7 - Post-secular Multiculturalism and the New Political Landscapes of Twenty-First-Century Britain

Summary

This chapter explores the growing significance of religious affiliation in shaping the identity politics of racialised minorities. Specifically, the chapter addresses the growing significance of Islam in shaping both the public reaction to religious diversity andhow the identity politics of Islamic faith reshaped a very different alternative public sphere. The chapter addresses how intersectionalities of diaspora, race, faith, gender, and geopolitics land in place, in the specific history of the East End of London. The chapter describes how diasporic Bangladeshi politics emerges in a transactional relationship with the local state in the East End. But what it means to be British and Bangladeshi, or white and ‘East Ender’, is subject to significant change at the same time. Racialisation and religion combine to shape both white and British Bangladeshi collective identities in nuanced ways. The chapter argues that what was commonly represented as isolation or withdrawal from the mainstream of political participation by a certain fraction of some minority Bangladeshi demographics was nothing of the sort.