Why has sociology failed to analyse Islam
and develop curricula about
the lives of Muslims?
Max Farrar
Emeritus Professor, Leeds Metropolitan University
Abstract
This paper sets out some results of the Islamic Studies Network’s project on the
teaching of Islam in social science departments of British universities, led by C-SAP,
from 2009 to 2012. An appeal for case studies of existing teaching on the topic of
Islam and/or the lives of British Muslims was met with stony silence from
sociologists in sociology departments. The project was rescued by sociologists in
religious studies, by anthropologists, psychologists, philosophers and colleagues in
politics departments.
Two volumes of cases studies have been published.
Dissemination events similarly failed to attract sociologists. This paper speculates on
the possible reasons for this neglect. Is it sociology’s atheism, or its neglect of the
study of everyday life? Is this a sub-set of its reluctance to study and teach on ‘race’
and racism? Is it the institutional racism of higher education leading to underrepresentation of Muslim social scientists? (But why should the study of Islam be
expected to be their prerogative anyway?) Or is there an unconscious echo among
British sociologists of those who criticize Muslims for allegedly leading ‘parallel
lives’? The paper closes with an advocacy of an intervention in the debates about
Islam under the banner of ‘public sociology’.
Key words:
Islamic Studies Network, teaching, Islam, Muslims, religion, public sociology
ooo000ooo
The HEA Islamic Studies initiative
In 2007 the British Labour Government recognised Islamic Studies as a strategically
important subject and recommended the formation of a UK Islamic Studies Network
(ISN). Its policy came in the wake of a report it commissioned which criticised the
way in which Islam was being taught in British universities because it was based on
‘out-of-date and irrelevant issues’. The BBC reported: ‘Academic Ataullah Siddiqui's
review paints a picture of Islamic studies departments where the post-9/11 and 7 July
1
world has largely passed them by’. Welcoming the report, Higher Education Minister
Bill Rammell explained the government’s rationale for boosting the teaching of Islam
in British universities: ‘The effective and accurate delivery of Islamic studies within
our universities is important for a multitude of reasons including wider community
cohesion and preventing violent extremism in the name of Islam’.i At the same time,
Tony Blair (then Prime Minister) announced the project in these terms, according to
another BBC report: ‘British politicians must listen harder to the “calm voice of
moderation and reason” of the majority of the country's Muslims . . . "The voices of
extremism are no more representative of Islam than the use in times gone by of torture
to force conversion to Christianity represented the teachings of Christ." Signalling
Higher Education’s reluctance to be harnessed to such blatantly social engineering
purposes, Professor Drummond Bone, president of Universities UK, was quoted as
saying: ‘It will be for the relevant academic community to debate any future changes
to the teaching of Islamic studies’.ii
This Islamic Studies Network, as it came to be called, was established and led by the
Higher Education Academy (HEA). In total, the Higher Education Funding Council
for England, the Scottish Funding Council and the Higher Education Funding Council
for Wales contributed £750,000 of funding to support the Network. It was to produce
a series of scholarly activities and publications, focused on teaching and learning,
between 2009 and 2012.
Islamic Studies is used by the Network as an umbrella term for the academic study of
Islam, Muslim cultures and societies and Islamic knowledge through a variety of
subject areas and perspectives. This includes, but is not limited to, those working in:
2
Religious Studies, Theology, Language Studies and Linguistics, International
Relations, Law, Finance, Management and Business Studies, History, Literature and
Textual Studies, Security Studies, Economics, Education, Science, Philosophy, Art,
Media Studies, Cultural Studies, Politics, Anthropology and Sociology, and the
interdisciplinary Area Studies programmes, for example those associated with Middle
East or South Asian Studies. The ISN is coordinated by a project team drawn from
across the Higher Education Academy including representatives from five Subject
Centres, and overseen by an Advisory Board.iii
Max Farrar and Malcolm Todd were appointed in 2009 by the HEA Centre for
Sociology, Anthropology and Politics (C-SAP) to coordinate the social science
contribution to the ISN. C-SAP’s aim was to collate existing work by social scientists
on the topics of Islam and the lives of Muslims, and to encourage further curricular
development in this field. To that end, Max Farrar and Malcolm Todd produced two
volumes of case studies (2010, 2011), setting out in considerable detail how social
scientists taught specific topics. In each volume there were ten case studies.iv A
dissemination event took place in 2011. C-SAP was wound up in 2011, and the social
science work of the ISN is now managed directly by the HEA. During 2011-2012,
two ‘expert seminars’ for social scientists on Islam and Muslims’ lives took place
place,v and web-based teaching and learning materials on these topics are being
assembled. Attendance at free public events in London, Birmingham and Sheffield
varied between ten and 26, with no attendee being a full-time member of staff of a
sociology department.
3
The study of Islam within social science curricula in UK universities
This paper argues that the response of sociologists in British universities to
researching and teaching about Islam and the lives of Muslims is lamentable. The
wealth of material in the field of Islam and Muslims’ lives is hardly addressed within
the sociology curriculum. Sociologists are manifestly neglecting this area of study, to
the detriment not only of their students’ education, but also to the public life of the
nation.
The evidence for this statement comes from a study by Lisa Bernasek and Gary Bunt.
They examined randomly selected web-sites of 110 of the 156 higher education
providers in the UK to establish how many modules in how many discipline areas
contained some study of Islam. They found 1,101 relevant modules. As expected, the
predominant discipline area was religious studies (28% of all modules). Next came
politics, with 17% of all modules (220), close to history with 16%. Sociology had 5%
(65 modules), while anthropology had 1% (20 modules) (Bernasek and Bunt 2010 pp.
14-15). These researchers found that 66% of these modules were taught at 12% of
higher education institutions, and that the great majority of teaching relating to Islam
took place in pre-1992 universities, with the Russell Group universities being pre-eminent among these. A handful of new universities taught fewer than ten modules
relating to Islam; none taught more than that (Bernasek and Bunt 2010 p. 12).
My further inspection of the data analysed by Bernasek and Bunt revealed that social
science modules referring to Islam were often cross-disciplinary, with module titles
such as those shown in Table 1.vi (The full list of social science modules which
4
embrace Islam and Muslim societies is included in Appendix C, as Table 2 of Volume
One of the Case Studies (Farrar 2010).)
Table 1: Examples of titles of social science modules referring to Islam and
Muslims, with discipline areas, taught in UK universities

Race, Racism and Cultural Identity

Western Civilization

Islam

Ethnic Diversity and Racism in Britain

Multiculturalism in theory and practice

Postcolonialism and Muslim Studies

Islam in the west: the politics of co-‐existence (Religious Studies/Sociology)

Harems, homes and streets: Gender and space

in Middle Eastern literatures

Muslims in the West

Social Impact of Sufism in the Muslim World (Religious Studies/Sociology)

Muslims in Britain and the Concept of Citizenship

Socialization, Conformity and Deviance

Ethnography of a Selected Region -‐ Near & Middle East
(Sociology )
(History/Sociology)
(Religious Studies/Sociology)
(Sociology)
(Politics/sociology)
(Sociology)
(Sociology)
(Politics/sociology
(Politics/sociology)
(Sociology)
(Anthropology, sociology, politics)

Islamic Law and the Modern World

Religion and Belief in the Modern World (Economics/Sociology)

Anthropology of Islam

Anthropology of Religion

Anthropology of the Middle East
(Law/Sociology)
(Anthropology)
(Religious Studies)
(Political and legal Anthropology)
5

Contemporary Middle East Politics

The Islamic Revival: from 18th-century Reform to

20th-century Political Action

Democracy and Authoritarianism: India and Pakistan

Politics in a plural state: Pakistan

Religions, Cultures and Civilizations in International Relations
(Politics)
(Politics)
(Politics)
(Politics)
(Politics/Religious Studies)

The Middle East in Global Order

Arab-‐Israeli Conflict
(Politics)

The Politics of Islamism
(Politics)

Political Islam In Global Politics (Politics)

International Relations of the Modern Middle East

Islam & Muslims in History and Society (History/Politics/Religious Studies)

Islam and Muslims and International Relations: contemporary issues and
twenty-first century challenges
(Politics)
(Politics)
(Politics/Religious Studies)
As the titles indicate, some of the modules are specifically about Islam, but many
appear because the module descriptors indicate that there is some reference to Islam.
Usually, where the title indicates that the module is about Islam, the whole of the
programme is devoted to Islam and related issues. But the data shows that quite often
only 5% to 30% of the module is devoted to matters Islamic in sociology and
anthropology modules, while it sometimes rises to 60% in politics modules. The dataset also provides information on the variety of departments in which social science
material relating to Islam is presented. Sociology, anthropology and politics with an
Islamic inflection is to be found in departments with a wide variety of titles including
6
International Studies and Social Sciences; Politics, International Studies and
Philosophy; Human Sciences, Sociology and Policy Studies; and Social Science,
Media and Cultural Studies. The material available on-line includes either module
descriptors or web-sites on which detailed information about each module can be
found; thus there is a rich source here for colleagues wishing to develop new modules
referring to Islam within their existing social science degree courses. Unfortunately,
very few sociologists seem to be sufficiently interested in this topic to find out what is
available.
The titles in Table 1 give a flavour of the rich variety of issues that could form part of
a sociology curriculum in any British university. Particularly when sociology is
willing to drop its ring-fenced attitude and welcome intersections with politics,
anthropology, cultural studies and history, the potential for exciting work on Islam
and Muslims is vast. Yet Bernasek and Bunt (2010) could find only 65 sociology
modules, most of which were jointly run with other departments, and almost all of
them in old universities. (This fact is specially ironic, given that the vast majority of
British Muslim students are in new universities, and these students provide not only
an excellent resource for lively teaching, but might be the most keen to study Islam
and the lives of Muslims.)
Over a two-year period, Farrar and Todd appealed to social scientists to provide
examples of the teaching they were doing in this field. While the fee they offered for
each case Study was not large (£250), there was a small financial incentive. If
organizing sociologists is like herding cats, obtaining information from them about
their teaching on Islam and Muslims is like pulling cats’ teeth.
7
Seventeen social scientists contributed the following topics to the two volumes of
case studies. Table 2 sets out the titles of the modules taught, and their discipline
areas.
Table 2: Titles of Case Studies in Farrar/Todd (2011, 2012)

Fieldwork at a Mosque with the Bristol Muslim Cultural Association
(sociology).

Muslims, Multiculturalism and the State (sociology/religious studies).

Ethnography of Muslim Societies (anthropology/cultural studies/religious
studies).

Morality and Belief in Islam (anthropology).

Anthropology of Islam/Muslim Societies (anthropology).

The Inspirational Night Dream in Islam: from the Qur’an to al-Qaeda and the
Taliban (anthropology).

The concept of Islamic civil society in Iran (politics).

Marriage, families and Islam (sociology/anthropology).

A Community of Inquiry: talking to Muslims (philosophy)

How Muslims and Christians understand concepts of faith today: a case study
on the work of Ali ibn Abi Talib and Soren Kierkgaard (religious
studies/philosophy).

Bringing Islam and Religion (back) into Social Policy Teaching (social
policy).
8

Developing undergraduate students’ skills in qualitative data analysis through
the exploration of on-line Hajj diaries (psychology).

The Messages Behind Imam al-Husayn’s Martyrdom: How Shi‘i Muslims
Commemorate the Tragedy of Karbala (sociology, anthropology, history,
theology).

Forced Marriage: an issue for social workers (social work, law).

International Relations of The Modern Middle East (international relations,
politics).

Seminar on ‘War on Terror - New Racism or Security? (sociology, social
policy, criminology).

Western Studies on the Prophet Muhammad (p.b.u.h.) (religious studies).

Using of Wiki for Teaching ‘Islam and Modernity’ Module (international
politics).

Seminar on Islam and Sexual and Reproductive Health Policymaking (health
sciences).

Families, sexuality and citizenship in Islam (sociology, anthropology,
politics).
Only one was classed as sociology pure and simple; five case studies involved
sociological analysis. The response from sociology to our appeal for information on
their modules was pathetic.
9
Why has British sociology failed to analyse Islam and the lives of
Muslims?
What follows is a series of speculations on the reasons why sociology has so
neglected this area of study, based on my short (twenty year) career as a sociologist at
Leeds Metropolitan University, and as a member of the BSA’s Race & Ethnicity
Study Group.
1) Sociology’s atheism
Sociology was produced in response to modernity, and modernity is inextricable from
the de-institutionalising of religion. As the Western world was ‘disenchanted’ by the
structural force of capitalism, sociology contributed ideologically. While Durkheim
demonstrated how essential religion was in providing solidarity as modernity tore
social bonds asunder, the impression that religion was a social fact of a bygone age
was unmistakable. Marx’s important characterization of religion as the sigh of the
oppressed and the soul of soul-less times picks up on the positive functions of
religion, but goes on, famously, to liken religion to an opiate. Weber saw
Protestantism’s affinity with capitalism (and said Eastern religions were so torpid that
they inhibited social and economic progress), but argued that Christianity was
incapable of resisting the juggernaut of technical rationality. These mixed messages
about religion’s place in modern society reverberate in today’s sociology –
particularly in the view that mass social occasions like football matches and stadium
music events, like religious worship, have ‘collective effervescence’ effects – but it
could be argued that post-modernity’s destruction of all meta-narratives has put paid
to religion within the discipline, even among those who do not call themselves post-
10
modernists. If sociology discounts, and then seems to disavow religion, it must be
hard for religious sociologists to feel at home in sociology departments. It is by no
means necessary to be religious to study religion, or the lives of religious people, but
there is no doubt that sociology’s curricula hardly includes religion. Students, in my
experience, rarely mention religion, and when they do, their exceptionality is marked.
Thus, I was once subjected to an angry tirade from a Rastafraian mature student who
thought that I (and the rest of the staff in a lecture series on modernity) were
disrespectful to religion. On another occasion, a student, who carried his guitar with
him wherever he went, asked for permission to play to the class. His rousing Christian
song was greeted politely, but with visible embarrassment.
2) Sociology’s neglect of the study of everyday life and its fetishisation of theory
Despite the disenchantment of the modern Western world, despite the undermining of
the certainties offered by modernity’s other big social theories, despite man seeming
to live quite happily by bread alone (combined with some circuses), religion is not
only an important force in Western society, but is absolutely central in the rapidly
modernising societies of the South and East. Islam is the world’s largest religion, and
is the most rapidly growing religion in the West. In 2009, there were 1.57 billion
Muslims (23% of the world’s population). By 2030 just over a quarter of the world’s
population will be Muslim.vii But even if sheer numbers do not impress – sociology is
rightly sceptical about the facts speaking for themselves – the important developments
in British society which began with the imperial domination of the Indian subcontinent, and developed rapidly within the metropolitan centre as South Asians,
many of whom were Muslims, arrived here in the 1960s and 70s, would seem to be
11
worthy of sociological analysis. When I studied sociology at Leeds University from
1968 to 1971 I was at one of the few university sociology departments which took
pride in being a centre for theory (probably thanks to the presence of John Rex on its
staff from 1949 to 1962). Yet even here the curriculum was well populated with
empirical modules, including one on the sociology of religion. When I taught
sociology at Leeds Met University in the 1990s and early 2000s, however, theory was
so dominant that ‘the sociology of modern Britain’, one of the few empirical modules,
was relegated to a part-timer (until I offered to take it over). As an external examiner
in this period it was clear that most sociology departments were overwhelmed by
theorists (though few were as top-heavy as Leeds Met). ‘Theory’ almost seems to be
the mark of the ‘real man’ in sociology. While religion cannot be analysed properly
without application of theory, it is a subject area which demands to be taught with
detailed attention to the everyday lives of religious, and secular, people. Yet
‘everyday life’ seems to be the reserve of disciplines which owe much to sociology,
but are separate – criminology, religious studies, media/cultural studies, for example –
or has become associated with specialist areas, such as the sociology of medicine or
education.
Two points motivate my view that ‘everyday life’ has to be at the centre of the
sociological enterprise. One is the seemingly obvious point that society, the object of
our study, is self-evidently composed of the myriad social relations through which
humans assemble society. Structure must be a central issue for sociology, but so must
agency. Students, in particular, are drawn to sociology because they are fascinated by
the variety of social practices they experience in daily life and encounter on paper and
on screen. My guess is that this curiousity about their fellow humans is also what
12
drew most academics to the discipline in the first place. Why that imaginative
encounter recedes in importance for so many of them is worth thinking about – on
another occasion. The second reason for putting ‘everyday life’ at the heart of our
discipline is more theoretical. It is well summed up in the obituary to John Rex which
appeared in the BSA’s magazine Network in 2012. Robert Moore, his long-time
friend and collaborator, wrote that John Rex was:
a sociologist for whom the interplay of evidence and theory was a process of
continual challenge and discovery – every encounter with people in
Sparkbrook [the area of Birmingham which he and Moore memorably studied
in the early 1960s] (however trivial) or in the city hall, every discussion of my
field notes, was both the occasion for theorization and the incentive to gather
more data.
(Moore 2012 p. 38)
Rex published Key Problems in Sociological Theory in 1961, and it formed the
foundations of the critique of American functionalist and systems theory that I learned
as an undergraduate, so Rex’s commitment to everyday life cannot be dismissed as
anti-theory. He could be described as a left-Weberian; like Weber, and Marx for that
matter, what people actually do is the subject for social analysis.
3) Sociology’s reluctance to study and teach on ‘race’ and racism: (a) its
emotional blindness
Why, in particular, does sociology pay so little attention to what black and brown
people actually do, and have done to them? Black people, as Peter Fryer (1984)
13
memorably demonstrated, have been a visible presence in Britain since Roman times.
Imperialism and colonialism, the structural basis for racism, has been at the centre of
the British polity since, arguably, Elizabethan times, and, unarguably, since the late
Nineteenth century. The issue of racism has been a central trope of public affairs since
the 1950s. Throughout the 1960s the civil rights movement in the USA was
frequently on British TV screens and the front pages of our newspapers. As a
schoolboy in the mid-1960s I read the novels of James Baldwin and listened to Black
Power speakers at Hyde Park Corner in London. Yet, when I was an undergraduate,
despite the influence of John Rex on our curriculum, my tutor was openly surprised
when I said I wanted to do a seminar on Eldridge Cleaver’s incendiary essays
collected as Soul on Ice (1968). Cleaver became a member of the Black Panther Party,
whose mélange of black nationalism, Marxism and Maoism had inspired my
developing political and social analysis of racism in Britain. ‘Race’ was utterly absent
from the teaching programme in British universities at this time, even though there
were several important studies available of the black presence in the UK which would
have formed the basis of several courses (not least the work of John Rex, Robert
Moore and Michael Banton).viii To this day, the sociology of race relations, as the
pioneers would call it, or the sociological analysis of racism, as those influenced by
Robert Miles would describe it, or even the analysis of racialized identities, to use a
starting point developed by sociologists influenced by cultural studies, are very thinly
dispersed across British universities.
Why are British sociologists so reluctant to teach in this field? A conventionally
sociological reason is discussed in the next section, but here I want to stray into a field
which sociology seems to think is beyond its pale. I suggest that white sociologists,
14
who unfortunately are massively in the majority in almost all departments, are
reluctant to teach modules on contemporary race relations because they are
emotionally blocked on this issue. Anecdotally, I can cite a colleague of mine, a little
older than me but much more experienced as a teacher, and incredibly well informed
on world affairs, saying that she would never broach any race issues in a lecture or
seminar for fear of getting it wrong and upsetting the class. In my own experience,
having taught on these issues throughout my twenty years in HE, and for five years in
the mid 1970s in an FE college (Farrar 2006), there are fraught moments when black
students (quite legitimately) challenge your authority, or when your knowledge is
incomplete, and even when racism erupts in the class-room (a painting and decorating
apprentice of Indian origin threatened a white student with a broken bottle). So I
understand white colleagues’ anxieties, but I would make two suggestions. One is that
they examine themselves on the sources of that anxiety. This is a complex area which
cannot be entered here. The other (less interesting, but much easier) possibility is that
they at least treat this subject area in the same way that they treat any other course that
is regarded as necessary for the completion of the degree. They simply go into the
library, research it, develop their teaching programme, and bottle up their anxiety.
Why this is not seen to be a necessary task – why it does not feature prominently in
course planning and course review meetings – takes us back, I would argue, into the
murky realm of the white unconscious.
To pursue this I want to ask why – given the enormous world-wide attention over the
past ten years on the issue of murder carried out in the name of God – we could not
find a single sociologist willing to share his or her teaching on Islam, Islamism or the
lives of Muslims affected by the so-called ‘war on terror’. No-one, it seems, had this
15
degree of interest in the lives of all Muslims in the UK and beyond. While the neglect
of the study of the operations of race and racism in everyday life could perhaps be
explained by colleagues believing they lack the competence, the study of Islam,
Islamism and the myriad of policies and practices which have emerged to contain the
not entirely imagined threat by the Al Qaeda network could certainly be treated as
normal scholarly exercise by anyone who knows their way around a library. So what
is blocking that visit to the library? What is blocking that discussion with the British
Muslims who, thankfully, though in pitifully small numbers, are now to be found
among our students and among our staff?
I hazard the guess that it is because our Muslim population is still seen by white
sociologists – just as it is for the majority of the British population – as utterly
foreign, utterly Other. This was to some extent true of our population of African,
Caribbean and mixed descent, but this ‘othering’ has always been more marked for
those Asians who arrived in the UK from rural and working class backgrounds in the
sub-continent. While significant sections of the Muslim population came from more
prosperous and better educated backgrounds in Africa and the metropolitan centres in
India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and were thus welcomed – this might be too strong a
word – by at least some of the white British, at least in professional workplaces, the
betel-nut chewing Muslim workers were partitioned off both at work and in the lowincome parts of British towns and cities. For me, that ‘othering’ was reduced when I
worked with Asian migrant labourers in an antiquated iron-foundry in the Midlands in
1971. Those men immediately established what we had in common across the
boundaries of class and colour with their frequently-asked question “Get plenty pushpush Max?” A couple of years later, it was possible to make some political links with
16
militant African-Caribbeans in Chapeltown’s community politics in the 1970s, and
even with some Sikhs, but it was beyond my ability to make contact with the Bengalis
and Pakistanis in that period. In the1980s contact became possible, but only because I
worked with educated British Pakistani and Bengalis who built bridges into the
working class. Even then, I too felt distinctly out of my depth in those situations,
bounded not so much by my colour, but by my lack of language skills and my sense
that their culture (if not their values) was so different from anything I had encountered
before.
If this was a sociological problem, it was also psychological. The Self-Other diad is
complex even when there is cultural alignment; when both parties have historicallyembedded sociological boundaries to negotiate, anxiety rises, misunderstandings
proliferate and the psychological impulse to withdraw from the encounter is strong.
But that assumes that the encounter is taking place. My sense is that most white
sociologists have consciously or unconsciously ensured that they never get closer to a
working class Muslim than the occasional visit to a corner shop or supermarket. In
such places, most treat the counter as an impregnable barrier to meaningful exchange,
making it almost impossible for the type of personal conversation that allows mutual
understanding – and the psychological comfort that provides – to develop. There is a
reflection of this problem, I believe, in the obsessive refrains of ‘self-segregation’ and
‘parallel lives’ that emerged after the so-called Northern riots of largely Muslim
youths in the summer or 2001. ‘Self-segregation’ can only be given currency in a
climate where sociology’s analysis of the structural processes that have driven lowincome dark-skinned people to the margins of towns has been completely ignored.
‘Parallel lives’ also seems to place blame upon a section of the population which has
17
never been properly included in the public life of the nation. While one or two social
scientists (notably the geographer Debbie Phillips (2007), and the demographers
Finney and Simpson (2009),) have challenged this sleight-of-hand concept, sociology
has been largely silent on these issues. The chief publicist for these ideas, Ted Cantle,
became a professor on the basis of his muddled investigation into the 2001 ‘Northern
riots’ (Cantle 2001). He, like most of his team, clearly had no intimate knowledge of
the Muslims whose lives were indicted in that report. Psychologically, it seems to me,
unconscious processes have contributed to the segregation of white sociologists from
the lives of Muslims; their absence from this field can only partly be explained by
sociological factors.
(b) Institutional racism in HE
But of course there are sociological factors at work here. Easily obtained statistics
show that in 2009-10, 7.6% of academic staff in British universities were of ‘Asian’
background.ix It might be hoped that sociology departments would reflect or improve
upon this overall percentage. But even this statistic masks the situation of those
British Asians of Pakistani and Bangladeshi descent (these are quite likely to the
Muslims). At my request, the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) supplied
more detailed figures. According to its 2010/11 Staff Record, there were 20
sociologists of Pakistani background, and ten of Bangladeshi background in British
universities, O.7% of all sociology staff. Thus an extremely small number and
proportion of sociologists would seem to be from Muslim cultures. (Of course this is a
notoriously difficult field for statistical analysis. There may well be some whiteskinned Muslim sociologists, some Muslim sociologists from other Asian
18
backgrounds, and some of African and African-Caribbean heritage in British
universities.) Detailed figures – which show that ‘Asian’ sociologists constitute 4.4%,
rather lower than for the sector as a whole – are in Table 3.
Table 3: Higher Education Statistics Agency figures for UK University sociology
staff according to their ethnicity
Academic
discipline
Ethnicity
Sociology
All staff
% sociology
White
4310
314520
Black
85
8025
2.0%
Asian or Asian British - Indian
70
8040
1.6%
Asian or Asian British - Pakistani
20
2310
0.5%
Bangladeshi
10
895
0.2%
Other Asian background
90
11630
2.1%
Other (including mixed)
125
8470
2.9%
90
9220
2.1%
125
18675
2.9%
4920
381790
Asian or Asian British -
Information refused
Unknown
Total
19
Source: Matthew Tetlow, HESA, email dated 16 April 2012. Data based on the 2010/11 Staff
Record. For definitions see
http://sis.hesa.ac.uk/projects/on-going/Electronic_Publications/staff/2010-11/definitions.html
An edited collection of essays provides much analysis of the way that institutional
racism works in Higher Education (Law, Phillips and Turney 2004). There are
processes other than institutional racism in HE which are keeping the proportion low
– including the class, as well as race factors which make for low attainment of
children of Bangladeshi and Pakistani background in our schools, as well as the
understandably instrumental aspirations of those Muslims who study in HE which
might well steer them against sociology. But there can be few older white sociologists
who have not witnessed racism against black and Asian colleagues, and for all their
professed liberalism, universities are not always hospitable places, especially for
devout Muslims.
Furthermore, studying, and teaching about Islam and the lives of Muslims cannot be
the specific province of Muslims. Clearly, Muslim sociologists, like sociologists of
any other religion, can and do study whatever interests them, and that will often be
well beyond any parameters derived from their religion. As we have seen, white
sociologists such as Banton, Rex, Moore and Miles have made important
contributions to the study of race and ethnicity, and there are acknowledged experts
on Islam in British universities who are white and (so far as I know) not Muslim. So
there is no reason why, even if institutional racism is reducing the numbers of
Muslim sociologists, sociology departments are not running courses on Islam and the
lives of Muslims. This field of study, especially in its early phases, benefits
enormously by having among its leading figures people of Islamic faith or culture,
just as the study of race was pushed forward when one or two black sociologists
20
entered in the 1970s and 80s. For this reason it is a matter or urgency that all barriers
to the recruitment of qualified Muslim sociologists are removed. An increased
number will have its greatest impact if it can stimulate non-Muslim colleagues to take
up this area of study. However, there is nothing to stop sociologists already employed
in universities from developing their teaching in this field, whatever their colour or
culture.
Public, interpretive sociology and Islam
Finally, sociology would benefit from recalling an important tradition in our
discipline advocating our potential role as public intellectuals, who might then
intervene in the national debate over Islam and the lives of Muslims. Elsewhere I have
advocated that sociology should embrace both Bauman’s early call for an interpretive
(rather than a legislative) sociology, and Burawoy’s call for public sociology (Farrar
2009). One antecedent to Bauman and Burawoy’s thoughts on the proper political
role of sociologists, rarely cited these days, is Karl Mannheim (1893-1947).
Mannheim was Hungarian by birth, but became a professor of sociology at the Goethe
university in Frankfurt, before fleeing from the Nazis. He arrived in Britain, as a
refugee, in 1933 and obtained a lectureship at the London School of Economics.
György Lukács was his mentor in Hungary, and Norbert Elias and Hans Gerth were
his assistants in Frankfurt. His best-known work, Ideology and Utopia (Mannheim
1936/1960), was (as its sub-title put it) ‘an introduction to the sociology of
knowledge’. Mannheim has some very interesting things to say about the social
position of intellectuals, and their potential political role in society. He sees us as a
21
‘relatively classless stratum’ (emphasis as in the original) and then employs his
colleague Alfred Weber’s term ‘socially unattached’ to describe us (Mannheim
1936/1960 p. 137). We are distinguished from other social strata by the education we
have acquired (as well as coming originally from a variety of class positions), and this
education – requiring us relentlessly to examine every narrow, class-based perspective
– allows us to avoid being trapped in the taken-for-granted world-views held by the
rest of the population. While Bauman (1987) was careful to limit our role to the
elaboration of these points of view, merely offering interpretations rather than
adjudications, Mannheim suggests that intellectuals might be able to discover ‘the
position from which a total perspective would be possible. Thus they might play the
part of watchmen in what would otherwise be pitch-black night’ (Mannheim
1936/1960 p. 143). He raises the possibility that intellectuals could produce a
scientific politics, with all the knowledge-totalizing potential that the natural sciences
offer. Such pretensions have, fortunately, been shattered, but the interesting issue for
this paper is Mannheim’s starting-point: that knowledge is inevitably partisan and that
intellectuals have a crucial political role in society. I follow Bauman in restricting our
role to interpretation, but I acknowledge that my interpretations are value-laden, and
are not politically neutral (thus I dispute the notion of an ‘objective social science’).
As Burawoy puts it, public sociology ‘strikes up a dialogic relation between
sociologist and public in which the agenda of each is brought to the table, in which
each adjusts to the other’ (Burawoy 2005 p. 9). Echoing C Wright Mills, Burawoy
says that public sociology makes ‘public issues out of private troubles, and thus
regenerat[es] sociology’s moral fiber’ (Burawoy 2005 p. 5).
22
If Mannheim is correct in positioning intellectuals as a relatively open social group
(bearing in mind the problem of institutional racism mentioned above), able to
examine its own biases, and able to offer a politically relevant analysis for the public
to consider, surely British sociology is well placed to make a useful contribution to
the understanding of Islam, how our Muslim citizens conduct their lives, and how
secular citizens, and other religious groups interact with them. Sociologists will want
to avoid subsuming themselves in governments’ agenda (as outlined in the quotes
from Blair and Rammell at the start of this paper, or in Prime Minister Cameron’s
(2011) more recent statements about muscular liberalism and violent extremism).
Nevertheless, at a time of heightened interest in the political mobilizations that have
emerged under the flag of Islam (ranging across the Sufis, Salafis, liberals and violent
jihadis) – and as governments respond with a haphazard deployment of sociological
concepts such as social cohesion, citizenship, women’s roles and identity – the time is
clearly right for us to step up to the sociological plate and do some serious research,
develop relevant teaching programmes, and fill the yawning gap in the public sphere
for informed comment. In short, we need a public, pedagogic sociology of Islam.
23
Bibliography
BERNASEK, LISA & BUNT, GARY (2010) Islamic Studies: provision in the UK.
Report to HEFCE by the Higher Education Academy, York: HEA Available at:
http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/rdreports/2010/rd06_10/
BAUMAN, ZYGMUNT (1987) Legislators and Interpreters, Cambridge: Polity.
BURAWOY, MICHAEL (2005) ‘For Public Sociology’ American Sociological
Review, 2005, vol. 70 (February: 4–28).
CAMERON, DAVID (2011) Prime Minister’s speech on radicalisation and Islamic
extremism at the Munich Security Conference, 5th February 2011.
http://www.number10.gov.uk/news/speeches-and-transcripts/2011/02/pms- speech-atmunich-security-conference-60293 Accessed 23.02.2011
CANTLE, TED (2001) Community Cohesion, London: HMSO.
FARRAR, MAX (2010) The Study of Islam within Social Science Curricula in UK
Universities – Case Studies Volume 1, The Higher Education Academy: Centre for
Sociology, Anthropology, Politics (C-SAP). Available at
http://www.islamicstudiesnetwork.ac.uk/assets/documents/islamicstudies/Max_Farrar
_Case_Studies.pdf Accessed 23.05.2012
FARRAR, MAX AND TODD, MALCOLM (2011) The Study of Islam within Social
Science Curricula in UK Universities – Case Studies Volume 2, The Higher Education
Academy: Centre for Sociology, Anthropology, Politics (C-SAP).
Available at
http://www.islamicstudiesnetwork.ac.uk/islamicstudiesnetwork/resources/display?id=
/resources/alldetails/islamicstudies/ISN_Case_Study_Vo2
Accessed 23.05.2012
FARRAR, MAX (2009) ‘Cracking the Ivory Tower: proposing “an interpretive public
sociology”’ in Burnett, Judith, Jeffers, Syd and Thomas, Graham (eds.) (2009) New
Social Connections: Sociology’s Subjects and Objects, London: Palgrave. Available
at:
http://www.maxfarrar.org/writing/publicsociology
FARRAR, MAX (2006) ‘Teaching “Race” - Thirty Years of the Changing Same’ in
Spencer, S. & Todd, M. (Eds) (2006) Reflections on Practice: Teaching 'Race' and
Ethnicity in Further and Higher Education. Birmingham: Higher Education
Academy, C-SAP. Available at http://www.maxfarrar.org.uk/writing/teaching/thirtyyears-of-the-“changing-same”-–-four-lessons-in-teaching-race/ Accessed 6.04.12
FINNEY, NISSA & SIMPSON, LUDI (2009) Sleepwalking into Segregation –
Challenging Myths of Race and Migration, Bristol: Policy Press.
24
FRYER, PETER (1984) Staying Power – The History of Black People in Britain,
London: Pluto Press.
LAW, IAN, PHILLIPS, DEBBIE AND TURNEY, LAURA (eds.) (2004)
Institutional racism in Higher Education, Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books
MANNHEIM, KARL (1936/1960) Ideology and Utopia, London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul.
MOORE, ROBERT (2012) ‘Professor John Rex 1925-2011’ Network [Magazine of
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25
Endnotes
‘Teaching of Islam is out-dated’ BBC News report (4.06.07) Available at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6713373.stm Accessed 4.04.12
ii ‘Blair in moderate Muslims appeal’ BBC news (4.06.07)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6718235.stm Accessed 4.04.12
i
The excellent HEA ISN web-site is at
http://www.islamicstudiesnetwork.ac.uk/islamicstudiesnetwork/home
Accessed 4.04.12.
iii
The two volumes of Case Studies are available on-line at the Islamic Studies
Network’s site:
Volume 1:
http://www.islamicstudiesnetwork.ac.uk/assets/documents/islamicstudies/Ma
x_Farrar_Case_Studies.pdf
iv
Volume 2:
http://www.islamicstudiesnetwork.ac.uk/islamicstudiesnetwork/resources/dis
play?id=/resources/alldetails/islamicstudies/ISN_Case_Study_Vo2
Accessed 23.05.2012
For a list of all ISN events, including the social science events on 9th December
2011 and 18th May 2012, see here
http://www.islamicstudiesnetwork.ac.uk/islamicstudiesnetwork/events/pastevents Accessed 23.05.2012
v
The data base is available on the HEA ISN web-site at
http://www.islamicstudiesnetwork.ac.uk/islamicstudiesnetwork/resources/dis
play?id=/resources/alldetails/islamicstudies/IS_modules_database
Accessed 4.04.12
vi
See the Pew forecast at http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/01/27/2-2-billionworlds-muslim-population-doubles/ Accessed 4.04.12.
vii
I write more on this in a forthcoming issue of the journal Ethnic and Racial
Studies. The work that should have formed the basis of teaching programmes in
British universities in the 1960s includes BANTON, MICHAEL (1955) The
Coloured Quarter – Negro immigrants in an English city, London: Cape;
REX, JOHN AND MOORE, ROBERT (1967) Race, Community and Conflict – a
study of Sparkbrook, London: Oxford University Press; and ROSE, EJB and
associates Colour and Citizenship – A Report on British Race Relations, London:
Oxford University Press.
viii
Statistic from the HESA web-site at
http://www.hesa.ac.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1969&It
emid=161 Accessed 6.04.12
ix
26
WORD COUNT
6,002 including abstract, not including Bibliog (319) or endnotes (198)
Max Farrar
Leeds
7th April 2012
maximfarrar@gmail.com
www.maxfarrar.org.uk
27