Medina in Birmingham, Najaf in Brent

The author of this account on British Muslims joined the BBC in 1994 after obtaining a first degree in political theory (University of Liverpool) and a spell at law school. In subsequent decades, she specialised in politics and current affairs as an editor and producer, working on programmes such as File on Four and Analysis. She has a long-standing interest in British Muslim affairs, beginning in 2003. Her forensic and journalist skills are in evidence in this work, which is based on over 70 interviews with a wide ranging and eclectic mix between 2007 and 2013, and also draws on visits to some mosques and community centres. The book aims to seek out ‘the more complicated truth’ rather than ‘the ‘them and us’ narrative’ and so makes it ‘possible for interested outsiders to understand who British Muslims are and what they think’. The author notes her heavy reliance on Mehmood Naqshbandi, ‘an English convert to Islam who works full time in IT’ for data ‘on the ideological affiliation of mosques’. She ought to have mentioned that Mr Naqshbandi – who has adopted the name of a famous Sufi order – is author of an 80–page guide, ‘Islam and Muslims in Britain, A Guide for Non-Muslims’, published by the City of London Police in 2006. This booklet included a foreword by the former undercover officer and later member of Scotland Yard’s Muslim Contact Unit, Bob Lambert, and provided a statistical table of mosques by various tendencies and schools of thought – Deobandi, Barelwi, Mawdudi masjids, Salafi masjids, Arab-speaking, Shi‘a masjids. The unusual labelling of ‘Maududi masjids’ – after Maulana Abul A‘la Mawdudi (died 1979) – is akin to categorising those Roman Catholic churches active in community organising and Catholic Social Teaching (CST) as Manning churches, after the cardinal (died 1892) who provided the vision and thinking of CST.