Spatial reflections on Muslimsʼ segregation in Britain

first_pagesettingsOrder Article Reprints Open AccessArticle Spatial Reflections on Muslims’ Segregation in Britain by Farouq Tahar 1,Asma Mehan 2,*ORCID andKrzysztof Nawratek 1ORCID 1 School of Architecture, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK 2 Huckabee College of Architecture, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409, USA * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. Religions 2023, 14(3), 349; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14030349 Received: 30 December 2022 / Revised: 15 February 2023 / Accepted: 2 March 2023 / Published: 6 March 2023 (This article belongs to the Special Issue Non-sacred Spaces for Religious Practices and Spirituality) Download Browse Figures Versions Notes Abstract The diversity of multicultural, multi-religious, and multi-ethnic groups and communities within Britain has created cohesion and integration challenges for different community groups and authorities to adapt to the current diverse society. More recently, there has been an increased focus on Muslim segregation in Britain in official reports and reviews. Those documents mentioned the Muslims’ segregation (directly or indirectly) for various reasons, and some recommendations have aimed to improve “community cohesion” in general and Muslims’ “integration” in particular. However, community participation in the design or planning of regeneration and development projects has yet to be focused on, although these documents recommended promoting community cohesion and integration through these projects. Community participation in architecture—in its broader sense—is a crucial aspect that contributes towards fulfilling the tasks of serving communities with different religious and ethnic backgrounds. Muslims’ religious and cultural practices have been problematised in urban spaces and perceived as leading to social and spatial segregation. This paper intends to explore how secular urban spaces are used and perceived by Muslims through their religious and cultural practices. Therefore, the article aspires to inform the community participation in urban projects and demonstrates the role that Muslims’ inclusion in designing urban projects has in promoting cohesion and integration. The Ellesmere Green project in Burngreave, Sheffield, UK, is an empirical example of exploring this locally through semi-structured interviews with community members, leaders, and local authorities’ officials. The findings demonstrate that sacred and secular spaces are interconnected in Muslims’ everyday lives, and the boundaries between them are blurry. The data also show that having the ability to manifest their religious and cultural practices in secular urban spaces does not suggest the desire for segregation, nor does it reduce Muslims’ willingness to have social and spatial interactions with non-Muslims.