Gary R Bunt (UK Team and Website data analysis)
Anna Grasso (UK Team and Website data analysis)
This archive is part of the Digital Islam Across Europe project’s collection. One of the DigitIslam project outputs focuses on website data and collection analysis. The objective is to identify, catalogue and analyse Muslim organisations’ and actors’ websites (Online Islamic Environments or OIEs) from these different countries.1
This collection showcases websites of organisations and initiatives aimed at “New Muslims” as well as individuals seeking information or wanting to improve their faith.
In the United Kingdom we find historical as well as contemporary influential figures who have “converted/reverted” to Islam. The first name that comes to mind is that of solicitor William Henry Quilliam (1856-1932) who converted in 1887 after a trip to Morocco changing his name to Abdullah. He later became a Muslim scholar and helped set up Britain’s first mosque in Liverpool.2 More recently Muslim converts in the UK have been particularly active to promote Islam in the country as well as globally. They are active in the fields of academia, journalism, etc. as well as in online spaces through blogs and social media pages. Some of these figures and their online content can be found in our UK collections.
This specific collection is more focused on organisations rather than individual actors. We observed a growing number of initiatives specifically set up to support new Muslims. This does not seem the case in the other countries involved in this project.
Some organisations are local initiatives set up in various cities across the UK (Bradford, Sheffield, Leicester, Manchester, etc.) We often find the city name in the organisation’s title. Others have more of a national or even global scope. This is especially the case of “One Reason” whose content is translated in nine different languages.
Bradford New Muslims website
One Reason website
The gender element is also important when analysing content related to new Muslims. For instance, one of the most famous reports on “converts” in the UK was carried out by the University of Cambridge which initially focused on the female population (in collaboration with the New Muslims Project in Marksfield) which took place in 2013. Another study was later carried out on male converts in 2016. With regards to online content, we can also observe websites which specifically target female new Muslims such as “New Muslim Women’s Group” or “Solace UK”. Other websites offer specific services for men and women as for example “Sheffield New Muslims”.
Solace UK website
As is the case with our other collections, capturing content was sometimes challenging. An example of this is “Farasha”. Our first crawling attempt did not work as the URL had changed. We therefore updated the address and saved the content. Nonetheless, when comparing the old (thanks to Wayback Machine) and new versions of the website it seems that the overall architecture did not change except for a few new articles.
Farasha website
This archive consists of an initial capture. We will be updating this list in due course. We believe this data can become a useful tool for researchers and the general public who have an interest in digital Islam across Europe as well as those who are mostly focused on the study of Islam or comparative religion within the British or Western context. Moreover, the analysis of these sites will be part of a wider project output through presentations and publications.
- For more information on this: https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/digitalislameurope/research-findings/archiving/ back
- There is a long history of converts in the late 19th – early 20th century. For more information on this see: Yusuf Samih Asmay, Islam in Victorian Liverpool: An Ottoman Account of Britain’s First Mosque Community, (Translated and edited with an Introduction and Appendixes by Yahya Birt, Riordan and Münire Zeyneb Maksudoğlu), (Swansea, 2021); Ron Geaves, Islam in Victorian Britain: the life and times of Abdullah Quilliam, Markfield: Kube, 2010. Gilliat-Ray S. Muslims in Britain. Cambridge University Press; 2010:39-41 back
