Paper Short Abstract:

This paper presents modern British Muslims identities discourse, based on statistics, academics, media and author`s field materials 2012-2024 in Northern England, London, Scotland, Northern Ireland, etc. The work describes the role of city structures and districts, co-interpretation of borders, forming and transforming cross-border identity, e.g. by means of author`s visual anthropological methods.

Paper Abstract:

This paper presents modern British Muslims identities discourse, based on statistics, academics, media and author`s field materials 2012-2024 in Northern England, London, Scotland, Northern Ireland, etc. The work describes the role of city structures and districts, co-interpretation of borders, forming and transforming cross-border identity, e.g. by means of author`s visual anthropological methods.

We are talking about specific communication places: mosque (territory for community socialization, mobilization and public discussions): sports club, stadium, school (territories of external communication and competition); home as family socialization, local heritage; market as a space for familiarization). and we are talking about 3 types of communications, expressed in urban quarters allegory: 1. “ghettos” presenting (not preserving) a micro version of the world that its inhabitants once left; 2. quarters of a cosmopolitan, commercial, literally multicultural order; 3. “quarters” that do not exist as such, a territory that sometimes remains an idea, a virtual space enclosed within the central and bohemian districts. The paper also touches upon the problem of "visibility" and role of contemporary British-Islamic entertainment culture in the development of this identities. We can talk here about co-interpretation of “active borders” – joint interpretation of the meanings of history/space/memory both on the “hard” and “soft” borderlands. Young Muslims of the so called “2-3 generations” deal with two cultural worlds of their own families and cultural communities, as well as their peers, schools and society at large. Thus, “intercultural worlds”, including “worlds of memory”, can turn out to be not only “bicultural”, but much more multi-layered.