Diaspora and British Muslim Writers

Diaspora is actually comes from Greek word, brings a meaning of the movement, migration or scattering of people away from established or ancestral homeland. Diaspora also means people dispersed by whatever cause to more than one location or in other words, people moved far from their ancestral homelands. Diaspora can be voluntary or forced and usually the place people moved is far away from home region.

Of all the countries in Western Europe, Britain has always regarded had a ‘special relationship’ with the Muslim world. Initially, Muslim people landed in Britain as explorers and traders. Since 1951, the number of Muslim population in Britain keeps increasing starting from 23 000 and by the year 2000, the population reached 2 million. They were small Muslim communities in Britain, largely in port areas such as Cardiff, Liverpool, and London. Many Somali, Yemeni, and Bengali migrants had been stranded by their ships in the depression of inter-war years. The late 1950’s is the starting point of main migrant stream to Britain mostly from Pakistan and India. The late 1960s and early 1970s saw the expulsion of Asians and East Africa and about the quarter of their numbers was Muslim. The most recent and rapidly growing migrant group arrived in 1970s and 1980s has been the Bangladeshis. The three main South Asian groups in Britain are Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. Indians make up 26% of the total ethnic minority population, whilst Pakistanis account for 16% and Bangladeshis 6%. Arabs and Somalis also contributed to the numbers of Muslim of South Asian origin in Britain but the exact numbers are disputed. It is complicated in estimating the numbers from the Middle East in Britain by the fact that the place of birth as well as children who were born to members of the British Forces serving in Egypt and Libya before the withdrawal of British from those countries.

The whole of Europe was occupied with the massive task of reconstructing after the war, and there...