ties that bind - sep 11

£10.00
ISBN: 978-1-907689-09-3
Policy Exchange
Clutha House
10 Storey’s Gate
London SW1P 3AY
www.policyexchange.org.uk
Muslims have a long and distinguished record of service in the British armed forces.
But this record has been almost completely obliterated in recent years by the
competing narratives of the Far Right and of hardline Islamists. Both blocs, for their
own ideological reasons, seem to assert that one cannot be both a loyal Briton and
a good Muslim at the same time.
In Ties that Bind: How the story of Britain’s Muslim Soldiers can forge a national
identity, former Islamist Shiraz Maher recaptures this lost history of Muslim service
to the Crown. He shows that in the past the Muslim authorities in India successfully
faced down Islamist propaganda and emotive appeals to their confessional
obligations – and made it clear that there were no religious reasons for not fighting
for the British Empire. This was particularly the case in the First World War, even
when this country was locked in combat with the Ottoman Caliphate.
Maher shows that this collective past constitutes the basis of a new shared
future – which can endure in no less testing circumstances. It also forms the
basis for enhanced recruitment of Muslims to the armed forces, without political
preconditions attached.
Shiraz Maher is a Senior Research Fellow at the International Centre for the Study of
Radicalisation (ICSR) at King’s College London and a former activist for the Islamist
group Hizb ut Tahrir.