‘Keeping the lamp burning’: A study of a mosque congregation in London

This research explores the different forms of religious practice within a mosque in north London. It was built by one migrant group, the Guyanese, but the congregation includes those from different Muslim communities now living in the vicinity. These different communities have brought with them their own religious traditions.

The ritual of Friday prayer brings this diverse group together as a congregation but the mosque is also a space for the communal life of the Guyanese and those who share their way of being Muslim, while globalized currents of thinking are apparent in the work of a Guyanese preacher who teaches an explicitly text based Islam in classes and lectures. My research examines the different ways in which Islam is present within these three domains and the relationship between them within the context of the mosque.

The research contributes to the idea of ‘mundane Islam’ and ‘everyday religion’ through an exploration of the implicit, unsystematic way of being Muslim lived by the Guyanese and the everyday relational concerns and ethical commitments it carries. Though the classes offered a very different view of Islam to which the teacher was committed, one purified of cultural traditions, the women who attended them brought the complexity and ambiguity of the mundane back into the process of religious transmission.