Institutionalising diasporic Islam: multiculturalism, secularism and the integration of Muslim immigrants in Britain

The integration of Muslim immigrants in Western countries especially Britain has attracted wider attention both from academia, policymakers and public in general. Their different religion (i.e. Islam) has been regarded as the crucial factors in the process contextualised by the socio-political circumstances of the host society and the existence transnational link to the home country encouraging them to reproduce and transplant their ethno-religious tradition in diaspora. The article addresses the interplay between, on the one hand, the strong and weakness of the politics of multiculturalism and the secularisation and desecularisation of British society, and on the other, the institutionalisation of Islam in Britain amidst the persistent internal divisions and fragmentations of minority Muslim immigrant communities. As the result, Muslim immigrants have set up an ethno-religious integration trajectory through their own established socio-religious institutions and associations in parallel with the host country social and political ones.