12 June 2018

Dr Amina Yaqin, Senior Lecturer in Urdu and Postcolonial Studies at SOAS University of London, has co-edited the book Muslims, Trust and Multiculturalism: New Directions with Palgrave MacMillan which explores the themes of trust and multiculturalism across a range of perspectives, employing insights from political science, sociology, literature, ethnography and cultural studies.

The volume is the latest outcome from a project funded by Research Council UK, Muslims, Trust and Cultural Dialogue which Dr Yaqin is Deputy Director. The project is an international, multidisciplinary network of scholars, practitioners and stakeholders exploring questions of trust in the relationship between Muslim diaspora populations in the West and the societies around them.

Other colleagues from SOAS also contributed essays which discuss how deteriorating trust has become a barrier to Muslim communities participating in civil society and citizenship, arts and culture, and business in Europe and North America.

Professor Alison Scott-Baumann, Professor of Society & Belief - Trust Within Reason: How to Trump the Hermeneutics of Suspicion on Campus

Alaya Forte, Centre for Gender Studies - Constructing a New Imagery for the Muslim Woman: Symbolic Encounters and the Language of Radical Empowerment

Farrah Sheikh, recently completed PhD student - Living ‘True’ Islam in Multicultural Britain: An Ahmadi Case Study

Of the book, Humayun Ansari, Professor of Islam and Cultural Diversity at Royal Holloway, University of London comments: "With the contemporary world facing challenges that range from fake news to the erosion of public confidence in politicians and state institutions alike, this timely collection of papers provides a very welcome intervention in debates on the more specific breakdown in trust between Muslims and the wider western societies to which they belong."