Religious Identity, Citizenship, and Welfare The Case of Muslims in Britain

Abstract

In addressing the situation of Muslim communities in Britain, it is
apparent that one of the major frameworks for understanding their situation
has been the notion of "Citizenship," for citizenship is a means of
identifying critical aspects of the relationship between the individual and
the state. Following Bottomore (1992), we may make a useful distinction
between "formal" and "substantive" citizenship: the former being Simply
defined as "membemhip in a nation state" and the latter as "an array of
civil, political, and especially social rights, involving also some kind of
participation in the business of government'' (ibid.).
There are a number of salient points that should be made in relation
to examining the implications of this distinction. First, we may note that
the legal definition of citizenship is always informed by the cultural and
ethnic agendas historically rooted in the foundation myths of each nationstate.
Thus in France, for example, just as the revolutionary iconography
of the Tricolor, Marianne, and Liberty, Equality, and Fratemity continue
to serve contemporary national sentiments (Hobsbawm 1983), so today
French legal framing of formal citizenship is infused with its revolutionary
roots:
La tradition centraliste francaise interdit la reconnaissance dans
l'espace public des 'communautes', au sens oii elles existent au
Wtats-Unis. (Schnapper 1990).
Consequently, in France neither ethnicity nor religion are formally relevant
in determining access to citizenship ...