--Explores the tensions and contradictions facing ethnic minorities in a multicultural society--

Representing Muslims explores the tensions and contradictions facing ethnic minorities in a multicultural society, particularly when those communities assert rights that the majority would often prefer they went without - the right to express their Islamic identity and culture in ways which sometimes disturb and challenge prevailing notions of what it means to be British.

McLoughlin sets the debates around Muslim religious identity and cultural politics in the wider context of contemporary ideas about globalization and diaspora, community and hybridity. In four different case studies he considers some of the ways in which Muslims are seeking to represent their identity to the state, wider society and each other. He also examines the ways in which Muslim identity is contextualised and cross-cut by a variety of sometimes conflicting notions of ethnicity, class, gender and generation.