Britain’S Rural Muslims

This book examines the relationship between the integration of Muslim migrant communities and rurality in Britain. It uses the county of Wiltshire as a case study, and charts both local authority policy and Muslims communities’ personal experiences of migration and integration across the post-1960s period. It draws upon both previously unexplored archival material and oral histories, and addresses a range of topics and themes, including entrepreneurship, housing, education, multiculturalism, social cohesion, and religious identities, needs and practices. It challenges the notion that local authorities in more rural areas have been inactive, and even disinterested, in devising and implementing migration, integration and diversity policies, and sheds light on small and dispersed Muslim communities that have traditionally been written out of Britain’s immigration history. In doing so, it reveals that there has long existed a rural dimension to Muslim integration in Britain.