Religious Identity, Citizenship, and Welfare: The Case of Muslims in Britain Waqar I. Ahmad and Charles Husband In addressing the situation of Muslim communities in Britain, it is apparent that one of the major frameworks for understanding their situa- tion has been the notion of "Citizenship," for citizenship is a means of identifying critical aspects of the relationship between the individual and the state. Following Bottomore (1992), we may make a useful distinction between "formal" and "substantive" citizenship: the former being Simply defined as "membemhip in a nation state" and the latter as "an array of civil, political, and especially social rights, involving also some kind of participation in the business of government'' (ibid.). There are a number of salient points that should be made in relation to examining the implications of this distinction. First, we may note that the legal definition of citizenship is always informed by the cultural and ethnic agendas historically rooted in the foundation myths of each nation- state. Thus in France, for example, just as the revolutionary iconography of the Tricolor, Marianne, and Liberty, Equality, and Fratemity continue to serve contemporary national sentiments (Hobbawm 1983), so today French legal framing of formal citizenship is infused with its revolu- tionary roots: La tradition centraliste franpise interdit la reconnaissance dans l'espace public des 'communautk', au sens oii elles existent au lb.s-Unis. (Schnapper 1990). Consequently, in France neither ethnicity nor religion are formally rele- vant m determining access to citizenship. Waqar I. Ahmad is a lecturer in health studies, and Charles Husband is a professor of social analysis. Both are affiliated with the Department of Social and Economic Studies, University of Bradford, Bradford, England. 218 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 102 Germany, on the other hand, is very much an ethnic state with citi- zenship conceived of in relation to an ethnic consciousness of kind. As Bottomore puts it: Because national feeling developed before the nation-state . . . the German nation . . . was conceived not as the bearer of universal political values, but as an organic cultutal, linguistic, or racial community-as a Volksgemeinschaft. (Bottomore 1992). A powerful idea of shad ethnic identity is at the core of German na- tional identity and is therefore reflected in its citizenship policy. Britain, on the other hand, with its self-image of monarchical conti- nuity and historic parliamentary democracy had, until the 1981 Nation- ality Act, no legal concept of citizenship, since Commonwealth nationals and members had a common allegiance to the monarch. That demotic, nonethnic concept of allegiance to the state was in effect eroded by immi- gtation legislation which, in seeking to exclude nonwhite immigrants from 1962 onwatds, p r o g d v e l y moved to defme blood links as an es- sential criterion of rights to entry and settlement in Britain (Gordon 1989). During the Thatcher era, this was heightened and focused by the neo-conservative tacialized nationalism promoted by the new right in England (Gilmore 1987; Husband 1991). The Falklands War, the "Iron Lady" resisting European assaults upon British sovereignty, explicit anti- immigrant rhetoric, and an attempt to define and assert the primacy of English-British culture in schools through the 1988 Education Act were part of a process to make "traditional" British values salient. British legis- lation and sentiments have moved citizenship policy from an open demo- tic concept of citizenship towards one based on an ethnic-state concept. Second, Britain and other European countries ended postwar rectuit- ment of migtant labor to service the national economy and provide a mal- leable and cheap labor force in the 1970s via strict immigration control (Hammat 1990; Layton-Henry 1990). Structural changes in international manufactuting and trade caused a major shift in Western European labor needs, and economic crisis showed the tensions inherent in the ethnic seg- mentation of labor markets and the demographic isolation of settled im- migrant communities. During 1981, major civil disturbances in British cities exposed the frustrations of these communities (Eknyon 1984). The Scatman Report (1981), which analyzed causes and necessary responses, acknowledged the existence of urban deprivation, refused to accept wide- spread racism in British social life, and reasserted the fundamental decency of the British political and institutional fabric. The fundamental equity of format citizenship was reasserted, while the necessary condi- tions for guatanteeing substantive equity were fudged. Ahmad and Husband: Religious Identity, Citizenship, and Welfare 219 The point being made here is that citizenship is not merely a legal status; it is also a vehicle for nationalism and a focus for defining na- tional identity. Thus in Gennany, very substantial numbers of Getman- born Muslim residents of Turkish background are excluded from fotmal citizenship, while in France, working-class North African Muslims, who are French citizens, ate made to feel culturally alien. And in Britain, fol- lowing the "Rushdie Affair" and the Gulf War, British Muslim citizens have been challenged to demonstrate their "Btitishess." Beating both of the above points in mind, it is thetefote particularly important to note the ambiguous relationship between "formal" and "sub- stantive" citizenship. In Bmbaker's words: That which constitutes citizenship-the atray of rights or the pat- tern of participation-is not necessarily tied to fotmal state- membership. Formal citizenshjp is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for substantive citizenship . . . That it is not a sufficient condition is clear: one can possess fotmal state- membetship yet be excluded (in law or in fact) from certain political, civil, or social rights . . . That formal citizenship is not a necessary condition of substantive citizenship is pethaps less evident . . . Often social rights, for example, ate accessible to citizens and legally resident non-citizens on virtually identical tetms. (Quoted in Bottomore 1992) Indeed, within Europe there is such a large number of persons who are non-citizen settled residents of nation states who enjoy a range of civil and social rights that Hammar (1990 and 1992) has ptoposed a new tetm-ffdenizensff- to describe them: This new tetm is meant to emphasise that the traditional sharp distinction between foreigner and citizen has been etoded and that large numbers of foreign citizens have established close, in- tensive, secute and long-standing telations with their countty of residence. (Layton-Henry 1990) However, among other consequences, "denizens" would find them- selves Seriously disadvantaged as regards their mobility within the post- 1992 "Europe without frontiers." Thus in discussing the welfare environ- ment of Muslim communities in Britain, we must bear in mind the diver- sity that exists vis-A-vis their fotmal and substantive citizenship rights. The denial of citizenship to ethnic aliens settled in European states re- mains a powerful means of politically asserting that they do not belong. And despite the ability of such "denizens" to have de fact0 access to sub- 220 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 10:2 stantive citizenship rights, their political rejection and isolation feeds the cultural xenophobia and racism that then shapes their experience of seek- ing to exercise these social rights. This is also true in cases where Mus- lim communities, as in Britain, ptedominantly enjoy formal citizenship. If these communities ate then vilified as "an alien wedge" by popular and state racialized nationalism, their ability to enjoy the substantive rights of citizenship are equally undermined (Husband 1991). The relationship between the state and citizenship rights is, as we have seen, complex. Moreover, if we move from a general consideration of citizen rights to a discussion specifically dealing with those social rights relating to the provision of education, health care, welfare benefits, and housing, then we rapidly encounter a problem: How are we to iden- tify the welfare 'heeds" of Muslim communities in Europe? Can we legitimately assume a commonality of experience and identity that constitutes the Muslim presence in Britain? Are Notth African Mus- lims settled in London, Pakistanis in Bradford, Bangladeshis in Spital- fields, and white British Muslims to be regarded as having identical wel- fare needs? Clearly not, for these are persons of distinct ethnic identities who share a religious faith. So we need to confront a paradoxical diver- sity: Islam transcends ethnicity but is always mediated through it. Islam is universal, while ethnicity is usually linked to territorial identities. In policy terms, can we distinguish between the universal religious ptescriptions of Islam and the historically specific cultural norms of eth- nic identities? In terms of theological hermeneutics, the answer must be: Yes, we can make a good attempt to distinguish the two (witness, for example, the theological scholarship of Muslim feminists). But in terms of the lived experience of "Muslim ethnic-minority communities," this is a mote difficult and contentious task. One useful advance is pethaps to recognize that Islam may be in- voked to both defend and define ethnicity. Batth (1969) pointed out that ethnicity should be understood in terms of the mechanisms used to dejine the boundaries of ethnic groups. Religion is one such potent mechanism of signalling difference, of differentiating us from them. Thus in secular- Christian Europe, Islam is invoked increasingly to define the "Other," the alien southern and eastern perimeter defining the edge of "Europe." So, too, for Pakistanis in Britain, Turks in Germany, or Moroccans in France: Islam is a bond that positively affirms their ethnic identities. We have to be cleat about the policy implications of two distinct proCesseS: 1. Islamic prescriptions that have immediate implications for implement- ing policies to ensute the provision of the means to fulfill religious demands relating to, for example, diet, burial, prayer, and education. Ahmad and Husband Religious Identity, Citizenship, and Welfare 221 2. The consequences of the majority society's discrimination against eth- nic minority communities, by means of which their Muslim identity is identified, vilified, and provides an agenda for focusing disctimi- natory action, such as a) specifically by blocking the provision of ?zukiZ food, hindering the establishment of Muslim schools, and blocking the construction of mosques, and b) generally by disctimi- nating in housing, employment, education, and welfare, and thus making the Muslim community a marginal class. Muslim communities thus become disproportionately tepmnted in the national underclass and ate consequently denied the full enjoyment of their social rights. Their class position and, at the same time, the majority community's racism tend to force them to call upon the resources of the welfare state. This development, in turn, is perceived as disproportionate dependency and so legitimates defining them as a burden on society and a threat to the interests of "teal Britons." The Production and Construction of Welfare Needs and the Role of the State We cannot discuss welfare needs without considering how they ate produced and defined. The British state has played an important but in- glorious part in creating particular needs through racialized policies, par- ticularly on immigration. Various state welfare agencies now base their assessment and provision of welfare to minority ethnic communities on their assessment of the claimant's immigration status and have thus be- come tools of state immigration control. Gordon puts it well: Black people are a problem and unwelcome here. That is the message which is testated and reaffirmed every time immigration policy is made mote restrictive. It is a message not lost on "out people" in Britain-on the employers who can ask, with reason, why they should have "them" in their firm if the government does not want them in the country, on the tenants who do not want them in "their" streets or housing estates, on the parents and pupils who do not want them in "their" schools, on the 42 per- cent of young white people who, according to the British Social Attitudes Survey, will now willingly admit to racial prejudice. (Gordon 1989) Gotdon is right to emphasize state racism as a vital part of societal racism Various state spokespersons throughout British history have ex- 222 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 102 pressed concern about foreigners upsetting the population "balance," using state services to which the white people should have sole or first rights, or cteathg "race relations problems." Queen Elizabeth I was horrified that "blackamoos" had settled in her "realm" and were consuming relief meant for her own faithful subjects. In 1979, Mrs. Thatcher made her fa- mous remarks about British people's feat of being "swamped" by people of alien cultures. Douglas Hutd, then Home Secretary, said in 1987 thak It would not be in the interests of the ethnic minorities them- selves if there were a prospect of further mass inwatd move- ments. That pmpect would increase social tensions, particularly in out cities. That is why we say that fitm immigration control is essential if we are to have good community relations. (Hansatd 1987) These ideas about the nonwhite populations being a problem, their presence a threat, and their consumption of welfare as inimical to the in- terest of the white people can all be seen in play in the minority ethnic communities' interaction with state welfare. Cleat links have been estab- lished between immigration status, length of stay, and social security entitlement. The practice of passport checking, particularly for "Asians" is widespread Amott (1987) writes that: A survey in Oldham found that only 18 out of 77 Department of Health and Social Secutity offices did not check passpotts. Any- one who is black, particularly if they look Asian or do not speak fluent English, ate often assumed to have "recently come from abroad" and therefore ate asked for their passpotts. A Tameside man who came to this country as "recently" as 1938 was asked for his! To bomw a phrase used to describe the British and other westem governments' treatment of asylum seekers, what the example given above illustrates is the politics of dissuasion. The British government is sanc- tioning bureaucratic practices that routinely question the citizenship rights of Muslims in Britain because they look "un-British," and continues to cteate an environment that tends to dissuade British Muslims from claiming their legitimate welfare rights. The problem does not stop there, for the institutional discrimination located in routine practices is amplified by the personal racism expressed freely by bureaucrats and professionals. After the publication of the report Action Not Wordr by the National Association of Health Authorities (19881, one particular health authority with a minority ethnic group pop- Ahmad and Husband Religious Identity, Citizenship, and Welfare of their British fellow citizens who are white. And as we shall see below, Muslim needs also tend to be represented as having a specifically Unique and peculiar origin in their alien culture and religion. We need, therefore, to be careful when it comes to identifying the ways in which the welfare needs of Muslim communities are dejhed or represented. Independently of this, we need to reveal how their welfare needs are produced. In addition, here we must recognize that state i&- gration policies and discrimination based on color, culture, and religion 223 lation of about 15 pement (the largest single Muslim population in an authority) wrote to all its consultants asking about the adequacy of ser- vice provision to ethnic minority patients. In reply, its senior orthopedic consultant r e h e a d many of the racist arguments about equal opportu- nities, even when only implemented at a national level (as in that hos- pital), being inimical to the minorities. This was based on the claim that such policies will prolong the time taken by the mainly Muslim minority groups to integrate. Rather, the problem was simply due to a lack of inte- gration as opposed to institutional or individual racism with61 the health service. The consultant felt free to state that the improvement of policies for the Muslim minority was unfair, as by virtue of birth and lineage white patients deserved a better quality of service than nonwhites. In a paper published in 1988, Kushnick gives another &Stressing example: In 1981 when lawyers acting for Ibrahim Khan, who had been thrown out of a window by three youths, wrote to St Mary’s Hospital in London to request a letter from the hospital so that a claim for criminal compensation could be made on his behalf, they received the following reply: “No one here is prepared to write a report for you about this patient . . . Mr Khan has been extremely fortunate to receive treatment that exceeds the cost of a heart transplant. There is absolutely no reason why this patient should receive preferential treatment or become a burden on the tax payers here. I find it im- moral to use public money allowing Mr Khan to become a bur- den on their dwindling resources.“ Signed: Orthopaedic secretary and over-burdened tax payer. (Kushnick 1988) 224 The America0 Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 10:2 are major contributing factors in creating the welfare needs of Muslim communities. Take, for example, the housing policies of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. State and institutional racism has restricted the employ- ment chances of the local (largely Bangladeshi) Muslim population, and this population thus remains in low status jobs and has a high unemploy- ment rate. The option of owner occupation therefore is not realistic, creating a need for socially rented property. Due to these and other prob- lems, many Bangladeshis have been separated from their families, who remain in Bangladesh and for whom they have no accommodation in Britain. The local council policy of registering requests for housing from its Bangladeshi residents only after their families arrive from Bangladesh automatically made the families homeless on arrival. The council then could claim that as the families had deliberately made themselves home- less, they were a low priority. In a formal investigation, the Commission for Racial Equality found that the majority of the boroughs' thirteen hundred homeless people in 1988 were Bangladeshis (CRE 1988). Another example shows the interplay between many of the above is- sues and traditional English fears about "Asian arranged marriage." The "arranged marriage system" was seen by immigration officials as a way to circumvent immigration controls where both young Asian men and women were potential sponsors of partners from the Indian subcontinent. Attempts were made to discriminate, particularly against women. For ex- ample, the entry of a fiance into Britain is conditional on the resident spouse or family providing for his/her accommodation and welfare needs. In a society combineing racial and gender-based discrimination in relation to Muslim and other Asian women in employment and elsewhere, they are obviously less likely to be able to fulfill these requirements than are men from the same communities. According to Brah (1992): The immigration rules goveming the entry of foreign husbands and fiances were changed five times between 1969-1983 with the primary aim of preventing black and immigrant women from having their partners join them in Britain while allowing white women the right to do so. In 1985, the European Commission of Human Rights decreed that the British immigration rules dis- I 1 criminated on the grounds of sex. The British government reacted by making the conditions for men equally difficult-a strange way of achieving equality by any standard! The "primary purpose" rule in relation to controlling entry into Britain is a classic example of the discriminatory potential of discretionary powers linked to inherently ambiguous legal requirements. As a way of reinforc- i 1 1 Ahmad and Husband: Religious Identity, Citizenship, and Welfare 225 ing the marginal citizenship of Britain’s Muslims and in its capacity to destabilize families and create hardship, it is a vicious tool of state racism. We see then that state racism legitimates and perpetuates institutional and individual racism in the production and definition of welfare needs of Muslim and other minority groups. It also structures their interaction with welfare agencies. Class and Racism in Producing Needs One of the major determining factors of an individual’s welfare needs, and of the likelihood of these needs being met, is one’s position in the class system (for health and social needs, see Townsend and Davidson 1982; Whitehead 1987). For our discussion here, that p i t i o n is compounded by the role of racism in modifying an individual’s relation to, and experience of, the class system. As Modood stated in a broad genemlization: That South Asian Muslims in Britain form a virtual underclass there cannot be much doubt; throughout the 198Os, of the nine non-white groups identified in the ‘Labour Force Survey’, Paki- stanis and Bangladeshis have suffered the highest rates of unemployment, have the lowest number of educational qualifica- tions, and the highest profile in manual work; and this is true in each respect not just for women but also men, and not just for the middle-aged (the first generation) but also the young. They have had the most adverse impact from immigration laws and rules, they have the worst housing and suffer from the highest levels of attacks on person and property. Of all groups Pakistanis are least found in London and the South-East for they came mainly to work in the run-down mills and factories of the North and Midlands and have in consequence suffered most from the ‘shake-outs’ of the early 80s and benefitted least from the recent growth. The plight of the Bangladeshis is perhaps worst of all. Scope for improvement is circumscribed by the fact, as a recent European Commission survey showed, that while Muslimphobia has not yet reached French proportions, Asians are the single most disliked minority in this country. (Modood 1990) Class and racism, in interaction, help to determine the frequency and n a t m of an individual’s interaction with state welfare agencies. While welfare needs are socially produced, the attempt to make use of welfare provision by members of Muslim communities in Britain is all too often &fined in ethnic terms by state agencies. An ethnic definition of need 226 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 102 helps to obscure the social and structural basis of the need, and helps to petpetuate the marginalization of Muslim citizens. One difficulty in engaging in a discourse on inequalities between communities defined by religion, rather than as an "ethnic group," is the lack of official data. So although we can talk about inequalities suffered by Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in a reasonably meaningful way, we can- not do so for white and Afro-Caribbean Muslims, Muslims from the Middle East, Afghanistan, Itan, or Turkey. Relatively little has been writ- ten about the welfare needs of a number of numerically smaller Muslim communities in Britain (see Rashid 1992 and chapter 3 in Torkington 1991 on the Liverpool Somali population). We now want to look at some evidence of the low socioeconomic position of Muslims in Britain. Muslims ate located in the wotst areas of the labor market and suffer one of the highest rates of unemployment. Figutes quoted in a parliamentaty answer in the Houses of Parliament on unemployment, on 22 May 1992, showed unemployment to be 7 percent for whites, 13 percent for Indians, 15 percent for West Indians, and 21 percent for Pakistanis and Bangladeshis (quoted in Runneymede Trust 1992). The job levels also differ, again with the two main Muslim popu- lations (Pakistanis and Bangladeshis) being particularly badly affected. In health, the perinatal mortality rate (i.e., deaths of fetuses and/or newborns between twenty-eight weeks of pregnancy and the first week of life) for 1985 was around 10 pet thousand for mothets of "all places" and around 20 pet thousand for babies born to Pakistani mothers (quoted in Bhat et al. 1988). These differentials are confirmed by later evidence (Britton 1989). In 1990, babies born to Pakistani mothets had the highest stillbirth rates, neonatal mottality (deaths under one month of age), and post-neonatal mottality (deaths between four weeks and one year of life) of all ethnic groups in Britain (Parsons et al., forthcoming). Some may take comfort in thinking that perhaps this is due to the effects of poverty and malnutrition experienced as children and the low educational status of many Pakistani mothers due to their upbringing in an underdeveloped country. However, the sad evidence is that the birth outcome of British- born Pakistani mothers is even poorer, pointing to discrimination and dis- advantage as well as to the quality of obstetric and antenatal care (Belder- son 1988; Clarke and Clayton 1983). Recent work in Glasgow, which related health to length of residence in an age-controlled sample of Asian residents, showed long-term established residents to be in wotse health (Williams, forthcoming). If we focus on health, the relationship between health status and socioenvimnmental situation is of vital importance. The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion (Whitehead 1992) outlines nine basic prerequisites for healthy living: peace, shelter, education, food, income, a stable eco- Ahmad and Husband: Religious Identity, Citizenship, and Welfare 227 always been seen to be problematic. For example, with reference to the colonization of India, the British claimed that they were a libetalizing nomically, and sexually opptessed. In other words, they were "ruthlessly oppressed creatures who must be saved from their degradation" (Btah 1992). Thus the media now catty stories of "British, liberated" Asian girls being forced into arranged mattiages, thus posing this custom as a threat to individual freedom and the British way of life. I force especially for the women, who were seen to be socially, eco- . 228 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 102 White liberal professionals often champion the “oppressed” young person, often a woman, against “outdated,” Third World, oppressive sys- tems such as attanged marriages. If one adds these ideological construc- tions with further “monstrous” acts (i.e., marriage with consanguineous, blood relatives), one has the making of a highly charged discourse com- bining notions of cultural pathology with genetic pathology, and illicit sexual relationships verging on incest that complement the notion of Mus- lim women as helpless, passive, oppressed, and in need of being saved. The following example is instructive. The fact of higher rates of cbn- sanguinity among Pakistanis in Britain is now the ultimate “explanatory hypothesis” within medicine of their poor health status. Recently, one of us met an oncologist who was convinced that the “unusual cancernus tu- mom“ he was seeing in Pakistanis were due to consanguinity, a hematolo- gist who blamed consanguinity for their blood disorders, an ophthalmolo- gist who was convinced that there was a link between their eye disorders and their mattiage patterns, and of c o m e the informal, and to some ex- tent formal, culture within obstetrics that has a theological belief in the link between high perinatal mortality and interbreeding among Pakistanis. The interest in consanguinity among obstetricians includes serious researchers who wish to disentangle the complex interplay between socio- economics, life-styles, environment, genetics, and health service factors in influencing, for example, birth outcome, petinatal mortality, and con- genital malformations. A larger group, however, is happy to hang any- thing from poor “birth outcome” to blood disorders, cancers, diseases of the eye, and much mote onto this new-found peg. This conem is already being expressed in scientific literature (Bundey et al. 1989; Lancet 1991), and research on consanguinity is likely to be a major subindustry soon. Consanguinity is fast becoming the ”cause” of all the health problems of the Pakistani and Muslim minorities, despite the fact that the relevant research literature remains inconclusive (Rao and Inbataj 1977; Macluer 1980; Saedi-Wong 1989) and is too often conveniently sidestepped. The fact that it is neatly impossible to control for numerous confounding variables-including social class, education, and health care quality-in studies on the effects of consanguinity is easily ignored. It provides an excellent way of blaming the victim and absolving the health services and wider racial inequalities from responsibility. Better still, by not doing anything one can claim to be antiracist and on the side of the Muslims, as the only possible recommended action regarding consanguinity would be for communities to abandon this alien and deleterious habit. There is evidence, however, that Muslim communities have refused to be intimi- dated by prnfessional disapproval and have demanded adequate and equi- table health care resources for health problems that ate popularly located in their presumed pathological cultures (Datt 1990). Ahmad and Husband: Religious Identity, Citizenship, and Welfare 229 Thus racism and racial discrimination is ignored, and ideas about the minorities' duty to change, to become true Brits, are emphasized. It is a small step from presenting issues of power, structural disadvantage, and racial oppression as problems ofminority cultures to arguing that the pro- motion or even maintenance of minority cultures is inimical to becoming good Brits. In this scenario, to talk of fighting racism or anti-Islamic sen- timent, generally agreed to be on the rise across Europe, becomes posi- tively harmful to "good race relations" and to the interests of minority communities. Thus it is argued that if they must protect their cultural heritage, they should do it themselves. But they should also beware of the potential harm of such acts, as they may conflict with "being British." An example of this is the text of an open letter to a number of Mus- lim organizations sent by John Patten to clarify the Conservative govem- ment's position on "being British" (4 July 1989). Stressing "integration" and "participation" by all minority ethnic groups, the minister then stressed that "being British meant: . . . that we recognise and support those things which, by virtue of living in Britain, are common to us all. Those include: the framework of laws, freedoms, rights and obligations which we live under; the English language; and British history. One cannot be British on one's own exclusive terms or on a selective basis, nor is there mom for dual loyalties where these loyalties openly contradict one another. (Cited in Singh 1992) Muslim Moblization: Concluding Remarks We have come again to the tension between the de jure reality of a common "formal citizenship" and the de facto experience of the inequali- ties of "substantive citizenship." The diversity of ethnicities in Britain is not easily accommodated within the English nationalism that informs state policies. For welfare agencies there is a clear requirement to uppro- priately recognize and respond to ethnic diversity amongst their clientele. The need for "ethnic sensitivity" in responding to welfare needs has direct implications for the training and recruitment of personnel in welfare agencies. Local authorities and some professional bodies have begun to address this question (CCETSW 1991). But the response is patchy and the political will often ambiguous or "actively" lacking. Nor does respecting ethnic diversity in response to welfare needs ad- dress the social production of those needs. Challenging the social produc- tion of welfare needs is necessarily political, and this raises particular questions for the Muslim communities in Britain. This should have been an area of policy where the political focus upon power relations and 230 The American Journal of Islamic Social Science3 102 structural inequities of the antiracist movement in Britain could have been assumed to provide support for Muslim mobiilization. However, a number of factors may be noted as informing the context for Muslim mobiliza- tion, among which are: 1) Religion is part of our pelsonal, cultural, and historical identity. It is important for many, and its importance is not always recognized by all; 3) 4) There has been, recently, a rising tide of anti-Muslim sentiment or racism that has been increasingly openly articulated since the mobili- zation against The Satanic Verses. This is gaining some respectability. Muslims should rightly be concerned about it and should organize in defense; The antiracist movement has neither adequately understood Muslims' concerns and fears nor adequately supported their struggles in nxent years; and Antiracism as a political force has been severely diminished by con- tinued attacks from both the right and the central government. Even some on the left have lost faith in its commitment to a class-based model to effect antiracist change. Moreover, some Muslims see it as irrelevant at best but as generally inimical to their interests. We wish to assert that the antiracist movement has to come to terms with new forms of struggle around religious identity and the protection of religious values and traditions. Many Muslims clearly felt that both the grassroots and the formalized antiracist movements did not aid their cause. However, there are a number of problems associated with organiz- ing on religious or cultural-ethnic grounds: it fragments the much wider political unity based on common oppression under British racism; and it fits in with the New Right discourse and policy of accentuating difference and then setting up such difference as deviance from a British norm This then fuels an explanation of the "natural feats" of the white community as being legitimate. To some extent, Muslim identity is made central for Muslim commu- nities by the distinctive anti-Islamic racism currently prevalent in Britain and Europe. Thus Muslim unity and mobilization is a necessary and legi- timate strategy. However, the diversity of the ummah should guarantee that such Muslim mobilization does not become essentialist and deny the ethnic diversity that constitutes the Muslim communities of Europe. Patti- cipation in common struggles against racism and distinct pro-Muslim stra- Ahmad and Husband: Religious Identity, Citizenship, and Welfare 231 tegies are not mutually exclusive. The demography of Muslim commu- nities means that struggles for adequate welfare provision at the local level for social services, education, and health will have a distinct Muslim and ethnic component. The specific constitution of local communities, their needs, networks, and points of leverage with local and state agencies should guarantee this. To the extent that the citizenship rights of Muslim communities are defined in relation to their "ethnic minority" stab, they must join with other ethnic minorities to resist their marginalization and oppression. 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