Book review: Mohammed Qasim, Young, Muslim and Criminal. Experiences, Identities and Pathways into Crime
| Author | Tahir Abass |
| Published date | 01 April 2020 |
| Date | 01 April 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1748895819878285 |
| Subject Matter | Book review |
https://doi.org/
Criminology & Criminal Justice
2020, Vol. 20(2) 244 –246
© The Author(s) 2019
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Book review
Mohammed Qasim, Young, Muslim and Criminal. Experiences, Identities and Pathways into Crime,
Policy Press: Bristol, 2018; 186 pp.: 978-1447341482, £80.00 (hbk), 978-1447341505, £24.99
(pbk)
Reviewed by: Tahir Abass, University of Leeds, UK
DOI: 10.1177/1748895819878285
Over the course of the last few decades, the Muslim community in the United Kingdom
has been increasingly criminalised and Pakistani Muslim men especially have emerged
as a modern-day folk devil (Gill and Harrison, 2015; Goodey, 2001). The criminalisation
of this group has precipitated a surge in the Muslim prison population which, according
to the Lammy (2017) Review, rose by 50% in the decade preceding the publication of the
report. Yet within criminology there have been few attempts to investigate this commu-
nity and to develop an understanding of the circumstances that have enabled the status
quo to emerge. In order to address this gap in knowledge and understanding, Young,
Muslim and Criminal. Experiences, Identities and Pathways into Crime provides com-
prehensive insights into the lives of a group of young Pakistani Muslim men, who come
from a socially disadvantaged and deprived community in Bradford (United Kingdom),
and are involved in criminality. Subsequently, this book offers a vital contribution to
contemporary criminological discourse.
Perhaps Qasim’s most remarkable accomplishment in this endeavour is his ability to
gain proximity to a group of stigmatised and marginalised young Muslim men, who
according to Qasim himself are often spoken of, but rarely given opportunities to con-
tribute to the narratives pertaining to their own lives. Qasim is able to use his position as
an insider, courtesy of his ethnicity and faith, and also his personal connection to the city
of Bradford, to gain access to a group of nine associated men, who are involved in prob-
lematic behaviours and delinquency. The challenges and difficulty in accessing groups
like these is widely recognised across the discipline. Qasim adopts a phenomenological
approach to his research, accompanying and observing the group of men in their ‘natural
setting’ over a period of time. This enables Qasim to gain a rich understanding and appre-
ciation for how this group sees the world and makes sense of it, through their own eyes
and in their own words.
In the earlier sections of the book, Qasim contextualises the problematisation and polit-
icisation of the Pakistani Muslim community over the course of the last 30 years, and
878285CRJ00Criminology & Criminal JusticeBook review
book-review2019
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