Creating a Shared Moral Community

Reviewed by: Ifthahar Ahmed – Cardiff University, UK

Published by: New York: Routledge. 2023, 179pp. ISBN: 978-0367529826.

Shuttleworth aims to better our understanding of the Indo-Guyanese community via her insider access to a London-based mosque. This is valuable from two standpoints. Firstly, there is little or no ethnographic research on this particular community in London. Perhaps other groups, due to their numerical dominance, such as the Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, have eclipsed academic focus on the Indo- Guyanese group. Secondly, Shuttleworth is a non-Muslim ethnographer, which means her observations will ostensibly capture what some Muslim ethnographers may consider too ‘mundane’ to record, such as details of the prayer rituals. These details are essential to capture the basic practices that take place in the mosque for those who may not be familiar with them.

As part of her insider access, it is worth highlighting a couple of moral tensions she was able to witness first-hand. In one case, a Guyanese woman offered advice to a Bangladeshi woman about how the latter’s hijab, which left the “neck and sometimes the ears visible,” was “not Islamic” (p. 90). The Bangladeshi woman “shrugged” and was “not minded to change her way of dressing” (p. 90). I believe this is extremely useful to note, as it illustrates that there is a “willingness of some people to correct others” (p. 90), hence living within a shared community. The other case involved the mosque reaching its capacity. In peak times, the doorways, stairs, corridors, and exits were blocked due to the sheer number of attendees. The mosque management faced a conundrum in allowing the congregants to pray whilst simultaneously complying with health and safety. However, “some of the men in the congregation” believed that “their right to pray took priority over all other considerations”’ (pp. 93-94). A member of the mosque management was even barged down by some of these men, and the police were called. This victim repeatedly reminded, at the end of prayers, that this was unacceptable behaviour and that these men were “not proper Muslims”’ (p. 94). Thus, many outsiders, including Muslims, may be unaware of such tensions in the mosque, especially if they only attend the prayers. In my view, Shuttleworth not only captures these tensions well, but she also relates it back to the bigger picture of how certain members of this Indo-Guyanese group have a sense of responsibility in creating a shared moral community.