'The Cup of Kindness’? Dominant Social Norms and Muslims’ Social Integration in Scotland

Since the 9/11 bombings in New York, and the 7/7 bombings in London,Muslims’ integration in the UK has been under intense scrutiny. Muslimintegration, however, has long been a matter of debate in Britain, revolvingaround the maintenance of Muslims’ distinctive identity and practice. Forinstance, David Cameron (Cameron, 2011), Britain’s then Prime Minister,announced at the Munich Security Conference that “state multiculturalism”has encouraged “different cultures to live separate lives, apart from eachother and apart from the mainstream”. In criticizing multiculturalism, mostcritics mainly refer to Muslims as being less integrated into wider societythan people from other minority groups, and Muslims are shown to bedisloyal. The complexity of Muslims’ integration and its dependency ondifferent social, structural and cultural factors are, however, mostly lessstudied. This paper is designed to understand the social and cultural barriersto Muslim integration. In doing so, it aims to explore Muslims’ integrationalstrategies to deal with these barriers. Findings of this paper draw on researchthat involved 43 semi-structured interviews with Muslims across Scotland’smajor cities and small towns.