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Abstract: Recent events demonstrate the need for greater understanding of intercultural relations between Muslim minorities and majority of cultures in host societies. We examine British Muslims' descriptions of their experiences of acculturation. Data from interviews with first‐generation Muslims were analysed by using discourse analysis. Participants' descriptions reflect the acculturation possibilities made available in local interactional contexts. Where invited to choose between assimilation and separation, participants provide ‘trouble‐telling’ accounts that detail the difficulties involved. In contexts involving integration, participants account for their own efforts. By contrast, contexts that allow participants to introduce acculturation in their own terms lead to descriptions of acculturation success. Thus, participants' accounts of relations with British culture reflect not simply orientations towards acculturation but rather how acculturation is framed and negotiated in local contexts: The success or failure of intercultural relations reflects as much how the issues are presented as they do immigrants' acceptance or non‐acceptance of British culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While in the American context religion is seen to facilitate immigrant incorporation by providing both spiritual and socioeconomic resources, in Europe high levels of religiosity are theorized as a barrier for immigrant incorporation into the secular mainstream. This is particularly salient for Islam, Europe's largest minority religion. In this study, we use the 2008-2009 England and Wales Citizenship Survey to compare levels and predictors of religiosity between Muslim and non-Muslim first-generation immigrants and their native-born counterparts. Overall, Muslims are more religious than non-Muslims. The results show that among non-Muslims, the foreign-born are significantly more religious than the native-born; among Muslims, however, nativity has no impact on religiosity, indicating the native-born are as highly religious as the foreign-born. Additionally, although education is associated with reduced religiosity among non-Muslim immigrants and native-born, for Muslims it has no significant impact. Muslims across diverse ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds show strong religious adherence. Results suggest that pathways to secular, mainstream norms do not operate in the same manner across Muslim and non-Muslim immigrant groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses how immigrant Muslims benefited in the U.S. and Great Britain from the tribalistic and pluralistic point of view. By building places of worship, political organizations and schools, Muslims benefited from the successes of Protestant public sphere. Through an alliance with evangelicals in support of Texas Governor George W. Bush's family values faith-based platform, the power of the first national bloc vote in 2000 was proven by the American Muslim Political Coordination Committee. The curriculum and operations of Islamic schools in Los Angeles, California and Manchester were also modeled after successful Christian academies.