Keogh, Jews in Twentieth-Century Ireland: Refugees, Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust (Cork: Cork University Press, 1998); Abel Ugba, Shades of Belonging: African Pentecostals in Twenty-first Century Ireland (Trenton, NJ, Asamara, Eritrea: Africa World Press, 2009); Abel Ugba, ‘Between God and Ethnicity: Pentecostal African Immigrants in 21st Century Ireland’, Irish Journal of Anthropology, 9, 2006, pp. 56–63; Abel Ugba, ‘African Pentecostals in Twenty-First Century Ireland’, in Bryan Fanning (ed.), Immigration and Social Change in Ireland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), pp. 168–84; Alessia Passarelli, ‘Integration, Migration, and Religion: Responses of the Church of Ireland’, Translocations: Migration and Social Change, 6:2, 2010, pp. 1–18.

75. Seán McLoughlin, ‘Religion, Religions and Diaspora’, in Ato Quayson and Girish Dawsani (eds), A Companion to Diaspora and Transnationalism (Malden and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), pp. 125–38; Seán McLoughlin and John Zavos, ‘Writing Religion in British Asian Diasporas’, Research Network From Diasporas to Multi-Locality: Writing British Asian Cities, Research Paper WBC 009, 2013. Available at https:/ / www.leeds.ac.uk/ writingbritishasiancities/ assets/ papers/ WBAC009.pdf (last accessed 27 April 2014). See also (forthcoming) Seán McLoughlin and John Zavos, ‘Writing Religion in British Asian Diasporas’, in Seán McLoughlin et al. (eds), Writing the City in British Asian Diasporas (London: Routledge, 2014).

76. Silvestri, ‘Public Policies Towards Muslims’, pp. 45–58; Hussain, ‘Holy Grail of Muslims in Western Europe’, pp. 215–50.

77. Andrea Wimmer and Nina Glick Schiller, ‘Methodological Nationalism and Beyond: Nation-State Building, Migration and Beyond’, Global Networks, 2:4, 2002, pp. 301–34.

78. Jocelyne Cesari, ‘Introduction’, in Cesari and McLoughlin, European Muslims and the Secular State, p. 1.

79. Ibid.80. See report of the Forum on Patronage and Pluralism in the Primary Sector, pub-

lished in 2012 available at http:/ / www.education.ie/ en/ Publications/ Policy-Reports/ fpp_report_advisory_group.pdf (last accessed 15 January 2014).

81. Rougier and Honohan, ‘Ireland’, p. 268.82. Tim Healy, ‘Sikh refused permission to wear turban in Garda Reserve’, Irish

Independent, 20 May 2013. Available at http:/ / www.independent.ie/ irish-news/ courts/ sikh-refused-permission-to-wear-turban-in-garda-reserve-29309444.html (last accessed 26 March 2014).

83. Fiona Dillon and Tom Brady, ‘Muslims target in “hate mail” campaign’, Irish Independent, 26 November 2013. Available at http:/ / www.independent.ie/ irish-news/ muslims-targeted-in-hate-mail-campaign-29783626.html (last acc -es sed 13 January 2014). See also James Carr and Amanda Haynes, ‘A Clash

24 ] Muslims in Ireland

of Racialisations: the Policing of “Race” and Anti-Muslim Racism in Ireland’, Critical Sociology, July 2013, as doi: 10.1177/ 0896920513492805.

84. Anthony M. Messina, ‘The Politics of Migration to Western Europe: Ireland in Comparative Perspective’, West European Politics, 32:1, 2009, pp. 14–16.