Sunday Lecture: Religion, Identity and Psychic Detachment: Exploring some Consequences

Dr Rumy Hasan examines the effects of psychological, and sometimes physical, ghettoisation of ethnic minorities on community cohesion

For many religious-ethnic minorities, ‘choice factors’ of residence have long been dominant; a consequence of which is that neighbourhoods in which they reside have become larger and concentrated, where those not of the same ethnicity or religion have left the area. Accordingly, these areas can be termed ‘mono-cultural’, ‘mono-faith’ communities. This is particularly true for significant numbers of Muslims in many towns and cities of the UK. I give the term ‘psychic detachment’ to describe the phenomenon of people (especially religious-ethnic minority communities) leading highly segregated lives with few points of contact with mainstream society.

Rumy Hasan will explore the proposition that self-segregation of Muslims is engendering a heightened religious identity with concomitant high levels of psychic detachment. This, in turn, is contributing to the alienation of, and arousing negative feelings among, many non-Muslims, in particular significant numbers of the majority White society. This has had – is having – political consequences, the most worrying of which is that far right groups are utilising such alienation to their advantage. This paper examines this hypothesis in regard to the English Defence League, formed in 2009.

Rumy Hasan is Senior Lectuere at the University of Sussex, and author of Multiculturalism: Some Inconvenient Truths.

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