Muslims in the UK and Europe I

The Centre of Islamic Studies (CIS) at the University of Cambridge held its first Graduate Symposium on the subject of ‘Muslims in the UK and Europe’ from the 17 – 18 May, 2014. The aim of this first Symposium was to bring graduate students from British, European and American universities together to present their research to their peers, discuss their findings and engage in debate about the issues that face Muslims in the European context, with special emphasis on the UK. Two scholars of Islam, Professor Maurits Berger of Leiden University and Dr Jeremy Henzell-Thomas of the Centre of Islamic Studies, acted as mentors and commentators. In addition, two keynote speakers addressed major issues in the British and European contexts: Costas Gabrielatos on representations of Islam in the British press from a corpus-linguistics perspective and Esra Ozyurek on Race, Religion, and Conversion in the New Europe.
The papers in this volume are expanded versions of the contributions made at the Symposium. They are presented here with little editorial intervention. Instead of forcing them into thematic sections, I have chosen to present them alphabetically following the authors’ names. The last two papers in the volume are by the two mentors. They provide commentary on the symposium as a whole, as well as some reflections on the study of Muslims in Europe more generally.