Professor Sophie Gilliat-Ray

Professor Sophie Gilliat-Ray

Professor of Religious & Theological Studies at Cardiff University and the Founding Director of the Islam-UK Centre. I have written numerous articles and books about Islam and Muslims in Britain.

Location Cardiff

Activity

  • Thank you Abeer. Let's hope you are right that with awareness stigma will reduce. That's a research project for someone!

  • Thank you Naheed. It's a confusing area. In previous research, we found that people sometimes suggested something was religious (but was in fact cultural) as a way of disarming professionals!

  • Thank your Roderic. I think you are absolutely right about the attractions of chaplaincy roles compared to the imamate. We are just beginning to analyse a large dataset about the imamate in Britain which will highlight some of these issues...and our survey data clearly shows that more imams want and need support in helping their congregations with mental...

  • Dear Nazia. Thank you for sharing some of your struggles. I hope that as we move towards the end of the course you might identify with some of the support organisations we signpost. Take care.

  • Hello Sirpa. Thanks for your comment. You are right to point out that arranged marriages where coercion is involved are likely to be problematic - both for the man and woman. I'm hearing that more young Muslims are now active agents in their own marriage decisions, which is hopefully a good thing!

  • Thanks for your interesting question Ibrahim. I think there is definitely a need for more in-depth research that examines the link between mental health and socio-economic status. I wonder if any learners on the course have read any useful literature on this topic?

  • @RachelBeadle Hi Rachel - welcome to the course. I hope you find it helpful in your work. As the course has been running for a few weeks now, you should find plenty of material and comments that could be useful.

  • Thank you Mirazam - it's great that you bring your perspectives as an Imam to the course. Quite agree that long waiting times are very unhelpful.

  • This is a very interesting and useful insight...and you could well be right! I wonder how other practitioners might answer this question? It's interesting that it is more socially acceptable to believe in benign or positive spiritual beings/forces, but less so negative ones.

  • Thanks Roderic. This is only indirectly relevant but might be of interest to you - we did some research at Cardiff about the religious upbringing of Muslim children in the city, with a focus on those of primary school age. 'Muslim Childhood' was published by Oxford University Press - authors: Scourfield, Gilliat-Ray, Khan and Otri.

  • Thanks for reminding me about the MYH - they have done some excellent work. I wonder if other learners have come across them?

  • You have made a really good point here, Maryati. I'd never thought of it in quite this way before, but now I will! I think there is now much more awareness about how to build better mental wellbeing into our lives, such as regular use of apps like 'Headspace' or 'Calm'. Arguably, these provide a basis for having better mental health and coping capacity when...

  • Thanks for your comments here, Roderic. We are keen to benefit from learners offering this kind of precise feedback so that we can improve and develop the course going forward. Thank you.

  • Thank you for sharing your experience and thoughts as a prison chaplain - and for your reflections on how we might use (or not) the contributions of Islamic scholars of the past in relation to the contemporary world. I wonder if other learners have considered the best ways to integrate past and current scholarship that has theoretical, theological, and...

  • Thanks for your comments Therese - I think the importance of people being treated as individuals - regardless of their background - comes through as very important in many places in the course.

  • Hi Diana. Welcome and I hope you find the course helpful, especially Week 3 where Dr Ali and Suhayl from the Beacon Counselling Trust look at issues of addiction! Do share your experiences and reflections.

  • Thanks Roderic - that's a nice way of posing the question.

  • Thanks Arzu - we are very much hoping that this course can help to build some bridges - enabling practitioners (Muslim or non-Muslim) to bring the spiritual (Islamic) perspective into their work with Muslims with mental health problems - if that seems appropriate.

  • Thanks Roderic. You clearly have a lot of valuable experience and knowledge which is helpful to read.

  • Thanks Roderic. There is a book to be published in the autumn this year about Islam in prisons, and especially the experience of converts. It's by Matthew Wilkinson. You might find it a useful read. Let me know if you want more details.

  • @ThereseGrace Thanks for sharing Therese. The research around Islam and Muslims in Britain with respect to gender is obviously extensive, but it does show some of the ways in which women can exercise a great deal of agency with respect to education, employment, and the operation of their homes. Of course, there are exceptions, but there is a saying in Islam...

  • Thank you Roderic. Your observation is an important reminder about trying to see each person as an individual and not making assumptions based on appearances or stereotypes.

  • @AdeelahMir Thanks for your reflections Adeelah. It might be worth noting that what you have described may not be typical for all...? And of course any sense of 'conflict' may be more or less intense, depending on circumstances and life-stage.

  • Dear Arzu. I'm so pleased to hear that you have found the video clip helpful. Your message is most encouraging to those of us who have been involved in the creation of the course. With regard to your question, I'm sure that it would be good if more Muslims were aware of/educated about the support organisations that have been established. We hope that this...

  • Thanks for this reflection Shamim. It seems to be particularly important (for Muslims, at least) to enable same-gender support. In some of my previous research, I've heard of Muslim women who would rather seeks pastoral support from a Christian female chaplain than a male Muslim chaplain.

  • Great you have been able to join in with comments, Husnara!

  • This is an interesting reflection, Therese. Gendered interpretations of religious texts arguably have quite a lot to answer for!

  • Good point, Naheed. I wonder if others on the course recognise this point?

  • Thanks Rachael - yes - I agree that Dr Yusuf is an excellent communicator and makes complex material easier to understand. I wonder if other learners share your hypothetical question to him...and whether anyone has some answers based on their experience?

  • Thanks Naheed - you are absolutely right to point to the complexity of the issues and the challenges of translating terms between different languages. I hope you find the later parts of the course helpful.

  • Thanks Husnara - I was interested to hear how lockdown provided an avenue for education and support for you.

  • Thank you Therese - that's a really interesting thought about the vocabulary that we use and the connotations of particular words. I wonder if others share your view?

  • Thanks Roderic - your perspectives as someone working in a prison context are interesting. I wonder if other learners have some thoughts about the relationship between personality disorder and mental health problems?

  • @HusnaraBegum-shohid Thanks Husnara and Roderic - we very much hope that this course will be an accessible way for Imams to acquire some understanding about mental health issues. If you have access to these networks, perhaps you could share information about this course?

  • Glad to hear you are familiar with the Lantern Initiative. We will be signposting to their work during the course!

  • Your experience of working with Muslim students is fascinating Janine. You are reminding us of the importance of the social context of people with mental health problems, and the need to take an individualised approach to their support.

  • Thanks Ibrahim - its interesting to hear how you find your faith supportive.

  • Thank you Shamim - these are all really useful and interesting comments. I wonder if other learners with relevant professional experience recognise these barriers too?

  • Hi Husnara - sorry to hear you have had problems. What device are you using? This may be something to raise with FutureLearn.

  • Thanks for your comment Shamim - do share information about this course with other students on your MA programme!

  • Thanks for this Roderic - this is really helpful to share.

  • Thanks Amina - we are very keen that our research is supportive of Muslim communities.

  • Hello Julia. The question of music is interesting and there are in fact a range of views. This is evident in the fact that the well-known British Muslim, Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens) has returned to recording 'Islamic' music again, and there are many other well-known Muslim artists and singers. Any music in a mosque would tend to be 'religious' or...

  • There is a women's section at this mosque - and lots of women's activities. There were just limits on how much we could fit into the video! You will meet some very interesting Muslim women later in the course.

  • While it is possible for a Muslim to perform their prayer in any mosque, most Muslims tend to prefer to pray with people from their own ethnic group or 'school of thought'. To take an analogy: Christians sometimes worship in churches that are a different denomination from the one they normally worship in, or were brought up in, perhaps if they are traveling...

  • Yes Bisma - the larger and better funded mosques have become very entrepreneurial spaces! But there are still many smaller 'house mosques' that serve simply for prayer, which is fine.

  • I enjoyed listening to this.

  • Yes - Joanna - many UK mosques now have 'Open Days' for anyone to go along. Look out for information

  • Welcome Yvonne! I too am based in rural Herefordshire!

  • Hi Mary. If you are based in mid-Wales, you may like to come along to a talk that I am giving in New Radnor in April. Email me separately @ gilliat-rays@cardiff.ac.uk if you want more details.

  • Dear Alison. Welcome. I hope that you might enjoy meeting some of the British Muslim healthcare chaplains who feature in the course!

  • Very pleased to welcome you to the course Natasha, and I hope you enjoy it.

  • Dear Andrew. Cardiff has one of the oldest Muslim communities in Britain...and now is home to around 24,000 Muslims. The history of Muslims in Britain is mapped out on streets just a few miles from the university...so this is a great place from which to think about Muslim communities in Britain! Each city has a slightly different demographic - so Leeds...

  • Thank you for your support!

  • I think I can answer this question. Mr Jameel is an educational philanthropist, who supports graduate scholarship programmes in various world-leading universities (including Oxford and Cambridge). He is interested in supporting scholarship that will 'make a difference' to human flourishing.

  • Dear Abdullah. Very glad to have you with us. You clearly have some insights and experiences that we can all learn from.

  • Dear Sameena. Delighted you have joined us, and we look forward to your contributions based on your experiences.

  • Thank you for all your introductions. A very warm welcome to the course. Please feel free to share your ideas and thoughts, as we go along.

  • Hello Grace. Welcome to the course! I was interested to hear that you are considering applying for our MA Islam in Britain programme here at Cardiff. This MOOC will certainly give you a 'taster' of the things that fascinate us! If you want to find out more we have course webpage: http://courses.cardiff.ac.uk/postgraduate/course/detail/p168.html and you...

  • Hi Delyth. Great to hear that you were at the lecture in person on Tuesday. It was a truly memorable occasion, not only for the quality of Dr Allen's lecture, but also because of the very wide variety of people attending from so many faiths and spheres of public life.

  • Many thanks to those of you who have commented on the course and your experiences of learning new things about Islam and Muslims in Britain. The production team have thoroughly enjoyed reading your questions, thereby gaining a sense of what you find most interesting and/or challenging. We hope this course might be the beginning of new avenues of exploration...

  • I just wanted to clarify some details about the production of this course. Those of us most closely involved with its development first started conversations with Cardiff University about running a MOOC about 18 months ago. The bulk of the articles were written just over a year ago in time for the first delivery of the course in March 2014. We used feedback...

  • Just following up on Celia's query, not all Muslims would say that "Islam has saints". The recognition of particular individuals as having 'saintly' qualities is dependent upon context, history, tradition, religious lineage, and so on. Leaving that complex question aside for the moment, there is rather more recognition of 'scholars' within the Islamic...

  • The subject of dress has stirred up some lively debate which is great! I have been fascinated by the development of the Islamic 'fashion' industry in Britain (and further afield) recent years. There has been some interesting academic research on this subject, and this short vimeo clip reflects the work of the anthropologist Emma Tarlo: ...

  • Hello Steven. I think I can help here! It is certainly true that there is an increasing identification with the worldwide Muslim community and with Muslim religious identity itself, but the way in which this might take expression will reflect the context in which Muslims find themselves. For example, I recently saw a poster produced by a local mosque in...

  • I am liking the nuanced discussions going on about research methodologies, and the strengths and weaknesses of qualitative and quantitative approaches. Over the last four or five decades, I think there has been increasing debate and scrutiny about research methodology in a range of social scientific fields, and a healthy skepticism about the 'who' and the...

  • The increase in the Muslim population rests upon a range of factors, these being higher birth rates among a 'demographically young' population and the more effective transmission of Islam across the generations.

  • Professor Sophie Gilliat-Ray replied to [Learner left FutureLearn]

    Quite right! Well observed. One of the things we want to stress in the course is the individuality of Muslims in Britain, and the fact there isn't a homogeneous 'community'.

  • I am pleased to read such a wide ranging and varied set of comments about the course, so far. Thank you. It is fascinating to get a better understanding of how complex and sometimes difficult issues about religion and faith are discussed online....and thinking about how comments or posts would be different if made face-to-face?

  • When we think about the settlement of Muslims in Britain, it may be helpful to take account of the very complex and varied circumstances that have brought Muslims into this country, both historically and in the contemporary period. They might have arrived as traumatised refugees who have escaped persecution or warfare that are unimaginable to many of us; as...

  • I am pleased that learners have been stimulated by the 1961 film - we were delighted to get permission to use it for this course. Part of the reason is that Sheikh Saeed who is interviewed is probably the longest-serving Imam in Britain. I asked Prof Ansari if he would concur with that view when he came to Cardiff on Tuesday for the lecture, and he could not...

  • I am very pleased that most learners are enjoying the course. There are obvious limits on what can be covered in a short 4-week course, and we try to offer both depth and breadth as far as we possibly can! Not easy! There are so many topics we would have liked to explore in more depth, and issues that, ideally, would have had much more substantial...

  • I hope this course will encourage and inspire some of our learners to get to know British Muslims better, in the workplace, in the neighbourhood, or via other channels, once the course is complete. Then the really rich stories and mutual sharing will happen in depth.

  • Katherine - yes - those households displaced by the dam construction were compensated and this helped to fund their travel to Britain.

  • I am delighted to find that so many of you have enjoyed the footage of Sheikh Saeed and the experiences of Muslims in Cardiff in the 1960s. This film was discovered by one of our former MA students a few years ago, and we are very happy that we managed to get permission to use it here for the first time!

  • Dear Ursula. Thanks for your comment. The Islam-UK Centre did some research a few years ago with 60 Muslim families in Cardiff about their experiences of living in the city, and raising there children here. They recounted many positive things about being Welsh Muslims, despite the very changed socio-political circumstances that we live in today. Here is a...

  • Hello Noel. The course team come from a wide range of academic backgrounds (especially social science and anthropology) but we share a broad 'Religious Studies' approach which tries to appreciate the meaning, significance and implications that beliefs have for those that adhere to them. For a more theological perspective, perhaps have a look at other courses?

  • It is worth noting that Professor Ansari also has expertise in relation to Islam and Muslims in Britain today, so I am sure he will be able to answer questions that range over a considerable time period.

  • Hello Mary. I quite agree with you that things will have changed, but the historical background to Islam in Britain is quite important to recognise in order to track changes over time, and for our appreciation of the contemporary period.

  • Thank you for this suggestion Delyth.

  • Thank you for this reading suggestion Anne. Novels are another interesting way of thinking about British Muslim experiences. Works by Leila Aboulela are worth borrowing from your local library.

  • The architecture of mosques in Britain is highly variable. Some 'house mosques' are hardly recognisable as places of worship, while London Central Mosque in Regent's Park is a wonderful building that is unmistakably a mosque with its dome and minaret. Well worth a visit if you can.

  • Sharon - mosque building is perhaps becoming less controversial now, as the Muslim population of the UK becomes more established in British society. But it was not always the case! Herefordshire is the last English county without a mosque, and plans to establish one in the last few years have been quite controversial!

  • So, yes, the Graeme Davies you refer to is the author of 'The Dragon and the Crescent'. You can listen to a lecture by Graham, delivered as one of our 'Public Lectures' at the Islam-UK Centre at Cardiff University in 2009:
    https://vimeo.com/77173877

  • Hello Margaret. There isn't a book list to accompany the course, but if you message me off the course site (Gilliat-Rays@cardiff.ac.uk) I would be happy to suggest things you might find helpful. We are not able to point learners to material for purchase.

  • Hamad - I am glad you have learned something new from the course - we hope that the depth and range of material we cover will make the course informative to a wide range of learners.

  • I am delighted you are finding the material useful! Thank you.

  • Hello Delyth. I am glad you find the course of potential use as an RE teaching resource. Please do 'spread the word' among the RE teaching community!

  • Hello Gary. I hope we are educating, not proselytizing, though I won't apologise for our enthusiasm about the material and the subject matter we are covering in the course!

  • Lovely to hear your enthusiasm Ann.

  • I hope so Celia! We like to relate history to actual lived experiences. Let us know how you get on!

  • Thanks to Abdul-Azim, we now have a translation of the Shahadah in Welsh! Here it is:
    Yr wyf yn tystio fod yna neb teilwng am addoliad ag duw ac y mae Muhammad yw'r caethwas a negesydd olaf.

  • Edis - this is an interesting question! I think the signage in the mosque (English and Welsh) is quite unusual...but certainly conveys a sense that the Muslims there see themselves as being rooted in their local context. I will try to find out what the Shahadah would look like in Welsh!

  • Aundrea - yes - the separation of men and women for prayer is for reasons of dignity, but also to avoid the distractions of watching (or being watched by) those of the opposite gender.

  • For sure - in addition to the 5 daily prayers (which are spaced to reflect the natural work/rest 'intervals' of the day) Muslims will offer prayer whenever they feel the need. During our research with Muslim chaplains, I was present when chaplains offered spontaneous prayers with hospital patients and prisoners worried about their health or their...

  • Hester - the transmission of Islam across the generations seem to rest upon a convergence of influences, not just the teaching in the mosque and madrassah. As you point out, the family is vitally important, both nuclear and extended, especially in the years before children start school or madrassah. It is in the years up to the age of 5 that children begin...

  • Hello Graham. The acronym PBUH is derived from 'Peace Be Upon Him' (English translation of the Arabic - see below) and it is a way of conveying respect not only to the Prophet Muhammad, but to the Prophets before him as well. Muslims will often refer to Jesus (Isa) and use the same phrase to indicate respect.

  • Thank you for the discussions so far. It is wonderful to find learners posting such helpful replies to questions, and engaging in such collaborative learning.

  • Hello Sophie! Thank you for that additional point....which we can extend to children, the elderly, travellers, pregnant and breastfeeding mothers....all of whom are exempt from fasting on account of their circumstances. Many Muslims regard this as a reflection of God's mercy.

  • That's lovely to hear - thank you for sharing that!